Hugging the stone walls in the dark I extend my perception field to the limit. At roughly 69 meters of range, I can cover a huge volume, but in a straight line it’s not that far away and so far I found nothing, absolutely nothing.

And so I continue making my way along the outside corridor.

Hours pass without even any hints of success, not even a whiff.

I change my methods over and over, stopping along the way and looking at stuff closely or going faster to cover more ground. But in the end, all I find is solid stone and the void surrounding the trial. Through the vacuum around may not actually be ‘The Void’. I may just not be able to detect anything there with my perception field.

Throughout the trial, besides this solid stone, there is only a slightly different type of stone that composes the runes hidden in the teleportation table and that is nothing new. Without a lot more mana and metal tools, I couldn’t even try to game the system and force the snack machine to spit out more than what I ‘paid’ for.

Whirling the problem away in my mind, I look at the map meticulously drawn with the filaments of roots that covers a wide flat area behind my lungs.

Making a mental effort, I try to look at it and translate it into the air right in front of me. I get a hint of a headache, even with the muted feedback this place imposes on my body, but I still keep it up. I look at it from several angles and move the ‘hallucination’ until I find the perfect view of the entire thing.

But in the end, I succeed, I bypass the limitations in my visual cortex and can ‘see’ the entire map as it is supposed to be. A grin comes unbidden to my face, something that I cannot contain, nor do I try to do so, flaunting it to all, though there is anyone else in range as far as I can tell.

Analyzing the layout and the rules it follows, I try to glean anything more than what I already knew. But even minutes later, I’m still stuck, so I keep the idea in the back of my mind and let the effort drop.

Coming back to the trail, I decide to continue following the outside corridors, but drop to a walking pace until I learn something new.

New information never arrives.

A day, then two. Stops along the way to resummon the map and my time quickly running out, even without running at the initial insane pace I had been keeping. I even go back to the initial and the central rooms to look for any clues that might be hidden over there, no matter how small, but it is all to no avail.

What does change is me. Getting used to the entire map, especially in a much more friendly form such as the interactive hologram I ‘forced’ my mind to create shows me small details about the nature of the maze and intricacies of the rules it followed that not even the combined months in between trials had taught me.

Details about how the branching worked, where and when you go up or down, and finding the closest dead end with an actual puzzle and sometimes water source.

Eventually, I spot a little inconsistency in the rules I learned about. Six spots that call my attention. A larger open area of about 200 meters wide without any other access except for a dead-end that came a little closer.

That in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, but almost like an artist saying that a tree feels wrong in a spot, or the color of a root is off in a painting, I can tell something is wrong with this place. Not in the fact that it is a dead end, the small void or anything else in specific, but there is no other place in the entire maze that gathers all these factors together, no other confluence with the same ‘feel’.

If you have only 50 meters in perception field range you will never see any other corridor but the one you are on and the start of its direct intersections, if you have 200 meters you can always see something in ‘any’ direction.

Although individually this new section does follow all the individual ‘rules’, there is something just “off” about it and I’m determined to find out what.

Closing the mental map, I increase my pace and head straight over. Each step on my feet takes me closer to my destination and my certainty increases. More inconsistencies pop up and even the way the surroundings are organized seemed to be designed to decrease the chance I would explore the place and instead only rely on the feedback from my perception field while I was either above or below never actually visiting the place.

For the people without even the 50 meters range it would be a moot point either way. With the greater travel, they would need a lot more time given each trip down a corridor only reveals the very corridor. That would instantly at least triple the miles they had to run and likely making the complete maping endeavor impossible in the available time frame.

There is something stark when compared to what the rest of the trial, but without actual white to compare it to, Ice colored paint might as well be white.

The miles dwindle and soon I’m at the corridor, heading in for nearly a kilometer with no branches, again not unusual in itself, but in context…. I pass the dozens of corridors around in range that helped me map this one. The certainty of my conclusion comes to a peak as my perception field passes the end of the corridor even before I find anything.

No puzzles, no water, no runes, but my legs continue driving me forward, and when my perception field is 51 meters beyond the limits, finally, I find an easter egg.

“Yes, ohhhh, bloody yes.”

Sliding to a stop not even having noticed my sprinting pace, I drop tp the ground and stare at the single addition to the trial.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A chicken egg of dense stone in the middle. Though it is not only heavy in weight, something extremely easy to tell with the perception field, but has another ‘heavy’ property.

It fells… heavy… in color. Likely a dark grey or maybe a black stone with reflective spots.

Too bad I can’t even touch it let alone take it away.

I continue covering the small volume in wonderment. At first glance, it feels completely solid, but as I get used to it and let go of everything else, putting my entire focus on it, I find an exciting discovery, the shape carved inside. A small drawing, almost like a single piece of the puzzle. Carefully copying it with my roots I go over it again and again but learn nothing beyond that. Hugging the wall climbing to the ceiling and laying on the floor yields no new discoveries, the only thing I can detect is this ‘egg’ well within my inner world range.

I give a quick look at the map and even though all the twists and turns I feel it shouldn't take more than twenty minutes to get over to the next similar place.

After giving one last look at the stone egg, I start running.

Forcing myself to slow down a little so I don’t exhaust myself, I keep pace on the way to the next spot in search of the same flavor of color… or maybe something new, perhaps even an entirely new shape.

Would it be the same puzzle piece or do they fit each other and only the entire thing would make sense? Coming to a halt with much more control than last time, I look around disbelievingly.

I sit right at the edge and send my perception out scanning through every single inch. But all my attempts are in vain. There is not a speck of dust. Beyond the tone I can touch

Ten minutes pass before I’m satisfied I wasn’t missing anything in range., but I don’t quite give up the effort, and head to the next one confused.

The confusion only increases as I find three of the places with similar eggs, though each has a different shape inside.

Could it just be simply to increase the chances someone would enter one of the corridors and finding nothing at the end, not bother with the others?

Shaking my head in frustration, I move to the central room before earnestly trying to fit the shapes together.

At first glance, they don’t have anything to do with each other.

They all have outer boundaries following an egg shape, and they also don’t seem to be runes. As I turn them around in my mind I notice how the empty spots of one seem to match the lines in the other two.

Creating a trio of copies within myself again, I try to slide them into place inside each other. A beautiful interlocking wireframe follows, but nothing else. I look at the wireframe egg completed and something of it pulls at me, but by itself, it is not the whole.

I head for the blue cristal to look for any changes, but that also doesn’t show anything else. I’m still ‘only’ on full completion.

That takes a little wind from my sails, but I will row the ship by the strength of my arms if needed and that doesn’t even discourage me, though I chose to do something else to take my mind off it and come back with a fresh perspective later.

Sitting down to meditate in the light with returned senses given I’m in the central room, I seek to find the improvement in Stats from all my physical exertion during the entire trial.

The system fights me, but I push through. I may not be in the instance, but I know my body and after pushing myself like this I have at least a couple of stat points to unlock. If nobody else does this, either because they can’t or won’t is beside the point.

I can and I will make full use of this capability. I even stop pushing for unlocking my health equivalent, something that I have yet to think of a good name for.

Only my body and soul are in my awareness.

Even Aether and other resources in particular corners of the void inside are left to their own place.

I go down and down, trying to integrate my BODY and my SOUL.

I’m me, but those are important aspects of ME.

Breath in, breath out.

Letting all thoughts that try to interrupt be released in peace and float away like clouds. Seek what is the very substance of the universe and be one with it.

Lessons that I slowly learned throughout my life from dozens, hundreds of sources slowly integrate as I achieve an ‘enlightened’ state.

No mana, no stamina and no health use for a good while.

Peace and quiet, even if not the entirety of my goal for eternity are very helpful intermittently and help bring out my very BEING. The egg inside me starts drawing me in the longer I stare at it. Before they were just fuzzy random lines, but together they form something more, still incomplete and subtle, but very significant.

After staring at it for what feels like forever, a small piece of the puzzle unlocks in front of me and I know ALL.

I become …myself… listening to my intuition not just as conscious effort as I try day to day, but the most natural of actions, after all, not following your instincts is simply anathema and nobody ever does something like that, right?

With ease and speed, I can barely believe, I grow the roots inside my mouth with a thread of Qi and form another interlocking ‘egg’.

The imbalance grows and I’m knocked off my state really not knowing what just happened. But even coming back down to Earth, I KNOW, I understand, I GROK.

Only simple and seemingly insignificant wisdom stays behind. But compared to my normal self, even the obvious before a being like that… is greater wisdom than the best philosophers could impart in their lifetimes.

And that being was me.

What the Heck did just happen?

The question fades from my mind as I have more practical concerns, like my lack of a health equivalent resource. That is creating a significant imbalance, I also need something to counterbalance my soul. Besides those nuggets of wisdom, I tuck away more tips on my path forward trusting that this is not a hidden trap laid by the system, but in some way a reward.

I spit out the only physical reminder of my experience. Barely even tired even after having used a good amount of qi even while under the system’s restrictions, I look at the object and note the fact that the system is not trying to destroy it.

How the hell did I go from my ‘lesser’ self to… something else, and how can I go back to that? The egg might have something about it, but even as I look at it, its luster, the sense of incompleteness and excitement are all gone.

It is still something new, but lesser somehow.

I concentrate on the roots in my liver and move out the second copy opening a small incision to pass my organ walls on the way out. Spiting the small root wireframe puzzle again, the same thing happens, or rather, it doesn’t. The system doesn’t even care. I don’t even know if my enlightened state even had anything to do with the egg, but I let the excitement build again as I realise that the eggs are just fine.

I put one of them back in my mouth and add a small root protrusion to the other, though as it grows, the system erodes it. In less than a minute nothing but the perfect shape of the egg is left. The system doesn’t seem to notice or care about the very egg, but even the smallest of roots inside is kaput in moments.

Almost in the way it treats Aether.

It gave everyone a good chunk of the highest quality Aether to everyone on day one and technically there are Aether coins, but that is not talked about almost as if it was taboo.

I shake my head and go back to the egg.

“Ok, this is not a way to evade the system in this place.” Still curious about the effects of this thing, I swallow the egg in my mouth keeping the other one out. Tentatively I extend my arm to touch the blue cristal hoping for a change, any change that can come from this and finally a new line of text shows up in the system forcing a smile on my face.

Hidden Easter Egg (3/3)

For how little time the system knew us for this actually shows a decent understanding of our culture.