“Only one left, valued customers!” the fury announced, beaming with joy. Of course, Dallion could tell it was all fake. She wasn’t particularly pleased with Dallion’s performance or even with the amount of money the Drum was taking in. If anything, she was bored with the whole thing. Considering the fact that she was a fury, and possibly awakened, Dallion could empathize a bit.

His attention, however, remained on the staircase. The mage who had given Dallion the warning and attempted to get him to lose or quit the gauntlet had gone down less than a minute ago. Unless he was running, that suggested that he was still in the building. If Dallion managed to mend the final item in the next half minute or so, he still had a chance of running down and catching up. The only thing that made that possibility less likely was the useless announcements that prolonged the challenge.

“By now, our challenge must be quite spent. Does he have enough strength to continue with the final challenge?” The fury went on and on. “We shall soon see. Before that, though, let’s make things a bit more interesting.”

No! Dallion screamed internally. Not more talking! He just wanted to end this quickly, so he had a chance of finding out more.

Gen, tell Harp. Maybe she can find a way to tell Jiroh or someone at the inn.

The plan wasn’t the best. Jiroh was going to be furious he was messing around with the mirror pool, and that wasn’t even close to how much Eury was going to be when she, in turn, found out. However, some pain was worth it.

“Since there’s only one color left, selecting an item from the chest would be pointless. That is why we’ll let chance decide.”

An excessively muscular waiter brought a large tray with three items on it. At a quick glance, all of them seemed to be the same—three daggers covered in black rot. From what Dallion could make out, there was more dirt than grime holding them together, making it difficult to determine the actual damage.

“Three daggers,” the fury said as the ray was put on the end of the table. “Brand new from the wilderness. Each has guardians that no one awakened has seen.”

Dallion could tell that was a lie. He could feel dishonesty ringing in her voice, even if she was masking it perfectly.

“In order to mend a dagger fully, our challenger will have to defeat all but the last guardian of the dagger. As you all remember, the rules of the gauntlet—an item cannot be improved, only mended.”

Get on with it, Dallion wanted to shout

“But how do we choose which item he’s to mend? Do we let our challenger decide?” the fury slid the bank of her left-hand fingers along Dallion’s face. “Or better yet, maybe you, our valued customers, would decide.” The fury flashed a smile. “If you want him to enter the left dagger, raise your left hand. If you want the right—raise your right hand. And of course, if you want him to try his luck in the middle, raise no hands at all.”

Nice trick. Dallion could see how she was trying to manipulate the choice. More people were likely to do nothing at all and leave him with the middle dagger. That had to be the trick.

“Please, determine our challenger’s destiny!”

A number of hands rose in the air, but nowhere nearly as many as the people in the room. The fury had played her cards well, creating the impression that the crowd had made the determination. In fact, the Drum had made the choice all along.

“Ah, a wise decision,” the fury took the middle dagger and placed it in the only remaining spot on the table. “Now the final challenge is upon us. Please, choose. Do you think that our challenger will succeed, or will he fail?”

Gold coins poured faster than the waiters could take them to the gambling table. At this point, Dallion had no hope of catching the mage. His only option was for Harp to have managed to pull something off.

The table was soon stacked. The bets were split pretty much ten to one against Dallion. From a business perspective, Dallion thought Belaal would let him win. That way the Drum would keep not only the half the bets, but Dallion’s winnings as well. However, there was more to it than simple math. He himself had made a bet against the owner and there was no telling how that would affect the odds.

“One minute,” the fury whispered as she turned the hourglass for the last time. “Make a good performance once it’s over.”

Dallion grabbed hold of the dagger.

ITEM AWAKENING

The green rectangle appeared. When Dallion saw it didn’t have the world sphere in it, he already knew what was going on. As it turned out, the butterfly had been right all along.

Get Lux, Dallion thought.

The setting around him was quite miserable—a room with walls made of black mold with pieces of metal visible every now and again. The mending labyrinth was in the same condition, but unlike all the items before, there was one huge difference… this wasn’t an item that could be mended. The damage and corrosion was so far gone that it had become the only thing keeping the item together. If Dallion were to try and remove the crud, the item itself would snap under its own pressure.

That’s why all the previous challengers had failed. The plan was quite simple, but very sneaky. The best part was that it was very visual. Having half of the item fall off left nothing to interpretation. The gamblers would be left with the impression that they had won, for the most part ignoring the amounts of money they had lost so far. What was more, having someone fail so close to completing the challenge would make people hunger for more.

The rectangle described the room as being level three, however, that was beyond the point. Combining his music and forging skills, Dallion looked around, searching for places from where to start fixing this mess.

While it was true that he had never studied architecture or the like, he had played enough physics games back on Earth to have some idea of what to do. Hopefully, it was going to be enough.

The first thing Lux did upon appearing on Dallion’s shoulder was to let out a depressing chirp.

“I know, little guy.” Dallion petted the familiar on the head. “We still have to do it, though.”

The more Dallion looked, the more he was convinced that the item’s state wasn’t an accident. The damage was too precise, measured to be in a state of equilibrium. In order to get even some foundations in place, Dallion had to engage in a game of reverse-Jenga. If the stakes weren’t so high, Dallion might have even enjoyed this.

“Sorry about this, Nox.” Dallion summoned the Nox dagger. “I’ll need your help as well.”

The crackling remained stoically silent, likely to show the younger familiar how things were done.

Dallion looked down. It, too, was a minefield of crud and decay. The spot that Dallion had appeared in was pretty much the only bastion of safety. Still, there were a few metal lines visible extending outward. Bending down, Dallion used the tip of the dagger to scrape off a bit of decay. Careful as a surgeon with a scalpel, he revealed the metal element.

Tin, Dallion thought. Considering the wealth the owner of the Drum had, it was no surprise he’d cheap out on the item. Summoning a tin ingot, Dallion carefully pushed it through the black mass, until it touched the metal of the room.

“Your turn, Lux,” he said. “Go slow and heal evenly.”

For over a minute, the firebird stood on the top of the ingot, its flames slowly melting it from the bottom up. The process was excruciatingly stressful. Dallion could feel sweat form on his forehead. There were constantly two instances of him at the ready—one doing nothing, and the other yelling at Lux to stop. Fortunately, the latter never came into play. In the end, the connection was complete and a new segment of metal was connected to the safe zone.

“One down,” Dallion said, and focused on the next.

After a quarter hour, eight metal lines were connected to the starting spot, like bars in concrete. The only difference was that the “concrete” was the thing that Dallion had to remove, which he slowly did. This was the first time he got to glance into the nothingness beyond the item. There was no window to the real world, not a colorful rectangle, just a dark void that was darker than black.

Ask Nil if that’s the stuff of nightmares, Dallion thought, then started summoning ingots for Lux to weld in.

The process took much less time than Dallion expected. After only a few minutes, the space between the metal bars was filled up, looking identical to that of the original spot. Now came the moment of truth.

“Get ready to lift me, Lux,” Dallion said. Then, after a deep breath, he stepped on one of the new sections.

If the floor would let out now, it could mean pretty much the end of his hopes to gain a kaleidervisto. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Just to make sure, Dallion split and jumped on the flour in a few of his instances. The metal held.

A jolt of euphoria passed through him, bringing him the sweet satisfaction of knowing he had found a way to beat the trap set up for him by Balaal. The moment was quickly crushed by the realization of how much time it would take. So far, he had spent half an hour only mending a few feet of the starting room. He hadn’t reached the walls, let alone the mending labyrinth itself.

Dallion wasn’t particularly good in math in the past, but thanks to his improvement in mind, he was able to tell that it would take him weeks at the very least to complete this task. Even in terms of true time, that was a lot. However, there was nothing he could do about it.

“Well, guys, better get to it.” Dallion looked around for the next section to mend. “The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get to finish.”

Soon, as it turned out, was a very relative term. The entire first few days Dallion had spent on the starting room alone. The floor was fixed almost without issue, but when it came to the walls, Dallion was glad that he kept a spare instance while working, even if it was causing him a faint but permanent headache. On four occasions entire sections of the walls had been seen crumbling, forcing him to choose the safe instance and try a new approach. It was almost like using a reality undo… an undo that required focus and effort to maintain.

The mending labyrinth had turned out to be far worse. Not only did he have to deal with the standard issues he was accustomed to, but he had to take into account the twistiness of the labyrinth itself. Whoever had made the damage had made sure to twist the item like a corkscrew, requiring Dallion first to solve the puzzle in his head before he could even get to work. At one point, the only thing that kept him going were the blue rectangles announcing that he had mended another percent of the realm.

On the second week, hunger started to kick in, further reducing Dallion’s work capability. While it did no real damage, the feeling made him more and more testy, forcing him to spend half of the day sleeping in the starting room. Feeling his annoyance, Lux and Nox tried to cheer him up as best they could, but that didn’t always work.

Finally, after three and a half weeks by Dallion’s count, he had arrived at the last patch of decay in the realm. Standing in front, Dallion almost felt a reluctance to finish. It had taken him so much time to get this far that part of him was sad it was over. The goals that he had come in with now seemed so far away, as if part of a different life.

Astreza, Berannah, Centor, Dararr, Emion, Felygn, Galatea, Dallion said to himself.

There was a whole world waiting for him beyond this realm, the real world. And once he mended this last one patch, he was going to get his prize.

“Here goes nothing.” Dallion scraped out the remaining crud. As before, the substance melted in the air, as if it had never been, leaving a large hole. “Darude,” Dallion whispered, and summoned a tin ingot.