The next day, Aldred and his wives woke up and went downstairs.
"What, you guys decided to leave already?" Avre asked.
"Yeah, we cannot delay much longer. We have to continue our journey," Aldred replied.
Avre nodded. "I understand." She then grabbed a bunch of golden spatial bags, and gave them to Aldred.
"I noticed you like to collect treasures and rare herbs. These are some of my private collections. Consider it as our parting gift."
Aldred's eyes lit up. "Thank you. In that case, I have to give something back."
He bit his finger, and blood poured out before it floated in the air and condensed into an orb. "This is my blood essence. Take it."
Avre's eyes lit up. She had suspected that Aldred was the son of one of the founder. If she could get a hand on his blood essence, that would be the rarest treasure she could get.
The blood orb landed on her palm and she felt a powerful aura washed over her. It was demonic, yet alluring and seductive. It was evil, dangerous, yet full of adventure.
'What is this feeling?' she thought.
Besides the weird feeling she felt, it was undeniable that the blood was powerful.
If she consumed it, she could evolved into something more than human. But a prized treasure like this... she couldn't have the heart to do it.
Like a dragon, she loved to collect priceless items as her collection.
"Thank you," Avre said.
"No worries," Aldred replied. His blood essence would regenerate again after a few weeks anyway.
They chatted for a few minutes before leaving the inn.
"May fate let us meet again," Avre said.
Aldred nodded and left the city.
As they walked on the plain, they looked back at the city one more time.
"What a wonderful city," Aldred said.
"Avre was a nice girl," Mary said. "I hope we can meet her again."
"Maybe someday we will," Aldred said before he turned around and began walking.
He grabbed the Golden Emblem and looked at it intently. "I wonder if we can use this in other cities as well."
"Probably," Mareona said.
They kept walking for another hour before arriving at the mountain range. In the distance, there was a gate made out of ancient stones.
Aldred and the others made their way to this gate.
The gate was the shape of an arc, standing on top of a circular altar with runic writings.
Stella's eyes shone in golden color. The runic writings changed shape and form in her eyes.
"World Tree's Portal," Stella read. "It's a portal!"
"So how do we use it?"
Zafrina looked around the altar. "I think it's broken."
"Wait. Look at all these holes and cracks. And look at the stones all around us. If we fill the holes and cracks, maybe we can fix it," Aldred said.
"Let's do that," Mary said.
For the next few hours, Aldred used his godly eyes to find the stones and which holes or cracks it belong to. Everyone else scoured the land, and picked up the rocks and rubbles they could find, trying to fix the portal together.
Hours passed, Baendjbi wiped his sweat off his forehead as he put the last piece of stone. "And we're done."
They all smiled and waited but nothing happened.
"It's not working," Mary said.
Suddenly, a deep, mysterious voice sounded from above. "Are you treasure hunters?"
They looked up and saw a three meter tall man, face hidden by a worn and torn robe. He was floating in the air with a weird stick on his lap.
Aldred used his godly eyes, but he received no information.
The man went down and gracefully landed on the ground.
"I am the guardian of this test," the three meter tall man said.
He was like a giant with athletic built.
"Do we have to pass a test before we can use this portal?"
The man nodded.
"What is the test?" Aldred asked.
The man lightly tapped the portal with his stick, and a blue energy appeared like a bubble. "Enter this portal, and you will find out."
Aldred looked at his wives and they nodded at him.
He entered first, followed by his wives and friends.
They appeared in a vast plain that seemingly span over tens of thousands miles. Aldred also saw some other people here who seemed to come here through other portals.
Like him, they were confused as to what to do here.
Suddenly, a booming voice came from above. "Welcome, treasure hunters."
They all looked up and saw a large, black dice floating in the sky.
"In this challenge, all of you need to find a token inside the stomach of white rats. These rats are always on the move, and they stay in the ground most of the time. Your task is to find them and pull the token out. Only when you have the token will you pass this challenge. There are no other rules."
Murmured of people talking to each other was heard. Some of them wanted to make an alliance.
"Also," the voice came again. "There are more than 100,000 of you, but There are only 1,000 tokens."
"Good luck."
Everything became silent at that moment. Now they did not see each other as potential allies, but absolute enemies.
There were only one thousand tokens, but there were more than 100,000 treasure hunters. Which mean 99,000 of them had to die.
That was 1% chance survivability.
A few seconds later, everyone roared, brandished their weapons and charged at each other.
Baendjbi pulled out his weapon as well.
"What are you doing?" Aldred asked.
"We need to kill the others," Baendjbi said. "Isn't that what we supposed to do?"
"No. Not yet," Aldred said.
A group of adventurers charged at Aldred.
Aldred shouted: "Stop!"
The adventurers stopped but their gaze were still fiery and dangerous.
"What do you stop us for? It's do or die."
"How many people is in your group?" Aldred asked.
"Around one hundred."
"There are one hundred in my group as well. We should make an alliance."
"And how do I know that you won't stab our back?"
"There are 1,000 tokens. That means we can make allies with 1,000 people and then kill the rest."
The other group was so shocked to hear that.
"Why didn't we think of that?"
The group discussed about it before their leader agreed to the alliance.
"Great. Let's find 800 more people," Aldred said.
Then they walked around the plains, watching the adventurers killing themselves while they recruit one group after another.
Some groups were stubborn and arrogance, so Aldred and his newly-made friends had to massacre them. But other than that, the recruitment went very well.
"We got 900 people now," Aldred said. "All we need is another 100."
"Umm. I have a question." A man raised his hand and stepped forward. "Won't it be better if we hunt for the rats? Why are we still looking for people."
"We can simply take the tokens from people. It's better to make alliance first to increase our chances."
They all nodded in understanding like a group of students.
"Hey, sir. I invited a group that wanted join us." A man excitedly sprinted at him with a bunch of people.
"How many are they?"
"One hundred people, sir. Exactly how much we need."
They all cheered after hearing that.
"Well, boys. It's killing time." Aldred smiled.
