[Ti is accelerating, please stand by.
All cooldowns have been reset.]
"The third encounter is to be the hardest, yet again," Emma guessed, as a notification arrived the mont she set foot in the next room.
This one was completely bare of decorations, a simple cylinder surrounded on all sides by simple stone walls. These walls were bare, save for a single column, where careful carvings produced a chain of long, flowery script from top to bottom. The room was otherwise empty, with neither enemy nor proctor to greet her. Taking the heavy handed hint in stride, Emma began to read from the wall.
"If it must be nad, let its na be Great. Great and kind, great and terrible, rembered from antiquity until the stars go out. This is The Way: the imnsity of heaven, the solidity of earth, and the tenacity of mankind to bridge the gap."
Emma paused, as the next line reverted to the first, repeating the sa stanza again and again until it cut off mid sentence against the floor, as space for writing ran out.
"It's very… inspirational?"
[The text is old, stemming from the writings of Li Er, if I'm not mistaken. The System does its best, but translation is a delicate art, and certain nuances are inevitably lost when the recipient is not themselves a native speaker.
Ti is accelerating.
WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 21 hours, 21 minutes
WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 21 hours, 20 minutes
WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 21 hours, 19 minutes..]
"Shit."
Feeling the urgency more than ever, Emma looked around the room with renewed fervour, looking for a hint to what had to be a puzzle room of so sort. Nothing changed, neither hide nor hair of anyone coming to greet her. All the while, the clock ticked down, a minute gone with every passing second. Faced with a situation with unknown paraters she couldn't begin to guess at, Emma defaulted to doing what she was best at: breaking things.
Calling Epitaph to her hand, she began by hacking and slashin at the nearest wall, seeking a hidden exit. Her blade bounced off every ti, doing no damage at all despite her best efforts and considerable strength. This remained true as she circled the room, until at last she reached the wall with the carvings. The mont Emma scratched through her first Chinese character, Emma died.
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[50,000 Anima lost.
One With Everything activates, leaving you at 1 Anima!]
Emma slamd against the far wall, courtesy of an imnse hand that had appeared out of nowhere to give her the mother of all slaps, before retreating back into the wall, or rather, what the rest of the wall had been built around.
[Funerary Tablet (Spirit Severing) - Level 80]
"I didn't even see it move," Emma gaped as she slowly slid down the wall, leaving a faint imprint as she landed, as she watched the faint cut she'd managed seal itself, leaving the tablet pristine once more.
[Spirit Severing is the highest realm of cultivators in the modern age. Anything above that could not be sustained by the mana available: in an era of drought, those in higher realms were forced to either ascend or starve. Even Spirit Severing didn't have it easy; the majority at this rank have spent long centuries asleep, and will only now start to wake back up in this new era of abundance.]
"So this is the resting place of a powerful dead cultivator?"
[Stronger than any of his descendants, much to his chagrin.]
That answer wasn't too helpful, and as Emma considered her options, she realised there was no way she could overco such an opponent. Brute force, clearly, was not the answer.
"Wait."
Emma glanced down, tracing the faint impression beneath her.
"The walls resist damage, the tablet fights back, but the floor did neither."
Earthbound Immortal, excavate.
By Emma's command, her summoned elental took possession on the earth beneath them and pulled, taking all of it with him to form a body taller than herself. Not too big, as the room was only two feet deeper after the fact, so there wasn't that much dirt to work with. None of it looked any different from further up, but Emma didn't care, her eyes imdiately turning to the funerary tablet. asuring the remaining distance from the end of the writing to the floor, she decided that, yes, there was exactly enough room to finish the final stanza, if the correct size and script was maintained.
[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 19 hours, 05 minutes]
By now, One With Everything was back off cooldown, courtesy of the accelerated flow of ti, so Emma had her safety net back even if her deduction proved wrong. Heading back before the Funerary Tablet, and careful not to touch what was already there, Emma laid flat on her belly for a better view and leverage. From there, she lightly pierced the newly revealed stretch of wall with Epitaph's tip, and began to carve.
It was slow, careful work, Emma frequently pausing to look at the existing characters further up, trying to keep as close to the design as possible. She knew parity wasn't realistic; being neither a trained stonemason nor equipped with the tools to make it so, but Emma still tried her best to keep to the the. Thankfully, no further attacks materialised as she worked, and as the eighth and final line took form, ending less than a millitre above the new floor level, every character lit up in heavenly blue, and caved in on itself.
[200 EXP gained for passing a trial of wits.
Ti resus its normal flow.
WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 13 hours, 17 minutes.]
Where once was a stretch of solid wall, a narrow passageway appeared, through which Emma could see two figures. One, an old man dressed in scholar's robes, lying dead on the floor. The other? A massive ball of liquid tal, pulsating in tune with an unknown heartbeat.
[Heavenly Jade Mirror - Level ???]
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