Flain saw three crossroads. At the first intersection, to the left was the symbol of a smooth pearl, to the right a depiction of a thorn. On the stone panel in front of him, an inscription was carved: "What is pure, yet hides a fall; what pricks, shall lead you to the mirror of truth."
Flain stopped and began thinking. This was, most likely, a riddle. But this one was quite easy—just from the text, it was easy to understand what it ant.
Without hesitation, he headed to the right where the thorn was, and behind him ca the quiet tallic click of a chanism, which opened another segnt.
The second intersection was more extensive, the corridors seed closer together, and above the narrow threshold hung a carved riddle: "Two stars in the dark sky, one shines with hope, the other fades in fear. Which one shall lead you?"
Flain thought quickly because he wanted to earn a lot of points for speed.
He lowered his head, reviewing all the facts: "Hope leads into a trap, fear prepares you to leap."
Flain knew that avoiding traps required a cool mind, not naïve courage, and therefore he chose the path of fear—the star that shone with fear. Though he wasn’t completely sure, because it could have been hope, fear made more sense to him.
Flain ran left, where the hallway hooked into a steep staircase going upward. That ant he chose correctly, otherwise the labyrinth would have sent him down a floor.
In front of him stood three tal doors: on the first, there were a few broken mirrors; on the second, delicate vibrating resonant rings; on the third, an opaque black plate. Flain noticed a subtle pulse—the mirrors reflected his every movent with a short delay, the rings vibrated rapidly, the black plate was cold, with no response.
The balance of light and shadow suggested that the mirrors were too drastic and the black one too static. The rings remained.
He focused on the wall beside the second gate and tuned into the slow rhythm of the vibrations. Quietly, he synchronized his mana pulse with their frequency, running his fingers across the tal rings. When the last ring resonated exactly on the sa wave, a deep echo of opening doors sounded.
The doors led into a room with stairs to the 4th floor, which wasn’t blocked by any darkness. The fourth floor was the hardest so far, and Flain had to think quite a bit, but it was still nothing that gave him real trouble.
Flain walked up the stairs to the 4th floor, so he was almost halfway. The room on the 4th floor was lined with black stone inscribed with runes, which absorbed any acoustic or magical manifestation above Stage 4.
In the center hung six crystals arranged in a circle, each crystal marked with one of the following symbols: wind, water, earth, fire, mind, chaos.
Flain felt that each crystal vibrated with its own mana frequency. Flain wondered what he was supposed to do here—whether he had to use a spell from each of the elents. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be able to continue, since out of those affinities, he only had a fire spell.
He also had the mind technique called Low-Dagger-Mastery and Low-DualSwords-Mastery, but that was basically just a representation of how good he was with a specific weapon, so Flain doubted it would work.
Flain also thought he could create a mana pulse that would have the sa frequency as each of the crystals, but that didn’t make much sense to him because sothing almost the sa had already appeared on the 1st floor, and it also wouldn’t explain why the elents were marked on the crystals.
Anyway, Flain decided to try it. He sent out his mana and wrapped it around each of the crystals. Flain’s projection flooded with blue color and he was sent back to the beginning of the 3rd floor.
That ant Flain did sothing wrong—Flain’s first failure. He had vaguely hoped to get through it all without a single mistake, but unfortunately, his wish didn’t co true.
Slightly annoyed, Flain quickly passed through the 3rd floor again and made it back to the fourth.
There was a high chance that Flain was supposed to wrap the crystals with so specific kind of mana pulse, only this ti he had done it wrong. The reason he thought this was because just before he got teleported to the 3rd floor, his projection flooded with blue color, which didn’t seem normal to him. But since he had never failed before, he couldn’t know if that was normal.
Flain thought about summoning Aran or Ivy to try it with their mana pulse, but Flain would have to teach them how to summon their mana pulse, which would take far too much ti, so that wasn’t an option.
Flain summoned his mana pulse again, and this ti put more mana into it, making it stronger. Instead of wrapping it around all the crystals, he wrapped it around only one.
Flain’s projection flooded with red color, and Flain was already expecting to appear at the beginning of the 3rd floor, but he wasn’t teleported anywhere. That ant he didn’t completely fail.
Flain tried the sa pulse with the sa strength as before, wrapping it again around one of the crystals. Flain’s projection was once again colored blue.
But Flain didn’t fail, so he understood that when he wraps his mana pulse around only one mana crystal, nothing happens to him. So Flain started sending different strength mana pulses to the crystal and discovered that when the mana pulse is strong, his projection turns red, and when it’s weak, it turns blue.
Two ideas occurred to Flain that could get him further. The first idea was that he had to find the perfect mana pulse—not too strong, not too weak. The second idea was that he had to apply either a weak or strong mana pulse to each crystal, and with the correct combination, he would get through.
Flain first wanted to try the first option because he was very good at controlling his mana pulse thanks to his focus. Anyway, he had to test it quickly because he couldn’t afford to waste ti. There was also a pretty big chance that it wasn’t either of the two options Flain ca up with—which wouldn’t be nice at all...
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