Way of the Knights

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The Smelting Trial inside the Devil Emperor's Pagoda continued without any hitches…

No one amongst the participants or the facilitators knew that something strange happened. All they could see, was the imagery provided by the monitoring arrays inside the Devil Emperor's Pagoda. As for Raven's situation, what the facilitators are currently seeing, was obviously faked. 

In their eyes, Raven could be seen calmly participating in the Smelting Trial but in reality, Raven had actually fallen into a deep slumber in the 89th floor of the real Devil Emperor's Pagoda. 

Had Raven wasn't chosen by the Heavenly Elk, what's supposed to happen was for him to experience a great number of challenges within each floor of the pagoda replica. 

The rules of the Smelting Trial is simple. As the participants gets transported within, they will arrive at a vast and barren place. There they will face the endless pursuit of devils - Lesser Imps to be exact. 

Lesser Imps are actually man-made devils. They were created from actual Imps by collecting some of their body parts, therefore acquiring their genes. Lesser Imps are created for the sole purpose of testing the disciples. These man-made devils weren't physically strong. In terms of energy control and reserves, they aren't worse compared to humans. 

Where they truly excel at, is in terms of Spirit. Realm Imps possess incredible Spirit, controlling and cultivating their Spirits comes naturally for Imps. Due to this, they are incredibly proficient on pulling someone inside their illusions, and their illusions were deadly. They could plunge someone into a deep chasm of unending nightmares, trapping their consciousness within and leaving their physical forms vulnerable. 

Imps devour souls. The more souls they devour, the stronger they get. Some of the stronger Imps could plunge an entire country into believe a false reality in order to devour all of them. Such is the terror of these little devils. 

Lesser Imps, since they are made after the image of the real ones, could also do this but only on a smaller ratios. What makes Lesser Imps less dangerous is that, they don't have high intelligence. Lesser Imps couldn't talk and acts due to instinct. Only the stronger Lesser Imps could do that. Additionally, those who created them limited their lifespans as well.

Still, the amount of Lesser Imps present within the Devil Emperor's Pagoda replica were too many. The task of every participant is to kill a certain amount of Lesser Imps om each floor in order to ascend to the next floor. Whenever they kill a Lesser Imp, they will release pure Spiritual Energy that would be absorbed by the participants, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of getting a stronger soul without any draw backs. 

The more Lesser Imps they kill, the stronger their spirit gets, which in turn will prevent them from falling to the Lesser Imps' illusions, making it easier to deal with them. This is the main attraction of this smelting trial. 

As for the lucky chances and opportunities, those could be found scattered within each floor. All the participants has to do, is to search for them. 

Of course, some of the more valuable serendipities are stashed amidst a dangerous place. Only those who are capable enough could grab them. However, just like Elder Abe said before. There is a first come first serve rule when it comes to this. 

Though the participants won't see each other, the lucky opportunities located within the pagoda are finite. Should someone pick them up first, that item/lucky chance will disappear from the view of the other participants. Should two people were to try claiming the same serendipity, it will go to the one who could leave their mark on it first. 

All in all, the participants had to fight Lesser Imps and discover their own serendipities within the pagoda in order to strengthen themselves since the higher they climb, the stronger the versions of Lesser Imps they will face. 

Each floor has a dedicated safe zone. Within this safe zone, the participants won't be attacked by the Lesser Imps. Each floor also has a requirement that has to be met in order to ascend to the next floor. In the first floor, one only has to kill a certain amount of Lesser Devils, but from the 2nd floor and above, one would also be required to posses a certain amount of serendipities as well as to slay numerous devils. 

The time limit is ten years, but only ten days will pass outside. This means that it is completely possible for the participants to stay within a specific floor for longer periods of time. 

At this point, nobody managed to ascend to the second floor just yet. All the remaining 40 participants - minus Raven, are still on the first floor battling their hearts out. 

Out of these 40 people, eight were in a critical state. These participants almost had their souls devoured by Lesser Imps. If it weren't for the fact that they managed to wake up from their befuddled state, they would've already lost their lives and serve as nourishment to strengthen the spirit of some Lesser Imps.

It also didn't help that Lesser Imps actually roam around in groups. Each group would have at least five to nine Lesser Imps. One wrong move and it would be easy for one to get ganged up by these imps. 

The requirement to ascend to the second floor is to kill at least one thousand Lesser Imps. If one haven't encountered any lesser imps before, they might start thinking that this requirement is easy to surpass but once they face one, they would soon understand that this is already a high number. 

The Lesser Imps on the first floor could easily take down a Hero Knight Expert should they become careless. Since Lesser Imps travel in groups, even a Champion Knight expert wouldn't casually charge at them without a solid plan. This is already enough to slow down their hunt of the imps. 

Additionally, as they ascend to higher floors, the Lesser Imps will become stronger and the requirements will become steeper. Which is why most of them decided to take their time. 

***

Whilst the rest of the participants tried their best to fulfill the requirements as quickly as they could, Raven on the other hand was still stuck within his deep slumbering state. 

As his physical body stayed afloat, the large mass of green light that the Heavenly Elk released earlier had now visibly shrunk. Right now, there are no visible changes on his body. It also doesn't seem like Raven was experiencing a difficult problem as well. His face was peaceful, anyone who sees him would think that he's just sleeping.

But the truth was far from that…

Within Raven's body, a scene representing chaos was unfolding. The reason behind this was due to a simple reason…

The seal on his Chaos Force were now removed.

When Raven started cultivating the Book of Chaos, his cultivation path had been different. Due to the unique quality of his constitution, it required Master Geezer to bestow him Cosmic Energy in order for to continue cultivating. But Raven was weak back then so Geezer had to place seals on his Cosmic Energy in order to prevent Raven from imploding. 

Due to him experiencing Soul Rebirth, Raven's soul could already bear the burden of the total amount of Cosmic Energy he has. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for his physical body. Which is why Raven trained his body extremely hard since that's the only way for him to slowly loosen the seals on his chaos force and use them however he likes. 

There are a total of three seals placed on his Cosmic Energy but Raven only managed to release one. And that took him more or less five years to do so. 

After that, he was placed on an awkward situation since he could feel that he's barely scratching the surface of the second seal even after consistently trying ways to improve his physical strength. He lamented over the fact that he can't cultivate any other techniques since his foundation for the Book of Chaos had been solidified. He would've loved to try out some Body Forging Techniques but he couldn't. 

Which is why he could only sigh and continue doing what he's been doing since there's no other way, that's until now that he met the Heavenly Elk. 

Right now, the rest of the seals were broken in one go and he wasn't even aware of it. He was in a deep slumber as his body was currently experiencing a chaotic change. 

Previously, the amalgamation of his Cosmic Energy took the form of a sun within his inner world. But now that the seals were broken, it exploded with a loud bang that shook Raven's whole body. 

There was a fierce storm on his inner world. Thankfully, the items he placed within weren't touched nor damaged by it. Still this massive storm was like that of the apocalypse. As it rages within his inner world, Raven's whole body was greatly affected as well. 

If Raven was awake right now, this scene will for sure make him panic…