Chapter 24: Puzzles Are Fun, Right?

A single table waited for me in a small room at the bottom of the stairwell. The room had a clearly locked door on the opposite side of the room. While it wasn't too surprising, what did surprise me was what was on the table. On top of the table was a three by three Rubik's cube and a sheet of paper. Now, that wasn't too odd, but it was already scrambled.

Beside the cube was a sheet of paper. On the paper were instructions written in various languages, most of which I didn't recognize as any language from earth, though I could be wrong. I wasn't an expert in the field, so maybe it was just some lesser known language.

'Solve this cube to unlock the door. More puzzles await.'

After finding the English instructions, I sighed. This was a floor that was going to be filled with puzzles. I enjoyed a puzzle here and there, don't get me wrong. I don't think that a floor full of them is going to be all that enjoyable to be honest.

I looked at the cube on the table and realized that I hadn't solved one of these things in ages. I used to know how to do it, but the skills have left me long before I even came to these floors. I didn't have a working one anymore, and I wonder if I would be punished if I cheated.

I tried to solve it normally at first, bits and pieces of the way to solve it coming back to me, and old muscle memory letting me solve most of the cube. As usual, I had gotten stuck on the final side. The plague of solving all cubes. If I had some way to access the internet, this would be over in a few seconds, instead I had to brute force it by just moving things around.

After about two hours of brute forcing, the cube was solved and back on the table. I was already exhausted, there was no enjoyment in that, only the pain of partially remembering the solutions only to have them fail. I heard the door in front of me unlock, at least there was some reward for the suffering I had gone through.

I walked through the now unlocked door, looking at a fairly simple five by five sliding puzzle on the wall of the next room. The puzzle itself was quite large for some reason. I wasn't going to question it too much, but the tiles were probably larger than my head making the puzzle take up a decent portion of the wall.

It was a simple puzzle. Each tile was labeled with a number from one to twenty-four. I knew these puzzles usually wanted the one tile in the top left then repeating from the left side. This one took a lot less time to solve, but the tiles seemed to increase in weight the higher the number they were.

The twenty-fourth tile was so hard to move it took almost all of my strength any time I had to move it, and gravity even applied to the pieces making any vertical moves all that more challenging. I almost got my fingers crushed a few times by falling tiles, but I managed to not get injured the whole time.

With the next door unlocking, it was already time to leave this room. However, I decided to take a small break before I went into the next room. I was fairly tired after doing all of that heavy lifting. I ended up drinking a bottle of 'Clear Water', and eating a small protein bar.

Snack break over, I walked into the next room to see what kind of horror awaited me. On the table sitting in the center of the room was a cylinder with another sliding puzzle on it. Oh no. I saw one of these once. They had stranger solutions because they looped at the top of the puzzle.

It was a normal five by five, but the twenty-fifth slot connected to the first on the other side. In theory the way to get to the solution was the same, but there could be a more awkward set of moves required to solve it because of the extra connection.

One hour passed with lots of swearing and setting the puzzle down to rub my temples to alleviate the headache I was constantly getting. I took a small break as I looked at the puzzle. It looked well put together and was made of metal. I was contemplating taking the puzzle apart and then just putting it back together solved, but the fear of being punished stopped me.

After a quick anger nap, I was feeling a lot better and solved the puzzle within the hour. The door unlocks, but this time it opens on its own. It was nice that this floor knew I was tired of opening the doors myself. I was beginning to wonder how many rooms were here, but I had no clear way of knowing.

The next room was another table, but this time there was a chair and pencil to go along with the paper. I looked at the paper and sighed. I took off my bag and set it beside me at the table, giving a feeling of a school-like setting, but my bag was way bigger than it ever was in school.

'Given a set of numbers: 5, 11, 17, x, 29. What number is 'x'?'

Well, now that is interesting. This isn't technically a puzzle as much as it is a math logic problem. I guess that loosely counts as a puzzle, but it is quite a vague thing anyways. This one was extremely easy, so I wrote the answer of twenty-three on the paper.

The next room was the exact same setup with another sheet of paper with another similar problem on it, only this one was actually challenging. Why did it make the previous one so easy if they were just going to throw me into the lion's den.

'Given a set of numbers: 8, x, 64, 1024, y. What numbers are 'x' and 'y'?'

Alright. This one was challenging. I only got three numbers and probably had to find some relation between them. A tricky problem to say the least, and I liked that. I started writing numbers down on the paper to see what fit. Writing things down always made them easier for me to visualize.

What number can come between eight and sixty-four, then the next being just over a thousand. Squares had to be involved in numbers that got that big, that fast. So I poked around at the third and fourth number until I got a formula that worked between them. Square it then divide by four.

'X' was going to be equal to sixteen, while 'y' was going to be… uhhh, take one million, divide it by four and then add the rest of the numbers on and we get two hundred and sixty-two thousand, one hundred and forty-four.

With that, the door unlocks and opens. Wow, that wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, but I was thankful about it. Hopefully it wouldn't try to kick it up another notch, but maybe this place runs in rules of two, save for that first room with the cube.

Inside the next room was a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. I was hoping this was a one off room as well, because I wasn't going to be happy if this was ramped up in difficulty for no reason. With nothing else to do, the bag got set down, I got out some water and some snacks and I got to work.

It was actually quite relaxing just to work on a puzzle. There weren't any enemies, and I got to do something I actually kind of enjoyed. I could see why this would be hell for some people, but I was having a great time assembling this picture of a horse.

I wasn't able to sort the pieces though. I would sort them, but if I looked away for a second, or even just blinked, it would randomize with the pieces that were attached to things already. It was annoying, but not the end of the world for a one thousand piece puzzle. I could still complete it, it would just take a bit longer with the pieces constantly swapping with each other.

Several hours later, there was an assembled picture of a horse on the table as I wiped sweat off my brow. A job well done if I must say. The sound of the door unlocking startled me as I had nearly forgotten where I was due to the fun I was having with the puzzle.

The next room was, as I feared, a harder jigsaw puzzle. The issue was that it was only two hundred pieces, but they were all the same color. There was no way to tell any of them apart, and some of them fit in places they probably shouldn't as their other sides varied.

This was going to be about brute forcing and suffering. I started with the edge pieces, and was already encountering issues where the corner pieces weren't going on at all. It was barely two hours in and I was holding my head over the puzzle in tears.

I wasn't even done with the edges yet, after two grueling hours, I had what felt like days ahead of me left if I kept trying this method of solving the puzzle. I was tempted to just give up and force the door to the next room open with my ax. It was just a wooden door, what could it do against my real weapon made of good metal.

I decided against it in the end and sat back down at the table with a defeated sigh. I just have to keep pushing through this, and eventually I'll make it through this. I kept putting pieces wherever they fit, I didn't care if it was right or not, just getting them to stop randomizing was the key to success here.

Two and a half days later, I completed it. I wanted to cry, it was a beautiful creation. I was sad that I had to leave it here after working so hard on it. I was emotionally attached to the cheap cardboard the thing was made of, almost like a parent would treasure their child.

The show must go on though, and pointless weight in my bag wasn't a good idea, no matter how sentimental I was after nearly three days of puzzle work. I slowly walked to the next room and closed the door behind me so I wouldn't be tempted to go back and collect my child.

This room had three buttons in it. On the wall above the door was a TV monitor flashing colors that matched the three different colors of the buttons. So I pressed the buttons in the order that the colors appeared on the TV screen. With a *ding*, the colors of the TV and the buttons change.

I continue to do this for about ten minutes before I realize that something might be wrong here. The door wasn't opening, and it wasn't doing anything other than changing colors. Maybe I had to press them in a specific order with one in particular first, rather than just pressing the buttons with whichever one I wanted first.

The buttons were now red, green and yellow. What could the one I start on need to be, and why hadn't I hit it until now? Lets see, start with green, then red, then yellow? The door unlocks with a loud click and the TV shuts down, having fulfilled its single purpose.

What even was the solution there? I just brute forced it again, but it worked this time. I don't understand. This time when I went into the next room, there were four buttons, and no monitor. The buttons had colors and numbers on them. When I pressed a total of four buttons, they changed numbers and colors.

One, Five, Seven, twelve. Blue, red, yellow, green. The buttons were currently set to that, and I thought really hard about what the solution might be. There was no TV giving me some sort of instructions this time, so I figured that the previous room should have taught me how to do it properly, but I brute forced it by accident.

I didn't want to press the wrong buttons, but what if this is something stupidly simple. What if we just go alphabetical by first letter in the number or color. That would be, blue, five, green, then uhhhhhhhhhh, one.

The door unlocks and I breathe a sigh of relief. It really was just that easy, huh. I was a bit scared that it was going to be a more abstract solution, the previous upscale of difficulty has left me scared of these harder rooms.

Another room down, who knows how many more to go. I was hoping it wasn't too many more, I was starting to lose my earlier motivation. You know, the thing I had three days ago when I was going through the easy jigsaw puzzle. Who knew that a puzzle that took three days made someone lose motivation.

In the next room was a piece of paper with a pencil on the table. I was worried it was going to be another math question, but instead it seemed to be a riddle. This was an easy riddle and I wasn't immediately able to solve it, so I should expect quite the challenge from the next room.

'I have cities, but no houses. I have forests, but no trees. I have water, but no fish.'

A city with no houses, I feel like I've heard this riddle before. I remember the answer was really easy if you just thought about it for a bit. Forest but no trees, and water without fish. I just had to think logically, there was no reason that I shouldn't be able to think of something quickly here.

The only thing I can think of is maybe they are pictures, but no, you would see trees if someone took a photo of a forest. Then maybe a drawing of some kind… A map! The answer was definitely a map. It marked locations like cities, forests and water, but didn't actually have those things on them. I wrote down the answer and was gifted with the sound of the door opening.

The next room was a lot more dimly lit and looked as if a storm had torn through here. There were no windows, but one of the fluorescent lights had fallen from the ceiling but was still dimly flickering. I sat at the table with the next piece of paper and pencil, and read the next riddle.

'No matter how far you sink, you can always find me. I am something always in the back of your mind. The more you experience, the worse off you are for life. What am I?'

Oh, how interesting. This one was less direct for sure, I was going to have to pick it apart and look for clues. The more I experience, the worse off I am for life. Then, it is always in the back of my mind. I wonder if maybe it is fear. If you fear something, you can always fear it more, so it fits with the first one too.

I wrote down fear, and nothing happened. Was it wrong? I guess it had to be if the door didn't unlock. What else filled all these criteria, and it has to be a negative, there is no way a positive thing, and because of the second clue, I can assume it is an emotion. I might be wrong though.

What emotion can you sink into? Maybe depression, but that was more of a state than an emotion, but I tried to write it down anyways. Once again, nothing happened so I was wrong again. I was glad that I wasn't being punished for wrong answers, but I wasn't just going to sit here all day writing things down, I wanted to actually solve it.

What emotion can you sink into… It was the right question, but I had just gone down the wrong path last time. I was stuck wondering for a while, until I realized that a common emotion to 'sink' into was despair. I wasn't confident though, as I wasn't sure that despair could ruin someone's life.

However, once I finished writing it on the page, the door ahead of me slowly swung open with a groaning noise that matched its deteriorated appearance. I walked through the door into the room, immediately assaulted with a sense of wrongness. Something else was involved in this puzzle that I didn't like.

The normal looking room had what appeared to be a box in the center of the room, it was constantly vibrating. It seemed to be vibrating in a pattern. On the sides of the box was a total of three dials that all went from one to sixty. The box itself almost looked like an old safe.

The door of the safe only had a handle on it. There were no brand markings on it, but the feeling of wrongness I got as I approached it only got stronger. I had no idea what was in here, but I knew I had to get it out. I had begun to associate this presence with demons, but there's no way a demon could fit inside of a safe this small. It barely reached my knees in height as it sat on the floor.

What interested me the most however, was the red exit sign above the door. This was the final room, and the next floor was going to be a boss floor. I was a bit worried, but didn't think about it too hard. I had to worry about this anomaly sitting in front of me.

I put my hand on the safe, ignoring the feeling that was trying to get me to run from it. The same feeling I got with demons. The more I felt around and looked at this thing, the more unnerved I felt. I tried to feel for the pattern that the vibrations were trying to convey, but my hand went numb a few seconds after touching it, and the vibrations were too close together to tell apart by my ear from afar.

I put my ear near the safe, and along with the vibrations, I hear a faint beating likened to a heart, along with some other kind of artificial noise, maybe a beeping of some kind. Turning the dials on the sides didn't seem to do anything noticeable. I probably either needed to input numbers on them like a safe, or I needed to have them all point to a correct number.

At a loss, I looked around the room for some kind of information. There wasn't a piece of paper that told me what I needed to do unlike most of the rooms on this floor, and there wasn't anything on the ceiling, walls, or floor that gave me any hints as to what needed to be done here.

I tried alternating my hands to prevent them from going completely numb as I felt for a repeat in the vibration, and eventually I found that there was a hard stop between the beginning and the end of the vibrations. It was less than half a second longer, but it was a longer pause than the rest of the vibrations.

I tried the most straightforward option of just using the number of vibrations per cycle, and there were nine numbers in sequence, so I would input the numbers on the dials in sets of three, just like some safes I used to know. I started from left to right. Doing the dial on the left side first, then the back, then the right. With a click, I heard a panel on the wall behind me open.

Inside of the small hole that had been opened was a sheet of paper. At the same time, the vibrations from the safe had stopped. I carefully reached for the sheet of paper and hesitated as I looked between it and the safe, the note was unnerving to say the least.

'Inside the safe, is the heart of a True Demon. As they are immortal, you do not have to worry about time, as no amount of time can kill a True Demon. Your task is to free the heart of the True Demon, whether it be temporary or permanent.

Do not under any circumstances summon this demon to your location, such actions will result in the failure of the puzzle, and you being forced to deal with the consequences.'

Lovely, don't summon the demon, but you have to free its heart! Cool, good, wonderful. Now how in the world was I supposed to do that. Did I have to draw some special chalk lines on the ground to prevent the demon from coming to collect its own heart? These things were basically gods, how can I stop them!

After calming down from my raging at no one, I sat on the ground and listened to the now clearly audible beating of the heart. It was still alive somehow, probably by nature of the immortality involved in being a demon. True immortality was terrifying. You could be dismembered, or have your organs extracted, and you'd still be alive, feeling it all as it happened.

This True Demon's heart was still beating inside of this safe, I had to free it. Did that really mean I had to open it though? I mean, in some cases, freedom doesn't always mean escape. An old line I used to read on the spine comes to my mind at that moment; 'there is freedom in death'.

Was I supposed to kill something that was immortal somehow? You can't, it is actually impossible if this is true immortality… unless their 'true' immortality is just as true as their belief in themselves being gods. But on the flip side, what if I anger it by trying to kill it and it tries to do the same to me.

There were so many variables that I just couldn't account for. I had to make a decision at some point though, as I needed to leave this place. I couldn't just sit in this room with a detached and still beating heart for the rest of my life. Well, I could, but that would be a dumb life to live.

I looked around the room to assess my options. Nothing had changed overall. The three dials on the safe, the now open wall with the note still inside, and me. The vibration was gone, making it so I could touch the safe without my hands going numb now, but it was strange.

I checked the hole again to see if there was anything other than the note, and there wasn't anything I could see or feel. I was stumped, but then I remembered the artificial sound I could faintly hear last time from the safe.

I put my head against the safe to try and hear the noise through the beating of the heart. It was another repeating number sequence that was probably in morse code or a code of some kind. At first I thought it was a heart rate monitor, but the noise was substantially different, it was more like a signal device.

Sixteen separate numbers with a small wait between them, with a hard stop when the sequence repeated. It was being very generous with me, and I appreciated it. I now had to figure out what numbers it was trying to convey to me, so I walked to the previous room and grabbed the paper and the pencil and started to write what I was hearing down.

It seemed all the numbers were quite clear. This was probably just morse code, the only issue was going to be trying to tell which numbers were double digits and which weren't. I had sixteen numbers, and only nine slots to put them in. I tried listening to the sequence again, but if there was a difference, I couldn't tell with just my ears.

I took all the numbers that were six and looked at anything past them, if it had a zero, it could be a double digit, if it didn't, it was probably a single digit. This only really worked if it was the first number in a double digit though.

After around an hour, I had tried a few solutions with none of them working. I was taking my time figuring out this solution. I had a few more options to try, but I think I had narrowed it down quite well just through simple elimination and educated guesses. The next solution I had tried finally yielded some feedback.

Another panel on the wall opened up revealing a sheet of paper, a pencil and a note taped to the wall. This was just continuing to get more and more complicated as each section was completed, I was scared about what it was going to make me do next, as this was probably the step that was do or die.

'Congratulations for not summoning the True Demon by this point. Above the note, there is a false panel you can remove, behind it, you will find ten steel needles, and a hammer to insert them. If placed correctly, you can free the True Demon of its curse, otherwise, the freedom is temporary.

The demon should no longer be able to find you. No matter the result from this point on, insertion of all ten needles will result in success.'

Now that was ominous. Why hide the needles from this point, and why call them needles if I need a hammer. I removed the panel above the note and found ten 'needles' of various sizes, and a small five kilogram hammer. Now, calling these massive spikes 'needles' seemed a little extra.

The shortest of which was the same length as my forearm and the same width as my pinky finger. The largest was as long as my leg and as thick as my forearm. One more thing concerned me. What part of the previous step could summon the demon?

Even as a joke, that isn't funny. Was there something I could have done to summon the demon instead of solving the puzzle? What would have happened if I listened closely to the beating of the demon's heart, was it also beating in morse code, and I just let it go thinking it was just the awkward beating of a demon's heart not connected to a body.

I decided to start with the largest spike, looking closely at it, I could tell it wasn't a solid piece of steel, but it had patterns of a slightly shinier metal inlaid in an intricate pattern. I could barely see it when it was held at the perfect angle to the light, so I wondered if this was the only spike like this, or if all of them had this, it was just harder to tell on the smaller ones.

I hammered away at the large spike, forcing it through the metal on the top of the safe, pushing it through as fast as I could. I felt the soft feedback as the spike made it to the heart, and I immediately felt the feeling of wrongness surge to a level I had never felt before.

A scream entered my ears that forced me to fall to the ground. It was a scream of pure agony, and it was causing me an intense amount of the same. Covering my ears did nothing to stop the noise from entering my ears. I could taste metal in my mouth as I forced myself to stand up with the hammer in my hand.

I hit the spike deeper into the demon's heart, and it continued to scream. I could feel it outside the room, it knew I was here and it was trying to come for me. The feeling it emanated was so many times stronger than the woman from floor eighteen. The feeling made me actually vomit and keel over.

It was angry, and I was freeing it. What curse this demon suffered from, I could only assume it was its own existence. So I forced myself to stand and keep hammering in the spikes. It took an unnatural amount of energy to get the spike all the way through the safe, more than it should have, even if I was forcing it through metal.

With the first needle through the safe, I could see a gray liquid escaping from the bottom of it. It smelled worse than anything I could have even imagined, the stench of decay was overwhelming. The screaming continued, but was now a lot quieter.

Needle after needle was put through the heart, with each additional needle, the screaming became quieter and quieter. Until the final needle went all the way through and there was silence. No screaming, only the sounds of my heavy breathing.

I was unnaturally tired, sweat drenched my entire body as if I had recently been underwater. I could hear a body limply fall to the ground outside this room, and the door behind me locked. The exit door with the red exit light opened slowly revealing the stairwell. There wasn't another note to read, only escape.

I quickly grabbed my bag and left the room. The smell of rot and decay was making me want to vomit, despite there already being nothing left to vomit. The gray liquid was covering almost the entire floor, dirtying my boots. The demon's heart bled a lot, a lot more than any heart really ever should. It was also larger than a normal heart, by about five times.

I closed the exit door behind me, and collapsed. I really was just exhausted. I was going to sleep, and then it was time for the next boss floor.