A wave of dizziness hits me and I nearly fall from my trotting pace. The perception field goes all wonky in its ‘flashlight’ region. It expands for a good 20 extra meters for a split second and then collapses.

I take a deep breath and try to find any changes, but the ripples surrounding the edges of my perception field are gone and the inner world is far from my purview, so I can’t even check what is happening.

One thing is for sure, Merlin has been hard at work. Even if what I witnessed is all he can ever do, adding about 20 to 25 percent range to the perception field for a second is an invaluable skill. I wait a minute with nary a change, not even a single disturbance across the perception field, so I just go back to my run keeping an eye out for this new phenomenon so I don’t get knocked back on my feet again.

At an even more conservative pace, I keep heading in the rough direction of a likely new source of water.

They may not have any puzzles as usual, but even lacking that ‘feature’, I start getting used to the logic of this map with algorithms and logic I developed in the previous iteration.

Knowing exactly where I’m at all times, I can always spend an hour going back and taking a short rest, but I’m still good for another day with no water intake and the region I have to search and find the way into its ‘center’ to get at yet another dead end corridor. This one spouting the stuff of life.

Slowly but surely the rest of the day passes and I continue growing my map. Each corridor I ‘pencil’ down is one less I have to search through and another clue revealing the outline of that section of the maze.

Especially on this third ‘layer’ of the trial, with even more floors, so far 11 in total. Sometimes I even find a corridor that takes me all the way across the maze without branching off. Other times, 5 corridors all conjoin and 200 meters later again. Learning to minimize long dead ends and migrations to the other side of the map is an absolutely essential skill. I just hope future trials don’t start with shenanigans like moving walls.

Another day passes as I’m too dehydrated, but right as I’m about to turn back, I find the right place.

Already so thirsty that all propriety has left me, I suck each droplet of water from the wall until I’m full and then I sit to wait. Instead of remaining idle, I imagine a pull on the water in my stomach and guide it throughout my body, which strange as it may seem, speeds up my absorption.

With a couple more pounds of weight and much of my strength back, I start drinking again, though much more slowly. Each gulp of pure water is like ambrosia. Strength refills my arms and legs and even my slouchy posture fades.

Next time I won’t push so hard, or even better, I will get a water skin or something for the micro inner world hidden in my torso.

I find a fairly dry spot nearby to get some sleep before I’m too exhausted in this other fashion as well.

=============

Some trhee hours later, I wake up feeling amazing. The only points of contention are the system’s attempts to make me tired, something I have only faint memories of, and my empty stomach after having eaten the last of my stores just a day ago. On the second account at least I still have another week at my current pace and if I go back to meditating full time, I could extend that severalfold.

I spend a long time inside both trials, but I could spend a year inside and that would only be about 10 days for the others in the instance.

I reach out with my perception field, barely four hours after I stopped last night, and the results surprise me. 104 meters of range in front of me though no change in the other directions.

That’s a rather sudden jump, I wonder what Merlin has been doing to manage this sudden increace?

Shaking my head I head back to drink more water already planning my day. Though as soon as I lower my torso, reality catches up with me and I notice something: a tablet in the middle of the ground a hundred meters ahead. Similar to the puzzles I found on the corridor walls, but different in its own way.

Buried in the soil, I mentally clean it up and go over the lines coping everything down, though it is missing some of the marks I was used to. It doesn’t seem like I will find the same 3 by 3 gridded pattern in the central room if there is even a central room at all. It looks closer to a complete picture with no splits that will inform me of…something.

I think over my course of action, but even as I sit on the ground the range drops back to 99 meters.

Ohh, he learned some way to sustain the extra range for a few minutes at least, but it is probably ‘costly.’

I hope he uses it repeatedly, I need this extra couple of meters.

I look at the part of the map that has the highest chance of containing the central room now that I already have at least one ‘puzzle’.

I have a few decisions to make.

Should I go back to all the other places or head straight to the central room?

With how it was set up, even with rough estimates of the area to search, I will need days to find it, which eats into all of my safety margins.

I could stop to meditate, in hopes that Merlin will slowly improve, but that just delays the problem and takes the agency for my success from my hands. It would also have been more effective at the very start, not now.

In the end, the hundreds of permutations of my actions pass through my head and I settle on a slow and very efficient walking pace for the time being. I make my way to the section that feels to me has the highest chance of containing a path to the central chamber if there is such a thing with only a small detour so I can pass by another water source. Two should be better than one and it will barely use up my fat stores to stop for a little while.

I start to make my track back but after I arrive the range is still just a little bit too short. About two meters too short. I think of heading on, but instead, I sit down and start meditating.

Focusing on the space before me, I just wait with all my other senses already drawn down as I double down on my perception field, the moment it comes, I will see it. Even if it is another long range but shorter duration test, I will be ready.

I absorb the entire volume of my surroundings much more deeply than anywhere else in this same trial. But as the hours pass without change, I start noticing small ripples on my perception field. Nothing that I would normally notice, barely a millimeter in amplitude all over the middle band which has easier access to everyone but Merlin who could move the roots, and though he couldn't meld his consciousness to then, the inner world was small in the grand scheme of things.

The ripples keep happening, as an afterthought to whatever they are doing inside. I can guess all day long. They seem to be doing something like messing with more rune configurations trying to find the perfect match, but even that is just speculation based on what little I know, though these waves are more subtle than usual.

I concentrate on absorbing all this information even while going back to my new and ohh so exciting resources.

Vigor stays for later as I continue testing Qi and Life. While working with Life, I don’t try to actively use it, the pain is too great to actually use it regularly and I’m no masochist. So instead I focus on my new resources trying to fix the imbalance I that was slowly throwing me off and even now it is not totally gone, but luckily it is so muted that I barely notice it. Though even if it’s not causing problems right now, I do so want to keep them at more similar levels. I also know that to reach the level of vigor which I had grown used to for over a decade with Pando might take me a while.

I light up the smallest and weakest of candle flames. I can barely feel the heat nearly burning my skin and I imagine the light it produces. The ionized gas particles shifting to higher energy states which is the very reason heat emanates from it, but little to none of that is within the grasp of my normal senses in this place.

Even the slight pain from the light burn on my skin may be more psychosomatic than real.

None of the light photons hitting my eyes are visible, not even while putting the flame an inch from my eye. The system fights me every step of the way, but I’m starting to grow used to it.

Though as I use my Qi, I feel something else draining from me in the background.

I could keep a flame like this lit for a long time on the outside, but the system doesn't let up, and I add this small action to my exercises.

I wonder what I could do and if it would be worth it to burn my resources like this. Breaking the stones and getting access to the soil behind is possible and a possibility for later, but it is also dangerous in its own way. For all I knew, messing with the structural integrity of the maze would collapse the tunnels and smooch me, or even just close that path permanently.

The memory of the system’s warning about this second layer of the trial not being protected hits me like a truck. Something like this may be the real reason for its warning.

It is not about someone going hungry and passing out, it is about them doing something stupid and getting themselves killed. If I had full command of my powers I could force the issue, no I would force the issue, but with the system's interference with my use of Qi, no roots and lack of access to the inner world make any such attempt a much more dangerous prospect.

I didn’t have enough Life to rely on the roots I grew on the spot, not enough to support something like a tunnel, so the only choice left is not to risk it at all.

Things may change in the future, but for now, I’m happy with my decision.

Ideas about what else could help me start to flow. Although many that might be selectively useful show up, none highlights themselves to me. So I start some real experiments with Qi, instead of only working on my base dexterity and control of it.

Does it work inside my body? Definitely and as I find out, even better than outside as the system’s normally inexorable pull that can only be avoided or bypassed, but inside my body, inside my domain, I can ever so slightly push it back.

Does Qi work with runes? Yes, though a few interactions are strange, I just chalk it up to normal variations to test later.

Ideas continue to flow as I get a feel for this new resource. Each time I spend a little bit of it, not only the normally impossible-to-reach mana is drained, something is happening in the background, though it is too faint for me to know what it is. Though it faintly feels like a pool of willpower of a flavor that is uniquely tied to my mana.

That will have to wait for us to leave this cursed place for me to make full use of.

One idea strikes me, the perfect idea.

I don’t have the Qi to use it for long, but if… I make the runes inside my body, and considering my lower weight than normal, the range would be even better.

I forge myself into a flying bicycle.

Excited, I start work. The first step is to grab a little bit of my Life and poke a hole through it instead of yanking the whole thing like I did last time. Slowly, like a pinprick on a tire, the air leaks out while I gently guide the power to select places across my body. I make a large repulsing rune in my chest and interlink it to the extensors across my legs, knees, hips, head and arms.

With a simple, but functional design ready, I lay ont eh ground and send a few points of Qi into it.

I start levitating, just four or five inches of the ground, but that is enoughfor me. A massive grin comes to my face, but it gets stuck and warped into something unrecognizable as the ground begins to shake.

Concerned at the change, I drop to the ground and get to my feet. But the earthquake is instantly gone.

My chest goes a mile a minute in the unnatural stillness and I get confused.

“What?”

A minute passes, then two, but nothing changes. Shrugging, I continue my experiments by powering the rune once more and sending power to my feet. Though the lower length acting against the ground limits my height, but it is still enough for most of my tests.

As expected, I float only about an inch of the ground, then two before settling at just over two inches and no more.

It is not like I have boatloads of Mana or Qi available to use the normal design that could levitate me higher. My thoughts grind again, as an earthquake starts building again.

“What?… Ohhh,” I finally get what is happening. Anger builds in my gut and chest. Letting it all out I continue. “I can’t cheat like this, otherwise you are going to drop the mountain on top of my head? We will see about that.”

“I… CALL … YOUR… BLUFF.”