Chapter 142: Goodbye Loneliness, Hello Stealing!

"Don't tell me I have to endure the hits of this little light thing until I reach the top!" William grumbled while the light bounced off his Forcefield for the sixth time.

As the platform traveled upward, William's guess was turning out to be true. At the ten-meter mark, the singular white light turned into two identical lights that relentlessly pounded on his Forcefield. They seemed to be pretty weak, since they weren't able to damage the Forcefield, but there was a strength in numbers.

The white lights doubled at the fifteen-meter mark, turning into four white lights that pelted his Forcefield from multiple sides. William was holding the Sword of Shifting Sands and the Mana Gathering Staff, so he focused on using it to condense a wall around himself of the Earth Element.

The Earth Barrier rose, covering the entire platform and raising four meters into the sky. William covered his head with another Barrier of the Earth Element, sealing off himself and the platform inside a dome of rock.

He sat in darkness as he listened to the white lights damaging the Earth Barrier repeatedly. After the twenty-five-meter mark, tiny cracks began to form on one side of the Earth Wall, which William immediately reinforced with some additional Mana.

Upon reaching thirty-meters, William expected the platform to stop since that was the ceiling of the trial, but it didn't turn out to be the case. Just as William thought he was going to be crushed by the platform into the ceiling, his body phased through as if it didn't exist.

An almost mechanical voice matching that of the trial creator sounded in his head.

Floor fifty-one passed. Your reward will be calculated at the end of the trial.

Even while the voice spoke, William could still hear the white lights bouncing off the Earth Barrier, their number increasing even further.

He found that Life Sense was able to detect the white lights, so William was able to count sixteen white lights ricocheting off the walls and floor. When he reached the forty-meter mark, that number doubled once again to thirty-two.

He continued to rise through the trial, reinforcing his Earth Barrier every time it became damaged. The Earth Barrier proved to be useful through floors fifty-one through fifty-nine, but once he reached floor sixty the number of white lights not only increased to 256, but they became twice as strong.

The speed of the platform slowed, taking over an hour to reach the next floor this time. William felt that he could hold on for quite a while, but he didn't know quite how much longer this would last.

To prevent any accidents, William drank the remainder of his Mana Regeneration Potions to fully recover his Mana and worked on optimizing his use of the Earth Element to better handle these white lights.

A Challenger has entered floor eighty...

In the courtyard of the trial tower, many Cultivators were animatedly discussing the most recent announcement from the trial creator.

"He's on floor 80, he must be close to the top!" someone shouted with glee. While they had been preparing traps and whatnot for William the last few days, they were becoming bored with the monotonous activity.

"Not a chance, he's probably only around halfway done." someone else commented as they scanned the trial tower from the outside. Anyone with a decent understanding of architecture could tell that this structure had well over a hundred floors, even if they couldn't see the very top from their current position.

"Only halfway? What a brutal trial..." the Cultivator muttered in response.

A few dozen meters away, Glen was looking upward at the trial tower in the area where William's aura was the most prominent.

You're almost to the one hundredth floor... Glen looked upward in awe. After a few days of silence, he was suddenly clearing five floors at a time in a matter of hours! At this rate, he should reach the top well before the end of the two-month time limit!

If he wasn't sure before that William had the ability to help him out, he was a hundred percent confident now! In fact, William had probably already collected way more than the amount he needed to pay his organization.

If Glen knew that William had actually earned over a hundred times his debt in treasures, Glen might have passed out on the spot.

He smiled as he thought of the future. This is finally my chance to leave, to abandon this filthy organization and join the Thieves' Guild. To say goodbye to the dark and lonely past, and hello to the thrill of stealing!