Kyle lamented his current situation for a couple more minutes.
Then, he stood up and put his hammer over his shoulder.
However, he quickly realized that his hammer had become uncomfortably heavy.
Carrying his hammer like this hurt quite a bit, and Kyle decided to carry it in his hands.
He had become quite hungry by now since he had been using so much Ether, and carrying this hammer did not make things easier.
If he were at his peak, his hammer would have just the right weight.
But he wasn’t.
When Kyle saw the huge winding staircase going upward, he sighed.
Eventually, he started climbing the stairs.
He didn’t say or think anything during the climb.
He knew that he wasn’t getting out of this situation.
The winding staircase was unreasonably long, and he kept climbing for several minutes.
After about 100 meters, he reached the second layer of the spire.
There were many strange, broken, and old machines in there.
They probably all used to have a purpose, but right now, they were just unusable junk.
Kyle just sighed again before he continued ascending the winding staircase.
He reached the third layer and saw a bunch of dull crystals on different pedestals.
When he saw that, he became a bit hopeful.
Kyle grabbed one of them and tried to eat them.
Maybe he could increase the power of his body.
However, the crystals were unreasonably hard.
He had never come into contact with anything that was this hard.
BOOOM!
He struck the crystal with his hammer, but it was like diamond.
It didn’t react at all.
But that didn’t actually matter.
Even if he managed to turn the crystal into bite-sized chunks, it wouldn’t do anything.
Kyle’s soul had long since told him that these crystals had no Ether.
They had probably once been filled to the brim with Ether, but that was a long time ago.
All the Ether had dissipated with time.
Demotivated, Kyle just looked at the dull crystals for a while.
Eventually, he just sighed again.
‘Time waits for no one,’ he thought as he approached the staircase again. ‘Gotta die.’
He kept climbing the staircase for a while, and finally, he reached the last level.
This was around 300 meters away from the bottom, which meant it was close to the ceiling of the cave.
That was also where the spire broke off.
When Kyle saw the third layer, he saw a black throne at the end.
This was probably where the Inheritance Crystal used to be.
Instead, there was something else.
In the middle of the final layer was a gigantic boulder.
It was almost five meters high.
There was no doubt that this was a behemoth, and if it stood up, it would probably be seven to eight meters tall.
However, its size was not the only thing that was different.
Compared to all of the other behemoths, this one was completely white and was shining.
A second after Kyle arrived, the hall started to shake, and the boulder moved.
Sure enough, it transformed into a hulking behemoth.
“This is not supposed to happen!”
Kyle was taken aback as a voice suddenly came out of the behemoth.
However, it was not the behemoth that was shouting.
Instead, something else from inside the behemoth was shouting.
“You’re one of my inheritors, right?” the voice shouted from the hulking behemoth.
Kyle just wordlessly nodded.
“This is not supposed to happen!” the voice repeated. “The fish pond and the climb down was supposed to be the last trial!”
“Ore Fiends were never part of this trial!”
Kyle watched the behemoth, or Ore Fiend, slowly turning towards him.
“You can’t defeat this! Run away and tell Sulfur! Tell him there are Ore Fiends in the city!” the voice shouted.
The Ore Fiend looked at Kyle silently.
“Eh, I can’t,” Kyle said quietly.
“What are you doing?! Run! I have no control over this thing!” the voice from inside the Ore Fiend shouted.
“I mean, I would,” Kyle said as he looked at the slowly approaching Ore Fiend. “But the outside has like 20 of them, and they all want to kill me.”
“20?! I knew I should have gotten rid of the Ancestral Stone Spring! My entire Inheritance Crypt is ruined!”
RRRRRR!
The next moment, the white Ore Fiend started to rumble aggressively.
Kyle’s hair stood on end as he looked at it.
“What am I supposed to do?!” he shouted.
The voice didn’t answer, and the rumbling became more intense.
“Hello?! What am I supposed to do?!”
“I don’t know, okay?!” the voice shouted back. “You can’t fight this thing!”
The next moment, the Ore Fiend jumped up.
Kyle took a deep breath and jumped to the side.
BOOOM!
The white Ore Fiend landed in the spot where Kyle had just been and moved its humongous hand to him.
Kyle struck the hand with his pick with all of his power.
BANG!
The hand moved slightly to the side, brushing past Kyle.
There was no damage on the hand.
Not even a single crack.
The Ore Fiend’s second arm moved to Kyle, and Kyle jumped back.
This strike had cost him a lot of Ether, and it achieved nothing.
When the Ore Fiend saw that Kyle was out of its reach, it readied itself for another jump.
Kyle jumped to the side.
BOOOM!
However, the Ore Fiend landed quite far away from him.
It wasn’t targeting the spot where Kyle was currently, but the place where he could be.
Cold sweat ran down Kyle’s back.
Eventually, the Ore Fiend would guess the direction of Kyle’s jump correctly.
And then, everything would be over.
Kyle anxiously looked at the distant Ore Fiend as it prepared for another jump.
When it jumped, Kyle ran right towards it.
He passed beneath it and avoided its jump.
Then, he looked at it again.
“What are you doing?!” the voice shouted again.
“Exhausting it!”
“You fool! Ore Fiends don’t run out of energy! You will starve before it gets winded!”
Kyle gritted his teeth as the Ore Fiend turned towards him again.
“Then what do you want me to do?!”
Silence.
“Thought so,” Kyle grumbled.