Hal broke out into a cold sweat as the realization that he once thought of fighting the Sea Dragon alone as a last resort flashed in his mind.

He would've certainly died had he attempted such a dumb thing.

Still, his assumptions proved correct: Chaos would always give him a way to complete the trials.

It's just that he needed to think hard, act, and continue looking for it.

Hal was snapped out of his thoughts the next moment as the white-scaled serpent dove for the core and devoured it as though it hadn't eaten for weeks and was suddenly presented with its favorite.

It easily crunched at the Megala Core, breaking it and swallowing all the energy inside.

To humans, doing such a thing was equivalent to suicide, and it was, even to beasts.

It was just that there was no other alternative.

The serpent was obviously a Devourer Beast, as it wouldn't even be hunting for the core, otherwise.

But being one doesn't guarantee that it will be able to digest all the energy.

Sure enough, in the next moment, the serpent trembled, then began thrashing crazily, discharging thunder from time to time that even Hal, who was now a fair distance away, felt strongly.

The moment he was zapped, he quickly bolted away using his escape skills, fleeing to the entrance.

Hal knew he would die if he stayed around.

This unfortunately meant that he wouldn't be able to carve important parts out of the Sea Dragon immediately, allowing the thrashing serpent to damage the goods further before he would have a chance.

But Hal wasn't stupid.

He would only be able to put the materials to use if he were alive, after all.

And so, with everything he had, Hal barely secured safety, [Blink]ing out at the last second as a massive discharge that was more fitting to be called an outburst occurred.

A single drop of water, and naturally, the violent thunder, was barred by a special force from entering the sacred temple.

'Could this even be called sacred?' Hal mused as he looked around, strangely finding comfort in the eerie silence and harrowing darkness of the temple.

He felt somewhat at home…

Knowing that he would probably be entering another trial after he descended the ancient stairway, Hal took a deep breath, temporarily shifting his attention back to the entrance.

He also disabled his [Breathing Room] spell for now, as he needed to recover mana, or Chaos Karma in his case, before descending again.

Hal watched the bright, thunderous discharges like they were fireworks.

He could only wait for the outbursts to end before heading out again and checking if he could collect some additional spoils.

Having fought side by side with the white-scaled serpent, Hal wanted it to survive its tribulation, but he also wouldn't feel too bad if it failed.

They've fought only one battle, after all.

He could also simply harvest parts of the serpent if it perished to make the most of the situation.

To his disbelief, the violent element continued raging in the depths for more than an hour, causing Hal to think that there was no way that serpent would survive.

His heart felt a bit hollow at the thought, but hey, at least he would have more high-tier loot to take home, should he manage to survive Chaos' trials.

Only after another hour did the raging thunder stop.

Hal had recovered more than ninety percent of his Chaos Karma by now, and so activating [Breathing Room] and [Mana Fins] for an hour wouldn't be a problem.

He also planned to recover both his physical and mental state to full before tackling the next trial.

Waiting for three more minutes to confirm that the violent outbursts had stopped, Hal finally decided to step out…and froze as a prompt appeared in front of him.

[Would you like to exit the temple? [Yes/No] You will not be able to enter again.]

Hal hadn't tapped the [No] option faster in his life.

Clearly, there was something strange in this specific "instance" of the world, as he would like to call it.

The Tiki Island here was chained to the depths by some unknown, divine force, while the one they arrived at was perfectly fine, with tribal humans thriving.

He naturally didn't want to get stuck here.

Hal also felt that he would never see Loki, his mother, the midget, and the others he cared about if he chose [Yes].

If there was one thing he learned, it was that his intuition when making a decision couldn't be sharper, especially after his gamble to fight the Sea Dragon alongside the white-scaled serpent turned out to be his only way out of this trial.

This was why he decided to just let go of the loot.

While he didn't feel that he would lose his life if he chose the greedier option, Hal felt he would lose something far more.

If only he could see what was outside—mangled bits of flesh and utterly unusable scales—Hal would be jumping for joy that he chose the correct option.

The white-scaled serpent was also gone.

As for whether it survived the tribulation, only Chaos knew.

Meanwhile, inside the temple, Hal took a deep breath, trying to calm his bleeding heart.

The loot of a dragon, gone…

But this was for the best, so he could only move on.

A nice meal would certainly help…

And so, since he could still use some rest, Hal decided to eat and drink well first before descending the staircases.

There were also the seventy thousand Chaos Points he had yet to use…

Hal retrieved a chunk of roasted fish meat from his inventory and purchased a rice meal and a cold tea from the shop, then began eating.

Soon, he fell deep in thought, pondering how he should use his points.

He could upgrade the system now, but was it worth it?

'No…not yet…'

While he already had a small arsenal of [Epic]-tier cards, they were far too small for him to be thinking of upgrading the system right now.

[Unique]-tier cards also proved their worth in this trial.

In the end, he decided to spend all his points on draw chance upgrades and card draws before descending.