The Completion of Myth
The first trial that appeared was ten thousand skeleton soldiers of the same level as me.
After that came ten thousand skeleton soldiers bearing the Hidden Trait of Void.
This is connected to my racial values.
There was no way this was a coincidence. There was clearly a deep relationship between the racial values I had seen upon entry and the trials themselves.
So what would the next trial bring?
Giant. Druid. Celestial.
The first trial had probably been an ordinary one tied to the Corpse Crow. A confrontation with corpses was, by nature, linked to the Corpse Crow itself.
That left three.
Giant (10). Druid (10). Celestial (20).
If the numbers attached to each racial value determined the added difficulty, then Giant and Druid would sit at roughly the same level as Void. With a bit of clever thinking and strategy, they were still within the realm of the surmountable. The way the difficulty compounded like interest was murderous, but it wasn't as if there was no path through at all.
The problem is the Celestial.
The Celestial alone was worth twenty points. What the hell even was a Celestial?
Wasn't it supposed to be related to the heavenly races of the divine realm, or the demonic races of the Demon Realm? But I couldn't imagine the racial values of heavenly or demonic races ranking higher than those of Giants. Giants were a great race that had once protected the goddess. According to myth, some of them had possessed combat power on par with the gods themselves.
It might be something completely different from what I'm imagining.
So "Celestial" could be something entirely outside my expectations. I had to keep open the possibility that it had nothing to do with the Heavenly Realm or the Demon Realm at all.
Either way, I'll find out once I climb the trials.
The trials kept stacking racial traits one atop another. Once I reached the Celestial trial, the outline would become clear. By then, I would have at least some idea of what "Celestial" actually meant.
But to get there, I first had to clear the two prerequisites standing in my way.
Giant. Druid.
Void gave the skeleton soldiers the opposing light attribute. A Giant's anti-magic will raise their magic resistance, and a Druid will obviously add something related to spirits.
Carefully. Before stepping into the next trial, I thought it through first. I pictured in advance how to handle skeleton soldiers equipped with those added abilities. I also ran another check on my own changed capabilities. Even calculating everything together and moving with full deliberation still wouldn't be enough.
The level of the Skeleton Soldiers matches the challenger's level.
The Skeleton Soldiers gain an opposing attribute due to Void.
The Skeleton Soldiers gain the traits of a Giant.
Preparations complete, I challenged the next trial.
Riding the newly generated warp, I crossed over — and the terrain before me was not so different from everything I had seen so far. Parched earth. Cliffs scattered here and there. And—
"……"
Ten thousand skeleton soldiers.
But my brow refused to unknit as I looked at them.
"……This is the worst, caw."
The skeleton soldiers were huge. Huge like Giants.
They hadn't simply added a Giant's anti-magic. They had just made them into Giants outright.
……Yeah. I was pretty thoroughly screwed.
"……"
Isaac stood staring blankly at the tower.
Something beyond common sense. An impossibility so complete that the only option was to abandon thought itself — and it was right there in front of him.
And he was far from the only one reacting this way. One by one, the monsters of Kramdel gathered around the tower. The wavelengths of light pouring from the Tower of Mystery had grown so fierce that the phenomenon was visible across the entire city.
The Hall of Mystery was a place every being who came to Kramdel visited at least once. But the tower had never shown a phenomenon like this. Countless monsters, curiosity piqued, flocked to its surroundings and began to watch the change with rapt attention.
"Rings of light……"
"Just who is taking the tower's trial?"
"How great a being must they be?"
At the tower's peak — at the summit of that endlessly rising spire — a round golden ring had formed. The single ring of light that had first appeared soon became two. The twin rings scattered even more light, leaving the monsters utterly entranced.
"……It is the tower's final trial, one that only a Transcendent Species may undertake."
At that moment, a beast lumbered forward and spoke so that all could hear. With every step it took, a path opened. Near the Tower of Mystery, where the ground had been a tangled mess, something like the parting of the Red Sea took place.
A phantasmal beast with the body of an ox and the quills of a hedgehog — Qiongqi. A vicious creature with a tiger's face, hooked claws, and wings sprouting from its forelegs. Even among monsters, Qiongqi was a being others feared, and it was gazing up at the tower with clear tension.
"Transcendent Species? Like a Mythic Species or a Phantasmal Species?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
But the monsters, ignorant of the concept, all tilted their heads. The very idea of a Transcendent Species was so unfamiliar that their confusion was only natural.
"One who has transcended the limits of their kind. In all of Kramdel, this is a trial only the White King has ever been able to undertake."
"……!!!"
"Th-then someone is taking the same trial the White King once took?"
"And that being is inside the tower right now?"
Everyone reeled in shock and turned their eyes back to the tower. But they could scarcely believe it.
Who was the White King? He was the god of the North. The guardian of Kramdel, an Absolute in his own right. So long as the White King stood, no human, no denizen of the Abyss or its rulers, not even the Celestials themselves, dared set foot in the North. Every Mythic Species and Phantasmal Species had no choice but to bow their heads before him.
And someone of equal caliber was inside this tower right now?
Gulp.
That can't be……
Even if it is true, this is a disaster.
Everyone watching the tower tensed. The reason Kramdel was called a paradise for monsters was the White King. No one dared cause trouble in his presence. And yet a being of the White King's caliber had entered the tower and was undergoing its trial. What if that being emerged? The peace of Kramdel might shatter. Even if it didn't, it was not hard to deduce that the taut balance of Kramdel would snap.
In the Trial of Myth, the White King created three rings.
Qiongqi looked up at the tower's peak. Those round golden rings encircling the tower were an indicator of the Completion of Myth. Even the peerless White King had formed three rings and then left the tower. After that, no one had opened the Hall of Myth within the Tower of Mystery again — so of course the phenomenon was alien to the monsters here.
Two.
And right now, the rings wrapping the Tower of Mystery numbered two. The Completion of Myth still fell short of the White King's. But even two alone was a staggering result. It was proof that someone had cleared two stages of a trial only a Transcendent Species could even attempt.
Once monsters began emerging from the tower one by one, it would become clear which among them had undertaken the Trial of Myth.
"Th-three!"
"The rings just became three!"
……But it wasn't over yet.
Three rings?
Qiongqi's pupils widened. Just as they said, the rings had increased to three. That meant the challenger had cleared the three-stage trial — the same as the White King. Impossible. Something that could not, should not exist was unfolding before their eyes.
Shiiiiing—!
In that instant—
"Th-the sky!"
"Medusa's eye……!"
"Hahk!"
A colossal eye of Medusa bloomed brazenly across the heavens. That she had revealed it without concealment meant Medusa had gathered every one of her "eyes" upon this place. In other words, she who had not shown herself for years had taken an unprecedented interest.
The moment three rings appeared, there was simply no way not to care.
One of the four great monsters known as the White King's closest retainers — one of the true rulers who governed Kramdel — and she had never shown this much interest in anything before!
"Wh-what's happening inside the tower?"
"Just who is it?"
"Clearly the strongest. The worst."
"Some vicious bastard who transcends every species, without a doubt."
"Mm. An overwhelmingly horrific monster, for certain."
Every monster speculated and chattered about the being undergoing the tower's trial. But no one could even begin to guess. What kind of tremendous beast was taking that trial inside the tower? How vicious, how terrifyingly powerful must they be, for even Medusa and Qiongqi to show this much interest……
Boom!
Rrrumble—!
Crash! Crash! KRAAAASH!
"……"
I stood still, watching the skeleton soldiers topple before my eyes like a chain of dominoes.
Giant skeleton soldiers so enormous their height alone approached ten meters. When they swung their arms and loosed arrows of light, the situation should have been utterly hopeless.
And yet, from a certain point onward, the giant skeleton soldiers began to fall one by one. The moment the foremost soldier collapsed, a chain reaction set in — they toppled and shattered in a rolling cascade, just like dominoes.
Ah. The level.
Only then did I understand. Those giants were still level 4. The stats needed to support their bloated bodies had been far too low. No matter how much opposing attributes they carried or how massive their frames had grown, their level was still 4.
Level 4 had its limits, no matter how strong. Even maxing out Strength, Stamina, and Magic Power wouldn't push any of them past 40. That was nowhere near enough to maintain and move a Giant's colossal body. And they certainly didn't have the strength to catch and brace against the collapsing bulk of the ones in front of them.
Crash! Crash! Crash! KRAAAASH!
"……"
I watched the spectacle in a daze. It was absurd — and no matter how I turned it over, it remained absurd.
……I got lucky.
Unlike the first two trials, the third had been free. It felt like a bonus stage. Would the fourth and fifth trials be the same? Either way, the Giant trait would carry over intact. As long as they were level 4, their heavy bodies would clearly struggle to hold up.
Then again, even the designer of these trials probably never expected someone like me to challenge them. I hadn't expected it either.
If I cleared it too easily, will they just skip the reward?
Honestly, I was a little worried. I had done absolutely nothing. A trial was supposed to be a process of a challenger slamming into their limits and breaking through. I hadn't slammed into anything, and I hadn't broken through anything, so of course the normal outcome would be no reward at all.
You have cleared the Trial: Wall of Species (3).
🎁 Reward: You may acquire the Transcendent Myth-grade Mystery Progenitor Giant.
Acquire it?
If declined, you will proceed to a higher trial.
……Well, at least that was a relief. It seemed the system still counted the trial as cleared.
After Ultimate comes Transcendence, huh.
And after Transcendence? Now even I was curious what would come next.
Acquisition of the Mystery Progenitor Giant has been declined.
I had come too far to turn back. If I stopped here, I would never be satisfied. So even if I couldn't swallow it, I was all-in.
The third trial had essentially been free, which left only the Druid and the Celestial. My questions about the Celestial in particular were exploding — I fully intended to see this through to the end.
The challenger proceeds to a higher trial.