Chapter 321: Shadow trials[4]

The moment Samantha’s boots hit the cold, damp stone of the lower abyssal tier, her senses expanded.

The environment was suffocatingly dark—a pitch-black that would blind and disorient an untrained student.

?For Samantha, however, the void felt strangely familiar.

Water dripped in rhythm somewhere deep within the rock face, each drop echoing like a miniature hammer strike in the silence.

She sank into a low posture, her breathing slowing to a faint, rhythmic whisper.

Moving silently, she glided along the shadow line of the damp stone wall, slipping past a pair of heavy, four-legged automated tracking sentinels.

Their obsidian-plated carapaces whirred softly as they swept the main corridor in narrow arcs of red diagnostic light.

Every time a beam passed over her position, she blended seamlessly into the recess of the jagged rock, her dark spear drawing in the ambient glare and reflecting nothing.

By choosing to bypass the crowded upper vaults, she’d descended straight into the third-tier lower abyss where the highest-value Obsidian Seals rested.

?

Except, Warren was already there.

?He stood before a massive reinforced blast door marking the threshold of an Obsidian vault.

The Class A-5 Quadra-Elemental Talented was entirely unbothered by the pitch-blackness. A faint, precise coil of heated air shimmered around his hands, illuminating his calm, focused profile.

?He didn’t turn around when Samantha stepped out of the shadow of a basalt pillar, but his posture subtly adjusted.

Almost as though he had known she was there the moment her boots touched the stone.

?"You skipped the upper tiers as well," Warren said softly.

His voice was steady, carrying no trace of exertion despite having just navigated a three-hundred-foot drop.

So did you," Samantha replied, her fingers tightening slightly on the Tenebris spear.

Warren glanced sideways at her, the faint heat in his palm catching the cold, competitive gleam in her green eyes. "Great minds think alike. Or fools who don’t know when to take the easy points."

Samantha shrugged, remaining silent and on gandd.

Warren let out a quiet sigh.

?"The upper tiers are a trap," he said, manipulating a thin, pressurized stream of water from the humidity in the air directly into the locking mechanism of the blast door.

"Too many people fighting over ten-point crusts. It wastes time."

With a sharp flick of his wrist, he froze the water inside the lock mechanism, expanding it instantly.

The heavy internal pins snapped with a dull, muffled clack.

"We are on the same side for the Veilrend count," Warren stated calmly. "But I’m still taking the points."

?"Not without a verification hold," Samantha noted, pointing her spear toward the ceiling above the column.

?Hovering directly over the seal was an adaptive pulse-sentinel—a spherical defense automaton armed with dual arc-cannons and an omnidirectional kinetic field generator.

To claim the seal, a contestant had to place their hand on the control altar for ten full seconds while the sentinel actively defended the zone.

?Before Warren could react, a sudden high-pitched chime echoed down the corridor behind them.

Samantha and Warren both turned toward the corridor.

A heavy, multi-layered energy barrier slammed down behind them, cutting off their retreat back to the middle tiers.

?At the same time, the glass column holding the Obsidian Seal receded into the floor, replaced by a dual-locking mechanism requiring two separate override nodes to be held simultaneously on opposite sides of the room.

?If either of them stepped away, the entire vault would trigger a total lockdown, purging the area with suppression waves and denying the seventy-five points to both of them.

?Warren glanced at Samantha, his expression completely unreadable.

"It seems the trial system doesn’t want us working individually either."

The air in the vault grew heavy, thick with the sharp scent of ionized plasma.

"Interesting," Warren said, his voice entirely devoid of panic.

Samantha didn’t hesitate. She blurred forward, her boots making no sound against the stone floor as she closed the distance to the right pedestal.

?The adaptive sentinel above them whirred to life, its core flashing an aggressive crimson.

It didn’t fire immediately; instead, it released an omnidirectional kinetic pulse meant to blast both intruders off their respective control plates.

?"Hold your ground," Warren muttered.

?He snapped his left arm outward.

A dense wall of compacted earth erupted directly out of the stone floor in front of him, absorbing the force of the kinetic wave with a heavy, reverberating thud.

Simultaneously, he whipped his right hand upward—a controlled spiral of compressed wind caught the sentinel’s undercarriage, tilting its arc-cannons upward so its opening plasma salvo blew harmless holes into the vault ceiling.

Before the machine could adjust its trajectory, its head turret snapped toward Samantha, locking on with a high-pitched targeting whine.

A twin pulse beam discharged point-blank, sending a blinding bolt of white-hot energy streaking directly toward her chest.

?Samantha didn’t flinch.

Driving her heels into the flagstones, she raised the dark shaft of her spear and angled the leaf-shaped tip directly into the path of the beam.

The weapon caught the plasma head-on; instead of shattering or conducting the immense heat into her hands, the lusterless mineral surface flared with dark energy, dispersing the energy harmlessly along its length in a brief shower of black sparks.

Verification in progress...

?[VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS: 6/10 SECONDS]

?"The spear absorbed the charge?" Warren noted, his voice carrying a rare note of genuine curiosity as he maintained his earth wall against a second shockwave.

"Intriguing."

?[VERIFICATION COMPLETE. OBSIDIAN SEAL UNLOCKED.]

?The central pedestal rose back out of the floor, the floating black-and-gold token glowing brightly.

?Samantha lunged inward, snatching the token. The moment her fingers closed around the Obsidian Seal, a mechanical voice resonated through the vault.

?[75 POINTS AWARDED TO CONTESTANT: SAMANTHA]

[WARNING: SECONDARY SECURITY PHASE ACTIVATED. SECTOR PURGE IN 180 SECONDS.]

The points went to you," Warren observed, stepping back as his earth barrier crumbled into harmless dust.

"Which means this vault considers the primary operator to be the one who completed the manual extraction."

?"We need to find another node," Samantha said, stowing the seal in her belt.

"I’m not leaving you with zero after you blocked that shockwave."

?"Don’t worry about my score," Warren said smoothly. He swept his arm down, utilizing a precise burst of pressurized air to clear the debris from the secondary ventilation hatch near the base of the eastern wall.

"I came down here for more than one seal."

?Meanwhile, two tiers above them in the Middle Tier...?Lucian stood in the center of a wide, circular chamber containing three Silver Seals.

Around him lay four automated tracking sentinels, each disabled with surgical precision, neutralized by precise strikes to their primary power relays.

?Lucian checked his wrist display.

?[CURRENT SCORE: 60 POINTS (3x SILVER SEALS)]

[TIME ELAPSED: 14 MINUTES, 22 SECONDS]

?He had taken zero damage. He had expended minimal energy.

?A subtle rustle of cloth came from the shadows near the northern archway. Lucian didn’t draw his daggers. He simply shifted his eyes.

"You’re taking the safe path, Lucian," Xander Gray said, stepping out from the ceiling rafters like a falling shadow.