It took Karzaia several hours of walking, carefully watching for traps or monsters, to reach the end of the corridor. All along the corridor’s length, lanterns of blue fire were placed at regular intervals. As she walked, she noted minuscule runes decorating the floor and ceiling, shifting slightly every time her boots made contact with the ground.

Trials weren’t like Tribulations. A Tribulation was a disaster focused on an individual and tailored to counter their advantages to force them to grow past their limits. Trials were more… standardized. Corridors like the one she was traversing were common, utilizing runic scripts to read the overall abilities of the Trial-taker so that their Trial could in some respects reflect their potential.

There were no easy Trials. The gods made Trials to challenge people and weed out the weak and the arrogant. However, the generalized nature of a Trial was fixed, even if the actual power and challenge of what lay within weren’t. The Trial of Manthein was designed to challenge the clansmen of Manthein who had not yet reached adulthood, to force them to show the results of their efforts to master their affinities and Talents. If a child of Manthein couldn’t pass the Trial, they would never survive their Journey.

All this and more swirled through Karzaia’s mind as she sent thin feelers of forged Soul affinity into the large, darkened cavern that lay at the end of the corridor. People didn’t tell stories about the Trial. Children weren’t informed about it, and no one boasted of what happened there. So, Karzaia had no idea of what to expect.

Her feelers outlined several potential problems after several minutes of careful probing… three dozen of them, to be specific. She grimaced when she figured out what she was feeling, as the outlines of what lay within resolved into a colorless picture in her mind.

Saurians.

Three dozen saurians, the three-foot tall lizardmen that often fought with the goblinoid tribes for territory outside the most mana rich areas of the continent, were within the cavern. Saurians were tough, their bones harder than stone and their scales tough enough to resist glancing blows from edged weapons. The only saving grace, in her older brother’s words was that they were ‘dumb as a bag of rocks and clumsier than a blind ogre’.

They all seemed to be armed with some kind of roughly-formed daggers, and they stood unnaturally still, as if waiting for her to step into the cavern… which they probably were. If she refused the challenge the gods had put before her, she would simply fail the Trial.

She wasn’t willing to fail, and she refused to be a coward. She stepped across the unseen boundary between the cavern and the corridor.

Immediately, the cavern lit up with blue lanterns, and precisely three of the saurians became animated and rushed her.

I guess the gods don’t want to bury me in numbers, She thought with some relief. She lunged forward, coming in low and driving her spear upwards so it would the saurian on the left just below its ribs. The spear’s tip met resistance for a moment before punching through and digging deep into the little creature’s organs.

It snapped and snarled, but she ignored its struggles as she lifted it off its feet and slammed it into the saurian in the middle, sending it crashing to the ground. She twisted the weapon, wrenching it free and slashing it across the rightmost saurian’s throat in a spray of greenish-blue blood. She then turned and drove the heavy manasteel ball at the opposite end into the skull of the unwounded saurian, the blow just enough to crack its thick skull, though it wasn’t enough to burst it.

The gutted saurian tried to lunge at her, despite its mortal wound, but she was having none of that, though a part of her was panicking at her first taste of combat. She thrust the speartip through its right eye and withdrew it in a single motion.

The saurian she’d clubbed was starting to shake off its daze, so she smashed the ball of the spear into its already-cracked skull, finally caving it in in a spray of blood, bone, and brains.

She stood there gasping and drawing in air for several moments as adrenaline burned through her veins… and a few seconds later, four of the creatures came to life and rushed her, one of them drawing a bow.

With a grimace that didn’t really show the pain she felt, she Forged a dart of Soul affinity and shot it off with a tendril of her will attached. The glowing blue spell plunged into the archer’s right eye and out the back of its skull bloodlessly, but the creature dropped as if a truly material weapon had been used. Its limited consciousness had been turned to oblivion by the strike, though a true saurian might have survived the strike at such a low intensity.

With a thought, she channeled pure mana into the spear, causing it to vibrate, and she tossed it, impaling one of the other saurians through the gut and shattering its spine despite the stone-like resilience of saurian bones.

She drew her spirit blade and launched herself into the remaining two with a grim smile.

She was finding her stride.

________________________________________________

The next ten minutes were taken up by a frantic series of escalating battles, finishing up with the charge of thirteen saurians at once, which she managed to dispatch by disposing of the archers first and leading the others a merry chase through the cavern as she cut them down one by one. By the end, Karzaia was feeling tired, her muscles burning with fatigue despite her tempering. She still had plenty of mana, but the residual pain of using Soul-Forging spells to kill the archers was making her thoughts more sluggish than usual.

This was, of course, the biggest disadvantage of her otherwise powerful affinity, the disadvantage that made the obtainment of Soul-Tempering an absolute necessity. Every use of her affinity broke off infinitesimal pieces of her soul to use in her magic, a process that was agonizing in a way that was impossible to describe to someone who had never experienced a soul wound.

The process of Soul-Tempering accelerated her soul’s ability to regenerate by many times for each level the Talent gained, while also refining and reforging her body and mind as a side-effect. Without it, she would have fallen into madness the first time she made a dagger out of her affinity.

This was why she desperately wanted to add another affinity to her arsenal, a feeling that was growing stronger with every day. She loved the immense potential for power her affinity granted her, but another, simpler affinity would allow her to balance her usage of it so she didn’t exhaust herself quite so quickly.

The corpses of the saurians were already dissolving into dust now that she’d finished the first challenge, and she retrieved her spear from where she’d thrown it before sitting down to polish the weapon and restore its edge using a mixture of mana crystal powder and iron filings.

Manasteel was versatile that way… as long as you provided it materials, it would restore dings, notches, and even cracks in whatever equipment it was made into, so long as the damage didn’t actually destroy the unseen ‘matrix’ that defined its proper shape. She didn’t bother to watch the process of the spear tip’s bent end and slightly blunted edge return to normal. She’d seen the process dozens of times before after weapons practice.

That was a lot for just the first challenge. I wonder if everyone else faced something like that? She thought, thinking over the battle. While the saurians weren’t a challenge individually, their numbers combined with their sheer tenacity and resilience to glancing blows had made things harder than they would have been if she’d been facing goblins or gnolls. She had to actually push mana into every strike to be sure of passing through the scales without the blade getting caught, and several tougher individuals had been hidden in the waves that would have been able to resist if she hadn’t also been channeling her affinity through the blade.

For a young warrior or a slow-moving sorcerer, the groups of saurians might have presented an insurmountable challenge. It was only because she had trained herself in spellblade tactics that she’d been able to defeat them without being overwhelmed.

To put it simply, a warrior would have been unable to handle the numbers, a sorcerer unable to handle their speed and tenacity. At her tier of power, neither type was suited to dealing with large numbers of tough, relatively fast-moving enemies.

If it was goblins or orcs, I might not have made it, She mused. It would have been harder to deliver a mortal blow to orcs, thus making her spend more time dealing with each one, and goblins were much more clever than saurians, with the same level of insane tenacity.

With a sigh, she rose to her feet unsteadily, sending a flash of mana through her brain to clear the fog, Time to move on to the next challenge.

Another grim smile curved her lips as she hefted her spear, checked her sword in her sheath, then headed for the corridor on the opposite side of the cavern, leading to the next challenge.

__________________________________________________________________________

The corridor to the next challenge was lined with traps.

She had to be careful, probing every inch with tendrils of mana, finding pressure plates, explosive glyphs, pit traps, and tripwires constantly. Several times, she found a tripwire or a glyph waiting on the other side of a pit trap, or a pressure plate for a poison dart trap to the side of an acid glyph.

She wasn’t on the Path of the Explorer, so her training in disarming traps was rudimentary, at best. Most of the time, she simply threw rocks at the pressure plates, cast Soul darts at the glyphs, and used her spear to set off the tripwires at a distance.

The scent of burning and a light mist of smoke tainted the air of the corridor, because her only real option was to set off the deadlier traps while avoiding the more obvious ones. Several times, she had to stop to repair her spear due to damage from acid or explosions, and her stock of mana crystal and iron powder was almost gone. If this went on much longer, she was going to have to expend mana and fragments of her soul to fill in.

When she finally reached the end of the corridor, she groaned out loud as she sensed what awaited her in the challenge cavern.

A twelve-foot tall lesser drake waited in the darkness. She couldn’t see what type it was due to the shadows, but her ‘feelers’ told her that it was a youngling, being only thirty feet long. The adults grew to be over one hundred feet long and thirty feet tall.

She sat down right before the entrance and opened her pack, taking out a waxed cloth packet of dried meat and fruits, as well as a leather wineskin full of watered mead. She began to eat, staring with tired but determined eyes at the creature that awaited her through the ‘feelers’. She was proud of that particular spell. While it cost mana to move them, the feelers themselves were near-permanent if not destroyed. In addition, the actual mana cost was much slower than the regeneration, and it could be used to give her a sense of everything within an eleven-foot radius of her when she wasn’t moving them around actively.

The downside was that she couldn’t really rest while they were active. The burden on her mind, while slight, was stressful enough that she had to dismiss them at least once a day to get some sleep, since she’d found out by accident that not doing so caused nightmares of epic proportions.

The mead wasn’t of the highest quality… but then, it was only meant to give the water some flavor. The meat was beast meat from a recent wave of lupine beasts that had struck the clanhold a month before. The fruits came from underground greenhouses maintained by Solar affinity sorcerers year-round.

When she was done with her modest meal, she returned the wineskin to her pack with the empty cloth. She rose to her feet and sent a low current of mana through her muscles and organs to remove the worst of the fatigue. That particular tactic wasn’t a cure-all, and it could only be done so many times a day before the body wouldn’t accept it anymore. However, it was enough to keep her going, for now.

She stepped into the cavern and winced slightly when it came alight, illuminating the drake. Her face went pale when she saw what type of drake she was facing.

Fuck, a black drake! She screamed internally as she dodged a mist of poison it snorted at her, roaring its rage at her intrusion. She had no protections against poison!

The creature whipped its tail into her path, and she just barely vaulted over it using her spear before it could smash her to paste. She sent a thick dart of her affinity into the right foreleg, and the beast collapsed as the limb gave out.

She snarled as she focused her affinity into her spear, evading another tail lash by ducking, and she rolled aside to get out of the drake’s jaws as they closed on the spot she was standing in a moment before. The drake was strong, tough, fast, and reasonably intelligent.

It was also extremely resilient spiritually, given that it was already standing again after a few seconds.

Her mouth firmed in a grim line as she focused more of her affinity into the manasteel spear, the weapon beginning to glow with a ghostly white aura, the edge widening, the point of the tip growing sharper.

She gathered her mana into her rear leg and right arm… and tossed the spear into the beast’s throat as it made to bite at her again.

The spear shot forward at inhuman speeds, a thick thread of her affinity emerging from her hand to force it forward faster. The pain of using her affinity this way was crippling, almost making thought impossible.

The spear plunged into the beast’s throat and out the back before exploding, overloaded with mana.

The beast snarled, still alive, though its trachea was partially-severed and exposed to the air. Toxic blood sprayed the area, and the mist of its breath weapon exuded from both the damaged tube and its mouth as it sought to slay its tormentor.

It was visibly regenerating, the powerful vitality of a lesser dragonkin seeking to prevent its death. Karzaia drew her spirit blade, even as she evaded a smashing blow from a claw by jumping aside, then leapt over another swing of the tail. A third claw smash shattered the ground less than an inch away from her right foot, and she was tossed away like a ragdoll by the shockwave, the left side of her face sliced open by a shard of stone.

Karzaia stumbled to her feet and sent another surge of mana through her legs, allowing her to blast forward and inside the range of the fourth claw stomp. She then launched herself upward through the cloud of toxic gas… and her blade slashed out, severing the trachea and a massive pulsing artery in a flash of white mana pulsed through its edge. The beast gurgled as its lifeblood began to spray out, too rapidly for its regeneration to keep up.

Karzaia fell to the ground, only to take a relatively feeble tail swipe on the edge of her sword, sending her flying into the nearby wall. She heard a distinct crack as her left shoulder blade was turned to powder, and she lost her hold on her sword.

If the beast had had the presence of mind to go after her at that moment, it might have managed to take her with it, but its relatively intelligence compared to the saurians made it focus just a little too much on its inevitable death. So it was that the black drake collapsed, its heart ceasing to beat as the flow of blood slowed to a trickle, its last breath letting out a small trickle of poison through its severed trachea.

Karzaia wasn’t unconscious, but she really, really wished she was, Gods, this is horrible.

Her thought wasn’t from her pain. Using her affinity was, at its worst, much more painful than the shattered shoulder-blade. No, it was from the poison she’d inevitably inhaled during the course of the short but horrifically brutal battle.

Her lungs were burning inside her chest, literally. She could could feel her left lung had already collapsed, and it was melting rapidly.

If she had any more challenges left, she would not survive.

Her eyes widened as a golden light surrounded her, filling her with relief. The gods had deemed her worthy.

Trial of Manthein passed. Congratulations, Child of Manthein! The gods proclaim you worthy.

The message was like music in her ears, even as she was once again transported to the realm between the world of the gods and her own.

This time, there was no deity waiting for her. Instead, an ancient elf with stark white hair and two empty eye sockets sat on a throne before her.

“Greetings, child. You have passed my Trial,” He greeted her, his lips curving upward, though something about his powerful aura spoke of resignation rather than joy or congratulations.

Karzaia’s wounds healed enough that she would not die in a matter of seconds, her lungs reconstituting themselves and the poison gone from her system. Her shoulder, however, remained as broken as ever.

“Do not try to respond, Child of Manthein. As the Guardian of the Trial, I have determined a proper reward, by the guidelines the gods put down when I was bound here,” He said gently when Karzaia tried to answer his greetings. She found she couldn’t speak, and she was instead relegated to complete silence. Apparently, there would be no exchange of greetings between her and the Guardian.

“You did well, despite the fact that the Tester increased the difficulty by one more level based on your potential. The increased number of saurians and changing the drake type from a red to a black was a bit much, I think,” He said, the last part apparently directed at some other being hidden by the darkness, an irritated expression flowing briefly across his marred face before he regained his gentle smile.

“I have seen into your heart, and I know your desires. However, this Trial cannot grant a new affinity. The Trial of Manthein is a Lesser Trial, not a Greater. While your trial was upgraded slightly, it does not enter the highest Tier for your current ability,” He said admonishingly, causing Karzaia to look a bit abashed.

“No, I will give you something that will aid you greatly in the future, even if it seems to be of little use now,” A single mote of silver light emerged on his right index finger and flashed into Karzaia’s chest.

A moment later, her back arched, and she screamed incoherently as, for the first time, she consciously experienced the imprinting of a Talent on her very soul through the System. It was worse than using her affinity… far worse. Now she understood why Adventurers often took months off after completing a Trial. The trauma of receiving a new Talent after the initialization of their interface was much harsher and felt almost unnatural in comparison.

New Talent Gained, Meridian Purification. Affinity Tier cap removed. Talent Level cap removed. New cap at 40.

She sighed with relief as she saw the basic reward in addition to the new Talent.

Meridian Purification- A rare Talent for cultivators designed to allow the removal of built-up impurities through cycling of qi. This allows for the creation of pristine meridians, even in a badly contaminated environment, and it also gives an enhancement to the natural restoration of meridians after damage.

This wasn’t a Talent she had ever heard of… but then again, there were almost no cultivators in the Nine Lands. The near-absence of natural qi beyond that which was needed to sustain life made cultivation… difficult at best. So far, she hadn’t been able to progress hers beyond the lowest rank, despite several months of trying inside a specialized runic formation.

When Karzaia emerged from the Trial shortly after, she felt her vision waver, even as the guard turned to her with alarm, Oh, I guess I overdid things a bit…

She collapsed, the guard only barely stopping her before she hit the ground. He looked at the Lord’s daughter with some concern. Her left shoulder seemed to be pulverized, she had a jagged cut opening up the right side of her face, and there were bruises covering most of her body.

I hope Fan’ar doesn’t blame me for this, The older man thought to himself glumly as he picked the girl up and hurried for the healers’ hall.

_____________________________________________

The Guardian turned to the spirit of the Tester, who was responsible for ‘tasting’ those entering the trial to determine their abilities and formulate a proper challenge. His empty gaze was contrasted by an enraged grimace twisting his lips as he ‘looked’ at the former Dryad, his fury at his Trial being perverted nearly beyond his ability to manage.

“What did you think you were doing?! You doubled the number of saurians, increased the deadliness of the traps, and you even switched the boss monster from a red salamander to a black drake! Those are not challenges appropriate to someone still bound by the cap, no matter how talented!” He nearly screamed at her.

“That girl’s soul tried to destroy me when I examined her! I clearly had the right to exact a price for her actions!” The spirit argued back.

Once, she’d been a free dryad, an ally of the long-dead elf’s tribe before its defeat by the Hooded King in the last of the Domination Wars. They’d both agreed to be bound to a Trial set for their descendants when the gods made the request after the Shattering and the formation of the System. They often bickered, like an old married couple, but it was rare for the ancient elf’s spirit to show so much anger toward the dryad.

“Your role does not involve examining the souls of Trial-takers, you ninny! You are only required to read their interface so we have an idea of what they can do and adjust the challenges accordingly! Instead, you not only poked the sleeping bear, but you also had the gall to make alterations without consulting me! I could not even give the girl an appropriate reward, because the challenges went beyond our Trial’s Tier!” He snapped at her.

“That Talent is more than good enough to make up for a little extra trouble!” The former dryad argued.

“No, no, it isn’t. If she was at Tier 10, those challenges would have been appropriate, and the reward would have been the same! Going by the degree of difficulty, giving her a new affinity or awakening her bloodlines would have been more appropriate rewards!” The level of rewards a Trial’s Guardian could issue was capped based on the Tier of the Trial. For a Trial originally meant to be an initial test of the abilities of someone at Tier 5, that meant that the Talent he’d given her had only been barely within his authority to bestow.

“But-!” She tried to protest.

“No ‘buts’, Yaori! I have told you hundreds of thousands of times not to fiddle with our descendants’ souls, but you never listen! If you want toys to play with, you should use the Servitors or the souls of the failures!” He scolded her. He honestly loved the ancient dryad, but she absolutely refused to grow past her initial curious and mischievous nature.

“But the souls of Servitors and failures are so boooring-!” She wailed. Those Manthein who either refused the Trial or fell during it eventually served as ‘inserts’ for the various monsters they spawned during the challenges. Servitors were only claimed after their natural deaths, but the failures were taken immediately. The Tester and Guardian had an absolute right, given by the ancient pact with the clan, to do whatever they wished with those particular souls.

“Instilling a desire to take off their clothes in public or belt out dirty limericks in front of their loved ones into someone’s soul is not within your purview, silly dryad,” He told her, growing resigned once more to her antics. No matter how many times he told her to stop, she always did things like that to those taking the Trial and the guards outside. The effects generally only lasted a few weeks, but it was noticeable enough that some enterprising souls on the outside had started a betting pool centuries before on what Trial-takers would do in the few weeks they had to prepare after for their Journey.

She looked rebellious to him, her soul’s subtle changes in shape signaling her mood as clearly to him as if she still had an actual face. Sometimes he wondered if the Wanderer hadn’t picked her specifically for those qualities. Ever since he gave up his former role, that particular deity had developed a rather odd sense of humor.

Not that he was stupid enough to say so aloud. Better safe than sorry, after all.

“What did you think of her?” She suddenly asked, her expression solemn. The ancient spirit of a long-dead dryad still felt a lingering terror at the sheer… force of the soul she’d made the mistake of trying to fiddle with. Its density was incredible, even though it was only in the first stages of being tempered. Moreover, it seemed to have some kind of inherent desire to obliterate outside influences of all sorts… not just resist but destroy. Most souls merely resisted being altered, but that particular one…

“I think she will be terrifying if she manages to survive her Journey,” He said honestly. Primal affinities were only given to truly unusual or very old souls. These individuals generally ended up with much greater power if they survived than anyone around them… but he had a bad feeling about her. By all rights, Karzaia should have perished to the black drake. The toxins should have killed her before she managed to deal the fatal blow, and she should never have been able to endure the pain of enhancing that spear to the point of self-destruction during battle.

“She reminds me of him,” She said darkly. She still had nightmares about the day the Hooded King conquered their tribe, the sheer force and density of his soul shredding her protective magics without requiring any actual effort on his part. She still recalled the way he had simply obliterated an entire army of elves with a casual effort of will, merely his attention enough to annihilate those without powerful soul protections.

She recalled pristine fields turned to massive lakes of blood as elven warriors simply crunched under the force of his attention, popping like balloons full of crimson water. She also remembered her sisters as their immortal essence shredded at his passing, their bodies and those of their trees following suit a moment later. He hadn’t actually intended to do anything, but their act of trying to stop his procession through their grove had earned an automatic response that had destroyed them utterly… without him even noticing.

The girl’s soul was far smaller, and it had a great deal of the jagged edges and ragged bits one usually expected of a young soul, but the density was almost the same. She was terrified of what Karzaia would become if she was allowed to grow to her potential, even in a world restricted by the System.

The ancient Guardian shook his head slowly, “We agreed to set aside those resentments when we were bound here. The daughter of our tribe was his downfall, her love his death. While it was delayed, we had our vengeance, in the end.”

“Did we? He died of his own choice, not slain by Yifana’s poison or sword. Our descendants even now honor him as if he were some kind of legendary hero or god-king, even though it has been ages since his demise,” She said bitterly.

“That a being on the verge of overthrowing the gods died as a result of her actions is sufficient. He never conquered the Realms, and no other like him can ever rise again, now that the System exists,” He said wearily.

Silently, she disagreed with him, but she pretended to acquiesce, concealing her true feelings with effort as they both returned to their duties.

There was always something to do when you were running a Trial, after all.