The crafting stations were getting busier and busier every time he visited. Unlike other rooms, additional instances were only created if more than one person required the same kind of station. There was no option to turn the entire crafting room private, not that Aaron necessarily wanted to.
It was quite cool seeing others at work. It was also interesting seeing them leave, as the materials provided by the trials disappeared, and then reappeared when they entered again.
There was an exception to this. Helpers. Sooty was hardly the only helper, although it wasn’t like everyone had a little minion doing odd jobs for them. But like Sooty, there were a few other little creatures collecting materials, or even helping their masters craft.
In one station, there was a panda helping its master, who appeared to be some kind of tailor, sew. In another, there was a cat. The cat looked a lot less helpful, though, playing with materials and knocking them off the table to the frustration of their owner.
I guess cats are the same everywhere. I wonder if they’re all trial rewards, or if people got them in the Tutorials? I’ll ask later.
It was all very interesting, and he imagined the place looking a little too sweat-shoppy once more arrived. But for now, he wanted to focus on finishing the trial he was in the middle of. And that meant making this trip to the kitchen a quick one. But he made a mental note to check out what some of the other crafters were up to at a later date.
Stocking up on food and cooking another spirit dish for later, Aaron ran through his errands as quickly as possible. Only stopping to eat and build up adipose reserves.
But even then, whilst distracted with work, he was considering his next moves. He was thinking about how he struck the patchwork homunculi with his spirit fist, and what he could do better.
He had also gotten into the habit of cycling aether whenever he could, not that it was easy. He had to maintain some degree of connection with his spirit to do so. It was distracting, but absolutely worthwhile.
The more comfortable and natural his control over his spirit became, the easier it was to spin aether around. Most couldn’t see anything, but a vortex of swirling aether was essentially always following him around now.
There were likely more ways to employ the power as well, he mused. But they could wait until he perfected his spirit punch.
Once he was done, he returned to the Trial of Dominance and smashed his way through it.
There was no need to take his time with the homunculi now. He had gotten what he wanted out of them and realized that he wanted to test his spirit energy disruption against more energy signals. There were bound to be limited gains to be had, slamming himself against the same wall over and over again, and he wasn’t in a position to waste time.
He knew what needed to be done now, and as long as he kept his pace, bashing his way through the trial, and didn’t let the homunculi slow him down, it was relatively easy.
The real problem only arose when he let their numbers amass too greatly. As long as he avoided that, he was more than capable of beating his way through the trial. Although they were still stubbornly hard to kill. He mostly just landed a spiritual punch, breaking their connection and moving on before the scattered imps could reform into a new homunculus.
When he reached the tower’s top, a familiar scene played out, and both the remaining homunculi and imps bowed to him.
Chain Quest: The Shadow Trials
Stage seven of [ Trial of Dominance] COMPLETED!
You have tested yourself against a swarm of gold-loving imps and homunculi and have emerged victorious.
Quest Rewards: Cosmic Package [ Epic ], Unique System Store upgraded to level 7.
Experience rewarded for completing a quest stage!
Aaron eyed the package in his hand as it appeared. It looked like an e-commerce package from old Earth, fragile stickers and all.
Cosmic Package [ Epic ]
If you can fit it in this package, you can send it. The Cosmic Package will travel to any destination throughout the multiverse selected by the user. The user must have seen the location either in person or via a viewing portal to select said destination. Items may also be placed into a package by the receiver and recalled by the user at their leisure.
“Umm, this could actually be pretty useful,” Aaron mumbled and pocketed the package in his scabbard. He didn’t know how easy it would be to see other sections of the multiverse, but even if he couldn’t immediately use it, he was sure he would find a use for it sooner or later.
Returning to the hallway triumphant, he considered his next steps. His spirit punch had come a long way. He wasn’t yet sure that he had perfected it enough, but it was at least worth testing against Oozagh.
Restarting the Trial of the Challenger, he faced off against the ogre and readied to attack.
“Bahah! Think you have figured it out, twig boy?”
“We’ll see,” Aaron cocked his head and rushed forward and attacked with several punches, all of which were powered with swirling spirit energy.
He hadn’t figured it out. Not well enough yet, at least.
The punch did screw with Oozagh’s energy, though. Just not enough to have a real effect on the ogre. This wasn’t necessarily a total buzz kill, though. There was only so much he could achieve prior to level 35 and his Skill unlock. It was, however, a little disappointing.
He knew he was onto something, but it just didn’t have enough power yet to contend with the formidable ogre avatar at this stage of its ascent.
“That tickled,” Oozagh chuckled.
“Bugger. I really hoped that would do something.”
“Try again!” Oozagh boomed as he lopped Aaron’s head off.
The stubborn warrior wasn't about to just give up because he lost his head; that was barely an inconvenience for Aaron at this point. And the fight continued for several long minutes. He landed his spirit punch several times during it, tuning it and feeling for the energy disruptions it caused, and he even managed to dispel one of Oozagh’s attacks despite not trying to. Sending out so much interruptive aether with his attacks just kind of had those side effects.
He could also feel himself blasting away the ogre’s energy when he attacked, but it wasn’t enough. For the attack to be legitimately powerful, it needed to drain considerably more energy than it cost Aaron to use. And it wasn’t there yet, and least not compared to this version of Oozagh.
He reminded himself who he was up against and pushed himself harder. Mo’han wasn’t just the strongest in the sector, but an asura with naturally powerful energy reserves. If this didn’t work against the ogre’s avatar, it wouldn’t work against Mo’han Khan.
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After a short back and forth, Aaron was finished off and returned to the hallway.
However, he was close. Close to figuring out this punch. And he thought it was about time he picked up more experience as he honed his way to the final form of his unrefined spirit punch.
Even faced off against trials that were not specifically designed for fighting, the stubborn brute that was Aaron Dober always managed to find ways of turning them into boxing matches.
In relatively quick succession, he blasted through two stages of the Trial of Wit as he perfected his spirit punch.
During the first one, there was a sphinx that asked riddles. But who was Aaron to sit around and play games of riddles? No, that was not his style. Instead, he would rather let his fists talk.
There had been powerful magic and conditions in place to force trial takers to follow the rules. Unfortunately for the creator, they hadn’t expected that whoever took the trial, could survive something as mundane as death.
So, once the trial and the powerful energies behind it had killed him and he had summarily revived, it was just Aaron, his fists, and a sphinx who really didn’t want to fight.
But he didn’t let it off easily. It was a good punching bag to test his spirit punch on. The sphinx had surprisingly large energy reserves, and he quite enjoyed hitting it.
Chain Quest: The Shadow Trials
Stage three of [ Trial of Wit ] COMPLETED!
You have tested yourself against the riddles and challenges of the mighty sphinx and have passed successfully.
Quest Rewards: Basic Regeneration Ward [ Elite ], Training Hall upgrade to stage 3!
Experience rewarded for completing a quest stage!
[ Empty-Handed Energy Monk ] has LEVELED UP!
30 → 31
The basic regeneration ward was another settlement item. He had multiple settlement items now, and hoped that he would actually be able to use them at some point. But that was a thought for another day.
He barely even took notice of his level-up and raced into the next trial. Thankfully, the lines were getting much better managed. He even noticed a couple of spruikers popping up along the now fast-moving line, trying to hawk their goods. Perhaps when he wasn’t in the middle of something, he would take a look at what they had to offer.
He eagerly rubbed his hands as he stepped up to the trial dial. It wasn’t just extra experience that had gotten him excited, though. During his fight with the sphinx, he had gotten an idea and desperately wanted to test it out.
It had been hard to notice earlier, but all of this running around with his spirit activated was starting to pay dividends. His link with his spirit felt stronger than ever, and it seemed to be making his spirit punches stronger in the process.
Against the fourth stage of the Trial of Wit, he tested just this theory.
Swirling the aether around his fist had multiplied the power of the aether, but not the quantity. However, in the process of trying to get a better handle on his spirit, he had unexpectedly started to climb this hurdle himself.
In the following Trial of Wit, he found himself against stone statues that looked like some kind of winged creatures with the bodies of lions. Interestingly, inspect didn’t provide levels or names, just called them trial statutes. He guessed they mustn’t have been alive and were actually parts of a larger construct.
But they weren’t just any statues. These statues only moved whenever he looked away.
The difficulty in this trial was that the clues to the puzzle he was supposed to complete to beat the trial were on the opposite side of the chamber. This meant that you had to look away to find answers, and hopefully turn back before the stone statues descended upon you.
Instead, Aaron marched straight up to the statues and punched them. They weren’t made of just any ordinary stone, though, and his punch did literally zero damage to their impervious shells.
However, just like everything in the multiverse, they required energy to move and fight, even if they were a simple part of something greater.
A grin creased his face as he realized just how perfect this trial was for his training.
The statues just stood there unmoving as he trained punch after punch against them, aiming for their spirits and energy.
His spirit punches actually worked, kind of. They were damaging their energy and restricting their regeneration, but barely. Because they weren’t alive, even as shadows, their energy came from an external source. With enough power from his spirit, he could actually block out those external sources from providing energy to the statues, but it wasn’t easy.
Even after he tried shutting down their energy regeneration, it seemed to stubbornly come back online only seconds later. He wasn’t too surprised, though. These enemies weren’t designed to be beaten. Trial takers who attempted this trial were supposed to figure out the puzzle, not beat up the statues.
That just wasn’t Aaron’s style, though. And if there was a means of beating this trial without following the rules, he was going to find it.
And this particular challenge was quite perfect. He spent hours slamming his fists against the stone. If not for his own stupid regeneration, he’d have crippled himself many times over. But all it took was a little food to boost him back up.
And gradually, after hours of slamming fists against stone, constantly honing his technique, he noticed he was coming up on a wall. Each strike was a bit stronger than the last, but the difference was getting smaller and smaller each time. He could keep improving it, but the gains were so small that he wasn’t sure it was worth continuing. He just couldn’t spin his aether any faster. The rotation of his fist and the amount of his willpower could accelerate it, but it had a limit.
He took a break from punching the statues and started idly messing with his aether as he tried thinking of ways to improve. He could sense his aether twisting the pathways within the statue, but it wasn’t quite enough. He needed more destructive power, but he couldn’t get his aether rotating fast enough.
Then, as he was fiddling with his aether, it came to him. He could obviously manipulate the aether within his spirit. After all, how else would he get it gathered in his fist? The aether was constantly moving around within his spirit, and it was more or less at his command. He could just use that.
Slowly, he started to seize control of the flow of aether within his spirit. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too difficult either, since, unlike his body, his spirit didn’t really have organs or natural pathways to follow. After a few minutes, he managed to get the aether in his spirit swirling around. He did an experimental punch on the statue, and to his surprise, despite not putting his full effort into it, it was just as destructive as his maximum effort punches earlier, if not more so.
He dove further and further into his new technique, swirling the aether in his body faster, and refining the flow until something suddenly clicked for him. His entire spirit wasn’t in the best shape for swirling, but he could gather most of the aether into the center in a rapidly rotating ball and siphon that for his spirit punches. The aether reached his spirit’s arm already spinning rapidly, and with the added force of the punch, it was like a drill burrowing its way into the statue, tearing up all the pathways within it. The technique even allowed him to add more aether, with the swirling seeming to have almost a suction effect, like water draining from a tub, which allowed him to put more power into his spirit punch.
His ghostly fist had turned into a blur of energy, swirling so fast even his trained eyes couldn’t properly tell what was happening. And then, he swung the violently swirling energy into the stone statue once more.
A torrent of pure aether shot outward. It existed within the spirit plane and wasn’t felt by mortal creatures, but Aaron had felt it.
Not only had his punch blasted away at the statue’s energy, completely disabling its energy regeneration, but the drill-like punch had continued onward, damaging the arm of a second statue before finally dissipating.
In his excitement, though, he had allowed the rotation of the aether core in his spirit to slow, so he had to take a moment to speed it back up before punching again. When he did, the same scene played out, but this time, the statue he was punching literally fell to pieces. Without the energy inside it to prop it up, the stone could not withstand Aaron’s enhanced strength from even his ordinary punches, and it stood no chance against him.
A mad smile creased his lips as he walked over to the next one. This was it. He had done it. He had created a truly powerful strike at destroying energy and disabling regeneration.
A short moment later, and all five statues lay in pieces, but nothing happened.
“Ahhh, bloody hell. Don’t tell me!” Aaron groaned.
Like a disciplined child, he trudged over to the puzzle. Throwing his arms around, he forced himself to study the puzzle, and very slowly, he completed it.
Chain Quest: The Shadow Trials
Stage four of [ Trial of Wit ] COMPLETED!
You have tested your wit against the grand puzzle and the unbreakable statues that guard its secrets successfully.
Quest Rewards: Basic Regeneration Ward [ Elite ], Training Hall upgrade to stage 4!
Experience rewarded for completing a quest stage!
Despite the laborious task of completing the puzzle, his spirits were immediately raised when he saw the notification.
Alright, I think I’m finally ready.
This was it. If this version of the strike was effective against Oozagh’s avatar, then he felt confident in his final rush towards level 35. There was no way the System would cheat him out of an appropriate Skill if he managed to shut down the energy regeneration of Oozagh’s avatar in its current form.
This is gonna be fun!
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