Terrence and I land in the plaza of the ruins., the wolfkin stumbling slightly as I land lightly on my feet. I hide my amusement at his stumble as I examine the ruined buildings around us. That's what he gets for poking me in the side when we're halfway down to the ground. Sure, I didn't actually need to disable the flight spell, but it was still amusing hearing his yelp as we suddenly dropped like lead balloons.

These ruins… are not of the type of buildings I've seen in this world so far. Wood and stone, wattle and daub. Thatch roofs and wooden shingles. That's the type of buildings I've seen in town and around it.

Here, however… I'm reminded of Earth. No towering skyscrapers, but there are seven-story buildings made of bricks, plenty of glass in the windows (or at least, there was – only a few panes are left), and even streetlights. Most of the metal has rusted, but some of them remain functional.

Hell, I can even see some car-like vehicles scattered about, though most have rusted to hell.

The plaza we've arrived in has a cobblestone ground, though I saw asphalt in a few places as we soared over here. The town itself could have probably housed twenty thousand to thirty thousand residents, roughly the same size as my town back home.

I'm impressed by the fact that so much of this has lasted, it's been several thousand years since this place was abandoned. At least, according to Silvia. Could metal and brick of our modern world last this long? Or are the materials here different, maybe touched with magic?

"Be alert," Silvia says as she and the twins land beside us. "These ruins… they're ancient. Much more so than I expected. At least ten or eleven thousand years old. It's in one of the best conditions I've heard of, too."

At least ten thousand years old? There's definitely magic involved in keeping the metal from having completely rusted away. As it is, the town is ruined, with plenty of buildings having collapsed entirely. The road was broken and uneven in many places, and this plaza is one of the few that's still stable in appearance.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"I've only heard of a few of these ruins," Silvia tells me. "Most of them are in a much more severe state of disrepair. These are the ruins of the Ancients, from a forgotten time. Not much is known about them, as none of their works remain. At least, not in any readable form. We've never deciphered their language, there's too little of it left to make out."

Silvia indicates a metal plaque on a storefront. There was definitely an awning over the sidewalk in front of the door and windows, but that's long gone. Most signs that I can see are rusted, the words no longer visible. The plaque is metal, and though it's worn down quite a lot, and I can't make out the runes.

"Supposedly," Silvia says. "The Ancients merged some unknown form of technology with magic, and one of their known ruins has a building several hundred feet in height, and a few others that had toppled over or collapsed. I haven't explored any of them, but there's one universal fact for all known ruins of the Ancients."

"What's that?" I ask.

"The monsters here are unlike any elsewhere," she says. "With abilities unlike any other. Monsters made of metal and lightning."

Metal and lightning? Do some of the machines still work, then?

I look around the plaza some more. Four fountains – nonfunctional – benches, some flower plots that are overgrown with flowers and weeds, trash cans, and the thing we're here for, a twenty-foot-tall tree that's about five feet in diameter, its leaves green with an appearance like they've been dusted with gold.

The few machines I do see just look like things I'd have seen on Earth. Cars, the lampposts, lights in windows, cash registers… nothing out-of-the-ordinary.

The tree is our way to performing a Rank Advancement Trial. Terrence and I spent all day yesterday training in preparation for taking it on. We're doing this instead of going to the tower with the death knights and death mage first.

This way, we can gain more Experience from them. Silvia's estimation puts me as being able to beat them even if we wait another couple of days, due to my high bonus each Level. Terrence can take on the weaker mobs.

"How did you know about the tree if you didn't even know these were ruins of the Ancients?" I ask. "We're in the middle of the town."

"We have a map of all the known locations of the trees for the entire eastern half of the continent," Silvia explains. "One of the locations overlapped this town, so I knew they'd likely built the town around it."

"Okay."

I look around the plaza a bit more. All of the buildings face into it, and there are half a dozen of the rusty cars here. Some grass and small flowers grow here and there between the cobblestones, but it's largely uninterrupted. There are also no monsters, making it feel a little surreal.

"This creeps me out," Terrence murmurs. "I can hear monsters, but there aren't any here."

"Enchanted trees create safe zones," Silvia informs us. "Fifty feet in all directions. The plaza, as you'll notice, is exactly that size. Monsters can't enter it. We'll set up camp here. While you two are in the trial, we'll do a little bit of exploring around. Once I actually start exploring these ruins after the Slip ends, this will be my base camp."

"Alright," I pull off my pack and set it down. "Want some help setting up the tents first?

"No," Silvia says. "You two can go ahead and do your Rank Advancement Trials."

"Okay," I say.

"Before we do," Terrence says. "I was wondering something."

"Yes?" Silvia asks.

"Why did we gain so much Experience from the wyvern?" He asks. "Shouldn't we have only gained a few Levels?"

"A Level 200 Tier I who killed a normal wyvern would have gained at least five Levels," Silvia says. "You killed a Slip-enhanced one that was more than double the normal amount of it, while under Level 80. The amount of Experience needed for Level 201 from level 200 may very well be more than how much was needed to reach Level 100 from nothing."

"The base amount was that much higher," Terrence says. "And then the difficulty bonus and our Tier bonus multiplied I. Okay, that makes sense. Anything we should know before going into the Trial?"

"Nothing I didn't tell you yesterday," Silvia says. "What do you remember?"

"The form and difficulty," Terrence pulls off his pack and sets it down. "Is determined by our Tier, affinities, and current Rank. So someone with fire, water, earth, and air doing their first one will have a different one from a light and shadow or a lightning doing their first one, or someone with the four basic doing their second one."

"Correct," Silvia says. "What do you remember about the form yours takes?"

"It varies a little based on the individual as well," Terrence says. "And it's known that some Titles can affect the difficulty as well. As a Tier IV with the four basic elements, I'll be tested in all four elements, sometimes simultaneously. I'll also be tested in different uses of them. The Trial itself can take a day or more, and has been known to last a few weeks in the past."

"Wait," I say. "A few weeks? You didn't mention that, Silvia."

"Sorry," she apologizes. "I'd honestly forgotten about it. Terrence must have heard that in the capital. Yes, it has lasted a few weeks, but we only have a handful of those records. My First Rank Advancement Trial only took four days, and that was with seven Titles."

"That information is a little important," I say. "Don't forget that I'm an [Archon]. We already figure I'll be tested in the seven elements. I knew it might take a day or two, but a few weeks is a real possibility for me if that's something that happens."

"Right," Silvia gives me an apologetic look. "Sorry, Reid. It really had slipped my mind, that's a rare occurrence."

"Rank Advancement Trials are rare."

There are only ten people alive who have completed one, with twenty-seven known failures in the last fifty years. Ten people out of more than a century's worth of attempts. According to Silvia, only one out of every five or six attempts succeed.

I'm quite confident I'll succeed seeing as I'm an [Archon], though Terrence should probably wait a little longer. Especially seeing as Titles increase the difficulty. That's information I should have known before now as well.

"Fair enough," Silvia says. "Once again, I apologize for forgetting about that, you're correct in that it is probably important. However long you two take, the twins and I will be here. I'll be looking for any information or research centers of this town. Seeing as these are ruins of the Ancients, it's possible they have information about dimensional magics. One of the few things we have learned about them is that they wanted to create dimensional gates."

"Didn't you just say a few minutes ago," I say. "That no one's been able to decipher their language because too little of it remains?"

"True as that is," Silvia says. "We've recovered enough diagrams and items to piece together that much. I'll see if this location had anything. You might be able to use it to help find a way home, if you can figure anything out from it. We've never managed, but we're also not [Archon]s."

"Fair enough," I say. "After the trial, though, I'm going to handle that tower, then take on job requests from town. They'll no doubt need the extra help that far into the Slip, if the trial doesn't take so long the Slip is over when I leave."

"Alright," Silvia says. "Remember, boys, that the final stage of it is always a battle that will require your full power to win. You'll also be able to take rests from time to time, including in zones which include eating and resting facilities."

"However," I say. "Our time in them is limited."

"Correct," she says. "So be careful."

"And when we go in," I touch my tunic. "Our clothes will change. We go in with nothing we had, and when we leave, we'll exit with what we went in with."

Clothes changing during a dimensional travel – just like what happened when I arrived here. My Earth-modern clothes changed to the modern attire of this world when I was summoned here. The fact that the same thing happens during a System-based thing further suggests my arrival here was by the power of either the System or the force behind it.

"Do you remember what the attire change is?" Silvia asks.

"For females," I say. "The attire changes them into a skirt, boots, and a chest-wrap. For us males, it's boots and a pair of shorts. These aren't permanent changes, and we may be able to acquire new clothes as we travel through the trial. However, they won't come out with us."

When we leave, we'll be in the same outfit we had gone in with, as if our clothes had never changed at all. That suggests there's some sort of dimensional storage for that stuff, which makes me wonder if my clothes from Earth are in one – as well as my cellphone, wallet, keys, and so on.

"All correct," she says. "And your rewards, once you leave, will be in a temporary storage space, a bracelet that will be around the wrist of your dominant hand. It will exist for seventy-two hours, then expel the items and disappear, if you haven't already removed them. If you do remove them on your own, it will disappear."

"Alright," I say. "Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of," she says. "Good luck."

"Thanks," I say, then approach the enchanted tree.

Terrence approaches it as well, and we place our hands against it at the same time as Silvia and the twins watch. The twins' tails and Terrence's tail are all wagging, though Terrence's face is one of focus and slight worry.

"You don't need to if you don't want to," I tell him. "You have plenty of time to prepare for it more."

"I know," he says. "But if I don't, the Slip will slip by and I'll have a huge dent to how much I can gain Experience as I get stronger. I need to get stronger. I'm confident enough in my abilities."

There is such a thing as overconfident. I wouldn't be attempting this if magic didn't come to me so intuitively and I didn't have so many spells at Level 10 or higher. Hell, I even utilized Silvia's library to look up spells that weren't just modifications of others.

"Good luck," I tell him.

"You as well."

Turning my attention to the hand I have on the enchanted tree, I send a pulse of Mana through it. Immediately, a window appears in my vision.

Level 100 confirmed. [Archon] First Rank Advancement Trial is available. [Mythic Beast Killer] Title detected. Difficulty adjusted. Begin Trial? Yes No

I should have guessed that such a Title would increase the difficulty of the Trial, and I know that Terrence is getting the same message, though adjusted for his own type of mage. Before I can say anything to him about it, he vanishes, entering into the Trial.

He went in anyway even though the Trial explicitly stated that the difficulty was increased due to him killing something with an average Attribute of 2,000. He's at a third of that. Is he crazy?

If Terrence makes it out alive, it will be a massive miracle.

Suppressing a sigh, I confirm entry. Immediately, I find myself in a new place, dressed in only shorts and a pair of boots.

Not that I can see them or anything, I only know I'm wearing them because I can feel them on me. Everything here is dark, not a single trace of light around. With only a thought and without moving from this spot, I conjure five [Light Orb]s.

One of them is sent to hover above me, while the other four are spread out around me, kept twenty feet away to further illuminate the area. At the same time, I use [Air Scan] to get a feel for what lies in the darkness beyond the illuminated space.

All I can see are the stone tiles making up the ground beneath my feet, no ceiling in sight above me. After the training I did yesterday, my [Air Scan] stretches over a hundred yards, and all it can detect are the stone tiles of the ground. No gaps between them for it to penetrate through, and nothing within a hundred yards of me when going above.

A silent command sends the four lower orbs out further, well-past the range of my [Air Scan], yet nothing is illuminated even as I reach the limit of my range. I can retain hold of my spells up to around five hundred feet away now. Focusing, I rotate the orbs, making a full circle around me in case something is illuminated, but nothing is.

This is just one big empty space.

I pull the orbs back close to me, setting them only thirty feet away around me. Keeping [Air Scan] active, I begin walking forward. The tiles are perfectly-square tiles, one foot on each side. That makes it easy to stay in a line as I walk, allowing me to know I'm not going in circles.

At least, at first. Ten minutes pass yet nothing in the terrain changes, and that's when I start to wonder if there's some sort of dimensional magic going on here. Gesturing with my right hand, I use [Stone Wall], creating a four-foot-tall pillar of stone that's one foot on each side, perfectly placed on a tile. Another gesture shapes an arrow onto the top of the [Stone Wall], pointing in the direction that I'm walking. A third gesture creates a 1 on it.

I begin walking forward, creating a second pillar twenty feet away, a 2 carved into the arrow. Every twenty feet, I create a new [Stone Wall] pillar of the same dimensions, with the next number up on it.

It doesn't take long for my [Air Scan] to confirm what I suspected all along: I can detect my pillars straight ahead. If my estimation is correct, the loop is one thousand feet. I continue making the pillars until I reach the starting one.

Then, I adjust the arrow on it to point in two directions: forward and right. Each one has a 1 labeled on it, and I begin walking right, making this my new forward. As with before, the loop lasts a thousand feet, taking me back to the starting pillar.

I walk down to the fifth pillar, one hundred feet away, and adjust its arrow to point right. When make it back to the original line, I move down another hundred feet and start a new perpendicular line. This continues until I'm back at the start, then I go down the side line to the right until I'm one hundred feet away.

Here, I begin adjusting the arrows as I walk forward once more, and I continue this pattern of moving down it and adjusting the arrows as I move forward. At least, until the loop ends.

Five hundred feet from the starting point of my pillars, both forward and right, the loop seems to disappear. In fact, all of the pillars do, until I walk backwards a little. I've found the exit, I think.

Stepping forward, I walk straight ahead into the new space, which feels smaller to me, even though my [Air Scan] doesn't detect anything other than the ground. If I'm right, there's no dimensional loop in here.

Ten feet from where the shift into the new zone occurs, I create a pillar, then start to walk past it… only for the pillar to fade away as light fills the area. Not blinding light, but enough for me to see by.

At an estimate, the room is now four hundred feet on each side, the ceiling now only fifty feet in height. All of the walls, along with the ceiling, is smooth stone, not a crack or blemish visible. The tiles in here start merging together, creating tiles three feet on each side. As that finishes, braziers begin lifting up out of the ground, and the lighting of the room reduces back to nothing.

From what I can tell, the braziers number sixty-four in total, on an eight-by-eight grid. There's an empty space between each brazier, with a one-tile gap between the braziers and the walls as well.

There's also no exit, and as I start to push my [Light Orb]s out, flames form in twenty-four of the braziers. Each flame extends up about a foot at the peak, alternating every-other brazier on each of the first three rows of them.

In addition to that oddity, the flames are different colors. The flames of the other side are bright green, while the flames of this side are dark purple. This creates a weird lighting effect, so I intensify my [Light Orb]s and spread them at.

At the same time as I do that, one of the braziers on the other side, in the row in front of the lit-up one in the center, illuminates. Diagonally back two spaces, the flame vanishes.

Odd. Does that mean I'm supposed to light the braziers as well, in some sort of pattern? Nothing else happens, so I take a gamble and place a flame into a brazier. The flames turn crimson, and then shoot at me, wrapping around me.

"GAAAH!" I exclaim as I'm burned.

Though the flames last for only a few seconds, it feels as if every fiber of my being is aflame. When the fire fades, there's no an injury on me, my skin unmarked.

Another brazier lights in front of the other side's rows, and the one two diagonal back from it darkens.

Oh. Oh, my fucking goodness.

This is checkers, isn't it? Just checkers with a couple of altered or added rules, and played with fire instead of normal tokens.

I walk forward to the fourth row inward and light a brazier on the diagonal. The flames I cast turn dark purple after entering it, and the one I was thinking of as moving darkens.

This really is checkers. Rather than just getting told off for putting the piece in the wrong spot, I get burned for putting the wrong flame in the wrong brazier. If I'm right, the flames will probably be more harmful each time – inflicting more pain and possibly starting to damage me.

It only takes a few more moves before I learn what happens when one of my flames is jumped by the enemy – the flame goes out and nothing happens to me. While that's a small relief, I still don't intend on losing.

Silvia was very clear that no matter the form of the trial, failing a stage means death. In the last stage, I could have starved to death. In this one, I'll probably be burned to death.

That's not an option for me. I have friends and family to go back to, people who I miss very much even though it's only been a few days. I will not lose a game of magical checkers.

As I move a piece to take one of theirs, a thought comes to me. Just how much will Lyssa tease me when she finds out I played a literal game of life-or-death checkers?