CH804

“Mmh, this is beginning to look a bit troubling,” Vasta muttered as the clock continued ticking down.

It was a sentiment all of them could share. With half of their time used up in their search as they flew across the endless plain of platforms, they hadn’t found so much as a glimpse of an exit despite the fact that they were covering distances that regular parties taking on the challenge couldn’t imagine. A distance that would have taken anyone else days to traverse had been examined and explored but didn’t leave them with a drop of hope for getting out.

“What else can we do then?” Jake asked. “If we can’t find it then we’re missing something.”

“Maybe it’s because we haven’t been interacting with the trial in a normal way?” Ben offered. “Most parties wouldn’t be flying across all of this, they’d be moving platform to platform. Maybe there’s something that we should have activated that we’ve missed out on.”

It was an idea that brought a grimace to all of their faces. With half of their time gone, if it was because they’d simply failed to find and interact with some pivotal part of the trial then all of their searching until that point had been nothing but a waste.

“Thera, bring us down,” Vasta said after grappling with the idea Ben put forth. “Better to see if something happens.”

Giving a nod, his girlfriend brought them down, all of them waiting for a moment on their new platform but with no change to come. If there were platforms that would activate in some way with their presence, it wasn’t that one.

That didn’t mean the idea was wrong though and they kept trying. The gaps between the platforms were big enough that anyone could have fallen through if they weren’t careful but with Thera still there to move them it was easy to jump from one to the next, even if there was still no change and left them standing in silence after their sixth attempt.

“…Maybe if there was some sort of activation condition it was around the one we started on?” Amy offered. “If we skipped whatever it might have been then maybe nothing further down would activate first.”

The idea brought a frown to Vasta’s face. “I’d prefer to think the gods wouldn’t be so careless to build a trial where the conditions we’d need to conceivably finish it could be bypassed.”

…I can absolutely believe the gods of this world could fuck up on building a core feature of one of their trials.

“Okay, well only one way to know for sure,” Ben told them. “I can remember how many platforms we passed and if we’re not slowing down to search then Thera can get us back there in fifteen minutes, easy. Unless we have any better ideas?”

“…No, I suppose we don’t,” Vasta sighed. “We’ll have to keep thinking on the way I suppose but for now I vote we’ll do as you suggest if everyone else is in agreement?”

With no other ideas, there was no argument, thereby beginning their journey back.

“Still nothing it looks like,” Ben muttered as their search went on.

They’d gotten back to their original platform and they’d searched not only every one around it but every one around all of those ones as well, getting no change to hint at wherever they were meant to be going. They were by all accounts stuck.

“Do we just keep moving then?” Jake asked. “We’re already back, might as well explore the opposite way in case it’s as simple as that.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“…I do wonder if the solution could really be so simple,” Vasta muttered. “There’s nothing to give it away, no hint or clue or anything. You’d expect a trial to have some way to actually solve the damnable thing instead of being forced to wander random directions with the hope we might get it right in some stroke of luck.”

She’s right.

As much as the overall designs of trials annoyed him, built to harvest faith in exchange for a blessing and level in a way that left the participants putting their lives on the line, the gods would get nothing from killing their believers, especially not when they were in the middle of the war. There had to have been a way to solve it.

“…Unless this tower is so rarely challenged that we’re literally the first people to attempt this floor and discover that it doesn’t work…”

“Hmm, what was that Ben?” Vasta asked him.

“Oh, nothing. Just thought out loud a bit. Ignore me.”