R. A. T. H

Forty-Three vol.2

Elsa found herself blinking her eyes. She stood, glancing at her body at the odd realization that she felt lighter than usual.

"What the fuck?" She cursed immediately.

Her pulse pistol was gone. Her mana shield emblem was gone. Her gauntlets were gone. And, try as she might, though she still saw a tattoo at her midsection, she could not feel any energy from it or the other one she had. That was to say, she was without anything to fight or defend herself with but her brain and her body.

She gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath, then another.

'Goddammit.'

Of course she was furious, but she was also not an idiot. If the dungeon could move people between what was akin to separate dimensions, then it wasn't strange that it could remove her equipment as well. As for her spirits. . .she found that odd but shrugged.

'It can mess with memories already,' She thought, 'Being able to stop some energy should just be another shitty thing it can do.'

With that thought, she stared at her surroundings.

She was alone this time in a single, white room that reminded her of the floor-between-floors. She raised her brow at a ground littered with mana orbs and scraps of metal, then she turned left.

". . ."

There was a divider in the room. A barrier of blue with a large timer that seemed made of mana counting down from 10 minutes at its middle. On the other end, there was a beast. A snake-like creature with emerald scales. It was large, its body coiled as it watched her with its thin pupils.

'Hell that looks more like a small dragon than a damned snake.'

Before the anxiousness came, and before her impulsiveness could grip her, Elsa took a breath and forced her brain to think. The timer made her realize that time was ticking. If it existed, then something would definitely happen once it reached zero.

'Fuck, don't tell me the barrier will disappear?' Elsa found herself cursing immediately.

Her shitty thought was that the dungeon wanted her to fight the thing. Of course, she thought it was impossible. Fight the thing? With what? The dungeon had taken all of her items and her spirits too. Then she glanced at the floor littered with mana orbs and scraps of metal.

'So it wants me to use what's in this room to defeat it. . .' She thought incredulously.

If the theory was true that the dungeon was something man-made, made to test individuals as they climbed its levels, then Elsa thought it made sense that it'd throw her in this situation. If it had access to her memories, then it likely knew what she was capable of. And if it knew that, then it was a no-brainer that it could throw her into a personalized challenge.

"What the fuck?" She cursed. It made sense, but damn was she pissed.

It wasn't impossible, but she'd be pushing herself. As the timer struck 9 minutes, Elsa began working. She sat and grabbed the nearest mana orbs she could find as a mana line came from a finger and connected to it

'Damn, I haven't coded under pressure before.'

She was creating a basic 'order', etching it within the mana orb. Specifically, that order, something that could be thought of as code, was a simple one: erupt all the mana in a burst of force. It worked in the same way the burst mode of a gun would. Instead of collapsing mana into a concrete shape, it merely forced it out extremely quickly. In the same vein that fast moving winds could crush through objects with its force, fast moving mana could create a force of its own. Scaled up using all the energy in a mana orb, an extremely basic mana bomb could be made.