Chapter 18

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[Floor 2 – Day 20]

[Total Days in Trial: 61]

I tried to stop him.

With every trick the Charisma Attribute would grant me, I tried to convince him otherwise. When the things I could think of on my own ran dry, the suggestions it gave me were things I should have had no way of guessing. Dialogue that seemed to come from nowhere, as Charisma urged me on.

I told him that there was no need for an old warrior like himself to go back to war.

I told him that he'd given up the sword for a reason.

He paused at that last one, but only for a moment. He'd turned to me with those sightless eyes, and looked through me, as if searching for something. Then, he turned away.

In the end, the Priest could not be deterred. He seemed to find a greater resolve, in fact. With every Charisma boosted word I gave, trying to convince him otherwise, he seemed to solidify his choice to leave.

“I have lived many years. I am not afraid of death. I know it approaches, with every passing day." He spoke calmly, but clearly. "Of what I fear, I can only say that I am afraid of what may befall this land. I have sensed terrible things. So, I will choose to die in service of the land in which I have lived my life. You, my disciple, must remain here.”

He did not say he would return.

In fact, I knew he wouldn’t. He was simply too kind to say it directly.

He left me the key to a small backroom that had never opened once during my stay. He instructed me on the proper maintenance of the garden, and reminded me to practice as he'd taught me. With great efforts, I helped him pack a small bag with food and supplies. I made sure he took my sandals, which were newer and in far better condition than his own, and I gave him a walking stick of wood I had made, carved with a symbol of faith matching what was etched into the side of his humble Church.

Together, we walked for a good distance down the road, before he asked me to return.

“Live, child.” He said, as he continued down the road without me. “Live, and pass on what I have taught you. That is all I ask.”

With that final request, I stopped and watched his small back carry on into the distance. There, I was left alone, and before the day was over, I received yet another message. Another grim reminder:

[SECONDARY QUEST]

[DEFEND THE CITIES: PROGRESS 0/3] [QUEST FAILED]

[REWARD REDUCED] [NEW SECONDARY QUEST ISSUED] [DEFEND THE CITIES: PROGRESS 0/2]

Things were progressing in a terrible way, and they even seemed to be accelerating, but I found that there was little I could do about it. As I was, I could barely help myself, much less help others, and it lead me down some dark thoughts. Even as I did my best to push them away, they haunted me.

What should I do, when faced with an impossible situation?

The honorable thing would have been to go with the Priest, but I wasn’t here because of honor. That wasn’t my goal, and as much as I could get attached to the idea of doing the right thing, I had to recognize that this wasn’t my fight.

The cynical path would have been to tell myself that none of this was real. That the Priest was just a constructed "piece" within a Floor meant to test me. That he wasn't a real human of flesh and blood, and what happened to him was ultimately pointless, because this wasn't Earth. This was just a "Floor." Nothing more.

This wasn’t my world. This wasn’t my responsibility. Even if the Trial tried to influence me into thinking it was: none of this had anything to do with me. I'd been plucked away and forced into this, without any real say on my part. I was only here because I wanted to live.

But, try as I might to adopt such thoughts, I simply couldn't.

The Priest had felt as real as I was. The things he'd said, the advice he'd given, the humble kindness he had shown me: I couldn't simply write him off as being artifical. I couldn't label him as a piece of a set, playing out a part. It didn't feel right to me.

So, my emotions fought, and in the end, I could come to no true conclusion. I simply felt I was a coward, and on that foundation of self-loathing, I pushed myself. Every minute of every hour, I strove to improve. As I sat in meditation, as I ate infrequently, as I fell back to only for a single meal a day, cooking simple meals, and following the instructions to meditate and heal just as the Priest had taught me: I pushed my limits in the hopes of reaching towards new breakthroughs in my Attributes and Skills. There was nothing else I could do.

The slow decline in my health resumed.

With the Priest gone, I was once again losing weight. Casting [Lesser Heal] was almost impossible for me to do more than once a day, but I managed. Even if it left me feeling drained and almost on the verge of passing out, I was finding inefficiencies, and correcting them. My ability to keep the Miracle running for a little longer each time, was progress enough that I was able to maintain my body and focus.

But it was hard.

I was able to continue, harshly pushing myself on. Relying almost entirely on willpower, and a practiced routine. As the days passed, I found that I had reached the point where I could Meditate with ease while walking and hunting. I had always been able to do it, but it had felt clumsy, and tricky. The breathing patterns made it extremely difficult to do anything that took serious effort, but now I could easily keep the patterns while moving about.

Meditation became a part of the entire day, soon after. Continuing it every moment I could, for the exception of when I was eating, drinking, or sleeping.

Unlocking the backroom in the small church, I found there was a small library. Books were present, all of them were covered in dust. I could not read them, as much as I tried. There was a desk and stool, as well. Dried ink sat out, clearly not used for decades, and parchment that crumbled when I picked it up, were all those held. Apart from those things, though, was an old chest. Opening it lead me to a folded cloth, which wrapped a simple suit of dried and cracked leather armor, and a rusted steel sword.

It seemed that the Priest really had once been a soldier, a very long time ago. If the condition of the armor was any indication, I could only imagine how many years had passed since that time.

Not for the first time, I felt somewhat awkward.

How little I knew about him, this kind old man who saved my life. How little I possibly could know about him, considering the circumstances that lead me here. From the moment I had touched down on the second Floor, events were already in motion. If I had not been who I was, with my illness, I might have found my way back to one of the cities, and never truly known him at all.

It was mind boggling, as a concept. Just how vast this floor must be, if all the people here were like the Priest. Real and true beings, with a history, memories, and lives of their own. I knew almost nothing about the 2nd Floor, or the world it seemed to host.

And the Priest hadn't been a man of many words, either. If it wasn’t for me trying to test the limits of Charisma, I might not even know a tiny fraction of his life.

He had taken me as a disciple, and never once even given me his name. I only known his name because of Lesser Analysis...

In fact, he had never asked for mine, either. It was as if such things had not mattered to him in the slightest. Instead, he had been far more focused on the present moment. On the world around him, and not on concepts of titles or personal details. Was there a lesson in that, I wondered?

I wished I could ask him, but he was already gone. Even if I ran all the way down the road after him, for all I really knew, he was already dead.

I struggled with that. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Did the floors truly exist? The first Floor, and its endless forests. This second Floor, and all of the life that inhabited it: Did these simply come into being to play out like a stage for people selected and put through the Trial? Was anyone here truly alive?

I felt they were.

Yet, if someone else were to get this same Trial, would they find copies of the Priest I'd met? Of the cities and all their inhabitants?

I didn’t know the answer.