D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 1893: Chapter 1893 A Little A-maze-ing

--- Lily ---

It didn’t take too much to figure out what the new features did. That didn’t make them any less annoying. The vine carves popped out of the walls and turned into small vines. Doesn’t sound so bad... until you realise they’re almost exclusively in the same areas as the already present holes and that a ’little bit’ for a maze that’s only a few centimetres wide is most of the pathway.

The flowers were even more annoying. They were carved into the floor of the maze and when you got close they sprung up becoming a real flower for a moment. Just long enough to spray a big puff of pollen before hiding away as a painting once again. The pollen reduced the friction on the ball majorly preventing you from taking it slow... and worse was that if you were too close to the flower when it went off the puff sent the ball flying away. They could do this multiple times.

Luckily, there were some tricks to the table. Unluckily, it took Lily some time to work them out. It was enough that Hedera had found a good mushroom to use as a chair and was currently relaxing. The elf wasn’t entirely relaxed, she still canvased the area regularly, and always had an eye out... but you could tell the elf wasn’t paying as much attention as she could be. Still, Lily could accept that.

The tricks weren’t anything too major. For the vines, you could perform this sort of ’hop’ by quickly shifting the table and lodging the ball between the glass roof and the vine itself. It made getting over the holes a bit more difficult, but once you realised it was possible it wasn’t too bad. The flowers on the other hand, had a short internal timer. They wouldn’t trigger a second time... if you were quick enough passing the ball through their territory. It was still a pain, but Lily could deal with it.

All four balls sunk once again. In exchange, she got four more orbs and a bunch of changes to the maze. The entire thing had been redone. The pathways were completely different between one blink and the next. Her muscle memory from doing the previous routes so many times... mostly wiped out. The traps had been shuffled a little alongside that... and of course there were new ones to test.

Lily didn’t bother waiting to examine the things this time, she just went straight into testing things. The first was a serious of arrows bunched together. They launched the ball in the direction the arrows were pointing... which was not always the way you wanted to go. The launch also extended ’upwards’ as well. Lily did a quick test where she tried using the glass ceiling of the maze as the floor. It still launched the ball. Looking it all over though... there was probably a path through. The trick with the arrows might just be that you have to deal with it.

The second addition were these ’portal’ blocks. They were painted onto the walls and when you got close to one they moved the ball to a matching ’portal’ somewhere else on the board... but a few just removed the ball. What was annoying was that they weren’t really marked. See, portals of the same colour would transfer the ball between them... or remove it from play.

Just as an example, there were five different blue portals. That was enough for two sets of connected portals... and one that sent the ball off into the void. There was no indication as to WHICH portal would wipe the ball from existence until you’d tested the portals. At the very least you knew the even numbered ones were safe. Take red for instance. There was four of them, and both sets were safely connected. The ’trick’ if you could call it that was that the portals that went know where were unattached ones.

This presented a bit of an issue. Especially when the arrows would throw the ball against walls, walls that often times had portals on them. One nasty section Lily had to get through for the top right goal had a launcher that fired the ball over a gap, into a portal, then straight into a second portal where you had to take control of the ball before it bounced into a third ’empty’ portal.

Lily wished her spatial senses were finely tuned enough to pick up where each portal went but it was too well done. Either that or there was some manner of enchantment blunting her senses. Instead she just had to rely on trial and effort. Not an insurmountable obstacle of course but it meant the time estimate she’d given Hedera was laughable. The whole exercise had already taken up an hour’s worth of time when Lily had gotten onto the third stage with the portals. Certainly not ideal.

Even just the first run through had taken a good thirty minutes by itself and Lily had barely managed it. A sneeze right near the end had jerked the table just barely correctly to avoid a ’void’ portal that really just sent the ball back to the start. It had saved her run... and about five minutes worth of work. Perhaps more. Lily sighed as she put the table down and started to roll her shoulders a bit. She wasn’t using too much mana. The table was light and she only needed a little bit to lift her slightly off the ground but the constant mental effort was getting to her. ”This... this might be a bit much...” mumbled Lily.

”Hmmm?” queried Hedera.

”It’s just been a lot of effort and I don’t know if it’ll be worth it. Even knowing where some of the portals go it’s still going to take me another thirty minutes, if not more, to finish the other three goals on this stage... and if there’s more? I could be in real trouble. I know I said these were pretty easy... but the traps make it a delicate thing. I’m certainly not trying to rush because that would just create more issues... but keeping track of everything, my shadows, the ball, the teleport paths. It’s all just a bit much but I don’t know if I can afford a proper break because then I might forget those paths, or get them mixed up,”

Hedera shrugged her shoulders. ”Look, the four orbs you got from the last round make this worth it. It’s technically a four times return on investment time wise and we’ll probably get something better if you manage to finish the whole thing, even if you take a break. I feel a bit useless just sitting here knowing you can Kat are putting in work... but I also know that it’s better to have a guard then not,”

Lily nodded. They might have been attacked but she had noticed a few monsters around. Mostly from the sounds of them fighting each other. There was no certainty she’d notice before something attacked her and unlike the nice, underground bunker that was the target range. This one was up in the open. Heck, there was also the chance of other contestants attacking, not just monsters.

”I guess I just feel like the reward hasn’t been worth the effort so far... and I’m a little worried how long this is going to take if things get more complicated. Even if they don’t get more difficult to execute, if things take a bit of extra time for the next stage... that could really add up. I have to do each table four times after all,” sighed Lily.

”Why are you talking as if there’s GOING to be a fourth table? You did three already. Who says this isn’t the last one?” asked Hedera.

Lily frowned at the question. She HAD been assuming there was another table after this one, and perhaps one after that... so why did she think that? Looking over the table there wasn’t any obvious indication that there was going to be more after this... but that didn’t feel quite right either.

As Lily’s eyes slowly looked over the table she realised the problem. ”Even with the extra traps on the board... there’s just a bit too much space. Like see here,” Lily pointed to a section on the middle of the board. Hedera, sitting down a few metres away, couldn’t see it at all. Lily was too caught up in her revelation to care though. ”There’s nothing at all anywhere in this area. It’s too much blank space. Why bother packing it all in so closely everywhere else?

”Like, there’s a flower here, a booster here, portals, vines holes. Stuff all over the place and yet there are still... notable chunks of the maze... I don’t want to say missing because obviously all the wood is still there but there isn’t any traps and I guess that just feels wrong to me,”

Hedera shrugged. ”Look, in the end... if you get another four orbs for your efforts I’d call that worth it and I suspect you’ll get at LEAST six. I say just go for it,”

Lily nodded, somewhat re invigorated as she set her shadows back up. Ready to keep going with the table.