Shmebulok
"EVAN EMIT, ENTER." The door boomed.
"This'll be easy peezy! I bet I won't even get a scratch." Evan boasted as he entered the mist, disappearing as he went deeper and the doors closed.
"HIS TRIAL BEGINS." The door said as it opened again roughly 5 minutes later.
"KEIDI AND CEIDI NORTUM, ENTER."
....
"NAINA JOPIN, ENTER."
...
"EMILIA YON SCORBER, ENTER"
...
"OLIVIA REDDRUM, ENTER"
...
"KIIBIKI, ENTER"
...
"LANA TAUR-CRUSHER, ENTER"
...
"MIA ADLELEAF, ENTER"
...
"GORUM, ENTER"
"..."
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Shmebulok yawned boredly and scratched his rotund belly. The challenger analysis was taking forever, like always. He couldn't complain about it very much though, it would be too difficult to do his job if it didn't get a proper reading.
"Challenger Analysis finished." The ceiling chimed from a floating magic crystal.
"Finally, cough it up so I can get to work." He spat as he got off his fat blue ass and brushed off his knees.
"Challenger name, Gorum. Elderly human warrior, orphan. Challenger's mental resistances too high to gather further information." The crystal chimed before it floated up into a small tunnel in the ceiling and went to a different chamber.
"Fahh... that's it? Oh well...maybe one of the human kingdoms sent a warmaster or something." He griped aloud as he wondered about who could possibly have high enough mental resistance to stump the analyser. His best guess was some veteran human was sent alongside the rest of the challengers to chaperone. It was too bad for him though, the elderly were the easiest to deal with. Even more so than punks with no resistance to his magic.
As Shmebulok prepared a spell and watched the door he grew quite surprised.
"Eh?"
Emerging from the mist was possibly the largest creature he'd ever seen. A giant clad in gold crawled into the room on its belly and stood up hunched over, unable to fully extend due the low ceiling.
'Uwah... that's supposed to be a human?' he thought in disbelief. The analyser wasn't usually wrong about something as obvious as species...but it didn't matter, his job didn't change at all.
"Gorum my boy come closer~" He tempted in the voice of a older woman as he let a spell float across the room and deep into the human. Of course, the human looked his way and started shuffling over slowly under the spells effects.
"It's been so long I didn't recognize you...my child. I didn't want to abandon you but things were so hard, I couldn't take care of a child.." he said to the human, lulling it further into the illusion as it lurched across the room and stood over him. But to his surpise, instead of falling into illusioned slumber, the human snatched Shmebulok up and held him in one of his large hands.
"Your illusions do not fool me, imp." The human said in a spine shivering, gravely voice. It's deep blue bloodshot eyes trembling with unstable thoughts of violence as it stared at Shmebulok.
"E-Eeek!"
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"So it's all just illusions and spacial magic hm?"
"Yes that's correct, your party members are all in their own rooms and undergoing mental trials.."
Currently, Shmebulok was being made to balance on the top of his and tips of his toes. Some form of human prostration, whatever it was called it made his back and belly hurt.
In this position the human had been interrogating him.
'Seriously, why is a hardcore guy like this running around in the hero's party!? Shouldn't he be guarding a king or something?' Shmebulok trembled on the ground as he wracked his brain and tried not to fall over. The human threatened to squash him if he did and had promptly smashed a rock under his foot to make an example, so Shmebulok was keen to obey.
'Shit...this hasn't ever happened before, how did this freak manage to resist my magic after going through the Wandering Dream Mist?'
The main gimic of the dungeon was a nation level magical tool that produced Wandering Dream Mist, an A to B spatial mist that was capable of swallowing you in one end and spitting you out on the other after injecting your brain with pure illusion mana. Not only did it make you suffer random dream like illusions, it also made you more susceptible to illusion spells. So theoretically, even a blue Imp like Shmebulok could lure a normally impossible opponent into an illusion.
"H-Hey..." He meekly said to get the human's attention, whom had been staring of into space thinking about something.
"Yes?" The gravelly voice responded.
"How come you were able to resist my magic? I-I know I'm just an imp but I've been training my illusion magic for 200 years in this dungeon, with the mist you went through, you should have fell to my spell..." He asked, desperate to get any helpful information he could.
"Ahh...well that's good you've stayed dedicated to training, it's just..." The human started to trail off.
'Eh? Is he trying not to hurt my feelings? You bastard you're holding me hostage!' Shmebulok clenched his jaw in annoyance.
"Please, I'd truly like to know how to improve..." He said through gritted teeth.
"Ah well, just keep doing what you're doing. Anyways, since your illusions failed, what now?" The human said, denying the question and asking one of his own.
"Honestly I don't know... normally if you beat the trial we keep you under illusion and drop you off at the blacksmith.." Shmebulok answered. He was being truthful aswell, this sort of thing had never happened before. Even when heroes of the century entered the dungeon they too fell to the illusions.
"Well, I suppose I can just walk to the blacksmith so I can wait on my party." The human said.
"Ah well l can't lead you there or I'll get in trouble so...I mean I don't intend to stop you or anything! It's just that the blacksmith is pretty far down and the rest of your friends are still doing their trials above us so... " Shmebulok said against his better instincts, but at this point not being mouthy didn't matter as much as just getting this guy to leave. Surprisingly though the human didn't seem to mind his rudeness and actually let out a gruff chuckle.
"Don't worry about me, instead I'd worry about anyone under us." He said with a strange merriment in his voice.
"Eh?" Shmebulok looked up at the human in confusion just to see him swing his fist into the floor, causing the walls to crack and split as the entire floor collapsed into the room below.