"Ping"

Selected Name: John

Username: [Locked]

Global Chat Access ->

[Restricted]

Full Menu Access: ->

[Restricted]

Total Days in Trial:

[119 Days]

Floors Completed: [5]

Current Floor: [6]

Unspent Attribute Points: [2]

I almost died.

Drifting onward, deeper into the mana, I circled that thought.

Breathe in, breathe out...

I almost died.

And for what?

The chance of a reward? A point in Charisma?

Then... what?

For a person, who I knew might not even exist?

That had been reckless.

Utterly stupid.

In the same measure: Probably the bravest thing I'd ever done.

Churned up feelings of shame and pride.

These Floors were wreaking havoc on my sense of what was normal.

Honestly I wasn't sure that normal, as a concept, still existed.

Nothing was normal anymore.

Not while floating in the dark void.

Drifting with no end in sight...

I had to wonder what the point was.

What was the purpose of that Floor? Was there even a purpose?

It felt like the whole process was trying to understand me.

To parse out what my choices said about me.

That last floor, especially, seemed to have a purpose.

Was I the type to save my own skin?

Or was I the type to risk my neck saving others?

Maybe there were some other options I completely overlooked?

I wasn't entirely convinced, but that was all I could discern.

Was there even a correct answer?

Rewards seemed to suggest what it wanted from me.

But maybe what it wanted was just a trick.

Like a sweet aroma that leads a bug into a trap.

Want this reward? It's right here! Just come closer... closer...

Protecting everyone would have been rewarded.

But, it seemed impossible.

I'd failed that.

The Charisma was nice, sure. But that was just luck.

There was no way to know I'd get something for my actions, and I'd taken a big risk.

Would I have done that, if the Floor wasn't going to end?

I was so mentally assured all I needed to do was get to town.

I'd be free and clear, as soon as I made it inside. I knew that.

If I'd been wrong, I'd be dead.

I almost died.

If I hadn't left the Floor, I really would have died.

That had been stupid.

I wrestled with what that meant to me.

Saved a kid, almost died.

I hadn't done it because I'd wanted to perform a selfless act.

In fact, it was more than partly selfish on my part.

Consequences.

Fear of consequences.

I think I understood, innately:

There would be consequences for a choice like that.

Not because of the reward system in the [Trial] or anything like that:

It would have been because I'd have to live with my decision.

Beyond rewards through the [Trial] that I could use.

I would have had to live with the fact I ran away and left a kid to die.

Regrets, negative emotions...

I knew that the [Trial] was a test of physical ability, beyond any doubt.

Yet, what if it was also a test of mental strength.

The things it was putting me through weren't easy.

These were not things that just anyone could do.

I wasn't sure many people would survive them.

I barely survived them.

Hell, I was clinging to life by the skin of my teeth, Floor after Floor.

I'd survived, but I knew that eventually there was going to be a point where I would crumble.

The Mountain alone would have been enough to make some people give up.

Just stuck forever on that Floor until they starved.

What then?

If you're not dead, I suppose that's lucky, but what next?

If it happened on a Floor without a time limit, I felt that there was a good chance I would just be trapped.

For me, that was certain death. My body would give out.

For others? Maybe not.

Maybe that was just a new "normal" for life.

Depending on what the Floors they got were like, I had to guess that some people stayed put.

Unless a person had a really good reason, there wasn't anything the [Trial] did to force a person to continue.

The 1st Floor had good weather, food, water...

If they had the mindset to survive, it wouldn't be all that difficult.

They might suffer a bit. They might get bored.

Actually, they'd certainly get bored.

But life before all this was often boring.

Working jobs, wasting time...

And boring generally beats being dead.

Was that a cruel aspect of the [Trial] being fair, then?

It didn't force anyone to advance past the 1st Floor.

And if someone got past the first few Floors, and found another Floor without a time limit?

I had to imagine they could opt out.

They could just stop.

The 3rd Floor, I could have stopped if my body wasn't such a wreck.

I could have just lived there, avoiding the quests needed to clear the Floor.

There were "people" there.

Enough variety to keep me in a routine, distracted.

Content...

From that point on. Just a new life, stuck forever...

Maybe that was the open secret.

Why so many people were still alive.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt certain.

At some point a person would break.

They'd throw in the towel, and stop.

Because they were too afraid.

Because they were too traumatized.

Because they simply couldn't win.

Forever stuck.

I found that it was a horrifying thought.

Normal people had that choice.

They could live.

I couldn't.

For me, I couldn't stop.

And that was just the crux of it all.

If I wanted to live, I had to keep climbing.

I had to make it to the next floor before my time ran out.

And that meant I had to live very differently.

I had to be better.

I didn't just need every Attribute point I could gather.

I needed to be in peak physical and mental condition.

I needed to be the very best I could be.

My actions in the Floors I'd passed through were potentially erased.

I had no way to go back and check.

They might not matter.

Or they might matter more than anything.

Regardless: I never had been able to go back in my life before the [Trial] either.

Maybe the physical locations, sure.

I could revisit those if I was lucky, but time didn't just stop.

My choices piled up in life, with no choice of redoing them.

Life hadn't ever waited for me.

My childhood neighborhood was no more.

My extended family, they were all gone.

People I'd known, coworkers, friends I'd had in the past...

Were they still alive?

Were they in the [Trial] too? Or just stuck on Earth, waiting to die?

The world being what it was, I couldn't be certain.

The point was that I had always felt that what I did in my life, defined who I was.

I didn't know what happened when I left, but my own actions and memories came with me.

In a sense, at least.

I remembered.

Everything I'd done had some impact on who I was.

The good and the bad tallied up, even in small ways.

[Trial] or not: If someone died, they were gone.

If the death was my fault?

There was a weight in that.

Regrets were heavy.

If I let the kid die, I would have that with me forever.

Each any every Floor moving forward.

If the Floors kept throwing things like this at me...

Burdened by regrets that would likely continue to pile up.

My actions would continue to define and redefine me.

Weigh me down.

The Trial wasn't short.

To make it all the way to the 20th Floor was going to be a process.

Just fighting as far as I had, I already felt like it had been a lifetime.

Several lifetimes.

Tiny fractions of a life, lived out in times of peace and struggle.

Different versions of a life I could have lived.

Snippets of lives...

It hadn't even been a year.

There I was, sinking deeper.

Just one impossible sounding scenario after another.

I was no philosopher.

What all this meant, I didn't know.

All I knew was that being in good, sharp, mental condition, was critical.

My survival depended on both my physical and mental wellbeing.

The floating moments or hours between the Floors couldn't completely settle negative emotions.

I'd have a body again soon.

All the normal emotions and problems would be back then.

My physical health would begin to fade, again.

I had no control over that.

My mental health, though?

That, I could control. To some degree, at least.

I paused.

I felt it.

My Miracle was back.

The Mana here was heavier.

Time was passing... but strangely.

I wasn't sure how long it had been.

Perhaps the shorter Floors gave a longer rest.

"Ping"

Floor 6 - Minimum Clear Condition: Escape the Dungeon

A new Floor.

I pulled on the now-instinctive menu.

[Status]

Name: John

Attributes

Class: Disciple – Skills: 4/7

Titles:

Perks:

Strength:

21

-

Dexterity:

16

Archery 16

Constitution:

23

Resist Poison 23

Intelligence:

10

-

Wisdom:

16 [+2]

Meditation 13

Lesser Heal 12 - (Miracle)

Wise man of the Mountains

Charisma:

13 [+0]

-

Ambitious [INACTIVE]

Adventurer's Spirit

Free

2

- - -

I supposed I was leaning towards Strength.

It was almost always useful.

Wisdom and Intelligence seemed promising.

Anything I might be able to do to quickly gather Mana, or be more effective with Mana.

But with my Intelligence stat still at the flat 10 I'd started with...

I wasn't certain I could afford to waste a lot of points on it.

From what I knew of Magic, it had sounded extremely difficult.

Like, building an entire machine from memory, in order to light a candle.

Mentally assembling an entire building, brick by brick, to cast a spell...

The concept was daunting, and I didn't even know any spells.

At least Strength kept me alive.

And saving those Attributes for emergencies had been crucial.

Reacting with those points had saved my life.

Holding them until I needed them seemed to be the best way forward for now.

[Task… Pending]

No.

Title “Ambitious” - [Recognized]

Query: [Apply Title to Floor 5?]

[Yes]

[No]

No, I said.

[No]

"Ping"

[Title Not Activated – Difficulty Reduced]

[Floor 6 – Task to complete: Leave the Dungeon]

Sad Pings, again...

I'd rather not think about what that means.

[Floor 6 – Secondary Conditions:]

[None]

That was... different.

None?

Nothing?

... Is this because I keep avoiding Ambitious?

"Ping"

[Floor 6 – Start]