Alshifa worshipped no gods other than the Great Makers, and the Great Makers crafted shelters instead of temples—Dahlia had never set foot in a temple before, so as she’d expected, she simply couldn’t find the right hallway to throw herself down.
Beeswax candles burned above and bells rang from shadowy corners. The sandstone temple was a hundred times bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. She’d trudged through the front gate and saw only one straight hallway to the end, thinking it was just her luck that maybe she wouldn’t get lost, but room three-one-eight didn’t mean it was on the third floor, or the first floor, or on any of the floors; at the end of the first hallway were stairs on the left and right, leading down into the underground, and the moment she went down was the moment she truly lost herself in this winding labyrinth of a temple.
Zero ventilation. Endless straight hallways that led wherever which way. Dim candlelights and ear-grating bells. Stairs that went up, down, back to previous hallways. Twenty beautifully ornate wooden doors lined each side of every hallway, and on some, there were signboards with room numbers scribbled on. On others, there were only empty signs, and she felt sick just thinking about pushing them open. It was like some sort of void lay behind those doors, and if she opened them carelessly, she’d be sucked in, never to be seen again.
It wasn’t just her who was obviously confused about where their assigned room was. She’d been walking around for twenty-five minutes, and along the way, she must’ve passed a hundred other participants scratching the back of their heads. Most of them were panting and out of breath as though they’d been wandering down here for days, but… that couldn’t be true, could it? The gathering point for the exam only opened this morning, didn’t it?
Kari?
Hello?
Are you okay?
[...]
No response.
Kari had been quiet since she stepped foot into the temple, and a part of her shuddered at the thought of being discovered with an Altered Hexsteel System already in her neck. She’d been told to keep Kari quiet, but maybe there was something in the temple jamming the little worm? Disrupting its functions somehow? Whatever the case, she was truly alone down in these halls, and no matter how far she walked, she just couldn’t seem to find room three-one-eight.
Maybe this is part of the exam, she thought, chewing her lips as she glanced at each signboard only briefly, heading towards the stairs at the end of the hallway once again. What good is a Hasharana at clearing out bug infestations if they can’t even find a room they’ve been assigned to?
With each step she took, her heart grew heavier and heavier. There had to be a trick behind the never-ending stairs and underground levels. She’d descended at least sixteen levels by now; the Hasharana who’d sent her into the temple told her she had to be in her room by thirty minutes, so she must be expected to do something drastic in order to reach it.
She paused in the middle of an empty hallway, raised her antennae, and swerved them around with her eyes closed. She didn’t know what she was looking for—she’d already tried her antennae many times before, but just one more time. One more time couldn’t hurt.
When her antennae failed to even give her a push in the right direction, she sighed and knelt into a little ball, hugging her knees with all four arms.
Have I already failed?
If I don’t get to my room in one minute, am I just going to fail?
What if I just open one of the numbered rooms and ask the people inside?
The Hasharana who’d sent her in had explicitly told her not to talk to anyone—most likely, this labyrinth was part of the exam—but would the Hasharana even know if she just pushed a door open to quickly exchange hand gestures with another participant? Looking to the left at the door numbered two-two-one, she peeked at the slit beneath the door, trying to see if there was any light behind it…
…
And then she frowned, looking up at the sign again.
And then she looked around at the other sign along the hallway, noticing all of the signs on the left were already numbered, while all of the signs on the right were unnumbered.
And then she noticed cold, blue light only seeped out from under the slits of the doors on the right.
There were no lights coming from behind the numbered doors on the left; there were sandstone walls right behind those doors, and she realised, even without pulling them open, that they were doors that’d lead her nowhere.
Maybe…
Rubbing her eyes, she stood up and walked towards the door to her immediate right, feeling sick and dizzy the moment she approached it. The blue light behind the door was humming, threatening her to stay back, and when she hovered her hand over the doorknob, she immediately retched.
Nope, nope. Not like this. Coughing and hacking, she scowled at the empty sign next to the door and slapped a palm over it, trying to remember how to write ‘three-one-eight’ in the Sharaji tongue. It’s like… this.
Hastily, she carved the numbers onto the signboard, and with only ten, maybe twenty seconds left on the invisible clock, she forced herself to grab the doorknob and yank it open.
The blue light vanished in an instant, and she didn’t even turn to see beastly monstrosity was barreling down the hallway to clear out any of the participants who couldn’t find their room in time—she threw herself into her room, landed on her stomach, and kicked the door shut all in the same motion.
She slid a good few metres across the waxy wooden floor, and eventually came to a squeaky halt in the centre of the room.
… Whoa.
The room was as spacious as Tavern Emparatoria—cosy wooden floorboards, gently glowing firefly lamps in the corners of the room, honeycomb-shaped glass panes covering every inch of the walls and ceilings, and most importantly, a dozen fluffy sofas she just wanted to immediately throw herself onto. It didn’t even register to her that there was a giant blue dahlia drawn across the floorboards in the centre of the room until she scrambled to her feet, and when she realised, she immediately took a step back to blink; the Hasharana wore flower-patterned cloaks, after all.
It was probably just a coincidence that she was assigned to ‘Team Dahlia’, or maybe whoever had allocated the teams thought it’d be funny to stick her here.
The real coincidence, however, were the two people who were already lounging around on the circle of sofas around her.
One was a giant of a man with his bare arms corded with thick muscles, his face cut with harsh lines. His deep red and gold tunic clung to his massive torso, embroidered with scale-like patterns, and a white sash crossed his chest with half a dozen gourds strapped on. His loose trousers were black and lined with rings of crimson fur, flaring at the ankles, and his deep red eyes stared into her soul as he rested one arm across the hollow head of a giant stag beetle; the empty black shell was waxed and glistening, and the twin horns were so sharp she had no idea what its purpose even was.
The other was a terrifically short girl with amber chitin plates scattered across her skin, and even if she made an attempt to conceal them with her mantle, Dahlia would’ve instantly recognised the glassy cicada wings.
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She immediately pointed back at Dahlia, mouth agape.
“Radish girl,” she said, and it took Dahlia a moment to register the Alshifa tongue.
“Radish thief,” Dahlia replied, pointing back at her in the Sharaji tongue. “You’re… I thought you were lying when you said you were–”
The honeycomb glass panes on the walls rippled with blue light, and suddenly a voice coughed through the walls, vibrating straight into her eardrums.
“Testing, testing, one two three,” a lady muttered, and all three of them in the room snapped their heads towards the blurry silhouette on the other side of the glass; it was like they were staring through a window into another room, but Dahlia knew there wasn’t a room behind those panes. The lady clad in red and black beetle armour wasn’t really there, and the bow she held in her hands wasn’t real, either. “All of you can hear me, right? The speakers are working? If so, make yourself comfortable on one of the sofas. This won’t be long, but you’d want to sit down for it nevertheless.”
A pause.
Silence.
Then the lady looked straight at Dahlia, and the image cleared to reveal a pair of sharp, crimson eyes staring right at her.
“I’m talking to you, girl from room three-one-eight. Sit down. The details of the first stage of the Hasharana Entrance Exam will begin shortly.”
Dahlia needed no telling twice. She’d no idea how the lady could tell she was still standing, but between the endless hallways, the teleporting doors, and the honeycomb glass walls that could seemingly connect two rooms across space and time, she felt she was completely out of her depth—so she picked a soft velvet sofa far from the beetle man and the cicada girl, patting her lap as she tried to put herself at ease.
The archer lady on the other side of the glass waited for a moment before humming with satisfaction. She took her seat on a sofa identical to the one Dahlia was on, and it was only now that Dahlia realised the lady was in a team room of her own, just like all of them.
Was the lady actually somewhere close by in this temple?
“... Welcome, participants, to the thirtieth Hasharana Entrance Exam,” the lady said, sighing as she kicked her legs across her sofa and laid on her back. “I’m ranked eleventh of the Arcana Hasharana, the Sun. You may also know me as the Sun Shooter. I’ll be the proctor for the first stage of the exam, so here’s to another fruitful year with at least five passing candidates. Without further ado, allow me to present the full history of the Hasharana as a wandering bug-slaying organisation, beginning with the appearance of the Worm Mage in Year Sixty–”
The Sun suddenly blurred, and Dahlia frowned as a small ruckus came from the other side of the glass—it sounded like someone else walked into the lady’s room, started talking, and the lady shouted back, telling the new arrival to sit in the corner.
A moment of awkward rustling and clicking sounds later, the image refocused, and the Sun was sitting upright with her bow in her lap.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, coughing into her fist. “A cockroach just crawled into the room. I had to dispose of him quickly–”
“Get on with the explanation already, Jia Yin,” a man interrupted from the side of the room, just a bit out of sight. “Also, where’s my second volume of ‘Web of a Thousand Eyes’? I swore I left it here just ten minutes ago–”
“Shove it, roach.” The Sun reached behind her quiver for an arrow, and then she chucked it full-force at the man who’d interrupted her. Sand trickled from the ceiling and onto Dahlia’s shoulder as a distant boom resounded; the Sun herself resumed smiling at Dahlia. “As some or most of you may have already heard, we’ve enlisted the help of the Empress of the Attini Empire for the construction of the first stage’s venue. It is a giant fungi forest at the back of the city, and that is where all nine hundred and sixty of you will be staying for the next month.”
Then the left half of the glass wall rippled, and it was as though it connected to another view—this one of a vast, vibrant, sunlit mushroom forest, where the fungi stalks were as tall as tiny mountains and foliage was as dense as a spider’s web.
The Sun shuffled to the right, gesturing at the view next to her with an arrow. “The Empress made a gargantuan arena, so we’ve released about three thousand giant bugs in the forest alongside two Mutant-Classes of the same species,” she said plainly. “The rules are simple: currently, there are three hundred and twenty teams of three, but only two teams can pass. In order to make it to the second stage, your team must kill at least one Mutant before the time limit is up. It’s first come first serve. You can kill both Mutants so only your team passes, or you can kill your teammates and the other teams as well if you think they’re only going to get in your way—needless to say, we don’t really care what you do, and we won’t interfere even if you’re about to be killed by the Mutants. We just want at least one person making it to the second stage this year.”
She paused for a moment.
“If anyone wants to back out of the exam, now is the time. Just exit through the door behind you, and you will be transported back to the front of the temple.”
Dahlia gulped, stealing peeks at the cicada girl and the beetle man, but the two of them were dead-eyed and bored out of their minds; they looked like they couldn’t wait for the Sun to finish talking.
Who are they, anyways?
Where are they from?
I’ve never seen their clothes before–
“Cool.” The Sun clapped her hands all of a sudden, making Dahlia jolt. “The teams have now been whittled down to only seventy-five, and that’s… wow. Exactly two hundred and twenty-five participants. So all of you are in teams of three.” She paused for yet another moment, squinting at something past the edges of the window. “Finally, for some extra rules and details and stuff… you’ll be warped out of the forest the moment your team kills a Mutant, your entire team will pass even if only one person actually works to kill a Mutant, and for the bonus challenge—because I’m the one proctoring the first stage this year—there’ll be an additional obstacle that we’ve never introduced before. It’ll be on par with the two Mutants, so… that’s basically it, right? Did I miss anything?”
The man’s muffled voice travelled through the glass again, though he was still out of sight. “Here’s a tip before we let all of you enter the venue: you can kill your teammates and the other participants, but I’d recommend not doing so. For these two Mutants, it’s best if you work together and–”
“Can it, roach. It’s my exam, and I decide if they should get any tips,” the Sun grumbled, throwing a pillow at the man. “Anyways, if you’re ready, step through the wormhole to your right… to your left. You’ll be warped straight to the fungi forest courtesy of the Worm God, who’s not here with us, but he’s probably still listening to this one way or the other.”
And, right on cue, the left side of the honeycomb glass wall shattered to let in a blast of warm, earth-scented air.
Dahlia’s eyes immediately widened. It was the same sensation as when she'd written the room number on the sign outside, and the world beyond the door changed to let her in.
How does that even–
“You have one month to kill the Mutants,” the Sun said, standing and groaning and stretching her waist as she walked away from the glass. “Best of luck to all of you, and… try to work with each other, okay?”
With that, the glass panes on the right turned fully opaque, and only the ‘wormhole’ to the fungi forests on the left remained.
The cicada girl and the beetle man had been silent throughout, and they maintained their silence as they both got up from their sofas. It was almost comical seeing how tiny the girl was when she was standing side-by-side with the man, but both of them were giving off cold, standoffish auras that made Dahlia shiver—they weren't going to kill each other right off the bat, right?
… No.
She wouldn't let them fight.
If it came down to it, she'd stop both of them and–
“I am Muyang, fourth son of the Firegourd Wu Clan,” the man said, closing his eyes as he bowed at Dahlia and the girl slightly. “With great respect, I eagerly await walking this shared path with the two of you. May our collaboration bring about boundless wisdom.”
“I’m Emilia,” the girl said, scratching her ear awkwardly as she looked between Muyang and Dahlia. “I’m not looking to kill anybody. Papa will kill me if he knew I took a human down on the path to becoming a bug-slayer, so…” She winked at Dahlia, pulling a half-hearted apologetic grin onto her face. “Forget about the radish thing, okay? I’ll make it up to you by carrying you through this first stage!”
Dahlia recovered quickly; folding her hands before her as she dipped into a small bow as well.
“I-I’m Dahlia, of the Alshifa Undertown,” she stammered. She was so, so incredibly relieved deep inside that she seemed to have decent teammates; she didn’t know what she’d do if she had to fight them both to get them to work together. “I also… don’t want to kill humans… so I hope we get along. Companionship.”
Muyang acknowledged her with a polite nod. “You are Dahlia of ‘Team Dahlia’? Fate has indeed smiled upon this meeting, and I trust it will lead to a most auspicious journey ahead."
“Uh… yes. Good to meet you, too.” It was Dahlia’s turn to scratch her head, looking at the ‘wormhole’ pointedly. “Now, don’t we have to… go through that thing before it–”
“Yep! We’re going now!”
For a girl her size, Emilia was surprisingly strong. She grabbed Dahlia by the collar, then wrangled the horn of Muyang’s giant beetle shell forward, dragging all three of them through the wormhole before it could close on them—and it was like Dahlia immediately stepped foot in another world where the the air was thick with a damp, earthy musk, clinging to her skin like a second layer.
Massive hundred-metre-tall mushrooms surrounded them on all sides, and the moment the glowing circle that was the wormhole winked shut behind them, her antennae tingled.
… Danger.
And she looked up to see the shadow of a colossal moth, soaring just above the mushroom caps.