Chapter 37 - The Path of least Resistance

To say climbing back up to the throne room was difficult would be the understatement of the century.

Lan had wedged his knees against the freezing, icy rock and shimmied up the tight shaft for over half an hour before he finally made it out. When he arrived at the exit, his legs were scraped raw, and his hands stung furiously.

After pushing the cover aside, Lan peered out into the empty cavern. The densely packed stone spikes growing from the floor were utterly decimated, leaving only about half standing. And the two girls were nowhere to be found.

He glanced across the empty cavern and squinted. 'There's three of us and five crown pieces. Assuming we each went to grab one and succeeded, that would mean only two pieces remain. So…’

Lan clambered out of the hole and slowly began stalking through the stone spikes. Each of his footsteps was accompanied by a soft ripple of mana that pulsed through the floor. The steady rhythm was like a heartbeat. This time, he wasn't just looking for the next hidden passageway, but another person. The longer passed, the higher the odds he would be ambushed.

'Who is going to take the chance?'

Would it be him?

Honestly, Lan would rather kill another boss in peace. He had gained two levels from the previous one, which was worth 90 stat points. Or the equivalent of four levels for an average pathfinder. Which is to say, the more Lan levelled up, the more significant his advantage would become.

But he still didn't know the other Harriet's abilities. If she ended up ambushing him after he killed the final boss, he would be out of luck.

Lan mulled it over, thinking deeply. 'What if I kill steal?' He wondered. He would rather be the one doing the ambushing if it had to happen.

'If I wait until someone goes for one of the crown pieces and follow them in soon after, I can take both them and the boss out,'

With a plan in mind, Lan increased the range of his mana pulses and checked to ensure there wasn't anyone hiding nearby. Then, he began to search for the remaining paths to the crown pieces.

Along the way, he came across two open holes, which he assumed belonged to Thea and the other girl, but he couldn't discern whether or not they had already been completed. Further on, he discovered one of the remaining shafts, still covered by a stone spike. 'This one hasn't been entered yet,' He noted.

It wasn't long before Lan found the final shaft, and what he saw left him feeling uncertain. The stone spike had been obliterated, and the tunnel lay open, begging the question, had it been entered yet?

The way Lan saw it, there were three possibilities.

One. One of the three open shafts was currently occupied by one or both of the girls.

Two. Someone had killed their boss before him and destroyed one of the entrance-blocking spikes, but instead of entering the shaft, they hid somewhere in the throne room, waiting to follow him inside.

Three. There was the distinct possibility that the girls had teamed up and were waiting for him at the bottom of one of the holes. If that were the case, he didn't like his chances.

If the girls were capable of killing the bosses, then Lan could only assume they were around his level of strength. 'I don't think I could take on both of them at once, even if I've levelled up twice,'

He ground his teeth and tried to think of a way to know for sure where the girls were. But they could be in any number of the open shafts. Only the single, unopen one held a degree of certainty. If he went in there, he knew exactly what he would get.

A boss.

And experience.

If someone followed him in, they wouldn't be leaving.

Lan wasn't about to give up his initiative and let the other two level up, while he sat about waiting for them to come back. He hadn't slept for long, thanks to his increased endurance he only needed a couple of hours at most, and there were still nineteen hours left until the trial ended. Plenty of time to kill another boss.

Just like the previous time, when Lan arrived at the blocked entrance, he sliced off the sharp spike using a thin mana string and covered the entrance after climbing in. This one was different to the previous tunnel.

Rather than plunging straight into an icy abyss, it took a sharp turn a few metres down and gently sloped deeper into the earth. Lit by Lan's lantern, the tunnel was filled with eerie shadows that stretched distorted as though possessed.

He followed the slope down into the suffocating depths of the world once more, walking for what felt like days. The only change in scenery was the surrounding rock taking on a reddish hue. It was like walking slowly down into hell.

While walking, Lan thought about his dream.

Since Bo left for the academy, he had never been the same person. Bitterness and loneliness overwhelmed him, like how vines strangle a withered tree. The years he spent in the District were isolating, and the years he spent waiting for Bo at the hotel were even lonelier. All he had was the vague hope that one day when Bo became a pathfinder, he might choose to stay there, and Lan could meet him again.

Lan saved up money for nothing. He had no hopes, no dreams, and no future. He simply had nothing to spend it on, nothing he enjoyed.

Until one day, on a whim, he looked through the black market. Lan's future was reborn on that day, from a cramped hovel to an infinite night sky of endless possibilities. For the first time since his parents died, Lan looked up at the Bridge and saw a chance to get rid of it once and for all.

He still had the venom he had bought from the black market after stealing it back from the crafters' village. On the way to the third step, he had hidden it in the forest and hoped no one would find it until he finished the steps. The venom was D-ranked, and Lan was sure he could find a use for it.

Lan still didn't know how he had managed to afford the venom. He considered it the most enormous stroke of luck in his miserable life.

'But now I've got…' Lan whipped out his profile to check his stats.

Name: Unknown

Title(s): [Punching Up] [Class Of Your Own] [Disciple of David][Epiphany(Temp)][Eutierria]

Age: 18

Race: Human - G

Class: Trochilus

Talent: Weapons are my Weapons – G, ********* - Unique

Health: 1640/1640

Mana: 1040/1040

Level: 12

Strength: 137

Dexterity: 118

Endurance: 89

Vitality: 84

Mind: 75

Intelligence: 104

Luck: 32

Free Points:

Skills: [Strengthen – F][Mana String – B][Karmic Threads - ??][Boon of Trochilus - ??]

'32 luck. That isn't half bad,' Lan thought, 'My next big break will be even bigger,'

His wandering thoughts had helped distract him as he continued deeper beneath the earth. But he began to notice a gradual increase in temperature. It was subtle at first but quickly blossomed into a sweltering, suffocating haze.

Lan could brush the immense heat off to a certain extent, thanks to his title, but it still bothered him. When his sweat hit the floor, it sizzled, and the walls had taken on an almost molten glow.

'I reckon I can guess which element this is,' Lan mused, putting two and two together. 'I suppose each title corresponds to one of the five bosses.'

If he assumed the clam was water and the scorching oven he was walking into was fire, then chances were, the other bosses were wind, nature and earth.

Lan wiped the sweat from his brow and walked deeper into the earth, finally emerging in a room on fire. Every wall, every rock, every shrub... burned. Even the air smouldered. But the flames weren't real. They were ghostly apparitions that produced no smoke and simply flickered and swayed in an immaterial haze.

Even when burning on a rock, with absolutely no fuel at all, the flames showed no signs of going out and, in fact, gave off such an extreme heat that even Lan baulked slightly at the idea of entering the cavern.

He glanced around the flaming cavern, noticing that the walls were actually covered in sticky black tar that seemed to be dripping down from the ceiling. It was this substance that burned with such fervour.

The entire room was coated in the stuff, but Lan couldn't see where it came from.

Aside from the flames and tar, the room was bare. He couldn't even spot the crown piece behind the wall of fire.

'What should I do?' Lan wondered. He had already given up on his current set of clothes since they would likely be burned to cinders right after he entered the room, but he didn't want to lose the blue pearl. If he dropped it amidst the black tar, it would be a nightmare to find it again.

Lan decided to hide the pearl in a spot near the entrance of the room and stepped out into the inferno.

Nothing.

The flames felt like nothing.

The heat hit him like a tonne of bricks, but it was never beyond anything he could handle. It was simply unpleasant, not deadly. Even his clothes remained unbothered by the hungry licks of fire. Wherever he walked, the flames seemed to part as though he and it were the same poles of a magnet.

Something occurred to Lan, and he fished the blue pearl out of his pocket. It was cold, almost icy to the touch and shone a deep blue that pushed back the orange glow. He quickly figured out that it wasn't him the fire was avoiding, but the pearl.

Going off his earlier assumptions, if the clam was the water element, and this pearl was also water, then it clearly had some restraining properties on fire.

In particular, he noticed the empty hole in the centre of the pearl and suspected that this was exactly where the fire part of the crown would go. The two contrasting elements would keep each other in check, one mutually restraining the other.

With a bit more confidence, Lan stepped further into the room, parting the flames like curtains and searching for the next piece of the crown.

His search quickly led him to the centre of the room, where a dark, misshapen stalactite hung from the ceiling. Tar dripped from its end into a flaming pool in the centre of the cavern, falling in molten drops that splashed in the fiery puddle.

Lan glanced up at the oddly shaped stalactite and squinted. He was pretty sure he could make out a system tag through the haze.

Lvl:22 Vesper Inferno

‘Shit,’

Luckily the creature, whatever it was, hadn't noticed him yet. It seemed to be sleeping on the ceiling and remained blissfully unaware of Lan's presence.

'Still, I know where the boss is, but where is th-'

Lan tried to breathe and couldn't.

The room wasn't large, and it had only taken Lan a few seconds to reach the centre, so this was his first time trying to breathe air since stepping in. But when he opened his mouth and tried to breathe, he was met with a mixture of fire and what smelt like petrol fumes.

'What the fuck!?'

He sprinted for the exit and jumped out into the tunnel, taking deep breaths.

'How did I overlook that?' He shook his head, 'Of course, I can't breathe in a room full of fire. It's no different to trying to breathe underwater water,'

After taking another deep breath and finding a semblance of calm, Lan created a sphere of clean air and brought it with him as he stepped into the room, making a beeline straight for the stalactite.

***

Harriet managed to kill the boss after her plan went off without a hitch.

She had picked her target perfectly. It was a big, clumsy thing that couldn't keep up with her speed or nimble grace. And with her flawless execution, the earth monster, a giant stone boar, died after a long, drawn-out battle.

No movement was wasted, and no risks were taken.

All told, there wasn't a single moment in the battle where she wasn't in complete control.

Even as the monster tired and Harriet gained the upper hand, she didn't lunge in for the killing blow or throw caution to the wind. That just wasn't how she operated. Harriet carved piece after piece, sliver after sliver, off the monster, spending hours chipping away until the thing was finally dead and the crown was hers.

It almost looked like she was painstakingly carving a statue from the colossal stone boar, except usually, rocks don't scream in pain.

She had emerged into the throne room and quickly assessed the situation.

Every tunnel had been opened by the time she got there, which didn't bode well. That meant the other two had managed to kill their bosses ahead of her, and if she let both of them kill a second boss, they would both have a considerable level advantage.

Harriet didn't like taking risks. In fact, she never took a risk.

Her talent, Path Of Least Resistance, let her understand probabilities. Since receiving it, she had never made a poor decision, never died, and never lost. She was always ten steps ahead, and that never changed.

So, as she looked down at one of the entrances that had been covertly covered, she made up her mind.

This wasn't a risk.

Harriet didn't take risks.

She simply made the best decision, the only decision.

And so, she moved the spike out of the way and stepped down into a gently sloping tunnel, following it deep into the earth.