Dumb silence fell upon Kel and his comrades as they gawked at the gate before them for what felt like hours until Tae finally spoke. Micro could only here some of what they were saying as his body passed through the portal.

  “The boy… He won’t survive…” Tae’s voice was filled with more shock than concern. “Even your uncle, the previous heir, succumbed to the harsh trials of this dungeon…”

  “It would be unthinkable for us to enter the dungeon at our level, but the boy…” Den mumbled.

  “Only Kel, who has received a lifetime of training in the Jade Fire Turtle Art from the current sect leader, could possibly survive this trial,” another man added. “It takes years of preparation.”

  The five attendants mumbled mournfully over what they’d just witnessed, no thought of entering the dungeon themselves even crossing their mind. Eventually, they turned to Kel, wondering what he would have to say.

  “My friends…” he began, addressing them without his usual formal tone. “You have served my family well since before I can recall, and you have helped me every step of the way until here.”

  “You waste such words on—” Tae answered, but she was cut off.

  “No, I must thank you,” Kel asserted, though his eyes remained warm. “I was blessed by the teachings of my grandfather, who prepared me for this day, but I was equally blessed to have been in your care for so long. That is why I must proudly pass through this trial and prove to you all, to the sect, to myself, that I am worthy of those blessings.”

  Kel suddenly grinned, confusing his friends.

  “That boy just got a head start on me, that’s all. I have a feeling he’ll make it out in one piece,” Kel concluded before hopping through the glowing green portal after Micro, despite the worried voices behind him.

  ~

  Micro was confused when he passed through the strange doorway. He expected to see more rocks and dirt, but after being surrounded for a moment by intense green swirling lights, he was now in a large room made of giant, stone bricks. The room was very simple and clean, and it was decorated with statues which looked almost exactly like ordinary turtles. As his foot hit the ground for the first time, he looked behind him to see the same glowing portal shrink to the size of a mosquito before disappearing completely.

  It was then that he noticed a crushing pressure all around him, similar to the discomfort he’d felt around Kel and the others before he learned how to coat himself with his own aura, but much worse. At first he panicked, running back to where the portal had been, but he crashed into the stone wall and fell to the ground. Then he remembered what Kel had taught him. He sat down and closed his eyes, struggling to concentrate at first due to the pressure, and eventually found himself looking at his core.

  “That’s a bit like tuning a valve, if I just loosen that and…” he mumbled to himself while running his hands along the seams of the core, moulding it slightly here and there to increase the flow on one side and decrease it on another.

  He didn’t fully understand the function of his core, but with trial and error he began to feel more comfortable with the flow of energy around his body. After a little while, the energy flowing out of his core and finding its way to the surface of his skin had increased drastically, and he could finally relax. He opened his eyes and quickly picked himself up off the floor. He knocked on the wall, wondering if Kel and the others might be behind it, but found it to be nothing but rock.

  “I guess the exit is somewhere else…” Micro sighed, then turned around. “Okay, let’s find that card and get moving.”

  He wandered around the stone room for a moment, taking in the arched ceiling, and looking around at the floor in search of any Core Cards. He smiled as he noticed just how flat the floor was.

  “Why can’t the ground always be this even…” Micro said to himself. “Not a bump or pothole anywhere…”

  After walking to the end of the room, he came to a stone stairway that led up to another room, at the centre of which was a single statue of a turtle, comparable in size to the house attached to his garage back home. Beneath the turtle’s massive head was a stone altar, the sight of which raised some unpleasant memories in Micro. He approached the altar, hoping the card might be there, but he was disappointed. As he thought of where the card might be hidden, he recalled the friends he’d left behind in the cave mentioning how dangerous dungeons were. However, he didn’t see anything dangerous in the cave at all, beyond the pressure he had felt when he first arrived. In fact, it seemed even safer than the cave in many ways. The floor was even, the walls were sturdy, there were no monsters, and it was fairly well lit.

  “You stupid human!” Blue suddenly burst out of his pocket, nearly knocking his Core Cards on the floor in the process.

  “I take a quick nap and suddenly I’m in a dungeon!?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Micro said as he looked around. “I’m looking for a Core Card, but I’m not sure what’s going on in here…”

  “This is such a new low for me…!” Blue cried. “Dragged into a dungeon by a broken human… most of my power gone… and what is that unpleasant smell?”

  “Smell?” Micro asked.

  “It smells like that annoying old—” Blue continued, but she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. What now?”

  “Can you see a way out of here? I think there might not be a card here after all.”

  “This stupid…” Blue fumed. “Fine! Let me see!”

  She hopped on his shoulder as he looked around the altar, then sat down with a frustrated sigh.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Well, we’re definitely in a dungeon,” she explained spitefully. “It’s a completely different realm to the one we’re supposed to be in.”

  “A different realm?”

  “It’s another world, basically.” She rolled her eyes and continued with a harsh tone. “Cultivators do this all the time, trapping us in these wretched realms between realms. They’re a hassle, but this is just… wow…”

  “That’s not good.” Micro nodded slowly as he processed her words. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we need a key more than we need a door, and that big monster is the only thing in here that’s alive, so go ask it nicely to let us out of here before I come up there and—”

  “Hello!” Micro shouted at the giant statue. “Are you a real turtle?”

  Micro ignored Blue’s increasingly energetic complaints and awaited a reply from the statue. At first, he wondered if the statue was really capable of answering, but after staring at it until his feet started to ache, he noticed that it did feel less like a statue and more like a sleeping giant.

  He continued to call out to it occasionally, trusting that it would eventually reply. He noticed at one point that Blue had fallen asleep on his shoulder while siphoning some of his energy again, but he continued to call out to the giant statue. Finally, the giant statue’s eyes began to glow. They glowed so faintly that he hadn’t noticed at first, but as the minutes turned to hours, they started to look almost like headlights.

  “Must be nice…” Micro sighed, and he continued to wait.

  He walked around the room now and then when his legs became stiff, looking at the big stone slabs that made up the intimidating walls of the dungeon, made of stones so large that ten trucks like him wouldn’t be able to carry a single one. As his feet ached more and more, he eventually came to sit on the altar in front of the great turtle, and he waited some more. He looked up at it, patiently waiting for something to happen while Blue sat grumpily on his shoulder. Suddenly, a voice filled the dungeon, but from a different direction than he was expecting.

  “Micro!”

  Micro turned around, stirring the pixie on his shoulder from her nap. Blue looked around in a panic and then dove into Micro’s pocket once again.

  “Kel!” he shouted back. “This dungeon might be broken. The turtle is ignoring me!”

  “Incredible.” Kel joined Micro at the Altar and looked around the room in awe.

  “It’s a nice room, huh?” Micro replied. “Not much happening in here though.”

  “So this is where my ancestors trained…” Kel marvelled as his eyes fell upon the turtle. “It’s like my grandfather said. Even if it is the lowest level dungeon, the amount of life force in the ancient turtle is astounding. It’s impossible to imagine how long it has lived, how many eras it has witnessed, how many lives it has seen…”

  “So how do we turn it on?” Micro asked.

  “I should have mentioned this earlier, Micro,” Kel replied with an embarrassed expression. “But do you know what the core teaching of the Fire Mountain Turtle Sect is?”

  “You walk across mountain roads dangerously slow,” Micro answered immediately.

  “What? No—” Kel scoffed.

  “You cause accidents?” Micro asked with an accusatory tone.

  “It’s patience,” Kel asserted, though his frowning face seemed to lack patience in Micro’s eyes. “Patience is the key to unlocking our most advanced techniques. And patience will aid you in escaping this dungeon with your life.”

  “You mean, with a Core Card,” Micro corrected him, drawing a rectangle in the air with his hands. “I already have my life. What I need is a—”

  “You can’t possibly be thinking of challenging the trial, can you?” Kel asked, dumbfounded. “These trials are not the same for every cultivator who challenges them. Years of training are required to steel yourself for whatever challenge you face. Even my uncle—”

  “I need Core Cards, and there are Core Cards here,” Micro said firmly. “Tell me how to turn the turtle on, please.”

  Kel was about to rebuke Micro, when he suddenly smiled. A dry laugh escaped his mouth next.

  “Oh, ancient turtle,” He said wistfully as he looked up at the giant statue. “We both must look impatient to one as timeless and great as you. Wait, perhaps…”

  Kel then held his hands out over the altar, and Micro jumped off of it when both the altar and Kel’s hands began to glow.

  “Ancient dungeon, gift of the immortal realm, bestow upon us your ancient wisdom…” Kel asked of the statue before him with his head bowed.

  “Oh, that’s interesting.” Micro was excited to see the statue finally move its head to look down at them. The turtle rumbled, as if yawning, and looked down at Kel. He waved, but the turtle was preoccupied with the trembling cultivator beneath it.

  “You…” Its deep, gravelly voice shook the air. “A new generation? Very well…”

  “Oh, sacred guardian!” Kel shouted respectfully. “Would you not spare the boy beside me from the trial? He was mistaken in coming here.”

  “I would spare a lost child…” It bellowed. The turtle’s head slowly turned to face Micro, who waved again.

  “Oh, thank you mighty—”

  “But these souls…” the turtle continued, its voice rumbling like an earthquake. “I will not spare…”

  “But why?” Kel gasped.

  “It…” the turtle replied slowly. “Would be rude…”

  “He is young and untrained. He would only…” Kel pleaded, but his voice trailed off as he despaired.

  “I see no hesitation in the younger soul…” the turtle grumbled, its voice causing Micro’s entire body to vibrate. “In the older soul… I see no weakness… Though I see trouble…”

  “The wha—” Kel blurted out awkwardly, but he covered his mouth with an embarrassed look on his face.

  “So much trouble in that one…” the turtle closed its big eyes and let out a short laugh so loud that it made Micro cover his ears. “How… fun…”

  “But he—” Kel’s confusion only grew as he looked back at the smiling Micro, who looked fearlessly up at the giant with an impatient-looking smile. “Wait, you said ‘they’ can take the test?”

  “Your path is decided…” the turtle remarked.

  “Micro, you only have one soul, right?” Kel asked with wide eyes. “Or did you have some kind of pet?”

  “Oh, she’s a little shy, so—”

  “Who do you think you’re calling a pet, you good for nothing, cultivating, piece of—”

  “This is Blue!” Micro shouted over her angry introduction. He placed his hand over her head, worried that she might stumble off of him as she flailed her arms.

  “I’ll end your adventure right here and now if you call me a pet again you miserable little—” Blue continued to complain, but she was taken aback by Kel’s expression.

  “A pi—pi—pixie?!” Kel stuttered with a look of horror.

  “I know, eh…” Blue rolled her eyes, then jumped out of the pocket and hovered in the air for a moment.

  “So I can apply for a card here?” Micro shouted back at the turtle, trying to ignore the unfolding drama. “Is there a written test first, or just the practical exam?”

  “We’ll take your silly test!” Blue added while making a rude hand gesture to Kel from atop Micro’s head. “Just get us out of this place. The time is making me dizzy!”

  “All three of you…” the turtle declared as slowly as ever. “You shall undertake the trial of the Jade Fire Turtle Art Dungeon.”