Looking at the stranger of my rewards, the temporal link cube, I checked over its description.

Temporal link cube: A cube forged from twilight with a core of morning tides and dawn light, this cube contains temporal conceptualization allowing it to link to the best matched other cube to permit a short conversation across temporal points. Causality limit prevents anything that would alter temporal pathing beyond standard deviation.

Picking up the cube I wondered what would want to speak with me through time. This device would apparently match me with someone else who at some point earned one or crafted one themselves, as I held the cube of perfect twilight it slowly made a gentle sound like tides in the morning.

A small window appeared above it, and I saw myself but different. That was my own brown hair, just slightly lighter like I had been outside plenty, and those blue eyes I had seen a thousand times in the mirror. But there were small scars across the face to match my freckles, and my eyes still looked wrong. Like a sliver of insanity had taken root and was being used as a lens to view the world. It was me, if I had seen horrors and returned. While I took in myself, the vision of madness shattered as a soft smile broke out on their face, and warmth appeared in their eyes while they started to water.

“I don’t remember, what did I want to be, what do you want from your growing power Fenris?” Even my voice sounded weary, like it had spoken a thousand tales and come back to share their final one.

“Peace maybe, to find something I can do that makes me happy? Maybe some people to share that peace and joy with. What did I get?” Looking at myself, I realised that the path I had been taking lightly for these last few days as I settled in may contain more hardships than I had been mentally steeling myself for.

“You get strength, scars, you learn to endure. I love you, please remember this always, we love ourselves, no matter what anyone thinks of our visage you must love yourself. You will forget it eventually, but this conversation, it will bring it back, seeing how soft our beauty once was. Goodbye little pup, and enjoy the butterflies they are a treasure we still cherish.” By this point tears were freely rolling down my face, and as they shifted back from their cube I could see I had lost some weight at some point, becoming even leaner, which with my lack of curves was a feat itself.

“Can you share advice? Anything that won’t violate the causality rules but that might help?” I was hoping if it didn’t change my path, maybe future me could still help make things easier or help me find something useful to grow.

“Don’t trust any groups, if it comes down to completing a challenge and ending another soul, end them. It is harsh, and it will cost them a lot of their stats to rebirth again, but almost always you will have to put them down if they are in the way anyway, it's best to not let the morality become more important than your own survival.” With that last mildly concerning bit of advice the cubes hum started to quiet and the window it had opened closed over.

Once the cube had gone completely quiet it became dead, but didn’t dissolve into mist. Assuming this meant I would be allowed to keep it I kept it in my hand and wandered over to the box that should contain my offensive reward.

Opening up the lavender box, a simple lid covering the top like a shoebox, inside I found something worth getting excited over. Clearly a mana-morph of some kind, it looked like a modern handgun, but even just looking at it it was a higher power weapon then the one I was currently using.

Focusing on the weapon thankfully gave me the system information on it, and I was immediately pleased with this dungeon run despite the conflicting emotions the temporal cube had caused.

Ruin Delver's mana-morph: This weapon contains three base forms, one for long, short, and melee range each respectively. This weapon was designed for long term bounding, and as such is not capable of gaining new forms, it instead develops its forms as your skill with it grows based on how it is used.

Now this, this is what I was hoping for. It was mildly concerning that it couldn’t gain additional forms, usually from what my book had said the main goal of a mana-morph was to get as many useful forms as possible to create a huge level of versatility that pairs with a high skill level. However if it grew to suit how I used it this might be better, specialisation over generalisation.

Its current form looked like a very generic handgun, with a matte black colouration to the metal, which minimal reflection from light on the weapon sounded like it had to be good come time for a hunting challenge, though that was mostly based on watching bad tv shows so hopefully it was good logic.

Looking around I confirmed I hadn’t missed anything, and went to put my hand on the crystal again.

All rewards collected. Would you like to leave the challenge and mark as completed?

Giving my affirmative to leaving another lot of stairs rose from the spheres edges to my right, leading up to the pink cube that had come out of the wall part way. Walking up to it and pressing my hand against it I was able to select to return to my own quarters.

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Looking around it was nice to be back, I had no idea how long I had actually been gone or if there was any time distortion or anything else. Walking into my living space I found Ignut still there, sitting on my couch reading a book that if the title was any indicator was mostly smut of some kind.

“You did well, Eterna sent me a contact advising he was quite happy with the results and that he is looking forward to your next challenge to see if you start a full completionist run again. Otherwise it looks like you kept your head, and hopefully were rewarded well for your troubles?” Getting up from the couch Ignut seemed genuinely proud, which was a nice feeling even if we hadn’t known each other very long.

“Glad to hear it, is there any reason Eterna can’t come and share the praise directly? No offence, you have been great, but it's been kinda strange being sponsored by someone I basically don’t see. And yeah my rewards were really good I think, didn’t you see them?” Sitting my cube and the box that now contained my old mana-morph while my new one was on my belt holster, thankfully their handgun form was similar enough that it fit reasonably well.

“Going backwards on your questions there, the ability to scry what is happening in the challenge stops when you get to the rewards room, it also doesn’t show any of your system messages to anyone watching. So we don’t know your skill gains, stat gains, or material rewards. For Eterna outside of one of the fountains that connects to the soul pools for a full god to be physically present with a lesser soul who was lower then B tier at a minimum would be very likely to cause some level of damage from ambient pressure.” Gesturing to take a look at my cube and box I passed over the cube but gave Ignut the morph from my holster, explaining I had swapped them over immediately.

He was definitely happy with the upgraded weapon, and confirmed specialising morphs weren’t better or worse but if I wanted to commit to one it was better to do so earlier so I didn’t fall into the habit of expecting a weapon to be able to shift to a large number of alternate forms.

Going over the challenge from start to finish with Ignut made me think of a debrief you see in those military movies, except ten minutes in Ignut started ordering high fat foods and tried to force me on a bathroom break.

“Trust me, you didn’t have any biological needs while in the challenge, and it's instant time wise. Souls don’t age biologically so don’t worry, but some biological functions help growth, eating, sleeping, and shitting are all part of that. So I suggest you go try to use the toilet, while I get more food organised, then we can keep going over your experiences.”

Honestly what was worse than being told to go to the bathroom like a child was him being right, and fifteen minutes later I was able to come back and finish going over the events of the dungeon. Before I could get into the rewards room Ignut stopped me.

“Right, let's review how the actual challenge went first, it sounds like you made some overall good decisions. The divine gambit rarely picks anything beyond your current abilities, if anything it's a bit below, for you first run or two at a minimum but you still handled it well. Plenty of areas for growth but you marked them already so I won’t waste both our time repeating those points. Ongoing for you I will be starting a proper training schedule now. Bluntly speaking, plenty of people kill their first monster, get stuck on their first puzzle, or face their first uncomprehending horror and just give up. They can’t do it, and it's difficult to tell from a soul's past trials if they will make or break on that, so while Eterna and I invested in setting you up to succeed, I also didn’t exactly pour my all into it just in case so that we didn’t burn too much. This isn’t to offend you, it's just the economics of the divine gambit. Now you have managed a challenge, killed some monsters, and by the look on your face when you came through you faced something that mentally took its toll at the end somehow in a reward room, so I will make a proper personalised training schedule for you to start following. Now, rewards, leave nothing out please as much as possible, I would rather know what we are working with.”

I had to take a moment to think over what I wanted to share, I didn’t think Ignut had anything against my future self and there was nothing shared that should be a problem, but there was still a very strong part of me that had a desire to hold my cards to my chest to try to prevent any losses or to keep an advantage.

Thinking it over, comparing hiding what I knew and being cagey, managing lies and trying to balance everything, compared to simply having to solve the problems or handling the risks it created, I decided I would rather this life be one where my cards were on display when it came to my team at least. If betrayal happened I just had to get strong enough first that either no one risked it, or more realistically I had a chance to handle whatever happened.

I walked him through each of my rewards, the frustrating overall low feeling stat gains, the feelings of frustration of being stuck with a single stat below ten, and the temporal cube. Ignut seemed to not be that surprised or concerned by my future self, despite the oddity of it all.

“Look Fenris, honestly temporal cubes are normally more for your future self then your current self. You got very little out of that interaction, some reassurance that it's very likely you make it to high tier lesser soul tier if not demigod tier, but that is about it. For your future self though it is likely you were facing some kind of trial soon or even at that time, or just going through a lot of personal conflict. Reflecting on your past self and growth, or even just seeing a younger face that you can relate to can provide a lot of grounding in these situations” Giving my shoulder a squeeze Ignut started to make his way out back to the training room.

“Get some sleep, eat more, drink plenty of good fluids, and maybe sit in the shower for a bit. Tomorrow is going to be a recovery day for you, you just don’t have the stats to ignore the impact of biological delay from even a short challenge. Rest, you earned it, and the day after tomorrow I will come visit so you can show me that new morph of yours.”

Taking his advice to heart, I finished eating the stew Ignut had ordered for us, a really hearty but tasty meal, before another bathroom trip and a very fast shower. Almost as soon as the warm water hit my skin, my muscles decided to protest their recent treatment very vocally. Taking advantage of the warm water I did some light stretching to hopefully make them less painful after a sleep, and dried off before collapsing on top of my bed for the deepest sleep I had ever had.