Starting from Zero Chapter 128

"Who goes there?!"

A ninja turned around and saw us. He looked us up and down, then quickly locked his sight onto Razor.

"That sword...the [Rin Ray]? Our nation treasure? You're Razor?"

Oh this isn’t good.

"Get ready." Blue Wind spoke in our team channel. "The door is opening."

"On me." I told everyone.

"Understood."

"Tank! Hammer attack!"

Tank appeared in front of me and used his bone hammer to slam the speaking ninja, who crashed into several people and flew all the way into the door.

The door is now fully open due to the force of the attack. The path between us and the door is now clear. We rushed towards it when the other j.a.panese didn’t react yet, with Coin being the fastest again.

We went through a pale blue barrier and fell into a terribly hot place which I can only describe it as "h.e.l.l". The land is burning red, which is divided into several parts by bright hot lava streams.

Dark smog is coming out from holes all over the place.

The place looks bad but it will be worse if the enemies behind catch us. We kept running away from where the entrance is located, with j.a.panese players hot on our tails. However, not all players went through the door. Some of them were suddenly blocked by an invisible wall as the door slowly closed up.

Next, a thunderous system notice voice came from above us.

"The trial has begun. Your first task is to find and defeat the three hidden evil creatures in this world. Each creature will drop an item upon defeat. Bring three items back to the Door of Truth to prove victory. Only 500 players are allowed in this task, and you have reached this limit. Logging off during the task will be deemed as abandoning, and the player will be removed from this field. All monsters apart from the three targets will yield no EXP in this task, thus it is suggested not to waste your strength on them. That is all. May the truth favors you."

The j.a.panese players looked at us again when the voice ended. They hopped towards us using the floating rocks on the lava stream.

"Rosa! Sweep them down!"

Rosa started to burn the moment he appeared so I immediately called him back.

Razor pressed a finger against the ground. With a "fizzz!", he quickly redrew his hand and blew on it.

"The place is too hot, that companion of yours won’t survive underground."

"Right." I touched the Fire Gem on my helmet. "Dragon Wasps. Attack!"

I can now summon over 800 hundred of these creatures. They look extremely active in this place for some reason.

A ninja is jumping towards another floating rock. But several wasps b.u.mped into him in the air, causing him to stray away from his landing point and fall into the lava. He simply disappeared under some blue smoke, leaving nothing behind.

Similarly, more players are intercepted and killed in this way. The lava is real, which means instant kill if an ordinary player steps in there.

No players dared to jump further after they saw over a dozen dead comrades. There are still someone standing halfway, who can neither proceed nor back off now but only look around in panic on the rocks.

I raised my right hand and used my crossbow at one of them. I'm not a shooter cla.s.s so the attack was a miss, as expected. However the poor guy moved too much to dodge my bolt. His foot slipped and dropped down below by himself. 　　

I saw that ninja slammed by Tank coming into view on the other side. He slowly vanished in the air, then more ninjas followed his example.

"Cloaking ninjas! Run!" Razor yelled.

A bit too late. A katana already appeared in front of my face. I don’t have time to draw my sword now so I raised my left hand to grab the attack. The Dark Dragon Lord armor didn’t fail me. The coming katana was completely stopped by my gauntlet. With a snap, I broke the blade into half.

Another katana stabbed me from my back. Phantom already warned me about it but I can’t avoid it in time now.

"Hrmph!" Someone groaned.

Red Moon smashed the attacker's head with her wizard cane. She can’t do much damage like that but...ninjas are pretty squishy characters too. The ninja was knocked away, his blade only caused some harmless sparks on my armor.

"Tank! Acid attack!" I summoned Tank above our heads.

Green fluid covered the battlefield. Now a hundred or two green human figures are moving around us. The ma.s.s attack won’t cause damage to them but I meant to mark them with the color. Green can be very distinguishable in this crimson world.

The exposed ninjas gave up their ambush tactic and all charged at us. Ninjas are similar to Rogues and a.s.sa.s.sins. They use speed and a.s.sa.s.sination skills, but are easy to kill if hit. Now they don’t have the element of surprise so they’re planning to get rid of us before we can establish any defense.

The Door of Truth gave us a quest which only allows 500 partic.i.p.ants...so this means there are 493 j.a.panese players in here. If they lose too many people from the start they’ll definitely fail. 　　

"Tank, go somewhere safe and destroy this platform!"

Hearing my order, Tank glided towards another safe spot on the lava pool and began to preprare his crystal cannon shot. I spread open my wing blades to take Red Moon off the ground. I summoned Lucky and Phiona at the same time. Lucky took away Merciless by biting on his collar, while Phiona took Zirai and Coin in her claws. 　　

The ninja leader saw us leaving the current small island and realized what we're trying to do, so he immediately retreated to where he came from. Tank fired the moment we took off into the air. He stayed on a nearby spot so the bullet shot exploded without delay. A small mushroom cloud followed by a strong gust caused us to lose balance and tumble for a bit. I didn’t have the chance to recall my dragon wasps, now the explosion wiped them out. Not a big deal though, as they'll recover after a while.

The ninja minions didn't retreat with their leader. Now that the platform they're trying to land on has completely disappeared under the lava, most of them, about 200 people, became part of the deadly flowing liquid. Only several experienced ones managed to follow their leader and escape. 　　

I de-summoned the now weakened Tank. We should be safe from the j.a.panese players for now. We just had a good look around the terrain from the air. The Door of Truth is standing on a small island in the middle of a volcano crater, this is where we came in. Three other islands are located, I mean should have been located around this central one to form a triangle formation. But now there are only two, as Tank just blasted one of them into pieces.

Each outer island has two paths connected to it, formed by floating rocks that leads outside. One towards the central island, another to the outermost safe ground around the lava lake. Now the one island below us is no more. The j.a.panese players will have to take a long detour to reach us.

We should take the chance to think about how to escape. I looked up to see if we can leave the volcano by flying. Nope. The wall around us is so tall as if it's against the sky itself. Suppose there is no limit to how high we can fly, it’ll probably take a whole night to reach out, and I don’t think this is what this task wanted us to do.

"Ziri!" Coin called me. "Look there!"

I looked towards where she’s pointing to. There's a cave entrance on the wall.

"Lucky, Phiona, go over there!"

We reached the entrance which is about 5 meters above the ground. It's too small to be noticed from the islands, plus there's no way Lucky and Phiona can fit in.

Lucky crouched against the cave as our temporary ladder. We came to the entrance but didn’t get in. It's horribly dark in there!

The j.a.panese players also left the lava lake. They didn’t come after us though--they found a similar cave on their side.

Zirai walked ahead and decided to take the first step but I dragged her back.

"One moment." Then I spoke to Lucky. "Dragon breath, into the cave. Try a strong one."

Lucky reached his muzzle into the cave, took a deep breath and released his signature skill. 　　

Suddenly, several flame beams appeared all around the volcano wall, and those bright white color suggests they're dragon fire, not lava eruption. As I thought, there are more cave entrances out there, all connected on the inside. Lucky’s fire traveled through the inner area and busted out from the other ends. The j.a.panese already sent someone inside. I see several roasted corpses getting pushed out from their entrance.

"Take that, losers!" Zirai laughed at them. "I think I saw seven or eight more exits in the area."　　

"Let's go inside. Any monster hiding in there would be dead or gone by now."

I followed everyone from behind. I de-summoned Lucky and asked Phiona to turn into her smaller body. We didn’t bring any torches, her natural glimmer can be our light source.

The cave walls are made of volcanic rocks, which is not surprising. There are also s.h.i.+ny green crystals embedded inside the rocks. These common quartz looks pretty but they aren’t valuable.

They can, however, help our light travel inside so we can see deeper into the cave. The path ahead of us goes upwards a little and becomes narrower as we proceed. We had to bend down after about 300 meters’ walk.

After some more distance, we reached a crossroad. It's obviously two paths joining in here. If we turn 90 degree here we would probably run into the j.a.panese players, so we decided to keep moving ahead.

The slope became steeper and steeper, now we’re almost climbing straight upwards. It's extremely narrow too, which is good, because we can climbing up by stepping on the sides.　　

It turned flat again after some climbing. Coin has been complaining that we're like rats running in the air vent. The map is no longer showing our coordinate numbers, so my teleport ring wouldn’t work either.

"It’s not so hot here. Can you send your companion to watch ahead?"

"Actually I'm gonna try something else. "

I summoned Rosa and Dart. I sent Dart to scout ahead. He's the size of a rabbit so he can move around freely in here. As for Rosa, I asked him to act as our conveyor belt by transporting us on his tentacle. It's still slow but at least better than climbing on all fours.

Dart came back after a while and yipped something, and Phantom translated it for us: "It's a dead end."

"What??" Everyone behind me freaked out.

Getting trapped in a small s.p.a.ce like this will easily break down anyone's sanity. Besides we can’t even turn around. If we can’t proceed we'll have to crawl backwards!

"Let’s take a look." Blue Wind said. "My side cla.s.s is Miner, if we're close enough to the surface I can try digging our way outside."

"Alright."

We kept moving until we came to a giant rock.

"Rosa, how far is the surface?"

He dived away and sent message that we're only two meters away. Actually the rock itself is about two meters in length. If we dig around the rock it will be another dozen meters.

"Can you break through rocks, Blue?"

"I don’t think so. Miners can pry off minerals out of solid soil but there's no way we can dig open an entire stone."

"What now?" Red Moon asked. "So we turn back?"

"We might as well try moving around than to head back now."

I opened my bracelet inventory and checked if there's anything we can use. Since there is no s.p.a.ce or weight limit to it, I always sweep clean everything I can find after a fight.

I see all kinds of stuff... Oh. I actually found a shovel. Buuut this won’t help us crack a rock so I put it back.

Then I saw something interesting.

"Eureka!"

I took out a long, thin bamboo tube. This is a dynamite tube I collected for Clark. I found the shovel again and dug a small crater under the rock, placed the tube, then created a simple bomb fuse using some blank scroll papers. Ouch. These blank scrolls cost like 20 crystals per piece. I used a dozen of them to get a fuse that's long enough (I think). Man this bomb is expensive.

When I'm prepared I told my team to back off and ignited the fuse.

After a giant explosion and a brief earthquake, we appeared under the sky again.

"Cough...cough! Can’t you use something smaller? You almost blasted us into the sky!" Coin complained while dusting dirt from her face.

Yeah...that was my fault. That thing was an overkill. Instead of destroying the rock, it pushed the whole roof of the path to G.o.d knows where, revealing us on the side of the volcano.

"Hey guys, look. Where...are we?" I just realized we’re looking at a bizarre scenery after cleaning myself up.

The volcano is now behind us. It’s peak goes all the way into the cloud so we don’t know how high it is. I do know that we're definitely not in j.a.pan, because the volcano is like, ten times bigger than Fuji Mountain. No, maybe more.　　

The gigantic volcano itself, however, shouldn’t surprise us much. What did surprise us is the vast gra.s.sland under the volcano, spreading towards the horizon.

There's a lake among the gra.s.s, also giant. I'm afraid we’d mistake it as the sea if we're to stand beside the water. The place is bustling with colorful, moving spots. Must be animals running around.

This is so beautiful!

"Guess what, I’d spend the rest of my life here if I had to." Coin inhaled deeply. "I never experienced such fresh air in years!"　　

We all nodded in agreement.

However, what we don’t know it that this place is a terrible trap waiting to draw us in. We'll soon learn our lesson about how we should not judge something by the looks.