Alarion was that kid when it came to puzzles.

Every village had one, or so he had often been told. The child who asked to be told a riddle, then got angry when the obviously set-up answer turned out to be a red herring. The one who started searching every ‘clever’ hiding spot when faced with a scavenger hunt instead of engaging with the clues presented. The sort who all too often rebutted the correct answer with ‘No, that would be dumb’, when teamed with others.

That wasn’t to say that Alarion was bad at puzzles. All too often brute force had an advantage all its own. When faced with a locked door others would search for a key, while Alarion challenged the lock itself. Or the door. Or its frame. In his time among thieves he’d once spent an entire night in a cramped closet trying eight thousand four hundred and twenty two of the ten thousand possible combinations of a lock box in order to breach it.

He was the sort of person to be terrible at puzzles, but still think that he had a shot at solving them.

All of which was to say that when Alarion was faced with a seemingly infinite space, his first thought was to test those dimensions. To simply walk in as straight a line as he could manage for nearly an hour. It got him nowhere, possibly quite literally given the nature of extra-dimensional spaces, but it gave him time to think of alternatives.

When he finally abandoned his initial ‘solution’ Alarion was quick to move on to the next. He leapt from one balcony and climbed back up another, testing if the verticality of the place was as immutable as its length and width. When that failed he began to break things, not out of anger but as an easy way of tracking his progress. One that proved fruitless as the items seemingly repaired themselves the moment they were outside of easy perception.

He focused in on smells and sounds for an hour, and when that failed he seriously considered licking some items but pushed that further down the list in favor of other possibilities.

The statues were an obvious place to start engaging with the puzzle ‘properly’ but proved no more fruitful than his endless walking. They were beautiful statues, but appeared to be just that. Statues. They did not contain any items, even when pulverized down to a fine powder, nor did their bases contain any hidden mechanism through which he could advance.

He slept the first night curled up on one of the plush couches, his scarf pulled up over his face to blot out the endless overhead lighting that had long since given him a pounding headache.

The next day proved no better. The ceilings were out of reach, but hid no obvious secrets after being subjected to a number of Void slashes. Digging a pit proved largely unsuccessful and took several hours with only the Duke’s mace as an impromptu shovel. Walking backward did not produce the desired results, nor did closing his eyes or attempting to ‘play’ the instruments on the statues.

His sleep the second night was fitful, and the pit was gone when he awoke the following ‘morning’. Probably for the best, given that he had intended to spend another few hours in the attempt.

Not that he had any better ideas. Alarion started his day with a walk into the endless, pondering over and rejecting a hundred different possible solutions.

He’d been told it was a magical dungeon which suggested that the solution was magically related. It was also tailored to his abilities, according to Valentina, meaning that the magic he had on hand might factor into the solution.

He spent the rest of the morning testing that theory to equally fruitless results. Running through the halls with Quicken did not seem to change anything. Solar Burst made a mess, but accomplished little else, while Void Slash was no different than simply smashing his targets with his mace.

Something had to change, but as the day ticked on Alarion began to lose hope and with it, his drive to succeed. There was something he was missing, and he did not have even the slightest guess as to where to look

“I take it things are not going well?”

To his credit, Alarion did not jump all the way out of his own skin at the unexpected sound of Valentina’s voice, though it was a close thing. Having spent the better part of two days wandering the infinite halls and stairwells, the sudden appearance of the Incarnate was as welcome as it was startling, even if Alarion tried to hide it as he turned to face her.

“What was your first hint?” he asked in a decidedly sour tone.

“Well, you are coming up on the record for the longest amount of time spent in the first challenge.” Valentina parried his irritation with sarcasm as she continued, “So either you really like the aesthetics of my dungeon, or you are in dire need of assistance.”

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Alarion bit back a bitter reply, drew a breath and said, “Will there be a penalty for this assistance?”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” she waved away his concern. “Not unless I need to physically remove you from the room to save you from starving, but you looked like you still had plenty of rations.”

“You have been watching me?”

“More like…. checking in periodically. There is only so much time a person can spend watching someone wander aimlessly and smash things.”

Alarion shot her a deadpan look for several seconds before he sighed. “Which way is the exit?”

“I said I’d help you. That I’d give you a hint, not solve the puzzle for you.” Valentina scoffed at the very notion, then gestured at the room about them. “What have you deduced thus far?”

“Nothing.” Alarion answered honestly, his tone once again annoyed. Unlike many of the challenges put to him by ZEKE and Elena, this one had proven inscrutable. It wasn’t that he was struggling against a difficult challenge, nor that he was fighting to break through a plateau. After two days he still had not the slightest clue of where to even start. “But you have to know that, even if you were checking in periodically.”

Valentina tilted her head in a slight concession. “That was what I thought, but I was hoping you might have some insight you hadn’t verbalized. I’m not a mind reader after all. Or, well… I can be, but I try not to.”

Alarion simply stared expectantly.

“I know of half a hundred ways out of this particular challenge, but most of them are out of the reach of a novice such as yourself.” What was no doubt intended as an endearing smile came across as patronizing as she continued, “If your five senses can’t deduce the puzzle, then perhaps a sixth?”

The young boy frowned. “If you are talking about sensing mana, I can not do that.”

“No time like the present in order to learn.”

“No,” he protested. “I am unable to do so. My flaw makes it impossible.”

Valentina snorted. “And who put that idea in your mind?”

“My instructor, ZEKE.” His eyes were defiant as they met hers. “And I have experience to back it up.”

“Let me guess, they looked at your flaw, tried for a couple of days and declared it impossible?” The slightly embarrassed shift in Alarion’s gaze was enough for her to press on with her assumption. “Typical. Tell me, do you feel this?”

There was a sudden shift as if every drop of blood in his veins suddenly weighed a ton. It forced him to a knee and stole the breath from his lungs as the air was now too heavy to breath. Something inside his head was pushing outward, intent on popping his skull like a balloon as he gasped and struggled.

Then it was gone as quickly as it came. There was no lingering pain, no deleterious after effects, save perhaps a slight ache in his knee from where it had struck the tile floor. Alarion looked up to find Valentina smiling, but could not muster the rage he normally felt at being struck or betrayed. Because it hadn’t been a strike. She hadn’t lashed out at him, she’d simply stopped holding back.

“Well?”

“Y-yes,” He stumbled over his own tongue. He took a few shallow breaths to steady himself, then asked, “Was that all of your power?”

“Most of it. At least half,” She winked. “In this place I’m stronger than I was, even in life. Strong enough to kill someone of your rank outright if I put my back into it, even with your flaw. But to circle back, are you sure it is impossible?”

“No. But there is a difference between that and…”

“A quantitative difference, yes. But not qualitative.” She offered him a hand, changing their dynamic as he rose to stand over her once more. “If you can sense my mana, then you can sense any mana. You just have to go about it differently. Your teacher abandoned the idea because his technique relies on something that you lack.”

“The mana gates?”

“Correct!” Her voice was sing song and cheerful as she turned to study one of the statues that dotted the room’s four cardinal directions. “Traditional sensing relies on exterior pressure. You detect mana by the way it pushes against you. But there are other methods. What did it feel like when I let loose?”

He considered the question and the deeply unpleasant sensation he had endured. “Like I was going to pop, I was overly full.”

“And why is that. Do you know your theory?”

“If my gates are open then your mana overfills me?”

“Close.” Her eyes were a little sad as they looked back in his direction. “The System won’t allow you to have more MP than your limit. That seems to be a hard and fast rule. Your regeneration, however, is not. It can go as high as it likes, but your individual circuits can only transmit so much, especially if they are underdeveloped. While it is an awful visual, imagine if I started dumping a river of blood into your veins. You’d notice rather quickly, no?”

“Gross. But how does that help me sen-” Alarion stopped himself as a thought occurred, “You are saying I can feel the mana inside my body?”

“With practice, yes. Normally I would end the hint there, but you are short on time.” She gestured to one of the nearby couches. “Grab a seat and we can begin.”

“Are you allowed to give hints?”

“I was a God, who is going to stop me?” Valentina scoffed. “We established these dungeons as a way to test for future Incarnates, but also as a way to push others forward. Having you fail out in the early challenges, especially due to a lack of knowledge defeats the point. You will still be able to fail, I’m just giving you the ability to engage with the test, something your teacher should have already given you.”

“Mm.” Alarion adopted a slightly sheepish expression as he added, “In his defense, he told me I was not ready. That this was a waste.”

“Well, let us go about proving him wrong then.” The woman closed her eyes and Alarion felt a weight come over him once again as her magic suffused his body. The sensation was weaker than the last time, but still oppressive enough to halt his breathing. “How does this feel?”

“Bad.” Alarion gasped.

“Then it is working!”