Three echoes appeared in the room, just as the glasses doubled again. With not enough space left on the counter they formed a second row floating in the air. The rules, however, remained the same.

“Ready?” the fury asked.

Before Dallion had a chance to respond, all glasses began moving about like butterflies. If the past shuffle was difficult, this one was outright impossible. Dallion did his best to follow what he thought to be the glass with the liquid, but after a few seconds, his eyes were stinging him so much that he had to blink.

So that’s the trick, he thought. A blink wasn’t much, but it was enough to let Diroh switch either the position of the glass, or have the liquid move to another. Quite tricky, though, within the rules. Whatever the trial was trying to teach him, it wasn’t mere perception.

“Want me to stop talking?” she asked. “Or do you want me to continue? You’ll lose either way, but this way you’ll feel a bit better about yourself.”

“Wow. Glad you have a high opinion of me.” Dallion gave up. With his perception level, it was impossible to keep up, not with her speed.

“I’m not Diroh, remember? I’m just your thoughts and fears.”

“You still get some outside help,” Dallion said, referring to the Moons. That was the wildcard that made this so much more complicated. If Dallion was certain that he was only dealing with his own fears, he could dismiss a lot of things as outright false and act accordingly. However, each trial had just enough doubt to make him wonder whether there wasn’t some truth to it.

“That’s the nature of the trial.”

The glasses kept on floating and sliding until at one point they all froze in place. Giving into temptation, Dallion created an instance to look underneath the floating ones, but all he saw was a layer of glass. The trial had thought of something so simple.

“Can you guys check a quarter?” he asked, his echoes.

“Sure.”

“No prob”

“Alright.” Dallion took a step back. “On three.”

He split into twenty clones: sixteen to handle his section of the glasses and four more to observe the reactions of the echoes. The prize wasn’t in Dallion’s section, which was bad. However, in one of his remaining instances, he heard an echo shout out it was among his glasses. Naturally, he switched to that instance.

“It’s here,” the echo said loudly, then turned the glass around.

There was nothing there. Not only that, but the echo who’d said so disappeared, leaving the glass to fall and smash into the floor.

“I told you not to rely on echoes,” Diroh said. And just to confirm the point, all of Dallion’s remaining echoes vanished as well. One of the remaining classes turned around, revealing the shimmering orange liquid. This time, though, it didn’t remain in place, but darted at Dallion, hitting him in the shoulder.

MINOR WOUND

Your health has been reduced by 5%

A red rectangle appeared in front of him. Its mere presence surprised Dallion. With the level he was aiming for being so far up, he had assumed that he only would get one shot at this. Apparently, things weren’t as harsh.

“Why so surprised?” The fury smirked. “The point isn’t just checking if you’re good enough to go on higher, but to teach you if you aren’t.”

“Isn’t that too much in my favor?” Dallion waved the rectangle away. “Completing trials in ways that they weren’t meant to be completed and such.”

“You can’t cheat a trial. Either you succeed or you don’t. That’s the only thing that matters. If you use a crutch, you’ll have more problems later on.”

It all evens out, Dallion thought. It was a solid philosophy and one he had taken advantage of early on. However, having reached his current level, he wished that he hadn’t.

“How many times do I have?”

“You’re good at math, can’t you calculate? The damage doesn’t change.”

Nineteen more times. It sounded like a lot, but without a plan, it didn’t matter if Dallion had nineteen times or nineteen thousand. The end result was always going to be the same. There always was the option to rely on luck. If he pushed himself a bit, he could split into forty instances, which gave him more than a fifty percent chance of success. That was better than the odds on a roulette table, and yet Dallion still thought it wouldn’t be of any help.

Naturally, since this was a learning exercise, he had a go at it. Three times he chose two-thirds of the glasses and three times he failed. The result was always a sharp sting in a part of his body and five percent damage.

“Want a break?” Diroh asked. “It won’t count against you in the trial.”

Dallion gave her a suspicious look. From what he could tell, she wasn’t lying. Just to be on the safe side he had one instance check out his suspicions. The trial didn’t end.

“A break’s fine,” he said at last.

All the glasses shifted to the sides, opening a clear space between Dallion and Diroh.

“Want something to drink?” she asked. “It won’t be the best. You don’t have to level to make things taste nice yet, but it’s okay. You’ve had worse as a hunter.”

“Maybe later.” Dallion couldn’t help but smile.

He’d had a lot worse as a hunter indeed. That was one of the differences between a hunter and a sheltered awakened. The sheltered created things that matched their high perception—softer clothes and fabrics, tastier food, stronger oils and ointments—while hunters worked to ignore the sensations. Sleeping in the wilderness wasn’t comfortable in the least, but Dallion had grown to accept it.

“How much do you know of what’s going on outside?” he asked.

“As much as you know. You’re in a tough situation fighting a crazy mage.”

“Nothing more?”

Instead of answering, the fury floated a bottle of lime green liquid and poured herself a glass. A deep smell of thistles and ozone filled the air. It wasn’t a combination that was common, even if the sensations mixed rather well. Without doubt, one had to be a fury to feel the full effect.

A fury, Dallion thought. Once again, he was being given a hint. The answer to this puzzle was skill, but not only perception. Dallion had to use empathy as well.

Furies were not like humans. They had a lot of shared characteristics, but above all, they were beings of air. Their entire perception of the world was different—it wasn’t only land, and plants, and buildings, but also air currents… Hundreds and hundreds of air currents that went everywhere all of the time. They were the invisible strings that moved any object that the furies desired. All this time, the truth had been staring Dallion in the face.

Harp, he said. Can I use music to see air?

No, the nymph replied. You can see the changes around it.

Several strings on the harpsisword moved on their own. On cue, Dallion concentrated. Initially, there was nothing to see, however, soon he saw it: the bends in the music sounds. In the past, Dallion had seen sound as nothing but threads attaching to a target. Back on Earth, every child knew that sound wasn’t a string, but a vibration that spread as an acoustic wave. What Dallion had been seeing so far was, in fact, a marker representing the connection between the sound source and the target. Now, he was seeing the entire field, and in that field was affected by magic—the natural magic that furies used to control air currents.

“I should have been looking at you,” Dallion said. “Not the glasses.”

“Good catch.” The fury finished her drink and floated the bottle back on the shelf behind her. The air currents she used to do so were clearly visible as pale lines lacking the background’s color. “It won’t help you, though.” Dozens of more emerged, each connecting to a different glass.

Without warning, the glasses started shuffling again. Like ballet dancers, they moved from thread to thread, swapping and turning. A breathtaking sight, to be sure, but not one that helped him. Diroh had been right to say that seeing the threads wasn’t of any substantial help.

It was natural Dallion wouldn’t be able to guess which glass held the liquid; after all, he hadn’t seen where it had gone. Unfortunately, the next few times proved that wasn’t the only reason for his failure.

Soon enough, half his health was gone and the pain in his eyes was back. Using music to find the liquid didn’t work either. The trial had made it the same consistency as air, and the harpsisword refused to let him know if there was a way to detect it.

Pushing through the pain, Dallion persisted. No longer splitting into instances, he focused on only following the glass. The level of his body trait made it possible for him to keep on staring for over a minute without blinking.

Eyes on the prize, he kept repeating himself.

Finally, the movement stopped.

“That one.” He pointed, tears streaming from his eyes.

“Are you sure?” Diroh asked.

When she didn’t receive a reply, the fury flipped the cup. A ball of orange liquid floated from it.

“Six so far.” All the glasses split again, forming three rows above the counter. There were a total of a hundred and sixty-four glasses now, all ready to start the game. “Ready to go on?”

“Give me a minute.” Dallion closed his eyes.

The strain was too large for him to handle. In a few weeks, or maybe days, he’d undoubtedly be better at this, but that was too far away in the future. There was still the trial to go through, not to mention the fight going on in the real world. The whole point of leveling up now was to be able to survive the encounter against the mage. By the looks of it, things weren’t going well. Dallion had doubts he’d be able to complete the next round, let alone be up for another trial.

That’s a decision only you can make, dear boy, Nil said. If you’d allow a few words of encouragement from an old man, I think you have what it takes to complete two trials.

Right… Would that be enough, though?

If it weren’t enough, I wouldn’t have insisted that you attempt it in the first place. The possibility is there right in front of you. Everything else depends entirely on you.

It always does.

A minute passed, then a few more. When the pain in the back of Dallion’s eyeballs had diminished enough for him to think straight, he opened them. Diroh was holding the glass with the orange liquid in it, patiently waiting for him to give the okay.

“Go,” Dallion said, playing a chord.

Faster than anything she’d done so far, the fury threw the glass among the rest. Over a hundred pieces of glass moved about, bouncing between threads of air. For several seconds, the speed was on the verge of Dallion’s perception. After that, it became even faster. Everything disappeared in a general blur above the counter.

There was no way for Dallion to be able to track that, and with so many glasses he couldn’t rely on combat splitting or echoes.

“You’re pushing me to improve,” Dallion said, more to himself than to her. “All the rounds so far were to get me to think in a certain direction. And each time I failed to do so, you raised the stakes to get me to think.”

No smile appeared on the fury’s face, but Dallion wasn’t expecting one. He had already figured out what to do, or at least he thought so. If he was right, it was never about the numbers or the speed.

Gleam! Dallion thought and drew his whip blade.