Dan brought Winston to the secluded spot he had moved the other four bodies to. First, they prayed together. While Winston was still praying with his eyes closed, Dan slid his knife into the base of the old man’s skull. A real professional kill. Quick and painless.
Even though he killed Winston, since the old man was considered a friendly participant right up to his death, the inverted bonus still applied. Dan was lucky that an Orbment Fragment dropped.
Then Dan ran to the Strength Trial, stopping about a half mile away to walk up to it. I assume to catch his breath. He…
[One moment. Do Stats work the same in the Game?]
Besides the compressed grades, yes.
As far as I know, a grade increase to the Strength Stat does two things – it increases natural, intrinsic strength as well as the Stat point cap. Every grade increase is more potent than the last. So, Dan’s C-grade Agility wouldn’t do much until he put some points in it.
For us, it’s B-grade, but for the Game, S-Grade is when 100 Stat points in Strength equals a 100% increase to intrinsic strength.
Because of the XP and grinding, qi isn’t much of an issue for participants, not like it is for us. And they have way more access to frags and Orbments than those of my layer do.
Soul-grade and Stat-grades are their main bottlenecks. As we discussed already, working on revelations in that artificial environment is a real killer.
I should also add that mortals are intrinsically very weak. Particularly these mortals of Earth since they never found the suppressors. All but a handful started with F-grade in all Stats. Not counting Traits, of course. Generally, if any low-tier mortal stepped into even the lowest layer of Hell, they’d die immediately.
Have you ever been to Earth?
[No.]
Well, it sucks. Mortals of Earth are all very stupid. There were a few things I liked about it though, such as smoking crack, smart phones, some of their porn, rating things poorly on Yelp, ‘Over the Top’ starring Sylvester Stallone as Lincoln Hawk, some of the…
[Does Speed reduce the cast time of invocations for them?]
Maybe? We hear it does for us too, but, if it does, it’s impossible to tell.
[It’s not all that noticeable at lower tiers, grades, and point totals. At max grade with max points, it reduces the cast time of all invocations by half.]
You mean SSUR++? What’s the Stat point cap at that grade?
[1,400.]
Unholy Moloch, that’s insanity! Wow, 1,400 points, huh? Have you maxed out a Stat yet, Boss? What tier are you?
[You said those beasts were low-Foundation equivalent, so the three cores they dropped should’ve had enough qi for Dan to hit level 7 or 8 even with his pristine core. With his 4-Star Soul, that’s 5 Stat points per level. If he had a Class and levels, these Trials would be a lot easier, especially considering how out of shape you claim he was. His Health Attribute would increase by 1 upon ascending to Foundation tier. In your opinion, why didn’t he get a Class and level up?]
I can only imagine if I could go back and do it all over again. I’d try increasing my Soul-grade as much as possible before I started gaining levels. If I were able to pull that off, I’d be much more powerful now.
[As would we all.]
Except he could stay at level 0 after taking a Class and gaining a mana-type. There’s a reason for him holding off. It’ll make sense when I get to that part.
[Understood. Continue from where you left off.]
Sure thing, Boss. My whole team was at the Strength Trial, on the far side of it so Dan wouldn’t think they were crowding him. Chet was at the reader, and only Nick was in front of the Trial.
“You done it? He’s dead,” asked Nick.
“Yeah,” replied Dan.
“Well, I hope he gets to be with his wife. He was a good man. God rest his soul.”
“He was. God rest his soul.”
“I let everyone know what was happening. Most of them understood. It was his decision,” said Nick. “Looks like you’re bleeding worse than you was earlier. Becky should check that out.”
Dan turned his eyes from his daughter to his brother. “Start worrying about yourself. Carlos knows to pay close attention? This ball is heavy as hell.”
“Yup. He knows.”
Dan nodded and stretched his arms and legs until Chet brought the camera to him. He then entered the Trial and placed the backpack and camera down.
Now, this Trial hurt my case with that dumb broad Zixy. She had been doing her own snooping and had three major points.
Her first was that Dan wouldn’t have looked through the reader on the first day if he started the Game knowing everything.
Second, she interpreted the comment he just made as meaning he thought the ball was the same weight for everyone.
Third, since these mortals had no idea what they were doing, a lot of them were doing some weird shit that somehow worked out well. Some of Earth’s mortals were able to touch upon revelations before ever learning about revelations. A bunch of them increased their Stat grades naturally by barely working the related Stat. Weird shit like that. She said Dan was no different than these others.
The ball in the Strength Trial doesn’t weigh the same for everyone. It has three different sizes for both males and females and the weight changes for all of them. It also increases in weight along with a participant’s tier. The ball for the big males is way heavier than the one used for small females, and it’s much heavier for Jades than Origin tiers.
Same for most of these Trials. It’s called scaling.
The ball is always too big and awkward. Arms can’t be wrapped completely around it, and the ball can’t be hugged to the chest with hands locked together.
Participants must pick the ball up above their waistline and hold it for two minutes. If the ball drops below their standing waistline at any time, they’re killed. After the two-minute mark, the rating is upgraded every 30 seconds.
At Hell difficulty, a big light overhead slowly follows the participant around. If the light touches the participant for 5 seconds, they’re killed, so they must keep moving.
Nightmare difficulty adds little tacks to the ball every 40 millimeters. Hell difficulty adds a bigger tack and places them every 20 millimeters.
When the Trial started, Dan had 30 seconds to get the ball up. He bent down, grabbed it, straightened his legs, hefted it to his chest, then rolled it up to his shoulder, so he had one arm cradling it as it rested on his neck and head, and the other hand holding and balancing it – not easy with all those tacks.
The thing was so heavy for him that just getting it up there looked like it caused him seven hernias and a million more broken blood vessels. His eyes were bugging so far out of his head I thought they’d pop any second. His face was beet red. He was out of breath before the timer even started.
But just as the timer did start, I ordered up the max number of images I could. A couple dozen creepy and translucent monsters appeared, completely crowding him. He was so startled he almost dropped the ball.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
So close! I nearly killed him that time!
Dan began waddling around with the giant ball on his shoulder and almost dropped it a million other times. The light almost got him a bunch of times too. He could barely stay out of it.
As soon as the chime sounded, Dan dropped the ball and collapsed onto the ground, completely spent. That fat prick ended up pulling off another SS rating. He laid there for about 10 minutes before getting up and collecting his rewards, including a Strength Grade-Enhancer.
After using the enhancer, he put the fragments in the backpack, grabbed the camera, and exited. He pulled Nick aside, handed over the camera, and said, “Bring them to the Reaction Trial so I can get rested up for the Speed Trial.”
“Another one, Danny?”
Dan said…
[One moment. How many Trials are there?]
Nine in the tutorial area. The recommended order of completion given by the reader goes class, core, mana, then all the other Stat ones, Soul, and then basic combat last in preparation for the next area.
[Does the Mana Trial teach them of Orbments, invocations, and mana techniques?]
It only covers the basics of attacking and blocking, and only with Orbments. The Profile Readers give some information on the other stuff that was negotiated and agreed upon by both sides.
[I see. Continue.]
Will do, Boss. Let me sidetrack for a second though. Right about when Dan completed the Strength Trial is when Zixy…well, she thought she had the ammo needed to put me in my place.
That dumb broad carbon-copied a bunch of bigwigs onto a message and laid out those three points I described earlier. She said I was a stupid, incompetent, paranoid idiot, and if I ever threatened to stomp on her brood or murder everyone she cared about again, she would sacrifice half her brood to the Temple of Berith to have me tortured and tormented to death.
She also said very mean and hurtful stuff about my tentacles and genitals. But she did attach a new picture of those five curious holes, this time oozing a thick green mucus. I think she thought those pictures were goading me, but I treasure each and every one of them dearly.
I have over 10 levels on that dumb broad. The only reason why I haven’t killed her yet is because the new employee handbook has really strong language against murdering at the workplace. Since I’m already dealing with a bunch of unwanted-sexual-harassment cases and some other hogwash, I just can’t risk it.
We hear all these stories about how fun our layer used to be. Every day there’d be an orgy somewhere you could join in on during a break, or one of the damned strung up in every hallway you could torture to blow off some steam. Now everyone’s greedy with their holes and a bunch of wussy tattletales.
Even though the other side loses every Game, it’s like they’re winning by destroying Hell with all their prudery. Why’re we even bothering? It’s infuriating. And no one sees it.
Ideally, I’ll get that vacation approved so I can take my time murdering her, but if Zixy doesn’t approve it, I just need to catch her outside of work once. Just once. Then I will murder her better than anyone has ever been murdered in the entire history of murder.
Sorry about that rant. I just really needed to get that off my chest. I know. No need to say anything. I’m moving on.
Well, turns out one of the demons Zixy carbon-copied was an old-school Chamosite. A bigwig named Gabrodyl. I think she reports directly to someone that reports directly to Chamos himself. Maybe there’s a few additional buffer layers between her and Chamos, like four or seven more, but she’s high up there.
Gabrodyl must’ve read through the whole message chain because she hit reply-all and said I’d be getting a few other techs sent my way. She also told Zixy to stop whining and being such a stupid drama queen.
Chamosites are good demons despite lacking even one semi-compelling face orifice. There’s usually at least one. Mortals have the same issue. Most of them have seven on their head but none are all that compelling. I guess the nostrils are okay. Definitely not my favorites though.
There’re all those rumors about Chamosites being prudes, but my mother was a huge whore, and she told me they’re some superfreaks once they get going, so you can disregard those horrid lies.
[Noted. Continue.]
You got it, Boss. Back to my team. They headed to the Reaction Trial next.
It’s not going to be easy to explain this one in detail, and I can’t think of a good reason to, so I won’t. I’ll just say there’re three parts to it – simple reaction time, choice reaction time, and direction response time. Each of those parts has three components – visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
The rating is based on misses. Miss too many during any component of any part and the participant dies. SS is achieved by missing one or less for each component of each part. It’s not physically demanding, even the kinesthetic components. F-rating is pretty easy to get for anyone that isn’t a complete gimp.
Dan achieved SS and increased his Reaction Stat to C-grade.
My team wanted to take a break and eat dinner once he finished. Dan said no and headed to the Speed Trial.
Outside the door, Dan told Nick, “This one’ll be rough for me. You and Ace pay close attention. You two are the only ones that can do this one.”
Just FYI, Leena was the team member best suited to rate highly in this Trial by a super wide margin.
Nick looked surprised and said, “We’re both injured, Danny.”
“Y’all’ll heal enough by then.”
Dan stretched a little more. It seemed to me he was hesitating even though his social anxiety line was in the yellow.
Once he finally entered and set his backpack down, I noticed his hands were shaking more than usual.
He took some time finding a good spot for the camera, so it could get the best view of the important parts of the track.
The Speed Trial is the one where participants can’t help but notice space works differently in the Game. It can’t be denied that the outside and inside of that Trial don’t match up at all. It’s very large inside.
The Speed Trial has different times required to not die based on various factors. In his case, Dan needed to run a kilometer in three minutes and 45 seconds. That’s to live and get F-rating.
To achieve SS, he’d have to finish another kilometer and a quarter at a slightly slower speed. For Hell difficulty, this Trial throws some additional surprises at participants too.
The countdown started and the track lit up. I was excited. Based on all his records and his current vitals, there was no chance he’d pull off an F-rating and survive this.
----------------------------------------
Dan was so sore he wouldn’t be surprised if his legs just gave out before he even started the Speed Trial.
This was the tutorial Trial he was worried about the most. He’d have to sprint as fast as he could the whole time, faster than his body ever would allow itself to go normally and was in no condition to accomplish.
The mind controlled the body. To get the body to do what it couldn’t or didn’t want to, it was just a matter of convincing his mind that it wasn’t just possible, but it would happen, and there was no other choice but to get it done.
And there wasn’t another choice. Not for him. He had to sprint a klick faster than his body could. And just as he had no other choice, neither did his body, so it would.
Then his body had to keep complying and sprint another 1.25 klicks so he could get SS.
Increasing the rank didn’t require him to sprint as fast as the first klick did, but almost. He just had to stay ahead of the ball and not get crushed.
This’ll be rough, he thought. Don’t matter none. I got to get it done. Just a couple other things need doing before I get a Class. That’ll make things easier, but I’ll still need to get this body conditioned.
Dan rubbed his right shoulder. He thought the spikes on the heavy ball must’ve hit a nerve or something. His arm wasn’t working all that well and felt numb. Certain movements sent pain flaring down the arm. It wasn’t bad pain. Easily tolerated. He opened and closed his hand a few times to try and wake his fingers up.
Most of his bones hurt too. He was sure a bunch of them weren’t doing so well. He just needed them to last a little longer without breaking.
Dan chastised himself for procrastinating. Stop being such a bitch. A little sprint ain’t nothing. There’s no quitting. It’s all on you. The whole world’s depending on you. You can’t fail again.
After walking up to the starting line a pleasant voice said, “Three, two, one, begin!” He started sprinting down the track. A giant metal ball dropped down and began chasing him. It got a little too close and he pushed himself forward by force of will alone as his body was being very noncompliant.
His legs were shaking. They were begging him to stop. He tried focusing on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, but he just wasn’t getting enough oxygen. As his legs cramped and the ball nipped at his heels, he became a little worried. The hurdles were fast approaching. He was hoping to have a little more distance from the ball before those.
A couple feet from the first hurdle, he brought his lead leg to his butt and extended it forward, thrust with his trailing leg, landed, and ran to the next without slowing, barely staying ahead of the ball as it crushed the hurdles right behind him.
After the hurdles came the pit jump. He cleared it without issue besides his body trying to force him to slow down. To give up. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. But he gave up trying to breathe in through his nose. His lungs burned and he wanted to cough up phlegm. He didn’t have the time.
Next up was the skip-jump and he really needed to push himself and get a little distance from the ball. He dug down deep to increase his speed for a couple seconds then jumped and landed on the first X with his right foot and pushed off canted to land on the next X with his left.
He almost landed incorrectly a couple times but pulled it off. Having C-grade Agility and Reaction was a little help there, even without having any points in either.
The next and last obstacle was the blades. His body was demanding that he stop and quit. It was trying to force him to slow down and get more oxygen. He had to do the opposite and speed up as the ball was once again nipping at his heels.
Dan was used to being in a lot of pain. He was used to functioning while hurting badly. He wondered why having to push through being out of wind seemed so much worse than even pushing through the pain of a major wound. There was no thinking about something else when so winded. He had to constantly focus on making his body continue, making it do what it needed to do.
He saw the blades and had two choices – speed up or slow down a little. He chose to speed up and immediately adjusted to the timing of the blades shooting out of the ground.
Once clear of the blades, the main course ended. The ball slowed a little. It became a normal track where he could exit to either side and avoid being crushed by the ball. But then he’d get a lower rating. He’d have to do it over again.
Just push through, thought Dan. This time, you’re going to finally do something to make Amanda proud, you piece of shit. You’re almost halfway done. Sprinting 1.25 more klicks ain’t nothing. There’s no quitting. You won’t fail. I won’t let you.