If you stood before a rail with a switch in front of you, that could change the path of an oncoming train onto another path, with five people tied to the train’s original path and only one on the…
Okay, everyone knows the trolley problem. Apparently, the Wyrmgod did, too, as Jake was presented with one that was pretty much a magical carbon copy where he could choose who to teleport away from an incoming monster horde. As for Jake’s choice?
Why not just kill the monsters?
Which is what he did.
Jake didn’t know if the system didn’t like that or something, as, in the very next story, Jake was represented with a very similar scenario. However, this time, he was on a whole other planet operating a teleporter where he could either choose to let the story run its course or teleport a bigger group if he personally intervened.
As for Jake’s choice? He did nothing.
See, he didn’t really see this as a legitimate trolley problem, the same as back on Earth. He felt It was more like one of those modified ones, where you got told that the one person you killed to save five actually had the cure to cancer in their head, and you were now a monster who had doomed millions to die due to your decision. Of course, Jake didn’t know this was the case, but he also didn’t know it wasn’t, so he just let the character who was in charge of teleporting do his thing, assuming he knew better.
Ultimately, Jake didn’t really see why he should care much which group was saved either way. He didn’t know who they were, and if he was to make a purely utilitarian judgment call, he lacked the information to do that. What if the smaller group he saved were all C-grades with good future prospects, while the larger group was filled with F and E-grades who had a better chance of randomly becoming Transcendents than reaching D-grade?
So, with all that in mind, Jake remained passive when he couldn’t directly interfere to change the situation to something he thought was better. If he could reveal his true power to save people, he saw no reason not to, but if he had to make these weird moral choices, he chose not to engage. He was aware that in itself was a choice, but it was one he stuck to.
There was one of these trolley-problem stories where Jake did choose what to do. It was one where he was riding a space shuttle that was crashing toward a star, and he had to decide who could evacuate in escape pods. Jake himself was the captain in this one and the person who had been flying the spaceship when he had fucked up and hit an asteroid before Jake entered the story.
With only a total of fifteen escape pods but twenty-five people on board, ten people had to stay and die. During the story, he had gotten to know all the other crew members as they tried to repair the spaceship before it was too late, and when the final choice of who to escape appeared, Jake knew what to do as he took control.
“Well, to say we’re fucked is an understatement… only fifteen of us are getting out of here, which means ten will have to say. So, let me first ask first… any volunteers for dying?” Jake questioned before he did something none of the crew members had expected as he raised his hand.
Jake had learned something during this story he genuinely hadn’t known. That entire thing where the captain goes down with his ship was not a thing in the multiverse. In fact, it tended to be the opposite. Seeing as the captain was often the person with the highest level, he would often be evacuated first as he held more value. A high-level captain could have more value than the entire spaceship itself, so to lose both was just unnecessary in the eyes of most.
However, Jake didn’t agree with this. In his eyes, the captain – himself - in this case, had been the one who had fucked up. He had hit an asteroid due to his own incompetence and gotten at least nine others killed, so of course, he had to take responsibility or at least stay on the spaceship till the very end and try to fix the situation he had created.
Anyway, Jake volunteering to go down with the ship also made five others decide to stay behind. As they did this, Jake suddenly got an odd feeling as he stared at one of the crew members who had decided to leave. He got the feeling she needed to stay… so he made that happen.
“The remaining four who stay will be decided by chance to make it fair,” Jake said, as he proceeded to use his Bloodline to entirely rig the game of chance to make that one specific woman stay with him and the other volunteers. She looked devastated when she realized she had lost, but still accepted the result as fifteen people took the escape pods, leaving ten of them in a spaceship that couldn’t fly, barreling toward a star. They still had a bit less than two days till impact, but things were definitely less than stellar.
Jake learned a day later, when they were getting closer to the star, why his guts had told him to keep the female crew member who was one of the engineers. With excitement, she ran to him and said she had found a potential solution to allow them to survive. By blowing up one of the engines, they could take advantage of a storm of space mana that was approaching, pushing them just enough to enter orbit around the star, to then blow up a second engine to set free them from orbit again and send them flying home.
It was super risky and straight out of some very unrealistic space movie, but Jake was entirely on board. This was one of the stories where Jake’s own power didn’t do shit. Something he had noticed was a general theme. Either power didn’t matter at all, as everything else was just too damn powerful compared to any C-grade, or everyone was E and D-grades. In fact, Jake hadn’t seen a single C-grade even after doing more than fifty of the stories.
Anyway, in a twist that wasn’t super surprising, the engineer’s plan turned out to work, and in the epilogue, Jake saw his captain character and the rest of the crew miraculously survive. It did also show his character getting scolded by his superiors for not escaping in a pod, but ultimately, he was still hailed as a hero along with the engineer for “great decision making.”
The lesson Jake learned from this test was to always trust his gut and that rigging a game of chance was acceptable as long as it was for the greater good. Ah, who was he kidding?
Jake hadn’t learned shit during all these damn tests of his character or whatever. The novelty had long worn off, and while he did his best to get engaged in the stories, some of them proving genuinely interesting due to the setting, his attention span was waning. Most of them just weren’t that engaging or interesting to him, and he felt like he was wasting time. Moreover, most stories took over a week, and at that point, he had already spent over a year inside the Challenge Dungeon with nothing to show for it.
Stories from there just felt slower and slower. Soon Jake had done sixty, then seventy, eighty, ninety… Jake had no idea when it would end until finally, he reached story number one hundred. This story in itself didn’t have anything hugely enjoyable about it, but as he entered it, Jake felt like he was finally approaching the end of his suffering.
Once the story was done and the princess was not saved from a dragon that just turned out to have a massive crush on her, he finally went somewhere that wasn’t just another random story.
Jake found himself within a white void – on a side note, the system really liked white voids for these kinds of situations – where nothing happened for a few seconds. Finally, a system message appeared before him, making him sigh in relief.
Congratulations! You have completed the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon!
Evaluation performance…
Thank fucking Villy, Jake thought to himself. For a second there, he was afraid the white void was just the setup for another story or something. Jake was sure happy to finally be out and was already looking forward to the next Challenge Dungeon, as it could only be better than this.
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But, before that, he still needed his final evaluation. One that he had to admit he was kind of nervous about. It had to be reiterated, but Jake had no idea how he had done or what he had even been tested on. So, with bated breath, he waited until suddenly, a Grand Achievement popped up in front of him.
Grand Achievement earned: Successfully completed the Test of Character with an excellent performance. You have shown a consistent sense of justice, character, and a high level of self-belief. However, you also displayed a lack of dedication to certain Paths and a lack of interest in understanding stories, even when doing so could prove beneficial to you personally. Throughout the test, you have shown no growth or regression in your character but remained wholly consistent. 49.108 Nevermore Points earned. Due to completing a Grand Achievement, you will receive a 10% multiplier of all Nevermore Points at the final calculation.
Reading it over carefully, Jake could honestly only shrug. It said he had an excellent performance, so that was good, right? Also, at least it called him consistent, even if it also recognized he was bored. But was it really that bad to not show dedication toward something that he really didn’t like doing? Sure, it said he didn’t display interest even when doing so could have benefitted him, but it wasn’t like missing some benefits here and there would ruin him. He could always just make up for any losses elsewhere while doing something he actually found engaging.
Jake knew one of the reasons he had kind of hated the Challenge Dungeon was simply due to how “complicated” it was. He liked to keep things simple, and some grand social experiment mixed with a personality test wasn’t something he liked at all. If it had told him how to perform, he would have taken it as a challenge, but what even was the challenge in this Challenge Dungeon? He still didn’t fucking know.
But… oh well, he had at least gotten some more Nevermore Points and another multiplier, so that was nice to see. With this, he got his points above nine hundred thousand, rapidly closing in on a million.
Nevermore Points: 907.602
There was also no title this time around, and from the looks of it, there were no levels either. This did make him question if any of these Challenge Dungeons even gave experience, but surely, the Minaga one had to, right?
Anyway, Jake was complaining a lot internally, but it wasn’t all bad. Especially not when he got the other reward from the Challenge Dungeon besides the points.
Right in front of him appeared what looked like a single blank page ripped from a book. At first, Jake was confused, but when he used Identify on it, a small smile snuck onto his lips.
[High-Quality Storybook Page (Unique] – The page of an unknown storybook containing empty Records of a tale yet untold. Allows you to infuse the Records of a skill into the storybook page. Ripping a page infused with the Records of a skill will grant you an opportunity to upgrade the skill. The effect is lower the higher the rarity of the skill, and the page will not accept Records of certain skills. It will have no effect if used on skills at or above legendary rarity. Skill upgrades are not guaranteed.
Requirements: C-grade. Soulbound
Now, this was something actually useful. Items like this were incredibly rare to find in the multiverse and would allow him to potentially even upgrade skills where Jake wasn’t sure where to take it. Yep, definitely a good one.
Do you wish to exit the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon?
No further actions can be taken within this Challenge Dungeon.
Jake, standing in the void, sighed, happy he was finally done with the damn Test of Character Challenge Dungeon. Looking up, he stared straight at where he knew someone was observing him. Definitely the Wyrmgod recording.
“I give that damn Challenge Dungeon a two out of ten. It’s shit. The novelty quickly wears off, and then you are just doing chores. Definitely one to go back to the drawing board with. And if you say that my not liking it is proof I shouldn’t have gotten a better evaluation, then I guess my character just sucks, and I’ll happily accept that if it means not going to that shithole again,” Jake said, giving a very fair and accurate review of the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon.
If they wanted to do a damn live documentary of his life, he should at least have the right to get a few jabs in, right?
Ultimately, he just decided to mentally write off the entire Challenge Dungeon. Yeah, it had just been a place for him to waste some time while recovering from the Colosseum of Mortals, nothing more, nothing less, and it wasn’t like it hadn’t still been efficient when it came to making Nevermore Points, and he even got that storybook page. Yep, it was definitely not a waste of time. Definitely not…
Seriously, what kind of person would like that shitty place?
----------------------------------------
Jacob appeared in the white void, a pang of sadness hitting him as he realized the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon was over. He had genuinely enjoyed the entire experience, and despite it giving him no levels, he felt like he had progressed plenty. The Paths he had seen, the fates he had divined, and the worlds he had experienced were invaluable. To stand in the shoes of another person and truly experience life from their point of view was simply invaluable, and something he would gladly do again if given the chance.
He had barely considered what rewards the dungeon would offer, so he was taken aback when the system presented him with his final evaluation.
Grand Achievement earned: Successfully completed the Test of Character with a near-perfect performance. You have shown yourself to be a guide, a teacher, an observer, or whatever role you needed to adapt. You have proven you can understand every story and guide it toward an ideal future, your every decision guided by comprehension, empathy, and logic, your thought process adapting to each scenario. Throughout the Test of Character, you have grown and adapted to every challenge, never once faltering. 88.201 Nevermore Points earned. Due to completing a Grand Achievement, you will receive a 20% multiplier of all Nevermore Points at the final calculation.
Reward gained: Test of Character: Near-perfect Empath.
Test of Character: Near-Perfect Empath – You have proven yourself a Near-perfect Empath during the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon, truly displaying compassion and understanding of every story, earning more than 80.000 Nevermore Points. Only one Nevermore Challenge Dungeon title can be held at a time. +175 to all stats.
Not to mention the odd page he got when everything else was said and done…
[Exceptional Storybook Page (Unique] – The page of an unknown storybook containing empty Records of a tale yet untold. Allows you to infuse the Records of a skill into the storybook page. Ripping a page infused with the Records of a skill will grant you an opportunity to upgrade the skill. The effect is lower the higher the rarity of the skill, and the page will not accept Records of certain skills. It will have no effect if used on skills at or above mythical rarity. Skill upgrades are not guaranteed.
Requirements: C-grade. Soulbound
Despite his gratitude for these rewards, Jacob admittedly would have gladly traded them for another chance to do the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon. He was not a contender for the Leaderboards anyway, and getting more power through titles and such mattered little to him or his Path.
With gratitude for being allowed the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon, he left with a smile on his face, hoping others would find as much enjoyment in the experience as he had.
--
Arnold appeared in the white void, having completed the Challenge Dungeon with an approach he deemed the best. Besides that, he didn’t really have many thoughts of the roughly last two years of his life, as he hadn’t really done anything he deemed especially noteworthy. This did make him display some surprise as he raised a single eyebrow when he got the final evaluation.
Grand Achievement earned: Successfully completed the Test of Character with an unquestionable performance. You have shown yourself to be an analyst of all stories. Every story was approached with logic, and every decision was made only according to the data provided to maximize benefits for your character. Your own personal beliefs or sentiments never once influenced your decision-making, allowing you to always remain impartial. Impartial to forever only make decisions that benefitted the character you inhabited, with no regard or care for any other living being. Throughout the Test of Character, you have been a beacon of consistency. 88.758 Nevermore Points earned. Due to completing a Grand Achievement, you will receive a 20% multiplier of all Nevermore Points at the final calculation.
Reward gained: Test of Character: Unquestionable Analyst.
Test of Character: Unquestionable Analyst – You have proven yourself an unquestionable analyst during the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon by displaying an analytical and logical mind that defies comprehension, earning more than 80.000 Nevermore Points. Only one Nevermore Challenge Dungeon title can be held at a time. +175 to all stats.
What’s more was the Exceptional Storybook Page he received, which would allow him to upgrade one of his research-related skills that usually had a too time-consuming progression path. This would save him a lot of time and allow him to proceed more quickly with some of the experiments he had hypothesized but lacked the means to adequately collect empirical data and form a proper theory. As for his thoughts on the Test of Character itself?
In truth, he didn’t really have any. He didn’t believe his own thoughts on the matter had any bearing on the actions he had taken, after all. However, he could admit he did find some level of happiness with his gains. Especially after the entirely lacking performance he displayed in the Colosseum of Mortals, which had proven to be an entirely unproductive endeavor.