I munch on the closest thing to a macadamia seed in the white ‘wait room’ of the system as the minutes tick down while my options just dwindle. Ideas that can still work dry up as the clock advances and I fail in coming up with anything revolutionary in the meantime, but I can’t complain. I prepared as much as possible, with the root growths, inner world expansion, another iteration of the bag of holding, and a myriad of small tune-ups, like refueling my stomach, twice.

“Merlin, try to continue growing the inner world as much as possible balancing one direction with something more holistic. Don’t be afraid to change things around or push your luck, I don’t think there is anything you could do to blow it up unless that was your intent all along. Even if you have to lose a bit of range while you are working, if you have a good idea, go for it.”

He nods and I turn to the others trusting he will be able to coordinate the help he needs from the other mages and magic users that joined in the inner world.

“Translator team, keep it up with the arch shaman, though you won’t need any more wood, do we understand each other?” I say a little miffed at the waste in their constructions methods. It is fine to take down the trees, but at least learn to do it right. So much waste.

They all nod emphatically after a brief look at each other and that’s when the last second ticks, closing the inner world connection and I’m dragged away from the white room.

This time, the usually near instant travel takes me a few more moments, and as curiosity hits me, I extend my perception field out in an instinctive action as I come across the first spatial maze ever.

Edges of space fold on themselves for a few moments and then it is over leaving me standing in an initial room shocked and unsteady on my feet.

The system is incredible, a wondrous tool with night infinite power available, what it did with space was so much more than I could imagine, even if only to transport me a small distance. The way it moves and the beautiful patterns it forms.

My perception field can tell so much more than my other senses, though if it had lasted more than a moment I wouldn’t be left behind with the flash imprint of light in my eyes, instead, the memory would be seared in my brain as the last thing I saw along with a massive headache from all the new information crammed into my mind.

I need to be more careful with my perception field whenever I’m in the vicinity of spatial phenomena, but they are just so interesting. They tug at my being in a way few things ever did.

The second thing I notice concerns the space I was transported through. It is actually the familiar Void and that brings a smile to my face.

The brief instant is over as the system withdraws my control of Mana and the other resources while moving the inner world even farther away than previously. SO Far in fact that I have trouble even telling if it is still in the direction it flew off, but my Aether can just barely brush against it. The system always acts like a spoiled brat and moves it another few meters farther so I don’t push my luck.

All that quickly fades as my attention turns to my torso and the spatial storage tool I put there which I need the system out of, but incredible as that may feel, the system doesn’t fight me very hard inside my own body.

Relieved, I look around at the place. This one is very similar on the surface to the last trial, but that is only a very superficial look for someone without the perception field, for any trial takers, the difference is so obvious it is impossible to miss. This is not the sterile trial under laboratory conditions I had gotten used to, but something closer to a real labyrinth found in a random place put together a decade before. It seems and feels like I was off exploring some ancient tomb of something.

Fully extending my perception field out, I twist my torso as the longer range of my inner world in that particular direction straight down the first tunnel.

At nearly 80 meters out, I see a lot that is new. Not the perfectly cut stones, but actual tool marks. Not perfectly uniform stone, but the natural layered gradient any geologist or petrologist would be able to recognize instantly in the compacted rock. Small cracks of uniform length, water in the cracks and even dirt packed in the cornors.

The ‘void’ is gone, leaving me inside something of a mountain or at least a giant block of stone and dirt. Though to get to the dirt, I would have to break at least 2 meters of nearly solid stone with no tools and possibly the system’s interference.

I can even see in the first intersection just ahead, moss in the damp corners. I start walking forward and corridors show up in the perception field both above and below.

Excited to be out of the dead trials before, even if they had their own advantages, I pace full steam ahead. Running even faster than usual, I start quickly mapping the entire place, while leaving the last map untouched.

Minutes and uber excitement give way to hours and an uplifted mood which stabilizes as I keep finding interesting stuff all over the place. I don’t know what the system intends with this, but as I arrive at the first meaningful dead end I come across a source of water like expected.

Extending my perception field out to the full range, I hug the walls in all directions but I find absolutely nothing.

“That’s… different, very different.”

As my voice reaches my own ears, my own obliviousness catches up to me. My senses… they are not quite fully muted.

Resources are still as locked down as ever, and I whirl away at my Health, trying to bring balance to the triad after unlocking both Vigor and Qi, but though sight is still fully gone, my hearing is faint but present, just like my sense of touch.

Muted and hard to discern, but still present.

Doing a quick assessment reveals that my ears were the only new affected sense and even then, I can barely hear myself talking. I suppose that I may just lack the light to see and my eyes are back to normal, but for this trial, it might as well be a moot point. A distinction without a difference, either my blindness or a lack of light the result is the same.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Though if I ever manage to restore my balance and can start earnestly using Qi, In select situations even single candlelight might be the perfect complement to my vision where the perception field fails. Even if it seems unlikely now, the situation where I culd easily read the books with my eyes but not the perception field just came to show me its current limitations and spurred me into action to improve it.

After drinking my fill of water from the wall, I keep it in place for a good five minutes going over the entire volume of my perception field.

The sterile environment may be boring on the old trials but it is exponentially easier to find stuff, you just had to look for any signs of difference compared to the surroundings.

Most things simply screamed they were there from a mile away. A black dot in a smooth and crisp sheet of white paper visible from a dozen meters away. If it is printed along thousands of other dots superposed on a complex image, it becomes something else entirely.

Still, I find nothing and just keep going, already realizing the differences with this trial are even greater than I initially realized.

The very way the map was shaping up had a different feel to it, a slightly divergent set of rules, though I didn’t have enough to accurately judge what those rules would be, just that it was moving away slightly from the last two trials.

As exhaustion catches up to me, the day reaches its end and I find a nice dry corner to sleep, something else I didn’t have to worry about back on the other trial instance, though this is at best a minor annoyance, as most places were dry instead of the entire trial.

I hug my ‘starter clothes’, the only thing the system lets me have in this place is like the clothes the system gifted us on day one. Finding a comfortable spot I lay on the ground and slowly drift off, trying to fit the entire puzzle together.

Today was a good day and tomorrow… will be even better.

--------------------

Five days. Five entire days and a good chunk of the labyrinth map filled, but I still haven’t found a single puzzle or the central room.

The entire fat reserve I got from my pause is gone and I start popping the nodules of sugar and fat in my bloodstream that Aspen helped me with. Even with everything else I prepared, if I don’t at least find the food I normally do, I will have a couple of weeks less than normal.

If I hadn’t forgotten… If I had stored fuel inside the root network in the first part of the trial as well, I could have… Never mind.

I sigh releasing the frustration at my own lack of imagination before heading inside.

No sense in crying over the forgotten piece of fruit that rotted and molded over after being forgotten a week or three too long. Not that I have personal knowledge of that, I swear so with my feet together.

Each day I wake up more and more tired. It is not a question of lacking stamina, or food as I still have plenty stored away. I’m also very familiar with how my own body reacts, something that was only enhanced by my increase in the perception stat. It is well over 100 by now.

And for the life of me, I have absolutely no idea what is going on or what could possibly cause me to experience this beyond system shinanigans. One thing is for sure however, something changed from the last time I was in the second ‘stage’ of the same trial. Comparing now with the weakness my memories hint to me, I’m managing to hold out much better. So I either grew stronger or the system is not quite as enthusiastically piling weight on top of my shoulders.

I continue putting my feet one in front of the other and coming up with new ways and new ideas to explore in this trial. The problems whirl away in the back of my mind relentlessly and I will not let them go.

I think of my skills, but except for fully self contained skills like running which already hit level 99, I can’t even properly use them here.

Exploring other possibilities, I reserve an hour to meditate every day along with the day log search, even as the reason behind the change takes a little of my focus away from the Health equivalent resource that I’m trying to learn to use.

Getting nowhere after another week and with my reserves rapidly dwindling, I decided to focus on the Heath equivalent, my own version of the resource. This time the scheme came a lot harder for me.

To not only come up with a representative name but something that will tie well with the two concepts I have to this point.

The third leg of my foundation to match in both practicality and power of my old friend vigor and the Qi I have just begun to know. A myriad of names comes across to my mind and this time I hesitate even considering my awesome naming scheme, and proven track record in the field.

What is actually stopping me is that the other resources have well defined parameters but Health was fuzzier.

Mana seems like the best of all in its own way, but I was already more used to the finer points of Vigor and by extension Stamina. With Aspen developing, maybe he would soon be able to help me with refueling my vigor, even if stamina wasn’t in his purview hitting that narrow edge of both resources that didn't overlap, I would still have a lot more room to navigate with ‘infinite’ vigor.

Health, however, seems another beast entirely. Not a resource per se, but perhaps that is simply because we hadn’t learned to yield it properly.

A few with loads of vitality points and a few screws loose traded blows with weaker opponents instead of dodging and if there was a second layer to the strategy in actively using their large Health pool, something like that may one day become viable.

I, however, do not have the time to wait. The imbalance is growing and seems to be building towards a crescendo. I‘m still not desperate, but time will eventually run out. I do not have the luxury to take things slowly. I have to do it now and I need a concept and word to drive my will behind.

Thoughts bounce up and down until there is only one choice. Something simple and unpretentious. Another concept that was tied to me even before the system given will and words. It is risky, but it is my choice, and a choice I choose to take NOW.

I prepare myself and finally give words to it:

“Life.”

The faint sound reached my ears and seems to resound in this place even with my hearing impaired.

“LIFE, I wield LIFE.”

A small and deep stirring within myself calls to me.

A building of the natural momentum of my Aether that, without any action on my part, begins to spin around me.

I’m both surprised and concerned as adrenaline hits my veins so I use all my senses to watch for clues about what is happening.

The momentum builds and builds and I try to make the most of the situation by feeding my natural Aether flow with a thicker stream of Aether which just fuels the flames. The roiling momentum of the storm is just beginning.

Letting go of my fears I start chanting wildling leaking Aether to be picked up by the tornado around me.

Life

Life

Life

…

I spread my arms fully nearly touching the walls of the corridor and spin around.

In my mind, there is only this word, this concept intended to ‘replace’ Health and match the other two resources finally becoming a true and balanced triad, but there is still something missing.

I dig deep within myself trying to find this… something. Trying to align the mental trigger behind this single but expressive word. I have the word, I have an outline of the mental image, but there is still something missing.

Everything is Life. Everything needs Vigor to move. Qi is the very fuel of external magic.

The vital force, the will to move oneself and the will to move the world.

Power from the divine, power from the body, power from the mind.

Though some of those lines are blurred, those are simple concepts behind it the triad and I continue in search of the perfect match. A myriad of pictures are painted in my mind as I stop running and spinning and cross my leg on the ground in another of my favorite positions.

I am a dog with a bone and this will NOT EscaPE ME!!!!!!!!!