“Agh…” Alarion grunted as the dull ache crept up his arm, across his shoulder and into his neck and chest. It was uncomfortable, the sort of body ache one associated with a sore muscle or a bad flu, only writ large. Within seconds it had spread throughout his whole upper body and into his head, whereupon his head began to pound with a low-grade headache, as though he had gone days without sleep.

The novelty of the creeping discomfort had worn off and Alarion withdrew his hand.

The pain vanished in an instant, as though it had never existed. His head was clear and focused, his muscles loose and ready for activity. There were no notifications in his vision, no damage to his HP. The magic caused pain, and only pain.

Alarion had a sinking feeling he understood the challenge, and reached out to touch the jeweled panel, to prove his hypothesis. It was inert under his initial touch but activated the moment he sunk his hand into the magical pain once more.

The sensation was faster this time, drawn into and through him by the now active magical siphon. What had taken nearly half a minute on his first attempt happened in a matter of moments on his second, the pounding headache, the body pain, the crawling sensation of decay moving beneath his skin. The foul magic flowed in through one arm and exited through the other, slowly beginning to feed the siphon.

Very slowly. Too slowly.

Alarion took a step into the corridor, immersing himself in the foreign mana. Instantly he felt a wave of nausea seize his guts as the intensity of the magical pain increased drastically. With his mana circuits damaged as they were, the decay affinity mana flooded into him from every point of contact. His bones ached, his head pounded and worse yet, there was no increase in the amount of the corrupt mana being drawn out of him by the siphon.

He stepped back, a wave of relief washing over him as the pain dissipated once again. The sensation was unsettling in its unfamiliarity. Even healing spells and potions left a brief residual ache after completing their work. To have pain flow out of him like water was a special sort of unnatural.

And that was the least of his problems.

Alarion had spent nearly a minute feeding the stone set into the wall, and he had barely made a dent in what he now realized was not one, but six sequential magical fields. At the rate the siphon worked, it would take at least an hour to clear the first field of pain. With each subsequent field more dense and more severe than the last, he would have to spend hours, possibly days feeding siphons while suffering through progressively worse agony.

A true endurance challenge.

“No.” He declared. He had neither the time, nor inclination to engage with the challenge the way it was intended. Not when there was an obvious work around.

The problem was that door at the end of the hallway. It was surely the exit to the challenge, but it was going to cause him problems. He couldn’t open it at a distance, but maybe he didn’t have to.

Alarion picked up his mace and centered himself at the mouth of the corridor. He hefted the weapon, set his feet and brought it down in an angry arc as he incanted, “Void Crush!”

The wave of darkness swept into the hallway, but something was immediately off. It slowed as it hit the heavy ambient mana, then began to fragment and dissipate as it moved further into the hall, slowing more and more until his spell dissipated among the fifth layer.

“Hm.” Alarion frowned.

“Void Crush.”

The second attempt proved as fruitless as the first, but it wasn’t until the third that he understood why. Viewed through the lens of his [Introverted Mana Sense] Alarion watched as his third [Void Crush] impacted the trap.

The decay mana in the air resisted the intrusion as it struck, forcing Alarion’s spell to waste some of its energy pushing through the barrier. Tiny fragments of decay magic slid along the edges of the [Void Crush], eroding it as it punched through to the next layer where it met even stronger resistance, until at last it fragmented against the fifth layer and dissolved.

There would be no getting through the barrier. Even if Alarion were to cast the spell from inside the first few layers, he was certain that the fourth, fifth and six layers alone would be enough to stop any spell he could cast from reaching the door.

His backup plan, then. The field of pain could stop his spells, but it had done nothing to his mace.

Alarion took the time to coil his newest magic item around both his right arm and the haft of his great mace. Valentina’s rewards had proven useful in the challenges thus far, but he doubted she’d intended him to use it so soon. With luck he wouldn’t need it.

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Quite literally.

“Quicken.” The young man intoned, a shiver running along the length of his spine as newfound agility pulsed through his body. He rolled a hint of stiffness out of his right shoulder, then hefted his mace, holding it as one might a javelin. “Lucky Strike.”

Then he launched it toward the door.

Red cloth magically unwound as the projectile arced across the short distance. Even with the benefit of [Thrown Weapon Mastery] Alarion had clearly misjudged the weight and aerodynamics of the weapon as its bulk slammed down a full three feet shy of the door, cracking the stone where it impacted.

“Damn.” Alarion murmured. He twisted his wrist and sent a pulse of mana along the length of the crimson wrap, summoning the weapon back to his hand. It was a slow and noisy process, especially compared to the near instant teleportation of his greatsword, but within two seconds the wrap had dragged the great mace back down the corridor to Alarion’s waiting hand, the marked fabric whirling back into position around his forearm and the weapon’s haft.

The mace was not a good throwing weapon, not with his current strength at least, but Alarion was not easily dissuaded. He needed a few more feet of distance. After that, his [Lucky Strike] and the sheer bulk of the weapon should do the rest, even if it had lost most if its momentum.

“Lucky Strike.” He said again, more confident this time as he sprinted across the room and put his whole body into the throw.

This time he’d overdone it. The mace flew true, impacting the door at roughly its midpoint and blasting through as though the wood didn’t exist. It continued into the room beyond, unravelling the whole binding on Alarion’s wrist as it exceeded the cloth’s maximum distance and slammed into the far wall just next to where Valentina sat reading?

“What in the… Alarion!?” The goddess shouted with the tone of a disappointed mother, glaring at him incredulously through the now ruined doorframe. Then she saw him move to the far end of the room once more, lining up for a run at the corridor. “No! Alarion, do-”

Something stole the air from Valentina’s lungs, her warning uttered in gasps and wholly ignored as Alarion rushed the corridor.

The pain struck him in waves. First the dull ache of illness, then a sharper, more pronounced pain at his joints. He cried out in shock as he entered the third layer and stumbled as the violent agony of the fourth overwhelmed him. Momentum carried him forward into the fifth layer and his vision went blurry.

Everything was pain. A thousand knives stabbed into a thousand nerves, each twisting and slicing at impossible angles. His teeth felt as though they would burst, and Alarion writhed through sensations of white-hot agony. The pain was everything. Everywhere. Undeniable, indisputable. His world was suffering, and he needed to go back. He needed to escape. To be free of this nightmare.

Only, his body would not permit him even that. The pain had overloaded his nerves and made movement impossible. He could not feel the pressure of the floor beneath him, he could not feel the weight of gravity, or his own breathing.

He lay there for an eternity, his mind searching desperately for an escape. Whether that relief was a successful escape, the bliss of gibbering madness or simply death, he did not care. It just needed to end.

Eventually his senses fell away. His eyes were useless, the nerves shot through with so much agony that they could not stand the light. His hearing was a sharp endless ringing, his tastebuds coated in sour metal. But his mana sense… that was clear. It wasn’t linked to any physical organ and thus was not overwhelmed with pain. It let him sense the world around him for the first time in what felt like centuries but might have only been minutes.

He could move his limbs. The movements were awkward and halting, but it didn’t matter. He knelt, then stood. He had only to go back, freedom from his nightmare mere steps away.

But so was victory.

Alarion entered the final layer and found himself adrift. Every nerve was dipped in acid. Every synapse firing in ice water. His heart stopped and his body collapsed as infinite darkness took him.

—

“Are you with me?”

“Alarion, are you with me?”

“I…” He struggled to respond, but the words wouldn’t come. There was blood in his mouth, an open wound on his tongue. His throat was ragged, his voice barely a whisper. He nodded as best he could, the muscles of his neck sore beyond belief.

“Thank goodness.” Valentina said with a heavy sigh of relief.

Alarion was resting on the floor, looking up at Valentina at an odd angle. It took several seconds before he realized that his head was in her lap and that the slow pulse of the room was nothing more than her breathing.

“Just how stupid are you?”

Alarion met her eyes but could not summon even enough indignation to glare as she lectured him.

“Do you have any idea what would have happened if you’d failed that stunt?!” She scolded him, one hand opening and closing just off to the side, as though she were resisting the urge to strike him. “If you hadn’t slumped a hand out the door, I would have been powerless to help.”

“Perhaps I should have been clearer from the start. Just because you cannot die in a challenge does not mean that it is safe. Do you know how long it takes someone with your Vitality to die of dehydration?” She pressed her voice brimming with quiet fury. “Weeks. If not longer. Forget failing your challenge, you’d have been an utter lunatic by the time I could recover you.”

“Sorry.” Alarion rasped, slowly pushing himself upright on the floor. “I didn’t want to waste time.”

“Stop trying to have your cake while you eat it.” Valentina scolded. “These challenges are teaching moments. You get nothing by cheaply circumventing them.”

“I do not get a reward for finishing?” Alarion frowned.

“That is not what I…” the woman exhaled heavily in annoyance, then stood and brushed down her dress. “That challenge was meant to teach you how to compartmentalize and endure pain. A useful skill in its own right, but in doing so you would have ideally learned a general meditation skill.”

Alarion looked back at the still open door, seeing the challenge in a new light. “I could still…”

“No.” Valentina said sharply, dismissing the door with a wave of her hand. “For a whole host of reasons, no. “

“Mm.” The young man struggled to his feet, wincing with each stiff movement. “What now?”

The goddess scowled as she sat behind her desk, already scrawling in an open book before her. “Now you go and rest while I stay up late revising the remainder of your challenges.”

“Because I didn’t get the meditation skill?”

“To keep you from cheating.”