Darkness, a darkness so black that there isn't the slightest beam of light, where you couldn't understand from which direction footsteps came, and which didn't thin out despite hours passing. Siomha, the Deputy Leader of the Elemental Ten, had come here the moment after stepping into the magic circle, and she didn't know how long she had been in this state.
Sometimes she stood up to walk but stopped where she was after hearing other footsteps coming from afar a few steps later. She had even restricted her breathing; she knew she wasn't alone in this place where she didn't know where she was, and she was doing her best not to be found.
No matter how dense the darkness was, people's eyes would get used to the environment after a while, they would start making out the objects around them, but even though Siomha had been standing in the same place for hours, she still couldn't see a single step ahead.
"What am I going to do?"
This was the only question in her mind, appearing and disappearing; her sole companion in the darkness was the question sentence consisting of a few words, until she started screaming along with the breath blown into her ear.
"Hello!"
Facing the slippery, sticky, but equally terrifying greeting, Siomha started running, screaming at the top of her lungs as if not to hear it again. Let alone determining the direction she ran, while not even being able to see a single step ahead, she wanted to get away from there in the fastest way possible.
When she reached her goal, it was impossible to hear anything other than her heartbeat; she hadn't even counted how many times she fell, but she was still anxious as if she would start running again at any moment. Even though she felt around, she couldn't find anything; she wasn't in a condition to do anything other than drop to her knees and cover her ears with her hands.
As time passed, her breathing regulated, the strength that left her legs returned, realizing what a big mistake it made, and her eyes still hadn't gotten used to the darkness. Oh well, she was calming down anyway; she could stay here, after all, the owner of the voice that gave her the biggest fear of her life was no longer after her.
"Hello!"
She spoke too soon; the moment everything returned to normal, the word smelling of darkness in every letter returned. The blind charge was starting again; even if her heart felt like it would explode, even if painful cramps shouted from every side of her delicate body, she wouldn't stop.
It was as if running had become her fate from the moment she stepped into the magic circle, but the situation for her superior in the Elemental Ten hierarchy was very different. While his subordinate was trapped in a game of tag where it wasn't clear who was 'it', he was held hostage on the stone he sat on.
Even though the plump, juicy, and flawlessly round fruits hanging from the branches occupied by thin green leaves of the tree rising right a step behind him caught his eyes, he didn't dare to direct his gazes anywhere other than the druids surrounding him.
"Insolent!"
"Look at this, this druid who doesn't even have a tree growing in his soul yet says he will reject our traditions."
"He says he wants to barbarically take lives, to bring an end to lives that don't belong to him!"
Alator repeatedly looked at the faces of the ten druids surrounding him at one-step intervals, but the fact that he didn't recognize any of them didn't change even once. The environment was also foreign to him; neither the stone he sat on, nor the tree rising behind him, nor the air he breathed were things he had experienced before.
"Why not, why do we have to only cast defense and support spells too?"
Even though he was surrounded by foreign objects and druids on all four sides, this situation wouldn't prevent him from defending his ideas, but everything was going to be experienced for the first time today.
"Impertinent, who told you you could speak?"
First he heard what was said, then the slap landing on his face prevented the ear on that side from performing its functions. He had been slapped; neither while on the Wild Swamp nor inside the Orc Military Academy had anyone laid a hand on him, but an old druid he didn't know at all hadn't thought for a second to apply violence to him.
"Who are you? By what right can you hit me?"
There were two questions Alator wanted answered, but the answer was given with slaps landing one after another. The ten slap blows he received in the duration of five breaths would cause his cheeks to become rosy like the fruits of the tree behind him.
"You asked for this!"
Alator, whose eyes were brimming with tears, managed to create the storm carrying ice particles in all four directions with the help of the double magic circle appearing under his feet within a few seconds. No one, absolutely no one could treat him like this, and if anyone dared, they would pay for it very heavily.
"Are you going to scare us with this spring breeze?"
"Incompetent boy!"
The old druids, wrapping their bodies in energy barriers of every color, began to beat Alator using their staffs in a way that left no untouched spot on his body. They didn't hold back at all; after raising their arms into the air, they brought down their heavy wooden staffs onto their compatriot's body with all their speed.
The Leader of the Elemental Ten, biting his lips to endure the pain, couldn't do anything other than scream at the top of his lungs after a while; how much his state resembled his subordinate running in the darkness. Siomha was trapped in an apparently endless cycle, and whenever she was in a condition to run again, she heard that voice right by her ear.
"Hello!"
It was an endless torture, like a nightmare she could never wake up from. She was running away, the voice darker than the unceasing darkness surrounding her was appearing right by her ear. Whereas, for the druids other than the two people at the top of the Elemental Ten, things were getting easier as time passed.
The pain-filled screams of the fire element user baptized with the lava of the volcano had given way to slight moans on the third day, and his friend, who could only manage to see a few steps ahead with the fire he created, could now comfortably watch the distance up to a hundred paces.
The situation was no different among the earth element users; the druid warrior trying to find his way inside the labyrinth surrounded by high walls looked confident as he advanced leaning one hand on the earth walls, and his other friend comfortably evaded the earth spears flying towards him while walking on the hand-thick path.
The one stranded in the ice desert from the duo having mastery over the water element was no longer walking; he was advancing by reaching a speed that would cause his hair to fly with the help of the ice layer gathering under his feet. The ice monsters shooting out from among the trees whose tips of their sharp leaves were wet with blood had been waiting silently for a while, because the druid, whose magic circle was twice as big as when he first set foot here, had started using the trees they used to hide behind to attack.
The leaves of the trees they hid behind and waited for the right moment were tearing from their branches as if agreed upon and raining down on them, and not knowing when this would happen had been enough to drive them into indecision.
While things were getting better and better for the four fire, two water, two earth users, none of them possessed the comfort Nafız attained. So much so that in the turquoise-colored waters where only she was before, a thousand and one kinds of sea creatures were wandering, and there were even sharks among them.
They came and rubbed against Nafız's legs like a docile dog, and when she reached out and petted their heads, they went crazy with excitement, causing the cool waters to fall on her sun-scorched face. Even if her sleep was interrupted, the Blood God couldn't get angry at them, how could she? They had only made peace after all those years.
The situations of those inside the Reward Dungeon resembled candies, each having different shapes and flavors, thrown into a massive sphere. Those who didn't want to stay even for a second and those who could prefer to stay here forever were in the same boat, and the time remaining for them to reach the final port was less than three days.