To her surprise, Zoe wasn’t in an arena. Looking around, she realized that the exterior stone wall of the structure was right behind her. Open earth and sky stretched out in every other direction. It felt kind of strange — why would there be a Coliseum-like structure in the middle of nowhere?

Deciding not to bother making sense of it, Zoe set off in the other direction. A gloomily shaded treeline stretched out across a stretch of meadow. A gently winding path led her through the yellowed grasses and into the blackened trees.

Seeing that the path continued deeper into the forest, Zoe shrugged and pressed forward. Slinging her rifle over her shoulder, she decided to just enjoy the atmosphere. It was nice to be able to appreciate raw nature without worrying about something trying to kill you.

It was at that point that something tried to kill Zoe.

Her {Combat Sense} alerting her at the last minute, Zoe whirled out of the way before shouldering her rifle like it was the most natural thing in the world and firing point blank into the colossal wolf. It died instantly and unceremoniously, but then the rest of the pack was upon her and Zoe was forced to resort to kicking and lashing her tail.

She wasn’t willing to part with her rifle, given both her experience with the sword and the fact that it had proved effective just seconds ago. Unfortunately, it was rather unwieldy at such close range, and only served to entangle her more.

Finally having had enough of trying to aim it, Zoe slung it back over her shoulder and fled the path to dash up into the branches of the nearest large tree. After resting a moment to clear her mind more than to rest her body, Zoe took aim again and took out another wolf.

Now able to see them more closely and carefully, Zoe realized that they definitely weren’t ordinary, mundane animals. No — they were wreathed in a hazy, subtly writhing shadow. The pack was quite large. In fact, it was far larger than Zoe thought was normal — and it was dense, too. More like a swarm of wild boars like in that one movie.

After firing off more shots, Zoe realized two things. First, there really were a lot of them, and second, her shots were getting more powerful.

A minute later and several dozen dead wolfs later, Zoe realized a third thing — which was that they didn’t leave corpses and seemed to respawn.

Sure, the pack was growing smaller, but she should have killed every single monster more than twice over by now. As she watched, one of the wolfs split in two. It wasn’t actually obvious — in the dense pack, it had a casual subtlety that could easily fool an unobservant eye.

Damnit. Am I supposed to kill all of them at once?

Fortunately, Zoe’s attacks had become so strong that they were blasting up explosions of dirt that rained back down over the entire pack. Getting an idea, Zoe dashed several trees over, dropped down, and began firing blind.

Shot after shot tore through the squirming mass of fur, penetrating clear through to the other side and leaving nothing but crumbling tatters of dusty shadow. The pack thinned rapidly, and within seconds Zoe had whittled it down to just two.

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Three shots later — one of them managed to split — and the swarm was no more.

A wave of energy coursed through Zoe’s entire spirit.

Some of the mana soaked deep into her threads, thickening and strengthening them, while the majority of it whirled around her core in a chaotic vortex. While the mana in her threads felt static, the vortex was bleeding away fairly quickly.

After examining her own soul for a few more moments, Zoe set off back down the path.

She was pretty sure she knew what this was. Killing enemies gives both a permanent power increase and a temporary rampage-style buff.

It made sense — this path seemed to be about weapons and killing. And then there was the fact that her shots got increasingly powerful. All of that combined with what she had just observed in her spirit pointed to that sort of mechanic.

That’s… cool. But honestly, kind of basic.

The first, knowledge based path had been simply incredible. The second, survival based one had been miserable to experience and kind of wishy-washy in explanation. This one felt almost too simple and down-to-earth. Okay, to be fair, there’s also the instant weapon mastery. Which is nice.

As it looked like her current trial wouldn’t end any time soon, Zoe resolved to investigate it further. I think the most important thing to consider for this kind of mechanic is how much it scales. Does it cap out? Diminishing returns, or exponential increase? How does the temporary buff stack with the permanent improvements?

Oh well. I’m pretty sure I’m going to find out.

----------------------------------------

I fucking hate guns.

Sure, the elder dragon had been vaporized in a single shot and she could now rocket jump, but it was still just so awkward. The fire rate hadn’t improved and she was still extremely vulnerable to being swarmed at close range. Whenever that happened, Zoe’s entire improvised fighting style completely fell apart and she was effectively forced to retreat.

At the very least, the dragon had finally brought her up to level ninety-nine. Just one more, and we’ll see what I can do.

It was a little disappointing that these levels wouldn’t actually carry back over once she made her choice. Actually, while Zoe was now taking this third trial in a pretty easy-going manner, she was starting to really stress about her predicament back in the real world.

After all, no matter what path she took, she only had, what — five mana? The aura master was literally swinging his blade down at her neck when she had chosen to ascend.

As Zoe crested the hill, she stopped short.

The other Zoe was standing with her arms crossed and tapping her talons in a very bored-looking manner. She was still a couple dozen or so meters away, so it took Zoe several seconds to get in speaking distance.

“What are you doing here?”

Her mirror tilted her head. “What do you mean? I’ve been guiding you through your entire ascension so far.”

Zoe narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, but why here in the middle of some moorland?”

Her copy laughed. “I was getting tired of the cafe. So here I am.”

“Wait, does that mean this trial is over?”

Shrugging, Zoe’s double nodded. “Yes, if you’re ready to decide.” She paused. “So what will it be? You’ve seen your options.”

Zoe blinked. “So I really just get to choose? And that’s it?”

“Yeah.”

They stared at each other. “Honestly, it’s kind of hard to think about giving up any of these paths, but… if I were you, I would pick the pursuit of knowledge.”

Looking back at the mountainous foothills she had come from, Zoe tasted the air. It was strangely salty, as if they were close to the ocean. “But you’re not me. So you don’t have to decide.”

Tilting her head, Zoe’s mirror blinked at her. “Right.”

Zoe nodded. “You’re not me. You said you were a representation of my potential.”

The other Zoe remained silent.

“My potential. You and this place are really the same thing, aren’t they?” Licking her fangs, Zoe stepped forward. “I don’t want to choose. I want your power.”

Uncrossing her arms, Zoe’s double split her mouth into a toothy grin. Spreading all four of her arms, she cocked her head to the side.

“Then take it.”