And that was how I spent the next two weeks. Each morning after eating a light meal, various fruits rather than steak when I had to get moving shortly after eating, before heading into the training room for sensory skill training.

At first it had been awful, trying to solve a projected hard light maze with a blindfold on, then trying to find which box was last handled by Ignut by hearing how it sounded compared to when he had picked it up, even going as far as only being able to use my sense of taste on various objects to work out their origin. Thankfully I finally did unlock my sensory skill, and it was one that meant Ignut couldn’t keep making me taste or smell awful things in the name of training.

Skill obtained: Missing Pieces

Missing Pieces:

This skill grants the ability to use various observational skills to determine hidden information. Related to Puzzle Enlightenment as a derived skill. Cannot exceed parent skills level.

Ingut’s explainer on Derived skills at least cleared up any concerns, it just meant I would now be more likely to get a class that ties my other skills closer to my puzzle skill as well, and when I would rather solve puzzles then kill things plus the divine gambit giving challenges in a way that best suits your growth and capacity I am hopeful it's a good sign.

The only other major change over these last couple of weeks was I no longer had dedicated puzzle time, as I had found out with mana I could buy shifting puzzles that would grow in complexity as I solved them, and spent a lot of my personal time on them so Ignut decided we would use it to study instead, which is why I now had my face pressed against a book hoping my desperate need would help me get a time dilation skill to get through this.

“I know you don’t enjoy this, I don’t blame you, but we don’t often get a chance to study properly this early unless a soul is on the crafter track already. It just doesn’t provide a lot of direct value early, and there are ways to catch up later, but a more well rounded foundation will give you more options for growth later.” As usual Ignut was right, but that doesn’t mean I particularly had to enjoy it.

As much as I wanted to dive in and learn everything I could, it was just incredibly dry material. It all sounded exciting at first, learning about clans and pantheons and what makes a god, well a god, but instead it was like my intro to commerce class all over again. What is a pantheon? Well it's basically a real life guild for gods, and a clan is when someone with a bloodline related class or profession offers other souls a chance to unlock it and develop it under them, though usually clans are tied to specific pantheons as well.

Thankfully this was all mostly to make sure I was ready for later in my life, or was it afterlife? Ah well big questions can wait until bedtime, as Eterna didn’t belong to a pantheon or any kind of group at all. Apparently this was really common, if you grouped up at all you were expected to pool resources and honestly listening to how they worked it all sounded like a pyramid scheme, which I was more than glad to avoid thanks to Eterna not being tied up in it all.

After escaping Ignut’s books of boredom I was able to nab a quick meal, this was something called a Grt’he Stew, I wasn’t sure if a Grt’he was the meat in it or the place it originated from, but I had been having Ignut share some different foods with me. I felt like an eternity with only the foods I could remember or think of to order would grow boring quickly, and I wasn’t at a point where I exactly had a huge contact book to visit and exchange foods with.

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This stew was becoming a quick favourite, beyond the mildly blue meat and the stew broth being white, it looked like a normal stew but had a mixture of hearty meat and potato like vegetables combined with some other vegetables that tasted like citrus fruit making a nice combination.

I had also learned I could only order things that were “standard consumables generally accepted as sustenance or recreational non-medical consumables”, so I couldn’t just ask for some medication or crafting materials. I had considered even keeping bones from meat, but those returned to mana once the rest of the meal also cleared away.

Settling down post meal and shower into bed I grabbed my puzzle rings. Two rings for each hand, one for each thumb and one for each pinkie. Once I had them on and put a tiny amount of mana into them they would project a puzzle into the air for me between my hands to try to solve.

Currently I was on the third last puzzle from the fifth Silver set, with puzzles for the rings being purchased as a group of difficulty. Bronze contained only five sets of twenty puzzles, but Silver contained five sets of forty puzzles that were quite a lot more difficult. I had looked at the Gold sets, which I had only been able to view after buying the silver sets, and that was ten sets but only ten puzzles each.

The cost also grew, but it still wasn’t anything I couldn’t afford with a day or two's mana regeneration. Although there was no way the system broke even on a lot of the lower grade purchases, it must have been more about offsetting the cost for the production of those items than on making a profit.

Laying in bed working on puzzles I have consistently ended up back on the topic of the divine gauntlet itself, and based on the obviously limited information I have it had to be some kind of funnel to produce more whatever it is that titans need.

Lesser souls paid in mana to produce items, and looking at the few higher tier things for me that I could see it looked like at higher tiers it was likely it became slightly profitable for the system to sell it. Then most demigods also challenged a higher group of challenges in the divine gauntlet and bought more expensive things, likely with a bigger margin if my assumption is right. The other demigods either trained lesser souls, while being paid by gods and as such spending mana on the system while taking a cut of the gods winnings, or they produced items and consumables for the system to sell.

Talking to Ignut I found out that you couldn’t directly buy and sell items, but if you sold something to the system it would either buy it for a determined price based on supply and demand, or if it was a more unique or rare item it would host an auction for you. With the set price it was usually around twelve percent below what it would sell it for, but with an auction the system kept three to seven percent depending on how much the item goes for and how long the auction is.

Then you could have mana credit with the system to spend as if it were your own mana.

All of this sounded like good old capitalism just with a currency people consumed to grow at higher tiers, as enough mana could be condensed into divinity which would allow a god to eventually become a titan. So if the system takes a cut, and I am assuming even with the cost the divine gambit has to sustain itself this has to be profitable, then it has to be a way for divinity to be collected and condensed for titans to grow into whatever was next.

Not that literally any of this mattered. I had to compete to grow, and if I didn’t grow I would eventually die again, so I didn’t really have a choice but to buy into this system for now at least. If I reached demigod status as long as I could pay for my own expenses my understanding was I could do whatever, so maybe I would take some time to review what I wanted to do then, but in the meantime I needed to grind up my skills and stats.

Wrapping up finishing the third set of puzzles, an achievement I was happy with, I drifted off to sleep hoping to get into a challenge again soon so I could make real progress and growth again.