John returned to the cavern he had started in a short while later, gasping for breath. It wasn't gasps of fatigue or breathlessness, but gasps of disgust from the foul odor that surrounded him. His body was covered in a horrifyingly foul-smelling slime that nearly caused him to faint from its stench. Pain rose from his body as well as the slime corroded his skin, wracking his body with pain. And worse of all, the slime clung to his skin in spite of his Qi, refusing to budge. It even permeated his Qi when he tried to push the smell away, making it impossible to escape. Only with great effort was he able to get some of it off, although a great deal remained lingering behind.
The trial was even worse than he could have imagined.
"What the fuck is this stuff?" John cursed through the gags.
While the corrosive slime did cause him pain, it was not enough to endanger him. It was the foul-smelling slime that was the worst, which was easily the worst smell he had ever encountered in his life. Before entering the tunnel, he would have never imagined such a smell existed.
"Gahahaha, I see you didn't make it through on your first attempt," the Prime Shadow suddenly appeared next to him, laughing loudly. "I warned you, the bats are very sensitive to aura's, and yet you barged in there with your aura flaring that powerfully. What did you expect?"
"I was hiding my presence, not flaring my aura!" John rebuked loudly, stifling some gags in between his words. The Prime Shadow waved his hand in front of his nose and took a few steps back, face scrunched up from the smell.
"If that's what you call hiding your presence, then you're going to be down here for quite some time," the Prime Shadow said, shaking his head.
John grimaced, then grumbled audibly.
"Does the aura hiding portion of the assassination art even matter? Just teach me the killing portion. I don't need to hide my presence," John grumbled.
His words caused Prime Shadow's laughing face to instantly change to a serious one, one that caused John to hold his tongue before speaking more.
"If I did that, then it would be no different than a normal battle art," the Prime Shadow said, voice very serious. "My master created this art as an assassination art, and it will only ever be used either completely, or not at all. So pick now, learn the entire thing, or give up entirely."
John sighed, then stood up, doing his best to ignore the putrid smell.
"I'll learn the entire thing," he grumbled.
"Good," the Prime Shadow said, his cheery attitude returning. He shifted his gaze to the tunnel entrance, where the Toxfoul Bats lived. "Those bats only dwell in that tunnel, and don't come into this cavern, so if you get ambushed, you can always safely retreat here and recover."
John thanked the Prime Shadow for his obvious advice, as he could already tell the bats had not followed him when he retreated earlier. The Prime Shadow ignored his obviously sarcastic tone, opting to give him more advice.
"Oh, and don't try to outrun the bats either," he said warningly. "The Toxfoul Bats aren't very strong or dangerous, but they're far quicker than you. And once they lock onto you, they spit their slimy bile all over you as a defense mechanism, as you've now found out. Oh, and don't try to kill them either. They just explode when destroyed, and then their slime gets everywhere anyways. Regardless, I'll only count this trial as being completed when you successfully sneak past the bats without disturbing them. If you play any tricks, I'll bring you right back to this point to start all over."
John grumbled again, then nodded his understanding. He stood up and looked towards the tunnel entrance, then sighed and moved towards it. Withdrawing his aura as best he could, he entered the tunnel again, moving more carefully this time around.
"Gahhhh!"
Another cry of retching disgust bellowed out within the tunnel a short while later. The Prime Shadow shook his head in light disapproval, and waved his hand to the side. A comfortable chair suddenly appeared, which he sat on, lounging back on its backrest.
"That boy didn't grow up as an assassin, so his ability to hide his presence and aura is quite lacking," he said to himself, listening to the cries of disgust coming from the tunnel. "We're going to be here for quite some time it seems. I suppose I'll make myself comfortable."
…
Days passed quickly turned to weeks as John spent his life within the dark tunnels, trying to hide his aura enough to sneak past the Toxfoul Bats. Thousands of attempts later, progress had been made, but he had yet to successfully withdraw his aura enough to sneak past all the bats unnoticed.
After being covered by the bat bile thousands of times, he had expected to develop some sort of tolerance for the soul smell. However, that had not happened, and it still affected him just as much as it had the very first time he had been discovered by the bats. In some ways, the smell of the slime was more torturous to him than any pain trial he had endured in the past.
"There's millions of them in there. How the hell am I supposed to get past all of them?!" John grumbled loudly after another unsuccessful attempt.
"You're getting better," the Prime Shadow said, still lounging on his chair.
"Shoudlnt you be doing something else?" John said to the man.
"Like what?" the Prime Shadow asked, giving him a questioning glance.
"I don't know, like running the Guild? Surely you can't stay away from it this long?"
"That's what the Guildmaster is for," the Prime Shadow grinned. "Now get back to it. You're getting better, despite the thousands of failures."
John frowned and wanted to make a snarky remark, but held his tongue. The Prime Shadow was right, he was most certainly getting better, and at a much more rapid pace than he had expected.
John had at first questioned the old man's methods, and grumbled that he could learn to conceal his aura in other ways that were less disgusting. But after a few weeks of this, he couldn't help but admit the Prime Shadow had a good reason for having him train here. Without the horrible slime the bats covered him with each failure, his motivation to pass the trial as quickly as possible would have been much less. The foul smell of the bat bile was so putrid that it ignited his instincts much the same as a life and death battle did, pushing his comprehension level to a higher level than normal.
However, despite improving at an incredible pace over the last few weeks, it was still far from enough. John grumbled once more before returning to the tunnel. He took a deep, depressed breath, and then entered once more.
The silence lasted for longer than any other attempt, causing the Prime Shadow to stop his comfortable lounging on the chair and peer into the tunnel, a curious look on his face.
"Is this the…"
A commotion broke out within the tunnel, indicating another failure. The Prime Shadow shook his head and then leaned back once more, comfortably lounging on his sofa.
…
Another two weeks passed by, marking over a full month since John had first been taken into the dark tunnels. The Prime Shadow continued to lounge on his sofa, basking in this rare opportunity to truly relax. He suddenly sat up on his seat, then smiled.
He touched the chair, storing it in his spatial ring, then vanished. He reappeared above ground, hovering in the air a few dozen yards above the ground. John turned his gaze upwards to meet the man, still covered with the foul slime from trials previously failed.
"Congratulations, you have successfully passed the first part of your training," the Prime Shadow said approvingly. An object appeared in his hands, which he tossed to John.
John caught it and gave it a questioning glance.
"Soap?" he asked.
"Soap that can take the slime of a Toxfoul Bat off you immediately," the Prime Shadow said, a cheeky grin on his face as he noticed John's displeased look. A look that screamed, 'you had this soap the whole time and didn't bother to give it to me earlier? I've been covered for a month straight in this horrible stuff!'
"There's a very refreshing natural spring over that hill," the Prime Shadow said, gesturing to his right. "Go clean yourself up. Once you're done, we start the next part of your training."
John grumbled again at the troublesome old man, then made his way towards the spring.
"Oh, and when you're done, I have some information for you," the Prime Shadow said.
"Information?" John stopped and asked.
"Information regarding that missing companion of yours."
