Exiting the hallway, Sasha caught her first glimpse of this Dungeon’s challenges. There were no monsters to fight or traps spitting flames. No tests of dexterity or strength that could lead to a gruesome death. And yet, she could feel her tail reflexively curling into a knot of pure anxiety.

“Oh, no. this is absssurd.” Staring at the wall in front of them, Sasha wanted to curl up and hide. The wall was a solid ten feet tall and covering it from the floor to the ceiling were numbers. All of them, arranged in sets of nine, in three by three squares.

“Oh, sudoku!” Her charge smiled up at the number-covered wall. “Ain’t that fun. You know, one of my nieces was just about the best puzzle solver you’d ever meet. She’d chew through sheets of these things. Tried to get her to teach me, but I just didn’t have the knack for it.”

He set his hands on his belt. “Well, nothin’ to it. Let’s go to work.”

“Wait, I don’t think it’sss that simple.” Sasha slipped down from Rick’s shoulders to wind along his body to the floor. She’d noticed a key difference between this puzzle and normal sudoku. Namely, all the numbers were already filled in. That wasn’t how sudoku was traditionally played, which meant this puzzle had a twist.

At the far bottom left corner, Sasha found a number spot that was blank. Sitting next to it, on the floor, was a tile emblazoned with a nine. In an instant, Sasha understood. “Oh, you have to be kidding me!”

It wasn’t just a sudoku puzzle, it was also a sliding tile puzzle! All the numbers had to fit the sudoku pattern by sliding tiles around. No doubt a number of the tiles situated throughout the puzzle couldn’t be moved, and would constitute the normal series of already filled out numbers in sudoku that made the puzzle game what it was.

Sasha could only stare at the floor, wondering just how long this would take. This would be on her to solve, Rick had already said he wasn’t very good at sudoku. While Sasha had a lot of experience with games and game theory, mainly to help with navigating the game-like nature of the System and HGG, she wasn’t all that good with puzzles. She tended to second-guess herself whenever she thought she had the answer.

She studied the wall, taking the time to commit it to memory before trying to peel it apart. It was impossible. Only one tile could be moved at a time, a perfect sequence of shifts were necessary unless you wanted your own actions to interfere with solving the puzzle. She couldn’t even begin to follow it. A bleak mental spiral threatened to swallow her, only to be intercepted by a loud clap and the sound of grinding stone. “Whaa?”

“Well, that was certainly fun! Never seen a puzzle quite like that. Wendy woulda loved it.” Rick was there, standing at the right bottom corner of the puzzle wall where the nine tile had been inserted. A section of it had swung open, revealing a passage similar to the one at the entrance to the Dungeon.

“What? How?” Sasha could hardly process what she was seeing. How long had she been thinking?! That was a ridiculously difficult, borderline impossible puzzle to solve. It could have, should have, taken days to complete!

“Like I said, my niece was real good at puzzles. I picked up a little somethin’ from her.” He smiled almost fondly at the puzzle wall. “This ain’t nothin’ compared to a ten by ten rubik's cube. Now that’s a real brain twister ‘til you get the patterns down.”

“I thought you said you ‘didn’t have a knack for it.’’' Sasha said, almost accusingly. This was absurd! A notion that seemed more and more to describe her Sinner as a whole.

“Psha,” Rick waved his hand almost embarrassedly. “Took almost a half hour to do! Wendy woulda’ had it done in a minute flat. Can’t hardly say I’m very good compared to that, now can I?”

Sasha seriously doubted this man’s niece could solve such an esoteric puzzle so rapidly. She would have suspected that her charge was being evasive if it weren’t for the complete sincerity in his voice. She found it hard to doubt him. Instead, she was faced with the idea that the man genuinely believed his young niece could do as he’d suggested, as ridiculous as that was.

Regardless, they continued on to the next puzzle. Because that’s what was through the door. Sasha hissed in frustration as she looked at the crossword puzzle set into the wall. Next to it was a matching grid filled with numbers.

“I’m not sure I even understand what we’re supposed to do.” Sasha hissed, glaring between the two images. The crossword had a key, the questions they were supposed to answer. But there was no way to fill it in, and several questions were already answered. Instead, there was a podium with numbered slates sitting on it in a pile. Those could obviously be used to fill out the matching numerical puzzle, but Sasha couldn’t figure out how they were related.

“Yup, not sure what I’m lookin’ at.” Rick scratched the back of his head before a look of annoyance crossed his face. No doubt he was still upset about his missing hat. At least, that was Sasha’s assumption, seeing as it was literally the only thing she’d seen that had phased him so far.

“Really? I thought you were good at this?” She asked.

“Pretty sure I said I wasn’t good at puzzles.” Rick chuckled.

Sasha huffed, but didn’t say anything, because that was exactly what he’d said. After the last puzzle though, she’d assumed he was being humble. But if he couldn’t figure it out either… Sasha stared at the two images again. Only the numbers could be added to, while only the crossword was technically solvable.

As an added annoyance, the questions were all about Hell’s Great Game, various aspects of the game itself. How was a Sinner supposed to figure this out on their own? Most Sin Totems were objects and couldn’t speak like she could. Plus, there were random esoteric questions mixed in. Who knew the name of the proper method to debone fish, as well as the most common knot used in lumberjacking?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sasha and her charge stared at the puzzles, trying to figure out the relationship between the two. Sasha almost gave up after a few minutes. She couldn’t see anything that tied them together. She shifted her gaze to her charge, wondering if he’d gained any insight. Rick was just staring at the wall with an unreadable, placid expression.

What was his deal, anyway? Sasha couldn’t help but wonder about the odd man she’d been saddled with. He’d solved the last puzzle far faster than she’d believed to be possible, and yet this one seemed to stump him just as much. She looked back at the wall, wondering how he could have figured out the last one.

The last puzzle…

An idea occurred to her. Sasha looked between the partially filled out crossword and the few numbered spots on its twin. Sure enough, the existing numbers and letters lined up. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Looking at the questions, Sasha found, to her growing horror, that they could all be answered several different ways.

“Rick, I think I have an idea.” Sasha said, hoping she was wrong.

“Well that’s good, ‘cuz I’m more lost than a fish in the desert. Lay it on me.” He smiled.

“No, not good. If I’m right, this puzzle is even meaner than the last. As far as I can tell, all the questions on the crossword have multiple viable answers, while the letters of the answers correspond to numbers on the other puzzle. The existing numbers and letters act as a key to translate which numbers match to which letters. Also, the numbers are sudoku. Again. It’s just that the squares are invisible.” The more she spoke, the more certain Sasha was that she was right. And the more certain she was that they weren’t getting out of here any time soon.

Rick rubbed his chin, reviewing the numbers and letters. “Well I’ll be! You’re right!”

Sasha stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘I’m right?’”

“Well, I started doin’ the puzzle based off what you said,” He walked up to the podium, grabbing numbers off it and placing them in the second puzzle where the stone magically stuck together. “Huh, nifty. Anyway, this, this, and this.” He started pointing at questions on the crossword key. “Match with these parts. If you use the current numbers and translate, it looks like this.” He finished putting tiles in place.

“How do I show this…?” Rick stared at the wall. Then he shrugged and turned a tile sideways before using its corner to scratch into the wall around the number puzzle, forming sudoku squares. “If the squares look like this,” He finished sketching out a rough pattern and started filling in numbers. “Then these answers match this layout.”

Sasha knew if she was in a human body, her mouth would have been hanging open. Just like that, he’d finished roughly an eighth of the puzzle. “How?”

“Oh, it ain’ that hard once you know what the puzzle is askin’ of ya.” He shrugged. “With both the sudoku and crossword, it’s easier to check both to narrow down on yer answers. Only so many words and numbers can match when you get down to it.”

After a moment, Sasha realized he was correct. The fact that the crossword and sudoku puzzle had to match vastly decreased the number of possible answers. The fastest way to finish the puzzles were to solve them simultaneously, rather than one at a time. She’d been thinking of it in terms of solving the crossword puzzle first and then checking it against the sudoku portion. That would have taken much longer, checking and correcting over and over again. Rick’s way was much faster.

“Now, Miss Sasha.” Rick’s words pulled her from her thoughts. “Do you know the answer to these questions? I haven’t got a single idea what they’re talkin’ ‘bout.”

He was gesturing toward the questions based around Hell’s Great Game.

“...I do, actually.” Sasha slithered over to him, winding her way up the arm he offered her. Settling around his shoulders, she started listing off every possible answer she could think of. Over the next hour or so, Sasha watched in amazement as her charge took all her input and rapidly converted it into numerical answers. They still had to change a few sections after later ones revealed that their initial answers had been slightly off, but Rick’s method cut down on those situations.

Finally, another door opened.

Sasha hissed. “No rewards this time either.”

“Is that not normal?” Rick asked as he walked them down another identical marble hallway, assumedly toward their next puzzle.

“It depends.” Sasha rippled her length, a snakey shrug. “Dungeons can offer rewards after every trial or after the entire Dungeon is complete. Neither method is more likely than the other, though certain types of Dungeons tend to stick to a particular style. Either way, Dungeons with more frequent rewards offer less overall than those that have one large payout, so if we haven’t gotten anything yet, our reward at the end should be suitably massive.”

“It’s that whole ‘difficulty means better rewards’, right?” Rick guessed. “ ‘Cuz if you got rewards after every challenge you could use what you got to make the next one easier.”

Sasha nodded. “Yes, exactly. It also happens that parceled reward Dungeons are typically also ones you can leave at will. Many would beat an early challenge and then leave the Dungeon without Delving the whole thing. A completion reward Dungeon guarantees that you completed all of it before you get anything, making the experience guaranteed to be more difficult.”

“Makes sense.”

The next puzzle was a massive cube covered in numbers floating in the middle of the room.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Sasha hissed. “Who likes sssudoku thisss much?”

Indeed, this puzzle was a combination of a 9 by 9 rubik’s cube with sudoku. However, that wasn’t the only point of interest in the room.

“Well now, that’s a mite bit different.”

Sasha agreed with her charge as they both looked at the open doorway in the corner of the room.

“Think it means we can skip this puzzle?”

“That seems like a bad idea.” Sasha looked at the doorway warrily. A Dungeon offering the opportunity to skip a challenge was almost always a trap in some way or another. It might make the next challenge more difficult or kill the Diver immediately if they tried to pass through without finishing the challenge first. Since there was no signposting yet again, it was a toss-up. Sasha explained as much to Rick.

“Then I ‘spose we should get to solvin’.”

Sasha said nothing, but her main concern wasn’t actually about them just walking through the door. For the previous two puzzles, they’d used the door opening to signal that Rick had done the puzzle right. Essentially, up until now, the entire Dungeon had been a ‘succeed to progress’ type. Now, it was a ‘punishment for failure’ type. If Rick did the puzzle wrong but thought he’d solved it, they’d still take whatever penalty the Dungeon had to offer.

But Sasha didn’t mention it. She didn’t want Rick to think she was questioning his ability to solve the puzzle. After all, he’d solved the last two with basically no assistance from her whatsoever. Who was she to tell him he needed to be careful?

The puzzle was slightly more complex than they’d first thought. Actually, it was way more complex, but Rick treated it like nothing. The 9x9 rubik’s cube could be split into 27 normal 3x3 rubik’s cubes, with a hidden one nestled in the center. That hidden one was actually the simplest, since those sudoku squares didn’t interact with the larger whole.

Overall, it took Rick nearly two hours to complete, much longer than the last two, but not terribly long. It hadn’t even been half a day since they arrived in Hell, and Rick was well on his way to finishing his first Dungeon Delve flawlessly.

Until they stepped through the doorway.

Sin Totem, your Sinner has Died!

Awaiting Revive or Oblivion