CHAPTER 257: CHAPTER 256 - THE TRIAL.

The maze had changed.

Each corridor now pulsed with a strange rhythm.

The silence from earlier was gone. The only thing left was tension. Coiling. Crawling. Waiting.

Selena stepped carefully around the corner, boots wet from ichor, only to freeze.

Something stood at the far end of the corridor.

Massive.

Humanoid.

Armor like obsidian plated across its limbs, etched with runes that shimmered dully—then blacked out like dying stars.

Its presence snuffed out everything.

She didn’t even wait for it to move, as she instinctively knew that it was an enemy.

Without a word, three devourer beasts with bone riders on their backs jumped out of her shadow and rushed forward.

Selena, however, frowned.

The creature stood unmoving even as the three devourers, armed with skeleton soldiers, rushed at it.

Then the unexpected happened.

The devourer beast whimpered and withered into smoke the moment they reached the creature. The undead soldiers followed, clattering into heaps of bone.

"What...?" She whispered, stepping back.

A pulse radiated from the creature—just a two-meter radius around it. Nothing lived in that radius—at least, nothing magical could.

Selena’s eyes sharpened.

She sent another serpent forward—only for it to unravel midair, like a broken illusion.

The creature didn’t even move.

"Anti-magic..." She muttered, her eyes narrowing.

She knew this element well because Siris once had it. The problem was that this creature, unlike Siris, could use anti-magic freely.

The thing tilted its head—then charged.

Its footfalls shattered the stone beneath it.

Selena spun around and bolted.

Even her own shadow fled.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t curse.

But inside, she was gritting her teeth.

Because she could tell that this enemy was made to finish her—this thing was her nemesis.

However, she wasn’t the only one who was struggling.

.....................

In another place, Clara ducked under a collapsed archway, sliding into a dimly lit chamber where strange floating stones orbited in the air like frozen moons.

She sensed the shift in mana.

Then she saw it.

An astral creature—shimmering like a star come alive, floating without legs or wings, pulsing with ghostly light. No face. No mouth.

No ears.

She hummed—a strong chord, dissonant and jagged.

The sound should’ve shattered everything it touched, but the creature didn’t even blink.

She pressed her palm to the floor, sending out a vibration field like sonar—

The echo came back twisted. It was curved wrong. The creature had no physical structure.

Nothing to reflect against.

"...It can’t hear," she realized aloud, stepping back.

Neither sound nor vibration worked.

She clenched her fists. "Well, that’s just cheating."

The creature pulsed once—

—Then the light grew, forcing her to leap back.

Clara’s illusions failed. Her manipulation of the senses was meaningless.

It had no senses.

She could do nothing but keep her distance from the creature.

.....................

Jessy slammed a metal shard into a charging beast’s maw—

Only for it to absorb the shard like water into sand.

Her magnetic plates spun wildly, disrupted, and then fell to the ground, clattering like broken toys.

"What the hell?!"

The beast—a jagged, insectile nightmare—radiated a pulse. She felt it.

It wasn’t magic. It was physics.

A pure anti-magnetic field.

Her arms snapped up as she took a defensive stance, using unbreakable fortress art to block an incoming strike—

But the creature’s claw slid through her defense like it was made of paper.

Jessy hissed, quickly rolling back and narrowly avoiding the claw.

"Okay... so it breaks defenses and counters magnets. Who designed this thing?!"

Like Clara, all she could do was keep her distance from the creature.

.....................

Meanwhile, Lia stood in the middle of a hallway overrun with emerald moss and vines.

Then the air shimmered—and a beast of fire stepped forward. No eyes. Just heat. Blazing.

She raised her hand, calling the roots—

—But the vines recoiled.

They didn’t want to fight.

"No..." She whispered. "You can’t be afraid."

The fire beast bellowed, and everything green wilted.

Her strongest magic had no hold.

"I can’t..." She backed up, chest tight. "I can’t fight this... nothing will grow..."

The beast took a step forward—and the moss at her feet burned.

She might be strong, and she could defeat a battalion of soldiers alone, but she couldn’t ignore her elemental weakness.

.....................

Jake knelt low, his scythe dragging behind him, face unreadable.

The entire hallway was lit.

Blinding. White.

His own shadow was barely a shimmer at his feet. He tried diving into it—

But then, he quickly realized what would happen if he did that.

His shadow was only visible because he was here. If he were to dive into his shadow, he wouldn’t have anywhere else to leave from.

Without an exit, he would be stuck in the shadow realm, unable to leave and eventually devoured by the shadow.

"Too close," he muttered, breathing harder than usual.

His shadow manipulation—the one thing that gave him a tactical edge—was gone.

The light beast just stood there, expressionless. But its very existence erased every dark place.

Even his aura-cloaked scythe did nothing. It passed through the beast like mist.

Jake couldn’t use the only power he had.

Yes, he still had his wind element, like how Selena had water, Clara had wind, and Jessy had earth.

However, there was no way they could win with those elements.

In a fight between a high element and a basic element, the latter was bound to lose.

.....................

Alex and Nibbles stared down at a creature that didn’t seem particularly terrifying.

A thin, elongated humanoid with a swirling mass of darkness for a head.

Then—

ZNNNNK.

Alex’s vision went white.

His body froze. Muscles stiffened. Breathing halted.

Then thoughts began—

Thoughts that weren’t his.

Memories not his own.

Something was inside his head.

"Ugh... Ghhhk—"

He couldn’t even scream.

Nibbles, on his shoulder, trembled—then collapsed.

But—

BLARGH.

The black ooze erupted across Alex’s skin, forcibly ejecting the psychic tendrils.

It also covered Nibbles, shifting the squirrel into its mini-venom form.

They gasped awake, coughing violently.

Then, a heartbeat later—

ZNNNNK.

Again.

The same mental attack struck them again.

Blargh resisted. Broke it.

Only for the monster to do it again.

It was relentless.

Neither Alex nor Nibbles could move.

They couldn’t strike, as they were caught in a loop of pain.

.....................

Rufus stood in a chamber lit by dull red lights.

Everything seemed normal.

Then—

He was hit.

Hard.

From behind.

Then the side.

Then above.

"Where—Where is it?!"

He spun, sensors blazing—

But nothing.

No signal.

No shape.

[Warning. Multiple suit fractures detected.]

[Threat proximity: Unknown.]

"Give me something!" Rufus yelled, launching a light sphere forward.

It hit nothing.

Then another blow struck his jaw, sending him crashing backward.

An invisible enemy.

No sound. No mana trail.

He was wearing the best suit on the continent, but it meant nothing right now.

.....................

Graye screamed as she flew through a wall.

The corridor cracked under her impact, dust clouding around her purple flames.

She growled and leapt to her feet. "You wanna play rough?! Let’s go!"

Her fire blazed—roaring hot, beautiful, and deadly.

But the moment she swung, the beast was gone.

Before she could blink, it was behind her again.

Slash.

Crash.

Over and over.

She couldn’t hit it.

She couldn’t even see it clearly.

Her flames were raw power.

But they were slow.

Bruised, she stood up, staggering.

"Damn it... You coward!" She snarled, standing again.

Her chest was heaving and blood dripping, but she hadn’t lost.

"I’m not going down like this!"

.....................

While all of them were struggling, somewhere, in a cave, Raven sat before the screen displaying their situation, but his focus was elsewhere.

He was given time to make plans, so he would, and once he was done, he would strike.

"What’s wrong? Why so silent?"

The voice from before asked.

Raven didn’t reply because he didn’t care. He had other important things to do. He needed to ensure his group’s safety when they passed the maze trial.

Yes, he wasn’t worried about them.

He wasn’t even looking at the screens anymore.

The voice drifted through the cavern again, oddly curious. "You’re not watching."

Raven didn’t respond, eyes still scanning the blueprints laid out in glowing lines across the table before him.

He was looking at his system interface, making other plans.

The voice pushed a little more, silk over steel. "They’re going to die, you know."

Raven finally leaned back, exhaling once, not in exhaustion but to acknowledge that he’d heard. "They won’t."

There was a pause before the voice giggled. "Confident words for someone surrounded by screams and breaking bones."

Still calm, Raven shrugged.

"Not confidence. Just facts."

The voice gave a soft laugh—closer to wind rustling bone-dry paper.

"It’s unwise to spout nonsense when your friends are being torn apart by creatures designed to counter their every strength."

BOOM.

The sound cracked through the room like a hammer to glass.

The screens lit up in a flash of white and red.

The voice stopped speaking.

Together, they stared.

On the screen, Selena stood still—her hair singed, coat torn, expression locked in quiet fury.

Before her, the hulking, rune-armored monstrosity collapsed backward, its chest gone. Smoke spiraled out in a perfect sphere. Nothing remained where its core had been.

Then—another screen flared.

Jessy’s beast, half-raised to strike her again, exploded mid-lunge, vanishing in a blink of an eye.

Then Clara’s.

Then Lia’s.

Each of them, one by one, held in their hands a blinking, rhombus-shaped shard. Each pulsed three times in their palms—softly, rhythmically.

Then they threw.

Each time, the moment the shards touched the beasts—BOOM.

It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t even magic.

It was something stronger—a warping force that tore through even reality-dampening fields. The explosions left no trace.

Even Alex—his hands trembling, mouth bloodied, brain still reeling from the psychic attacks—mustered the strength to hurl his shard.

Nibbles, clinging tightly to his shoulder, growled in miniature venom form as the black ooze pulled back just enough to let him move.

The shard hit true. The mind beast vanished.

On another screen, Rufus—one eye swollen, armor cracked—slammed a fist against the wall, and his nanoparticles exploded in the air.

As soon as the beast approached him, the particles stuck on its body, making it visible.

"Got you, invisible bastard," he muttered.

Then, he threw the shard—not at thin air, but at coordinates.

BOOM.

The room where he stood shook, and suddenly, there was a shape again—an outline, mid-dissolution. Gone.

The voice didn’t speak. Not immediately.

Then finally, it did. "That’s... not possible. That’s not what’s supposed to happen."

Still staring at the screens, Raven smiled. "Oh? You’re surprised?"

"They used a failsafe," the voice whispered. "This wasn’t their power, and it wasn’t an item I could sense."

Raven stood slowly, stretching his arms over his head with a casual groan. "It was a gift I gave to them before we stepped into this ruin."

Inwardly, however, he narrowed his eyes. ’So, she can’t sense divinity.’

He turned toward the screen that showed Graye.

She was panting and bleeding but still fighting. Her flames roared, and the beast blinked around her, dodging again. And again.

She hadn’t thrown a shard.

The voice narrowed in. "She doesn’t have one."

Raven didn’t say anything for a few seconds before he grinned. "She doesn’t need one."