You have completed a quest! The difficulty has been compared to your current level (1), and you have received essence for a greater feat.

WARNING: your raw essence gain has been artificially restricted by [Debt-Bonder X-09], an Infratech device.

You have been credited four (4) extra large essence crystals into your currency account.

You have advanced your [Follower of Wisp] base skill to [Favored of Wisp]!

You have raised each Wield stat by three (3).

You have one (1) talent available from advancing a base skill.

Your Patron skill max rank has been raised to two hundred (200).

You have quest reward items available to [claim]! Follow the link to receive them. [Favored of Wisp] Wisp is a great, flickering light in the distance. It is the way home, for people who are lost. Those who are in its favor are generally quick in action and quick to help. +three (3) to wield stats Please pick from the following pool of patron talents. [Greater Blessing] You do best when focusing solely on the reduction of harm, a beacon of safety in the middle of a group. +twenty percent (20%) to efficacy of protection spells when none of any other type are active, +twenty percent (20%) additional when casting on others [Greater Seeking] Your patron is exceptional at pointing out the way, and you are exceptional at following. +twenty percent (20%) to efficacy of guidance spells when none of any other type are active, +twenty percent (20%) additional when not in combat [Flicker Step] Unlocked (Wisp only). You are no longer content with the speed you can move on your own, so Wisp has granted you a portion of its own nature to use with its blessing. (active) ten (10) vigor. instantaneous. move up to six (6) feet, one (1) inch/level additional in any direction. counts as full dodge success when used in response to attacks [Quick Steps] Uncommon, Quest. What one needs most when running through the woods is conviction. Second most is a sturdy pair of shoes. +ten (10) to athletics, +ten percent (10%) to all travel speeds for you and your party

Once Hunter had hugged his mom and made sure the SysPol guards were taking care of Rodney, the only thing he managed to do before falling asleep again was pull off his shoes and coat and then crawl into his sleeping bag. He woke up just before dawn to so many notifications and stayed curled up while he dealt with them, mumbling to himself and rubbing his eyes.

“Oh, I get it,” he said sleepily, “base skill talents are like, specializations? Every single one of them. Except I don’t want to specialize any more, ugh. Unless I do?”

He rolled over with a groan, looking for his shoes, and found that his grimy and beat up yellow sneakers had been replaced with a fresh, even more vivid orange pair. He glanced around, unsure, then just shrugged and put them on, finding they fit even better than the old ones. Finally, he pulled himself to his feet with a yawn and saw his mom sitting next to the camp heater, drinking from a travel mug.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, wandering over to the heater as well, and taking a seat, “tell me about something.”

“Oh?” she said with a smile, “What can I tell you about today?”

“Umm, tell me why I shouldn’t take what I think is a short range teleport talent even though I really, really want to. You know, for starters.”

“Have you made a list yet?”

“No,” he mumbled, “I just woke up. I don’t want to see if it’s a bad idea, because it’s cool.”

“Would you be ignoring useful alternatives simply to get something cool?”

“Not really?” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Pretty good stuff for someone that’s not me, or someone that’s a different me, though.”

“Then,” she replied, taking a sip of her drink, “you should do what feels best, and if that is taking a fun, interesting talent over another situationally helpful but boring one, I don’t think it’s a poor choice.”

“Ok,” he said as he selected Flicker Step, then glanced over at the sleeping form of Rodney. “So, how is he?”

“He’ll live. He probably wouldn’t have, stranded deep in the Source like that. You did a good thing, bump.”

“Thanks, Mom. You know, the best good and all. He still doesn’t, umm, look too well though.”

“Burn teams have a healer with them, in case things have gone incredibly bad. He’ll make it until they arrive, and the guards have said they’ll watch over him. He’ll have two more days in pretty rough shape to go, and then he’ll be good as new.”

Hunter nodded a little, arms folded across his knees. “I’m going to need more bandages and cookies, I think. I won’t today, though. Pretty sure I can finish this whole thing off.”

“Oh?” his mother tilted her head, as she looked at him carefully.

“Well, yeah,” he replied, looking down. “I mean, I don’t get any of the skills or essence I earned until I touch the Fount, right? That means I gotta clear it. Plus, Farmer Olafsson sounds like kind of a jerk.”

“He’s not,” she started, paused, then continued with a chuckle, “That is to say, you know he’s not real, and none of the story being told is either.”

“Right, but, umm,” he blushed the tiniest bit, “it’s still neat. Like, the story. I want to see the end of it, especially if the end involves me slapping Olafsson in his jerk face.”

“That is a perfectly fine reason to go back in, then. That, and the rewards, of course.”

They spent a little while after that going through a shortened exercise session. First, his mother wanted to check him for any lingering injuries that would prevent fluid movement, so that he didn’t have any surprises in the middle of a fight. It turned out, he couldn’t move his head all the way to the right without a slight twinge, probably from the knock he’d gotten from the brawler scarecrow, but other than that he was alright.

Then his mother wanted to see his talent in action, and Hunter did, too. He took a relatively solid, comfortable position, carrying a heavy punch bowl, his feet apart in a slight squat, arms bent toward each other at an angle, and he relaxed. He was centered, he was still, he wasn’t moving at all except for his slow, measured breathing. He felt around in his Infra, through the extradimensional channels that made up the nonphysical part of his being, and he found a new one that felt like move. He breathed in, decided to move over there, and before he could breathe out, he was six feet away, still in the same position.

“Oh,” he said, blinking as his perspective changed, “oh wow.”

“How was that?” his mother asked, “Was there any disorientation?”

“It was,” he mumbled, “ok?” He pulled his focus off his arm and let it float into the air, trying to judge exactly how long it would take to get the vigor back.

“I think, perhaps, you should save it for emergencies only, until you’ve had a few days to practice with it.”

“That’s probably a good idea, yeah.”

Hunter went back into the maze and it was much different than his earlier venture. He looked up at the sky and while there were still murdercrows circling, they were in sparse, small flocks of a half dozen or so. When he came to the second turn, he stopped, stunned.

“It’s like a, umm,” he mumbled to himself, “a volcano.”

The circle his mother had made was clear, and there was a path she must have made to leave it, but all around it was a sloping pile of bird corpses, growing to at least three feet high at the boundary. The rest of the path, from about fifty feet leading up to the circle, and extending past it until the intersection, was carpeted at least one crow carcass deep as well. Hunter leaned on his staff for a moment and just looked at the mess, the devastation, and the nearly empty sky made a lot more sense.

“She,” he shook his head and chuckled, “killed like all of them. She coulda got us out easy after the first couple minutes, probably, but she stayed until they were all gone. Dead. Whatever. And these are just the ones that didn’t go into the walls.”

“mama,” Trips said, “bear.”

“Yup,” he murmured, then moved on.

After climbing over the remains of the enormous flock that had chased him the day before, Hunter jogged through the corn at a good pace, his Infra telling him the first checkpoint would still be clear for another couple hours, following Trips’ directions but still keeping on guard. He was only attacked a handful of times, by a lone crow or a pair, each time dodging out of the way and letting them go by to flap back up into the dull, brown sky.

Once he passed the first rest area, Trips climbed out of his satchel and back onto his shoulder, so it could look out for silent attacks while still telling him where to go. There weren’t many birds in that section either, so Hunter started to increase his pace, seeing just how fast the boost from his new shoes could comfortably make him. Between his new stride from the sneakers, his advances in meditation and athletics, and the straight, flat paths, he wasn’t losing any vigor even as he went faster than his trip home from the city.

He slid to a stop in the second clearing with still plenty of time to go before, presumably, the scarecrows regenerated in their fields.

“So,” he mumbled, stretching his neck gross it popped, “no more fighting crows. Not like we were anyway today, but it’s probably good to confirm?”

“hold,” the helperbot agreed, and nodded from his shoulder.

“And there’s probably another trick to it after the next scarecrow. Ugh.”

“yeah.”

“Now I’m hesitating, which, ugh,” he said, then stopped, head down. “It’s stupid. I’m being stupid. Thing just went really wrong for that group that brought in Rodney. That’s all. I don’t know why they couldn’t get it done, but they couldn’t. They probably deserved worse, honestly, leaving the new guy behind or whatever. But we saw the worst case scenario, so many birds, and we ran in, we survived it. Then we did the right thing, called Mom, got her to save our butts. Ugh, and I didn’t even want her to come.

“But I guess, that’s why, you know, we went to this one first. Level one hundred, maybe boosted to one-fifty, two hundred and sixty or so skill rating turns into four hundred, and we’re sitting on six hundred maybe? I dunno for sure. Plenty of clearance, if we’re on top of our game, and yeah I wasn’t for a little bit, but that was yesterday. I screw up somewhere harder, I might get really hurt, but now I know some of the kinds of screwups I’m going to make. If we ever want to push it, go somewhere higher, and things go this bad, we bail. Easy decision. But we can handle this.

“Alright, good pep talk. Let’s go.”

The maze after the swordsman puppet’s area didn’t seem to get any trickier, but without the large clouds of birds to use for direction, it still took a while. The random, silent birds that would attack still only made one or two passes before flying away, but Hunter figured out a problem when he came to the first dead end and a small flock descended upon him.

“They’re not leaving,” he whined to Trips, darting in between two of the murdercrows as they tried to edge him into the corner. “And Rodney said,” he started, but paused to, as gently as he could, smack one monster bird away from his head as it angled toward him, “the more we kill, the more they come. Do we just gotta let them chase us the whole way?”

He started to make his way back the way he came, thinking the crows might take off when he was officially out of the dead end, but they stayed even as he reached the intersection. Hunter frowned and then forced himself not to, smoothing out his emotions, letting himself stay in the meditative state, and went through his forms while the bird things assaulted him. This is, he thought, what I told Miracle to do, after all.

Hunter ducked under one, stepped to the side to let a second pass, and swept his free hand in an arc to deflect the flight of a third, watching carefully as they’d ascend to a few feet above the top of the corn before diving back at him. He planted one end of his staff on the ground, kept his right hand on it, and worked on minimizing his movements even further. A tip of the rod to one side to knock a crow a foot to his left, a pivot on one heel to narrow his profile to avoid another, a sweep of the other foot to reposition himself to the opposite side of the metal pole as two more birds slammed down to the ground where he was.

After a few minutes of practice, dancing in and around the paths of a half dozen monsters attempting to kill him, Hunter made a mistake. He pushed the staff too far forward, intercepting one crow, and momentarily forgot how heavy the seven feet of strange metal actually was. As he raised his other hand up to block a second crow, he stumbled forward slightly and smacked it too hard with his palm, watching with wide eyes as it tumbled through the air and into the corn, where it was promptly ripped into nothingness by the grainy flash of light.

“Oh, flip,” he muttered, looking up to the sky to see how many replacements were going to swoop in and ruin his day, but none came. “Huh, umm. Want to do an experiment, Trips?”

“sure.”

He had kept moving while he talked, edging closer to the wall of corn stalks with every quick, careful moment to avoid an attacking crow, until he was barely a foot from it. At that moment, one came sailing down right toward his face and he dropped into a squat at the last possible second, biting his lip as the roar of thunder went off behind him. Hunter looked around again briefly, not seeing any additional attacks, and then he grinned.

“So, if Rodney was right about killing them, then it only counts if we kill them. Walls are fair game.”

Hunter stepped to the side around another murdercrow and pushed it into the wall, then grabbed his staff with both hands to knock a second one in, and in less than a minute, had dealt with the rest. He stood in the intersection for a moment longer, looking around to see if he’d be attacked again, and then jogged down the next path.

He went back to making good time Dad says that’s the most important part of a trip, tricking and parrying most of the formerly terrifying monsters into the still fairly terrifying wall traps, and soon found himself at the entrance to another clearing. Hunter checked his vigor and other stats, finding them all nearly full, and nodded a little.

“So,” he murmured, “same plan as the last two times, if we can manage it. Otherwise, umm, just remember it’s not so bad. Stuff in here is scary, but that doesn’t mean much.” He took a moment longer to center himself, and then stepped into the rest zone, ready for another fight.

Everything went dark as he walked in, briefly at least, before the pinpoint lights on his shoulders and hood lit up and illuminated the area around him. When the corn burst out of the ground to pin him in, the tan sky faded to the same chocolate brown as the dirt, and the formerly immobile stalks of corn surrounding the clearing all rustled as a brisk breeze swept through. Hunter stayed right at the entrance, frowning at the slight change in environment and the lack of a scarecrow. It had been replaced by a small campfire in the middle of the cleared circle, the flames flickering in the breeze.

“Different is always bad, Trips,” he mumbled, “At least that’s the lesson we’re-”

Hunter was abruptly cut off as the wind roared louder for a few seconds, the campfire growing and waving before it exploded in a shower of sparks. Hunter shielded his eyes momentarily as Infra put up a nameplate.

[Olafsson’s Flame Puppet] An adventurer had heard tales of [Farmer Olafsson] and came to the village one day to confront him. “They’re just clothes stuffed with straw,” he said, “I’ll burn the lot of them to cinders, and then the old man himself.” When he came to the maze, he met this monster, and it wasn’t the farmer who died, slowly, screaming as he was immolated.

Three (3) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] found.

Two (2) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] defeated.

When he looked again, there was another scarecrow standing in front of him, or at least the shape of one. It was about seven feet tall and almost impossibly narrow like the previous two, but this one was made entirely out of fire oh just no. Hunter readied his staff, shifting his grip so he held it near the end and most of the length was pointed toward the flame monster, just as the scarecrow lifted a hand and made an overhead throwing motion.

He moved to the side, feet shuffling quickly, even before he saw what was coming his way. It wasn’t much of a fireball, not really, not compared to what he’d seen Ernie toss around on occasion, but it was still a mass of flame roughly the size of his head, and it roared as it passed him, crashing into the corn and fizzling out.

Hunter started to approach the monster carefully, moving the way his mother had drilled into him, his weight always centered above the foot still on the ground. That way, when he had to dodge the second and third fireballs, he wasn’t caught out, able to shove off and sidestep each one while still advancing. Trips leapt off his shoulder while he was avoiding the third attack and started to skitter in a wide circle around the scarecrow.

“Hey,” he said just loud enough to be heard over the roar of the flames, “there’s no cord.”

The little bot bounced in a shrug as it continued to move, just replying, “fire.”

“Ok,” he nodded, abruptly stopping in his tracks as the flame monster raised both hands and a ring of fire erupted from its feet, rapidly expanding in every direction. Emergency? he thought. Move. As the rippling barrier of flame, half his height, shot toward him he Flicker Stepped and found himself on the other side of it, Rising Tides already coaxing him to swing his staff up. At the last instant, he cast a Water Burst and felt the affinity rush down the metal rod, the wave of water increasing in intensity before it erupted from the other end, right as the pole crashed into the side of the scarecrow.

There was an eruption of steam and Hunter immediately backpedalled, checking briefly over his shoulder to make sure the ring was gone. When the cloud dissipated, the scarecrow was nowhere to be seen, but the wind had returned and the campfire looked unstable again.

“Trips!” he called out, “Back!” The robot nodded and stopped approaching the fire from the other side, reversing quickly just as it exploded again, and this time Hunter forced himself to watch, just squinting his eyes. In the brief, bright flash, the scarecrow rematerialized directly above the small pile of logs, and then floated quickly over to its right. Hunter followed, already prepping another Water Burst, but had to skid to a stop as the fiery monster tossed a pair of fireballs his way in quick succession.

The first missed because it seemed like the scarecrow was leading his throw, but the second was straight at where he’d stopped, feet not planted yet, not at all ready to avoid the rapidly approaching bolt. Hunter did the only stupid thing he could think of stupid, and swung his staff, discharging his spell at the moment the metal hit the oncoming flame. There was another burst of obscuring steam, he found his balance, and then immediately rolled to the side out of the way of a third fireball that came through the mist.

“Ok,” he muttered, back on his feet, spending more affinity to charge his staff again, “we’ve got this, I think.”

He was close enough to the fiery scarecrow that he could feel the heat, so close the ventilators in his armor turned on automatically, so close it felt like the fine hairs on the backs of his hands were being singed off. He was so close that the monster stopped throwing its attacks, and started swinging its long, whip-like arms at him, each slash herding him away from the middle of the clearing, away from the campfire where it would respawn.

“okay,” Trips said, the screen flashing briefly, and Hunter nodded.

He ducked under another swipe from the fiery claws and twisted, letting his momentum send the channeling rod into the side of the puppet without releasing his Water Burst. There wasn’t any impact, but he’d been prepared for that, so when the staff went right through the monster and it burst into a plume of smoke, he let the heavy pole carry him to the side. By the time he was steady, the fire in the middle was already wavering again, but his helperbot was right there and jamming its clamp deep into the logs.

He released the spell, felt it travel out of him and through Trips, and then the clearing went completely dark except for his armor lights as the fire went out abruptly in another sizzling burst. Trips ambled over a moment later, steaming but looking otherwise unharmed, and flopped onto the ground next to him. Hunter thought that was a very good idea, and dropped down to a seated position as well, chuckling.

“See, we had it,” he murmured, looking through his satchel for his second focus and shaking his head as he dismissed a handful of notifications.

You have taken five (5) damage from environmental factors! x7 (35 total)

You have taken six (6) damage from environmental factors! x6 (71 total)

You have taken seven (7) damage from environmental factors! x4 (99 total)

After a long rest and a slightly shorter conversation with his mother, Hunter got up and left the clearing, walking out from the dark and into the dull, beige light again. He walked along the dirt path, changing his grip on the staff nervously from time to time, keeping an eye out for whatever trick the Source was going to throw his way next.

“Mom says it’s an overreaction,” he mumbled, “to drop staff fighting for bow and arrow. I mean, she’s right and all, but yikes. We need something to keep our distance. It’ll probably screw up my style, too. She doesn’t know anyone that’s dropped one of their skills after they’ve already gotten it this far. And, get this, she said when I was a kid I had a toy bow and arrow, and I broke two windows and almost impaled my foot. I seriously don’t remember any of that, but it kind of sounds like me? We’ll just need to come up with a new plan.”

He continued to travel the path, a frown growing on his face and getting deeper by the minute. The dark, dirt road simply kept going straight, no twists or turns or intersections, and that started to bother him. He stopped the moment he saw an irregular shape in the middle of the dirt, squinting to get a closer look, then remembered all his supplies. Hunter rummaged in his satchel and found the oldtech binoculars he’d bought, and looked again.

“Oh, it’s just a,” he trailed off, then approached the apparently dead murdercrow slowly. He poked it with his stick, but it didn’t move or react. “Actually, it’s fake? Or stuck to the ground? I dunno, Trips, I’m not a fan of this place.”

He moved on, going a little faster down the straight pathway, stepping over or around the occasional dead bird, then pairs of them, and eventually clumps of five or six. He jabbed at most of them with his staff, and none of them were the same soft, jiggly consistency as the actual crows he’d killed. They were hard and immobile and they felt pretty much the same as the dirt under his feet, more of a decoration, an approximation, than something real.

After another mile or so, the carcasses growing in number until it looked like his mom had been there, he came to a mound of them and on the other side, a clearing with a house visible in the middle.

“Oh, we made it?” he said as he scratched his head under the hood. “Guess we missed a scarecrow somewhere, huh. I am not doubling back to look for it, though. Let’s go slap an old man and get out of here.”

“yeah,” Trips said from his shoulder.

He climbed over the pile carefully and walked into the clearing, looking around. It was about a quarter acre, he guessed, and it was basically, boringly, just someone’s yard. There was short, dead grass covering the ground, the same color as the sky and the corn surrounding it, that led all the way to the modestly sized cabin at the back of the area. Hunter saw a rusting pile of metal off to the left that looked like it used to be a cross between a train car and a pickup truck, and over to the right there was a huge pile of hay bales covered with a striped tarp. He shrugged and started across the lawn toward the house, not realizing his mistake until about halfway there.

Hunter felt a rumbling, deep and loud, in his guts and his bones, and he whipped his head from side to side to find the origin. First he looked toward the remains of the truck coulda been an engine, but nothing was happening there, so he turned back to the hay pile. It was slowly rising, the bales rising and forming into a vague person shape, if that person was twenty feet tall and almost that wide oh no, and the striped tarp was wrapping around the top to make a shirt. A second covering must have been in the pile somewhere, because whatever it was slithered around the legs to make dark pants as well.

He stumbled back, blinking, as the giant scarecrow formed and then stomped over to the house, reaching behind it to pull out we are so what looked like a half plow attached to a tree trunk, but in its huge hand looked the size of a hatchet. It bent over again so in trouble and grabbed a giant gun, basically just four cannon barrels stuck together and welded to a massive shotgun stock, then the huge monster turned to face him. The misshapen hay bale that made up its head split open to reveal a mass of those same sharp, black feathers, and when it roared, it felt like the ground, the sky, everything shook.

[Olafsson’s Giant Troll Puppet] [Farmer Olafsson] had one regret in his long, hateful life, and it was that none of his numerous enemies ever made it to the center of his deadly corn maze. If they had, they would have found this monster, his life’s work, his masterpiece.

Four (4) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] found.

Three (3) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] defeated.

Hunter stayed crouched behind the wreck of the vehicle, counting the booms in his head. One, two, three, flip where’s four? With each shot from the scarecrow’s huge gun, he could hear metal tearing where the pellets slammed into his rapidly dissolving cover. He’d been hiding there since the troll had started firing constantly, each shot tearing a hole at least six feet wide out of the dead lawn, just hoping to come up with some kind of plan before the truck was completely torn apart.

“Trips, any-” he was interrupted by the fourth barrel going off, much closer than before, and he looked up to see the top part of the hulk of metal teetering before crashing down toward him. He got out of the way in a hurry with a quick Flicker Step, leaned forward, and then took off running while he listened to the monster reload. There was a snap as it opened the gun, and Hunter ran, then four ominous clicks as it slowly reloaded each of its huge barrels, and Hunter turned with nowhere to go, and then there was a louder crunch as it readied the shotgun again, and Hunter was stranded in open space. “Ideas?” he finished, weakly.

He stared up at the giant as it swung the massive gun toward him with one hand, really wishing time would slow down just a little, for no reason other than the universe deciding to be helpful for once, to give him time to think. When he could see down the barrels of the gun, he moved suddenly, tossing his staff in one direction and leaping the opposite way right as the monster fired. He didn’t look back to see how much the blast missed him by, he was too focused on counting as he ran at an angle toward the troll. When the second shot was about to go off he faked a move to the outside and moved instead to his right, twisting and running directly at the giant puppet.

I am, he thought briefly, as he sprinted between the monster’s legs and skidded to a stop behind it, incredibly fast. He grabbed Trips and tossed it into the air onto the troll’s back before stepping in and pressing his fingers to the back of its right leg, knocking a chunk of hay and tarp away with a Water Burst. Before he had a chance to follow up, though, there was a loud, distracting thump as the puppet thing tossed its gun away, and then an even louder, deafening one as it took its axe in both hands and slammed it into the ground.

Hunter blinked, suddenly aware he was lying on his back, as the behemoth turned around in a slow, lumbering shuffle and lifted the makeshift weapon again. He rolled to the side to avoid the next attack, and was starting to get to his feet when the plow dropped right next to him, the dead grass rippled outward, and he fell again, this time onto his face. He Flicker Stepped while still prone, appearing between the legs of the giant, and then grabbed two handfuls of tarp and pulled himself up just before the axe hit the ground a third time.

He slowly climbed up the inside and then back of the leg as the troll started to stomp around and roar even louder, holding on for dear life as it tried to shake him off, and soon met up with Trips. The little helperbot was clinging onto the middle of the monster’s back with two clamps and repeatedly jabbing its third into an increasingly larger hole in the hay, and it greeted him with a quick, “help.”

Hunter jammed his hand into the gap and started yanking out handfuls of stuffing, while the increasingly angry monster threw down its axe and started stomping over to the house. Once he could fit his whole arm inside the bulk of the thing’s torso, he clawed around inside until he found something jagged and hard, but he couldn’t get his fingers around it to rip it out. Whatever it was, it enraged the puppet even further, and it started trying to reach back to grab at him, but its arms couldn’t quite make it behind its back.

Even though it missed by a fair margin on its own, Hunter felt Rising Tides activate in response, and he laughed a little as he cast a Water Burst and slammed his palm into the mass, eliciting another even louder roar. The scarecrow started to turn again when it reached the house, each step shaking Hunter and Trips from side to side as they held on, and he burned the rest of his affinity as fast as he could, feeling the force of a crashing wave travelling down his arm over and over as he channeled it deep into the soggy hay.

Just before the monster tried to slam him into the wall with its entire bulk, as he was going lightheaded from dumping so much of his magical essence at once, right before he knew he’d have to drop to the ground and try another idea, he felt whatever he was touching shatter. The troll’s chest expanded suddenly, he felt a stinging, sharp pain in his fingers please still be attached, and then the giant wobbled forward and back for a long, worrying moment before it crashed face first to the ground and burst at the seams, hay and dust going everywhere.

He curled up on the lumpy mass, clutching his hand to his chest and looking for his spare bandages, unable to stop shaking, for a very long time. As he wrapped his hand up whew five by five, he looked over at his companion and mumbled, “I really can’t tell if we’re super good at this, or very, extraordinarily bad.”

Hunter had been in a lot of grumpy farmers’ houses in his life. As fake, as weird, as off-putting as the rest of the Source had been, the end was surprisingly realistic. The floorboards creaked, there were ancient newspapers stacked on the floor everywhere, every inch of the wall was covered in weird photos or knick-knacks, and the whole thing smelled like dust and old people. He and Trips crept quietly through the mess at first, but soon realized the place was empty of anything going to jump out at attack them.

When they found the small bathroom near the back of the house, the smell got a lot worse and a notification popped up.

[Farmer Olafsson - Deceased] The poison the villagers fed him at the summer festival was a success, and the tyrant of the town will no longer ruin their reputation as fine, upstanding citizens of the kingdom. The crows will eat most of Olafsson’s corn, but now that the route is clear, the oppressed people can loot his ill-gotten gains to buy food. Take a souvenir from the farmer’s extensive trophy room for your troubles.

“Guess we don’t get to slap him,” he muttered, nudging the small, shrunken corpse with the toe of his sneaker. “Oh well.”

They found the “trophy room,” which was more of an enclosed back porch with even more junk hung on every wall, and Hunter took a look around. There were a lot of cobbled-together armor and weapons on one side of the room, none of which he thought would work for him, and the opposite end seemed to be filled with stacks upon stacks of crafting materials and essence crystals not interested. Hanging right in the middle of the room, however, amidst a collection of the nicer-looking equipment, was a sheathed sword that looked interesting.

He took it down off the wall and checked the blade, finding the slightly curved two and a half foot length polished to a mirror sheen from the basket handle to the pointed tip. It wasn’t an exact match, but it reminded him, more than anything, of Ellie’s mother’s sword, the one she was never allowed to practice with.

[Royal Justicar's Sabre] Rare. This is a sword forged by a master, gifted by a king, and wielded by the law. doubles (x2) the efficacy of all sword-related talents Would you like to [claim] this as your souvenir? Touch the Fount to confirm.

“So,” he said, tucking the sheath into the strap of his satchel, as he watched a wide, shallow bowl rise up from the floor on a narrow pedestal, “Mom did say to bring a gift.” He reached out and pressed his fingers to the edge of the Fount and was bombarded with Infra screens.

You have completed [The World’s Largest Corn Maze]! Calculating results… complete.

The difficulty (lv. 100++) has been compared to your current level (1), and you have been rewarded essence for an extraordinary Source feat.

WARNING: your raw essence gain has been artificially restricted by [Debt-Bonder X-09], an Infratech device.

WARNING: the amount of raw essence awarded is too large to convert to crystallized essence.

Your essence reward will be converted into useful goods by Infra. You have been credited one (1) near unique trinket, and one (1) random, rare item compatible with your [mod/class/talents].

You have reward items available to [claim]! Follow the link to receive them.

You have raised Infusion to one hundred (100).

You have one (1) talent available from maxing your infusion skill.

You have raised Evocation to one hundred (100).

You have one (1) talent available from maxing your evocation skill.

You have advanced your [Water Affinity] base skill to [Wave Affinity]!

You have raised each stat by one (1).

Resilience now at 100/117. Affinity now at 4/24. Vigor now at 89/114.

You have one (1) talent available from maxing a base skill.

Your Affinity skill max rank has been raised to two hundred (200).

You have earned two (2) achievements!

Would you like to be returned to the beginning of the Source now? Y/N

Hunter glanced around, made sure all his things were in order, and nodded as he thought a quick yes, then found himself back in the initial clearing, where his mother was seated and eating something from the lunchbox.

“Hello there, bump,” she said, setting her sandwich down. She was about to speak further when she noticed the look on his face, then stopped herself and instead stood up with her arms open.

He ran over, face hot, and all but tackled her in a hug as he felt the adrenaline from the last few hours finally leave his body, and he cried quietly against her chest.

“How do people do that?” he asked, after a long while of sitting quietly with his mother. “Umm, repeatedly and on purpose? It was awful.”

She took a while to respond, sitting on the sleeping bag with him, still inside the entrance area of the Source. “There are schools of thought,” she murmured. “It’s important to remember that even as dangerous and scary as it seemed, it was all constructed by an alien computer. Infra doesn’t have a fine grasp on human psychology, it has more of a very wide angle view of it, and you can tell when you look at various Sources. There’s a fair chance that this maze was built to be a horrifying, gruelling gauntlet where you fight animated, murderous simulacra until the constant, vague uneasiness from the environment causes you to make and then deal with mistakes you wouldn’t have ordinarily. There’s an equal chance that Infra found the terms ‘corn maze’ and ‘scarecrow,’ in its scan of the lexicon, and then threw this all together at random.”

“So,” Hunter said, staring at the ground, “it might be meant to be the worst experience ever in order to be the, umm, kind of training you can’t get elsewhere? But it also might just be an accident.”

“Exactly,” she nodded. “The first type of Source-crawler, the most prominent, we can call the enthusiast. Enthusiasts are going to come to this place, rightly decide that it isn’t any fun at all, in fact it’s a bit of a nightmare for its level, and then leave. The second kind are completionists. They’ll visit this place eventually, but once they talk to the enthusiasts, they’ll decide to wait until they’re my level or higher. There’s no psychological stress to be had when you can shrug off whatever the Source throws your way, for the most part.

“Lastly, there’s the survivalists. They’ll have a conversation with the enthusiasts, then another with the completionists, and then they might decide this is exactly the place for them. They might come here at or around the right level and then give it their best try. This may be only peak mortal, but it seems like it’s an experience, and it’s exactly the kind of experience a survivalist would revel in. They’ll come, and they’ll die, or they’ll run away, or they’ll complete it like you did, bump. And then, of course, they’ll be done with it.”

“Basically, umm,” he murmured, “to answer my question, no one comes here repeatedly and on purpose. Because it’s awful. And it’s ok that I thought it was awful.”

“Exactly,” she said, and lightly ruffled his hair. “There are some unique and almost beautiful experiences to be had in Sources and it’s honestly just bad luck that you began with this one. If I had known exactly what it was like, I would have suggested something different. Let’s just sit here a while longer, though, until you feel better about it.”