Kieran had wasted many a night struggling to complete arbitrarily contrived puzzles in video games–eager to get to the sick loot at the very end. So this peculiar door was not his first time being confronted with such a mysterious arrangement of perplexing interfaces for a frustrating amount of time. He couldn’t quite explain it, but he had a sneaking suspicion that whatever this eccentric gateway hid behind its immense doors would be far more difficult to uncover than any game puzzle, but would inevitably contain far greater rewards than useless virtual mmo gear.

Taking a reevaluating glance over the magical doors, and their elemental glyphs, he thoughtfully considered the implications of four unique elements of mana being present. These four mana types, combined with the four equally spaced empty holes on each door, assured him he might be on the right track.

Fire melts ice, right? Wind fans fire maybe, Erm…lightning? I dunno that one yet...

Kieran knelt on the floor, his head just below the swooping beams of the elemental roulette projections. Being careful not to burn out his eyes by moving at the wrong time, he kept his head low whilst he cautiously stretched up both his palms to feel out the beams.

Another buzz of electrical energy arced across his hand and filled him with tingles, but with a concerted effort, he held firm and unmoving.

A manaless beam succeeded the electrical one, and then another beam flashed across his other hand, also manaless.

Due to previously absorbing a good amount of fire mana, this element resonated more naturally with Kieran's senses, allowing him to swiftly detect its blazing heat before the next beam even touched him.

So focused on memorising the corresponding symbol for fire and the door’s potential meaning, Kieran almost missed the delicate trace of hot mana that clung to his hand long after the beam moved on. He barely observed its touch for another second or two before fading away.

Unsure if his random idea might pay off, he held both his hands up in front of the largest cluster of passing beams. It took a little while, filled with various shocks and chilly sensations across his flesh before a unified heat fell upon both of his hands simultaneously, which prompted him to hurry.

Without waiting for the luckily timed beams to fade, Kieran took a deep breath, trying to focus on using his skill properly. Trembling hands held the mana and pulling into himself with the inhale, he coaxed the energy to seep into his hands a little. The beam moved on before he even finished breathing in and Kieran almost let go of his tenuous hold on the energy, sure he’d failed.

The gentle orange glow hovering about both of Kieran’s hands appeared as though a soft ember flared to life within each palm.

Did it work? “Damn, that looks cool” he exclaimed quietly.

A deep orange flame with forks of red light radiated freely from his upheld hands. The sight fascinated Kieran. He noticed the flickering light looked uncannily similar to the mana aura he’d seen before, but he also belatedly realised the heat was not at all painful to hold. In fact, it didn't feel anything less than the perfect, comfortable temperature.

“Oooooh, I should have shouted ‘flame on’ or something” Kieran almost laughed as he basked in the beautiful joy of mana once more.

The controlled flame clung to him in such a way that it gave him more ideas on how to throw fireballs in the future, but grudgingly, he put the notion aside for the millionth time today–There was a job to do and he couldn’t keep getting distracted by every cool new display of magic that came his way.

“Well, guess we’re trying fire first?” he told himself.

Realising he should do something before the mana burned itself away, he focused on the leftmost slot in the wall. Without much thought, he went for a random attempt at trial and error, overlapped his hands over the small, chiselled-out hole, and waited for something interesting to happen.

“Any second now…” he said and hoped the door was listening. But of course, nothing happened until the mana slowly fizzled out and the residual warmth faded from his hands.

Kieran figured it must require some other method as he lifted his empty hands away from the slot, before the stone could try to drain him of life again.

He instead paused as he sat back on his heels, eyes catching sight of a subtle ember red where his hands once covered the stone slot. Blinking rapidly didn’t clear away the view of heated orange stone inside the small hole, and he waited curiously to see what happened next.

The answer was nothing. The door continued its dazzling light show above him, undisturbed, and the first of the four slots remained underwhelmingly luminescent.

Okay, so maybe it needs more than just one dose?

Kieran reached up again into the passing beams above his head, mind focused on the elemental effects.

Cold, nope. Windy? Nope…Ouch...nope.

Warmth shone upon his left hand, and will a short breath he held the hot mana in place. Kieran waited for a matching sensation on his right palm, also, but received the shocking touch of the lightning element instead. Feeling experimental, he considered trying to hold the electrical mana in another hand for efficiency’s sake. Unfortunately, holding two very different types of energy on each hand simultaneously instead gave him a sinking feeling in his chest, followed by an instant fizzing reaction on both hands that stung his skin intensely. The mana on both hands crackled noisily, then puffed out with a cloud of smoke, completely gone.

“What the hell was that?” he yelped, shaking out his smoking hands.

“Are the two types just not compatible, or was it something more?”

With a solid sigh, Kieran reached back up to continue this process, deciding to play it smart instead of creatively trying to cut corners.

The next batch of fire mana he transferred with both hands set the slot to a bright orange burn that almost filled the hole entirely with heat. It took one more batch to saturate the entirety of the slot with this fire mana. Something unexpected happened with the delivery of this third batch, however, and it greatly surprised him when a shining, fire-coloured glyph burst to life on the wall surrounding his hands.

Channels shimmering with red and orange light flowed from the glyph he recognised as the upward-pointing branching lines that symbolised fire. These shimmering hot lines ran across the gateway's surface in a peculiar winding pattern that looked entirely unfinished, covering only a quarter of the available blank space.

“Oh? That definitely did something! Sweet” he exclaimed with mixed uncertainty and then joy.

Okay, okay. Now surely I just do that again for the other elements? Maybe not the electric next though, just in case.

For the next ten minutes, Kieran patiently knelt on the hard floor and waited for the correct elements to infuse into both of his hands together before he would try to transfer them into the slots. When he transferred ice mana into the second slot, it simply sizzled out in a cloud of steam. He mentally slapped himself for not realising fire would obviously destroy the ice mana. He'd played enough Pokemon back in the day to grasp make-believe elemental strengths and weaknesses.

It’s basic elemental bullshit, so it has to be the air or wind one next.

This assumption soon proved correct. The wind mana created strange swirling currents of air around his hand and as he forced it into the slot in the wall, it caused a slight breeze to emanate out and around the small notch, kicking up a little dust into the air. For some unknown reason, it took him five whole repetitions of this process in order to fill the aperture with wind mana. Whether this was due to his own lack of experience with this energy type or just the nature of the puzzle, he couldn’t even guess.

Thankfully, his thoughts got interrupted by a shining grey pattern that came to life across the door. The matching symbol of swirling, intersecting lines displayed clearly around the slot.

“Oooh, we’re halfway there…” he sang quietly

“Woah-oh! It's fire, then it's air!”

Kieran’s mood improved considerably with this next success, and he became more determined to finish this up as soon as possible in the hopes this puzzle might give him some idea why the hell he was sent back here.

“Okay, it's got to be ice next, surely. Wind helps make ice, and ice helps make lightning, then lightning can make a fire. Not the other way around, right?” Kieran told himself with a small degree of certainty.

If only this door used the five basic elements like in martial arts stories, then he’d find this much easier.

“Whatever, let's just try it”

Another few minutes and a pair of icy numb hands later, Kieran pulled his hands away to see the third slot filled to the brim with clear shards of ice. Only taking four batches of mana to summon the bright blue fractal glyph around the slot, he watched the slightly rigid lines of ocean blue mix between the bright orange and grey paths of energy.

The shimmering lines and glowing glyphs around the slots shone a multicoloured light out into the great hall. The vast array of lights had all but eliminated any lingering darkness near the great dias Kieran stood upon. As he looked out into the surrounding hall, he saw well past the closest layers of fallen pillars and mounds of rubble. The bright beams and radiant glow completely overpowered the torches simmering up on the stone columns above.

Kieran examined the great hall and its now visible gigantic scope. This huge, expansive dome of collapsing rock only made him feel more alone and vulnerable again, eerily similar to how he felt when he first awoke in the strange, dark dungeon. The nervous energy in his bones reminded him to hurry up.

No time to wait. Let's open up this gate.

Lightning danced across his fingers, requiring a little more effort to hold the dazzling blue-white light in place once the beamed passed on. Holding the mana in his palms caused arcs of light and tingling pain to jump unpredictably across every part of both hands.

Resisting the strong urge to clench his hands into tight fists, Kieran lay them firmly upon the only remaining dull stone slot left.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Once.

Twice.

On the third delivery from his increasingly numb and tired hands, the wall around the slot burst to life with white light in a jagged weblike symbol that looks eerily similar to simple human representations of lightning.

Kieran stepped back a few steps and waited in anticipation, watching the four slots all repeatedly glow in harmonious fluctuations. One would shine brighter, then dim almost in perfect tandem with the increased glow of the next element, looping repeatedly through all four. But other than creating an even more beautiful and complete light show upon the huge door, nothing seemed to be happening.

The remaining glyphs continuously danced aimlessly across the surface in their random order, the rings around the dias still glowed softly to illuminate the platform. Nothing appeared to have changed at all.

What am I missing? Was there something else going on?

Unsure of what he had to do next, Kieran drew closer to the door and cautiously placed his hands against the stone. Ignoring the strange tingling in his palms, he gave the firm barrier a quick shove, but it didn’t budge at all.

Quickly ducking to avoid a beam of light out of habit, Kieran reminded himself that the symbols for the four elements had already disappeared, so the beams shouldn’t actually pose any threat to him anymore.

so he let the lights dance over his chest and face, ready to jump back if he sensed any twinge of harmful mana within them.

The innocent beams of light simply drifted over him without any incident, and now that the wall had ceased its attempts to consume his life, he considered it relatively safe for examination.

Placing his hands flat against the wall, the tingling sensation returned immediately, and Kieran focused in on this unique feeling that was different to the electric buzzing, or the chill of the cold. His hands detected a peculiar resonance from inside the stone doors and he wondered if there might be some catalyst or extra thing he needed to initiate the next stage of this puzzle.

For now, he began his rhythmic breathing once again with the hope that his skill might be able to derive some kind of energy or reaction from the dazzling lightshow the door unendingly displayed. He focused on the heavy air all around, trying to recover any of the free-floating mana that had leaked out in his attempts to fill up the door.

Hmmm, what’s this?

It was so unexpected to him, the remnants of elemental mana that floated freely about him no longer held such a deep connection to the corresponding natural phenomenon they did when he first experienced them. Merely the faded leftovers of powerful forces of nature, they bore only a slight resemblance to their origin. But the one benefit of these weak traces of the elements is the ease with which Kieran could inhale them deep into his body with his breath of the soul.

And by god, did he inhale them. Leaning his hands against the wall for support, Kieran let his head drop slightly as he relaxed a little and only paid attention to each of his slow, powerful breaths that bellowed air in and out with each slow and forceful push or pull.

Without taking the time to segregate or filter out any of the various energies, Kieran found himself engulfing entire swathes of the four different energies he’d experienced so far. The fire mana had become so familiar to him that he didn’t even feel its heat as it took the initiative to enter his body first. The feeling was entirely natural to him as warm mana moved wherever his body wanted it to, spreading heat and filling the empty void of his manabody.

The wind mana came next. Feeding itself through him in gentle streams of delicately arranged strands that seemed to follow closely behind the fire. The mana diffused fully into his chest and then outwards. Agitating the present fire mana into a far more tumultuous torrent in such a manner that also made it burn brighter and hotter than before. Without even the time to consider why the fire mana was starting to roast him from the inside and make sweat run down his face, the next waves of elemental force rushed into him.

The cold sensation brought by ice mana forced its way through these vague pathways next. The frosty energy quenched the enraged inferno in his chest and cooled his limbs back to a tepid but comfortable warmth. That feeling of jumping into chilly water on a sweltering summer's day filled his entire body with immediate relief.

He barely understood what was happening to him as he leaned into the wall even harder to brace himself from the fluctuating waves of discomfort. The next breath he took pushed him over some kind of threshold for the erratic buzzing energy of lightning mana he'd also been ingesting.

Electrifying currents burst from his chest in every direction to fill his body's pathways. The jagged spears of white light refused to be slowed within these channels saturated by fire, wind, and ice mana. In a direct rebellion of the flowing harmony of power that these three energies merged to form, the fourth and final element would not be controlled. In fact, the lightning mana utterly refused to synchronise with the rest of the occupying energy.

The electrical energy surged through his body with wild volatility, forming a complete web-like circuit through which it looped repeatedly in erratic arcs. As it danced violently about his manabody, the rest of his mana started to drift along with this steady flow. The lightning mana corralled the peacefully blazing and frosty air in his veins to flow faster, and to be more chaotic by its very essence.

Kieran began to get a weird feeling throughout every inch of himself the moment all the mana began to move as one. Veins and muscles heated up and cooled sporadically in waves, and where lightning mana clashed especially fiercely with clustered patches of the other three manas, intense stabs of discomfort set him on edge. Whatever was happening, he hoped he could safely breathe his way through it, as he couldn’t remotely understand what was happening to him anymore.

Taking his next breath pulled a great deal of all four mana types into him, combining and adding to the already raging torrents of energies. This new batch of energy reacted unexpectedly with the chaotic mix of the four elements that already wreaked havoc on his flesh. Instead of mixing and joining the chaotic flow, the mana itself seized up inside his chest. And then, like oil in water, they separated from each other into four distinct little orbs of their corresponding energy.

These elemental orbs turned slowly at first, then quickly began to spin rapidly around each other, releasing a deep humming noise that scaled up in pitch as the speedy rotations became faster and faster, making Kieran's ears hurt from the screeching sound.

Kieran let out a single yell in agony before his throat closed up entirely, and the pain became so bad that his legs gave out next. From the increasing pitch buzzing inside his chest, he was almost certain he was about to explode into countless pieces like a perfect guide of what not to do when cultivating vast cosmic powers. He clutched at his chest, but the wet hole of meat he grabbed sent even more pain through him.

Excruciating lances of energy stabbed into every part of his body as he hunched down on his hands and knees. He constantly fought to breathe in more oxygen through his collapsed airways. The terrifying oscillations from inside his chest reached an ear-splitting screech that he feared might be the last thing he ever heard.

Kieran made to stand up again. He wanted to at least die on his feet if this was how he would end, unseen in a cold, dark tomb. But the four elements of mana moving as a cohesive unit seemed to be destroying his entire mana body as well as his physical body, and he couldn't regain proper control of his limbs.

Needles of light poked through the flesh on his arms, like somebody was shining a powerful torch through the pores of his skin. The light shone brighter, stabbing out from every corner of his body in a terrifying display of light. Trembling legs finally gave out for good and he dropped to his knees.

Kieran fell face-first into the stone door, unable to see any of those glyphs through the blinding light that shone from his flesh.

Though he couldn’t see the door anymore, it scraped across his face and his hands hard enough to let him know he’d fallen into it. On the hard contact, however, a strange surge of his energy flowed through his hands. The agony throughout his entire body began to leak out of him slowly at first, but after a few seconds, he could actively feel the pain lessening inside him. His mind was an absolute mess, a vague awareness of an uncomfortable torrent of...something, scorched endlessly out through his arms and into the stone.

Searing ice constantly burned and then froze his hands over and over where they locked against the wall. The flesh and muscles eroded, then regrew countless times before his tired eyes in what he could only assume to be a horrific nightmare in his delirious state. The flashing horror and agony continued for so long that he feared he might never awake from the dream.

He hung there in limbo between constant suffering and the release of death.

A deafening boom reverberated through space.

He couldn't understand what the noise was. Like the heavy crashing stomps of a mountainous titan, the sound began to beat again, and he discovered it came from inside him.

The light finally dimmed enough for him to see clearly. The great door still shone, directly before him, its symbols now arrayed in neat rows that would probably make sense to someone who could read them.

All Kieran could think about was that dissonant, roaring drum inside as it stirred something in his chest. Trying to look inside himself, past all the chaotic elemental energy that still violently clashed inside his body, he sensed something else.

With his waning focus turned inwards, he could see it now, and he could practically feel it as though it were a part of him. The small obsidian bead of strange energy sat buried deep inside the utmost centre of his chest, right where his grizzly wound originated from. The bead pulsed with a firm thrum, condensing slightly and sending faint waves of purple mist to coast throughout his flesh.

In this moment of observation, Kieran also noticed the bead had grown by a shocking amount of size too. No longer a small, dark pea-shaped dot of menacing energy, what sat there now was a flawlessly smooth orb of serene obsidian, the size of a golf ball, that emitted wafting purple mist with each contracted beat.

Continuing to observe this strange change for another moment, the orb expanded ever so slightly in his mind's eye. It tore a small amount of this four-element mana from the surrounding torrent, then consumed it wholly. The orb slightly contracted again to release another pulse of mist.

With each thump, and each wave of purple mist exuded, Kieran’s body regained some feeling of autonomy. The unbearable pain faded amidst those calming waves of violet energy. And the might of this foreign substance miraculously caused the elemental mana to become incredibly tame and stable, almost completely docile even, before the mysterious power of the orb.

The relief it gave him finally allowed his body to relax little by little.

Letting out a deep sigh, Kieran finally took some refreshing breaths and tried to calm his racing heart.

“That…was fucking close….” he huffed. Only to be distracted by a sudden flash of familiar blue across his face.

Congratulations!

You successfully tempered your mana-body with the essence of The Four Natural Elements.

Few ever contain these laws within themselves in such a fundamental manner.

May your Path take you ever higher.

"But...so fucking worth it!" he said with a smile of relief at the unexpected news.

Due to Kieran's endless ingesting of fiction that dealt with magic, he was under the illusion the only natural elements would be earth, wind, fire, and air. His borderline arrogance from wielding superior knowledge was once more dashed by the system message's confirmation of what he'd done. But also that he had managed something truly amazing, yet exceedingly dangerous.

I think I have that damn black orb to thank this time too...

Despite assuming the little thing wanted to kill him so many times before, this mysterious orb and accompanying mist caused him a great deal of pain before. Remarkably though, the anomalous object changed drastically and now appeared extremely eager to help him instead. Whether this was due to an intended function or just some symbiotic desire to keep its host alive, he couldn't guess. But the fact it had saved him from certain death and was even right this second still helping him to tame and quell the raging elemental energies inside him. He would not forget the crucial help he received.

I can't believe I owe my life to some miniature version of a Palantir. Just who designed this crazy shit?

Resolving to dig into the nature of this powerful, alien orb at a later time, Kieran sat down on the hard ground to rest and tried to determine his next move, all while the chaotic energies inside him took their sweet time to reach a safe level of stability. He made a sickening expression as he looked down, only now noticing the ridiculous amount of blood in varying states of dryness down his front. With a sad tut, he finally took off his once tacky vest, somewhat ashamed of himself for keeping it on so long when it didn't have a single speck of green visible anymore. Not to mention the long-since caked-over decal of a cartoon lantern on the front. Using the cleanest part of the ragged cloth, he wiped away as much of the blood on his chest as possible.

Any indicator that he once bore a gruesome wound on his chest had long since vanished. He could only assume the veritable storm of mana that passed through him just now was responsible for this miraculous regeneration. The subdued crackling in his veins told him he might still be in great need of the healing effect of this mana.

Grateful to just be back to some level of normalcy, Kieran refocused on staying cool, calm, and collected, at least until he could sense the violent mana completely running its course.

After several long minutes, boredom pulled his thoughts away from the enhanced mana that flowed throughout his body. Kieran took up some light breathing just to keep his mind adequately occupied as he sat in the flickering lights of the doorway. With a force of will, he resisted the natural urge to ingest more of the elemental mana that floated about him, for now at least.

And definitely not while his body was still feeling sore and tingly from the absurd amount of energy he'd inadvertently taken in.

Kieran looked about to check for potential enemies and was happy to see the space just as empty and filled with rubble as when he first arrived back in this area. All the shining lights and burning torches actually illuminated a larger majority of this enormous domed structure than he first realised. He scanned about, mostly seeing dead spaces full of rubble mounds and collapsed pillars. Kieran wondered who could have even built such a vast, underground space with so few structural supports, not to mention the reason they would undertake such a task.

The veritable mountain of earth and stone they must have carried all the way to the surface was mind-boggling to him.

The system just calls this place a dungeon, but it's more like a great tomb...or shrine, maybe.

"The real question is, who is this for? And why the pretty mana-sucking doorway to nowhere?"

Rocks clashed together loudly in the distance, the unexpected noise carried over to him by deep echoes. Someone or something had disturbed pieces of rubble on the far side of the great hall. Kieran's heart beat a little faster at the unexpected sound, and he rose to his feet to get a better view of the distant areas.

As soon as he stood up and looked into the darkness, past the nearby pillars, his eyes drew to something all the way across to the darkest outer regions. Three tiny flecks of orange light bobbed merrily as they traced a path between two huge mounds. Kieran's breath caught in his lungs.

"Orcs? Not now, man" he whispered.

They were heading right in his direction.