Chapter 209: Inheritance Trial: The Endless Staircase

Chapter 209: Chapter 209: Inheritance Trial: The Endless Staircase

The moment the heavenly staircase appeared, the marks on the backs of all five of their hands completely dissipated.

Before their eyes, a screen materialized, accompanied by a preserved magical voice that sounded like the Mermaid Emperor but lacked even a half-ounce of emotion.

[The trial is divided into seven stages. The first stage: The Endless Staircase.]

[Trial Analysis: The staircase has a total of one thousand steps. Each step is distributed with magical beasts and challenges. For every one hundred steps reached, the difficulty will increase. One thousand steps correspond to ten high difficulties, either defeating magical beasts, concocting medicinal essences, or analyzing and replicating magic arrays...]

[Passing Criteria: Reaching every 100 steps grants a corresponding reward. Advancing to the 500th step within fifteen days and completing the related challenges is considered passing. Whether to choose to continue challenging the one thousand steps is up to your own decision and is not factored into the passing criteria.]

After the announcement finished, the screen also vanished.

The limit for the first stage of the trial was 15 days. If they wanted to pass quickly, the only way was to exert their full effort.

"Let’s go, fight fast and win fast." Jeremy took the lead, stepping toward the seemingly endless staircase before them.

The moment he stepped onto the first step, the staircase before their eyes instantly magnified hundreds of times, exactly like a miniature battlefield.

At the same time, countless massive magical beasts with hideous faces swarmed toward them, as if they couldn’t wait any longer to swallow them whole.

Jeremy snapped his fingers, and several cards instantly transformed into starlight points hovering beside him.

His fingertips pinched the Tide Card, and the card face immediately transformed. Infused with magic power, a faint layer of light began to swirl around the card’s body.

In that instant, an intricate and exquisite magic array also appeared in Jeremy’s heterochromatic eyes. A complex incantation was chanted, and he leisurely commanded: "Tide - Falling Moon."

As the incantation ended, the card body completely dissipated, and a cumbersome magic array appeared beneath Jeremy’s feet. Magic power transformed into a massive wave and a full moon coalesced from pale blue water moon, overwhelmingly surging toward the horde of magical beasts.

The core skill of the Tide Card was control, accompanied by damage output.

Under the sweep of the two-layered attack, hundreds of magical beasts were reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye.

The transformed staircase restored to its normal state, reverting from a massive battlefield to a height just enough to step onto the second step.

Evelyn, standing behind Jeremy and witnessing the entire event, froze slightly.

She didn’t expect that after just one year, Jeremy had become this strong.

Who could have expected this? Three years ago, Jeremy was still someone with nothing, not even acknowledged with the qualification to be a mage.

Seeing Jeremy already walking toward the second step, Evelyn suppressed the shock in her heart and lifted her feet to follow.

On the first ninety-nine steps, the magical beasts that appeared were basically mutated magical beasts from the Wasteland, and these were absolutely not illusions... but a type of teleportation spell.

The magical beasts they had just killed were magical beasts forcibly teleported over from the Wasteland; even their magic beast cores existed genuinely.

Upon discovering this point, Jeremy felt quite pleased.

Compared to illusions, this most authentic type of combat brought true challenge and value.

To conserve magic power, on the first ninety-nine steps, the five of them took turns taking charge.

One person handled ten steps, then the next person handled ten steps, dividing the work and cooperating clearly. Those during their rest period accelerated their recovery and stored up magic power.

Therefore, upon reaching the one-hundredth step, everyone’s magic power state was still at its absolute peak.

But exactly as the announcement stated earlier, reaching a major milestone every 100 steps meant the difficulty would upgrade.

This time, the opponent they had to face was exactly a five-star magical beast with a higher level than everyone here: the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark.

The staircase transformed again, and the surrounding scenery instantly turned into an ocean.

The speed of the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark was extremely fast, especially underwater. Everyone’s speed was restricted to a certain extent, not as agile as on land. Furthermore, a five-star magical beast from the Wasteland was equivalent to a tier-five human, holding an absolute advantage in terms of realm.

The five had just finished swallowing the Water Repelling Pills when the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark charged over, closing the distance to less than ten meters.

The attacking magic spikes arrived even faster than its fangs. Right as the attack was about to hit them, Phoenix, standing in the middle, summoned an Instantaneous Spatial Teleportation Spell, bringing himself and his teammates to successfully dodge the strike.

Along with the increase in his magic power realm, Phoenix was already capable of casting the majority of spells within a few seconds.

The third skill, Spatial Displacement, only took a little over ten seconds, which was several times faster compared to before when they were in the Myriad Beast Realm Domain.

After Phoenix successfully brought everyone to dodge the attack, Evelyn unsummoned the Azure Serenity Bow and summoned the Sacred Weapon of Holy Covenant 07, the Ice Feather Blade.

An existence exactly like a feather blade, with a total of seven segments.

The feather segments were transparent like ice crystals, radiating an endless chilling intent.

With a wave of Evelyn’s hand, the feather blade fractured and spun rapidly, flying toward the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark.

Wherever it sliced through, the air condensed, trailing emerald green streams of light, both exquisite and fraught with danger.

The Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark, already enraged by losing its target, faced with this provocative attack, naturally had its frenzy violently triggered.

An ear-piercing roar shrieked from its mouth. After forcefully pushing the Ice Feather Blade embedded in its flesh out, it directly unleashed its skill, Explosive Demonic Soul.

Massive waves surged in the blink of an eye, and five void black holes surfaced simultaneously, tightly surrounding the group in the middle.

Countless wraiths, formed from the shark’s remnant souls and bearing explosive fangs interwoven with various elemental systems, swarmed and attacked from all directions.

After all, the cultivation of this Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark was slightly higher than theirs. Sensing the situation turning bad, Jeremy immediately summoned the Yin Yang Card, simultaneously unleashing the primary skill [Yin Yang Devouring Domain], along with the auxiliary skill [Reversal].

The former domain could enhance his and his teammates’ magic power output intensity while devouring external attacks to convert into magic power, whereas the latter skill could convert the devoured attacks into identical strikes to return to the opponent.

But the gap between Tier Four Nine-Star and Tier Five Five-Star was plain to see. Despite the reinforcement of dual powers, Jeremy could only barely protect himself and his teammates.

Seeing this, Leon and Lucius, standing behind, didn’t stay idle anymore. The two summoned their wings, darted out of the domain’s range, and advanced to attack the main body of the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark.

The Sacred Weapon form of Leon’s Holy Covenant 10 was dual swords.

The Sacred Weapon form of Phoenix’s god-bestowed Holy Covenant was an existence similar to a magic scroll.

As for the Sacred Weapon of Lucius’s Holy Covenant 02, it was somewhat bizarre; it could morph into a flute, and also transform into a two-realm umbrella. As for what the Hidden Weapon form of his Darkness Mark was, that remained unknown for now.

However, regardless of the former or the latter, he clearly didn’t intend to use them, still choosing to use the Fang of Abyss he was accustomed to.

Although it was a Sacred Weapon belonging to a low-tier Mark, due to the reinforcement of three layers of Marks, its power was not much different from a high-tier Sacred Weapon.

After all, having been separated for a year, everyone hadn’t had the chance to re-familiarize themselves with each other’s skills and habits, so it was very obvious that compared to before, the current coordination between Leon and Lucius wasn’t very good.

Although it was still better than the majority of other teams, compared to their past selves, it was indeed terrible.

While they were engaging the Demonic Spirit Frenzy Shark, Jeremy signaled Evelyn and Phoenix to pay attention to the two’s moves and actions, to facilitate future coordination.

The two understood his intention; they didn’t rush to attack, but observed while unleashing skills to restrain the opponent.

Waiting until he felt it was just right, Jeremy called the two of them back.

As a captain, Jeremy naturally had to shoulder the responsibility of leading the team.

He said straightforwardly: "From now until the two-hundredth floor, we must hone our synergy back to our previous stage, otherwise it will take too much time. Next, Evelyn and I will handle close combat with the magical beast, Leon and Lucius, you two will handle the wraiths in the black holes, and Phoenix, quickly prepare your strongest offensive magic. During this time, everyone must also pay more attention to each other’s skills and habits, to make future coordination easier."

Jeremy’s speaking speed was very fast; as soon as he finished, he spread his wings and flew out of the domain’s range.

The others naturally didn’t have half a hint of objection to his decision, following suit in unison.