Challenge has been accepted. Restoring body.

Somewhere in the darkness which had enveloped him, Alex could feel his broken body knitting itself together with incredible speed. He was in awe, noting a complete lack of pain even as he felt his nerves regrow, his burns fade, and the sickening radiation in his body expel itself. Even his hair and slightly singed eyebrows regrew.

Should you complete the challenge, you will be granted a soul and your possessions will be restored.

Within the darkness, he felt his clothes vanish, along with the phone and keys in his pocket.

Oh well, it was probably fried anyway.

The clarity of that thought made him realise that the restoration of his body had also done wonders for his mind, and he felt the fog of pain and poison had completely lifted. While he didn’t sense any improvements, Alex was as well nourished, awake, and alert as he’d ever been. He no longer felt like a dying animal, and that was huge news in his books.

The challenge must be fair. Following this challenge, your specific memories of it will be erased.

With that, he felt new garments appear around him, jolting as they brushed against his newly restored skin. There was a flash of white, and the darkness around him lifted to reveal a large, open atrium ringed by seven doors. No source of light was visible, but the area was filled with the light and warmth of a cool summer day. Alex stood in the centre, looking down in amazement at his newly healed body and blinking to check, yet again, whether this was all a dream.

The presence in his head seemed to sigh in exasperation.

This is not a dream. Complete all seven trials and the way out will reveal itself. The pool will sustain you but will fade after three days. Once commenced, a trial must be completed or abandoned before you may return to this room. You will receive no further assistance.

Welcome to the Zeroth Floor of the Unending Depths… strange mortal.

“Wait!” Alex shouted. But his shout echoed into an empty hall to no response. He noted that the clothing which he’d felt pop into existence earlier was a simple white robe with wide sleeves which hung down to the middle of his forearms and a hem which reached a similar length down his shins. While the robe fit him perfectly, the voice that seemingly controlled this place hadn’t seen fit to provide him with anything else, leaving him barefoot and wearing nothing under the robe. Breezy, he thought.

The hall he found himself in was circular, decorated in shades of white and gold, with a lush, green grass making up the floor. Seven white marble pillars ringed the edge of the room, reinforcing a white marble wall adorned with seemingly random gold carvings. At equally spaced intervals, seven archways were indented into the wall, each between a pair of pillars. Each archway seemed to lead into a flat, starry void, which Alex had a strong intuition would act as a portal.

As if to confirm this, each archway had a small, golden glyph carved into a marble plate above it, although Alex couldn’t make them out in detail from his position in the centre. Right next to him sat a small, circular pool of glowing golden water, slightly raised and ringed by more white marble. He realised that it, not he, sat in the exact centre of the room.

Kneeling down and dipping a finger in, he was surprised to find that the water was more of an ethereal mist than a liquid. As if confirming the words of the mysterious, omnipotent voice from earlier, touching the pool filled him with the same healing energy that he’d felt twice now in the last hour. No matter what, he couldn’t find a way to lift any of the healing water-mist out of the pool.

Damn, that would have been handy.

Alex sat himself in the grass by the pool. It was lush and pleasant, and as far as he could tell he was in no rush. He had three entire days until the pool vanished, so a half-hour break might not hurt. His heart was racing with excitement, and he needed to slow down and use his newfound lucidity to reflect on what had happened.

His home had been destroyed. He thought back to his last moments in his apartment, noting that there had been no shock wave or mushroom cloud. His final theory was that it had been a solar flare of some sort, in which case it was likely that the entire planet had been obliterated. From what he knew of flares, they would vaporise anyone under the sun, and dramatically screw with the planet’s magnetic field in a way that survival for those on the dark side was also unlikely. The entire planet would be bombarded with lethal solar radiation, and the fallout would continue to last for centuries, if not millennia. All electronics would be fried by the radiation and fluctuations in Earth’s own magnetic field, making recovery even more difficult. That flare had likely killed everyone he knew, and it had been going to kill him. Hell, if it hadn’t been dusk when it had hit, it might have done so instantly, even indoors.

The loss he felt was somewhat muted by the shock and completeness of it. In a way, if a relative died, part of the sadness came from the reactions and loss of the community around them as a whole. In this case, everyone was gone, community and all. Well, except for Alex, apparently.

Well fuck. He decided to shelve processing the loss for now, as it was too monumental a task. At the moment, he just felt… weirdly normal, if highly confused. He wondered if he should feel guilty about that but supposed it didn’t matter. If this is being in shock, I actually don’t mind it. The total loss of every human connection I had sounds like a problem for future Alex.

Instead, he contemplated the rift which he’d dragged himself through. It had obviously transported him somewhere, somehow. Who knows, perhaps it just killed me, and this is where people go when they die. Alex wasn’t a religious guy, but it wasn’t as if his knowledge of physics yielded any reason to expect weird rifts in space after a solar flare. Not to mention the black lightning they'd been giving off, which made absolutely no sense.

He looked up at the ceiling of the room he was in, which was giving off very ‘atrium’ vibes. I’m calling it an atrium. The atrium ceiling was shaped like a dome, and gave the same impression as the portals ringing the room, making it look like a window into the depths of space. It was certainly a cool effect, and the entire atrium seemed well-designed to inspire awe and wonder. The space had a celestial feel, brimming with power, and the grass floor gave it a very 'heaven and earth' nature impression. The symmetry of the place felt kind of Greek, or like some sort of Minecraft build.

Wait a second.

Alex’s heart rate leapt back up as he looked back up at the starry ceiling, and he began to grin. His fingers burrowed into the soft earth next to him, digging out a clump of grass. As he did, his fingers brushed against hard marble a few centimetres below the soil. This gave him a second idea, which he shelved for a minute.

First things first, he thought, standing up. Winding his arm back, he tossed the clump of dirt and grass in his hand as hard as he could at the starry blackness of the grandiose ceiling dome, feeling slightly sacrilegious as he did so. Unfortunately, his upper body strength left a bit to be desired, and the clump sailed up a couple metres before arcing and landing on the ground on the other side of the atrium. Alex snorted and tried again, this time aiming for the lower edge of the dome, just above one of the marble pillars.

The clump hit the dome and disappeared. He grinned.

There are eight portals in this room, not seven.

Then, he looked back at the grass and his smile widened. The presence wanted him to try those 'trial' doors, but there was clearly more to this atrium than there appeared. If there was one thing that got Alex excited, it was secrets... uncovering secrets.

Edrick Linstone, mayor of Linosa, was talking to Trevia’s husband Johan about their farm and their aspirations for this season’s market. It had been a while since he’d seen the family, as they only tended to visit the town proper four times a year. Their farm was quite a ways out, and most of the farming families around the area preferred to meet up at various smaller hamlets rather than trekking all the way into Linosa proper.

It was always good for a mayor to know their constituents, Edrick reasoned, and for them to know the person responsible for their wellbeing and security. It was also important to be seen, especially to restore some confidence in order after the morning’s debacle – he was firmly committed to his role as mayor, and that meant keeping people reassured. This market was important for the town's economy, and he couldn't abide by interruptions.

The musclebound man been mayor of Linosa for almost twenty years ago now, having founded the town himself using an obelisk seed he’d been awarded on the thirtieth floor. The seed had been a rare find, and a life-changing one. Edrick had negotiated with his local lady, Areana, and a force had been raised to range into the unclaimed wilds on the edge of her fiefdom. He had used the seed to raise a tier one obelisk under his name, affording him the powers of a mayor and encouraging fortune-seekers to move to his newly established county of Linosa.

As he continued to inanely chat with Johan (by the gods, this man was boring), he glanced at his familiar obelisk. It was ranked at tier two now, slightly taller and subtly glowing. He’d evolved it around eight years back, using a huge share of his tax revenue along with a grant from the king. The resources and powers it had granted him and Linosa since then had more than justified the risks and expenses.

He frowned a little even as he felt the familiar, comforting pulses of energy coming from the stone. It was early-afternoon, around eight hours since the stranger had fallen from the sky and been whisked away to the zeroth floor. Surely it would be soon that he would emerge refreshed and empowered as a reborn… or his corpse would snap back into existence next to the obelisk. The latter happened all too often, and one of Eleanor’s guilders remained next to the floating pillar on standby for either type of return.

“…mayor?”

Momentarily distracted, Edrick’s mind flicked back to his conversation with Johan. He knew the trial allowed for up to three days, but most finished it far more quickly. What was taking the boy so damn long?

It took Alex about two hours, by his own estimation, to dig up a quarter of the grass in the atrium. He wanted to check out the roof portal but was a bit worried that he wouldn’t be able to get back. In fact, the more he thought about it the more he worried that it would simply obliterate anything it touched. He smiled. He could always poke a finger into it and restore any damage with the healing pool.

The healing pool was his new favourite thing ever. He’d had even more time to think and experiment, and it was definitely some sort of magic, which excited him to no end. He’d scraped his fingers countless times as he dug clods of dirt and stone out of the indented marble floor below him, and every time he’d been able to restore his scratched knuckles to perfect condition. It even restored his energy! He felt refreshed and cool with every quick dip. Even better, it showed no sign of diminishing returns or lost effectiveness with every loss. The thing was a treasure, even if it would be gone in a few days.

He’d had a couple of ideas around how he might abuse it, but he didn’t want to try them yet. They would all be very, very painful, and he still wasn’t quite sure what use he would have for a pile of amputated human body parts.

As he’d dug the first quarter of the atrium up (stacking the dirt in a pile by the pool) he had solidified his approach to this ‘challenge’. Clearly, the main objectives lay through the seven doors ringing the room. He had examined the glyphs that sat embedded above each portal, and he was sure that he could tell the meaning of each. Similar to the omniscient voice, each glyph seemed to speak directly into his mind.

Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Wisdom, Luck. The glyph for luck had been carved into the marble with gold trim, where the other six had pure gold inlays. He wasn’t sure what to make of it yet, but the first six attributes felt like they were paired, with luck as the odd one out. Mostly, he’d been focused on a more important development: the glyphs had reminded him of something he’d glimpsed just as his body was reconstructed, and after ruminating on them he'd found himself able to bring up a strange panel up in his mind.

Alexander James Patel Overview Affiliations Linosa Town Level 0 Class None Status HP - MP - SP - Attributes STR - CON - DEX - END - INT - WIS - LCK 0

Well, luckless was accurate. He wondered what Linosa Town was. He felt it couldn’t be his current location, as there was nothing that town-like about the marble atrium. Had he been somewhere else before now? His memories from that time were a jumbled blur, where he knew his mind had been degrading before his miraculous restoration.

The first time Alex had glimpsed the information about himself, it had felt more like a mental jumble of arcane concepts. But good scientist that he was, he'd experimented as he continued to dig up the second quarter of the atrium. He found that he was able to name and organise each concept with relatively little effort, even making the information appear as a neat mental table in a way which was scarily high-resolution for what he presumed to be his own imagination.

It had also occurred to him that the words assigned to each concept were determined by him, as the glyphs conveyed an intrinsic meaning rather than any particular English word. Grinning, he changed the name of the STR attribute to SMACKING POWER in his mind. It worked, but quickly faded back to STR. Probably because the translations were dictated mentally, and he absolutely couldn’t take the new name suggestion seriously. The abbreviations, he imagined, were a natural mental product of his many hours playing DnD back on Earth - they just felt right.

He frowned and momentarily stopped digging as he remembered that his DnD group were probably all dead.

The unexpected wave of glumness made him think - he wasn’t even sure what he was digging for, to be honest. It was probably a huge waste of limited time. But after the revelation with the ceiling, he'd figured he might as well investigate everything he could. Definitely a rational decision, he thought, ignoring the degree to which he found the simple repetitiveness of scooping up dirt and grass to throw in a pile to be therapeutic. He decided that once he was done de-turfing half the atrium he would check out the ceiling instead.

After another hour of simple, cathartic work, Alex had cleared a full half of the atrium floor, exposing a bare, slightly lowered marble surface, and leaving a surprisingly large pile of dirt. He’d experimented with throwing clods of dirt into each of the trial portals, and they’d all disappeared just like they had for the roof. Interestingly, any dirt that fell into the golden pool had also been zapped away, although a thin brown mist and odour rising from above it suggested that vaporisation, rather than teleportation, had been responsible in the case of the pool.

The golden pool giveth, the golden pool taketh away. I guess the big boss of this place doesn’t want it getting dirty.

Granted, it only took away dirt, so the trade was favourable. He'd tried dipping the hem of his robe and it simply passed through the golden water-mist. Must be designed to interact like that. Can't go burning my clothes off... or scooping up the goodness. The magic water clearly wasn't meant to leave its pool.

So instead, Alex focused on the exploits he could try. Glancing up at the cosmos-themed roof dome, he plotted a route up. He would simply climb one of the seven pillars ringing the room, then pull himself up and into the portal. The tops of the pillars supported a marble ring running around the underside of the portal dome and each pillar stood at around four metres tall. The dome itself arched up and must have reached another four metres above the golden pool in the room’s centre.

Hmmmm. Time to see how good I am at climbing.

As it turned out, Alex was not very good at climbing. He spent fifteen minutes jumping at a pillar and awkwardly wrapping his arms around it, trying to hump-shimmy his way up. At one point, he chipped a fingernail against the hard marble and had to restore it in the pool. Reasoning that the pool was there for a reason, Alex attempted increasingly reckless methods of scaling the pillar, giving himself long runups and leaping at the thing. After a couple more trips to the pool, he grumbled and began to stack dirt under the pillar instead. He chuckled at the idea of somehow building a ladder out of regrown arm bones, but a rational fear of extreme pain and trauma kept such approaches well away from his actual plans.

It took some time, but he was able to use his white robe like an excavator scoop, lifting the front of it up like an old creep exposing himself at a playground and loading dirt into the fold. It dirtied the front of his robe and exposed his privates, but it wasn’t like there was anyone here to judge him... probably. Eventually, he found himself with a slanting ramp of dirt reaching about metre and a half up the pillar, giving him confidence that he could at least get his arms into the portal if he jumped and shimmied up a bit – he was about 185cm tall, which helped.

After a couple more attempts, Alex found himself gripping the pillar firmly just below the ring supporting the ceiling dome. Moving quickly, before he could begin to slip again, he whipped one hand up and over the ring, right through the surface of the dome.

And it worked - he could still feel his hand! In fact, his fingers seemed to have gone right through the dome and were resting on top of the supporting ring. Grinning now, he put his weight on that hand and whipped his second up next to it, keeping his legs wrapped around the pillar. From there, it was only a matter of doing a single pull-up, and while Alex was hardly in peak physical condition, he was capable of that much. He took a deep breath, and then pushed his head through the veil.

Alex found himself in a narrow, cylindrical space, lit by the same unknown light as the atrium. He was crawling out of a circular dome in the centre which seemed to match the dimensions of the atrium roof.

Huh. Not a portal. Just an… illusion?

As he pulled his legs through the shroud and up onto the hidden loft, Alex could have sworn he felt a foreign, slightly amused, presence. He smiled at the thought of the omnipotent being watching him, then quickly stood up and began to walk around the circumference of the illusory dome he’d just climbed through.

The walls around him were tight, and appeared to be marble like on the floor below. A flat marble roof decorated with thousands of golden glyphs was visible high, high above him. Vague impressions of meaning floated down to him as he examined the patchwork inscriptions – light, safety, sanctuary, unbreakable, trial, rest, nourish, refill – Alex blinked fiercely and looked away. He’d somehow become entranced, standing there staring for at least fifteen minutes. Recognising what was probably valuable knowledge, he tried committing one or two of the glyphs to memory. But strangely, no matter how hard he tried, the precise details of each seemed to slip his mind.

Weird, he thought to himself. But I’m positive those glyphs are powering this room. And while his memory was by no means perfect, something external was stopping him from committing them, he was sure of it. Filing the thought aside for later, Alex began to walk along the narrow strip between the outer wall and the illusory dome, hoping to find some sort of secret or alternate exit. He still didn’t like the sound of those ‘trial’ doors, and he wasn’t going to enter until he’d exhausted his other options.

So his heart leapt and the corners of his mouth curled into an involuntary grin the moment that he rounded the corner and saw it – a carved, cubic, metal box around the size of his chest resting innocuously on a section of ledge in front of him. At the same time, the voice which had spoken to him so many hours ago again made itself heard.

Quest Granted: Thinking Outside the Box

Discover the secret of the Zeroth Floor Atrium.

Reward: ???

His grin widened, and he knelt down to pick up the box. It looked like he was onto something after all.