Atlas walked through the seemingly endless hallway.

I wonder what the next trial will be. Atlas mused to himself thinking over the options. So far it has been related to stats so maybe intelligence? Or endurance. Or maybe it's going to be one of the other two stats, I honestly have no clue.

Atlas continued to walk, deep in thought.

He soon came to a closed door that stretched across the entire hallway. It looked old, made of dark colored wood with a rusty metal rung as a door knob.

Atlas stopped, and as he watched, bold letters began to form on the oddly shaped door. Only one challenger may enter a room at a time. Please wait for the challenger to either die or move to the next trial.

Atlas stared at the text, trying to grasp their meaning. Someone else both entered this dungeon and made it this far? I shouldn’t be surprised, considering I made it here too, but I have a lot going for me. What difficulty are they in? If so, have I met them? Are they another Player?

As questions swarmed Atlas’s brain, the door caught fire. Atlas stumbled backwards, watching as the door turned to ash. The ash sank into the ground, vanishing right before his eyes.

He dusted himself off, standing up and pretending he hadn’t almost soiled his fancy Soulbound suit. “Okay, watch for things to randomly burst into flame, got it.” He snorted, beginning to watch forward cautiously. “And now I’m talking to myself, just great.”

After a couple more steps he found himself staring down a dark staircase. “Fun.” Was all he said before he started his descent into the inky darkness.

After a few more steps, he realized something. “Wait… how am I seeing shadows? I haven’t seen darkness ever since I got the Moonwalker title. Did the system take my titles?” He wondered aloud, thinking back to the beginning of the trials. “I think it did. Well, that's annoying, no more nightvision for me.”

He stopped. “I just realized, has my skin been turning black every time I enter a dark area? Or was it just during the night?” He mused to himself, already getting quite comfortable with talking to himself even just after a few minutes, he had been in dire need of a coping mechanism, keeping everything bottled up in his head hadn’t been good for his mental health.

He started to walk, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs and looking into a room filled to the brim with fire. For a couple seconds he stared, slack jawed at the sizzling coals on the ground, the burning wood on the walls, and the fire that seemed to be just floating in the middle of the room.

“I have to go through… that?”

Trial of Constitution starts in 10… 9… 8…

“Wait wait. I’m supposed to go through that hot mess of a room?” Atlas grumbled at the empty air.

!Important system message!: Yes

Atlas wanted to grumble more, but the countdown reached 0 before he could work up a good argument.

The Trial begins!

He grumbled a bit more before just manning up and crouching down, looking for where he was supposed to go. This was the trial of constitution, so it was testing his body, so it should be… There! Atlas spotted a gap all the way across the room that had nothing on fire.

He leaped forward, soles clacking against the scorching hot coals that were scattered everywhere. There was no way to avoid them, they were like a blanket of heat on the ground, suffusing everything with their violent power.

Atlas scoffed before casually walking to the gap in the fire. “Is that all? Pathetic.” Atlas’s feet were slightly singed but other than that he was completely fine.

Trial of Constitution completed.

1/2 challenges completed.

Next challenge begins… now.

The room seemed to melt, all of the fire snuffing itself and all of the still red coals tumbling to the center of the room, seeming to meld into each other.

Out of the floor rose thick golden beams, wrapping around Atlas and holding him in place. Atlas grit his teeth, trying to rip himself out of the golden bands, but it was no use, they showed no sign of breaking or even bending.

The stones finally gathered into a hulking golem, towering over Atlas and standing almost 15 feet tall. Atlas felt a chill run through him. Was this turning into a beating?

His answer came soon enough.

Survive 3 of the [Golemlord]’s strikes.

Atlas’s eyes widened as the golem lumbered towards him, fist glowing in a deadly grey light.

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Atlas closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, preparing to meet the golems punch with all he could muster.

The seconds ticked by, and nothing happened.

Atlas creaked open one of his eyes, only to be met with the terrifying view of the golems all encompassing fist taking over the entirety of his vision.

Atlas screamed turned into a gurgle as his head was whipped back and he heard a *crunch* on his face before he lost his vision because of a spurt of blood that drenched his face and shoulders.

Atlas immediately felt his high stats start to mend his face, but not nearly quickly enough.

The golems fist descended once again, this time coming crunching down at his chest. There was another meaty crunching sound and Atlas felt his ribs creak, but luckily did not break. He could barely see anything because of the blood clinging onto his face and falling across his eyes, but he definitely looked worse for the wear.

Just one more strike. All you have to do is survive one more strike and this will all be over. Atlas reminded himself and stared defiantly at the golem as it raised its fist for one final strike.

Atlas could immediately tell that something was wrong. Before, the golem had covered its fists in grey energy before slamming into Atlas, but this time it was different.

The golems fist was still covered in that dense grey energy, but it's fist started to throb, as though it was about to unleash a terrifyingly powerful blow.

The world seemed to slow down as the golem lord punched down at Atlas’s chest once more. The feeling was similar to whenever he used Reaper’s Senses but distinctly different. Instead of a skill, this was the heightened perception of someone who was staring death in the face. All of Atlas’s memories flashed before his eyes and he was suddenly somewhere else.

***

Atlas had always been a quiet child, never willing to interrupt or distract others unless they explicitly asked him. Or, at least, he used to. It had all changed when his father had died and his mother got remarried to Him.

If there was one word to describe Atlas’s mother, it was beautiful. She was the most beautiful being he had ever seen, and that included the people on tv. He may have been a bit biased because of her raising him, but others all seemed to agree with his assessment of her. “Your mother is so beautiful, is she a model?” they would ask him, and he would get all shy and only be able to simply shake his head at their questions.

He didn’t remember his father very well, having only been 5 when he died. He had some small memories of his smiling bearded face and his slate grey eyes that looked so much like Atlas’s. His father had been the happiest and most loving person on the planet- at least according to his mother. He had died a hero’s death, saving a small group of children who were about to be killed by a runaway truck with a driver who had later been found out to be drunk.

Atlas was sad to not have a father, but at least he could live knowing that his father had been brave enough to save people who couldn’t save themselves. That was a memory worth keeping.

His mother, after 3 years of not being a widow, had eventually decided to get married to a thriving businessman named Reiden Jackman. At first, all had been perfect, and Atlas had found his stepfather a decent man, though he would never call him “dad”, only ever calling him Rei, even after the insistence from his mother that he should accept his new father. Atlas had refused, saying that no one could replace his real father.

Reiden said it didn’t matter to him, so eventually his mother had dropped the matter.

On one seemingly normal day, Atlas came back from home jubilated, he had gotten a perfect score on his spelling bee and wanted to tell his mother all about it, as was usually on a test day.

He remembered thinking that the house had been unusually quiet, but thought nothing of it at the time.

Right up until he walked into his parents room and found Rei standing over the corpse of his mother, holding a bloodied knife in his hands. Atlas had screamed in shock and ran from the room, glancing back and finding his stepfather rushing after him with a maniac look in his eye. Atlas had burst outside and fled to his neighbors house, screaming at them to open the door.

They had opened the door in the nick of time, and Atlas slammed the door and locked it behind him, he broke down sobbing instantly after that, and the neighbors had tried to get him to talk but he was a blubbering mess. Rei pounded on the door and yelled to be let in but before the neighbors could unlock and open the door Atlas blocked their path, yelling at them to call the police.

Confused and frightened at the serious manner in which Atlas, the normally soft spoken boy was acting, they quickly dialed 911 and Atlas told the police everything that had happened. Both the police and the neighbors were horrified. How could something like this have happened?

The police arrived shortly after, and had to shoot Rei down after he tried to stab them to death, with one police officer getting a nasty stab in his leg and another barely avoiding being stabbed in the head.

Atlas hadn’t seen what happened, but the yelling and gunshots had been enough to tell him what had happened.

The police never found out why Reiden Jackson had killed his wife, and they never found any illegal substances that could have provoked such a reaction, and the general conclusion became that he had just snapped.

Rei had been through a lot and specialists believed that the pressure had eventually become too much for him to bear and broke him mentally.

As for Atlas, he had gone to live with his only aunt and had become scarred by what had happened. Newspapers had wanted to question him but his aunt had adamantly refused, and had sent them all on their way. It had taken years before Atlas was back to normal, but he had become a lot more outspoken, and had developed a deep hatred for anyone who picked on the weak or bullied others.

The years had passed peacefully, but his aunt died of a heart attack at the age of 54, and Atlas had been left all alone again at the age of 14. He spent 4 years with a foster family before going to college and getting a bachelor's degree. He had gotten a decent job that made him just enough money to get by, and he found a girl he fell in love with. They had never taken that last step though and stayed perpetually as boyfriend and girlfriend, too scared to break the balance and get married.

Just when Atlas was starting to work up the courage to propose, he had been whisked away by the system.

***

Atlas felt his life flash before his eyes as the punch slammed down into him, but he grit his teeth, not letting himself back down, he would never give up until he was truly dead, and he fought with everything he had and fought against the crushing pressure of the blow before it was finally over.

His body was battered all over, and his body was screaming at him in pain, but he was alive.

The golem collapsed into rocks as euphoria filled Atlas’s body, knitting him back together and healing all of his broken bones and bloody face.

Trial of Dexterity has been completed.

You may advance to the next challenge.

Your wounds have been healed.

Atlas collapsed to the ground, exhausted.