Six keys. Those from the first two trials were already slotted into the golden box, but Alex had lined the others up next to it.

Much more fun to put them all in at once.

Rotating the box in his hands, he pressed each key into its matching face and turned it, savouring each click. As he turned each one, he reflected on the challenge it had come from. Three tests of raw power, three tests of endurance; different but similar; closed cubes for strength and constitution, long halls for dexterity and endurance, and shifting chambers for intelligence and wisdom.

Alex took a few slow breaths in an attempt to calm the butterflies in his stomach. There was still one trial left, after all. He still had no idea what ‘luck’ entailed, although in his opinion it sounded stupid. But that was a problem for later. At long last, he turned the sixth key – he’d left wisdom until last – and heard it click.

He dropped the box and jumped back reflexively as the six faces began to shift with an almost mechanical whirring.

I’ve seen too many damn traps in the last few days.

As the box clicked away, sounding as if it were rearranging internally, it began to float up and away from Alex, a soft glow emanating from its edges. It continued to shift more rapidly as it floated toward the centre of the room, slowing to a stop to hover in the air over the empty pool. Alex watched, cautiously mesmerised.

The sides of the box had totally separated from each other at this point, now orbiting a brightly glowing, golden mote of light which seemed to have been contained in the centre. From the mote shot a golden thread, directly upwards and into the illusory ceiling dome. The mote began to pulse, and the golden thread thickened into a beam. Pulsing in time with the original mote, the influence of the beam began to spread across the ceiling. Rapidly thickening ribbons of golden mist extended over the previously dark starscape of the veil, radiating out from the apex of the beam. The mist consumed the veil until it was entirely made of shining yellow-gold.

Alex only noticed at the last moment that his ring was evaporating on his hand, flowing into a golden mist which went to join the central pillar. The gold engravings on the walls around him were similarly siphoned. With a blinding flash, the grass floor was returned to its original state, destroying his comfortable pile of dirt.

My dirt! Alex screamed internally despite himself. This golden pyrotechnics display might be impressive, but that pile of dirt had served him well.

Then, as if the energy had continued to flow downward from the roof, the six challenge doorways lit up again, this time with a golden glow, and the familiar voice spoke into his mind.

Quest Complete: Thinking Outside the Box

Reward: For your performance, you are limited to a choice of one reward. Choose wisely, mortal, these rewards are not often earned.

Those last words felt to Alex as if they had a personality behind them, more than just a part of the usual script. What was this presence, really? But as usual, it had vanished before he could ask, and he’d given up on trying to get it to respond by now.

Wait, did it just imply that more than one reward might have been attainable? Ugh.

Frowning pensively, Alex turned his attention to the now-golden portals.

After about ten minutes, Alex had made his decision. He’d also taken the time to confirm that the new grass floor was not destructible, and while he couldn’t reach it without his trusty dirt-pile, he suspected that the roof was also solidified now. The time for exploring was over. He just wished he still had his ring to check.

If this gate leads to another fucking challenge, trial, or trap… this reward had better be at least as good as that ring was.

He knew a trap was unlikely. The quest notification had said it was reward time, and the seemingly omniscient voice was yet to lie to him. Further, the gates pulsed with a comforting glow, reminding him of the glyphs on the (now inaccessible) roof.

Locking in the choice he’d made in his mind, he stepped through the golden gate he’d selected and disappeared into the now familiar darkness of teleportation.

Strangely, he arrived right back in the atrium. Only now, the doorways were empty again, and a strange glyph floated in the air over the pool, having replaced the box. It was composed of a golden mist which reminded him of the initial pool. He walked over and inspected it, and to his delight, information flooded into his mind the moment he brushed his hand against it.

Eyes of the Seeker

0th, soul, epic

Reward for unlocking the hidden treasures of the zeroth-floor atrium and entering the Gate of Wisdom. A single-use soul augment.

Grants permanent true sight.

This item cannot be consumed until you have completed the challenge and been reborn into a full soul.

To be honest, Alex felt a little underwhelmed. True sight? And he couldn’t even use it during the trial of luck because he hadn’t been ‘reborn’ yet, whatever that meant.

Given that the translations from this glyphic language seemed to assign meaning according to his own understandings, that meant he had D&D-style true sight. He would be able to see through illusions, see in the dark, maybe even see with his eyes closed.

Which is… cool? Solves the issue of not having brought my reading glasses with me through the gaping, hellish rift in space earlier. But… I mean, I kinda expected better. Even the ring might have been more useful than this.

The whole thing had him feeling a bit glum.

I knew I should have picked the intelligence reward. Well, wherever I end up after this I sure hope there’ll be a lot of illusions to bust.

He sighed. Ah well. The iron box had been its own reward, to be honest. And the keys hadn’t actually been all that difficult to find. To be honest, a part of him was secretly glad about the outcome.

The other reward options were probably amazing, but he hadn’t known he needed them. What he had known was that he never wanted to be put under an illusion spell like in that cursed trial again, and his hope had been that the wisdom reward would ensure that.

I guess it helps. Still, could’ve been better. Time for the final trial, I guess.

There really wasn’t anything left to do except walk up to the luck portal and touch it. As usual, he extended a hand toward the blackness, expecting to be sucked away to the trial room.

Welcome to the Trial of Luck.

The voice sounded in his head, right there in the atrium. His hand was pressed flat against the portal. This time, the voice had quite a lot to say.

For every stage you choose to progress, there will be approximately:

> an eight-in-one-hundred chance of instant annihilation;

> a sixty-in-one-hundred chance of stage progression;

> a twenty-five-in-one-hundred chance of stage regression;

> six one-in-one-hundred chances of a ‘defy-the-odds’ monster battle, each themed for one of the other trials and with its own special prize;

That most recent option gave him a brief mental impression of party poppers, for some reason.

> and a one-in-one-hundred chance of instantly progressing five stages.

Alex’s face had scrunched up over the course of the lengthy explanation, his eyebrows creeping higher and higher.

What kind of shitty trial design is this?

Do you wish to commence the trial?

“Absolutely fucking not. What the fuck?” The words were out of his mouth before he could even think twice. There was no way he was losing everything he’d earned so far to randomness. Stage regression? Monster battles? An eight percent chance of instant annihilation???

“What kind of fucking stat is luck, anyway. How the hell do you even give out that sort of thing. Is this a joke? Some sort of test?! I want my ring back!”

Concluding Trial, awarding bonus point for aberrant solution. Congratulations, you survived.

Alex felt as the aberrant point reward went to wisdom. Whoops.

Trial of Luck Complete.

Well, he supposed that wherever he ended up he would be relying on skill over luck. He hoped that low luck wasn’t the same thing as negative luck. While he couldn’t help but imagine a series of freakish Final Destination-style accidents, Alex equally couldn’t bring himself to be regret his decision. That trial had been stupid, and he was confident he’d made the right decision. Gambling was for idiots.

…even though he might have hit that jackpot.

He was just beginning to wistfully wonder what the ‘monster battles’ would have rewarded when he once again heard the voice in his mind.

All Trials Complete.

Enter the pool to be reborn.

It seemed that after three long days it was finally time to get out of this well-turfed hellhole. Walking over to the pool, Alex noted that it had been filled with the familiar black, starry surface that he had come to understand would act as a portal. His golden [Eyes of the Seeker] glyph floated above it, drawing the occasional strand of mist from the portal toward itself.

He brought up his full stat summary in his mind. He supposed this was what he was stuck with.

Alexander James Patel Overview Affiliations Linosa Town Level 0 Class None Status HP 0/120 SP 0/70 MP 0/150 Attributes STR 11 CON 12 DEX 13 END 7 INT 17 WIS 15 LCK 0

I wonder if it’ll be possible to increase these later.

Alex’s only real disappointment was his endurance, as he knew that a couple months or even weeks spent training might have resulted in a score of at least ten. All of the others were in the double digits, which had been about where the trials had gotten lethal. He’d used an optimal or aberrant solution for every trial except wisdom, and even lucked out by finding both on the dexterity trial.

No, not ‘lucked’ out. Found with skill.

He was still a little grumpy about that trial.

The value of the aberrant bonus points, initially discarded in his mind, was now clear. Since each stage in a trial was incrementally more difficult, the opportunity to get free points in a stat using the lower stages of other trials was invaluable. That last bonus point in WIS from the luck trial had probably saved him from some sort of crisis-inducing horror hallucination, and he really couldn’t put a price on that.

He shivered, immediately directing his thoughts away from that particular experience. Perhaps unsatisfied with merely traumatising him, the wisdom trial had gone on to give him a dud reward. The strength door would have probably given him a magic sword, or the ability to leap tall buildings… or something useful.

What a trash stat.

But he’d chosen the wisdom door for a reason, and he hesitantly decided to stand by his decision.

Regardless, it was time to get out of here. Eagerly, he breathed out and stepped in.

Alex hovered, suspended in an endless, starry void. Opposite him, mirroring his position, he could see a copy of himself, but… better? Slightly taller, stronger looking. It seemed to be composed of blue mist, shifting and swirling around a weakly defined form that seemed to be strengthening slowly.

The copy, he instinctively knew, was not flesh and blood, but pure energy. Mana? The concepts seemed to flow into mind. Maybe, perhaps something more primal.

That was weird. The copy was becoming more real, almost corporeal. Alex glanced down at his hand, and noticed the skin fading in colour, becoming transparent. Then he looked up again and realised that he was the copy.

Wait, no. He hadn’t been the copy a second ago. Was he both of them? This was weird.

He lifted his hand, and both of his bodies moved.

No, now he was increasingly sure that he was the stronger, better version. The other, weaker shell was disintegrating now as he felt his own strength and substance grow. The shell had just been a blueprint, a guide for the construction of this body of pure primal energy. Yes, this was definitely his own and only body.

It occurred to him now that it hadn’t always been. No, he had used to live in the shell. He could feel his thoughts running just a little quicker than they’d used to, just as he could feel his more muscular physique.

Yes, this must be rebirth. The objective of the challenge. I have an entirely new body.

It seems quite useful.

His features had remained largely the same: olive skin, thick, dark hair, hazel eyes. He thought he might be slightly taller now, but not significantly. He touched his face. Did his jawline feel more solid? Wait – did he have abs now?!

Then the glyph, [Eyes of the Seeker], blinked into existence in the void. Only here, they were actual eyeballs, with bright blue irises. Dangly optical nerves and all. Alex blinked as they evaporated, and then painlessly streamed into his own eyeballs, causing his vision to sharpen… marginally.

Stupid reward.

Slightly thrown by his sharpened vision, Alex blinked a couple of times and rubbed his eyes. He immediately snapped them open as soon as he felt the presence of other souls around him. Suddenly, he was no longer alone in the void.

Nine figures floated in a ring around him, each dressed beautifully and distinctively. They were without question the most perfect beings he’d ever laid eyes on. The radiation of power from their souls almost blew him away, dwarfing the soft blue glow coming from his own, new body.

The sensation of their power was vaguely familiar, and Alex realised he finally had faces to match to the voice which had been speaking in his head. He just wondered which one had said what. Looking around, he tried to take them all in.

A towering, horned man with ridged crimson skin radiated a blackened aura of destruction that dominated his side of the circle and seemed to creep into the others’ spaces.

A white-haired woman floated opposite him, her eyes, aura, and heroic armour glowing radiant white and gold. Alex sat directly between them.

On his right was a mousey man in a brown robe whose aura moved out from him in fractals like corridors. His eyes gleamed with an intelligence that felt like a storm of razorblades.

Then there was a man whose aura felt like a patchwork of thousands of screaming, lesser, souls, each one of them more powerful than Alex’s own.

A figure in thick obsidian armour gripping the haft of a long, curved hammer.

An obese woman sitting on a throne.

A bald man with glasses and a thick ledger.

A demonic woman holding a set of scales, positioned directly to Alex’s left.

A jester who was preoccupied juggling some strange set of playing cards.

Before he could finish taking in the details of each of perfect beings, their forms snapped and blurred into one. It was as if each one had slid into the others, their auras merging and the power of their conglomerate form now impossible to comprehend. The complete being spoke, reciting words with nine overlapping voices in perfect synchronicity.

“You have been reborn into a new soul.”

This was eerie. Having just become comfortable with this new body, Alex suddenly felt very, very out of his depth.

“Your memories of the trial will be severed from your conscious mind. The challenge must remain fair.”

Something delicately snapped in his mind, and while he found that while he could remember his trials in their entirety, that recollection seemed… separated? He wasn’t quite sure what had been done, but he had suspicions.

There was a pause as the auras of the beings around him flickered. They momentarily separated, splitting to fan out in a circle around him. The nine forms wavered for another moment, and again they re-joined to speak with their grand, shared voice.

“You are not of this world. This is irregular. Thusly, we have decided that your possessions will not be returned. We will provide you with fair compensation.”

Another pause and a flicker of separation. Alex could have sworn he felt inquisitiveness from a couple of the beings’ auras in the split, especially the mousey man. He felt confusion and greed from several of others, too many to pinpoint. From the heroic woman and demonic man, he felt nothing. Blurring, they rejoined again.

“Enough. You have completed the Challenge and are fit to traverse the Unending Depths. Return now, as a Reborn.”

Yet again, Alex’s world flashed white.

I’m getting really sick of these weirdos teleporting me around.

As the being named Alexander James Patel faded away to rejoin his brethren on the overworld, the entity which had been watching him shifted their gaze back to more important matters. Beings on another continent had just breached their eightieth floor, and their attention was required. It was rare that they would even leave more than a negligible fragment of their consciousness to manage a mere rebirth challenge, but the origin of this human had been unusual, and his antics somewhat entertaining.

They did resolve to keep an eye on him when they had the time and inclination. It wasn’t often that the fabric of space was weakened enough to open a rift, and the things that they could pull through were always fascinating. Living beings especially so.

As a collective, the entity buzzed with amusement. The strange, foreign human had done a commendable job given the circumstances. They were glad he hadn’t worked out the wall or roof puzzles though – then they would’ve had to have given him a really powerful reward, and those were far too bothersome and time-consuming to create.