Passing scores:

2 Puzzles unlocked: Class loses one rarity ranking.

5 Puzzles unlocked: Class maintains rarity ranking.

18 Puzzles unlocked: Class increases one rarity ranking.

Full puzzle unlocked: Chance to try the next tier trial.

Hidden Easter Egg (3/3)

I continue staring at the screen for a good few minutes riding the roller coaster of emotions. There is nothing that will staunch or cork the fountain within me, nor do I wish it so.

As the changes become normal and reality asserts itself, I ponder over the gains I have made this time around, and what is my next step. Should I stay behind and push for more? But even as the thought crosses my mind, I glance down at my wiry hands.

I have only bones left behind, way past the extreme bodybuilder point, and nearly into downright creepy territory. Hell, most people would have tied me down and forced food down my throat if it had been back on Earth, or whatever the medical equivalent of that.

There may be other puzzles behind for me to uncover, but I can’t just ignore my body. If I want to push the next trial as well, I’m going to leave the surpassing your limits category and head straight to the looney toonies bucket of loose screws.

Resolutely, I tap the with only a glance behind the only real option:

Next trial.

I feel the system pulling me a sharp and simple move like when I was dragged into the void, but instantly I’m in a white room for the next trial.

Wait??? White room, this isn’t a trial. Looking around for signs of…something, a prompt shows up.

Last time this didn't happen, I’m sure of it.

Please wait while the local administrator acquires the needed resources to build the next trial.

Trial grounds will be ready in: 1h56m18s.

Trial grounds will be ready in: 1h56m17s.

The ticking clock is relentless. Barely 10 seconds pass as I absorb the information and the dwindling time tries to take over my mind. Purposefully pushing it off for a while I reach out for all my resources, but find them still partially blocked. Not quite to the same level as inside the trial but not back to normal.

What I really care about happens in another few seconds, like a small rubber band pulling a ship, I watch as my connection to the inner world finishes dragging it in my range. I form a portal like usual to connect with my buddy Aspen and it is simply indescribable.

I missed you.

Me too.

The brief interaction that happens mostly in feeling and impressions lasts an instant, but just as an image can be worth a thousand words, a feeling can be worth a million, and everything that needs to be said is over faster than the shutter of a camera.

With a closer look around I notice a table on the other side of the 200 square meters room. Filled with everything I could ever want, in both color, texture and nutrition. I sprint over and start munching down like a starving dog.

Not concerning myself with human etiquette, I try to cram in food in the most efficient way possible considering the two hour timeline while considering my limitation and staying away from indigestion.

I start on the fruits, choosing a wide palate to give me variety.

Sititng innocently in the middle of the fruit piles I see the holy grail. Something that I had yet to see even a hint of, or encounter any equivalent in the instance, a berry

I almost cry, but even as I touch it and my perception absorbs it all, rage comes over me.

The berry… is… dead? They didn’t even bother to properly dry them? NO, NO, NO…you… you…. can’t do that to me you bloody possum system…

GahhhHHHHH…..

I ruffle through them with my senses, but all I find are the corpses of the highest form of sugary nutrition.

The quick turn around of emotions yet again unbalances me, but instead of letting that be the reason to give up or struggle uselessly, I just let it fuel me. I spit out the dead seedlets of the blueberry like food in the inner world while keeping my connection to Aspen.

Aspen, absorb them all, even from the dead berries, though I don’t think we can grow them in their current state. Grow and experiment with them as you will.

Ohh, my berries, my dear delicious berries.

As my mind settles and my stomach stops bothering me as it usually did once a day, I have one idea for this pause in the trial. A crazy idea that I wouldn’t trust anyone else with, but with my friends, maybe, just maybe I had a chance. I draw out a root of the inner world, but as it crosses the portal it withers in seconds.

Not detracted, having expected the system to fight me on this, I put the idea on the back burner for a minute while calling Merlin and the others.

They must have learned a lot in the interring and I need to know exactly what. I can’t make proper plans without information. Checking and coordinating with them should help a little bit at the very least.

“Merlin.” I send it over through a small portal.

“Uhhgh, what?” He jumps and spins around nearly sprewing his notes all over the ground, but as he sees palm sized portal and a piece of my face on the other side he calms down. Clearly getting a grip on himself he continues: “Ohh, it’s you.” He says almost sounding disappointed.

“What?” I say a little off balance at the underwhelming response.

“No sorry man. I thought it was someone on the translation team interrupting me… again. Are we back?”

“NO, but I have nearly 2 hours of access to the inner world and its resources, which for now include you, so I am going to make full use of the opportunity. Are you up for it?”

“Ahhh. Yeah, absolutely.”

“Get the others together. I have a few things to discuss, and I also like a brief report on what you have learned in the last 7 weeks or so.”

Hearing my last phase he pulls out a piece of paper and moves to hand me, but likely remembering what I told him about how the system destroys everything foreign to the trials, he instead lays it on the ground.

“I will get going. But read through this list. It is a rough overview of what I have been studying and the developments in the areas.”

He sprints off yelling for everyone to gather, while I move the portal closer to the ground and make my way through the page. A lot of the subtler points pass over my head, but skimming the list gives me an idea of what I’m working with. I even see a few small asterisks noting the shaman's help in figuring out quite a few items, though I guess his help is still limited given the communication limitation.

Mentally going over it the listI just read, I send my perception to his ‘cell’, and just like I expected, he is still throwing a thin and nearly useless lightning stream with the constant trickle of mana regen he has.

I note the last line which has a pair of asterisks beside the space runes line. I got to ask Merlin about that. I’m VERY interested in any developments in the area.

I reach the end to a couple of lines with a checkmark on the side, nor any jotted down notes and I assume it is respective to what he didn’t get to yet. But just the developments he alluded to are already incredible enough.

Everyone shuffles to the newly built encampment in the wooded area of the inner world. A wasteful endeavor without any carpenters, or even magic as the mages had likely concentrated on Melrni’ns experiments.

While this happens, I start work on my first Idea.

There is not a second to waste.

Pulling Aspen’s roots through small portals inside my very body, I extend the network in myself…a lot. Integrating and letting the sensation become more natural, I reach out for him and ask for him to gather all the sugar and fat he can and slowly infuse it all inside nodules along with adding a slow stream of the much needed nourishment directly into my veins.

He has a little trouble understanding the finer points of my request, but I go over it with him and he can follow my instructions to a T, even if he lacks the understanding of the reasons behind my requests.

As everyone gets together in something of a fireplace, I start out:

“I’m going to skip all the pleasantries, I don’t have the time. Less than two hours before I’m back in the trial, some of which is already gone.”

Everyone intently looks at me except one person who interrupts me: “Can we leave, even just a few minutes?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I say with finality, though internally I wince at my harsness, but we don’t have the time for coddling. And any such attempts could end up in a quick trip back to the instance or they may pay with their lives.

He looks a bit dejected, but his face stands out against most others who are thinking more in terms of the extra time they are getting instead of the time away from the village or other places.

“I’m going to need everyone’s help. Not sure about the details, but I have been looking at Merlin’s notes and I have an inkling or two.” Everyone nods before I continue: “I also want to talk about the two asterisks that you added to spatial developments.”

He leans back in the wooden seat and grins widely: “I actually deserve at least one more given all I learned in the area… But in short: The shaman helped me understand what space is and a few finer points better. I also got a few ideas for improving the portals, the bag of holding, and general rune interaction. Maybe even pushing the inner world's boundaries a little further.”

“Ohhh, even better than I had hoped. Anything of note in the other items?”

“Nothing off the top of my head. Not considering the two hours limit. If I think of anything before the clock runs out I will call you out.”

“Ok, go ahead and organize your notes, I will be over in a minute.”

I spend a minute or two with the translator team before deciding that their help would be minimal and that they didn’t get anything relevant from the shaman that Merlin didn’t know. Only the couple with a little magical expertise would be of help to my efforts, but I keep all the others in ‘retainer’ waiting for the chance an idea comes to mind that might be helpful for this short time.

Going back to Merlin, he runs through entire stacks of research notes over the next 15 minutes as I skim them. Though many of them only contain basic experiments given he didn’t want to break anything by ripping a hole in reality in this place. Though I still believed he was being more cautious than strictly needed it is not my life he was risking, so I can’t begrudge someone for erring on the side of caution. My gut reaction to doing this type of stuff in the inner world doesn't even flutter and I trust what my intuition tells me.

“Ok, I think I get the gist of it and both my Ideas should work out. I’m gonna need your help expanding the Inner world, but most of that can wait given you have decent control of the roots and Aspen’s help. You will have at least a few days with the other’s help, maybe even months depending on how the trial turns out. About your experiments, even if you push your luck I doubt anything bad would happen. The inner world is like me… resilient.”

He nods without interrupting, so I continue.

“The main thing that called to me are a few concepts of space and how to improve on the bag of holding. I understand the arch shaman helped you with the runes we found on the space bags we bought?”

“Yeah, even if your’s already work… barely. There are a lot of improvements and ways of reducing the strain that the seeds are under and getting more frequent access of bigger items in and out of our ‘baby inner worlds.”

“Are they inner worlds?” I ask not having it framed them in my mind like that.

“Not really, but that is just semantics. That is also something I forgot to mention. The origin of a pocket of space matters. Apparently, yours are better than anything we could have hoped for. At least without a lot more levels and experience. Inner worlds are of the best sources of space period, and I think you can upgrade the inherent value quality of the inner world, unlike other sources. I mean it is supposed to be part of you or something.”

“He really has been of tremendous help hasn’t he?”

“You have no idea, when we have more time back at the village, we can go over it all in detail.”

I nod and he shows me dozens of small incremental design changes for the space bag. All of them look appealing, but I see one that calls to me. My very gut can’t look away and I point to it asking him to explain it.

“That is a failed thought experiment, I was trying to do something, but I don’t think it will work.”

“My gut says otherwise. It will never be able to open the bag by itself, but it would be of tremendous help to the seed and it just gives me a starting point for my next iteration.”

He looks at me and I return a mad grin in his direction.

Working in concert, he helps me by running stuff in his head and drawing the rune formation blueprints as I push and prod on the outside to fold space into the shape I wanted.

Even in this white room, with more relaxed rules about my resources and manipulating space, I still can’t access the system’s prompts and my space bag takes a lot of effort to use.

I meditate repeating a simple mantra while trying to ignore the system’s interference.

My body is my temple.

I fold and shape the pocket of space to fit entirely within my chest.

My body is my own.

I mold reality and make it bend to my will.

The system will not interfere with my choices.

A torrent of mana rushes into the seed in my body as I tie another little pocket of space to myself that I need to knit like dough.

Creating dozens of new runes and making full use of the silver and gold in the root’s composition, I enjoy the magical malleability and mana storage capability of this new branch.

Putting space anchors all around my torso, I tie the space inside myself and focus on an opening overlapping. Something that should only take a smidge of mana to be activated and may be able to be opened from the inside. The only problem is if I could reach and communicate with the seed hidden inside.

The first hour comes and goes as I work feverishly getting everyone working, even if not in a user friendly iteration that I would have liked.

Going over dozens of basic copper runic formation iterations strewn over the inner world meant to expand it, I get my roots and start helping, at least before I have another idea on how to improve the Space Bag inside myself.

I reach for the outer wall, bypassing the meter wide layer of runes made with my roots that form a dome above and below the entire sphere that is the inner world. Each of the plates touches it, and at first glance, none affect it, but a closer glance reveals an anomaly. One of them is pushing out slightly.

If it had a nice effect like this when made in a rush by an inexperienced pup like the random mage that produced it, what could I and Merlin do after refinement with a properly sized cast or grown runic formation?

Throwing myself fully into it, I start growing a slightly altered version in a small section of the current runic dome setup. Instead of pushing in all directions, I just try to make a flashlight to reach a little further in the direction I’m turned to.

What a glorious day. A larger inner world with the accompanying increase in perception field range.

What more could I have asked for?