Tyrant

The team looked to their right the moment they heard the Specter called out the name of the room, but the room was so magical that they couldn"t feel scare or serious about the task when there was a theme park in front of them.

The room could be seeing in its entirety as people came down the stairs but if they were at the bottom, the 20 ft walls looked pretty intimidating. There were stairs that move up into the air and others that came down from the air and in the the middle of the room, there laid a platform that was elevated by something like a hydraulic rod, that function like a firefighters pole to slide down a hole into the next level. On top of the platform there was a door made out of dark energy very similar to a dark hole but when you looked straight at it, it gave the feeling that instead of absorbing anything close by, it would spit back anything that came into a 5 ft range of it.

The door on the platform was not the only one. There were many doors and some of them gave the feeling that it will suck you right in and you will never be able leave while there were some others like the one on the platform gave you the opposite feeling.

"Old guy what are those doors for, they all give me a weird feeling" asked Rahz.

"They are teleportation gates, they are connected in pairs, one is the entrance and the other is the exit. As you can see the one in the platform is the exit and to get there you need to find its twin brother among all the other entrances in the room but is not that easy to do, thanks to the room changing every 6 hours".

Now it was Elune"s turn to asked " What do you mean it changes?".

"Ohh speak of the Devil…"

The room started to shake, it was extremely loud and it felt like a big earthquake was taken place. Clouds of dust started appearing in some of the wall unions when they started moving like the pieces of a 3D puzzle.

Clack ..Clack.. Clack

Sounds of gears moving reached Rahz and the others, while some of the walls started moving downwards and disappearing into the floor, some others were coming out from the floor in different angles than before. Places where you could go straight before now had walls blocking the way, stairs that went up and then made a right, now went down and to the left, some teleportation gates that exited before were now entrances and some completely disappeared and became walls while others appeared in places were walls used to be.

The jaws of the group dropped for the entirety of the change and were snapped back to reality by a very old and a little high pitch voice that said, " Test..Test..Cough.. Changed 004 of 004, Extreme High Pace Field. Enjoy the Hunt Master Chrysalis".

(Silence)

The team didn"t know what to think about the voice but they couldn"t take their eyes away from the main platform to the next level that was now flush with the floor. Thanks to the height difference between their position and the now lower platform they were able to see a figure in the middle of the room.

The figure was sitting in a lotus position with both hands resting in front of where the lower dantian would be, with both palms looking up and one resting on top of the other. The thumbs touched each other at the top making a ( ) symbol between them. On his body there was a shin.o.bi shozoku that was full of dust and was falling apart due to the pa.s.sing of the time. The only thing visible was a pair of sunken eye holes where the organ use to be and all throughout his body there was a smoke like aura.

In the back of his waist, the handle of a straight short sword was visible as well as a pouch on his left side. When the team looked at the figured on the platform they all felt very uncomfortable, specially Rahz that couldn"t help but ma.s.sage his Adam apple over and over again, all he kept thinking about was the feeling of cold steel on his neck.

The group continued going down the stairs while they listened to the Royal Guard talking about the place. "There are a few things you must keep in mind, although there are not soldiers to fight in this room, every single path you take is riddle with mechanical traps that could kill you. You must pay attention to the changes as they would help you make sense of every Field modification. Right now, is an Extreme High Pace Field which means that you must move quickly while trying to reach the stairs. This Field is probably the shortest path to the third floor but it is also the deadliest, you only have a few seconds before every challenge so you can"t take your time thinking about your next move. If we rate all the four changes into Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert this mode 004 would be the expert level. The traps inside the room are always the same but the location changes with each iteration so don"t try to memorized them, instead try to find out the best way to overcome the particular trap so when you see it again in another place you can respond accordingly whether in beginner mode or on expert".

"Last but not least is Master Chrysalis, as you heard the voice in the speaker, this is his hunting ground and he would be attacking you while you try to go through the Labyrinth. The good news is that all the Guardians lost 30 Levels when they were cursed so he had lost most of his stats. Master Chrysalis was Level 45 when the invasion happened so right now he is only Level 15 but it would be a mistake to let your guard down just because of this, his a.s.sa.s.sination techniques are top notch. n.o.body knows exactly how many people he killed in his prime but rumor has it he was able to kill a prince of the Beast Race with only one attempt".

The group turned solemn after hearing the information and were already thinking about ways to cope with the challenge ahead. After 15 minutes of descend, the team finally reach the bottom and they were able to see a plaque besides the entrance to the maze that said:

4 Mode Interchangeable Kinetic Cube

Gnome Engineering Group

Rahz didn"t understand what it meant but he thought that it lacked flare, he would have name it something imposing like Megadeath Cube or Fields of Death, not 4 mode interchangeable whatever. However, the gnomes liked to name their inventions according to their functions that way if they had to send somebody else to fix it after a malfunction that gnome would know what the invention did or even the type of method use to give it power.

The doorway into the room look pretty simple and even the first hallway was extremely quiet. If it wasn"t for the specter giving them some pointers the team would have already rush in so they could feel for themselves what the fuss was about.

Rahz and the others decided to take the Old Guards advised to wait for the beginners field since they didn"t have to worry about any soldiers reviving anymore. Rahz pa.s.sed the time doing maintenance on his 2H Axe while Elune continued to get familiar with her new artifact and with her limits while using it. Elune had a feeling that she was going to have the biggest role in the upcoming challenge since her protection wards could stop the damage cause by the traps and maybe stop some of the a.s.sa.s.sin techniques from one shotting anybody in the team. They might be half undead thanks to the curse but if they die in the fallen gate, they would finished their transformation from half into full.

6 Hours pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye and the same old voice rang across the room "Test..Test..Cough.. Changed 002 of 004, Moderate Difficulty Mode, Hmmm...Stop being a p.u.s.s.y and enter the field".

The team looked like they had been spit on the face and Ridd.i.c.k stood up and Rawwwr at the voice that taunted him while walking towards the entrance.

"Wait!… Wait!… Don"t let him riled you up, wait for the beginner stage, I am Serious!!".