Popping through the portal, Rory and Zoey temporarily lost their bearings as they found themselves transported. Stumbling through, it took Rory only a mont to ground himself as he looked around.
“Well, ain’t this sothing.”
“Whoa,” Zoey said as she likewise got her bearings. “Trippy.”
They were in an endless skyline, a plain blue expanse above them, with an almost fog-like white beneath them. In the distance, impossibly far away, and yet sowhere within the sa realm of ‘existence’, seven needle-like spires rose so high that the tips seed to almost bend toward the glowing orb in the sky, a single sun.
As for their location, they were also on one of the needle-like spires. They were at the lowest point, a platform jutting from the side, and a glance backward showed nothing but an endless drop behind them. Ahead of them was a pathway that seed to wind its way up the massive spire, a mountain path made by a sadist.
“Fun,” Zoey said as she crossed her arms. “Can you get a sense of how far away those other spires are?”
“No,” Rory said, which was an answer in itself. Usually, if he could see sothing, he could make at least a basic assumption for how far away, but it was as if space ant nothing here, an inch or a thousand miles one and the sa.
“Want to take a bet that our Kingly fucker is at the top?”
“Good chances,” Rory said, agreeing with the obvious.
“Then we should probably get a move on.”
The climb was a test of patience, Rory had realized early on.
Usually, when one climbed a massive spire, one would expect monsters or traps or sothing.
Nada. Nothing. Zilch. They spent months, if not a little over a year, climbing the winding road upward.
All that, to reach only a single third of the way up.
One year, four months of climbing later, thankfully, they didn’t seem to hunger or dehydrate during the climb; they finally found sothing new. Rounding a side of the spire, their feet stalled out as they ca face to face with a big fuck off-sized gate blocking their path.
“Finally,” Zoey sighed, her voice hoarse after weeks since they’d last spoken. “Most boring adventure to date.”
“Please don’t jinx us,” Rory sighed.
“Jinxes don’t exist, that’s superstitious crap,” Zoey responded, waving it off.
“We literally are in a magical universe with Eon overseeing shit. It’s not superstitious.” Rory retorted.
“I… fair,” Zoey said, surrendering the point. “Anyway, gate?”
“Gate,” Rory agreed as he inspected the oversized gate. The two didn’t even bother trying to slip around the gate; that sort of obvious ploy would have gotten them smacked down for sure.
As Rory looked closer at the gate, several things beca apparent.
First, the gate was a puzzle of so sort.
Second, it was a puzzle revolving around ‘circuits.’
Third…. Rory already knew this would take so ti.
Just for good asure, Rory touched the gate as an influx of information was dumped into his mind with a grunt.
“Damn,” Rory muttered.
“What is it, Puzzle Master?”
“So, so of this has been translated into Zoey speak-”
“Not sure what you an by that.”
“-but basically, it’s a twenty-by-twenty grid with varying circuits that must be ford. We’ve got a certain amount of ‘moves’ allowed to form a circuit, after which…. Sothing? Sothing should happen.”
“What’s sothing?” Zoey asked.
“No idea, that’s why I said sothing. We get forty ‘moves’ to form the connection, and a limited number of ‘connectors’ of varying types, straight line, quad connection, etc.”
“Uh-huh,” Zoey said, beginning to lose interest. “So… the problem?”
“I don’t know which of the ‘wall nodes’ is active or not. So I have to brute force it, testing each connection one by one.”
“Aren’t you Mister Cognition? Shouldn’t that be easy to figure out?”
“I thought I was the Puzzle Master?”
“Multiple titles,” Zoey said, responding easily to the banter.
“Well, to answer the actual question, we’re talking about a degree of permutations that is baffling. Plus, it could be multi-stage.”
“aning?”
“aning I might be at this for a while.”
“Alright, so we wait. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that once I officially start, I have a feeling life isn’t going to be so peaceful.”
“Monsters?”
“Monsters,” Rory confird.
“Fuck, well, I guess I’ll keep them off your back. So, tell when you’re ready.”
“Ready.”
“Okay, I didn’t actually expect you to say that instantly,” Zoey rolled her eyes. “Give a mont to ready myself.”
“Need any gems?” Rory asked.
“Nah, not like I’ve used any of the resupply you gave before we left.”
“Right, right,” Rory nodded as he took a breath. “Good to go now?”
“Good to go, just needed the ntal preparation,” Zoey laughed as her shield appeared alongside a one-handed crossbow that rather niftily could be slotted into the top of the shield like a mobile turret.
“Three…. two….one,” Rory counted down before he ntally ‘inserted’ himself into the puzzle door.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from ; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
While Rory focused on the door puzzle, Zoey felt a slight tremor through the spire. Given how large the spire was, that ant a quite sizeable amount of energy had just been mobilized.
Holding her position behind Rory, Zoey felt the march, the thunder of feet nearing them. Not even questioning where they’d appeared from, Zoey waited.
“Well fuck,” Zoey sighed as they finally appeared, visible further down the spire and quickly rounding their way up the pathway.
Monsters. A fucking lot of monsters. Hundreds, thousands, how many was impossible to tell, an endless horde. The only good news was that the front of the crowd was low-tier sevens, with the stronger monsters much further back.
Yeah, crossbow ain’t doing shit.
Dropping the crossbow back into her inventory, Zoey hefted her shield from where she had nestled against a groove in the ground below. In her right arm, a mace appeared as she gave it a twirl. She wasn’t the weapon expert that Rory was, but you didn’t spend as much ti with soone called the Architect and not pick up so general weapon skills.
Both literally and figuratively.
Descending only a hundred feet of path away from Rory, Zoey took a deep breath, readying herself as the first of the endless horde appeared. Throwing herself forward as soon as they had appeared, her mace began to sweep about.
“Grind Down the Weak,” Zoey called out, activating the skill. It wasn’t an ascension skill, just one she had picked up over the years. If her durability was higher than her opponent’s, as well as her tier, and she was using a bludgeoning weapon, she could add the ‘difference’ between the two as a sort of secondary conceptual damage, or whatever explanation Rory would prattle on about.
In ‘Zoey-Speak,’ the bigger the durability gap, the better she could splatter them.
Unlike Rory, who couldn’t gain combat skills, Zoey had plenty of random one-off combat skills. Most were essentially useless, at least against powerful foes where only her best was worth bringing out, but against fodder? Sothing like Grind Down the Weak was perfect for fodder; it was in the god's damn na.
And so, Zoey fell into a battle-trance, stemming the eternal tide of monsters for how long, she wasn’t sure. Minutes? Easily. Hours? Probably. It was only when days had begun to pass that Grind Down the Weak felt as if it were doing less and less, the monsters having reached high tier seven, that she finally dismissed the mace back into her inventory, a new weapon replacing it, a two-handed axe that she held one-handed, her skin turning steel as she swapped her attributes.
“Alright, back to work.”
Rory was mystified and intrigued all at once. Spending Eon knew how long working on the circuit, Rory had realized sothing.
It wasn’t a circuit; it was a skill structure. Rory hadn’t realized it at first because of how ‘empty’ it had been, but as he slowly filled the puzzle in, the similarities beca undeniable.
A skill structure, or is there maybe so fundantal bedrock foundation of concepts, and this is rely how my mind interprets it?
Either way, Rory found himself mystified and intrigued because whatever ‘skill’ was baked into the gate, it was rather confoundingly complex. Yet, it was expected to be solved in forty ‘connections.’ Complex, but stupidly efficient.
Skill alterations, Rory had dabbled in the ‘art,’ but it was very much an art, then a science, from what he understood. What seed true in one place wasn’t always true in another. Sure, the rules were always ‘standardized’ within a ‘region’ of a skill, but those rules would go out the window the minute you moved on. Only the guiding concepts remained anchored.
As ti went on and Rory made progress, dedicating every available ntal thread to the effort, he examined the growing ‘web’ structure of the skill.
Chain. It’s a chain concept.
On its own, it wasn’t even really a ‘skill,’ in fact, it was basically useless for real-world application. In the context of the gate, the ‘chain’ structure would facilitate the connections that bring the gate down.
Or sothing along those lines, it was difficult to explain in words things he was understanding through conceptual ‘resonance’ like a blind person describing what they ‘saw’ in their mind when explaining words.
While it was typically useless in real-world applications, Rory did find potential lessons, mostly in understanding what a ‘chain’ even was. He’d often projected chains of pneuma in the past to bind monsters, but against powerful monsters, such chains were easily shed.
But, using this, when applying a magic circle to the projection of chains, he could ntally envision the ‘structure’ of the chain concept within the very runes of the magic circle, which would-
Getting distracted.
Putting aside thoughts of what he could do with such discovered knowledge, Rory instead focused his attention solely on the gate. With all his ntal threads dedicated to figuring it out, he couldn’t spare any to keep himself aware of what was happening in the ‘real’ world. Not that it mattered much, he had complete faith and trust in Zoey.
Starting, restarting, and doing it all over again, Rory progressed not through sudden, easy epiphany but purely by chanically grinding the process out, trial and error done hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of tis.
Until, at least, the final piece was clicked into place and Rory sensed sothing akin to a grinding of cogs deep within the structure.
“Bingo!” Rory shouted as he finally withdrew from his work, turning around to check on Zoey.
Well, I must have been busy for so ti.
Blood and gore painted everything for hundreds of feet down the winding pathway.
The artist? Zoey, of course. She was utterly drenched; it was impossible to tell how much of it was from her and how much of it was from the monsters.
Currently, she was scuffling with three base-tier-eight monsters. They were utterly average, not alpha variants or anything even remotely close. The fact that Zoey was struggling to keep up, her body being used as a punching bag as she barely kept to her feet, told Rory she’d been at this for so ti.
Sighting the monsters, Rory already had his staff out as monts later, three tal rails shot forward and instantly ended the beasts with well-placed projectiles to their heads, the resulting exploding heads preventing any regeneration shenanigans.
“Having fun?” Rory called out to Zoey, gifting her a mont’s reprieve, the endless sea of monsters that had been holding back out of sheer space limitations already surging forward once more.
Rory knew Zoey was tired when she said nothing, instead just flipping him the bird.
Right, that’s the sign to get going.
Fwiphing his hand like he was a certain friendly, neighborhood hero, a thread of pneuma lashed forward, snagging Zoey as Rory heaved back, yanking her away from the rushing tide of monsters.
Hauling Zoey over his shoulder, as tier eight, the weight of a small human woman and her admittedly heavy armor, was nothing more tireso than a small purse, Rory turned around and charged forward, through the gate which had seed to dematerialize. The horde of monsters attempted to give chase, but where the gate had been ‘lowered’ for Rory and Zoey, the sa wasn’t true for the monsters. Slamming into the gate, the monsters howled, as instantly a wave of disintegration passed through the horde. It was rather dramatic, and in Rory’s opinion, a little over the top, but that didn’t stop Rory from watching.
When the wave of disintegration finally passed, Rory dropped Zoey like a sack of potatoes as he whistled.
“Nifty,”
“Ow,” Zoey finally muttered from where she lay.
“Oh, you’re alive.”
“Ow,” Zoey muttered once more.
The fact that she wasn’t already beginning to heal told Rory just how much she’d exhausted herself. Seeing no reason to force a march, he dropped to the ground next to her, cross-legged.
Sitting with his chin in his hands as he waited, nearly three days passed before Zoey finally drunkenly raised herself to a seated position.
“I had to fight for a week straight,” Zoey glowered at Rory.
“That’s how long it took ?” Rory asked, surprised. “Huh, didn’t expect that. They didn’t seem that tough at least.”
“There is a quality to quantity,” Zoey grumbled. “I don’t even know how many I killed. And the worst part? Not a lick of ascension energy. They weren’t even real monsters, they were... I don’t know, projections, sort of like what you do. But for all intents and purposes, still monsters.”
“That’s rough, buddy,” Rory said with a sagely nod.
“Screw off.”
“I’d rather not,” Rory said as he looked over the side.
“Did you at least get a good reward out of it?” Zoey asked, clearly referring to his experience tackling the gate.
“Ehhh, sort of, not really? More like I think I picked up the blueprint of a concept to add into other stuff potentially.”
“So, no uber rare material or item?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah, fucking figures. I miss the days when I got handed shit for free. Ever since I started hanging out with you, it’s like Eon has gotten stingy.”
“It’s because I can make better stuff with the raw materials given than what you’d be gifted.”
“Don’t bring logic and facts when I’m trying to whine,” Zoey jabbed a finger into his side as she slowly stood up. “Alright, I’m good to go.”
“You sure?” Rory asked.
“Yeah, took a while for my durability to ‘reboot’ after being so thoroughly exhausted.”
“Understandable,” Rory said as he rose a second later. He’d experienced similar before, such as when he pushed his cognition too far and was sentenced to brain prison in his ntal palace.
“If that gate was what, a third of the way up?” Zoey asked, glancing back at the gate and how far they’d climbed relative to the spire. “Want to place a bet we’re going to see so sort of roadblock every third of the way?”
“Seems like a good guess to .”
“God damn lovely,” Zoey bemoaned. “Next gate? You handle any monsters. I don’t care if it takes three months to solve whatever puzzle it is.”
“Really? You’d want to spend three months on one puzzle?”
Zoey’s face darkened for a mont as if she’d suddenly bitten into sothing better.
“On second thought, I’ll stick with the monsters.”
User Comments
0 comments from readers