We had gathered on top of a nearby rooftop overlooking the last obstacle in this stage of the training. All that was left to do was to enter an unassuming door guarded by a half dozen of those giant creatures. They seemed to be on high alert for any signs of intruders, and I doubted that Bishop would have enough mana to daze all six of them at once. Still, I could think of at least a dozen different ways to clear this trail, even more, if they were willing to take certain risks. I was slightly interested to see how they would tackle this problem themselves.
“How do we pass through that?” Someone said to me, I had to concentrate to realize that it was Myra who said it in her irritating voice. “Sir guide, please advise us!”
Every cell in my body seemed to want me to scream at them for asking for all the solutions to be handed to them. It was a training stage where they were supposed to grow as Aspirants, yet all they had been doing was following along with my instructions whenever possible. A small part of me knew that it was partly due to my various Charisma passives making them so... dependent. I'm not sure what these attributes did, not when I only had a brief explanation from Noe, but I was starting to suspect that as people increased these stats past a certain threshold, more unique manifestations of their characteristics would appear.
After all, there was no way that our growth would only be linear, otherwise, we'd probably need billions of points to even approach the likes of Q or some of his senior staff, even with the help of great classes. It was like there were distinct tiers of these attribute stats, and unfortunately, my Charisma was so high and it made these people brain-dead when they were near me. That was great if I needed to manipulate people, less so when I needed them to think independently. I'll have to figure out exactly how the Trash Matrix's growth system worked when I was done here, and a way to control my stupid abilities. But I had to finish things up with these damned Aspirants first. I sighed.
Myra at least had the decency to devise some basic plans here and then, but I couldn’t say anything positive about the other two. Alina couldn’t act at all without being instructed to, and Bishop barely had any brain cells in that thick head of his for normal thinking, let alone complex planning. They were hopeless.
But I forced myself to care about them, if for no other reason than because these three represented the human Aspirant population as a whole. Noe was still using my experience here as a guideline for her operations with the rest of Pandora’s population. Plus, on a more personal level, I still required their existence for the Trial and for Jae-Hyun’s plans to take fruition.
Logically, I knew that I had every reason to try my absolute best to ensure Myra and her party survived this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. The three Aspirants before me were so limited in their abilities, both physically and mentally. They had no greater purpose in their lives other than their continued survival. They didn’t even realize that they were just being used as nothing more than expendable resources by a cooperation that they didn’t even know existed.
But none of that was fundamentally the fault of the Aspirants here. I knew that, and I also knew that people like Jae-Hyun, Vadeem, and Noel existed that showcased how much potential the other could have. Better yet, although Myra, Alina, and Bishop were woefully lacking when compared to the Abyss guild, they had learned and adapted remarkably well since I entered the stage. They needed to be handheld every step of the way, but they took every piece of advice I gave them to heart and showed that they could implement that advice in a practical setting as well.
All in all, there shouldn’t be anything that I was unhappy about at this particular moment. I wasn’t sure why I was so agitated lately, but whatever was causing it was getting progressively worse.
“Um, Mr. Guide?” Alina asked, “Sorry, are you not feeling well? You’ve been spaced out for a while now.”
I refocused my attention back on the matter at hand and did my best to ignore the uneasy feeling welling up in the pit of my stomach. Regardless of what I was feeling, what was important was to complete the task I set myself, I could worry about these weird changes in me later. And plus, it wasn’t like it was the first time my damned emotions went awry, I was all too used to that during those horrible days in the darkness.
“I’m fine,” I answered, doing my best to keep the scorn out of my voice, “Just thinking about how well you three have improved since I first met you. Hard to imagine it’s the same party that was running away from the mutants.”
Myra chuckled with a slight blush on her face, “I know… that wasn’t something I’d like to revisit though, that was quite the sorry state that you saw us in. Can’t believe we didn’t even understand the rules for the shadow things.”
Alina laughed as well, “I almost forgot about those things completely! Don’t think we’ve seen one since the guide arrived.”
Myra agreed, “And it’s all thanks to your help that we’ve been able to see how our abilities can be used outside of just combat situations.”
Bishop nodded, “Not to mention the synergies that we have together. I’d been a damned fool thinking I should just waste my abilities slowing down and weakening our foes before. If I’d known better then-”
Alina put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, “It’s no one’s fault about what happened before we met the guide. We all knew the risks involved with the training, and we all accepted those risks when we volunteered to come here.”
“Plus,” Myra added, “We are getting a lot stronger after each stage of training, and the Trails are just getting tougher and tougher. Remember trying to fight in that Colosseum back then? We barely made it out of that.”
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“Colosseum? Explain what happened.” I asked. This was the first time I had heard about what other kinds of Trials the non-anomalous Aspirants went into, and it piqued my interest, if only slightly.
“Yes sir,” Myra answered, “I guess you weren’t here for the second Trial, but there were five of us then. Um, Raffiel, that was the guide before the new-”
“I know the general structure of the Trials, just tell me what happened in it,” I muttered, already feeling that tiny bit of enthusiasm drop, why couldn’t they just give me the information in a nice and precise way like the Xollon?
“Oh, right,” the leader said, “Of course you’d know that, um, sorry. I should have thought more.”
Oh my god, just get on with it! How could any one species survive for so long when their only way of communication was so slow? No, that wasn’t right, Jae-Hyun was always concise with his words, and so were Vadeem and Noel… when she needed to. But that competence could also be due to their tendency to act first before resorting to verbal communication. I was beginning to find it harder and harder to remember these small details.
“Get to the point,” I started to say before catching the anger in my voice, I quickly put that away and added, “Please.”
“Right, sorry.”
Again with the useless words. Why say sorry when you can show me that by telling me what I need? But I didn’t say anything and just allowed her to continue.
“The five of us were sent to some strange new world where we had to fight through progressively harder opponents in a gladiatorial tournament.”
Bishop chuckled, “That was the first time we fought anything other than zombies, we barely managed to kill that ogre.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me of that…” Alina added, “Even with the five of us fighting against one, it was a hard victory.”
“And what was the victory condition?” I asked.
I really was curious this time, with such a set-up, there were a lot of things that could go wrong if their clear condition was hard. Was it something easier like escaping their capture, or something more challenging like formulating a revolt against their captors with the other gladiators? So many different ways of approach...
“We had to survive all fight fights,” Myra said with a shudder and I looked at her in disbelief, “I know, it was rough going, although it’s nothing compared to this training.”
“Did you have to fight them all in a row?” I asked with growing skepticism, “Or against even harder odds?”
“Um, no…” Alina answered, “It was always one enemy at a time, with the ogre being our last one, but we did only get one day of rest between fights.”
“Didn’t even get anything to eat if it wasn’t for Myra prepping all that extra food and water,” Bishop added, sounding quite proud as if that bit of information was in any way helpful, let alone something to feel pride in. "We had to make sure we weren't wounded, at least too badly, otherwise we'd have died the next day. We didn't have great classes back then, so it took a long time to heal exhaustion and injuries."
I waited a moment longer, hoping that they’d add something else but it was evident that they had given me all the information about the second Trial, or at least all the useful information. They had continued to talk further, something about how hard it was fighting or other such junk, but I had automatically filtered that out. What was clear was that the Trials that the normal Aspirants had gone through were so different than the things that I had experienced that we might as well have been living in different worlds.
More frustration welled up in me. I never understood, not truly, just how weak the normal Aspirants were until this moment. Not in terms of their abilities, even Myra and her ilk had useful class skills and passives, but it was the difference in their experiences in the Trials. If the worst thing that these normal Apsirants had to experience was fighting once a day, then Pandora was well and truly fucked. It didn’t matter how great their Awakening skills were if they didn’t know how to use them in an actual fight. I was willing to bet anything that the Aspirants would crumble at the first sign of a true setback.
I just continued to stare at the worthless chatter that the three humans drolled, and went through and reviewed every method that I could think of for getting these useless people out of the oncoming catastrophe.
Could I somehow brainwash them all to fight like a hivemind? No… it could be feasible, but there’s no way that the Overseer would allow that to happen, let alone the Trash Matrix. That'd be stifled the second I even try. The only thing that I could do to help out Pandora was the current training, but that's like trying to get someone ready for F1 racing when they couldn't even ride a bike. There was nothing I could meaningfully accomplish in a month.
Then what about my work with the Restus?
No, that’s also a dead end. I couldn’t go through with everything I wanted to when I was bogged down with my work here. But even if I could somehow weaken all of the Restus as I had originally planned, I wasn’t sure if that was enough to turn the tides given the new revelations. Not only did those reptiles outnumber the humans greatly after the culling that this training caused, but I also overestimated the general abilities of the humans. They'd have to be half-starved and comatose for Pandora to even have a chance.
What else could I do… there had to be some way out of the predicament. But every single plan and strategy that I could think of resulted in failure. I had too little time, the Aspirants I was tasked with training were too weak, and the foe too strong. Worst of all, I was under the constant surveillance of the Trash System, and my ability to operate in any capacity was limited, even with the Director’s charms.
If it was just one of these that I had to deal with, then I could do something, but not when it was all at the same time. I was only one man…
“... and that’s about all of it, Mr. Guide,” Myra said, “did you want to know anything else about the Trial we went through? I’d be glad to tell you!”
I shook my head, “No, you were very thorough, thank you. Let’s just focus on our current situation first.”
“Right!” she replied, “Let’s pass this stage and get on with the next one. I’m feeling confident that we’d breeze through the rest of the training with the guide’s help!”
“Um,” Alina stuttered, “Do you have any advice to give here? We’ve never really tried to fight one of those big things before.”
I shook my head; I couldn’t be bothered right now. There was too much to think about.
“No,” I answered, “Think of this as a final test of your abilities. I’ve taught you everything you need to know to succeed in this final endeavor, so do what you think is necessary to win. I believe in you, and your abilities.”
Everyone beamed at that, as they always do whenever I dole out even the smallest amount of praise. It didn’t matter if I put no emotion into anything I said, they didn’t care at all. Maybe this is what happened when people talked with the Father. It didn't matter how creepy he was if everyone else couldn't even perceive that.
“Alright everyone,” Myra said with a confident smile, “Let’s show our guide our full power!”
Their need to impress me meant that logic seemed to go straight out of their brains as they charged toward the gathered monstrosities. Did they not decide to figure out a plan first? Should I stop them? No, it was too late either way, they already attracted the attention of the first house-sized monster. The only thing I could do now was wait and see how things would play out.
Unsurprisingly, It was a disaster.