The dragon was flapping his wings above the horde of shadow monsters that were throwing themselves into swatches of bubbling lava, littering the ground in spirals around the giant hoard of golden coins. The dark smoke kept drifting towards the pristine white sky, dirtying it with grey tones.
A mass of pitch black tentacles shot out from the crowd of the black shadows, squirming and pulsing as they moved towards the dragon. They pierced through the dark smoke, tendrils of electricity passing through them, creating blue sparks along their whole length all the way towards the tentacle balls on their end. They still continued and tightly wrapped around the dragon dragging him down with incredible force, the black tentacles rotating around his body. Electrical tendrils going down the tendrils grew in intensity, violently sending blue sparks around them. Black smoke started to drift from their surface, but their hold was relentless, and the hard volcanic armour covering the dragon started to crack, small cracks leaking right glowing magma spread all over its surface.
At the same time, shadowy birds launched forward, passing above the dragon like black streaks.
Vesuvius’s reptilian eyes grew in panic as the birds closed towards the hoard at breathtaking speed. He urged mana through his veins, a magical circuit igniting in his mind. Then bright yellowy flames blazed out of his body, joining the electrical tendrils and creating a show of blue, yellow and orange. The flames instantly spread over the pulsing tentacles wrapped around him before they burst into black motes, freeing him.
The dragon fully spread his majestic wings sparkling with electricity and rose once again above the horde of the living shadows, and opened his mouth.
A magma sparkling with electricity flew out, moving through the flock of blackbirds before falling back down like a rain of fire, painting the pristine white ground with orange. Their black bodies turned into a thick black smoke drifting upwards as the magma passed through them.
More and more tentacles launched toward the dragon, tightly wrapping around his body and dragging him again towards the ground. His flames blazed once again, burning the tendrils, but more and more of the tendrils kept launching at the dragon before burning and turning into black moths a second later, only to be replaced by more tendrils.
The blackbird kept closing towards the gold. They were already close. Despair erupted in the dragon as he realised how precarious his situation was. He wanted to burn them all, but he couldn’t reach them in time.
‘It is the fault of these stupid tentacles!’ an orange flashed in the dragon’s mouth, magma erupting out like from an exploding volcano, culling through the hordes of monsters. He focused the magma on the ugly balls of pitch black pulsing tentacles. The moment the magma touched the balls, flames spread all over their round bodies as if they were made out of dry grass before dissipating into black motes.
An onslaught of the tentacles decreased, Vesuvius feeling new hope as he almost freed himself.
‘I can still manage it, but I can’t lose even a second!’ the dragon thought as he prepared to launch towards the white skies.
Then a huge black shadow moved on his periphery as it leapt up with its enormous claws splitting the black smoke that had already lost all of its electrical charges. The dragon ignored it as he had no time, desperately wanting to stop the birds.
‘The birds are almost there. I have no time for this!’
The huge black claws that were more than one meter long fell upon the dragon, slicing through his armour and scales as if they weren’t there. Ten huge, incredibly deep cuts passed through the dragon’s body, each for one claw.
Glowing blood gushed out, painting the white ground a crimson red. The dragon’s vision slowly turned black.
At the last moment, he saw a bird reach the pile of gold, taking a gold coin into its black beak.
Then a flash of bright golden light came, and the dragon opened his eyes. He was lying on the plain stone floor under the massive stone pillars. For a second, the golden statue right in front of him looked as if grinning before returning to normal.
A horrible pain akin to a human sticking their whole arm into a boiling acid surged through the dragon’s soul.
“Graaah!” Vesuvius opened his mouth, growling in pain as the pain kept surging through his soul. In nature, it was akin to kidney pain. You weren’t even aware of them normally, but when they hurt, they hurt horribly.
His vision turned black from the pain as he fell unconscious.
Sometime later:
Vesuvius opened his eyes, his soul and body still aching from the pain.
‘I failed…’ he felt a shame, the shame of him failing trials and not proving himself. Fear grew in him. It was the fear of the ancient wyrm returning and laughing at his incompetence. Until now, he felt mighty and strong for his level, but now all of his pride was shattered and turned into dust. His whole body trembled, ‘Am I worthy of being called a dragon if I failed…’.
The pain was bad, but it eventually vanished, but his shame would remain with him forever, and for dragons, their pride was important.
‘How can I proudly call myself a dragon now…’
He wanted to blame it all on the unrealistically sharp claws, but in the end, he couldn’t as he knew that it was part of the trial.
After a few seconds, he calmed down a little bit. Thinking about the portion of his dragon genetic memory that became accessible to him after he entered the trial space, ‘Difficulty of this second trial is scaling with the strength of the individual. So maybe I need just better strategy and more tries to get more used to fighting these monsters…’
He looked at the golden statue with determination and once again bit his tongue in a rush, letting the blood leak out, flowing down on the golden statue, ‘If the wyrm can’t see me fail, then I can still preserve my pride!’.
A golden light flashed again, and he stood once again on top of the golden hoard, shadow monsters materialising in the distance, ‘At least I can continue from where I failed… Now it feels more like it was not meant to be passed in one try. Endurance and determination to try again would also be a good fit into the trial.’