Running through their usual route down the mountain, Arin’s previously negative mood turned much more bright. Although they weren’t talking, the fact that they spent some time together was more than enough time for Arin.
Due to the sudden resource drought, Kian was commissioned to help secure even more territory outside the city by numerous high-class companies and networks. This made it difficult for them to spend time together as a family for quite a while now. To have this time to simply go on a run was something that Arin had been hoping for a while now.
“Do you want to go somewhere new?” Kian proposed to Arin. “To see something new for a change of pace.”
Arin thought for a while, that there shouldn’t be anything new here since there hasn’t been any change in the landscape for an extremely long time now. Even then, to suggest this out of the blue meant that Kian had something in mind. Arin accurately noticed that his father’s leading him somewhere so he curiously followed it.
“Where are we going, Dad?” Arin followed right behind Kian as he broke through the thicket of the woods, entering deeper into the forest right behind the mountain they lived on. Due to this being off the beaten path, they had to break away from the branches blocking their way.
“Somewhere new,” Kian didn’t use anything overbearing other than his personal Fragment. He wore a singular glove that seemed to be made out of tanned leather with a black transparent sheet enveloping his entire hand. Every time he touched a branch with it, oddly enough the branch stopped in place, only resuming its motion after Kian went away.
Dad’s Fragment… Delayed Touch...
“We’re almost there… almost… aha! A clearing!” Kian easily paved the way for both of them to pass through. Upon leaving the thick forest, they found themselves in a small clearing with a few nightglows shimmering in the sky. Although Arin wasn’t as interested in these things, he couldn’t help but admit that it was a cool scene.
As Arin explored the area, looking at the small flowers that grew right at the edges of the clearing giving an almost unperceivable glow if not for the dark shadows of the forest. The nightglows similar to fireflies lit up the surroundings enough to barely see the area but not enough to let them have full visibility.
“What are we doing here?”
“Just a nice change of pace for once, you know?” Kian awkwardly made his way forward as he suddenly gasped. “Oh, would you look at that, a Trial just showed up out of nowhere. That’s odd.”
Arin glanced over to where his father was, and an eerily bluish door showed up in front of him. This door was the only thing that existed, there wasn’t any structure that the door was granting them access to nor was there anything behind the door. Kian was blatantly getting closer and taunting Arin to get closer.
Kian casually came closer and brought Arin right beside him, “Aren’t you curious as to what’s inside?”
“No. Unless I’m beating something up then I’m not interested.”
Even as apathetic as he seemed, Arin vividly understood that this was a door to a Trial. A Trial out of nowhere suddenly appeared and even in his backyard, it was obvious that this was artificially implemented. And it was obvious who did it.
These Trials were ranked based on the difficulty and their contents. Humanity had created a strict ranking process that would place a Trial into one specific category. As for the difficulty of the Trials, the door in front of them would be clearly categorized as a Maze-level Trial, the easiest difficulty.
As for the contents of these Trials, it was simple. They were conditional where enacting the same actions would result in the same outcome. At least, only pertains to the Maze-level category. There was only one objective when inside these Trials, to solve it and complete the task. When a person completes the arbitrary task, it would be considered as a success.
Arin sighed as he knew that his father was trying to make him learn properly. Although he was attending Seal Academy, a little bit of insurance wouldn’t hurt him. Kian brought Arin right in front of the Trial.
There were runes and glyphs appearing in front of the door, these morphed and twisted, changing its appearance to the language that they understood best. It catered to all the information that they would ever need based on their own understanding.
Arin looked at the transformed runes and glyphs on the blue door.
Trial: The Sun’s Encompassing Gaze
Difficulty: Maze
Participants: No Limit
Restrictions: None
Goal: Unlock the Altar
Rewards: Livestock
g̶̱̱̦̬̼̳͇͋̋͊͜$̸̨̨̞̩͖̣̥̲̼̐̈͑͆̓̒̂͋̔́̕3̶̘̠͉̘̑̽̀́̓̅j̸͈̤͚̾̔̃͆́̂̀̀̏͆͘͠f̸̟̼̙̑̈́͒̋͋ö̵͈̼̫͎̪̼̝̪̯̼̤̙̬͇̓̑̑̉̓͌̀͊̐̎̑͑͠͝Ç̴̡̢̲̭͖̬͉̹̪̗̺̳͑͜6̴̡̨̡̡̻̗̟͓̪̝̙̖̗͓̯̊̈͒̒̓̓͝A̴͕̹͙̬̰͍̗̫̹͆̆͛͘͝͝ͅ
“What is that?” Arin pointed at the jumbled mess of runes and words on the door in front of them.
Kian looked at what Arin pointed at and he immediately understood what Arin was trying to imply. “You don’t know what it is yet, that’s why these symbols haven’t translated itself yet. Alright, that means, Sephirah.”
Arin felt a little dizzy as Kian told him this word, “Sephirah? What does that mean?”
“To count.” Kian took a brief moment to pause. “But in this world, it means the time until the truth is revealed.”
Arin immediately felt his entire body flare up, he felt a little overwhelmed as to why it was so overwhelming. He kneeled down on one knee as he immediately took in deep breaths. He felt his insides turn out as if his innards were being harvested with a knife. He felt his vision darken as if everything was turning black then… nothing. It disappeared as soon as it appeared.
Kian was about to take a seat beside Arin when he suddenly realized that Arin already passed through it. “You’re already done?!” Kian went up to support Arin immediately as he stopped him from falling down on the ground. This was completely beyond his expectations.
“Dad...? What… what happened?” Arin weakly asked as his entire body felt weak, unbelievably so. He tried to examine his body to see if there was anything that changed but to his surprise nothing did. The weakness he felt made him feel unbelievably vulnerable.
“That should’ve taken longer… No matter, son, you are now officially a real Solver. Congratulations,” Kian laughed out loud as he tried to keep his surprise within himself at how fast it all happened. A normal person would’ve gotten used to it in around an hour but Arin only took mere moments. It didn’t matter how talented they were nor how strong their body was, the general time was an hour for everyone.
“A… real Solver? I don’t… get it…” Arin was still entirely confused, why was he now an official Solver? Didn’t he need to get a badge to prove himself? Everything happened so fast that he couldn’t keep up with it.
“A real Solver’s someone who handled the Baptism. I’ll tell you about this at a later date, for now, you should focus on getting better, so you should be fine in a little while, after that let’s enter this Secret Maze to celebrate your achievement.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Why?” Arin felt something was off, in fact, he was sure that something was wrong. His father suddenly brought him out on a run, suddenly changing their route and a Trial was there waiting for them. Then all of a sudden, his father said something that made him physically sick then right after telling him he was now a Solver. Too many odd occurrences happened in a row, he would be a fool to think it was all a coincidence.
“I want to show you the world I live in. I know you’re going to be digging around for information on your own so I wanted to stop you before you did something stupid.”
Arin accepted it at face value since his father already said his intentions out loud. Although the method was a little questionable, Arin still wanted to see just how far he truly was from his father’s eyes.
Kian continued, “We’ll enter it the normal way first.”
Arin immediately felt something was off so he glanced at the morphing runes and glyphs on the door once more.
Trial: The Sun’s Encompassing Gaze
Difficulty: Secret Maze
Participants: No Limit
Restrictions: None
Goal: Unlock the Altar
Rewards: Livestock
Sephirah: -5
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The previously jumbled and abhorrent sequence of symbols suddenly turned into the word ‘Sephirah’ with a number beside it. An odd detail to mention was the fact that the word ‘Sephirah’ glowed a light blue hue, seemingly holy. Arin looked down and saw that there were three new categories that showed up alongside it.
“Dad, what are those three… runes?” Arin immediately asked if he was starting to take his first steps into his father’s world and he was siphoning all the bits of information that he could receive.
“Arin,” Kian came to Arin’s side and rubbed his hair, turning it into a wild mess. “To be honest, I don’t know either. We’ve been trying our best to find and research what these words meant but sadly we haven’t gotten a single clue.”
“No clue? How is that possible? There should be some ruins with some ancient text or some Trial giving some kind of hint to what we need to find right?” Arin immediately shouted out, he was perplexed, he fully understood just what kind of place this maze was, for as much as it gave Trials and tribulations, it also rewarded those who succeeded in its task. For there to not be a single clue was ludicrous.
“That’s what we thought as well and with the current drought… the Federation is getting antsy. We might have no other choice but to explore beyond The Boundary to find what we need.”
The Boundary… things are actually getting serious.
The Boundary is the safe haven that humanity had created within the first layer, with the City of Sin as its center. Humanity had fought tooth and nail to safeguard its territory against the numerous monsters and beasts that roamed the maze, creating a safe space where people wouldn’t need to struggle to survive. As humanity increased the Boundary, their need to keep fighting dwindled, finding safety within its created space.
Centuries ago, it wouldn’t have been an issue as humanity’s population was small, barely even a fraction of today’s population. However, as civilization progressed, the limited resources within the Boundary could no longer sustain the overwhelming daily demand of the population, quickly using up all the stockpiled supplies that humanity once stored.
Even worse was the fact that the overall skill of humanity had dropped down to an extremely low point, so low that there were only three Labyrinth Solvers alive, a far cry to the dozens it once had. This made the current situation in the City of Sin, extremely perilous, dangerous to the degree of almost teetering on humanity’s collapse.
Outside the Boundary, eldritch horrors and unexplainable phenomena ruled this dark demented maze, anything beyond the Boundary was no man's land, a place that humanity hadn’t explored for more than a thousand years. Too many parts were at play that danger was everywhere, even Kian, one of the three Labyrinth Solvers wouldn’t be able to escape the looming threat.
“Dad… don’t tell me you’re going,” Arin gritted his teeth as he asked something that he fully knew the answer to.
Kian didn’t say anything about that matter and only eluded to the fact, “We have ten years until the expected societal collapse. Unless something drastic happens, like pushing through the Boundary or… Regardless, I’ve made my plans so we have a guaranteed five years of safety, anything above that is beyond even me.”
Arin understood that his father was opening up to him, as much as his father initially wanted to keep Arin’s mind off this, he still wanted to be fully open with him. “Is this why we’re living in a mountain?”
“Exactly,” Kian looked back at Arin. “Seems like you’ve gotten better. Let’s see how you’ll fare on one of the easiest Maze Trials there is.”
Standing up, he stretched his limbs and didn’t see anything off with his current condition. As far as he could tell, nothing new happened to him, “So what’s new?”
“As for normal Trials, absolutely nothing. As for the Sephirah Trials, everything. Let’s go.” Kian intentionally omitted something vital.
Kian opened the door wide open and Arin entered soon after. From an outsider’s perspective, both Kian and Arin entered the door yet they didn’t appear on the other side, they had seemingly disappeared to nowhere. As they both entered, it was a completely void space that had nothing inside it yet once the Kian closed the door, they seemed to have teleported themselves into a brand new area.
An altar was erected directly in the middle with a few pressure plates surrounding it in a circular pattern. There was a new sky that had a sun rotating in a circular manner that didn’t have any effect on the lighting. As for their surroundings, it was completely open, so open that if they walked away and left, they wouldn’t probably find anything else but sand. Sand dunes and a few cactuses were placed all around surrounding them, mimicking what a normal desert biome would be like.
As for the actual puzzle area, it was completely made out of sandstone, seemingly man-made. The architecture was very similar to how one would make an offering area with a giant effigy, the altar, and a worship area represented by the giant flat sandstone area that both Kian and Arin were standing on.
This was the first time that Arin had ever set foot inside a Trial so he was completely caught off guard at how realistic the conditions were inside. He could feel the blaring heat of the desert and the occasional strong winds carrying sand, blurring his eyes.
Seeing that he was immediately being attacked by the elements, he quickly took off his shirt and made it similar to a makeshift mask. Kian noticed Arin react immediately despite being in this biome for the first time in his life.
“Good thinking, Arin. As expected of my son,” Kian’s blaring smile shone through, seemingly brighter than the sun.
Arin looked back at his father who was still taking in all of the elements without a worry in the world. “What about you, Dad?”
“Oh, me? I don’t need it. You’ll understand once you actually become a Solver,” Kian came to right in front of the altar, observing anything out of the ordinary. “And don’t think I contradicted myself here. You’re without a shred of doubt a real Solver now but you don’t have the skills to back up that responsibility… yet. I have high hopes for you son.”
Arin nodded in understanding and stood right beside him. Kian seemed to be observing everything with a keen eye and continued on to check every obvious spot for a clue. After Kian finished up his observations, Arin did so as well.
“First things first Arin, this is a special puzzle that I specifically sought after to train you-”
“Not even bothering to hide it now, huh?” Arin snarkily remarked.
“Ahem, that’s beside the point,” Kian placed his arms behind his back as he continued. “Remember the ‘restriction?’ That’s what constitutes a failure, which means that the puzzle will morph and transform into something we call a Pravum, a depraved monster out to exert its own influence on the world. As for this Trial, there are no restrictions meaning that we can do anything we want and there wouldn’t be any issues with it.”
“Of course, losing one time wouldn’t immediately cause it to transform. It only happens after repeated failed attempts.”
“As for the restrictions, it is usually time-based but as you work your way through the numerous Trials in this godforsaken maze, you will soon find out that time-based Trials are the best kind.”
“Noted,” Arin seriously said. Although he was bound to learn it in school, hearing it first-hand from one of the only three Labyrinth Solvers in the City of Sin was much better. He could also ask questions that boggled his mind, “What happens if we kill a Pravum? Do we still get the rewards?”
“Nothing. You don’t get a smidgen of a reward. So there’s no point in intentionally forcing a Trial to turn into a Pravum. Only those wishing for the end will be willing to do this. It benefits no one at all.”
“I understand,” Arin understood that this was a very terrifying taboo within the Solver community, so taboo that even his father would be willing to say this to him.
“Good,” Kian grabbed Arin’s shoulder and hugged him tight. “I promise to explain everything in the future but this isn’t the time yet. Focus on school, focus on growing, and focus on your life. We still have enough time before everything falls apart so grow strong, yeah?”
Arin weakly raised his arm as he grabbed it onto Kian’s waist, weakly gripping it tightly. This was one of the few times they’d hugged each other.
Kian weakly smiled while gazing at his son, “That’s all you need to know so let’s start solving the puzzle, alright? If we stay here too long then you might have trouble sleeping.”