Chapter 356: 130: Dawn of Mankind – Part 1

"I see you'll all do just fine here," Nikolas wryly remarks.

I stare at Penelope, and she holds my gaze, her arms crossed under her bra, assuming a more defensive posture as she tries to get a hold of herself due to my draconic pressure making her feel like prey.

I smirk as I approach, and her face involuntarily twitches as she begins to shyly smile, then she pushes her long floppy ears behind her and forces a more stern expression.

Playing hard to get?

Nikolas notices our silent flirting, and his face stiffens in annoyance.

Oh? It seems he holds a [Spirit Light] for her. They don't act like a couple, so maybe I could play a bit with his jealousy.

Her eyes wander to the purple tentacles coming out of my back, and her demeanor becomes unsure. "What are those… tentacles…?" She hesitantly asks.

I point my palm up and create a slimy, suggestively-shaped meat log. "A spell I've created. It allows me to grow fake, temporary appendages that I can use for… a variety of 'activities,'" I huskily reply with a suggestive grin.

Her eyes open wide, and she stiffens, slightly fearful of me, yet her eyes can't turn away from the purple "tool."

"But why is it… purple…?" She quietly asks and swallows heavily.

I make the tentacles all flesh-colored, then transparent, then I slowly pull them back. "It helps intimidate others, just like how you obviously are, but they're all just fake flesh, like a mana solidification," I kindly explain, and they both visibly relax.

I'm loving playing with them.

But Nikolas sends her a brief glare, then anxiously interjects, "Well aren't you full of 'mysteries,' but we don't have time to play. The next trial should start soon."

"'Trial'?" Roxanne asks, frowning in horror at the word.

The wolf man nods and sternly explains, "Patience, communication, carefulness, unity, bravery, imagination, and righteousness. Those are the trials the dungeon will make you go through."

Roxanne groans out loud, echoing Alissa's and Yunia's internal thoughts. They are not looking forward to being "tested."

Yet Ciel is too eager to share her priestly knowledge with us, so she suddenly interrupts, "In the Extended Tale of Creation, the God of Creation observed that mammals were the type of animal that had advanced the furthest, so They based our form on them and molded the Primes, a man and a woman, from the versatile clay. Those were the first two Symbols we fought.

"But having only two isn't enough to create a population without inbreeding, so Creation used their blood to give birth to true Man, a more flawed but better-balanced form based on the Primes."

Alissa's ears flicker in confusion as she asks, "Is 'Man' not the same as 'humans'?"

Ciel nods. "It is, it's just how we called ourselves in ancient Andraste."

Lina softly snorts and comments, "I find it funny that in Andraste, 'human' is just 'woman,' but with the first two letters cut in half."

"Using 'Man' instead of 'human' sounds unfair to women," Yunia remarks, sounding almost offended.

"In ancient Andraste, 'woman' is simply 'not-man,'" Lina explains, and Yunia's thin, golden eyebrows knit in distaste. "Women are better at magic, but back then, magic was not as well understood, so the physically stronger men usually ruled until the creation of skills equalized power levels."

"Okay, but what about the 'trials'?" I put us back on track.

Ciel excitedly continues, "They're not really 'trials,' at least not during that time. The God of Change simply liked to put Man in situations where they'd be forced to reflect upon life and understand themselves better. These 'trials' were more like 'events,' and there were seven major types, each focusing on one of the seven 'aspects' of our personalities we believe to exist."

"And the first one is to test your patience," Nikolas wisely adds.

But I frown skeptically and ask, "Doesn't knowing what these 'events' are going to be diminish their effect?"

And Penelope kindly explains, "Yes, but Antreos Crea is like participating in a play about the Dawn of Mankind, not a real 'trial.'"

I hum. "Interactive storytelling."

She tilts her head. "An… interesting choice of words, but true, I believe."

Suddenly, Alissa notices a barely audible rumbling, then the weak illumination begins to turn blood red as ripples on the sheet of water come towards us from far off into the mist.

"It's starting," Penelope soberly points out.

The scouting Hollys meet with dark clouds blocking their advance all at the same time, and the moment they fly into the ominous dark wall, they're assaulted by multiple lightning strikes until they've been fried to death.

"The next Symbols will have annoying abilities, but we never know which," Nikolas adds, and I can only frown at that statement.

Then the rest of the girls and I also begin to hear the rumbling, and the ripples grow into small waves.

"We're now being thrown into Rupegia while the Gods fought for control over it," Penelope announces.

The mist clears a bit, allowing us to see further and revealing the outline of mountains surrounding us, looking quite ominous in the red world that we now find ourselves in.

Directly ahead, the mist darkens again, then thickens into clouds, and four T-posing Symbols appear, slowly floating towards us.

We assume our previous battle formation, but a thick wall of water separates us, dividing our group right through the middle. Kyora's group and the guides retreat into the elevator, and the moment the water hits the stone shaft, it releases an oddly familiar type of mana, seemingly enchanted.

Alissa fires both physical [Mana Arrow]s and the magical [Arrow of Annihilation] at the Symbols, but all of her attacks are diverted by them, making her click her tongue in frustration.

Normally, I'd never allow my enemy to just approach us unmolested, but right now, I want to see what they're going to do, and we need the challenge anyway.

Yunia then becomes concerned about our guides. We're already exposing them to many of our hidden powers, and a noble has already shown a lot of interest in getting information about us, so while we wait, she guides Jarn to explain the situation to them.

The metal golem suddenly moves in front of the duo, scaring them a bit, then Jarn stares with her lifeless eyes while she robotically relays Yunia's words, "As you've already seen, our combat abilities are special, and there are plenty of nobles who would pay a lot of coin to have the knowledge that you now hold-…"

"Oh, fuck!" Nikolas hisses quietly in realization and shares a look with Penelope.

"But we're willing to shelter you while your information is still valuable, which we estimate will remain so for less than a month."

"How considerate…" Alonso remarks amusedly.

"I'll take it," Thunder Thighs immediately accepts with a grin.

"Fuck, Lolo. Why are you like this?" Nikolas grumbles and glares at her.

She coyly glances at him. "It'll be fun…"

And Timas helpfully chimes in, "Ciel will take care of you. She's a priestess, and we're Templars."

Penelope excitedly adds, "Free lodging while living with the elves. You can't pass on that."

But Nikolas is still not taking it. "He's a Lord with a gaggle of women following his tail," he quietly points out, his red eyes staring intensely at her.

The athletic bunny girl simply chuckles nervously and plays with her floppy ears as she stares at my back, but she doesn't reply.

And Roxanne's panties start to become moist from the sight of the horrified face Nikolas makes once he realizes her intentions. I also think that I'm beginning to understand why women have a thing for NTR.

"The fight…" Lina tiredly pulls our attention back to where it matters.

I shift my legs to get my boner into a more comfortable position, then I decide to float up to test things out.

A torrent of water comes out of the mist and shoots towards me, so I dodge, but another attack comes, then another, and another, and a fifth. I believe they're spending a lot more mana on these attacks than I'm using to dodge them, so I'm willing to bet in this war of attrition.

The mist suddenly darkens heavily, then Roxanne, Aoi, and I feel the Symbols' presences "aiming" at me.

Fu-…

I groan in pain as a strong lightning bolt hits me, and my body flashes with a rainbow color as [Rainbow Shield] activates to reduce the damage from the spell. It isn't enough to do more than take just a few HP points from me, but because I have [Mana Body], it's really fucking painful.

Hana summons her wings and shoots towards the Symbols, out for revenge, while I lower back down and let Ciel's [Holy Spirit] heal me.

Multiple water jets get in Hana's way, but they're too slow to change course, and a spiral pattern is enough to dodge them all.

The dark clouds continue to grow, quickly enshrouding the Symbols in a menacing, black barrier.

Hana flies right into it, bracing herself for the imminent lightning strikes, but they're much stronger than she expected, and they lock up her muscles, impeding her from flying properly.

She falls down and emerges from the cloud, which we notice doesn't touch the floor, so Hana recovers and safely lands right under them, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

"Normal adventurers would never be able to reach the Symbols before the cloud had grown big enough to protect them!" Roxanne points out through [Bind].

Indeed. This isn't Arreira's dungeon, so the difficulty level isn't being curated to be just challenging enough for us.

More walls of water appear, separating us further, but we're unsure how to take it. Another one hits the elevator's shaft, and Roxanne finally realizes something.

"The whole elevator shaft is enchanted with something like [Reinforce]," she points out, and I find that fact very suspicious.

The clouds continue to grow further, wrapping around the elevator's shaft completely, yet they still don't touch the floor.

Now the monsters get into our spell range, and the girls start shooting at them, but we're still too far, so the Symbols easily divert the spells.

Patience, huh?

But then Alissa realizes something that makes her really worried, "Wolfy… those aren't mountains…"

I look at the outlines surrounding us and realize that they're now much bigger, but through Alissa's eyes, I notice that there are foam-like vertical streaks that appear at the foot of the mountain and quickly rise up to the top, only to disappear.

Just like a tsunami wave.

We all stop and stare at the mountains, then squint to try to make out any further details in this weakly illuminated red world.

Scratch that. It isn't "just like a tsunami," it's "exactly like a tsunami" because IT IS A FUCKING TSUNAMI!

"B-back to the elevator!" I order, briefly dumbfounded at the silliness of this situation.

Hana grumbles, but she obeys, and we all use our armor's [Fly] to easily jump over the walls and reunite with the others.

We crowd together inside the elevator, ready to activate it again and get out of this accursed place, but then I notice that the small waves don't enter the elevator, blocked by some sort of barrier, and I suddenly feel like I have the answer on the tip of my tongue.

Alissa senses the Symbols continuing to quickly approach us until they're just a few meters away from the elevator's shaft, then they begin to lower, and the dark cloud slowly comes closer to the floor.

She fires a pot shot at one of the Symbols, and they're so close that the arrow doesn't have enough time to be diverted away, getting lodged in her target's shoulder.

"We should attack," Alissa eagerly suggests, but I'm still skeptical.

"Should we? This test is about patience, not passiveness or recklessness," I cryptically reply, then an idea comes to me. "Are the Symbols controlling the tsunami?!" I ask the girls out loud.

"'Tsunami'?" Penelope asks confusedly.

"The big wave! The water!"

"No! Only the clouds!" Roxanne answers, and everyone agrees.

Then let's gamble a bit!

I order Hana, Ciel, Aoi, and Yunia to go outside and stand right under the Symbols while I keep my finger on the enchantment to go up.

"What are they doing…?" Poppy concernedly asks.

"Their best," I answer jokingly.

The tsunami becomes unmistakable, and we hear a light "whooshing" sound coming from the rapidly approaching gigantic wall of water.

The Symbols' "presences" wash over the girls outside, then they're attacked by weak lightning strikes.

"HOLD!" I encourage them through [Bind].

The tsunami comes closer from all directions, and I feel my stomach sink in fear of what's coming next, then I summon six water elementals and tell them to spread out outside of the elevator so that I can get a better view of the situation.

The dark clouds stop coming right above the girls' heads, and the waves at their feet grow stronger, then we begin to smell the salty scent of the sea.

The Symbols continue to lower, now close enough that we could potentially kill them with just magic.

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"HOOOOLD!" The other girls and I encourage the brave four standing outside.

Lightning falls upon their heads again, but then the clouds start growing outwards, towards the tsunami, and we hold our breaths.

The wall of water touches the wall of black mist, and they both block each other.

But uncountable tons of water don't just stop on a copper coin.

The elementals sense a huge column of water shooting up as it crawls along the wall of clouds, then we hear the loud whooshing sounds of a huge wave crashing against a sea wall.

The dark barrier gives in a little from the pressure, and the Symbols divert all of their attention to keeping the tsunami from crushing them, then the clouds directly above the girls start to clear, revealing the four monsters.

"NOT YET!" I shout and force Hana to remain grounded.

A wave of water passes under the clouds and hits the brave four, making it difficult for them to remain in place.

After a tense moment, the elementals feel the tsunami recede, and the column of water surrounding us quickly reduces in height as the water drains away from the elevator.

The Symbols lower further and enter the turbulent water, their feet almost touching the floor, coming right into range of the four outside.

Just a little more!

The column of water starts to be pushed back by the clouds, and the Symbols finally land, then they immediately turn to the girls.

"NOW!" I give the order, and they attack.

The dark clouds almost immediately fade away as the monsters are quickly dispatched, and the still relatively tall columns of water are now free to flow towards us again.

The girls waste no time in running back to us, Aoi dragging her prey's corpse to consume it, and the moment they enter the elevator, Lina closes it off with [Earth Wall], then the tsunami reaches us.

The stone shaft rumbles, and its proto-[Reinforce] enchantment flares as it's slammed in on from all directions by the tall column of water. I observe the elevator with my full attention, my "inner finger" hovering over the button to summon earth elementals in case it starts to crumble.

But all we hear are the whooshing sounds of chaotic waves crashing all around us and the sickening crunches as Aoi eats the Symbol whole, horrifying everyone here but us. After a few moments, the water recedes enough that Lina starts to lower the [Earth Wall].

The monster bodies have been washed away, leaving us with a red realm that gradually begins to turn orange.

We walk out and breathe in, savoring the salty smell of the sea, then I turn to our guides and questioningly raise an eyebrow.

"The next trial is already starting. Communicate well and pay attention to your own situation," Penelope kindly answers my silent question.

"What would happen if we hadn't killed the Symbols?" Yunia curiously asks.

The bunny girl shrugs. "Either another wave would come, or different Symbols would appear."

"Well, this is fun," Roxanne comments out loud with a smile as she looks around at the orange world.

"For you…" Ciel mumbles, a bit irritated by the lightning strikes she had to endure.

The silver floor begins rumbling again, growing louder much faster this time.

We retreat back into the elevator and see cracks form all around us, then nearly all of the visible ground simply crumbles into dust, leaving only a radius of a couple of meters of silver intact around the elevator.

The water elementals fall into rivers of lava, and I dismiss them before they can inevitably die in the heat.

Fuck's sake. Can't really explore anything around here.

The lava burbles and rises until it's only a couple of meters under us, the temperature rising dramatically with it, then the fart-like smell of sulfur replaces the pleasant salty scent of the sea.

"The lava could be releasing noxious fumes," Lina worriedly points out.

"'Pay attention to your own situation,'" I repeat soberly.

Far ahead of us, a jet of lava suddenly spurts upwards, but the molten rock almost immediately stops in the air as if it hit a barrier, then it spreads out, creating a floating circular platform that rapidly cools and hardens into obsidian.

The endless pool of glowing lava becomes turbulent, and hundreds of jets spurt upwards, but only a few of them end up creating platforms, and a haphazard path that takes us into the mist soon forms before our eyes.

The orange light makes things annoyingly hard to see, so we all cast [Spirit Light] to make it easier on our eyes.

Then four T-posing Symbols finally descend from the sky, but there's also a shiny orange glass orb the size of a watermelon trailing behind them.

They land on a platform at the edge of the mist and immediately kneel, then we sense their "presences" washing over the lava, and multiple jets shoot towards the orb, which absorbs them all and glows slightly brighter.

"The realm used to be full of godly power, so Man used many methods to absorb it and become stronger," Lina scholarly explains.

"Okay, the objective here is pretty obvious," I point out, and we jump onto an obsidian platform (though Lina has to use [Fly]).

Three of the Symbols immediately stand up and start skipping towards us, performing jumps that'd make Olympic athletes envious. The jets of lava continue to shoot towards the orb, but now, they're much slower.

We quickly split into groups: Aoi and I; Roxanne and Hana; Ciel and Lina; and Alissa and Yunia. That last group will be responsible for sneaking around towards the orb and dealing with it.

Roxanne releases an [Ice Lance] that hits a Symbol right on the chest, but the ice immediately begins to steam and melt away while the wound left behind almost instantly heals.

Oh, Gods, high regeneration is so annoying.

Our three duos meet with our naked, weaponless opponents, and we easily keep them occupied, but we soon learn that they bleed red-hot blood that smells suspiciously nasty, and their regeneration is so good that they're just as resilient as full undead.

Roxanne tests [Explosion] on her opponent's chest, but even that isn't enough to actually kill it, and the strong smell of their blood makes her a bit light-headed, so one test is good enough for us, then Ciel sends her [Holy Spirit] to Roxanne to purify her body.

Hana keeps her Symbol from regenerating, but then a strong orange light shines upon the pair from the orb, and they immediately retreat. A couple of seconds later, a thick beam of plasma slices through the air where they just were, giving the Symbol enough time to fully grow its body back.

Penelope, are you sure this isn't the actual test of our patience?

[Illusion Magic] is extremely effective on them, so just with [Ignorance], Alissa and Yunia successfully sneak past the three Symbols, then they approach the kneeling one without it noticing them.

Yunia dices it up while Alissa uses a war hammer to smash the orb into smithereens, then all of the Symbols let out horrific death screams as their bodies melt into small pools of lava.

"Noooo! My foood!" Aoi cries out in dismay.

"Wait, that's it…?" Hana mumbles confusedly.

"Our teamwork is kind of perfect, even without the Gestalt," Ciel amusedly remarks through [Bind]

"It was so fragile that I could've just used an arrow," Alissa grumbles and pouts.

We hear a laugh coming from the elevator and notice that our guides are having fun observing our confused expressions.

But we don't have time to fool around, for the ground trembles again, and the next "trial" begins.

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