1762 sounded like a year which many important things happened but to Ada right now, the important thing about the number was that it was the number of steps she took to go from the bottom to the summit. Dividing by 4 would give 440.5. That means each box needed to be 440.5 steps between each other. This would have to mean that each step she took was even though. Her pedometer also calculated the total amount of distance traveled which was 0.88 miles. Divide that by 4 and that would be 0.22 miles. This was still going to be an estimate but there wasn’t much else she could do. No such thing like GPS existed here.

“I’ve a few questions in my mind. If I place the box not in the exact place but close enough, would I receive any punishment? A better question might be: how close is close enough?”

The voice resounded with amusement. “Do you want there to be punishment? I have quite a few already prepared.”

“Obviously not. I just want to understand the rules here,” Ada replied as she imagined the lady’s smirk.

This mage was much too transparent in the schadenfreude she displayed towards Ada’s potential failure. Ada wondered whether the animosity towards gods was a perspective shared by many mages or whether she was just unlucky enough to encounter one bigot after another. In a world dominated by gods with unimaginable powers, she would never have imagined there would be mortals who would dare to show such obvious disdain. She would have thought that there would be quiet dissent but nothing openly hostile, even towards a new Divine like herself. Of course, there was always the possibility that this particular mage was just a sadist. Whatever motivated Eilin, Ada did not plan to fail.

“Yes, you need to place it within five yards of the required position. There are a few built-in dispensed punishments for errors.”

“What kind of punishments?”

“Well, that’s hardly fair for me to tell you everything here isn’t it? You managed to navigate the trail well enough. Let’s just say things are going to get a little more interesting if you don’t place it within five yards.”

0.22x5280=1161.6 feet but 0.224x5280=1182.72 feet whereas 0.214x5280=1129.92. In the worst case scenario, assuming that it had perfect accuracy and we just needed to worry about precision, the difference between what could be and what it displayed was 52.8 feet which translated to 17.6 yards. Ada shook her head. Even assuming perfect accuracy of distance, the number of significant digits with the miles units was just too imprecise for her to base it off of that. Her smart watch was never meant for such precision. She would have to trust that the steps that she took was mostly equidistant.

The voice spoke again as Ada concluded her thoughts. “Did I mention there was a time limit?”

Ada would be surprised if Eilin wasn’t smirking. Ensuring her voice stayed neutral, Ada replied. “Thank you for informing me of this. How long do I have?”

“I understand the Divine uses different units than us. You have ten of your minutes to place all four boxes in their appropriate places on either side of the path. You can only carry one box at a time but for a goddess such as yourself a little hike shouldn’t be too onerous. Just try to move fast. Once you touch the first box, the timer will start.”

“What happens if I want to carry more than one?”

“If you wish to experiment, you can certainly quickly find out the consequences.”

Ada had a few choice words in her mind to reply to this snarky attitude but decided wisely that it was not in her best interest to make an unknown enemy, especially so when she wanted them to not become her enemies even if they choose not to be her allies. As far as testing out the consequences of not following the mage’s instructions, she didn’t think it would be wise either just in case. In school, she has never cheated and she didn’t plan to start now.

“I think I’m fine with not experimenting at the moment.”

“Excellent choice.”

“Are there any other rules I need to know?”

“No.”

“So, what happens after I pass this one?”

“Just because you are a Divine does not mean that you shouldn’t know the merit of having patience. Let me see you pass this test first.”

“I was just wondering if you can give me a little more insight into this whole process.”

Ada waited for a reply but she heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing. An unbidden thought came to her on how her own biology functioned as a goddess. Strange that I still breathe when I don’t need air to survive. The lack of response indicated to Ada that the woman was done talking.

“Let’s just get this over with so I can move on to whatever other tests she has in mind,” Ada muttered to herself.

She was confident that she was fast enough to do it even if she has to carry each box one at a time. The only change was that she needed to walk faster than anticipated. She reached out and gingerly touched the box closest to her. As soon as she touched it, there was the sound like the snap of a finger and suddenly a large bright 10:00 in a digital clock display resembling a red neon sign appeared out of thin air floating high above the dark terrain. It started ticking down. Unnecessarily dramatic but I won’t complain if it helps to make things that much more obvious.

The surface of the box itself felt smooth, hard and cold. Though its glowing rainbow color was impressive visually, tactilely it felt no different than an ordinary aluminum box. It also felt surprisingly light. If there was no time limit and if this wasn’t a test, Ada would have loved to investigate further to determine its material composition and its properties. As things stand now, her curiosity could wait. She thought aloud. “Let’s see how fast this body can run and still count the steps.”

She tucked the box under her arm and started at a brisk walk. From her experience so far with her enhanced reflexes, Ada wasn’t surprised she was able to walk over three times her former speed while still being able to count her steps. She walked even faster until she felt that she hit the limit of her capacity to move and count. In less than a minute, she reached the location where she needed to place the first box. There, she stopped and stooped down before carefully laying the box on the ground to the right of the path. There was no need to risk it breaking or tumbling down the hill. Quickly, she hurried back to the apex of the hill without the need to count her steps this time and grabbed the second box.

Repeat and rinse. This activity reminded her surprisingly of the tediousness when doing most of her school work throughout her life. She did not miss those days as a kid in public school where her homework assignment was composed of answering the same questions over and over again. She wondered if she would have died from boredom if her parents haven’t bitten the bullet and enrolled her at an expensive private STEM academy for the next six years. The change was like night and day in terms of both the students and teachers’ level of engagement and intelligence. She wondered if the Academy here was more akin to her experience with public school or the private academy. Just like she was being examined by the mages here, she was well-aware of the opportunity these tests have in informing her of their level of competency.

If I want competent allies, I would hope the instructors here to be intelligent and ambitious. However, if they're too competent, they may be wary of siding with me. I would. I mean, why would I dive headfirst into a war siding with a completely new Divine that has almost no power or influence in this world? Do they even care about changing the status quo where pompous psychotic gods like Yuano dictates how mortals live and die? Maybe it'll be better if they just stayed completely neutral. Just let me peruse their libraries and then have me leave them alone. Or maybe the whole thing is just much more complicated. Arbon did allude to different factions at play here. Ugh, politics. To be given all this power and yet having to play political games with mortals is downright depressing in a way.

Ada’s thoughts along these lines died as she neared the place for the second box. She stopped at the exact location she needed and carefully placed it next to the trail. She turned around and sprinted towards the hilltop. In a few seconds she had reached there and grabbed the last box. The clock read 5:30. This was going to be the easiest one since she didn’t have to count steps. She just needed to run as fast as possible to the beginning of the trail and place the box there.

She started running. Ada had the thought that if she was a crueler or less cautious god, she wouldn’t have agreed to participate in anything like a test. Instead, she would have just taken everything by force that she needed. She imagined scenes where this arrogant mage Eilin’s face (only lightly battered from a few good slaps) was resting firmly under her foot but this was nothing she could pursue now in the middle of the test. All the treasures of the Academy were forcibly laid out on the ground in front of her. There was a wild gleam in her eyes and she cackled with evil laughter at the looks of every single mage here groveling in front of her.

I would have to be thoroughly pressed to the edge of a cliff to go down that route of brute force intimidation. She needed allies and though she never thought of herself as what could be colloquially called nice or even had much confidence in her social competency, she believed that she had to try. Her mother used to tell her that one could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That line was used to encourage her to make more friends by being a little more tactful in what she said. It didn’t quite work out then but perhaps there was still truth to those words.

She needed these mortals to be on her side not because of her desire to acquire a flock of followers or allies but as a means to address the critical flaw of lack of information. She was almost completely ignorant of this world from its gods, magical systems, societal structures, flora and fauna, technologies, etc. She needed information. There was no Internet or digital databases here amongst the mortals so the next best thing was what the best minds on Urth had to offer in their records. Her conversations with Leanne and Ruciella have been quite helpful but the absorption rate of information was too slow. It was analogous to a situation where her downlink rate was a 1 Gbps whereas the mortals’ uplink rate was 1 Kbps. This was why she needed books. The upper limit of the uplink rate there would be determined by the time it took her to flip a page.

She was still half paying attention to the trail and noticed that the starting point was nearing her. Ada relished the thought that with a few steps more, she would be done with this test. A few moments later, she stopped and placed the last box next to the start of the trail. Glancing up at the digital clock display it read 4:32. Before she could pump her fist and proclaim to the annoying mage that she was complete, the grating sound of Eilin’s voice beat her to it with a completely unexpected response. “Too far for the last box.”

“What?! I placed it perfectly there.” Ada protested. She felt more shocked that she could have possibly did arithmetic wrong than she had of any fear of potential punishment.

There was no immediate reply. A wind whipped sand into her face. She wondered where the sand came from. The trail was featureless and had no obvious granular material from what she could tell. More sand whipped into her face and she hopped back a sizable distance to avoid being buffeted by them. They did not hurt nor did they infringe on her eyesight but they were quite annoying.

The woman finally answered. “Well, I’m not the one to assess whether you were in the bounds of the accepted placement of the last box. That decision was already built into this Artifact. I can tell you that if you can defeat the sand jinn in the time remaining, you still pass even though you did not place it where you should have.”

“The sand what?”

Ada looked at the creature. If she stretched her imagination, the swirling vortex of sand had the semblance of a face in the middle. She muttered. “Great, I have less than five minutes to defeat some weird swirling wind mixed in with sand.”

Ada quickly ran through some facts. Sand was a granular material typically with some composition of oxidized silica so it was most likely not flammable. If it was heated hot enough, it could turn into glass but she didn’t think her little torch flame was going to suffice. Sand also doesn’t chemically react with water though physically the water could cause the sand to sink. The question though was the wind part of this equation. If she dropped a gallon of water on this thing, who was to say that she has just traded a swirling sand vortex for a swirling water vortex?

“Well, this shouldn’t be too hard right?”