Vine tentacles shot out from the hulking creature to ensnare her while she was defenseless. With a sigh of pure exhaustion, Kumo forced her body up and started to jump back in order to avoid the attack. Each time her feet touched the ground she felt as if her whole body was going to give out.

  She pulled a dagger from her cloud bag and slashed at the incoming vines that seemed to have an endless range. Blade met vine and cut clean through with no resistance. A pained shriek came from the creature and the vines retracted before the monster vanished into the dense trees.

  Kumo was shocked that it had given up that easily. Those vines must be sensitive to have caused that much pain, but then why would a monster use them as their forward offense if they were a weak point. Either way, she needed to find somewhere safe to recover before it decided to come back. She ran in the opposite direction toward the mountainous terrain of this new room.

  After ten minutes of running, she spotted an alcove on the side of the mountain with a flat protrusion in front of it. Running was miserable, but the climbing was even worse. Her body was spent and felt like it weighed a hundred times more than it normally did. Still, she held on until she was at the back wall of the alcove. That’s all she remembered before her vision went black.

  Fake sunlight was still present when she awoke. There was no indication that nighttime would ever come in this place and so she had no idea how long she was out. Checking her status, she found her resource pools completely refilled which meant it had to at least have been a couple of hours. Her status screen also showed she had levelled up quite a few of her skills.

  Force of the Tempest went up twice along with Blades of the Cloud while Breeze, Thunder Surge, and Stormcloud all went up once. This trial was already paying off in the form of skill improvement and she intended to keep pushing forward. Now that she was back at 100% her mission to escape this new cell began.

  The mountain, forest wall, and the two walls designed to look like the sky were all impossible to breakthrough. She had attempted each one for hours with no progress. To her that meant there was a door somewhere and she needed to find it.

  While searching in the forest she found more of those odd vine creatures and now that she was able to fight back, they didn’t pose any sort of challenge. Her cloud blades went through them with no resistance. The only issue with them was they blended in with the foliage and were hard to spot.

  Hours passed and she went over the giant cell with a fine-toothed comb to find the door. When she finally found it, her palm immediately met her face. It was behind the waterfall built into the mountain. She was upset that it was such an obvious hiding spot, and she didn’t even think of it.

  Inspecting the door made her even more frustrated because it wouldn’t open. Instead, there were numbers on the hard stone showing she had 32/100 of something. Obviously, this meant she needed to get the other 68 and the door would open. Now she just needed to figure out what she already did 32 of and then it hit her. She didn’t keep count, but that was probably around the number of the vine creatures she had slaughtered.

  I guess it’s hunting time!

  ***

  Kumo was now certain that the lights didn’t have a nighttime mode, and it would always be daylight which was fine with her since these creatures were already hard to spot. In four hours, she had taken down another sixty of them. That meant she had eight left, and they were getting harder to find. That’s when she got an idea.

  She made herself collapse like she was completely exhausted and helpless again. A few minutes later, several vines started shooting towards her from several directions binding her extremities. Luckily, she didn’t necessarily need her arms to make cloud blades, it just helped her with accuracy when she swung her arm like a sword cutting air.

  Compressed tempest-empowered cloud blades shot out in every direction, and shrieks rang out to rid the forest of its peaceful silence. Seven more vine guards had been slain which meant there was one left. As soon as she got the notifications of the fallen vine guards there was a rumble like the whole cell was shaking.

  Running out of the forest, she saw a titanic vine guard pulling itself out of the ground between her and the door. When it saw her, a roar of anger shook through her, and it immediately attacked.

  What seemed like thousands of vines were twisting and turning through the air to trap Kumo. This monster wanted to take away her freedom and she wasn’t going to accept that. Powerful cloud blades started assaulting the mass of vines and after slicing through a few, they were on target to hit the body of the beast. Before her eyes, the vines and the cuts instantly repaired themselves like the wall from before.

  Kumo doubled down with the amount of cloud blades while pushing the entire mass of vines back with condensed Thunder Surges. A thick fog rolled in to obscure her from the target as she attempted to get closer and deliver a more solid blow. Her Stormcloud was activated, and lightning came down to sear the beast and its vines periodically. Heavy rain helped her dodge the incoming vines and eventually with all this happening she got within five feet of the target.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A condensed cloud blade struck the areas that the vines attached to the monster’s main body causing another shriek of pain. While it was distracted, she shot out a bigger cloud blade to take off its odd-shaped head. A lingering headless mass of vines was all that was left when she heard the door snap open.

  ***

  Each cell after that got more difficult. Some she had to find a way to break out of, some there was a difficult task to complete in order to advance, some cells were massive while others were tiny, and most had hordes of creatures with some type of lockdown skill to kill while figuring out how to escape.

  Kumo had lost count of how many cells she had escaped from, and time slipped away from her. By her estimations, it had been roughly four years of slaying monsters and escaping various cells. She was tired and was ready for the trial to end even though she did enjoy the random challenges.

  One room she had to hunt down birds around floating islands to get keys for the door. She loved the thrill of walking over the shoddy rope bridges between the islands. Another had her walking through this dense tar substance, and she couldn’t stop or she would start to sink. There was one that forced her to sit in a diamond box with only a small slit in the wall to look out of and the idea was to wait for these dragonfly creatures with sticky goo attacks to come close enough for you to attack. Her trapdoor on that one required two thousand insect deaths. Of course, she kind of cheated by using her vortex from her bracers to suck a ton in at a time. None of these were her favorite though.

  Her favorite challenge yet was a timed cell that seemed to be falling into nothingness. The door had opened, and a timer appeared in the false sky before the land started to fall apart. Kumo immediately started to run while conjuring a strong breeze behind her. She escaped in forty seconds, but it was still her favorite because of how free it made her feel to be dancing across the land like the wind. It felt like nothing could stop her when she was moving that freely.

  Currently, her challenge was another lengthy one. From what she could make out, there were several different types of creatures in this massive field and when she slayed enough of them then a bigger mini boss would form for her to face. When destroyed, they dropped orbs that needed to be put in a pedestal to power the door. She had already taken down a toad that would create mud prisons to try and trap her before eating the entire thing. Kumo was much too fast to be trapped like that and the toad fell to several cloud blades.

  Another mini boss spawned, and this one looked like a sunflower except it shot out beams of light that were impossible to move in. Unfortunately for the plant, it had to let go of the beam before striking with razor sharp teeth from its roots and that brief second before the attack was long enough for her to escape. Cloud blades severed the stem, and she destroyed all the roots before the notification came, and the orb was produced.

  Now she only had four hordes left to deal with. Some type of sheep creature that had a poison cloud instead of wool, then there were ten-foot-tall humanoids with an insanely strong grapple, a flock of bats that seemed to stun you with sound, and these odd creatures that look to be flaming circles crawling over the floor. She didn’t even want to get close to the last ones.

  After taking out the big sheep, she had to rest and get rid of the poison that had burned through her veins. The fight was much harder than she was expecting and Kumo had taken almost a third of her health points in damage. Poison had played a huge factor by making her hallucinate that she was being turned to stone. A truly horrific experience.

  Once the poison was cleared, she took on the humanoids which ended up being fun and dangerous. Each one had to get close in order to grapple her, but if they did it was tough to get out of and by the time she would escape another one would be waiting to grapple her again. For a while she couldn’t figure out why they were only trying to pin her down and then it hit her. They were sucking her mana away with every second she was in their grasps. After figuring that out, she was able to keep her distance and finish them off. Unfortunately, the horde was much more fun and difficult than the mini boss monster.

  She dreaded facing the screech of the bats, but the flock had fell quickly since they had almost no defensive measures. A big bat appeared, and it was much more defense oriented. Sound waves crashed with cloud blades in an epic battle of near invisible attacks. Kumo’s health dropped under a quarter before a random lightning strike of all things took the beast out.

  Resting back at the entrance before taking on the least of the monsters, she took another look at her status screen to see quite few more levels had come in. In the four years, she had finally gotten over the first wall and secured level 20 which came with a much-needed skill selection. Kumo chose a skill named Cloud Walking which basically let her create mini condensed clouds to run or stand in the air. It was by far her favorite skill, and she used it any chance she got. Her other skills were all level 25 after constant battle and life-threatening situations. She felt amazing with her stats so high.

  Completely rested back up, Kumo took off to fight the fire circles. She kept her distance not wanting to figure out what their lockdown skill was, and she found that her cloud blades weren’t very effective against them. The only sure way to kill them was for their flame to go out. She had to use her skills to cover them in dirt or snuff them out with prolonged exposure to the moisture in her fog. After an entire day, she took out the final one and the boss spawned.

  A flame circle with flames reaching to the fake sky and a circumference nearly taking up the entire room spawned which Kumo put uncomfortably close to her new enemy. Thankfully, much like the smaller ones, this creature didn’t seem to have any offensive tactics other than trying to trap her within its walls of flames which she was able to avoid thanks to her Cloud Walking and Breeze skill. Sadly, it took two whole days worth of dodging and piling dirt onto the circle for it to fall and the final orb to appear.

  Putting the final orb in, the entire room buzzed and instead of a door shifting open along the wall, the entire fake sky opened up revealing the real sky with the real clouds and two beautiful moons staring down at her. Without any hesitation she used her new skill to run into the freedom above her.

  Unfortunately, when she got above her last cell, chains started shooting at her from every angle. The rattling was accompanied by a notification.

  Defeat The Warden