Transmigrating to Modern Earth from the Future-Chapter 49: Campfire

It was only after around 10 minutes of laying there that Lumen had regained the courage and strength to essentially drag himself back to the shore.

He was so tired that he only had time to light a simple fire before he collapsed on the spot next to it, entering a deep slumber.

3 hours later, he finally awoke, still exhausted and somewhat weak from his experience of nearly falling entirely into the abyssal lake. The experience had left him both mentally and physically out of it, as he simply sat there staring at the light from the dimming campfire reflecting off of the water, contemplating his situation and how he could even get through this luck based trial.

’Surely there is some hidden component to this, there is no way the system expects anyone to ever have the chance to see what lies at the end of all of these trials if it puts in place such unfair and completely unrealistic challenges that would probably never be overcome in billions of years....’

His thoughts kept revolving around how he could possibly overcome this trial with his gaze left unfocused on the water, however even after an hour straight of contemplating and formulating ideas, nothing came to mind that felt right.

He eventually gave up with his thoughts as he put the idea aside as he was about to make another attempt at the stepping stone challenge. He knew that he was basically throwing away his life if he did so, but what other choice did he have?

However just as he was about to take the first leap onto the middle stepping stone, he noticed a peculiarity that hadn’t been there before.

’Why is there no reflection from the campfire light on the two fake stones to the side of this one? I can only see the reflection of the middle stone.... Don’t tell me this means-!’

A moment of realisation came to him as his mind had sparked with a new vigour and excitement at the prospect that this phenomenon may be the key to his success.

He didn’t hesitate in conjuring up some thick branches he had prepared in his inventory beforehand for situations just like this where there wouldn’t be a tree in sight.

He made a makeshift torch from the branch by wrapping some cloth scraps from his clothes around the thickest end of the branch and lit it with whatever was left of his campfire.

In his excitement, he nearly miss stepped even on the first stepping stone due to his shaking body and his increased energy.

With his back drenched in cold sweat from that experience, he went forwards and neared his torch to the surface of the lake near the stone he was standing on and confirmed that there was a reflection from the stone in there.

Next he neared it to one of the fake stones and just as he thought, no reflection!

Just wanting to make sure it wasn’t a one off occurrence, he repeated the same process on the second set of stones where the middle stone also happened to be the real platform.

To his great relief and glee, the lack of reflection carried on across all of the fake platforms and he could barely contain himself from jumping with joy due to still being on the small platform with the endless water all around him.

’This is it! This is the key to beating this trial! This challenge is only one based around luck if one doesn’t have the fortune or keen eye to figure out the real mechanism of these stones. Only the real stones have reflections, meaning I should be able to make it across to the other side if check every stone with this torch before leaping to the next row.’

He knew he had cracked the method of passing this trial, however that was only the first success. He wouldn’t become complacent just yet until he actually stepped foot on the shore of the exit.

He still had 48 more rows to sort through with his torch and for all he could know there could also be some hidden problems or challenges that may occur as he progresses along the platforms. Not to mention he also had to make sure to maintain focus on all of his leaps as one small misjudgement of slip would end up with him sinking to the bottom of this lake, if it had one.

Hence he took his time from this point onwards and checked all three stones before he leaped onto the next row and the monotone and boring process continued until he eventually reached the shore on the other side.

’At least the system has some basic sense, making this trial even more difficult on top of it’s already stupidly high level of difficulty would just be ridiculous. Thankfully I managed to make it to the exit relatively safely with no disturbances once I figured out how to properly navigate these stones.’ fгeewebnovёl.com

The next hallway was relatively the same as all of the others he had entered beforehand. Only the similarities continued to decrease as he continued walking along the path through the hallway. This one seemed to be never ending as he walked and walked for 10 minutes without a single exit in sight, not even any faint light or anything from the end of this lengthy tunnel.

Along the way, he actually started seeing drastic differences in the hallway from the other ones as every now and then he would see some sort of primitive imagery on the walls, similar to that of ancient man before civilisation was formed and they lived in caves.

His curiosity had slowed down his progression quite a bit as he would stop and observe these images carefully each time, taking note of each one of them and identifying any discernible patterns.

Only these images depicted creatures he had never seen or heard of before, even scouring through what limited memories he had left of his old universe he found nothing that looked like these creatures.

The best way he could describe them would be ’Chimera’ as each image depicted an animal different than the other in their own unique ways as they looked like crosses between many different animals or beasts combined.

Birds, wolves, cat like creatures, lizard like creatures. You name it, they had all of those features and countless more.

He had truly never seen anything like this but only made note of them as he walked on as they were of no use to him as of now except for satiating his curiosity.

It was only after another 30 mins of walking at a brisk pace that he managed to spot an exit on the other end of the hallway, though it was only the size of a dot with how far it was.

’Sigh, another long trek it is then.’ Lumen simply accepted the way this dungeon operated in it’s weird ways and made his way towards the exit.

Only 3 hours later did he come out of the other end of the hallway, and when he saw what was on the other side was not another huge hall or cave like it had been for every other trial.

Instead it was only a small room a few dozen square metres in size, with the only piece of decoration inside it being the lone pedestal in the middle of the room.