Everything is connected. The farmer’s son in a distant village doesn’t know that because two men lusting after the same girl will cause a war that will end up with the death of his family. Nor could those men know that the farmer’s son, due to their actions, traded his pitchfork for a sword. The once bright and warm boy became a cold assassin that even those two men of power feared. Life, consequences, and actions are the cornerstones of fate.

~Morrigan, The Mysterious Goddess of Fate

“Metal.” Crow pointed at the rune, letting Mara go first. She tapped it, and her war hammer changed into a wooden staff with a stone cuff on one side and a metal one on the other. A fire glowed on either end and as she twirled it, a barrier of fire formed.

Song Xue tapped it, and her weird war hammer turned into a short spear with a wooden shaft, and a stone sphere glowed hot like magma on the other end. Crow didn’t have a name for that weapon either, but he liked it. The metal spear tip was leaf-shaped, so thin and broad, and while it didn’t have any visible fire coming off it, Crow could see veins of fire through the blade itself.

Otto went next, and his maul turned into a tower shield made of a single slab of stone. The pylon covered the entire shield with a grid of metal bars, and a wooden framework on the backside supported the curved shape. There were six wooden handles built into the frame, making it feel more like a weapon than a shield. In Otto’s hands, he could use that thing to swat at others.

Looking at the shield, Crow doubted he could even lift the damned thing.

“Is that a tombstone?” Mara asked in a low voice so only Crow could hear. He gave it another look and had to admit that it definitely looked like an uncarved tombstone, and it even had a rounded top. Without the wire mesh, it just looked like a curved tombstone. So he could only nod in reply.

Crow touched the rune next, and it turned into a wooden boomerang with stone and metal caps on opposite ends. When he shook it, the tips flared up, creating fire. He scratched his head and felt he might have got shafted. While he knew what a boomerang was, he’d never used one. Nor did he know anyone that did.

There were two methods of throwing it. The overhanded method was closer to throwing a blade. Throwing side-hand and off-center slightly by about thirty degrees, the boomerang would go in a wide arc and come back to him. He never understood why anyone would bother with that method. The boomerang would lose more power, and it definitely wouldn’t return if it hit something.

Everyone was giving him a strange look, and he shook his head and sighed. Stepping forward, he threw the boomerang by holding it with two fingers near the stone tip. He aimed off to the right and then snapped his arm forward. The thing flew out in a pretty arc, and then after three meters, it caught fire and left a wall of flames in its path. It circled around in front of him and then came back at him.

“Oh, shit!” Crow dove out of the way because those books never said how he was supposed to catch it. The flames disappeared three meters from him, and then the boomerang slowed down and gently floated where Crow had originally stood before landing on the ground.

“That’s… awkward,” Crow muttered while standing back up.

The other three were staring at him and then burst out laughing.

“Not funny. Why did I get a damned boomerang?” Crow tried to defend himself, but they laughed even harder. Everyone sobered up once they heard the screaming down below.

Mara held up her weapon in front of Crow. “Big brain, what are these weapons? Do you know?”

“Why do you insist on calling me that?” Crow asked, but Mara’s eyes never wavered. “If I’m not mistaken, this item is temporary, but it’s like currency. The more runes you accumulate, the better your reward. Even the clowns following us might get one rune right eventually, but their reward will be garbage. Completing this challenge puts us at the halfway mark, which is why the trial is rewarding contenders.”

“How would you know that?” Song Xue asked, suspicious of Crow’s words.

“Otto hungry,” Otto interrupted them, and everyone looked over. The big guy had been mostly silent. Crow smiled and slapped Otto on the shoulder, glad that his brother was recovering.

*Completing the trial supposedly has something even more powerful, but it’s a shame it’s impossible for humans. It’d be impressive if a human made it past the fifth dragon god’s test.* Nin explained.

*Why?*

*The god of the Quicksilver Drakes manages that trial. Drakes are broad and heavy, so their wings are primarily used to glide. However, on the ground, drakes can kill dragons. Dragons and drakes hate each other because a drake’s scales have pure metallic essence in them. To us dragons, the temptation to feed on them is too great—especially the Quicksilver Drakes. Their scales are like a tonic or a drug that we can’t resist. Anyway, the fifth challenge is like running a gauntlet that disallows flight. Few dragons ever make it through, much less a human—not unless your body and bones are made of dense metal.*

*I’m confused. Why does this trial seem catered toward humans? Wouldn’t those golems and vines be simple for a dragon?*

*You forget, the trials change depending on who is taking it. We are just the custodians. It was the dragon gods that built this place with strict formations and rules. We can make slight changes and select the map layouts. But we cannot change the choices provided, which are based on race. For example, these stairs, if you took the dragon’s version of it, you’d have failed after the first two hundred steps. However, the fifth and sixth gods’ trials never change--those are immutable.*

Their conversation might have seemed long, but communicating through his soul was extremely fast. Barely a breath’s time passed. Crow didn’t really understand what Nin was saying. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her but felt she was trying to explain something she didn’t fully understand. On top of that, Crow suspected she’d been deliberately misinformed. He was convinced this trial did not originate with the dragon gods.

They climbed once more. However, when they saw swarms of insects coming toward them, they didn’t understand how this was related to metal. Mara twirled her staff, and the fire barrier was indispensable when the swarms got too close. She could keep them from reaching the group.

Song Xue’s spear shot forward, and a lance of fire shot forward in a beam of light for almost thirty meters. Typically, her attack didn’t take out many bugs, but her attacks could be more deadly than Otto’s if the swarm was dense enough. She was the precision attacker.

Otto swung his tombstone shield around like he was swatting flies. Charging into the next swarm, Crow saw his shield light up with fire, and then a cone of destruction took down everything in front of the big guy. Those charging blasts had a significant impact on the swarms, and no one wanted to get in front of him because there was no rhyme or reason to when the blast triggered. Otto wasn’t replenished enough to explain, nor could Crow explain to him. So they just let him lead the group and then cleaned up and protected around him.

Strangely, it was the boomerang that helped the most. After the first few times using the side-hand method, the group stopped joking with Crow over it. His walls of fire thinned out the swarms so severely that they could practically ignore the stragglers as they marched toward the next step.

Curious, Crow picked up one of the insects and held it close. Inspecting it closely, he magnified his vision and what he saw surprised him. These things were bugs at all, but tiny metal clockworks made to look like insects. After several minutes passed, he realized that the other three were standing around him, and he grinned in embarrassment. He’d been so engrossed, he didn’t even help them fight.

“What are you doing?” Mara demanded.

“Look.” Crow held it up to her face. Mara tilted her head sideways, and a few stray strands of hair fluttered about her cheek and glowed in the sun’s light. He was mesmerized and had to shake himself out of his trance with great effort. However, his actions didn’t escape Mara, who smiled and took the bug from him.

“This is a clockwork?” She asked as Song Xue and Otto also picked up a few to look.

“Yes, but these things are amazingly complex.”

“There is probably some factory or method of mass producing them. Maybe a formation and a machine? I bet they recycle them, too, since we aren’t damaging them. See these little slivers of crystal? I believe those are very tiny mana stones. Our attacks most likely shattering those crystals, so we are just knocking out their power source.”

Crow grabbed a bunch of them and stashed them in his Vortex Pin. He wanted to figure out how to use them, so he’d research them later. While he was leaving Oiche after this, he was sure there were other workshops throughout the tower. He’d been thinking about joining an academy in the future, one that focused on Scholarly Talents.

The swarms weren’t hard with the weapons they wielded. It was just an exhausting ordeal. A true grind to take out all those swarms. They even had to stop at one point and destroy the accumulated swarms that followed them. Even still, by the time they reached the one-thousandth step, the sun was nearing the horizon

This wasn’t even a step, but a massive platform at least twenty times bigger than the steps. Ten meters in front of them was the last pylon with all twenty-five runes glowing. They hesitated to touch the last rune because on the other side of the pylon was a podium or round table. A shimmering ball of light hovered above it, but it was the etching of a handprint on the surface of the podium that caught Crow’s attention.

Lastly, beyond both those things was a shimmering blue light. It was at the far end of the platform and looked just like the previous barriers, only this time, there were two of them. Crow had no idea what that meant, but he did know it was time to receive his reward.