In contrast to the temple’s stone doorway, the darkness which had seemed to envelope the path quickly vanished once Maiz and Riala were through the entrance. Maiz blinked. It had been rather odd, how the darkness seemed to act like a screen, preventing sight of the scene beyond the archway from in the glade.

In a moment, Maiz saw why.

Stumbling onto the path, which was really more of an opening in the densely packed trees and underbrush, Maiz stopped just short of a tripwire, poorly concealed with leaves, strung across the path.

“Traps? I mean, that’s not exactly tough to spot. How is it a test of Intelligence?”

“Well, remember that this is still basically the same test we used to use to judge the intelligence of every sixteen-year-old in the entire world. The benchmark isn’t really too high at the beginning.”

Right. Maiz scanned the trail for a few feet in front of him, examining the ground and the trees around him, then remembered to look up. In every adventure novel he read, the protagonist always failed to look up.

“Oh good! I almost thought you weren’t going to get that!”

There was a rather obvious net strung among the foliage. Maiz had to look around for a moment to find the trigger, until he noticed a suspiciously low-hanging branch which appeared to connect to the mechanism holding the net up. Maiz sighed, then stepped over the tripwire and walked a few feet further on the path, avoiding the branch as he did so. What does this even have to do with my Intelligence?

“Does higher Intelligence let you see better?” Maiz had often wondered about the exact meaning of different attributes, but his father had not very talkative on the subject, and books about such basic concepts were surprisingly rare.

“Well, not really. There’s basically two aspects to Intelligence. High Intelligence improves your perception, letting you see little details and also the bigger picture in most situations. It also improves your comprehension of information and your retention of that information. This part of the test is checking your perception, and you’re doing fine so far. Just keep taking your time and be careful! That’s all the advice I’ll give you.”

It took a while to proceed down the path, as Maiz had to constantly stop and check his surroundings for anything suspicious. He refused to allow himself to fail the trial because he didn’t take the time to examine his surroundings. Soon his back was aching from constantly stooping over to examine the ground, but he grew more adept at spotting the traps hidden along the path.

He was also dubiously examining the lush greenery around him. Caelos, his home city, was on the edge of a desert, and while Maiz had seen trees before, he had never beheld such a wild collection of plant life before. Trees stretched a far as Maiz could see, many as tall as the tallest buildings in his home. The sky was a tapestry of green leaves, swaying slowly in the gentle breeze, and there was an incessant noise of insects and birds chirping and tweeting through the canopy. Maiz was unused to travel through a forest, and even the path they were on was littered with branches, leaves, and other detritus of nature. Their progress was slowed further as Maiz had to take care not to trip or otherwise hurt himself in the uneven ground.

He didn’t mind however. The traps grew more sophisticated as they went along, from pressure triggers to traps hidden in the forest scenery. One net’s mechanism was held in place by a seemingly innocuous root on the path. Maiz had almost missed that one, but he was proud that he did not fall for any of the tricks. This isn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be. It seemed like the decision to take this trial had been the right one.

After an hour or so of inching along the path, Maiz was getting bored. That stick is a different color from the ones around it. Perfect. Maiz had not seen any of the other traps trigger, but he was somewhat curious. Kneeling, he picked up a rock and threw it at the stick from ten feet away. As soon as the rock made contact, a gods-damned arrow flew out from the trees, passing through the space where his neck would have been if he had stepped on the stick.

“Riala?” Maiz asked, feeling strangely calm. “I thought you said this trial wasn’t lethal?”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’re only in danger in the loosest sense of the word. If you’re ‘killed’ by anything here, it will just be considered a failure of the trial and you’ll re-enter your body in Saleria!”

“Huh.” Maiz wasn’t sure if he was comforted or disturbed by that news. He had already decided to risk everything on this gamble. There were really only two outcomes at this point: success or failure.

“It doesn’t matter anyways, because there’s no way you’re going to fail the trial!” Riala echoed his own resolve, but her words felt far more encouraging to Maiz. It felt like a long time since someone had believed in him, or cared about him at all. He was smiling rather foolishly at her, not looking ahead, when his head smacked into a wall.

“Ow!” It was a grey stone wall, clearly the work of a high-ranked Mason, with pieces fitted so tightly that it seemed completely smooth. It blocked the path forward, looking extraordinarily out of place in the dense forest. “What the hells is a wall doing here?”

Riala was laughing. “Oh I love this one! See if you can figure it out, because if you don’t I’ll never let you live it down!”

Grumbling, Maiz set himself to examining the wall carefully for any sort of traps, perhaps runes? He also checked the edges of the wall for any sort of mechanisms designed to catch him unawares. As he was considering how best to scale the wall--perhaps carve handholds into it--he smacked himself.

Blushing, he simply stepped off the path, wary for any traps in the underbrush, and walked around the it. Behind him, Riala burst out into another round of laughter.

On the other side of the wall was a pedestal, also looking rather incongruous in the middle of the forest, with a large book resting on it. “Great!” Riala said as she also rounded the wall’s corner. “We’re finally past the trapped section of the path! Now it’s going to get interesting!”

“What? How?”

“Don’t worry, just pick up the book!”

Sighing, Maiz picked up the book. Trying to get a straight answer out of Riala was tougher than the test had been so far. Opening the tome, Maiz instantly recognized it as a spellbook, mostly thanks to its title, SPELLBOOK OF MINOR ICEBOLT. “Wait, can I use this?” As far as Maiz knew, one had to have a magic-related title to learn any spell, and each title had a different set of spells it used.

“Oh, you won’t be able to use that spell outside of the trial, but in here, everything is created specially to work with the Seeker title!”

“That’s…” fascinating. Maiz had always wondered, somewhat covetously, about what exactly allowed certain titles to perform magic. It appeared that the gods were able to change the fundamental nature of either spells or the title-system at will.

“Uh, are you going to learn it?”

Maiz shook himself. “Right. I’m on it.” Maiz flipped the page, expecting arcane knowledge to pour into his mind as the book’s enchantment took effect. Nothing happened. “Uh Riala? I don’t think the enchantment on this book is working properly.”

She laughed at him. She seemed to do that a lot. “That book isn’t enchanted! This is a test of Intelligence, do you really think it would let you take a shortcut so that you could avoid reading?” She tapped her nose knowingly. “Besides, when you get out of here, you’d better remember that enchanted books are a waste of money! They’re ridiculously expensive since they’re difficult to make, and only single use. If you want to learn a spell, you’re better off doing it the hard way!”

“Of course.” Maiz said grumpily. Well, at least I’m good at this. Kicking a loose branch out of the way, Maiz plopped to the ground and started reading.

********

Magic was a lot more complicated than Maiz had thought. The ‘spellbook’ was also a primer on the basics of elemental magic, along with including the necessary information to cast the spell Minor Icebolt. Apparently, mana could be manipulated in a variety of ways by different types of spellcasters. This type of magic was among the most simple, involving simply gathering mana near the skin of the hands, and then speaking a phrase keyed to a longer arcane description--a spell formula--of the exact effect desired.

That was not to say that Maiz found the process easy. According to the book, this spell could be learned by many spellcasters with a title for elemental magic, but it would be best learned by Hydromancers, who had a massive boost to water spells. As Riala had told him earlier, as spells became more complex, more specialized titles would be required to cast them at all.

As a Seeker, Maiz should not have been able to learn this spell. However, there was a note in the book that the spell had been modified to take advantage of the unique properties of the trial’s world, allowing anyone within to cast it as if they had an elemental magic title. Which meant that, while he was technically able to cast the spell, it wasn’t easy.

“Minor Icebolt!” Maiz cried for what felt like the hundredth time. His hands were outstretched, and he hopefully thought that they felt slightly chilly as he uttered the words.

“One-hundred! Okay, I guess I should help you out.” Riala had been watching Maiz with undisguised boredom, perhaps even frustration, but now she bounded to her feet, full of energy. It was strange, how fast her mood shifted. “You’ve been doing it all wrong this whole time!”

Maiz stared at the Celestial Judge. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?” Maiz had spent almost ten hours in front of this pedestal by his measure. Though he should have fainted from hunger and exhaustion long since, he felt physically fine, and the shining sun overhead gave no sign that time had passed at all. But doing anything for hours on end with no success was still incredibly aggravating.

“I’m still a Judge, you know? I want to make sure you actually learn from all of this stuff, or else all that’s gonna happen at the end is you getting incinerated by an annoyed deity. So anyways, you haven’t been moving your mana in the right way at all. You started getting the hang of taking hold of it, but it never actually makes it to your hands.”

“Well, yeah, that’s to be expected considering I can’t see what I’m gods-damned doing!” That was the truly frustrating part of the whole experience. Without a magic-based title, Maiz couldn’t see his mana. “How did people in the past manage this, anyways?”

“Well, the priests back then usually taught kids the thought exercises for mana manipulation, in case they would become spellcasters when they grew up. That’s why I’m okay with telling you about this: it’s not really part of the test.”

“Thought exercises?”

“Yep. Basically, it’s a trick for visualizing your mana, even if you can’t see it like a spellcaster can. Try think of your mana like a pool of water at the base of your skull. Then imagine the water rushing down your neck, through your shoulders, and down your arms. Don’t pull the mana, just direct the flow.”

Maiz closed his eyes, imagining the scene Riala was painting with her words. In a few moments, though he felt absolutely nothing, Riala yelled “Now, cast the spell!”

Maiz lifted his hands. “Minor Icebolt!” A chill manifested in his hands, and a moment later a spike of bluish ice shot out from between his hands into the trees. As the bolt flew from his hands, Maiz stumbled slightly from an unexpected force pushing against him.

“I did it!” Suddenly Maiz wasn’t so angry about the hours he had spent learning this spell. He had performed magic.

“Great job! Now it’s time to see how good you are with that spell. Here’s my advice: aim for center mass, and don’t get fancy. Good luck!”

“What? What are you--” Maiz’s questions were answered as an ear-splitting shriek cut through the ordinary sounds of the forest. The noise was coming from the direction where Maiz had shot the icebolt--forward and to the right of the path. Maiz heard a frantic rustling in the underbrush, and moments later a small, greenish creature leapt onto the path in front of Maiz. It had large, flapping ears, a nose and mouth which were one step away from a snout, and yellow eyes burning with anger. “A goblin?”

“Actually,” Riala said happily, “these are weaker, less intelligent relatives of goblins, forest goblings!” She was somehow sitting on top of the grey stone wall behind Maiz.

Maiz barely paid attention as he jumped backwards, quickly putting his back to the wall. Heart pumping, he raised his hands in the direction of the monster and shouted “Minor Icebolt!” Nothing happened. Hells.

The gobling was still shrieking menacingly, waving its arms about, but it was slowly creeping forwards towards Maiz. Desperately, he tried to focus on the pool of mana in his head, imagining it rushing down to his hands as he raised them once again. “Minor Icebolt!” This time, the spike of ice formed and shot from his hands, piercing the gobling in the center of its chest. The creature flew backwards, and Maiz felt the recoil pressing his body against the wall.

“Yes!” Maiz exalted in his victory once again. And then another shriek split the air just like the first. I’ve really got to stop celebrating.

When the goblings came out of the trees, Maiz had an icebolt primed to take it in the chest. The creature’s shriek cut off abruptly as it stumbled back into the forest.

“Just a warning, pretty soon there’s gonna be more than one coming out at once!” Riala called.

Fantastic. It appeared Maiz had a little more time before the next gobling came out, so he considered his options. He could prepare his first cast of Minor Icebolt before the monsters came out, but each cast after that would take a few seconds. If multiple goblings attacked at once, Maiz would be left all but defenseless.

So, I’ve got to slow them down. Remembering his own embarrassing lapse in the wall “puzzle,” Maiz ran off the path into the woods. Careful not to occlude his view or line of fire, Maiz hid and waited for the next gobling to show itself. In moments, two goblings were running onto the path from different directions. They began looking around suspiciously, not seeing Maiz hidden in the underbrush. Maiz had the icebolt spell primed and ready to fire, but on a hunch, he refrained from casting it.

The goblings were extraordinarily ugly, prominently showing mouthfuls of fangs and their appendages all ending in claws. Their bestial faces and limbs contrasted horribly with their green skin and almost-humanoid anatomy. They looked like a cross between some sort of goblin and a small forest predator, such as a wolverine. Maiz knew very little about animals, having grown up in a city, but from reading a few novels set in the wild he knew vaguely what predators looked like. And, as far as he knew, predators who ate the same food did not like each other.

Sure enough, after seeing no external threat to their territory, the two goblings almost immediately turned, snarling, towards each other. In moments the two were rolling on the ground of the path, letting out those painful shrieks in between bites of each other’s flesh. One of the goblings managed to score a long gash with a claw to the other’s neck, and stood up, screaming in triumph. At that moment, another gobling bounded out of the woods on all fours, bowling over the triumphant little monster.

The goblings continued slaughtering each other in front of Maiz’s eyes. Every minute or so, another shrieking green-skinned blur joined the fray, some slipping over the bodies of their erstwhile rivals in their haste to participate in the bloodbath. In a flash of inspiration Maiz whispered his incantation and sent several more icebolts into the forest, making sure they all landed far away from his hiding spot. The spikes of ice succeeded in rousing more goblings deep in the forest to join in the fight. None of them so much as looked around for the source of the icebolts, electing to leap into the fray as soon as they came in sight of the path.

After almost a half hour the fight began to wind down. Unsurprisingly, the initial frenzied struggles had left dozens of goblings strewn across the path, many having died from bleeding in multiple wounds. As only four goblings remained to battle it out, another one emerged from the woods and into the fight. This gobling was different from the others, its skin closer to gray than green, and—most importantly—the words Apprentice Gobling Keeper hung over his head. The other goblings did not have names of any sort, indicating that they were both extremely low ranked and non-sentient. This “Keeper” was clearly either stronger or smarter than his brethren.

Maiz quickly found out which it was. The gray-skinned monster jumped into the fight between the four other goblings, quickly dispatching two of the combatants with swipes to the throat. The other two quickly realized that they were facing a more dangerous opponent and joined forces to fight the Keeper. However, their efforts were all but futile.

Each came at the Keeper from different sides and angles of attack, one leaping at him from the right while the other attacked low from the right. The Keeper ducked at the last moment, letting one gobling fly over his head as he bit deeply into the other’s throat. Without sparing a moment, the Keeper sprinted on all fours towards the final opponent, killing it the moment its paw-feet touched the ground. The grayish gobling shrieked in victory, head thrown back towards the sky, arms at its sides. The sound cut off abruptly as a spike of ice caught him in the throat. Maiz was rather proud of that shot.

“Boo! I was going to give you perfect marks, but you ignored my advice! No point in taking stupid risks aiming for small targets!” Riala called down from her vantage on the wall. She hopped down, making the twelve-foot drop seem like nothing as he carefully avoided the gore covering the path around the pedestal.

Maiz, taking her motion as a sign that the danger was passed, stepped out of his hiding spot in the underbrush. “You’re grading me?”

“Of course! What exactly do you think my job was supposed to be? You’ve been doing great so far. You recognized that the goblings would fight themselves to death and used the icebolts to attract more of them. But it’s really not intelligent to ignore advice from the Celestial Judge who’s seen this test a thousand times, so minus points!”

“Well, does that mean I failed?”

“No! It just means you didn’t get a perfect score! I gave you a 99%.”

“Oh… no.” Maiz deadpanned. He had been a little worried for a moment there.

“Oh shush, the test isn’t done yet!”

Chuckling slightly, Maiz looked around. The path was laden with the bodies of goblings, their blood was beginning to soak into his rough leather shoes. Moving gingerly, Maiz headed towards the corpse of the Gobling Keeper. The little monster was off to the side of the path, having been thrown back by Maiz’s icebolt. Frowning, Maiz examined its body, noting a tarnished silver chain around its neck that he had missed during the fit. Threaded through the chain was a small key.

Seems like this is the way forward. Wait, I have to get that off of him… Maiz held his breath, approaching kneeling carefully next to the monster and trying not to get blood on his pants. He realized that the ice spike in the creature’s throat would make it impossible to the remove the chain without removing the spike. Grasping the chilly spike, Maiz pulled, and felt more resistance than he expected as the spike held onto the gobling’s flesh. Pulling harder, Maiz felt a slight give and a horrible, wet squelching sound. This was…

After he was done dry heaving for several minutes, Maiz returned queasily to the issue of the key. And, for the second time in this damned test, he smacked himself. Snapping the key’s chain, Maiz grabbed the key and moved swiftly away from the Keeper’s body, forward on the path to where Riala was waiting for him.

“You all right?”

“I’m…” Maiz felt his face harden. This was nothing. He would learn how to deal with killing and corpses. Every person with a combat title dealt with blood each day, and he would become the strongest fighter in the world “I’m fine.”

Something green flashed in the corner of Maiz’s vision. Focusing on it, Maiz saw that it was a stylized script for ‘N,’ the symbol of Nomenadon. Maiz ‘selected’ the icon as he had for the prompts in his Name Sheet, and green text filled his vision.

You have learned a new spell, Minor Icebolt!

You have gained +1 Intelligence!

You have slain forest gobling, rank 1 (2)! +10 exp (10/30 to next rank)

You have improved Minor Icebolt to Rank 2! +5 exp (15/30 to next rank)

You have slain Gobling Keeper, Rank 2! +20 exp (35/30 to next rank)

You have acheived Rank 2 in: Seeker! You have unnassigned attribute points.

You have improved Minor Icebolt to Rank 3! +5 exp (10/40 to next rank)

You have gained +1 Wisdom!

Maiz blinked. His father had occasionally complained about the Notification Sheet, saying that it was irritating to have his every move recorded and then be forced to read it. But, at least at this point, Maiz found the information incredibly fascinating. He'd gained experience from killing the goblings, and a great deal from killing the Keeper. He'd also increased the rank of Minor Icebolt, which would probably make it easier to cast or more powerful. Based on that, the Seeker title seemed like a combat title, because he'd improved his rank through fighting. But--

“How did I get more attribute points?”

“Huh? What attributes did you get?” Riala looked somewhat surprised, but not alarmed.

Maiz told her about his increases in Intelligence and Wisdom.

"Wow that’s great! It’s actually pretty simple: whenever you improve an attribute through your work, it increases. Since you spent all that time looking for traps, and then you learned magic for the first time, it makes sense that you would get a boost to Intelligence! In this place, you can only get increases like that while you're going through a test though--otherwise you'd be able to work here until all your attributes were as high as an Apprentice's! ”

“Oh.” Maiz had never really heard about attribute increases outside of those granted by rank increases, but he supposed that it explained how children younger than sixteen ever gained stats at all. “What about the Wisdom increase?”

“Hah! Did you come to some big realization about yourself when you were brooding earlier? Wisdom is based on understanding yourself, just like Intelligence is understanding the world around you, so whatever you were thinking clearly deepened your understanding of your own personality!”

“I-I guess so.” Maiz stammered, blushing. “I got a new rank!” He blurted, trying to change the subject.

“Really? That’s great! So you have some attribute points to spend right?”

“That’s right, what should I put them in?”

“Well, what are your stats right now?”

Maiz quickly opened his name sheet and referenced his stats, then related them to Riala, neglecting to mention that he had five unassigned points instead of four.

“Wow, 15 Intelligence and 12 Wisdom? That’s really impressive!”

Maiz blushed again, heat returning to his cheeks just as his earlier embarrassment faded away. “Thanks. So I guess I should put my points in some other attribute right?”

She nodded. “You know that about 10 points in each attribute is normal for an adult male, I assume? You’ll want to be a little higher than average to complete this first round of tests easily, so why don’t you dump all of your unused points into Dexterity? We’ll do that one next.” I suppose she didn’t realize that I used some of the first four attribute points already. She probably hasn’t actually talked with a Seeker about the attributes before.

Remembering his deception brought Maiz another twinge of guilt, this one worse than before. It was necessary. Maiz followed Riala’s advice, bringing his Dexterity up to 12. As he did so, his balance shifted slightly, his body feeling lighter and more lithe than it ever had before. Taking a step forward, Maiz marveled at how easily his body seemed to move forwards, weight shifting and rebalancing, feet sure on the uneven ground. Suddenly he forgot about his questionable justification for tricking Riala into helping him.

“This is incredible!”

“Well, you did almost double your Dexterity. Maybe now you won’t be quite so uncoordinated!” She teased.

Her mild insult did not register with Maiz, who was still in awe of his magical increase in Dexterity. “This almost feels like cheating, it’s just too amazing!"

“It kind of is! I mean, this is definitely the easiest that improving your stats will ever be. Not only do you get to choose whatever you want to improve, but being a novice makes it much easier to improve your rank than it is at later levels. It took 30 experience to get to rank 2 right? It’ll only take 40 more to get to rank 3! When you get past rank 20, it gets much tougher to advance.”

Rank 20 would make Maiz an Apprentice, but he didn’t think he was likely to get that far in this trial. Either way, Maiz was eager to rank up once more and gain even more attribute points. It was really incredible how much Lord Nomenadon included in his Naming system. His divine power of words and numbers made everything about humans easily quantifiable, and gave them clear goals to work towards. Some theologists theorized that he had created much of his system to incentivize the sentient races into growing increasingly powerful. Speaking of which… “Why don’t we keep going?”

They headed further down the path, Maiz moving much faster thanks to his increased Dexterity and the lack of need to check for traps. They were walking for only a few minutes when a somewhat large hill, much like a dune in the desert but covered in that strange grass, came into view. The path appeared to terminate at the base of the hill, which rose from among the trees in what seemed to Maiz to be an ominous manner. Riala only said “Oh good, we’re here!” So Maiz assumed that he wouldn’t be attacked just yet. However, he still began to imagine the pool of his mana flowing down to has hands. It always paid to be prepared.

Maiz needn’t have worried. At the end of the path they came upon a stone door, the same gray color as the wall earlier in the test. In the center of the wall was a keyhole, and Maiz fished the Gobling Keeper’s key out of a pocket and stuck it in the hole. As soon as the key entered, door glowed a soft blue, and the door swung inward. Maiz blinked. Such enchanted doors were not unheard of, but Enchanter mages were not precisely common, especially in a border city like Caelos.

Stepping inside the doorway, Maiz saw a magnificent set of steps leading down to a large floor, lit by torches placed around the perimeter. Maiz wondered how exactly the torches remained lit indefinitely, but he supposed that they were the least fantastic thing he had witnessed in this strange world. The floor was a set of square tiles, each side longer than Maiz was tall. There was some sort of design on the floor, set up like a mosaic, but he could see no discernable pattern in the markings across the tiles.. Though the overall architecture of the room was incredible, with a sweeping ceiling, beautifully cut walls and stairs which could have graced a king’s palace, there was a piece missing from the mosaic on the floor. As Maiz stepped onto the floor, he nearly slipped as a tile slid under his feet.

“What the--” Maiz shot a glance at Riala, but though he could see a hint of mirth in her glowing green eyes, she refrained from speaking. Meaning that this had something to do with the trial. Experimentally, Maiz tried shifting the tile he was on forward into an empty space. Though the motion was somewhat awkward, he succeeded in moving the large square piece into the space, leaving a new space into which he could move several more tiles.

Huh. So it’s a puzzle? Am I supposed to make a picture with the tiles? Maiz looked up, hoping for a clue to help him, and spotted a stylized ‘N’ above a doorway which seemed to have been built onto a solid wall. Looking down, it seemed like some of the tiles looked like pieces of that symbol. Oh. Well, I guess I should be grateful it’s so easy.

Except that Maiz quickly realized that, though perhaps it was simplistic in design, this ‘puzzle’ was not easy. Maiz soon got sick of pushing the tiles around to change the picture, and because of the mosaic’s size and position, he was forced to walk up the stairs every time he wanted to examine the overall picture the tiles formed. The puzzle was tedious and mostly brainless, but Maiz did his best to stay focused. It took an hour of pushing tiles, running back and forth to examine his work, before the last tile slid into place and the entire floor glowed green. The doorway set against the far wall turned pitch-black, clearly an active portal.

“Congratulations! You’ve completed the test of Intelligence and proven your right to earn a rare title! I mean, you would have, if this had happened a few thousand years ago. Either way, great job! Now we’ve just got two more to go before we move on to the next level!”

Oh hells, Maiz thought as he considered the work he had before him. Still, he would do whatever it took to become God-Chosen.