Chapter 81: Chapter 80 – Tier 2 trial part 3

“Will this be enough?”

A beat-up looking Roland was standing close to the edge of the workshop. It was still there but soon it would slide down below the arena ground once more. The whole area was filled with monster remains that came from three of the four large gates.

He looked at the newest type that was a hell hound. These creatures were quite nimble and hard to fight off. The resistance to fire was increased even more which made the grease fire trap that he made mostly ineffective.

His body was all scratched up due to the fight with the monster hounds. He had no cloth armor to put under his armored gear. Only ordinary cloth that wouldn’t protect him from the tough claws and fangs of these monsters.

Roland had still managed to survive the third wave of the monsters but he was now feeling the fatigue. He couldn’t use the previous plan of setting everything ablaze or making a minefield. The hell hounds were fast runners and could smell out the buried flesh scrolls.

This last gate looked to have an even stronger creature behind it. The number of them decreased with each door but their strength also increased accordingly. Roland would rather fight more of those imps that were easy to kill with his current degree of traps. With a new unknown variant of the creature, he would need to come up with a new battle plan.

Lucky for him this world that he was in wasn’t entirely real. The workshop he was working with had a strange feature in it. If enough materials were removed they would replenish themselves. He tested it out by removing some sheets of metal that were placed in one of the provided boxes. After removing all of them another set materialized itself in the box out of nowhere. This same phenomenon happened with all the other resources, be it the metal rods or ingots.

With this slight bug in place, Roland decided on his new plan. The unprocessed sheets of metal that were meant for making thinner armor pieces were distributed around the arena. When enough of them were out there he utilized the stock rods that were also there. The ones that were used were the thinner ones that could be used as wires. Soon a spider web-like pattern composed of metallic rods appeared through the whole arena.

For some reason, the hourglass was giving him more time for this last big door. Roland could try getting through this task in a less troublesome way. Creating a good set of armor and some weapons weren’t out of the question in this time frame he was given. He had chosen a different approach this time around mostly due to the fact of not being a pure fighter.

With the help of a special rune wand that could discharge heat and flames, he began connecting the metallic parts together. He didn’t need them to stick together that well, just enough for the runic traces to go through them. Quite a grueling process of welding and hammering took place as the work continued. The main runes of this ‘trap’ were placed on the larger pieces of sheet metal while the rods used as a means of transferring mana.

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Roland had never tried connecting this many runes together in one runic structure. He knew that there were risks involved and that he would be instantly drained of most of his mana after one activation. The decision was already made though, he would take care of the last part of the test with one big bang. The biggest problem would arise if the monsters coming out were resistant to the magic he would be producing.

Time continued to pass him by as he worked. The more he hammered the more he started to doubt if this would even work. Roland was afraid that the thing that he was making would just blow up instead of working. That or he would either lose all of his mana instantly and pass out or it just wouldn’t turn on.

After a lot of painstaking work, he was somehow done. There were no breaks in this trial whatsoever and he had been here for several days with no sleep. For some reason, he wasn’t feeling that fatigued but the constant thinking was slowly getting to him.

He placed himself in the center of this spiderweb-like trap that he made. It would have to do as the hourglass was seconds away from being emptied. The whole thing he made was covered in sand. This was done by him to not make it too obvious for the monsters. He also hoped that the monster dogs would ignore the metal parts as there was no flesh involved.

‘I guess this is it…’

Roland glanced over his creations that could very well blow up in his face. The area was still filled with his mines and the grease fire tactic would be used as well. He heard a clicking sound and the workshop part slowly descended below the arena. The clawing of the monsters against the gate walls intensified with their movement.

These demonic monsters were greeted by the usual fire treatment. These fiends didn’t learn from their previous blunders as they just charged towards his general direction the moment they were out of their locked room.

Some of them fell to the flames while he stood away from the danger. He had his tower shield with him to block any incoming projectile attacks like the spikes from the demons from the second gate.

The doors were opening at about the same time which was fine for him as he needed the monster to enter the area of the trap together. Hounds that looked like they came out of hell started howling as they were finally free from their confines. Roland on the other hand looked at the sturdiest fourth gate which had the surprise last monster type.

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