I tried to see through the door before stepping through, but something seemed to obscure my vision somehow. Everything a few inches from the exit was covered in a heat haze, and I could only make out vague outlines of trees and boulders, with any finer details impossible to make out. Finally, I took a deep breath, and with no other way out of the room, stepped outside. The moment I touched the heat haze, I noticed a strange slipping sensation. Like I had begun to fall, but I could tell that I wasn't moving.

The feeling only worsened, and in seconds it felt like I was falling sideways. Yet, I knew for a fact that I wasn't moving. There was no wind on my face, and nothing in my vision budged. Finally, I felt my whole body flip upside down, and my senses returned to normal. I found myself standing in what looked like a naturally formed tunnel lit up with an ominous red glow with the heat haze gone. Finding the source wasn't hard, with it being a bright pink moss growing across the tunnel's ceiling.

The air in the tunnel was humid and carried an earthy scent and taste. Overall the tunnel didn't come close to matching the vague vision of a forest I'd been able to make out through the heat haze. I felt another notification come to life inside of my head as if in answer to this thought.

Congratulations, Alexander Cohen! You have been entered into a tier 0 capability test by Gariel. Over the next 24 hours, you will go through various physical, mental, and spiritual trials that will push you to the limit of your capabilities. Your final goal is to slay the nightmare Mortemal, and completing this goal will bring you great rewards. At any point, you may leave this trial but remember that you will only be able to complete one capability test per tier.

Now a message from your sponsor. "Remember, young one. Fortune favors the bold, and death follows the fool. Now show me your worth."

Prepare yourself, challenger! The test has begun!

I was glad to see an explanation for the bout of weirdness and even more glad to learn that I didn't need to go through with the test. I was going to go through with it, of course. It would be stupid not to try, and I was pretty excited at the prospect. Nearly two decades of the same boring town had filled me with a need for something new, and if this whole system offered anything, it was something new.

The whole test thing messed a bit with my plans, though. Looking around, I found that the entrance to the square room was gone, now replaced with a stone wall. Leaning against the wall, I kept an eye on the tunnel as I opened my skill sheet.

Skills: Defiant Gouge LVL 1.

Skill Points: 1

Skill Trees: Defiant Gouge I

Defiant Gouge Tree

Nodes:

+1 physicality

+1 mental capacity

+1 spirituality

Skill Points: 1

I was able to figure out the page pretty quickly. I would be able to use any skill points I got to buy nodes from skill trees. The only problem was deciding what to buy. Going through my options one by one, physicality sounded pretty self-explanatory. Where things got interesting were the other two. If we were going by the name alone, mental capacity would probably increase just that, my mental capacity. Would I think faster? Get Ideas I otherwise wouldn't? Maybe be able to shoot mind blasts?

The whole idea was a little scary but a lot more thrilling. Being able to upgrade your brain was probably one of the most sci-fi ideas out there, after all. Things got muddier with spirituality. Would I be more religious if I increased it? Maybe get visions from the gods or start scrawling out prophecies. My actual guess was that it probably had less to do with religion and a lot more with magic. That was exciting, but I knew that the stat would be useless for now since I didn't know anything about magic. That left me with a choice between physicality or mental capacity.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Thankfully, I had a free point to spend, so I didn't have to choose one or the other. Using a skill point to buy the mental capacity node and the free attribute point for physicality, I opened my skill tree and stat sheet.

+1 mental capacity--->+1 mental capacity

Name: Alexander Cohen

SIR Rank: 0

Approximate Tier:0

HP:100/100

MP:100/100

SP:0/0

Physicality:1

Mental Capacity:1

Spirituality:0

Free Points:0

Coins:0

The moment I gained the stats, I felt a massive rush of energy entering my body in two spots. First, something seemed to swell up inside my chest, and suddenly I was being filled with a comforting warmth. Simultaneously I felt a cold, round ball of energy appear inside of my head. I could immediately feel a huge difference between the two. The cold ball inside my head seemed to be incredibly stable, not letting any energy leak out. Whatever was in my chest was the polar opposite, constantly filling my body with power and energy. I could feel that the origin of the warmth was generally where my heart was, but unlike the cool energy, I had no idea if it even had a defined shape or not.

I could also tell I had some control over the cool energy, like some instinctual part of me just knew how to use it. Testing it out, I mentally began to tug at the edges of the orb, causing it to rotate slowly. I felt a tiny wisp of cold escape the ball with every rotation and settle throughout my head. I felt like my vision had cleared slightly, but it was hard to tell if there was any actual change. Checking my resources, I noticed that my MP had gone down by 1. Looking at my HP, I saw it had already dropped by 4 points despite not even trying to control the warm energy yet.

I shifted focus to the warm stream of energy centered on my chest and tried to pull it into a defined shape. After a few minutes of effort with no noticeable change to the energy, I gave up. My HP loss seemed to have stabilized at 90, and my attempts only seemed to worsen the drain. I would continue my experiments when I was somewhere safe, but I was on a time crunch for now. Kicking off the wall, I began to descend the tunnel, and after a few minutes and more than a few turns, before I finally saw something change.

The tunnel suddenly opened up into a dark chamber, with the only source of light being the moss from the tunnel and a blue crystal embedded in a door on the other side of the room. I hadn't forgotten that this was a test, and I figured this must be the first trial. Thanking all that time spent watching movies, I took off my shoe. Removing the laces, I made a few knots to make a makeshift rope, tossing the shoe into the room. My shoe landed, but as I began pulling it back to test for pitfalls, the room was flooded with red light.

Something big had fallen from the ceiling, revealing a large patch of glowing moss. The thing was about the size of a coffee table, with at least a dozen legs shooting from its body at odd angles. The thing hissed as more than one mouth opened to devour the shoe. Covering the spider was a black chitin armor covered in red barbs. I didn't give the monster time to discover that its prey wasn't edible. I needed to get through the room, and catching it off guard would be my best chance to do that.

Charging forward, I scooped up the spider and slamming it against the wall with a satisfying thunk. Then, keeping up the momentum of my attack, I began to pelt its back with punches. I could feel my HP moving with each strike, instinctually reinforcing each hit. I don't know if it was due to my blows being empowered or due to the chitin's weakness, but each punch sunk a good few inches into the monster's flesh.

I felt pretty good about the fight, but then I felt my body slowly being lifted. The spider was climbing up the wall, and it was trying to take me with it. We both began our ascent, and all the while, I never stopped slamming my fists, knees, and feet into the spider's back. Finally, as we reached the top of the fifteen-foot tall wall, I wrapped both of my arms around the spider's abdomen and with enough force to separate us from the wall. As we fell, I positioned the spider between me and the floor and prepared for impact.

Halfway down, I felt our trajectory change as a web shot out of the monster's rear end, attaching to the wall. Not ready for the sudden shift in direction, I slammed headfirst into the stone wall, my vision briefly going black as I flopped onto the floor. I tried getting to my feet in a daze, but I froze as something stabbed into my leg. Looking down, I was terrified to see that the spider had begun to crawl across my body. Its legs easily pierced into my flesh, and before I knew it, it was at my chest.

The spider lunged in an attempt to rip out my neck, but, by some miracle, I managed to grab hold of its mandibles and hold it at bay. Unfortunately, I could feel my strength fading with every second I had to hold it back; its onslaught of attacks never stopping. Desperate at this point, I tried to pool my HP up to my arms and found it shockingly easy to control compared to my earlier practice. Filled with newfound strength, I pulled as hard as I can, and like tearing tissue paper, I ripped the spider in two.

I felt a bombardment of alerts as I slumped my head back and closed my eyes, trying to settle my beating heart. I could feel almost no HP inside of myself, but I had managed to survive the battle. I began to open the notifications, but I passed out from exhaustion before I could pull them up.