27 The scale of darkness

"Another fucking dark elf? Seriously, another cheater like me." The memory of the complicated fight against the first dark elf is still in my memory...

He looked at me strangely. I think it was not the reaction he expected: fear, taking out weapons, preparing for combat. I think he expected something from that, not a guy screaming while looking at the ceiling and talking to an unknown entity...

I extended my mana senses in time to detect how he advanced with a feint while summoning a dome of darkness...

He had time to barely dodge my air blades, although I wasn't going to give him any respite so I opened a rift and appeared on his back. He reacted immediately and I couldn't hurt him, nor did my lightning strike manage to hit him...

His agility was no joke; we were fighting blind, since the darkness I had summoned didn't even allow me to see with my dim vision ability.

Despite forcing him defensively, I couldn't hurt him, nor could I control his body with my psyche magic; he fiercely resisted my mana. The combat took place between furtive sword strikes, throwing daggers, jumping into rifts, and air blades.

By the time 5 minutes had passed, we were both breathing hard. It canceled out the darkness, it made no sense and gave it no real advantage.

He launched the attack with renewed energy, his sword and his dagger seeking my body in a deadly combo. I took a few steps back, forced into a defensive posture. I managed to stop his attacks, partly by activating my bullet time and partly by using a wide variety of magic. He began to get used to my rifts, attacking in the direction of the exit opening. He was taking the measure of me...

Or so he thought. When he was directed to an exit rift, his foot sank into the mud...

Thanks to my multiple thinking, after I canceled the darkness, I accumulated all the humidity in the room and the corridors of the labyrinth that I could accumulate. Little by little, I filtered my mana of water and earth into a corner of the room, towards which I could not I was heading while continuing the attacks. When I opened a rift and saw that it was following me, I knew I would fall into the trap.

With an effort of air magic, removing the humidity, and forcing the nature of the rock, I managed to trap it up to ankle height. I did not come out of the rift as he expected, but instead advanced from my original position, canceling out the rifts. My air blade cut him in two at his waist...

An essence emerged from the dark elf's broken body.

"Congratulations to the player for obtaining the Dark Elf Essence: +2 Dexterity."

My body felt more elastic, more flexible, faster, inhumanly fast. I didn't stand around reveling in my new abilities, and I looted the corpse. The slightly curved sword didn't look bad; it even seemed better than mine, but I had become accustomed to using a double-edged weapon, and I felt that this "saber" did not fit my style very well, plus I still preferred the spear whenever possible. Besides the token and a pair of daggers, he had nothing else of value to him.

In a couple of minutes, I arrived at the scale room. It was illuminated again, and this time the text said the following: "Darkness is something that very few dare to walk through since you can get hopelessly lost; darkness is something in what monsters feel comfortable in but at the same time can be a refuge; darkness is a weapon if you know how to use it; and it is also the source of evil because it becomes great; leave your hands on the scales and let the weight from the darkness that you carry may give you your rewards."

The ball of light, the size of a melon, hit me. On the ass, it was an uncomfortable feeling... very uncomfortable...

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

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

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

"Congratulations on being the first player with 10 cores of level 3 or higher in the tutorial"

Darkness Mana Core, Level 4. 1/25000

I tried to make a field of darkness, and I succeeded after a couple of attempts. I also managed to darken only my figure or surroundings, or enlarge a shadow, enough to continue. Upon returning, I was constantly surprised by how the labyrinth had transformed into a straight path in a matter of minutes. I was especially surprised when I thought about the mana cost it would have compared to the mana I was spending when making a simple figure with stone. However, here the entire labyrinth had changed...

"Stop thinking like that; it's just a game." I laughed at myself, but the truth is that the experience was beginning to change my perception of things.

Arriving at the statue room, I meditated again to replenish my reserves. It was already beginning to become a habit; it became more natural to me.

The darkness had not been a big problem; however, I still didn't know what to expect in the corridor of light, what evidence would I have?

Like the corridor of darkness, in the corridor of light, there was no light beyond what the hall of statues radiated. I advanced to the first torch that was unlit, but before I could turn to check it, all my senses of danger were activated. It was the same feeling of ominous evil as in the tunnel of the labyrinth of darkness, but this time multiplied by a thousand in magnitude. 

The torch had no hidden mechanisms to light it, but I knew in the back of my head that in order to move forward, I had to light it. All that was left was to light it by magical means, but I still didn't have fire magic. However, there was magic that I knew whose use projected a lot of light... lightning magic...

I charged my hand with enough electrical energy to make it shine for a few seconds. The worst was what I saw in the hallway, a few meters away, crouching, waiting to jump. There were beings similar to the aliens from the famous movies, only they had a black body and a slightly shorter head, and they also had three tails instead of just one. They jumped into a shadow and vanished after being surprised by the brightness.

If I turned on the light with the electrical energy, they would vanish. I was sure of it. I took a deep breath, and as I took a step towards the darkness, I fired a "lightning bolt" with each hand. With that, they wouldn't have much place to hide. In the seconds that the lightning lasted, moving away and shining, I could see many of these beings that were hit. I did not wait for darkness to reign again and launch two more lightning strikes. I kept repeating the operation as I advanced; my senses told me that there were still some alive, and I didn't stop until I couldn't sense a single life in the hallway.

"Congratulations to the player for reaching level 6 during the tutorial"

"Congratulations to the player for obtaining an essence of "Vodak" during the tutorial: +2 to strength"

I had run out of electricity mana with my last cast, so just in case I opened a rift and reappeared in front of the first torch, it would have been a drama if it weren't for the lighter; I had remembered it at the last moment. Which gave me confidence for the previous battle...

The torch was lit, and the corridor was finally illuminated. The bodies of more than a hundred of those beings lay charred everywhere... The corridor smelled of burnt flesh... They had nothing of value to them, nor any token. They were just fried monsters.

I continued down the illuminated hallway for about 50 meters, and at the end, I came to a door.

With my senses, I noticed a room very similar to the one I found in the labyrinth, full of obstacles, or at least that's what it seemed like. I opened the door. High walls shot shadows here and there, but a clear path of light ran through them between them. However, in the darkness of the shadow of the first wall, I could see a shelf. On it was a shiny, two-handed sword, adorned with jewels that even emanated a strong magical power...

Okay, we have the bait, catch the object, and the trap enters the shadows. If I tried physically, the arrows would be shot or similar... I tried telekinesis and it worked; the sword ended up in my possession.

The problem was that, at the same time To take it, the walls became larger and therefore the shadows more pronounced, so the path of light became narrower...

I decided to see if there were more baits: an imposing shield, two short swords, a highly decorated bow, and a suit of armor. Plates, a staff with an orb at the end, a glowing gem, a Morningstar, a whip, a backpack, a set of knives, a belt, a tunic, a majestic cloak, a spear, a crown, a hood, gloves, a thick book with runes on the cover, some glasses...

However, I could only take two more without the path completely disappearing from them before the path was lost in the shadows...

Of all the objects, I was quite interested in the shield, the spear, the staff, and the book, but it was really a shame to lose all of them...

Lion thinks... thinks... how can I take them all without losing my way?

If I picked up the token that was waiting for me on the other side of the room, a medallion, surely the magic of the place would not let me escape with the objects.

Let's plan... I attracted all the objects while keeping them close to me, suspended with telekinesis but still in place. The limit of darkness has now arrived, and now the moment of synchronization has arrived. At the same time that I threw the objects towards the main hallway, I raised a wall of wind to protect myself from whatever came. I opened an dimensional rift right next to the medallion. I pulled it, and I took my hand out of the rift at the same moment that everything became dark.

Arrows did not rain as I expected; it seemed more like the darkness was dragging you...

I fell on my face, and a tangible darkness with a will of its own dragged me by my feet. I launched two air blades, but they crossed the void. I launched my bullet time, not so much to be able to escape, but to gain time to think how to do it. I projected all my will and psyche to hold on to the wall and not be dragged further, but even though I didn't back away, it felt like my legs were going to break at any moment.

You could say that I was healing my legs at the same time that they continued to break. The darkness had a will that was undoubtedly there, but it was not alive in the physical sense of the word.

At that moment, I regretted having used all my lightning magic. It only occurred to me to attack a shapeless mass with some type of energy, but neither life, nor water, nor space, nor time, nor wind. Neither the will nor the psyche at the moment had the desired effects.

I had to do something, but without knowing if it would work, I extended my hand towards the darkness and projected all my chaos mana with the firm will to restructure the consciousness that I had Dragged

The pull on my legs stopped, the darkness even dispersed in some points concentrating or spreading randomly, I projected all my darkness mana towards the darkness itself trying to decipher its nature, to merge with it, when my senses noticed the core of his will I launched a psychic attack with all the power, I left nothing in reserve...

The darkness dissolved and a monster was crashed against the wall, a horror with many arms and legs, even legs or arms that grew from other limbs, some ending in hands, others in claws, others in spikes or hooves, others in a single gnarled fingers, it had many mouths, including mouths inside the boas, and eyes all over its body, on its arms and legs... it had no head, it was all a horrible, black body that emanated darkness...

He had not killed him, and although he maintained control over the darkness in the room, he knew that the monster (which he would later discover was called a horrendous nightmare and that it was very rare, and difficult to find, but above all very powerful, a death safe for many adventurers) would recover from the shock.

I threw as many air blades at him as I could, in crazy, rapid succession, and when I ran out of air mana I threw the water from my skin into the air and stabbed him with another twenty water bullets, which I recomposed again and again. To keep attacking him, keep the darkness at bay, and attack him with other magic at the same time drained me very quickly. However, the monster recovered as quickly as I wounded it.

I managed to wrap him with earth and throw spikes inward to hurt him, but I noticed more and more rifts in my improvised prison, he wouldn't last much longer under control... I began to open as many rifts as I could all over his body, opening the exits in others. Parts of the room, 10, 15, 25 rifts closed at once cutting the monster into multiple parts.

"Congratulations to the player for reaching level 7 during the tutorial"

"Congratulations to the player for being the first to reach level 8 during the tutorial"

After that I fainted from the effort.