Back at the labyrinth, the fog became thicker as we tried to find our way forward. Davida became more spirited after beating The Black King, evident by how cheery she is, leading our party right in front. Well, the reward does play an important fact as well. A magic flashlight was rewarded to us after beating The Black King as, without it, we cannot see in this fog heavy place. The caveat was that only Davida can hold it.

After hours of walking, we stumbled into an empty, giant stone tablet. A golem emerged from the stone tablet. It moved its mouth open, “Welcome to the final part of The Test of Knowledge. Here, each of you must control a golem and guide it to make it past the hurdles. Please steps into the tablet.” It politely said, bowing to us with courtesy.

I looked at Duncan, who looked at me at the same time. We both nodded before turning our attention to Davida and Diane. “I’m good”, Daine replied while Davida only nodded like usual. We entered the tablet all at the same time. When I appeared inside of it, however, I was left alone by my lonesome. It’s another white room. Why is it always a white room? Suddenly, a screen then appeared in front of me, showing the golem field of view.

“It’s like an FPS game.” I look around, asking, “How do I control this?” I asked around, and the golem voice from before answered back, “Reached out your hand through the screen, you’ll feel some sort of connection with the golem when you do.” I tried doing exactly what the golem was saying, and immediately after, I felt some connection to the golem on the screen. I tried moving its right arm up, and it worked. I looked at my golem hands, “Cool. It felt like a more realistic VR game.”

“So, when do I start?”

A room appeared in front of me with blocks of different shapes scattered all over the place. I observed the room; there are 4 empty sockets, each positioned north, south, east and west respectably. In front of them, there are 4 respective locks, each with different patterns.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

What else? Right, there were chests near the scattered blocks with different patterns. I moved my golem near one of the square-shaped blocks, trying to lift it. I saw patterns at the bottom of the blocks before looking at another block. It appears that each block has its own unique patterns. Let me think, so I have to open and insert the appropriate pieces into it, but is there an order to it, I wonder….

I noticed the patterns on the lock and see that each pattern come with colour, green for the east, lock, red for the south lock, yellow for the west lock and blue for the north lock. Is it based on the four base elements? Hmm…

Let me sort this out. In short, I need to find the keys to the lock, likely from the chests, to opened up the lock and matched the block shapes and patterns to the empty sockets? Also, there may be an order in which I had to insert the block into the sockets. I began by looking at the chests for the key. 20 chests later, I only found 2 keys on it. One was red, and the other one was blue. I looked around me and found that there were still many chests yet to be opened. I sighed; this is going to be a long day.

===

After what seemed to be an hour, I finally got the 4 keys with me. I tried inserting the red key into the red-patterned lock, but it didn’t open. Is it based on the element weakness? Let’s try again. I inserted the blue key, and it didn’t open either. I tried every single key, but it wouldn’t open either. Something clicked inside my brain; if the socket has an order, why don’t the lock have an order too?

I take note of my surroundings a little more closely before finding a quote at the top of the ceiling. ‘All things born are from the earth. With a fiery passion, they lived their life. In a gentle wind, they talk and walk. In the end, however, all will be returned to the sea.’ So it’s yellow, red, green, then blue? I tried inserting the keys in that order, and it worked.

Now, how do I go about it? The shapes on each wall are square, hexagon, octagon, and decagon. I need to get the related shapes with the corresponding patterns. I caught a glimpse of what awaited me and sigh in exasperation. Why did this happen to me?

===

After what seemed like another hour, I finally found the shapes with the corresponding patterns. This time, however, I had an inkling on how to do it. I inserted them according to the shape hierarchy. It worked, and the pattern on them lit up.

Hmm? It didn’t do anything? I must’ve missed something. I lift my head up, and I found the word before lit up. Maybe… I jumped, extending the golem arm, trying to reach the word in the ceiling. Just like I thought, the word itself is a button. When I finally managed to do that, the floor opened up as I fell to the ground.

The screen went black, and I was greeted by the guardian golem voice, “Congratulations for passing the first puzzle. Transporting you to the final puzzle”, it said as my body become transparent before completely disappearing from the white room.