Venerable Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Rock. Paper. Scissors

Read chapter 26 of Venerable by Jade_White on NovelPedia.

Swoosh. With a flash of a strange bright light pillar, three figures appeared in an underground room. Dustin took a quick look around. The room was quite large. Its walls were made of rock and the ceiling was incredibly high. In fact, it was almost fifty meters high. The room had three doors, one on each wall, while the fourth wall was empty. Each door had strange symbols carved into them. Every single door was huge and covered almost half the length of the wall it was built into. Dustin and the others were amazed just by the sheer size of the room. The space was quite dark, but somehow they were able to see everything clearly. DING. [ You have entered a Special Dungeon ] [ You must pass all 4 layers of this Dungeon to clear it and get the rewards. ] [ Rewards: 12000 points per person who clears this Dungeon, and experience based on your performance. ] [ Note: There is a rare grade weapon hidden somewhere in Layer 4. Whoever finds it gets it. ] "Twelve thousand points? That much?" Dustin exclaimed after seeing the massive rewards. "I thought you knew about puzzle dungeons. Did you not also tell me that you get more points and less experience in these puzzle types?" Zac questioned Dustin while laughing. "Well, uh... that was entirely second-hand information to be honest. Haha," Dustin laughed awkwardly while rubbing the back of his neck. DING. [ Task: To clear Layer 1 of the dungeon and move to Layer 2, you must get out of this room using any one of the three doors. The path you choose here will also decide the Layer 2 you will be in. ] Dustin looked at the massive doors. They looked quite similar, except the glowing markings on them were entirely different. [ You are free to choose whichever you like, but you must reach Layer 2 before the sand in the sand clock fully pours down. ] Suddenly, small glass sand clocks appeared in the hands of each of them. The sand inside the clock was pouring down quite slowly, which meant they had at least a few hours left. Dustin turned his sand clock upside down, but surprisingly, the sand did not return to the bottom. Instead, the sand kept moving upward as if gravity had absolutely no effect on it. "It seems this thing is also made with magic," the young woman spoke up. She had been very quiet the entire time. "Should that not be obvious?" Zac replied. He then scrolled his system screen to read ahead. [ After choosing your desired path, you must find your way out and reach Layer 2 or you will fail the dungeon. If you fail, you will be thrown out and will not be allowed to enter any Dungeon in this region for 10 days. ] "Ten days? Are you kidding me?" Zac shouted. "In ten days, all the dungeons will get cleared by the other participants. We will be totally screwed." "At least it is not killing us instantly, and there are other regions we can travel to anyway," Dustin pointed out calmly. "But we really must clear this one, or how are we going to clear our main tasks? If we fail the main task, it would not be a very good death to just drop dead because your bug died. Hahaha." Dustin laughed heartily at his own dark joke. "Yeah, yeah. You are exactly right," the others laughed awkwardly as well. [ Note: You can choose to leave this Dungeon voluntarily, but you cannot leave after you take part in any layer. ] [ For example: You can leave now since you have not taken any steps in Layer 1. But once you start, you cannot leave until you reach Layer 2. This is applicable for each layer. ] [ You must pay a fee for leaving. The fee for Layer 1 will be 3000 points. For Layer 2, it will be 5000 points. For Layer 3, it will be 7000 points. For Layer 4, it will be 10000 points. ] "So basically, we cannot leave," Dustin quickly analyzed the situation. None of them had three thousand points to waste. The screen vanished. Dustin and Zac discussed a few things quietly before turning back to the girl. "I am Dustin, and you can call him Zac," Dustin said. He pointed toward Zac while looking at the girl. "May we