In the end it took four hours for Valentina to teach Alarion something that was supposedly impossible.
While it was true that Valentina had access to a nearly limitless flow of Mana that enabled her specific teaching strategy, Alarion could tell that it was more than that. She’d confessed that his particular flaw was one she’d never encountered, which meant that she’d made up her training regimen on the fly, but he’d never have known it otherwise. Every question he asked had a ready answer, every frustration a ready solution. She was patient but persistent, pushing the boundaries of his comfort until the inevitable breakthrough.
> Introverted Mana Sense [Uncommon]
>
> Description: Distinct from the more ubiquitous Mana Sense skill, Introverted Mana Sense obtains similar results from wildly divergent methodology.
>
> Requirements: Major Flaw - Splintered Mana Circuits
>
> Type: Active
>
> Effects: Allows the user to detect and observe differences in local ambient magical energy. Owing to its nature, Introverted Mana Sense has difficulty detecting subtle changes in magical pressure, but is better equipped to examine whatever fluctuations it does detect.
>
> Growths: INT +2. PER +2. WIL +2.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” The former god asked with a smile as sweet as those on the statues all around them.
Alarion was unconvinced. A new skill was a wonderful thing, and the rush of increased attributes helped to combat his fatigue, but her training had been exhausting. He was drenched in sweat, his skin a rosy hue from the constant pressure of her magical energy bearing down upon him. Her training had been as punishing as it had been successful, his legs weak and unsteady as he tried to stand.
“No, no. Take a moment.” Valentina scowled. “You are behind schedule, certainly, but five minutes to catch your breath isn’t going to make any difference.”
He stared at her, about to argue the point when his legs made the decision for him. He fell back onto the couch with a dull thud and a deep breath. There he relaxed, letting the cool air of the extradimensional space wash over him in the absence of Valentina’s overbearing magical pressure.
“Were you always this strong?”
“Oh no, not remotely.” Valentina scoffed at the very idea. “Even when I was a God I was never quite this strong, and I didn’t come to that until much later in life. I spent most of my early life as a teacher, actually.”
“Really?” Alarion opened his eyes to see a scowl on the woman’s face, and quickly corrected his word choice. “It shows! I just, it is hard to imagine a teacher becoming a God.”
“Well I wasn’t a school teacher. I was born only a generation after the System and while my Aptitude was nothing to write home about, I took to its nuances like a fish to water and proved to be very, very good at explaining them to others. Lal Viren was still adapting to the changes, and she sought me out as someone who could help her overcome this new challenge.”
That raised Alarion’s eyebrows, his voice carrying a note of incredulity as he said, “You knew more than a god?”
“Don’t be so surprised. Gods are fallible. They are immortal, but they- no, that is not blasphemy, that is a fact.” Valentina was talking to the air once again, scowling up at the unseen. “Well he has a point, doesn’t he?”
“Should I…?” Alarion asked as the two continued to bicker. It was an odd sensation, knowing there was a god in the room with him, unseen but clearly there. It also gave him an idea.
His eyes closed and Alarion reached out with his new skill. He felt the cold ambient magic of the extradimensional space all around him, the oddly solid mana that echoed from a nearby statue and the barely supressed grandeur of Valentina. Yet next to her was a void, an emptiness that was hard to describe or comprehend with his limited understanding of the new skill.
He focused upon it, and his new sense fell away into darkness. There was nothing there. Only a vast, cyclopian gulf in the world that filled him with an existential dread he could not comprehend or express. He opened his mouth to scream and the sensation immediately snapped away as if it had never been there at all.
“W-what-?”
“I should have warned you.” Valentina said apologetically. She was standing over him, the back of her palm on his brow. When had she moved? “You’re a few hundred years too young to try and see the face of God. I would advise against doing that again.”
“It was not that b-” Alarion frowned as a realization hit him. The sweat covered exhaustion of a few moments earlier had abruptly given way to a sort of clammy soreness. “How long?”
“About two hours. Just don’t focus on her in the future and you will be fine.”
Two hours. The idea was preposterous, but undeniable. “I should…”
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“You should.” Valentina agreed, offering him her dainty hand. “You know what to do from here?”
“I know where to start.” Alarion nodded as he turned his eyes to the nearby statue. “It shouldn’t take me too much… longer.”
Valentina was gone, having vanished with the same effortless silence through which she’d appeared. Alarion prayed he hadn’t been overconfident, for once.
The puzzle revolved around the statues, of that he was almost certain. The only thing in the dungeon that showed any level of variation, Alarion had thought them magically inert from his many initial observations, but through the lens of his [Introverted Mana Sense] the individual instruments pulsed with what he could best describe as a magical ‘charge’. The one nearest to him appeared empty, while others nearby were either full or empty, seemingly at random.
Alarion approached the statue and focused more heavily upon it, examining the inner workings of the magic as best he could. His new skill allowed him to ‘feel’ the twisting intricacies of magic in a way that provided new insight to old concepts. The instrument was covered in an unbound field, with strings of magic trailing off in four cardinal directions. When he touched it, the device sapped a tiny fragment of his mana, so little that it had gone unnoticed on every previous attempt, and used that magic to change its state. It flipped from ‘full’ to ‘empty, and send a pulse along each of its connecting lines to nearby statues.
Those statues were at the edge of his skill, making them indistinct in comparison, but Alarion understood what had happened. Touching this instrument had cycled its state, then flipped the state of each nearby statue. Moving to one of those, Alarion confirmed his theory with a touch, watching as the change of state cascaded back to its origin as well as the surrounding statues. Another touch, and the changes reversed.
His suspicions growing, Alarion triggered a few of the statues as he set off walking, taking careful note of which ones were active and which ones were not. Within a few minutes, he noticed a pattern. Though the dimension seemed infinite, there was a clear point at which it looped. Nine statues in any one direction. Nine ‘across’ and nine ‘down’.
He knew what this was. And he hated it.
They’d had a similar game when he’d been very little, though he could not recall what they’d called it. It was a sort of logic puzzle, one where the goal was to fill or clear the board, with each move altering the squares around it. It was a game his father had been able to solve on a whim, but Alarion had only been able to solve through brutal trial and error. He desperately wished he’d paid more attention when it had been explained to him.
Instead, he’d have to do it the old fashioned way.
The first step was to create a ‘map’ out of broken stone and shattered bits of furniture, as trying to keep the grid in mind while only being able to see a fraction of it at any time was a recipe for disaster. The process was slow and time consuming, in part because he took the time to double check his results. Just to be sure.
From there he started iterating, testing out a fast and reliable way to clear the majority of the grid. It was one of the only lessons he’d truly internalized from watching his father. If the grid was 9x9, clear it down to something more manageable, such as 5x5 and start from there.
That, at least, proved fairly simple. So long as one didn’t care about trying to fill the whole thing, it was easy to ‘walk’ a charge along the whole grid, filling it piece by piece while leaving the spaces ahead empty. It took him the better part of an hour, but Alarion quickly reduced the puzzle to a manageable level.
Which was where things got frustrating. In theory filling in the remainder should be easy. It was literally a game designed for children. In practice Alarion failed his self imposed condition, a ‘solve’ with less than fifty moves, time and time again. He knew he could eventually brute force the puzzle, but doing so risked spending literal hours wandering around touching statues, all while Valentina no doubt snickered from the sidelines.
But as with any simple task repeated ad nauseum, eventually one of Alarion’s paths found success.
Glad to be rid of this place, Alarion stood and quickly set about enacting his moves. He filled statue after statue, doubling back to inexorably push toward the ‘corners’ where the puzzle did not overlap. It was only as he reached the final piece, the five last ‘empty’ statues, that a horrifying thought occurred.
Were they supposed to be full? Or empty?
Alarion touched the statue and was rewarded with a wave of relief as the room around him flickered. Gone were the endless hallways, the four corners of the room replaced by solid stone walls, while above him the curved stairway led to a familiar set of double doors.
“Oh thank the….” Alarion started, then thought better of it. Was it blasphemous to say such a thing in the dungeon of one of those very gods? Or was it worse not to.
He thought better than to tempt fate and instead made for the doorway.
Valentina was waiting for him in on the edge of the desk, a Cheshire smile on her lips. “Ah, there is our new record holder.”
Alarion winced. “Does that hurt my chances?”
“If you intend to keep to your schedule? Probably,” She shrugged. “But in here I mostly keep track for bragging rights, or in your case, lack thereof.”
He sighed and turned his attention to his notifications.
> [Quest Complete – Escape The Room]
> Reward: One Uncommon Dungeon Box (Reduced to One Common Dungeon Box)
> Would you like to claim your Rewards? Yes/No
He’d set the quest two days ago shortly after his arrival in the puzzle room. At the time he’d thought a one day limit had been a good idea, but judging by the reduced reward, that had clearly been a bad decision. He accepted the reward anyway, and stretched out a hand to catch the box as it materialized.
“Double dipping on rewards with a quest power, hmm? At least you have the etiquette to save your host’s gift for last.”
“Do I get a reward now?” Alarion asked. “I assumed it was just one at the end.”
“It is both, actually.” Valentina answered. “There is a reason our dungeons are so heavily sought after. Open that first.”
The box depicted a confused Alarion wandering about the dungeon, its sour expression matching his own as he pushed aside the lid and retrieved the small crystal stored inside.
> Extradimensional Exit
>
> Description: This dull crystal is imbued with powerful void and dimension energy for the sole purpose of creating an escape from an involuntary extradimensional space.
>
> Type: Single Use
>
> Effect: Forcibly creates a breach in any extradimensional space created by an skill, spell or item of Rank III or below. This exit will last sixty seconds or until the owner of this item leaves the dimensional space. Spaces of Rank II or below may collapse entirely, depending on their structure.
“This would have been useful.” Alarion muttered.
“No it wouldn’t. You would have failed.” Valentina said as she held out a tightly wound scroll. “This, on the other hand, may be more to your liking.”