“How many did you make?” Alarion asked the roof of the empty cave. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to look up when asking questions of the absent goddess, for all he knew she was off to his left, or behind him, or nowhere at all. Looking up just felt right.

She didn’t answer, of course, but that was for the best. Her answer would have been smarmy, he was sure. ‘Enough’. Or ‘Too many’. Or ‘At least a few.’

Glimpsed only through intermittent gaps in the falling water, Alarion placed their number in the dozens. Maybe the low hundreds. The cats had flooded the small clearing over the course of nearly two hours, drawn to his presence but unable to reach beyond the waterfall to assault him. They prowled at the water’s edge, glaring at the hidden entrance as if its existence were a personal slight.

Needless to say, there would be no escaping back the way he came.

The existence of the horde of monsters did somewhat dim Alarion’s sense of satisfaction at having discovered the hidden entrance. The monsters existed to funnel him toward the pool and the secret beyond. If he’d headed out into the jungle, they’d have hounded and pressured him back toward the waterfall. No doubt they’d have always mysteriously appeared in the best position to drive him toward it. At least, that was what he assumed.

It was probably a safe assumption.

He’d had plenty of time to think on the matter as he waited for his HP and MP to fully recharge. He topped the former off with judicious use of [Mend Body], but he refrained from using his mana potions or bracelet to speed up the process. Nothing had attacked him upon his entrance to the small tunnel and there was no sense in wasting finite resources just because he was impatient.

Maybe ZEKE’s lessons had started to rub off on him.

When he was finally back to full health, Alarion turned away from the ravening hordes and satisfied his curiosity as he delved deeper into the tunnel. It was a narrow fit, which forced him to lead with his mace, a small mote of conjured light from one of his spell formula trinkets leading the way deeper into the cliffside tunnel.

Eventually the darkness gave way to a shaft of vertical light and what might have been the most unsettling ladder Alarion had ever laid eyes on.

There was nothing wrong with the evenly spaced iron rungs that ascended over a hundred feet vertically into the cavern above. Nothing save for the fact that they were there in the first place. The cave itself looked natural, with no signs of tool marks or habitation. The rungs were artificial. Part of the test.

That made them suspect. At least in his eyes.

They were also an unwelcome sight, given the burden Alarion carried along with him. He’d gotten used to lugging around the weight of the mace, but he’d yet to settle on a proper storage solution. Even compressed, he couldn’t expect to hang it from his sash, nor did he have a way to strap the item to his back. It was a conundrum he could solve eventually, but in the here and now it meant climbing hundreds of feet with a heavy weight strapped to his other arm.

Somewhere, ZEKE was laughing.

Alarion took the challenge one step at a time. It was slow, steady and exhausting, but doable. Hours of drills and tens of levels had refined his compact body into that of a proper Awakened, one who would not be intimidated by something as simple as a very, very long climb.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

At least, that was what he told himself as he reached the midway point.

The shallow rungs and thin passage gave him little room to adjust his position as he climbed. The result was a dull ache in Alarion’s shoulder as he dragged his mace up the last few rungs to join him at the top of the ladder.

He emerged into a small domed chamber with two exits. Down the left, Alarion could hear the nearby pounding of water falling upon stone. To his right, a narrow passageway. Tight enough that he would have to lead with his mace. A very familiar design.

Alarion had a terrible feeling about that passage, and his worst nightmares were realized as he followed it through to its conclusion.

Another ladder.

Sweat trickled from his brow as Alarion dragged himself up over the lip of the second climb, clutching his mace with white knuckled hands. If he dropped it, he would just leave it there, he’d decided. Valentina could recover it after he won the challenge.

Or he could just leap down to get it. Head first. The idea seemed rather appealing.

He slumped against the smooth stone wall of the second landing and was happy to see a literal light at the end of one of the two tunnels. There probably wouldn’t be any more climbing involved.

Once he’d prepared himself, Alarion leveraged himself upright with the help of his mace. [Mend Body] had proven unable to address his aching muscles, and the System registered no condition for the time being, but Alarion knew from experience that the pain of overexertion would get worse before it got better. It would behoove him to finish the challenge while his body was still somewhat limber.

On closer inspection the lit tunnel proved not to be a tunnel at all. It extended only a short distance before the roof gave way to the open sky above. The large room ahead was oval shaped with a large pool of stagnant water in its center where water had rained down from above. Muted sunlight came in from the hole in the ceiling, the entrance concealed by the heavy jungle.

Despite how large the hole looked from the interior, Alarion was sure it would be easy to miss from above ground. Especially if he didn’t know what he was looking for. Just as he was sure that this was the place he was meant to be. Pity that he had no idea why.

“Hello?” Alarion asked as he crossed the threshold, a discordant echo the room’s only reply.

When his natural senses found no secrets, Alarion let loose with his [Introverted Mana Sense] and was pleasantly rewarded. The room was rich with ambient mana, the heady flow of the arcane lifting his flagging spirits as he felt it flow through him as easily as the air around him.

And as easily as it travelled through stone walls, he quickly realized.

The mana pathways were not visible, but they were set in stone for those who knew how to look. They were a complicated, almost organic web that all terminated in the pool of water at the room’s center.

Alarion recognized a trap when he saw one.

The young man lifted his mace and slammed the head down on part of the nearby wall, dislodging a fist sized rock. He scooped down and collected the fragment, then tossed it from hand to hand to get a feel for its weight. Once he was satisfied, he turned his attention to the pool, cocked an arm and let loose with the full power of [Thrown Weapon Mastery].

The rock hit the water at a sharp angle, skipping off it surface at high speed. It caught the water again with a sharp slap, but only made it halfway through its next arc before the water slapped back.

An arc of blue-green water erupted from the pool and seized the stone. It slammed it into the bottom of the pool where it fragmented, ultra-high pressure grinding the durable stone into a cloud of discolored dust within seconds. Its enemy destroyed, the roiling surface of the water seemed to calm, until Alarion made the mistake of breathing.

The pool of water swirled and grew, rising out of the concave depression as it adopted a vaguely humanoid form. If humans were eleven feet tall, composed entirely of everflowing liquid and unbridled rage.

It screamed, a distorted grinding noise that sounded like ocean waves amplified several times over. Its hands slammed against the stone floor beneath it, leaving impact dents as it finally turned its body in his direction.

And charged.