The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1984 Frustration

For Karl, the trial after the next step didnʼt seem to have anything to do with Supremacy at all, as far as he could tell. Instead, he found himself standing in the middle of what looked suspiciously like Thorʼs pond.

Only, the stones werenʼt Holy, they were radiating some sort of Chaos Element energy combined with nature magic.

Given his silent choice in the last trial, to change himself into something that could easily become a supreme ranked powerhouse, this was likely intended to change him. Except Karl couldnʼt figure out how.

Was he just supposed to absorb the energy without any sort of guidance?

For a few seconds, Karl just stood there, confused.

Then, he realized that there was a subtle pressure on his body, like a massage for his cells. The trial was already starting to change him, and the goal was to endure it until he either succeeded or could not endure any more.

Most likely, this was supposed to be excruciating, as his body was remade from the inside out. But he resisted so much damage that the side effects were hardly noticeable.

So, he sat down in the pond, making himself comfortable as the energy levels increased, and his body was flooded with power that was reshaping him with even more energy in his cells.

”I wonder if itʼs possible to get a physique above Epic?”

That thought made Karl laugh, which seemed to upset the trial, and the energy level slammed into him like a hammer, causing the pain to finally break through his natural defences.

The aura was actually quite nostalgic.

When Hawk had gone for a swim in the dungeonʼs pure fire essence pools to evolve his own body, a very similar thing had happened.

For Karl, it wasnʼt fire, but an overflowing wave of nature and life energy with overtones of chaos. But the general feeling of being remade was the same, and this was nothing that Karl couldnʼt handle.

If it had caught him by surprise, he might have panicked and resisted.

But knowing what was happening, and the potential outcomes that it could provide, Karl simply went with it, and did his best to ignore the building pain as his cell structure was remade without tearing his body apart.

It wasnʼt triggering his regeneration, as no single cell was damaged or removed. They were simply being altered.

Second after second, the pain and pressure increased. However, Karl simply sat in the pond and waited, testing the limits of his body with increasing disappointment. All this change didnʼt seem to be doing anything at all.

Correction, it was definitely doing something. But it was neither increasing his power level nor pushing him further through the Immortal Realm.

”Maybe I should be meditating? Two for one bonus with all this energy?”

If the System heard him, it didnʼt give any indication, leaving Karl to do as he pleased.

The space seemed to be quite well suited to growing his power as an Ascended Immortal. Second by second he could feel his power growing, but separately from the changes that the trial was making to his body.

It might be because the energy was tailored to him by the trial, but heʼd never felt anything quite like it, and he was absolutely certain that he could not replicate it on his own.

While Karl was having a luxury bath and trying to change his body into something Supreme Ranked, Dana was having no such luck.

She had thought that the third ramp would be a good one, as it would finish the trial without the sun in her eyes. But once she got on the steps, she realized that she had picked a trial of knowledge, but it was all based on things that no sane and reasonable person would ever need to know.

What did it matter if she didnʼt know how many mana a four-meter diameter fireball, cast ten metres away at Peak Spirit Immortal power output and maximum efficiency took?

She had mastered the fundamental rule of mana manipulation, not the fundamental rule of mathematics.

So, she had been stuck on the first step for nearly thirty minutes already, and with some System prompting, had just finally managed to calculate the answers to all of its questions.

But the worst part was that you couldnʼt switch trials.

So, she moved on to the next step, and realized that the System was not just torturing her.

It was enjoying it.

{In order to construct a living being, the replenishment of expended energy flow is needed. Which of these three steps will provide the greatest mana cost reduction for an Epic Grade Summon?}

The options were all wildly different summoning arrays, which Dana examined carefully.

Even if she didnʼt understand what the System was trying to teach her, she might at least learn a bit more about summoning. These arrays were not ones from any of the spells that she knew, though they should all have a similar effect to [Epic Golem].

Another summoning spell that could call Golems of that quality would be outstanding. Especially if the System counted them as actual Golems, so that all of her class bonuses applied.

That seemed like a long shot, but the more that she studied the arrays, the more sense that they began to make. They were all written with runes that were familiar to her as a Runecrafter, and her skills would allow her to create and modify them on her own if she memorized them.

Even if she didnʼt know the skill.

So, there was a chance that this trial was actually going to be hugely beneficial to her, even if it appeared designed to simply annoy her to death with impossible questions about mathematics.

Logically, she knew that optimizing mana use was a useful skill. It really was.

But to this extent?

However, Dana was not the one who had gotten the worst trial.

Cara was standing in a throne room full of treasures, and every time that she tried to advance toward one, or pull it from its place, everything would shift so that she was no closer to her goal.

She wasnʼt as frustrated as Dana was. At least, not yet. But she was the only one still on the first step of the trial.