CHAPTER 25: SOLVING THE PUZZLE

Now that she knew, at least in theory, what needed to change in the Spell, the only issue was actually moving the lines. Thankfully, unlike in the Hardened Glass she had made, the Magic here was flowing through physical channels, rather than simply embedded Magic.’ Jenna almost reached out to touch the Spell line before the intense heat stopped her.

She considered what to do. Looking around, nothing new suddenly appeared in the room. That meant one of three things: the Pyramid thought that she had come in with the tools she would need, she would need to develop the tool using her Magic somehow, or the Pyramid wanted her to fail. As tempting as it was to believe it was the third, Jenna was almost certain it wasn’t.

Sure, the Pyramid wouldn’t shed a single tear if she, like Rita, was forced out in her first year. On the other hand, though, it would push her as hard as she was willing to pull to make her into the best Mage that she could be. If it had placed her in a number of situations that split a normal distribution into a bimodal distribution, she would just make sure to be in the upper portion of each one.

Pep talk over, Jenna considered her options. Her mace certainly was the wrong tool for the job. The rings she had might be what she needed, but there was no chance that she was going to risk using them here, especially when she could not even tell what they did.

The gold coins were likewise out of consideration. Even if she thought it might be useful to replace the lines in the Spell with new gold, she didn’t have any good way to melt it down or otherwise shape it. Jenna remembered that she had all of Rita’s inventory. Maybe something in there would be helpful.

To her disappointment, there was nothing useful within it. Sure, the healing product she had used was essential to her continued presence in the rift, and the other ones would likely be so later if she stayed in the rift, but none of it was helpful right now. Jenna was certain that if she hadn’t been so exhausted from the derivations and heat that she would be able to understand what the Pyramid was trying to get her to do.

“If I leave the room to go back into the general rift, will I be allowed back inside?” she was hoping that a little bit of time in the cool air would help refresh her.

Exit and reentry to puzzle rooms is allowed as long as you do not leave the floor or reenter the safe room.

That was a relief. Jenna packed the extra pieces of crystal and glass statues into her bag. As she saw it, there was no point in wasting free points.

The hallway of the rift almost felt cold as Jenna walked out of the puzzle. The sweat drying off of her skin left shivers as it came off. Back in the cooler room of the rift, she looked around.

Maybe there was something in the rooms that would be useful to solve the puzzle. Goblin swords were picked up and discarded as too flimsy for the purpose. The same held true for anything wooden. Jenna had watched her sweat hiss as it contacted the Spell lines, so she had minimal hope that a piece of wood would do anything except burn when it came in contact with the heated gold.

With no other ideas and nothing in the rift that seemed like it would help, Jenna was left wondering if she had missed something on a prior floor that would help her here. She didn’t think that she had searched any less thoroughly then, and she would be shocked if the solution to a puzzle was hidden better than the puzzle itself. Discarding that idea meant that she really only had one other. The Pyramid must want her to do something with her Magic.

Jenna made her way back into the dark hallway. Without the threat of some monster using the darkness to hide, she felt far more comfortable not taking a torch with her. When she had made it back into the puzzle room, she immediately went to the glowing crystal.

With an effort of willpower, she imagined her magic coating her hands like a glove. It was costly to maintain, but they did suddenly stop feeling the heat quite as badly. Bringing them closer to the Spell lines, Jenna focused her mind on keeping the Magic absolutely impenetrable.

Ever so gingerly, she tested the back of her hand against the misaligned portion of the Spell. If she’d had weeks to practice the skill, Jenna was certain that she would have been able to avoid feeling anything. As it was, the gold still felt painfully hot.

When she pulled her hand back and dispelled the glove she had made, though, she didn’t see any marks. Taking that as a good of a sign as she was likely to see, Jenna reformed the gloves.

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Learning Magic had done a lot for Jenna’s ability to ignore the difference between what she knew was true and what her eyes were telling her. The fact that her eyes only saw her bare hands reaching out towards the lines of gold radiating heat enough to distort the air was enough to make her concentration slip, just for a moment. Thankfully, that moment happened before she had taken hold of the Spell line.

It was still close enough that she felt the skin start to blister. It would be painful in a few minutes, but she hoped that she would have time to fix repair it with a Healing Product before too much damage set in. Gritting her teeth at the pain that was already beginning to throb with every beat of her heart, Jenna gripped the misaligned Spell.

Thankfully, the gold did not try to steal her Magic like the crystal had. It was about as pliable as she remembered gold being, which made her think that she might be doing the puzzle wrong. Still, with no other ideas, she continued forward. She held the Enchanted sculpted glass in her left hand as she maneuvered the Spell with her right.

Jenna was almost positive that she was doing something right, because each point in the Spell that she fixed stopped radiating heat. More than that, she saw the crystal glow brighter as the flow of Magic into it grew less interrupted. By the time that she was working on the last error, the room was almost comfortable again.

Unfortunately, the fact that there was now only a single point where the Spell had less than perfect flow meant that far more Magic was flowing through it than before. Even with the quick growth she was making in protecting herself with Magic, Jenna still felt her skin actively blistering as she moved the last piece into position.

As it started to cool down, the crystal continued to glow more and more brightly. When it became painful to look at and seemed to only be growing brighter, Jenna became concerned.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Detailed solution to puzzle room available upon final completion or failure.

That was the worst non answer that Jenna had gotten in a while. She quickly ran back through the hallway, surprised to see how much brighter it already was. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw what looked like murals on both walls.

Just as she had put the levered torch was behind her, she saw a table from the Pyramid.

Congratulations! You have completed the puzzle room. Please return to puzzle room to collect reward.

She had to trust that the Pyramid, vicious as it was, would not be actively lying to her. After drinking a Lesser Healing Product, which healed her burns, she turned around and started walking down the hallway. It looked completely different in the light.

Instead of the bare and sterile walls of the rest of the rift, these walls were covered in bright and shining gems and inks. There was clearly a story being told through the images, though Jenna could not say what the story was with any high degree of confidence. The overall impression was still strangely calming for some reason. She was tempted to pull off one of the emeralds that she saw, but the Pyramid preempted her.

Destruction of the mural will incur penalties.

That was strange. The Pyramid had only said something similar once before, when discussing the safe rooms. “Does that mean that this hallway can be considered a safe room?”

The Pyramid didn’t reply.

Jenna continued to look at the murals as she made her way down the hallway. As she looked more closely, she understood why the hallway made her feel safe. Unlike the rest of the rift, which was clearly lit by torches hanging on the walls, the hallway was lit the same way as the Pyramid had been before she entered the rift.

Jenna couldn’t see where the light was coming from, but a gentle and warm light suffused the entire hallway. It was almost certainly a side effect of having fixed the crystal, which made her hopeful that it wouldn’t be too bright to look at anymore. At the end of the hallway, she came to a mental crossroads.

The story clearly began at this end of the hallway. But, the rewards for solving the puzzle were inside of the puzzle room. If she delayed entering, she felt like there was a chance that the Pyramid could change the reward to something else. Conversely, if she went directly in, she knew somehow that the entire mural would disappear.

Jenna decided to trust her gut.

Jenna’s Status:

Jenna Fredrickson First Year Spells Known: First Tier: Hardened Glass Expected Years Completed: 8 Prediction Confidence: 24% Points: 5 Qualified to Ascend to Next Year? Yes