My Servant System

So come to find out it was actually very time consuming to move hundreds, if not thousands of bodies from one spot to another, especially when the place you were dragging them to continued to grow further and further away with each body that was tossed off of the red sands.

It got to the point that we were debating how worthwhile it was to do this now instead of just moving the bodies a few feet and waiting for them to awaken at night so that we could begin the cycle again.

I also began to utilize a long sled made of ice so that I could load up on even more bodies before dragging it back out into the desert, and that helped speed things up just a bit... though there were still so many waiting to be destroyed completely even as I streamlined the process as much as I could.

When night fell we stood our ground just a little ways away from the nearest cluster of the two armies and showed off our magic to them, igniting their rage and luring them out towards the edge as best we could, where we also discovered that the once headless corpses had stood up and charged at us as well, with their heads freshly regenerated.

That likely meant that the Core was what was needed to regenerate, so we needed to pull their bodies out completely in order to kill them for good, which just made all of this all the more tedious and time consuming.

There was nothing else we could do besides begin luring out more and more of them towards the edge, killing them and leaving their bodies wherever they dropped before heading back in to find some more, repeating the cycle until morning came.

Then the new cycle began as we started lugging the bodies as quickly as we could, causing time to begin melting into itself as we lost track of it completely; we weren't doing the greatest as of current, but we were fit enough to complete these tasks with ease, though as the sun reached its zenith we did decide to take a break, head back to the bulwark and take some naps to regain some of our energy.

That was what we did, and when night fell it repeated once more until the sun rose yet again, lowering us into a cycle much like the two armies that we were slowly whittling down, giving us a brief taste of their perpetual agony which made it easier to understand why they were so insane.

This seemed like hell, so while they might not be completely willing to end it all and rest in the afterlife, we were going to give them that rest no matter what, and the days began to trickle on by one by one as we butchered the armies at night before lugging them out towards the clean sands where they promptly exploded in a shower of gore.

Our bodies were soaked with blood, no amount of showering or use of mana during these short breaks we had being capable of ridding us of the stench of death or the red tinge to our skin that almost seemed like a mark we were being forced to wear for all this killing.

I can't be completely certain how many days we spent here, but I was assured that we were on the right path to clearing this trial, using this time to go over it in my head and understand it as much as I could.

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When it was all finally over I was beyond exhausted, the heat, stench, aching and so much more wearing me down and getting me into a state of being that just felt... horrible, with no sign of improvement in sight.

That was until we were bathed in light and whisked away from the desert suddenly, transported into a plane of blinding light that was very different from the almost sudden transportation from the outside world to this trial space.

This was like some sort of in between of those two spaces, and it was shocking to suddenly be deposited somewhere else without any semblance of a hint that this was about to happen; we were lucky enough to have our gear that we didn't have on hand transported with us, but it definitely added a new sense of paranoia to keep all of our valuables on us at all times.

There was also the paranoia that something had gone wrong with the trial space or that some entity - maybe the one that had created these spaces - had taken note of us and was preparing to do something... only for us to look around at one another and notice that there were a bunch of Mana Crystals floating around each of us.

Eight in total, with four of them being pure elemental crystals and the remaining four being crystals that had two different elements inside of it, creating the same power but with a different flavor.

"This... is the reward space..? Each of us are awarded a chunk of Mana Crystal for completing this trial... I think that also means we each are able to chose a chunk that we want for ourselves, and we aren't limited to our own elements. So... we need to pick wisely."

Leone nodded at that, before glancing at Anput and saying "She means don't touch any of them, Anput.", making my mate pause as she was just about to caress the surface of the glittering silver crystal that likely called out to her far more than the others.

Seeing all of these potent, incredible materials around me was quite the feeling, especially since I had never seen a Mana Crystal that was of the dual element type; even more so with the Ice Crystal that was just radiating a deathly chill that was just... right to me.

We had one hell of a choice to make about what reward we each took, and there was the obvious choice of picking what was good for us, but there was also the obvious choice of picking the rarest elements to take back home and sell for immense profits.