The second Damian crossed the white door, all his acquired items were left behind. His containers of mana liquid, his many runic tools, the numerous spatial storages filled with metal corpses and other things—nothing remained with him. He walked out exactly as he had come, even the dust on his clothes wiped clean as the same spotless white shirt and grey pants had been renewed. However, Damian did feel like something was odd. His field of vision was higher, his body felt.. slightly bigger? Did he just age?
Damian quickly checked his appearance, launching a water shield spell. He had indeed aged, but not the full thirty years. It barely felt like he had aged two—three at most—perhaps four years. His shoulders were more squared, and he felt more in control of his body. It felt good. So it wasn't a true frozen time. Even in the trials, people aged—just much slower. Around an 8:1 ratio—eight years in the trial but only one year of growth affected the body.
Now Damian felt anxious. Would he return to the exact moment when he had started the trial in the desert, or would the difference in years reflect there too? But that shouldn't be the case. The last time, for his prestigious job, he was gone for a month in the trial. If the 8:1 difference applied, he should have felt three to four days pass, but it had been mere seconds when he got back. Whether he had aged or not was a completely different question—unless it was different for each trial or world, or some bullshit like that. Well, he could find out once he finished this damn thing.
Pushing the thought aside, Damian looked around for clues about his third trial. He stood in a massive white expanse. The sky was white, the perfectly level floor white, and as far as he could see, everything was white and bathed in natural light. After walking around for a few minutes, Damian found the familiar folded paper. He took a deep breath and opened it.
It read: Earn the title of a monarch. Build a weapon to kill an Emperor.
The second Damian read it, a workbench, anvil, and forge materialized from thin air. Then came a loud, ear-piercing roar. Damian looked in the direction of the sound and saw a massive, towering, dark blue hairy figure clad in metal armor pieces with a giant sword in one hand, sitting atop a stone throne. It must have been at least eighty meters tall, rippling with overpowered muscles. The amount of mana inside the thing was jaw-dropping compared to the other Emperor-ranked monsters Damian had seen. Only that massive elephant [Astralox Titan] could come a little close. This guy seemed much more intelligent too—and even had weapons. A warring alien race, maybe.
The face looked like those big-nosed kabuki masks people used to wear on Earth. A higher-tiered Emperor-ranked monster..
An infinitely stretched green line separated Damian and his workbench from the towering monster and his throne. Damian ignored the creature and focused on the workbench. What did they give him.. There wasn't much—just enough steel to craft one longsword or other weapons equivalent to that. The forge was already lit, the anvil and hammer were good enough, and there were some papers and a quill on the workbench for him to draw out his plans before executing them.
First voiceless chanting, and now a weapon that could kill an Emperor-ranked monster. Damian felt like he was filling shoes far too big for him. The job was clearly way above his current level—the trial itself prepared for those eighty- to ninety-year-old mages and runesmiths who had reached such a level or needed just a little more time to reach it. His use of massive spells and killing people far above his level must have screwed with the natural job progression. Now he was being offered something that only someone far down the line might be offered.
The second Damian touched the ingots, a timer started counting down from 08:00:00. Full eight hours to craft just one weapon? If it truly was meant to devastate an Emperor-ranked monster, it needed at least that much time.
Damian rolled up his sleeves and got to work without wasting a second. His knowledge of spells had improved by leaps and bounds, naturally translating into his skill at making runic tools. He could now use spells no one in the world might have even heard of—overpowered spells while keeping mana costs and strain on the metal to the absolute minimum. The things he could do with a metal like Sacrium—if it could take it all—were unfathomable.
Soon, the ingots became red-hot. Damian used the anvil to shape them into a simple longsword. While the metal was still hot, he performed silent spell imbuement without uttering a single word. With less time spent on drawing runic spells and holding them, he could focus entirely on the metal's insides—reaching each gap, no matter how small, effortlessly to create detailed mana nodes.
His creations after decades barely dipped below Grand grade—mostly falling into Supreme grade. He had never achieved the Legendary or Divine ranks, simply because it wasn't possible with lowly materials like iron and steel.
One by one, five palm-sized runic circles covered one side of the blade, situated in a row. Damian hummed a nice tune while placing the last runic spell inside, connecting all the nodes in the sword so the runic circles would activate in succession as their task demanded. Finishing the last touches, the longsword was ready.
The timer still read: 06:39:17 when he placed the blade down and took a small break. Damian conjured a simple wooden chair near the green line, sitting in direct opposition to the giant hairy beast and its massive throne. The creature's gigantic longsword stood beside it, while Damian's simple small one leaned next to his wooden chair. The contrast was jarring to look at—but size wasn't everything.