The wall slid shut behind Yuriko, making her jump in surprise.

She should have expected that, she thought to herself; the spire didn't seem to want people to turn back. Shaking her head at the blank wall, she spun on her heels and continued on the path.

The floor was cold stone, at least compared to the warm sand of the arena. It suddenly occurred to her that she should have used Fri’Avgi against the Colossi. A giant weapon against giant foes. Except she hadn’t considered using it at the time--she hadn’t been pushed that hard. Besides, Fri’Avgi drained just a bit more Animus than usual. She didn’t really notice it before, but having become more sensitive to lumen counting, it was suddenly quite apparent.

That said, her Animus blades were annoyingly fragile. They did the job against the Koinos, but she’d had to hastily reform them mid-fight. At least, as long as she reacted quickly, she could gather the remnant Animus instead of spending fresh.

The tunnel was short and straight, ending in another round chamber. As soon as she entered, the opening behind her quickly shut. The second chamber was identical to the one she came from with hot sand underfoot and stone walls. She wriggled her toes into the sand as she made her way into the centre. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness.

No sooner had she arrived in the middle when the walls opened up again. This time, a veritable wave of swarmlings rushed out.

“Really?”

She shook her head. Swarmlings were barely a threat to her two seasons ago and they definitely weren’t one now. They wouldn’t even be able to penetrate past her flared Anima!

Except, when the first swarmling bumped into her golden flare, she felt a twisting of some sort, as though someone had twisted open a doorknob, opening a portal.

The Wyldling’s claw continued unhampered and only Yuriko’s reflexive backhand knocked the critter away. The swarmling’s face crumpled with the blow. It spun and tumbled away and settled in an unmoving heap.

That shouldn’t have happened either, Yuriko knew. No blow without the backing of Animus could seriously hurt a Wyldling. It was as if her Anima and their Protective Field cancelled each other out.

Well, either way, they still weren’t a threat. Without summoning her Animus blades or Fri’Avgi, she punched and kicked her way out of the swarmling encirclement. Her fists and feet were more than enough to crush carapace and bone alike.

The sheer savagery of fighting with her bare limbs filled Yuriko with visceral delight. The swarmlings were not’ worthy of her using a weapon.

In less than a minute, she was surrounded by broken bodies. Oddly, they didn’t emit green motes, Chaos, from their bodies. Instead, they slowly dissolved into dust and became one with the sands. Even as she looked, a wall slid open and the next passageway beckoned.

The tunnel was identical to the previous one. She slowly made her way through it while her thoughts whirled.

Why was she brought here? There was no doubt that something sentient had moved her from the spiralling path and into these…trials.

Nobody would set up a succession of trial arenas without purpose. Was it the obelisk? The voice that spoke to her when she touched the one in the grasslands called her a Hunter.

So what was she supposed to be hunting?

As she expected, the next chamber was another arena. This time she was beset by a small group of beasts: bipedal lizards with sharp claws and brilliantly coloured feathers sticking out of their backs and elbows. They were just slightly taller than she was.

She ploughed into them happily. They were meat!

In short order, she started butchering one of the lizard corpses.

“What?” she yelled in frustration and anger when the body she was carving dissolved into dust and sand. “No fair!”

She stomped her feet into the sand, causing a small sand storm in the process. The weight of disappointment brought tears to her eyes while her tummy grumbled. Loudly.

She stomped down the passageway as soon as it opened. The next arena had her fight a singular Hunter Wyldling. Again, not even a challenge. Even with its visual camouflage, as soon as it touched Yuriko’s flared Anima, she took its head off. There was no Chaos Shard to be had, and like the others, it dissolved into dust within a minute.

“So they aren’t real.”

None of the things she fought was real; it really was a test. To what purpose though?

The next three arenas contained opponents she easily bested. The fourth one after the Hunter Wyldling contained a mix of Wanderer types, hidden Hunters, and about two dozen swarmlings. It took her three minutes.

From then on, the arenas grew bigger and contained more and more Wyldlings or beasts, though never both types at once.

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Near the end there, the arena was nearly five hundred paces wide and entirely carpeted by Wyldlings. When the last one was ground beneath her heel, a section of the wall opened up, this time, leading to another chamber rather than a tunnel.

An obsidian obelisk stood prominently in the middle of it. The blue blood and gristle that spattered on her skin flaked away into sand as soon as she stepped past the threshold.

“So, what’s this about?”

She held her palm against the Obsidian Shard. A pulse of warmth radiated into her but nothing else happened. Instead, another chamber opened to the side.

It was a cosy nook with a table and chairs. The chairs had a cushion of green moss and there was a bowl of fruit in the middle of the table. In the corner was a marble bowl with some kind of opaque liquid inside. And there was a marble bathtub filled with steaming water.

“Oh...”

She sighed as she drifted towards the bath. She quickly shed her backpack and clothes. She stood in front of the steaming water completely naked and ready to go in when her eyes were drawn to a small shelf containing two crystalline vials. Next to the tub was a sunken area where a stream of water splashed down from the ceiling and emptied into a drain in the floor.

Soap and rinse here, she thought.

She happily obliged. One of the vials contained pleasant-smelling oil and the other contained liquid soap. She lathered it into her hands and scrubbed her skin furiously. No matter how many streams she crossed in her journey, they weren’t enough to make her feel truly clean. Sand could only do so much and not all riverbeds had it.

The silky feeling of the soap brought her rising pleasure as she scrubbed the dirt, oil, and funk away. The one part of her that didn’t need a thorough scrubbing was her hair. It remained as silky smooth and clean as ever. Still, massaging her scalp with soapy fingers made her moan.

She stepped under the stream of water and let lather and filth flow away. She would have stood there longer but the hot water tub beckoned. She poured the scented oil vial into the water and dipped her toes in.

The heat was wonderful, penetrating deep into her skin, touching her muscles which were fatigued beyond belief. While Recovery allowed her muscles to heal after she strained them, it did nothing for the stress knots that built up.

For the first time since she arrived in the Kogasi plane, Yuriko relaxed. The scent of the oil filled her senses. She breathed deeply as she submerged herself. There was a headrest on one end, and when she leaned on it, only her face remained above water.

The water remained hot throughout her bath. She must have stayed there for hours. Her fingers and toes had long turned pruny. And she may also have taken a nap.

When she opened her eyes, she felt every muscle was loose and relaxed. She alighted and grabbed the towel that hung next to a divider wall. Her clothes were neatly folded on a side table and looked freshly laundered.

Yuriko dressed and sat at the table.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

The air shimmered in response. When she looked back towards the tub, it was gone and had been replaced by a bed. She ate the fruits, did her ablutions then collapsed into a deep slumber.

The next day, the bowl of fruit had been replenished. She didn’t know what the green ovals were, just that they were both sweet and sour at the same time. The fruits this morning were assorted berries and she squealed in delight when she saw lavan berries alongside some blue and black ones.

Once she was done and dressed in her cleaned clothes, the bedroom and tables disappeared. Only a marble bowl with some liquid and a pedestal remained.

Her clothes were still too small but at least they were clean. Yuriko walked up to the pedestal.

Right on the surface was a black nail. It was cold to the touch and remarkably tough. It didn’t bend when she pressed against one side experimentally. What it was for, she didn’t know. But if the obelisk wanted her to have it, then she’d take it.

As for the bowl, it contained a viscous amber liquid. The scent made her tummy gurgle and when she dipped a finger into it and tasted, she felt warmth spread from her lips. She popped the cap off her condenser canteen and used it as a cup. When she drank it, her hunger was sated.

Eyes widening in surprise, she emptied half of her bamboo canisters and filled it with every drop of amber liquid she could get, until none but a few drops were left. Twelve canisters. She licked off the last drops remaining.

Waste not.

Once she was done, a path opened across the obelisk. Yuriko touched the Obsidian Shard once more before she left. A glance back revealed that the chamber was once again empty.

This time, the path led to a set of spiral stairs. She climbed them up a couple of flights before it opened up into a familiar path. It was the wide path with the canal. As soon as she set foot on it, the stairs disappeared into the wall, and everything was as if she hadn’t left the path at all.

She checked her belongings. The nail was still in her hip satchel and the bamboo canisters still held the amber liquid, so it couldn’t possibly have been a dream.

Her spirits buoyed, she continued on her way up. This time, the monotony didn’t seem so oppressive. The fact that she had a weeks worth of provisions also eased her worries. She could walk up the spire for a Season and she wouldn’t starve to death.

Still, there was only so much that she could endure. Days afterwards, she felt the depressing monotony keenly, but she kept on. She needed to climb, she needed to keep walking. She’d eventually reach the top of the spire and climb into the next plane.

Afterwards, it was only a matter of time before she found civilisation and a way back into Rumiga. Back into the sun, too. For all his inanity and perversion, Damien kept her from going insane from loneliness.

“I wonder what kind of people I’ll find?”

While the Empire was primarily populated by pure-blooded humans, there were other races who lived in the planes floating on the Primordial Chaos Sea. They were surrounded by hostile nations too. Much like how the Imperial Province of Rumiga bordered the Federation of City-States, a loose coalition of independent nations had joined together to ‘resist Imperial aggression.

But Yuriko knew that they were the ones invading most of the time. Then, there was the Belrath Xylarchy that bordered more than half of the Empire’s frontier planes. A nation perpetually at war with them. Most of the Empire’s Legions were deployed against Belrath, while the Coalition nipped at the Empire’s heels.

But the battlefront was spread out across nearly fifty planes, with Rumiga merely one of them. In fact, her home was quite peaceful compared to other frontiers, mainly because it was too far from the real front. And the Coalition only had loose authority over their constituents.

And, she could have found herself in an independent plane. She’d never heard of a plane that was coterminous to another, much less one that was connected through a land bridge. She was extremely eager to know more about her destination.

A flash of colour in front of her caught her attention. The air shimmered with multi-coloured hues, much like the Veil back home. It spread across the entire passage, and there was no way to bypass the curtain.

The road seemed to continue on beyond the veil of colours but it could easily be a mirage. Left with little choice, however, she could do nothing other than press on. The air rippled as her fingers touched the curtain and the next moment, she was pulled through.