It was challenging for Logan to maintain his calm when he knew that he had less than five minutes to figure this out. Not to mention that he’d chosen the most difficult thing in the whole chamber. Even though the System had generated everything, they were still alive. The grass had grown just like normal grass, the insects underneath his feet had independent thoughts, the paper bark tree had lived for centuries. That meant the artificial sun—a star—was also alive.
The System’s power once again blew him away. It had created magic and items that should be impossible. Created a star. Logan knew it was an AI minion, but the complexities around it were colossal. How had it gotten so powerful? Who had created it? If it came from Ernie’s Sky People, then he didn’t like their chances.
“System, how much time is left?”
[Trial Progress: 3.93 minutes remaining.]
“Shit.”
Adrenaline shot through his system despite his best efforts to remain calm. Clenching and unclenching his fists, blood pouring from his knuckles from cracked acid sores, Logan wrenched his attention away from speculation and towards focus.
He was losing time and subjecting his body to more damage by standing there, not even trying to shelter, allowing the acid pollen and sap to pepper him like a non-stop shooting paint gun, every droplet eating further into his flesh. By this point, he was covered in a layer of blood, raw flesh exposed on each inch of his body, nothing but a slab of hell.
Multiple rooms still sectioned off his pain, but the walls were beginning to vibrate, as if someone had turned on a stereo at full blast. But they weren’t vibrating with music, they were vibrating with the tick of a clock. It echoed like a beating heart.
Tick. Tick.
Tock.
Logan bit his lip until he drew blood. He could do this. It wasn’t impossible. It was just another task, just another way of looking at the world. If he could examine a tree and follow it as it grew from a seed to a towering monster, he should be able to do the same with a star.
Logan looked up above. This was another warped room, since he knew there had to be a ceiling, but all he could see was gloomy, grey sky and a dull sun that shone a faint light that was blue rather than yellow. Beyond the color, unlike Earth’s own sun, this one seemed off. Only a fraction the size of Earth’s, its heat a sizzle rather than an explosion.
It was a cold star. A dwarf star. It reminded Logan of his ex-girlfriend and her love of documentaries. Of space explorations, and how scientists identified whether a planet could support life. The planet needed to be in a habitable zone—the distance around a star that would allow it to maintain water.
He suspected that if this were any place other than a System trial, the trees and grass never would have grown so wild and abundant. The room was cold. Cold enough that he was surprised there wasn’t a layer of frost underneath his feet. For all he knew, the star emitted rays of radiation, jacking up the mutant weeds and making the acid even worse.
And yet, it was still a star. Unless he wanted to be blinded on top of having his skin eaten by acid, he couldn’t look directly at it. He would need to sense it, but not with sight.
Disregarding the falling acid fluff, Logan tilted his face up to the sky and closed his eyes.
[Life Cycle Master] continued to give him an advantage. He only had to think about it, and he could sense every spot of life within the clearing. Logan directed his senses away from the obvious spots, extending his awareness onwards and upwards. Unlike the forest clearing, the sky was devoid of life. It was a blank spot, a black hole. He instinctively wanted to drift down to where he knew was life. Forcing himself to fight that instinct was surprisingly difficult.
Foot by foot, he travelled upwards, stretching his senses like trickling frost. When he grew closer to that bright spot, it became easier, since at least now, he wasn’t extending his senses into a void. He had something to aim for, something with multitudes of life, a bright spot that had way more life than anything in the forest clearing. It was so bright it would be the equivalent of putting thousands of people into a room together and trying to sense them all at once. Overwhelming. Too much to handle.
Logan dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands and tried to focus. He refused to be cowed. It was immense, it was beyond his imagining, but he’d learned lessons in the last few days, lessons about his new world. If he let despair overwhelm him and if he were convinced that he wouldn’t succeed, he wouldn’t. But more than anything, he’d learned that even if all were lost and hopeless, to never give up. What seemed insurmountable could be tamed and mastered with pure grit and imagination. Forced to understand a thousand-year-old star in less than four minutes?
Bring it on.
Letting out a grunt of effort, a migraine building behind his nose, he latched onto that bright presence up above like swinging a lasso around it, he—
Logan panted, his heart fluttering in panic as if he’d been shot by a defibrator. The presence was off the charts!
It was too massive, too colossal.
From ground level, he’d had no true understanding of its size, thinking that if it existed in a room generated by the System, it must be room-size in comparison.
It wasn’t that at all.
This was a true star.
He had to think about this in a different way. If he were deploying [Life Cycle Master] how would he create a star?
Create a star.
Holy fucking shit, he’d known the System rated [Life Cycle Master] as epic, but he’d had no inkling, no possible conceivable thought to just how epic. It couldn’t be possible that he could create a star.
Could it?
But if he could envision it, imagine it growing from birth to death, wasn’t that the same as if he went one step further and deployed [Life Cycle Master] and grew it himself? After all, the definition of the skill was open-ended:
[This skill allows you to control the life cycle of beings from birth to death. Level is commensurate with your Karma pool and Karma regeneration rate.]
Okay, okay. So [Life Cycle Master] could be deployed on something thousands of years old. Maybe even millions. Wizard-shit indeed. But it would never happen; it would take too much Karma. He didn’t even have a concept of how much. Enough Karma to grow a hundred rainforests all at once.
Wait.
Holy shit.
He’d need a massive amount of Karma to tackle the Save Humanity Quest. Wasn’t that the purpose of this whole trial? To advance his physical attributes enough so that he could focus on increasing his wisdom and intelligence attributes to the exclusion of everything else? It would take a hell of a lot of leveling, and even with that, he wasn’t sure if it would be anywhere close to what was needed to grow a star. In fact, for him to have any chance, he’d need to replenish his Karma…
Replenish it…
He felt like he’d been hit by a two-by-four. His insides were vibrating as adrenaline rushed through his body. It was as if he’d been hit with a concept that opened his mind, opened his perception. He might as well have been dick-punched. He had the ability to replenish Karma through [Liche Siphon].
Logan could become a star-creator. Logan could become the shit.
But that was a thought for tomorrow. When he had time. He didn’t have a second to spare to even ask the System how much time he had left, and he needed to figure this out. If he had the Karma to deploy [Life Cycle Master] to create a star, how would he go about it? How did this one come into existence? This wasn’t like envisioning a seed growing.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He had to start somewhere. Opening his senses as far as they could go, he examined the star from all angles, looking deep into the core, looking for the origin. Everything was so bright with life that it was challenging to see beyond it. But within the star, at the core, there was something…
Something…
Dust. Dust and gas.
Years and years ago, the dust had been happy inside its cold, dark cloud, comingling with the gas in a mutual relationship. Back and forth, hovering around in empty space, existing, just existing. A massive storm of dust, static, and gas.
The System came.
To the dust, it was unwelcome, disrupting its happy and content existence and forcing it to have an awareness of a tug-o-war, a pressure, a massive push and pull of gravity forcing it to compact. Dust and gas pushed together. Over and over, circling into a disk, forcing its happy existence into conflict until it pushed its symbiotic gaseous partner away and into the center, compacting, ever compacting, flying around like a hurricane with the gas inside the hurricane’s eye.
Years passed.
Years of compacting and ever-expanding pressure.
More years passed.
Until… Logan hissed in a breath. Nuclear fusion.
The dust as a singular entity was no more; it was now part of the core of the star, symbiotic once again, filled with one purpose.
Beam light down upon the trial, always the trial.
Forever the trial.
Logan hissed out a gasp of relief. He had it!
Ding!
[You have earned one perception point!]
[You have earned one perception point!]
[You have earned one perception point!]
[You have earned one perception point!]
[You have earned--]
[Error!]
[Recalculating…]
[…]
[..]
[Results calculated!]
[Tough luck, Idiot! You’ve run out of time! Any additional perception points earned are null and void!]
[You have completed the perception trial!]
[Final Trial Total:
Asthea: 11 Perception
Logan: 10 Perception
Arsen: Disqualified
Errol: Disqualified
Thorin: Disqualified]
[Calculating rewards…]
[….]
[…]
[Rewards calculated!]
[No extra rewards! You have lost! Tsk tsk.]
No! Fuck! No! Logan slammed his fist against the nearest willow bark tree, splitting its trunk and making its branches rain leaves. With a crack, it lurched to the side, the green of its trunk exposed.
He wanted to bellow at the sky, reach through the pocket dimension, and strangle the System. He wanted to scream at the world. Scream at the universe. If he hadn’t run out of time, he would have earned enough to overtake Asthea’s score. A stone lodging in Logan’s stomach, white spots filling his vision from pure rage, he paced, his feet trailing pools of blood.
He got the sense that the System was laughing at him, as if relishing the fact that it could tell Logan that he’d lost. Without that time cut off, Logan was sure he would have received a massive perception bonus—forget six, talk about unlimited.
Instead, the System had cut him off.
Ding!
[You have completed part one of the trial dungeon! Calculating overall performance and ranking…]
[24 Hour Trial results calculated!]
[Rank 1: Idiot
Rank 2: Asthea Silverdagger
Rank 3: Arsen Silverdagger
Rank 4: Thorin Silverdagger
Rank 5: Errol Silverdagger]
The wind had died down; the room was calm, and the mutant monster weeds were shriveling, the acid pollen and fuzz dissolving and evaporating around him.
Logan’s shoulders drooped as his rage faded and his heart shrunk in disappointment. He’d been so close, just ten seconds more and he would have had it. Instead, he’d only walked away with ten perception attributes, and the additional True Grit Ring was lost. That meant he wouldn’t benefit from the tripling power, and he would have to wear the rings for everyone to see. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Logan looked down at his ruined body and ground his teeth. All the other trials had resulted in a massive boost which had wiped away his fatigue. Now, he’d have to wait for [Regenerate] and his constitution stat to get to work, giving him a handicap in the upcoming army trial.
He wouldn’t—
Ding!
[As a rank 1 player, you have been granted rewards!]
[1 Pink Sock. B Grade. Leaping, jumping, you have it all! The Pink Sock allows you to jump like the idiot you truly are. Gravity won’t get you down! The Pink Sock is part of an attribute set. Upon ownership of both socks, the jumping ability will turn into a floating ability.]
[Monetary reward: 300,000 KarmaCoin.]
Oh, come on!
Logan peered down at the ground. A pink sock. At this point, he wasn’t even surprised. The System had a warped, snarky personality, and Logan was the butt of its joke. He would have preferred a weapon to replace his baseball bat and the Cursed Length of Rope, but then he read the description.
It was a B Grade item. He now knew the power of B Grade. If it let him jump high distances… well, it wasn’t nothing. Grudgingly, despite his bitter feelings, he could acknowledge that something like that could be valuable.
Logan picked up the sock and examined it. Unlike a cotton sock, the fabric was slick and shone like the scales of a reptile. It was large, the perfect size to fit his foot. In addition to its slick appearance, it had an aura that was off the charts. It reminded him of the chains.
And even better, he knew where to find the other sock! The Tree Fridge.
Logan ran a hand through his hair, fingering the bald patches but not even caring. Yet again, he was reminded how lucky he’d been to get access to the Tree Fridge. If he could do it all over again, he’d take Eleanor instead of the fridge in a heartbeat, but it was only through that experience that he’d obtained access to something that was beyond valuable.
When he’d first seen the options available in the fridge, he’d been disgusted beyond belief, but if he were a betting man, each item, no matter how ridiculous, had value.
A reward of 300,000 KarmaCoin was nothing to sneeze at either. That meant he could afford every single item available in the Tree Fridge. Alternatively, if he found out how Asthea had purchased her communication marble, he might have a way to get in touch with Lara. A one-time use was hefty, but if it were the difference between life and death, Logan would absorb that cost any day of the week.
There was a splash of water behind him.
Asthea.
Logan willed the Pink Sock inside his spatial collar and then turned around. Asthea was clinging to the edge of the stream with a small smile, her eyes shining in pleasure, her pupils blown wide open. She looked half stoned.
“You okay in there?” asked Logan.
“Mmm. This is the good stuff.” Asthea clung to the edge of the stream with one hand and waved the other in the air. “Help a girl out?”
Logan latched onto her hand and hauled her out of the stream, the purple water pouring and then dripping off her armour and clothes onto the ground. Her hair was a wet, purple mess, and her face was full of welts from where the acid had managed to land. Second by second, her awareness sharpened, until she looked off to the side with a wide gasp.
“I did it!”
She looked down at her hand and held out her palm with a wide grin. Inside her hand, was a True Grit Ring. Excited, she put it on and then with a small gasp, looked at the chamber as if she were having the trip of her life. The doubling effect.
Bouncing on the balls of her feet, she jumped, kicking her feet in excitement. “Yes! Finally! Mother will have to be impressed with this.” Underneath her breath, she mumbled, “She might criticize me for earning a perception bonus, but she can’t criticize the fact that I made it through the whole trial.”
Her face was shining in pleasure, and Logan swallowed hard. The stakes had been high for him, he had a Save Humanity Quest to tackle, but Asthea had her own pressures. There was a complexity with her mother and her clan that he didn’t fully comprehend. He couldn’t deny that she deserved the win. Here he was, kicking himself that he hadn’t won all five trials, when Asthea hadn’t even won one until now. He could give her that.
In addition, she hadn’t made any effort to hide that she’d won the ring when Logan had done everything in his power to ensure he kept his secrets close to his chest. Logan felt like an ass. A selfish ass.
He held out his hand. “Good competition. You deserved the win.”
Asthea looked down at his extended hand with a bemused look.
Right. They probably didn’t have handshakes on their world.
Asthea preened. “I’m pleased with my success; I can own up to a bit of pride! But you! I’m frankly shocked. It takes our people decades to master perception increases. And you managed to almost beat me!”
Logan felt his ears turn red. “It wasn’t that difficult,” he said, shuffling his feet. “Once I figured out how to go back in time and follow each being’s development, the points came easy.”
Asthea blinked. “Go back in time. You just went back in time.” She pinched the bridge of her nose in disbelief. “You’re…” She swallowed. “I can’t even… I’m just done with you.”
Had Logan done it wrong? Had there been an easier way?
Ding!
[Please exit the trial dungeon chamber so that a reset can begin! Upon exit, your injuries and fatigue will be wiped clean, and the other members of your party will return whole.]
Asthea cracked her neck and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Finally! Nothing against you, stealth player, but I’m missing my family.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’m looking forward to beating you. It’s one thing to excel at an attribute trial, it’s another thing to defeat warriors at their own game.”
She hit him on the back on her way past, a friendly pat. At the beginning of the trial, Logan had felt her strength, forced to move after one push. This time, although he hissed in pain since she’d re-opened one of his sores, he stood motionless, able to withstand it.
He’d made massive gains in this trial.
And he was one step closer to getting out of here and back to Ernie and Lara.
But first, he had to get through the second part of the trial. The army trial. That meant that all the guards would come back.
Every one of them had a reason to want him dead.