I run to the feast, a dozen loaves of bread neatly stacked atop the table without even getting a proper look around the place. Nothing else seems to matter besides getting my fill.

While stuffing my face with the simple, but filling and decently nutritious food, it takes me a moment to fully come back to myself, but come back I do. By now, I’m fairly used to the taste of these loaves of bread, though even visually if they are just about a perfect match for Italian bread, their taste and actual texture resemble a hard honey biscuit with nearly no sweetness to which, which to tell the truth has its own charm, especially if you either have more variety or if like me you have started to fight hunger pangs.

Considering how much abuse I’m putting my body through, I have not been feeling any lack of the basic nutrients from this single source.

Shrugging my shoulders, I munch away as I turn my head around me. A similar high stone dome to the other central chambers covers me, a good 35 meters high in its peak, with a 40-meter wide diameter base. In the middle that same stone table and the neat spot where the blue crystal will show up.

There is not a single other exit. They have door frames and puzzles spaced in the same fashion as both my trials before, if at a greater distance given there are only 12, but all other 11 are fully covered in solid stone, with no hint of runes to power a portal or anything of the sort.

As a matter of fact, the only runes in the entire trial until now have been the ones hidden inside the table.

Twelve doorways and only one has a corridor. What could that mean? The puzzles also went from 18 to 12.

It takes me another few minutes to finish up my meal and I don’t start the next loaf, instead preferring to savor them. I could eat a lot more, but that wouldn’t be very efficient given my digestive system’s limitations.

Walking to the walls, an action that is not strictly needed, I touch one of the puzzles and go over it. It’s similar to all others before, but it forms a 5 by 5 grid leaving a lot of space in between each of the pieces. They also don’t seem to form a picture I can just guess from themselves. I look at this first one for a minute not sure what to do, nor if I will even get anything for solving it given the 12 loaves already atop the table.

Well, 11 by now, but my point stands.

Looking at every single one of the puzzles, I try to find one of them that has at least some similarity to the ones I found, and not to my surprise, I find a trio that matches all three copies grown in a clear space under the muscle layers of my hip.

I move two puzzles to my left and start.

It takes me a minute, trying to work out the logic, given the different rules, but using the ‘missing’ piece, I move the other 24 all into place leaving the back layer to fill the gap right in the middle.

As I do so, I feel something showing up behind me. A brief and seamless spatial transition powered partially by the runes.

I had never gotten enough of a look at the process to understand how it worked. Even this time even my muted mana sense and the perception field provide enough clues that together with my understanding of the very runes I’m observing and further spatial awareness, I finally know what happened.

Although it was absolutely awesome to know that was happening behind me, I’m also left disappointed. This is just a ‘passive’ transport pad. It may help the process, but given how space folded in its vicinity, even if very subtle has obvious reasons to me now.

The best I culd do is improve the current design slightly and help the other side reduce the mana cost. I could also stop any teleportation altogether if it relied on this pad to work, but I can’t initiate the process from this side.

My hopes and dreams of pulling the lever of the slot machine and forcing it to give the prize anytime I wanted were dashed, but I couldn’t complain too much, I had managed to bring dozens of pounds of food hidden in the pocket of space in my torso.

Even after all I did, that is how my days in the trial turn out. For the next couple of weeks, I just go back with a greater understanding of the logic of this particular trial and use a minimal amount of energy to occasionally run, relying on my Qi to fly around most of the time.

I cover more ground than ever by flying while using less of my energy, something even more glaring as I actually stop and meditate for less than an hour and a half to refill my pool entirely after running out.

Pages and pages of mental notes and wisdom are left behind which I note down as this rhythm develops and I seemingly enter and leave meditation every other minute with the neck jerking such mechanical use f meditation induces.

I get all twelve of the pictures hidden just within my normal perception field range and compare them with the puzzles in the central room. Each one has its particularities and considering the direction it has started to take, the next trials may be even more open ended.

Mechanical movements and requirements were easy to grasp, but to rely on my artistic sense, even if I wasn’t completely devoid of it, sounded a little more… unreliable. I knew to trust my gut, but this particular variety was not quite my strongest suit.

As I finally find the last one nothing changes on the trial. They don’t lock all into place as in the last trials, though I haven’t precisely shifted them back and forth. But considering how things developed and the subtle under notches to produce a soft ‘lock’, I doubt that particular last step is the way to go here.

These may look similar on the surface but I look beyond the surface. They are conceptually different. Not pieces roughly arranged in a 3 by 3 grid that moved fractions of an inch in the four cardinal directions, but actual sliding pieces that needed to be rearranged and even switched places like a ‘15 puzzle’ with more pieces. Their size against the backdrop and the lack of distinguishing features also stopped me from ‘assembling’ them with just the information on themselves, requiring a completed picture on the outside box of a jigsaw puzzle, instead of trying a few iterations until I find the right one. The pieces are nearly independent of the background image and have few if any indications about their placement.

Nonetheless, after finishing this last round, I sit around and ponder over it.

I play with Life, Qi and even Vigor trying to learn more and get used to their quirks, but the puzzle on the wall never leaves my mind.

I return to one of the picture plates and make a larger copy, coming back to the puzzle I start fiddling with it, but not only I can’t detect any ‘shifting’ allowed to perfectly align the plates. Try as I might, neither this idea nor anything afterward shows any success.

I keep playing around with them and extending my stay as long as possible so not only I, but Merlin and the translator team have as much time as possible.

There is a lot I can’t do here, but the options I do have are all useful, like training with the perception field and my new resources. Even if I still don’t know how to do anything that could help me in this place beyond flying and possibly a high investment of life to grow a few roots.

Bringing a few mana points seemed a sure way of giving me an unbeatable advantage, but now I realize that hope was naive.

I rack my brain and dig deep trying to find anything on the source, but this is one time I don’t pull the rabbit out of the hat, for I do have neither a rabbit nor a hat. Trickery can go a long way, but it always falls apart in the end.

Time inexorably marches forward. The cycles advance and I grow older, though only for about a month.

The entire time even my more fanciful attempts to extend my stay like getting inner world access and acquiring more food through other means prove to be complete failures. It is not a complete waste, for I get a little more used to the new runes and experiment with Qi on new and old designs, I also start a few longer term projects that I normally wouldn't try back on the instance.

I finish the preparations for my departure just to make sure I don’t forget anything important. I don’t know when I will come back here so extending my stay as long as possible is extremely important.

I have yet to see the blue cristal, but I know it’s time.

The food is long gone. I have gone and explored all the uncovered ground I can in the time available with my perception field. Even if Merlin continues to expand it and grow the entire dome to match the 103 meters he build in a small spot, it wouldn’t be enough. IF it was a Kilmore I may push a few days more. I don’t even have control of the 130 meters burst capability of the inner world, nor any realistic chance of extending that a lot over the next couple of days, so I finally throw in the towel.

“I wish to take my rewards for the trial completion I achieved.”

I may not have the complete trial finish, but at least I did have the 12 puzzles, and that might be enough for something.

Though I shouldn’t cry too much, this is actually the second layer of the trial. We are only expected to beat one layer at a time, not two or even more. For me to even get this far I needed humongous levels of ‘cheating’.

A presence hits me for an instant. The uncomfortable pressure of the system judging me and trying to understand what I just said, but even as I open my mouth to repeat it or clarify it, I’m whisked away.

I’m teleported back to the instance with all the familiar sounds and smells inside the village covering the unnatural artificiality of this world.

Finally, I’m back home.

---------------------------

Merlins POV - Inside Inner World

I sit back to take a short break in a small wooden chair made with my Nature Meta Magic. I had loads of time and managed to expand the inner world and my own skill in different venues throughout the entire time I was expanding our base understanding of magic, and even learning more about space.

It was slower here, but the advantages of the instance are not worth compared to the sheer amount of time we lose, though that calculation changes when comparing a long stay in the instance compared to someone’s life span running out on the outside.

We had hints of increased life span as our levels increased, but no concrete numbers just yet.

I have gone as far as possible without Nash’s help to make the bulk and the more complicated maneuvers in increasing the inner world. But even with his help, it will take a while to get it to pass 100 meter range in any direction. That doesn’t even take into account the need for soil to fill the larger volume and other similar considerations. A few other experiments I have should also benefit from his help. I have a deeper understanding of runes, but his instinctive approach could spot a dozen patchwork solutions in the time I solved one or two things properly.

I press the button for the hundredth time and a small trio of spatial distortions spins in a straight line heading straight for the end of the corridor. Now only some 10 meters farther away from the center than the main band around the inner world.

The work of a few hundred mana collides with the barrier and expands it. There is something I can almost feel, like something on the tip of my tongue I can’t put into words.

I wait for a few seconds.

Everything recharges, and I press the button again.

The 20 meter long straight ‘cannon’ shoots again extending the range by about 5 meters to a total of 108 using the closest measure of an actual standard meter with the help of the system’s quicks. It might be up to about half a percent up or down, but most other villages around us were using our standard and that is all proper measurement units require. The system may not have given us strict measurements, but we could do our own math on known distances in the instance and convert them.

I hesitate before putting my finger on the button again.

“Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

Einstein's famous quote comes to mind, even if I don’t believe it applies here, I’m not going to learn much if I just keep pressing buttons like a monkey and observing the results.

I need… I need to take direct control.

Doesn't matter if I fail or if I’m more likely to blow myself up than to succeed. I have to do it.

To paraphrase Nash: I will succeed and I will do so NOW.

I pull my own limited stores of mana, though they are quite a bit larger than most other mages, only a few higher-level ones managed to surpass me. Though even that is the work of my unexceptional class choice the first time around.

With all my mind, I grab the idea of the runes, shape the very mana inside them and wrestle it all with my entire willpower. I don’t even bother pressing the button, and just make a direct connection pushing forward.

My senses start to spin along the rune tracks.

Over a hundred runes spin at once in my head with the help of the runic framework around my will and my world becomes the mana before me, the mana that is becoming space.

I can only affect the mana, not directly poking space through some bullshit method like what Nash can pull, but even that is enough. My brains unscramble as the spinning triad hits the barrier, but then, fireworks go off in my head.

I fall to my knees, not in actual pain, but in the sheer overload of my senses. In my dazed state, however, I can feel my muscles stretching my lips from ear to ear.

I managed to ‘control’ space. I actually managed…

My control is brief and subtle achieved only through a myriad of ‘superfluous’ runes, but who am I if not the Meta Mage.

That single instant is enough.

A ‘ding’ calls my attention, something important from the system for its warning to be so pronounced. I open my stat sheet and see the number ‘1’ inside an orange balloon on the class icon indicating a surprise for me.

“Ohhh, did I unlock something nice, perhaps even the class I have been holding out for?”