Temporal Tides: The Chaos Crow's Ascendance

Chapter 5 - Decisive Battle Pt.1

I walked through the doorway into a long, narrow corridor filled with the same towering bookshelves covered by vines and branches; however, this time, some of the bindings of the books were stained with some kind of vermillion substance. It was as if fresh blood had somehow splattered onto these books recently. I continued flying forward while carefully watching my surroundings, especially for potential triggers for traps. In the distance, I saw a door larger than the rest I had seen throughout this trial dungeon. As I was nearing the door, I heard a faint clicking sound.

I immediately stopped flying and looked around, trying to figure out what exactly that click did. I saw nothing different compared to how the corridor looked before. Not seeing anything apparent, I resumed my flight toward the door at a slower speed, still a little suspicious about what happened.

Nothing happened, even when I got within a few feet in front of the door. I cautiously placed my empty talon on the door ring and carefully pulled the door open. As I did so, click, another faint sound resounded through the corridor. I hurriedly beat my wings to propel me backward, away from the door. I looked all around me to see if anything happened. I first checked the direction that I've noticed people frequently forget about, above, but nothing of note was there, just a bland ceiling. I then turned around to see if anything happened behind me: still nothing. Turning my head back so that I was once again facing the now-opened door, I turned my head from side to side to survey my immediate surroundings, and again, nothing was there.

'Nothing again? What could those clicks have done? Surely they weren't there just to scare me, right?' I came up with a plausible hypothesis for what the sounds were for, but doubts quickly spread in my mind. 'No, what is the point of doing that? There is no danger in this room, so there would be no point in scaring me. Scaring me only makes me more cautious and alert than normal which makes it harder to catch me off guard with another trap, which I'm pretty sure the dungeon does not want... Actually, why am I assuming that this dungeon is sentient and has a consciousness?' I thought about this question for minutes before finally coming to a conclusion.

'It's probably because the phrasing of the last note in that book led me to believe that this dungeon was likely created by whoever wrote that book. If they did create this place, they would be able to implement mechanisms that serve no practical purpose other than pranking the trial-goer. Even if this idea were true, it would not help me much as I do not know the personality of the creator, so I have no way to know whether it is a serious trap or just a trick. For now, I'll just have to proceed forward with caution.'

Turning my eyes back to the open doorway, I noticed something that I had glossed over since I was preoccupied with ascertaining the state of the corridor after the second click. Unlike the other doorways in this dungeon, this one had some sort of darkness obscuring the entrance to the next room.

'What is this weird darkness? The only way forward is through this veil of darkness unless there is a secret entrance somewhere in this corridor.' I meticulously checked each bookshelf for any hidden mechanism, but I found absolutely nothing.

'So that door really is the only way to proceed. I really don't want to go through that darkness, but it seems I must.' I approached the door before stopping and simply hovering in midair a few inches away from it. 'I should try a few experiments first before entering it fully at least.'

I stuck out my free talon into the darkness and it safely passed through the darkness. My talon disappeared into the door, but I could still feel it connected to my body, unharmed. I then stuck my beak into the door and the same thing happened.

'Seems safe enough. The darkness was probably only there so I couldn't see what was in the next room before entering the door. Judging from this, I'm guessing that the next room will be fairly intense in terms of difficulty, which probably means I'm near the end of the dungeon. Let's get this over with then.'