The life scale

"If you have come this far it is because you know the value of life, you may have seen how it can easily leave the hardest body, you may have felt life in all living beings, you may have faced decisions impossible and regrettable things that you can only assume, or you may even have carried out the miracle of life yourself, so leave the weight of your shoulders in the balance and wait for the rewards that life has in store for you."

The ball of green energy grew to the size of a melon, impacted my heart and merged with my heartbeat.

"Affinity with the mana of life created. 1/18100"

"Congratulations on completing the main life mana core during the tutorial."

"Congratulations on partially completing the hidden quest in the life Room, 3/4 completed."

"Congratulations on being the first player with seven cores of level 3 or higher in the tutorial"

Life Mana Core, Level 4. 1/25000

I cut myself with a dagger in my hand. The cut was deep, but I wanted to know the limits of this new power. I poured my mana and my will, and the wound was completely healed. It is true that the mana expenditure was high, but it was viable to recover at least from the external injuries...

I returned to the statue room, it had been "quiet" easy to a point, "Being part of the miracle of life...? Only women could pass the last side quest? Wasn't that a little unfair?..."

I was in a good mood, and I didn't feel like going back to psychological trauma at the moment, so I ruled out darkness and death, from the corridor of light. I didn't know exactly what to expect; I was saving ice and fire for the end, so This left me with the path of lightning ahead... Surely more than the lightning that was a symbolic incarnation, it would be electrical magic...

As always, the surprise awaited in the first cauldron. There was no torch; instead, a glass sphere attached to a metal handle was in place of the torch... A light bulb? It had no filament, but what would be the point if it were there? Here?. There was no switch, no connector, nothing, just the metal stick... I shook it up and down to see if it would charge, but it was useless.

I concentrated my metallic mana on the stick to try to see beyond the limit of my eyes. It was not a solid block; it was not a solid block; it was made of different layers of metal; the outermost one had a multitude of engraved symbols, and a circuit or paths of another alloy connected the exterior with the interior. Inside, in the innermost part, a total of the mechanism had three parts: the first was like a series of metal pieces placed in parallel where the circuits reached; the next was a square or solid piece; and the next thing was like a connector that stuck directly to the glass... converter, accumulator and connector?...

The device was magical in nature; you can verify it with my skill, although I already assumed it.

I concentrated my will and injected the earth mana, lighting the "light bulb" consumed about three thousand of energy... It was an enormous expense to light a simple light bulb, but in the end it would be the price of passing the test. I moved forward lighting light bulbs, when I emptied my earth mana I continued with the air mana, then with the life mana, then with the water mana, then with the psyche... but the tunnel seemed to have no end... the succession of torches did not It ended until I had spent all the mana in my body except that which came from the secondary cores... I felt empty... although luckily not completely.

A little further forward was a door to my right. I prepared myself for a fight, shield spear... I opened the door tense, alert... and what was behind it disappointed me, neither monsters nor physical tests, it was a damn puzzle or so it seemed to me... on the other's wall On the side of the room there were 13 gems in a circle, and a central gem, of the thirteen he could see how only 8 of them, those that corresponded to the nuclei he had activated, shone, the other six were empty, opaque, between the gems. From the circle and the central gem there was a series of runes, of circuits, some linked the gems together, others continued through a succession of runes... in the end that circuit ended in the central gem...

I put my hand on the gem of will and nothing happened, I put my other hand on one of the paths that led to one of the nearby runes... all the energy came out of the gem and illuminated the rune, however the energy of the rune was less than what the gem originally gave off...

I put my hand on the rune and then on the gem, and the energy returned to its original place..., I tried other combinations, in some rune the energy increased, and in another nothing happened...

I looked at the wall, 13 gems, more than 54 runes... this was giving me a headache... however... I ran my fingers through the conductive circuits, there was no doubt in my mind that they were metallic, a crazy idea appeared in my mind...

Using my metal mana I forced the threads to separate from the wall, then created 8 threads long enough to join the circle gems to the central gem... This used up all my metal energy, so if it didn't work, I would fail this mission. Secondary... When I had everything connected, I touched the gem of will with one hand and, with my other hand, the central gem.

The energy was transferred from one place to another, and there was no apparent loss in energy, I repeated the same with the next six, things got out of hand when I connected the eighth, rifts began to appear on the surface of the gem, the energy seemed to spin uncontrollably inside, I put my hands on the gem and my body began to suck the energies like a sponge, but when my reserves were full there was still energy left inside the gem.

"Congratulations player for detecting the secondary chaos energy during the tutorial."

"Chaos mana affinity created. 1/100"

I absorbed all the energy I could, but only got a 10 out of 100 in the process.

When the gem was emptied it fell off the wall and fell to the floor, something told me it was the object for the scale...

Upon reaching the tunnel, the next light bulbs appeared in the next section, but this time they were already illuminated.

5 light bulbs ahead there was another door... I opened it with caution, in fact something made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little, an instinct for danger... this time it was a natural cave with a lagoon... Something told me that there was something else in the water.

Deciding to try something new, I released my life mana to see if I could detect something... indeed more than fifty fish that I will define as "giant electric eels" were swimming through the waters, they were more than four meters long, their trunk was like a beer barrel and a mouth with three rows of teeth.

I now concentrated my psychic mana and some will on the nearest eel and pulled it out of the water, electric arcs ran through the monster fish's skin as I raised it above the water... I launched five air blades before the animal died, definitely.

I repeated the process with the rest, and when I was left with only a couple of them, data's voice rang.

"Congratulations to the player for reaching level 5 during the tutorial"

I was a little surprised that there was someone who had reached level five before me, but hey, there were 2000 of us and they were all professional players, surely some of them had spectacular skills...

I didn't stop to see how my statistics evolved, now I preferred to focus on continuing collecting, I would have time to see data.

I killed the other two eels with the same technique, and concentrated on looking for the gem, in this case it was at the bottom of the lake.

I returned to the hallway to find another door, this time on the left wall. I also had a slight feeling of danger as I approached. I turned the knob and was surprised to be in an open-air space. Thick storm clouds were running above me... The room or space would be about 50 meters by 70 meters wide. And in the center a pedestal with a gem... I took a step forward, and lightning struck a few meters away, forcing me to jump back and leaving a horrible ringing in my ears due to the subsequent thunder.

I tried to make it fly with telekinesis towards me, but it seemed that it was hooked to the pedestal and I couldn't pull it (it would have been easy, too easy)... I calculated the distance and spread my earth mana around the pedestal; it began to rise. When a stone dome, when it was completed, I opened a dimensional rift to appear next to the pedestal. Lightning hit the dome, but it resisted. I tried to take the gem, but it was anchored to the pedestal. I decided to act like the light bulbs and injected mana into them. Pedestal, after 5 seconds, the gem gave way. Several rays hit the dome, making it shake, but

I opened a rift and appeared directly in the hallway.

I continued down the hallway until I could see the scale room at the end.