EV B2 Chapter 2:

The next morning, I scarfed down breakfast and immediately left for the town. As I walked through the many paved streets, I studied every face carefully, searching for any bit of recognition, but not a single flicker. I didn’t see any familiar faces either, which gave me a little bit of solace.

I wondered about last night when I had gone to sleep. I had been exhausted. Not only had I just come from a battlefield where I had been betrayed in one of the most devastating ways I could possibly imagine—well, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration—but then I had fought through twelve fights that at least pushed me. The emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion eventually knocked me out, but not before I had spent several hours worrying and planning.

Of course, my worries and plans hadn’t been the most effective because I realized that my plan to try to find Helga first was a lot harder to implement than I originally thought. I didn’t actually know where she was. If she was still living in the same small apartment as last time, I would be incredibly surprised. Even with what we were making, she had enough to move past that. But where would she have gone?

Valhalla proper was huge. For tens of thousands of years, at least 24 new members entered daily. I wasn’t sure how many people left, but nowhere near as many who had entered. That left this sprawling city with possibly more arenas than the one I had seen, which would mean even more people would enter. It was unfathomable in many ways. There were millions of people here and no technology, no apps, no messaging systems—at least not that I could see. Perhaps there was some sort of courier service, but I’d need to look into that.

At least I had an idea of two people I could talk to. The first was Loki, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for another conversation with him yet. The other was Phil the Gnome. That was something that I hadn’t really considered all last night. He’d be someone who knew me well. He seemed trustworthy enough, but I wasn’t sure how he’d react to the news about me—if he’d even heard of it. He seemed relatively informed, so I imagined he would have. And with his connections to Loki, he probably had to know at least some of what was happening.

But I figured his connections with Loki would also probably help me. Unfortunately, I also didn’t have any money. No coin whatsoever. I had my pass for food and room and board at the Newbie House, but that was it. So I wouldn’t be able to pay him anything.

As I got my bearings and found out exactly where I was, I realized it wasn’t too far from where I had met him the first time. But instead of heading there, I worked my way toward the monthly challenge. Thor wasn’t in charge this month, but Baldur was. I wished I knew more about him. I just knew that he was Odin’s favorite son and had been killed by Loki? But something didn’t quite add up. I figured this was maybe one of those points where the myths didn’t match reality, which blew my mind to even think about.

When I eventually reached the challenge entrance, I scanned the board. Was this going to be another dungeon-crawl-style challenge or something else? Reading the description on it, I was confused. It seemed like it was a quest system. That was unique, to say the least. It seemed I would have to go in to find out more.

I didn’t have a party, so I likely wouldn’t get very far, but, well, I had unlimited retries. And I was significantly more powerful than I had been the last time I’d gone through something like this. My time away from Valhalla had given me levels—not as many as if I had just grinded in Valhalla as hard as possible, but enough that I was pretty confident I’d be getting close to that 20% mark to avoid punishment in the last trial. This trial? Well, who knew?

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Stepping into the building, I found it only lightly crowded. After approaching the Raven and registering myself, I received a medallion to keep track of my progress and loot. The Raven didn’t seem to recognize me, or at least didn’t give any hints if he did. I didn’t push anything and just walked toward the entrance of the challenge, letting darkness envelop me.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself under a gray sky of solid clouds. A light wind blew, ruffling my hair and carrying the scent of the sea over to me. Looking out over a cliff, I saw a beautiful fjord with a long tendril of ocean winding its way through the hills. Just off in the distance, I could see where the rocks ended, and the vast expanse of empty grayish-blue began.

There wasn’t much of a beach around, as the scent of seaweed or rotting fish was a lot less than it had been at some of the other beaches I had visited in my old life. No, this place was fresh and new. Immediately, I started to shiver as the wind picked up, and I could feel the temperature was close to freezing. Looking around, a little ways behind me, I found a rough-hewn house—more of a hut, really. It had a few rooms and was thatched, with a wooden fence keeping a few goats in a pen. Several chickens roamed around the yard, pecking at the dirt. Farther past the cliffs, I saw a small field of something being grown. It wasn’t very large, but neat rows of ankle-high plants poked out of the ground. I knew nothing about farming, so I pushed aside any curiosity about that and walked toward the house.

Well, if the issue was quests, presumably, there needed to be a quest giver, as I hadn’t been given any instruction when I appeared here. Carefully listening for sounds, I found none. But when I rapped on the door with my knuckles, the door swung open almost immediately. A barrel-chested man, standing nearly half a head taller than me, looked down.

“Who are you?” he said in a gruff voice.

I blinked, surprised by the sudden encounter. Was this like a role-play thing? Or did I need a quest? It was clearly spring turning into summer, but I didn’t know what else to draw from the situation. So, instead, I simply introduced myself.

“Miles? That’s an odd name. You can call me Haldor. What brings you to my—” He said a word I didn’t recognize, but I rolled with it, assuming he meant house, homestead, farm, or something similar. It was strange because, for the most part, he seemed to be speaking English.

I shook my head, not allowing it to faze me. “I’m afraid I’m a bit lost, and, well, the wind is getting to me. Is there anything I can do for you that you might perhaps consider giving me a fur for? I could really use something to keep myself warm.”

Haldor looked me up and down. “I suppose I have some old furs that I might be able to give you. For some light labor, in the meantime. While I go find them, why don’t you chop some wood? That’ll keep you warm and also help offset the cost.”

When he spoke, he gestured with his head off to the side, where I found a rough ax as well as a pile of logs that hadn’t been cut into rounds. Looking at the saw blade and the marks on the trees, I couldn’t tell much, but it seemed like they were cut by a rough-hewn blade rather than anything like a chainsaw. The fact that the trees had been felled, moved over here, and cut into rounds before being split seemed a bit odd to me, as the splitting usually seemed like the easiest part. But, well, I didn’t mind.

As I grabbed the ax, with my speed and strength, it was effortless to split the rounds into chunks that matched the ones already in the pile. My biggest concern was breaking the ax I was given. I kept swinging, one log after the other, quickly finding that it was almost more effective with my speed and strength to not even do a full swing. Instead, I held the wood in place, held the ax near the blade, and simply gave the wood a single tap, quickly splitting it into sections. Sometimes, I even tore it apart with my hands if I misjudged the strike and didn’t split it all the way through.

The hard work was satisfying and did a good job of keeping me warm. But at the same time, my mind was racing. I couldn’t figure out what the hell the point of this was.