The moment that Shio walked through the door water engulfed him. Thanks to his honed reflexes he managed to react quickly and drew out air from the water and created an airball around him.
"That was close. I almost drowned."
After ensuring that he would not drown, Shio started to examine his surroundings, but all he saw was darkness.
"I must be pretty deep if it's so dark." He muttered to himself and started moving upwards.
Using his airball as transportation, he moved quite quickly, but even after 5 minutes he still couldn't see anything.
"Just how deep am I?" And just as he said these words Shio felt something watching him.
He felt danger but couldn't find its source. All he could do was to be helpless in the face of the unknown enemy.
His vigilance hit maximum as he readied for the battle and the next second some kind of light flashed and he saw his enemy.
A gigantic shark had its mouth opened about to bite and before he could react he was swallowed whole.
When he came back to reality he was already in its stomach.
"Fu*king shark. If you think I will obediently stay here and let you eat me you are gravely mistaken."
Shio conjured wind blades and started frantically slashing the shark from inside.
The poor shark just had a nice meal and got into a comfortable position in order to sleep and digest the food only to be attacked by the sharp pain from his stomach.
While Shio was in a fierce battle with the shark Sara and Emir started their respective trials.
After placing the stone in its designated place on the altar Sara felt a sharp pain in her head and passed out.
The next time she opened her eyes she found herself in an unfamiliar room. After looking around she managed to figure out that she was in a small wooden house. After looking around she saw her reflection in the mirror.
Everything was the same but this time she had the same earth symbol that was on the altar and stone, on her forehead.
When she came out of the cabin what she saw were people of different ages walking around going about their business.
"You're up."
Sara heard a voice, and after turning to her left she saw an old man with a long white beard and hair, he was wearing old blue clothes that have almost lost their color due to being washed too many times.
"You are?" Asked Sara.
"I am Gino, chief of this village. I am very glad that you have finally woken up. We were afraid you might never wake up."
"We?"
"Hmm. Me and the villagers."
Sara took a second to look around analyzing her situation.
"Great hero are you here for the quest?" Asked Gino.
"Quest?"
"Yes, are you from the guild?"
'This is probably part of the trial.'
"Yes, can you tell me more about the quest?"
"Yes, Yes of course.
About two months ago a man came here. He had great powers and was controlling an army of golems he demanded 100 maidens from us or threatened to kill everyone.
We didn't want to give our woman so the fight started seeing that a lot of people were dying and the girls decided to follow the man.
We had no idea what happened to them until about a month later the man came once again demanding 100 maidens once again the situation was the same so we decided to put up a quest in guild yesterday he came again and took 100 more girls. Everyone's devastated, we are desperate."
Sara understood the situation, she probably had to defeat this man and be a hero saving beauties. The only problem was it all sounded too easy and for some reason, it made her very anxious.
But the one she was getting a bad feeling from was this old man. Sara was sure he was hiding something but she couldn't pinpoint what was wrong exactly and decided to go with the flow for the time being.
Meanwhile, Emir also woke up but instead of a village, he woke up in the woods.
"Ahh, the trees here are so big." Said Emir while looking up.
"Hmm, somehow I feel like something is different." He muttered while scratching his forehead and the next second he couldn't help but freak out as he looked down.
"It can't be."
Four short legs, small wings, and red scales all over his body.
"I AM A DRAGON." Emir couldn't help but pass out once again out of shock but this time he heard someone's voice inside his head.
"Little one, you are the last one of your kind in order for the dragons not to go extinct. You must take the heavy task of reproducing our kind, and you must continue to give birth until an heir is born, in other words, the fire dragon."
These words shocked Emir even more. He had a hard time accepting the fact that he was now a dragon moreover, a female dragon, and his task was to give birth to other dragons until an heir was born. God knows when that would be.
Emir couldn't help but cry at his dark future.
Well, he wasn't the only one confused about this task, the group also couldn't help but be puzzled. The only one amused was Morana who took out her popcorn and kept laughing when Samael updated her on the situation.
Her behavior drew curious gazes from the group and finally, Mari couldn't help but ask.
"What are you eating? It smells so good." Mari was a big foodie and loved tasting all kinds of new things and when she saw Morana take out all kinds of different food she couldn't help being curious.
"It's called popcorn."
"Popcorn? Is it delicious?"
"Hmm."
"I saw you eating a green one before but this is pink."
"The flavors are different, do you want to try some?" Finally, Morana asked, amused at the girl's curiosity.
"Really? Then what flavors do you have?"
"There are 'Poker face', 'Depression', 'Shakespeare,' 'direct,' and the last one is 'Joker.' Which one do you want to try?"
Their conversation also drew other people's attention and when Morana noticed it she decided to offer some to them as well.
Mari took flavor called 'Shakespeare, Sophia took flavor called 'Joker' and so did Zoel, Ezra took the flavor 'Poker face' while Chiff took flavor 'direct' and Emily and Ron went for the 'depression'
At first, they were curious to see Morana always eating popcorn, but now that they actually held the colorful food and looking at Morana's evil smile they were somehow regretting it. As the saying goes curiosity killed the cat.
Finally, they decided to leave it all to luck and put popcorn into their mouth.
All of them were assaulted with different but delicious flavors and just as they thought they were safe Mari started reciting weird poems, Sophia and Zoel started laughing out loud for no reason and couldn't stop, Ezra didn't have any reaction even though he was boiling inside he couldn't even laugh.
Cliff Started denouncing everyone for their actions and judging everything.
While Ron and Emily instantly became depressed, everything was in chaos but thankfully the effect wore off very quickly and everyone went back to their own selves.
They couldn't help looking at the popcorn with grudgey eyes.
'That thing is too dangerous' was their thoughts as they tried to stay away from popcorn as far as possible.
***
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@lazy-wanderer666
Don't forget to check out my second book "Spider lily."
>.<