He still waited for the fog to disperse, though. Once it did, it revealed the true size of the hall. Unlike the one before, this one could be considered tiny. It was a 20-meter by 20-meter room with a similar ceiling. It wasn't tiny by itself, but the comparison made it seem that way.
The walls were plain and had no decorations at all. There wasn't anything in the entire room, save for the pedestal in the center. This pedestal was something that he had already encountered before. It was the aptitude testing ball that he had crossed in the 7th tile in the previous hall.
"Isn't that the-" As he was asking her, Nefrati confirmed his observation.
"Yes, it is. But it is a little different. That isn't just an aptitude test. It will also test the quality of your blood."
Leo figured that it was there for a single reason - to make sure he was talented enough. Previously, the only requirement for him to pass was that he had Medium Aptitude in the Blood Element.
For this, however, it would definitely be higher. This was most likely to screen any candidates before giving them any further tests. He guessed that the reason his blood needed to be tested as well was because he was working with the Blood Element.
He walked to the crystal while keeping a lookout for anything odd. Thankfully, there wasn't anything weird like that. Nothing happened to him by the time he got to the pedestal.
Without hesitation, he put his hand on the ball. He would either pass or fail and nothing would change the outcome. So he felt no pressure during the test. The orb released a little bit of aura that pricked his finger, causing a drop of blood to fall on it.
Once the blood touched the orb, a cloud started to form inside. The cloud quickly turned a bright red and started changing colors. It changed to yellow and green before turning blue and then violet. But even after changing to violet like before, it kept changing color.
After violet, it turned pitch black. The black color filled the entire orb. Along with that, it created cracks all over it.
He took his hand off it with surprise. This was supposed to be a normal aptitude test, so why was the orb cracking? The cracks kept spreading until the orb shattered into pieces.
With a glance at the remnants, Leo realized there was something inside the orb that he didn't notice. The orb was initially transparent, so he would know if something was inside. Yet this object magically appeared after it broke.
The object inside the orb was a piece of ruby that seemed to look like the piece that he got from the first hall. He took out the previous piece and then took the ruby he just found and put them together.
It was a perfect match. The minute the two were next to each other, they clicked into shape and melded together. They formed a bigger piece that still seemed incomplete. But now he was starting to make something off it. It seemed to form a rectangular box.
Now that he had two pieces, he also noticed that there was something engraved onto the gem. He didn't know what it was and expected to find out once he found more pieces.
"Okay, so you passed this one," Nefrati said. "Do you think you can go to the next test?"
He looked ahead and saw a door leading to the next test.
"I don't know. Wasn't this too easy?" He asked her.
"That means the next one won't be. Do you have what it takes?"
"Yes," he said while walking into the door. Since he didn't use any energy in this test, he didn't need to rest at all. The door was wide open and he walked through it.
The minute his foot walked through the door, he felt like his soul was sucked out of his body. His eyes suddenly lost their vision and his other senses disappeared too. The only times he felt this sensation was when he was controlled by Nefrati and when he entered the temple for the first time.
After a few seconds of feeling nothing, he slowly regained his senses. First, it was his sense of touch. He could feel the wind blowing on his face. His finger reached out and could feel his face which seemed to calm him. He also felt weird because of what he was standing on.
It seemed to be a soft squishy surface that was very uneven. He couldn't seem to place the feeling to anything he experienced, but since it wasn't sucking him to the ground he didn't care.
Then his hearing came back. He immediately felt out of place because of what he heard. There were shouts from a lot of people that made him confused. He thought he was supposed to be the only person inside the temple. Why were there other people there?
As the shouts melded together, his sight finally came back. What he saw almost made him puke. He was surrounded by a sea of blood, being in the middle of a battlefield. The weird sensation he felt while walking was because he was standing on a corpse.
In his right hand, there was a giant spear, and in his left hand, a head. He immediately let go of the head with a shudder. When he did, he noticed that his arm seemed a little different compared to normal.
His hands were a lot larger than they used to be and coarse too. Unlike his hands which were rough from working, these hands were rough from the blisters of using a weapon. As he looked at the rest of his body, he noticed that there were absolutely no similarities between it and his normal appearance.
The clothing he was wearing had changed and every part of his body was bigger. It was like he had gone into another person's body. The thought seemed so reasonable that he looked around for any evidence that it was indeed the case.
He quickly found a pool of blood on the ground. With the sun shining on it, it cast a reflection on everything looking at it. He quickly rushed to it and looked at his face.
While the reflection itself was a little blurry and completely red in color, he found out what he needed to know. He wasn't in his own body. The body he was in seemed to belong to a warrior of some sort and he was currently on a battlefield.
"Are you with me, Nefrati?" He murmured, hoping that she would say something. After no response, he realized that he was completely alone in the place he was brought to. Neither was Nefrati responding nor was his magic working. The only way to survive the place would then be to use the aura he felt in his body.
He channeled the aura in his body and quickly realized a thing - the body he was in was very strong. More so than he could ever imagine. He had expected the aura level to be at the same level as him when he entered, but it was very far from it.
