D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 1892 Crow Puzzle

Chapter 1892: Chapter 1892 Crow Puzzle

— Lily —

They managed the backpack idea in the end. It was a bit awkward and some orbs might have been lost in the processed but Hedera simply added them to her storage. Sure it depowered one of the orbs… but it was just one more. Hardly anything worth worrying about. They’d explored some more and found another task. Lily couldn’t help but feel her eye twitching.

It was a table out in the open and she recognised the setup. Lily transformed with a sigh. “I know what’s going on here… and I don’t like it,”

“Isn’t this a simple puzzle?” asked Hedera. On the table was a thin, tall beaker with water in it and an orb with a floaty around it to keep it from sinking. On the table were a bunch of different objects and to Hedera at least it seemed obvious. You put whatever heavy objects there was into the beaker and raise the water level for the orb. Assuming you were doing it properly.

“This is a test for crows,” stated Lily with a sigh.

“Wait what?” asked Hedera.

“In my home dimension it’s a famous test used to work out how intelligent birds are, mostly crows. They’ve proven themselves smart enough to learn and work out puzzles like this. The one on the table in particular is one of the most common puzzles for them. I’d bet that once we clear it we’ll get a bunch of other tests just like it,” sighed Lily.

“Don’t complain about an easy task,” countered Hedera. “Especially when your magic can trivialise it. Just reach a shadow hand in and grab it,”

Lily didn’t want to start an argument about it so she just went through the motions… only for her to receive something akin to an electric shock when her shadow touched the ’water’ breaking her concentration and forcing her shadow to settle back into its original form. “Not so simple after all,” grumbled Lily as she shook out her real hand. There wasn’t any pain in it, but it helped remove the feeling of pins and needles across her body regardless.

“Guess we do this properly,” said Hedera as she stepped up to the table and looked at the various bowls. There were bowls of corks, apple seeds, leaves, a bunch of twigs and some cotton. “Hang on… will any of these work?”

Lily took her own look at the bowls. “Hmm… the apple seeds might work? Depends on what the liquid inside is… though…” Lily glanced around and started to nudge around the dirt and muck around her feet until she found what she was looking for. Several small pebbles. “We can always use rocks. That is the traditional method after all,”

“Go ahead,” said Hedera. “It will either zap you again, or the seeds were a trap the entire time,”

Lily glared a bit at Hedera for the reminder but slid the rocks into the beaker. When the first one smacked into the orb, Lily winced, forgetting they were fairly fragile. Luckily not quite THAT fragile as the rock sank to the bottom without issue. Seeing that this wasn’t going to result in her getting shocked, potentially repeatedly, Lily dropped the rest in. It wasn’t even close to enough. Still, she could use her shadows for this. Sending half a dozen shadowy hands through the nearby ground Lily started to gather up as many rocks of appropriate size that she could.

These were then past over to Hedera for final judgement. You didn’t want anything so big that it got stuck in the beaker, or that couldn’t slip past the orb where it was floating. Hedera’s efforts let Lily speed up the process massively. She just needed rocks that were mostly correct which really helped lesson the brain power requirements while moving so many shadow hands around.

Hedera poured the rocks into the beaker and soon the orb was easily plucked off the top. The tabletop was wiped clean, a wave of obvious space manipulation slowly claiming the objects on top. Lily ’watched’ with fascination as the space twisted around the objects to make it seem like they were vanishing before actually doing so a few moments later when they were full covered. It also gave a lot of time for people to move their fingers out of the way.

Once the table had been wiped clean another orb appeared in the centre. Just… sitting there. Hedera shrugged and picked it up. Once she did, the table changed. This time, instead of above it, it was the table itself. The wooden table had a maze rapidly carved into it. The whole thing started from the centre and worked its way outwards. It was a really cool effect… but it did make it quite easy to see how to get to the centre of the maze.

Lily was curious what the trap was… when she noticed that there were a number of darks holes that popped into existence all across the maze. There was four small gold circles, one in each of the corners. After the transformation seemed to finish there was one more change to take place. A steel ball appeared right in the very centre. “A tilt maze?” mumbled Hedera. “I never really enjoyed these,”

“Oh you guys have them here?” asked Lily.

Hedera nodded. “They are a simple children’s toy… mostly. Some say it makes you better at navigating dungeons and ruins when you get older but frankly I never believed that. I am… also not the best at navigating dungeons though. Not horrible certainly, but not great. So perhaps I’m actually an example of the point. Still… do we want to waste time with such a thing?”

“They normally aren’t too bad…” said Lily thinking mostly about the digital ones she’d played. “The problem are those holes. I can already tell you need to pass through at least one of them for each of the four endings… then again… I think you might need to do all four of them to clear this stage. It’s going to take my a while even if I don’t make any mistakes…” *Which isn’t certain as I get used to the weight of the setup and how the ball reacts.*

Lily sighed. “I think that this is going to make me a while. Perhaps even something like half an hour. You can stick around and watch or maybe explore… or we can skip it. I be the reward will be worth it but it’s going to take a good chunk of time to get this done,”

“Just… I’ll just watch. I don’t really know how far I can go and if something attacks you while you have all the orbs it would be bad…” said Hedera. Though a quick glance at the elf showed that she was still worried. Lily, for her part blinked and glanced around. Despite being in her human form at the moment… she wasn’t as worried as she had been earlier. Though Hedera seemed to be picking up the slack for both of them.

*Is it just because there’s a task in front of me? Is it because my shadows are free with this super awkward backpack thing? Which I really should set down.* The mushroom ’backpack’ was really more of an awkward shoulder bag. The vines stretched up into a handle, and also helped keep the bundle of orbs, real and fake, in check. It was not comfortable to carry around but that obviously didn’t matter in Memphis form.

Gently placing it down Lily placed her hands on the table and gave it a gently lift. It weighed… practically nothing. Wait. Lily gave it some more experimental shakes. Literally nothing. It was enchanted to weigh nothing, or so close to it as to not matter. Convenient… but it honestly was still a pain. The table wasn’t short so…

Lily repositioned herself. She made a small footstool out of shadows and lifted the table slightly off the ground, making sure she could see the whole thing and attached yet more shadows to the table itself. Even weighing nothing, having to physically hold the table would’ve been a massive pain for seeing where she was going. Now it was just a matter of getting the ball to the ends without hitting any of the traps.

The first round, really wasn’t so bad. Sure the ’black holes’ were in awkward positions but they didn’t take up the whole path and she was able to turn things with her shadows. It was simple to just run the ball against the maze walls and avoid them. Once that technique was in play Lily swiftly got the ball to the end…

Only for another to appear in the centre of the table and for a bunch of new markings to spread themselves out around the board. Annoyingly, they didn’t give a clear indication of what they actually DID. There were vines on a few walls, and flowers on the ground in a few spots… but was the board just getting fancier because she was a quarter of the way done? Or was there something else to these additions…

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