This time, it was no longer the ruins of a castle, but the crater of an active volcano.
Rian stood atop a chunk of black stone at the center of the crater. All around him, similar rocky platforms jutted out over the churning lava.
But there was something strikingly unusual: the lava's color.
Instead of glowing red, it was brilliant white, like liquid light capable of consuming everything it touched.
"An active volcano arena now?" Rian muttered, raising an eyebrow. "The creator of this place really is creative."
Suddenly, a burst of lava shot upward, piercing through Infinity and hitting the edge of his black trench coat, setting it ablaze. Rian quickly extinguished it with a stream of mana.
His brow furrowed slightly. "Hmm… looks like this lava contains spatial laws. Even with Infinity active, it can still get through? Annoying…"
In an instant, the Six Eyes caught something moving beneath the blazing white lava.
In the very next second, the stone platform beneath Rian cracked—then shattered into pieces. He leapt swiftly, landing on another intact platform.
And that was when Rian finally saw it.
A pair of massive reptilian jaws burst from the surface of the white lava, scales glowing like radiant crystal.
Ding!
[Detecting… Herald with Serial Number 90,000 has entered the Infinity Tower]
[Welcome to Floor 1 of the Infinity Tower]
[Initializing trial…]
[Loading trial details…]
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Infinity Tower – Floor 1 Trial
Trial Details: Slay 1 enemy possessing Authority Level 5 within 1 hour. If the target is not killed within the allotted time, the trial will be considered a failure.
Note: The enemy you must defeat has identical total attributes to your own.
If you die within the trial, you will truly die permanently and cannot be revived—regardless of any special abilities.
_________________
Meaning: even Subaru's Return by Death won't work here.
"I knew it… lava almost always means dragons or something similar," Rian muttered with a short sigh. "Like a Hydra… though it's pointless. I can't tame you anyway."
Before Rian could prepare a strategy or close the second-floor trial notification, his new platform suddenly collapsed—followed by the others.
One by one, the stone footholds shattered, forcing Rian to float in midair using his Infinity-bound energy control.
He glanced downward. His gaze hardened, Six Eyes narrowing sharply.
The next moment, from the blinding white lava, five colossal reptilian heads burst out at once.
Their bodies were still submerged, but the fluid motion and vicious roars made the entire volcanic crater tremble violently.
Rather than dragons, their form resembled a massive five-headed Hydra, each head rising high, thrashing wildly, and roaring as if ready to devour both sky and earth in the same breath.
"Okay, now the scale is way crazier," Rian said calmly, though his eyes remained sharp. "This place really is insane… the death risk here is obviously sky-high."
As if responding to his words, the white Hydra raised its heads simultaneously.
All five heads towered toward the sky before unleashing blazing white fire—its heat so intense that the surrounding air shook and warped from distortion.
Rian instantly activated Blue, pulling his body sharply aside to avoid the blast. He knew that fire like this wasn't normal.
If the lava itself carried spatial laws, then the Hydra's breath was clearly on an entirely different level.
Shooting through the air, Rian reappeared right in front of the middle neck. He swung his fist with full force, channeling both Mana and Blue into his strike.
Boom!
But the result was shocking.
The Hydra's white scales didn't budge—not even a crack.
They were as hard and unyielding as diamond.
Its skyward breath stopped.
One of the Hydra's heads suddenly snapped toward Rian, locking onto him before unleashing a stream of white fire straight at him.
A heartbeat later, the other four heads followed suit, creating a deadly storm of flames converging from every direction.
Rian dodged once more with Blue, his body weaving through the storm of white fire before slashing at the flames with Knight Killer.
The battle raged on fiercely for nearly five minutes.
Rian kept moving, constantly slipping past the Hydra's attacks while striking back with Knight Killer, Fear, and even various applications of Limitless.
But all of it was pointless.
Not a single attack managed to pierce the Hydra's hardened scales.
"If that's how you want to play it…" he whispered, his eyes gleaming sharply. "Then I won't hold back."
Rian teleported above the Hydra's massive body. He removed his interface glasses and stored them in the Infinity Ring—preparing to use a technique far stronger than anything he had unleashed so far.
Drawing in a deep breath, Rian raised both hands. His fingers intertwined, then slowly separated, forming a crossed triangle.
"Nine ropes."
"Polarised light."
"Crow and shomyo."
"The gap between within and without."
The chant echoed softly—calm, yet crushing in pressure.
From between his fingers, scarlet light burst outward like wild flame, while deep blue spiraled tightly, compressing itself into an impossibly dense core.
The two forces clashed—repelling, attracting, colliding in violent harmony. They were two opposites that should never coexist, forced together by Rian's will alone.
The air around him warped.
Reality trembled.
A thin cracking sound followed—like fragile glass being split from the inside out.
Far below, the Hydra's survival instinct screamed. All five heads recoiled at once before the colossal creature dove back into the blazing white lava, trying to escape something it couldn't begin to comprehend.
A faint smile curved on Rian's lips.
His right hand slid forward, thumb braced against his index and middle finger. His left hand rested gently over his right arm.
The motion was simple: yet it carried the final seal of destruction.
Red and blue devoured each other, merging by force into a sphere of dense, violet energy forming deep within his core.
It pulsed. Not like ordinary light, But like a cosmic heart pumping void into the world.
"Hollow Technique: Purple."
With a single flick of his fingers, Rian released the energy.
Purple shot forward, a sphere of imaginary mass launched like a bullet of absolute erasure.
Space twisted violently around it, spiraling into a storm of singularity that devoured everything in its path.
The volcanic crater of white lava, the place where the Hydra had submerged—vanished instantly.
Not shattered.
Not burned.
Simply erased, along with the creature dwelling within it, swallowed whole by nothingness.
This was no ordinary Hollow Purple.
Rian had infused it with the cosmic energy of the Infinity Ring, amplifying its destructive potential far beyond the usual limit.
Hovering silently in the air, Rian watched the aftermath, cold-eyed, expression steady—
as the devastation spread out in a smooth, perfectly circular void where reality itself had been scooped away.
Ding!
At that moment, several holographic screens burst into existence before him.
[You have gained +20,000 EXP]
Ding!
[Trial complete]
[You have cleared this trial in ten minutes and ten seconds]
[Evaluation Result: S]
[Congratulations, Herald with Serial Number 90,000. You have completed the Floor 2 Trial of the Infinity Tower.]
[You may choose 2 out of the 3 available rewards.]
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Reward Options:
Option 1: STR +2
Option 2: VIT +3
Option 3: INT +2
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[Please make your selection]
After choosing 3 points of VIT and 2 points of INT, Rian proceeded upward toward the next floor of the Infinity Tower.
As he climbed higher, the trials he encountered were far from smooth.
There were always several things that nagged at him:
First, the tower's rewards were never consistent. Sometimes he received ordinary points, sometimes attribute points, and other times the reward selection was oddly limited.
Even more troublesome, the arenas and enemies he faced were frequently designed not just to match him, but to counter his Limitless techniques outright.
Each floor felt crafted with an unsettling degree of precision, as if the tower—or the god who ruled it—was intentionally testing the limits of his abilities.
From all the trials he had faced, he managed to confirm one undeniable truth:
the higher the evaluation rank, the better the reward options.
Realizing this, Rian adjusted his approach.
Whenever his evaluation wasn't satisfactory, he would simply forfeit the trial and restart the floor, ensuring that he always secured the highest reward selection available.
On the first day, Rian only managed to reach Floor 3.
On the second day, he pushed through to Floor 5.
And on the third day, he finally stood on Floor 7.
Each step felt slow, but every bit of progress was earned with absolute consistency.
By the sixth day, Rian had finally climbed to Floor 20, the highest limit permitted by his current Authority Level.
To continue climbing from Floor Twenty to Floor Forty, Rian first needed to reach Authority Level Four.
However, the requirement was far from simple.
He needed a total of 100 pure base attribute points—
completely untouched by Titles, equipment bonuses, or Profession boosts.
During his ascent to Floor Twenty, Rian had accumulated 5 STR, 6 VIT, 5 AGI, and 8 INT.
Total gained: 24 points.
Previously, Rian possessed 76 base attribute points. With the additional 24 he had earned, he had now reached exactly 100 base points, fulfilling the qualification for the Authority Advancement Trial.
With all of these achievements, Rian now met the requirements to undergo the Authority Level Four Promotion Trial.