Beatitudes

Episode 88.

// Trial objectives cleared:

1st Objective- Eliminate all tainted beasts (110/110)

2nd Objective- Clear all floors (5/5)

Trial objectives left uncleared:

3rd Objective- Eliminate the mountain king(Imperative)

4th Objective- Destroy the mountain(Optional)

You have cleared the five floors of the Tainted mountain (Tier one) and completed an additional two subtasks of the trial.

You may choose to step into the safe zone to recuperate and recover all energy and get prepared, or you may directly head on to complete the third objective and challenge the mountain king, the leader of all the beasts of the mountain, be careful //

This time around, due to the additional objectives being stated, even Isaac and Harry read all the way down to the end as they took in the new words. When the saw the screen still stating the objective that was to eliminate the mountain king, that was when they realized that the mountain king wasn’t actually one of those they had just taken down.

This caused no small amount of confusion to three reading the words on the screen.

Hiya took a slow glance around every the entirety of the fifth floor as a flickering light flashed through her purple pupils. She had already had this little tidbit of thought that passed through her mind as soon as they reached the fifth floor. And when she did, she had immediately begun to speculate that the mountain king was most likely somewhere on the fifth floor, but it was hidden. After all, there were no more floors to sweep through, unless of course the floor that held the mountain king which would be the sixth floor, was considered a separate area from the rest of the mountain, hence why the screen never counted it among the floors of the mountain. But that was still a speculation and she couldn’t be sure if the screen of light had left anything out, so she had one more guess, the mountain king was most definitely on the fifth floor, but was in hiding somewhere, anywhere at all, and had been quietly waiting their trio while waiting for a time to strike.

But her thoughts were quickly tossed aside as a scene like in the previous at about the same time happened, a door slowly appeared like how the previous doors leading to the next floor appeared after clearing the floor they were currently on.

This door though was still a black colored door, but had large swathes of red colored over the black, like as if it had stained with copious amounts of blood at one point in time, if one sniffed in the air fairly well for a good while, one would be able to catch a whiff of the bloody smell that lingered in the air as if for a long time.

Harry had his brows involuntarily bunch up as he had been able to catch that smell. If this was a day years back in time when he hadn’t yet left his hometown, he wouldn’t have been able to realize what the smell was. But now he did, after all these years, starting from when he had been captured and forcefully taken to fight for no reason in the pit, all till now when he had become a fighter like in his dreams and spent a good amount of his days after it slaying beasts, he had been seeing blood all too well every time and had even inhaled its stench pretty well.

If he could smell it, then the others could too. The smell and the sight of the door that looked stained with blood all worked to make the door that had appeared a distance to their left a little more unnerving to them than it seemed to be.

If they hadn’t moved through the entire floor using the entire space in an effective manner while battling against the Direflame wolves and thus took in and remembered the sight of the entire floor as they fought all through it, then they wouldn’t have been able to believe that the door had only appeared now, instead they would have reasoned that they had overlooked the door and hence didn’t noticed it, even though the position it was in wasn’t at all overlookable.

**

So right now, I’m standing right in front of a big door that looks like it’s seen both the good and bad times of life and is now inviting all who can to experience the bad times with it. Harry and Hiya are standing right beside me but I get the feeling that neither one of them wants to go to the door first, well what do you know, I won’t be going either ways as well.

None of us seemed ready to go forward at this point, and this was all because of how the door seemed so sinister, boding death for all who approaches. I could hear Astral ’s voice in my head at this time, come to think of it, it had been a while since I heard him speaking

Astral: This is a low tier mountain, a tier one mountain to be more exact, what kind of danger could be present that you can’t handle, that you and the other two beside you can’t…

He didn’t ask of anything, he didn’t say much, but what he did say seemed to click in my head as I realized that he was right in a way, actually he was completely right.

This was a low level mountain, words spoken by Adam himself. From what I know of him since we’ve been together, he wouldn’t state things carelessly and cause mishaps. The door was downright spooky but it was definitely only a door that housed a low level mountain king. It’s said that the strength and appearance of those below you shows to others who you are and how strong you are. The Direflame wolves we took care are presumably the lackeys in this case, and they were definitely a weak bunch, so how much stronger could their boss, the so called mountain king of this tier one tainted mountain, be… not too much I presume.

So right as I regained my courage and was about to speak up to speak to the male and female beside me, a voice cut my glorious speech before it even began.

“This is a first tier tainted mountain right, the mountain king can’t be that much stronger could it?”

It was Harry and he surprisingly had the same thoughts as I did,

Astral: Don’t you mean the thoughts I shared with you

And like a certain someone could read my point of view, Astral cut in in his usual tone, but I ignored him at this point, which was probably the only thing I could do, it was hard for me to talk back to any of his words anyways.

I nodded to show my agreement with what Harry said since I couldn’t be the one who said it and showed bravery, after which I spoke up,

“Yeah you’re probably right, since it’s a low level mountain, the boss can’t be that strong…”

Harry turned his head to look at me with slight confusion in his eyes while Hiya also slowly turned her gaze to look at me, “What’s boss”

It was then I realized what I said as my mind turned blank for a brief moment. To be honest I actually didn’t know as well, I meant to say mountain king.

The silence lasted for a while as two pair of eyes were trained on me. But since I actually didn’t know how the word slipped out of my lips, I didn’t know how to explain. So instead I coughed slightly before turning my attention to the door as I spoke,

“I don’t think there’s anything too dangerous waiting for us behind this door, what say we go ahead and take a look, we’ve been stuck in this mountain for a while…”

The two who were looking at me also turned their heads again as they looked at the door, what I said being tossed to the back of our minds together.

Harry brandished his hammer as he held the handle in his right hand and the large head in his other hand, “Let’s go on then”

Hiya was the one who spoke the least out of the three of us, but at this point she opened her mouth to talk, she just said two words,

“Be careful…”