Adventure

She glares at both of us and then says. “What’s for dinner?” Taegan points to the pasta bake, and she takes a serving, the dimensional bag keeping it warm and fresh so she doesn’t have to heat it up.

We carefully move around her, and then get our own dinner. All of us sigh in delight at the actual flavour that this dish has. we all eat up, and then Dalyva heads back to bed. It was clear from the start that she only came out for food anyways.“Night.” I say, as Taegan says it as well. We then turn to each other. “Sleep?” I ask, sort of not sure if I want to yet. However Taegan nods. “We don't know what’s in the next room, so yeah.” I sigh, and we head to bed. “Sleep well.” Taegan says, and I reciprocate with. “No nightmares tonight. Good night.”

In the morning, we all wake up, Taegan waking me up, and both of us waking up Dalyva, just to be sure that one of us wasn’t killed. Handing out the gruel that was congee, and eating it up quickly before packing up.

We pack up our tents, and start to move on. As I haul my backpack on, Dalyva groans. “Do we have to move on?” She whines, and I just sigh. I don’t really either, however, if we want to finish this dungeon before a thousand years pass, we must, and I say this. “If you don’t want us to be stuck in here for a thousand years, yeah.” Dalyva scowls and grumbles, but eventually we get everything into the dimensional bag, and start to walk towards the big doors at the end of the room.

Occasionally I steal glances at Taegan, making sure he’s okay.

They’re huge, like those ones you would see in places where giants live or something. They are 5 times out height, with an arch at the top and a third up from the bottom are giant handles.

We will just have to push the doors open if we want to continue. Placing my hand on the door, I push with all my might, however, it easily swings open, contrary to my evaluation of it, and we step through.

On the inside is a rectangular, purple, room, a hologram in the middle that has no face, but must be there for a reason, and on either side are doors labeled with a picture. As we walk further into the room, the hologram starts to talk. “Hello, adventurers, and welcome to the Trials room. I will be your guide, so ask me any questions you have, though I might not answer all of them.” All of us instantly focus on the hologram. “What should we call you?” Dalyva asks as we approach cautiously.

“You can call me Guide.” Says the hologram. Taegan approaches it next. “Where are we?” He asks calmly.

“You are in the Trial room, let me explain. Every room in here is labeled with a sign or picture, when you go in these rooms there will be a challenge you must complete regarding that sign that represents the main theme of the challenge. Once you complete the challenge, you will get a token, and you need to gather eight tokens to advance.” Explains Guide. “Can you tell us what the symbols mean?” I ask. “Of course, would you like me to now?” Guide says. We all nod. “Yes.” Says Dalyva. “On your right, not mine, from closest to the door to furthest is Escape, Smart, Strength, Duels and Treasure. On your left from closest to the door to the furthest is Gatherer, Path-Finder, All-seeing, Monster and Trophy. Mind you, the Trophy room can only be accessed when you have at least seven other tokens.”

We all fall silent for a moment, and Dalyva takes this time to write down what he said, making a rough sketch of a triangle and putting the names where the hologram said.

“So.” Said Dalyva. “We can rule out the Trophy room for now.” We all nod. “Yeah, but also the All-seeing, as that just sounds very mysterious.” Adds Taegan. I agreed. The All-seeing sounded like a bit of a trap, and we don’t want to deal with any traps right now. “Gatherer and Treasure sound like some of the easiest, along with Smart and Strength, so I think we should do those first.” I say, and Dalyva circles the ones I mentioned, as well as putting a cross near the All-seeing. Taegan looks up. “Well, let's get started! Which one do we want to do first?” He asks as we all stand up from gathering around Dalyva’s notebook.

“Smart!” Said Dalyva quickly, and I pouted, even when I knew she would choose that. “O-Kay…..” I say sadly. She rolled her eyes at me. “C’mon Shankhe, the last couple days have been fighting and whatever. Now is finally a time to have some relaxation.”

I still continue to pout, but she knows that I will do what she wants. As we walk to the door, the symbol is that of a brain for smarts. I walk up to it, and gently touch the door. It swings open. “First run, Smart room.” Says the hologram. We walked into the room hesitantly. The door closes behind us, and we all turn around to see the door closed.

I think at that moment, it was kind of scary. To see your only chance of escape close right behind you was… terrifying to say the least. Knowing that whatever happens now, you can't go back. These thoughts run through my mind. The sort of ones you don’t want, yet always get. The terrifying ones. Taegan placed a discreet hand on my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. A slight smile emerges on my face, and I place an arm onto his shoulder. We grin at each other.

But we both looked forward, now knowing our only chance of escape lies in finishing this room. In front of us was a big wall, and on it read- ‘The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am i?’ Dalyva looked at it with confusion. “The more you take, the more you leave behind…” She whispered to herself. Taegan and I thought to ourselves. We were all stumped. “Five minutes left.” Said a voice in the wall. Dalyva looked up, and started to think harder. “Money?” She says, but a rat dropped through the ceiling. “Wrong.” Says the voice. I step in front of Dalyva, and quickly kill the rat with the katana, drawing it in a flash and slicing through its neck. “Oh, wait.” Says Dalyva as she figures it out. “Footsteps. The more steps you take, the more footsteps you leave behind!” She says quickly, and a door opens up on the left of the riddle.

“Correct.” Says the voice as we walk through. We, again, are faced with a riddle, but this time it seems a bit easier. ‘I am not a bird, but I can fly. I don’t have wings, but I can glide through the sky. I am made of bangonro, and my tail is long. What am I?’ We all instantly say. “Bangoro.” (A bangoro is a lantern made by a special red bark that is really thin-Bangonro- and has a tail of paper and a candle at the top of that paper in the lantern. You light the paper tail, which lights the candle, and launch it into the sky on Janro- New year.) The door opens, and the voice says. “Correct.” We all clap our hands together in celebration. “That one was easy!” I say happily.

The next riddle however was not. ‘I can be long or short, depending on how much you have of me. I can be painted or left bare, and I am often seen but seldom noticed. What am I?’ Dalyva thinks. “I feel like I've seen this one before…” she says. “Though I can't seem to remember it.” She thinks for a while, and by then me and Taegan had given up, and had started to just play bop.

Quite simple, actually. When you touch the person, you have to say bop, and then run away before they can bop you back, the person who has been bopped last when we get bored or have to go is the loser. I run to Taegan, but he’s fast, and dodges. I stumble, laughing. “Aawwwww.” I laugh, mockingly disappointed. “Not going to let me win?????” Taegan laughed at my disappointment. “Hell no.” He says. “I’m a proud warrior of the sands, I'm not losing!” Sadly, the proud warrior of the sands won…

We play for a couple more minutes as the voice counts down. “Two minutes left.” It says just then. Dalyva then perks up. “A line.” She says confidently. A door opens. “Correct.” Says the voice. By now Dalyva was starting to get confident, and as we entered the next room, it was completely different.

It was in the ancient runic language. To me and maybe Taegan, it looked like a mass of just random lines and circles, but to Dalyva it clearly meant something.

She looked at it, and wrote it down in her notebook. “Uxciesa (pronounced you-X-see-ah).” She muttered to herself. “Dk ara?” She said in confusion. (She’s speaking the Ancient Runic language. ‘Dk ara’ means ‘and what?’ She’s confused about what she’s translating.) Taegan leans over. “Can I read it?” He asks. She nods, and passes it to him silently. “No, that's not Uxciesa. Cause Uxciesa is a goddess of the sands sort of, so this is different. Oh, it's Vuxeadine, the descendants of Uxciesa. (Pronounced V-uh-ck-z-ah-d-i-n.) They looked very close, so you were on track.” Taegan supports. She nods, but then points to the rest.

“So what’s all this.” She pointed to the next part. “Vuxeadine Ue Tenkejest (V-uh-ck-z-ah-d-i-n you-eh t-eh-n-ck-eh-j-eh-s-t.).” He reads out loud. I’m just listening in, having not learnt that much of the ancient runic language. “It basically means- ’Vuxeadine greet Ghost mask?’” He sounds unsure. Dalyva lights up. “Ghost mask is a spirit who supposedly wanders the world when it is the festival of Uxciesa wearing a white mask, and always being incorporeal and ghostlike. they watch the people below, but no one knows why. Some say they’re the manifestation of people's dead loved ones, and some say it's just a spirit who loves to see people happy.” The voice pipes up. “Correct.” Having heard Taegans answer and Dalyva’s explaination of Ghost mask.

Suddenly a token appeared in front of Dalyva. She grabs the hovering token, and looks at it. It has the same symbol of a brain on it, and has the words ‘Smart Token’ inscribed on it.

“We got our first token!!” Dalyva yells out with celebration. “I grin, and we walk out the door that just appeared, leading to the central room of the trials. As we walk out, I pat Taegan on the back in congratulations. in the main room, Guide greets us as he says. “Smarts trial- completion in 15 minutes and 36 seconds.” We all grin. “That was good!” Commented Dalyva, before asking Guide. “How long is the average or expected take?” Guide responds. “The expected take is 5 to 6 fails before a finish time of 19 minutes and 45 seconds.” After doing some quick math, I say. “That means we got it 6 takes 4 minutes and 9 seconds earlier than expected!” We all high five.

“What's next?” Asks Dalyva, eager to do the next one as she crosses off the smart trial with a tick. We all crowd around her notebook. “Strength?’ Asks Taegan. “That’d make use of your torture training yesterday.” She glared at him, remembering yesterday's training. “Yeah, we all did it.” I perk up. “We can make use of it.” We head over to the door, which has the symbol of a muscular arm flexing.

We open the door carefully, and peek in as we all walk in. as expected the door closes behind us, and it's less unnerving now, because we’re used to it.

The room is just like the last trial, except instead of inscriptions on the wall, there is a huge door, with three hand prints. On top of the door that looks to be made for giants, it says one word. ‘Push.’ We all put our hands on the door, and start to push. It’s not that heavy, and swings open pretty easily. The next door is about double the heaviness, and we have to push a bit harder, but otherwise it's still easy. The next however, we did struggle a bit, since it was again double of the last door. About medium difficulty for us now. We all push hard, our muscles being put to work as we open it enough to get through, dreading the next door.

The door is just like the last, and as we take a rest before trying it, I say. “Is this all the trials are going to be?” I ask, confused that it would be just one thing for the strength trial. “Probably not.” Says Taegan as he gets up. “There'll probably be a different bit of the trial behind these doors or something.” Dalyva nods in agreement. Placing all our hands on the door, we push with all our might, and it opens up a crack that quickly closes as we take our hands off the door. “C’mon, we can do it!” encourages Taegan, putting his hands on again. “One, and two, and three!” he says, pushing with all his might. I join him, using all my strength too and as Dalyva joins, the door finally cracks open enough for us to pass through, we quickly slip into the next room before it closes.

This one’s certainly different, as it says on the board in front of us. ‘Each person has to do 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 sit ups total, no exceptions. The room knows.’ Well, that's certainly an ominous message at the end, but I guess it's valid. “Hey, Taegan.” I say, and he turns to me from reading it. “Yeah?” he asks. “Can you hold my feet so I can do my sit ups, then we swap.” He nods in agreement as I get down, and he holds my feet. Sit ups are the most easy, as they don’t take up much energy, and a mere fifteen are easy. He holds my feet tightly, as I do my sit ups.

Dalyva walks over to the bar, reaching up to it, and grabbing on to the bar, starting her pull ups. She’s done four by the time both me and Taegan are finished with our sit ups, but that's probably because she’s not that strong, and pull ups are hard. Once she finishes, Taegan helps her with her sit ups, as I start my pull ups near them on the bar. Starting down, I pull myself up. My muscles aren’t used to it, and protest, but I continue. Going down again after touching my chin to the bar, it's incredibly hard to find the strength to pull up, but I find it, and pull up again, my chin touching the cold iron bar. Falling down in relief, I struggle again through pulling up. It’s almost worse than Dalyva’s torment.

Two to go. I motivate myself by saying as I fall down again in a controlled manner, in order to not hurt my shoulders. As I pull up again, I almost slip off, but my hands grip white, and I resist, wanting to finish even just this before I fall off and have to get on again. Seeing that Dalyva’s done with her sit ups, and watching me, I fell down, controlled to do my last pull up. My hands and shoulders, as well as my poor arms ached with exertion, but I pulled through it, and did my last pull up. (pun intended) Jumping off the bar with joy, I sigh as I stretch out my muscles in my arms and wrists.

All of us get down in a front support position, and start to do push ups. I do about three before my arms protest. Dalyva had been sitting down between her pushups, her arms sore from the pull ups and her core from sit ups. I go down again, pushing out one more before sitting up. I take a long sip of water, and then continue. I do another, and then another, and then another before I just quit again. Taega, like the superhuman he is, has already done his push ups. I however still have three to go. i get down again, and start to lower myself down. It’s not that bad, and i do two, but my body really protested, and i try to ignore it, and Taegan, who comes over to cheer me on, motivates me to continue, and I lower down, my muscles shake in protest and exhaustion, but i used the last speck of energy to push myself up.

I let out a sigh of relief as I collapsed onto the hard but relaxing floor for my poor muscles. Taegan shakes his head at my dramatics, and goes over to encourage Dalyva, who has only 4 left. I watch her struggle, and see how she’s trying to circulate her spesh while doing something, so she gets better at it, and it's sort of working as well! However, it's making her more tired, since it's using up her energy. But she managed to push through and finish her push ups. As we all stand, the voice says. “Participants challenge finished, opening next door.” It’s certainly different from what the Smart trial voice said with just correct, and automatically opening the door. A door opens in the wall, and we walk through, regardless of what it said.

The next room has many vines hanging from the ceiling, tinted purple just like everything else, with a ledge about halfway up the vines and across maybe 8 vines from where you would first climb up. Unfortunately, if they wanted us to do it now, we were hungry, so as we sat down, Taegan hands out to each of us a bag. of trail mix, and we all eat it up hungrily. The taste of nuts and granola, with a bit of dried fruit thrown into the mix. As I look around the cave, I notice that basically everything is covered in moss, and the green purple tinted vines even have little glowing orange berries. I pick one curiously. “Dalyva, is this safe to eat?” I ask, showing her the berry in my hand.

She looks at it for a sec, before nodding. “Of course! they’re scattered in all the forests of Dajennu, and are harmless to eat. They grow on almost anything, and are a staple food of some smaller towns.” I popped it in my mouth as she finished her sentence. It tastes surprisingly good. A mixture of almost mango juice swirls in my mouth. Immediately I looked at Taegan. “Taegan.” I say, chucking him one, that he catches swiftly. He eats it, and his eyes light up. “We can use our old trail mix bags.” He says, and hands me my old trail mix bag. He gets his, and hands Dalyva hers, and the glow berry collection commences.

It takes us almost an hour or two of climbing around on the vines, which we discovered were very thick and not going to break and now we have 7 bags of about 15cm long and 6cm width of glow berries. We stack them away carefully in the dimensional bag. Of course, we did eat a few, couldn't resist, but not that many. We shimmy up the vines one last time, and hop onto the ledge. We survey what surrounds us now. There’s nothing much, just a door, but as we walk through it, another token appears in front of me, and I cheer. “Alright, we did it!”

I high five Taegan, and then Dalyva as we head back to the main Trial room. “Completed in 3 hours 5 minutes and 13 seconds.” Says Guide. That's pretty decent, but even though it's practically still the afternoon by my internal clock, I don’t want to continue. I say this. “Taegan, do we have to continue?” I ask, all my muscles sore from the work out and climbing around on the vines. Taegan sighs. “Dalyva?” He asks. She nods. “Yeah, I agree with Shankhe.”

And that’s how we started to put up the tents in the main trial room. We don’t have much food, only the berries, no pasta bake because we finished it, grains, three bags of trail mix left and some beef from the cows way back. All the spices had been used up, and we had none left, so the best thing in the bag was the berries.

Then I bring out Frognii, and Dalyva snatches it. Taegan gets out his earrings and just stares at them before gathering some sand, and making it poke a hole in his ears, which clearly hurt by his wince, and he quickly slides the earrings in, putting on the back. He removed all the sand from his ears and rubbed his ears soothingly.

I watch in pity. I look to where Dalyva is with Frognii, and see she is cleaning her with her clothes. I’m bored, yet tired, though I can't go to sleep because it's too early in the day. I groan, and lay on the floor just wanting for something to get rid of this muscle pain. I rub my core, those muscles the worst of all. I almost nodded off as I closed my eyes, and just decided to have a nap, so I got up, went into my tent, and lay down on my sleeping bag. Lying there, I could feel all the muscles in my body that we used today. Core, arms, my legs as well from climbing the vines. My hands which had vine burn from sliding down one, and just in general my whole body.

Slowly, my body starts to tire, and I fall into blissful unconsciousnes

She glares at both of us and then says. “What’s for dinner?” Taegan points to the pasta bake, and she takes a serving, the dimensional bag keeping it warm and fresh so she doesn’t have to heat it up.

We carefully move around her, and then get our own dinner. All of us sigh in delight at the actual flavour that this dish has. we all eat up, and then Dalyva heads back to bed. It was clear from the start that she only came out for food anyways.“Night.” I say, as Taegan says it as well. We then turn to each other. “Sleep?” I ask, sort of not sure if I want to yet. However Taegan nods. “We don't know what’s in the next room, so yeah.” I sigh, and we head to bed. “Sleep well.” Taegan says, and I reciprocate with. “No nightmares tonight. Good night.”

In the morning, we all wake up, Taegan waking me up, and both of us waking up Dalyva, just to be sure that one of us wasn’t killed. Handing out the gruel that was congee, and eating it up quickly before packing up.

We pack up our tents, and start to move on. As I haul my backpack on, Dalyva groans. “Do we have to move on?” She whines, and I just sigh. I don’t really either, however, if we want to finish this dungeon before a thousand years pass, we must, and I say this. “If you don’t want us to be stuck in here for a thousand years, yeah.” Dalyva scowls and grumbles, but eventually we get everything into the dimensional bag, and start to walk towards the big doors at the end of the room.

Occasionally I steal glances at Taegan, making sure he’s okay.

They’re huge, like those ones you would see in places where giants live or something. They are 5 times out height, with an arch at the top and a third up from the bottom are giant handles.

We will just have to push the doors open if we want to continue. Placing my hand on the door, I push with all my might, however, it easily swings open, contrary to my evaluation of it, and we step through.

On the inside is a rectangular, purple, room, a hologram in the middle that has no face, but must be there for a reason, and on either side are doors labeled with a picture. As we walk further into the room, the hologram starts to talk. “Hello, adventurers, and welcome to the Trials room. I will be your guide, so ask me any questions you have, though I might not answer all of them.” All of us instantly focus on the hologram. “What should we call you?” Dalyva asks as we approach cautiously.

“You can call me Guide.” Says the hologram. Taegan approaches it next. “Where are we?” He asks calmly.

“You are in the Trial room, let me explain. Every room in here is labeled with a sign or picture, when you go in these rooms there will be a challenge you must complete regarding that sign that represents the main theme of the challenge. Once you complete the challenge, you will get a token, and you need to gather eight tokens to advance.” Explains Guide. “Can you tell us what the symbols mean?” I ask. “Of course, would you like me to now?” Guide says. We all nod. “Yes.” Says Dalyva. “On your right, not mine, from closest to the door to furthest is Escape, Smart, Strength, Duels and Treasure. On your left from closest to the door to the furthest is Gatherer, Path-Finder, All-seeing, Monster and Trophy. Mind you, the Trophy room can only be accessed when you have at least seven other tokens.”

We all fall silent for a moment, and Dalyva takes this time to write down what he said, making a rough sketch of a triangle and putting the names where the hologram said.

“So.” Said Dalyva. “We can rule out the Trophy room for now.” We all nod. “Yeah, but also the All-seeing, as that just sounds very mysterious.” Adds Taegan. I agreed. The All-seeing sounded like a bit of a trap, and we don’t want to deal with any traps right now. “Gatherer and Treasure sound like some of the easiest, along with Smart and Strength, so I think we should do those first.” I say, and Dalyva circles the ones I mentioned, as well as putting a cross near the All-seeing. Taegan looks up. “Well, let's get started! Which one do we want to do first?” He asks as we all stand up from gathering around Dalyva’s notebook.

“Smart!” Said Dalyva quickly, and I pouted, even when I knew she would choose that. “O-Kay…..” I say sadly. She rolled her eyes at me. “C’mon Shankhe, the last couple days have been fighting and whatever. Now is finally a time to have some relaxation.”

I still continue to pout, but she knows that I will do what she wants. As we walk to the door, the symbol is that of a brain for smarts. I walk up to it, and gently touch the door. It swings open. “First run, Smart room.” Says the hologram. We walked into the room hesitantly. The door closes behind us, and we all turn around to see the door closed.

I think at that moment, it was kind of scary. To see your only chance of escape close right behind you was… terrifying to say the least. Knowing that whatever happens now, you can't go back. These thoughts run through my mind. The sort of ones you don’t want, yet always get. The terrifying ones. Taegan placed a discreet hand on my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. A slight smile emerges on my face, and I place an arm onto his shoulder. We grin at each other.

But we both looked forward, now knowing our only chance of escape lies in finishing this room. In front of us was a big wall, and on it read- ‘The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am i?’ Dalyva looked at it with confusion. “The more you take, the more you leave behind…” She whispered to herself. Taegan and I thought to ourselves. We were all stumped. “Five minutes left.” Said a voice in the wall. Dalyva looked up, and started to think harder. “Money?” She says, but a rat dropped through the ceiling. “Wrong.” Says the voice. I step in front of Dalyva, and quickly kill the rat with the katana, drawing it in a flash and slicing through its neck. “Oh, wait.” Says Dalyva as she figures it out. “Footsteps. The more steps you take, the more footsteps you leave behind!” She says quickly, and a door opens up on the left of the riddle.

“Correct.” Says the voice as we walk through. We, again, are faced with a riddle, but this time it seems a bit easier. ‘I am not a bird, but I can fly. I don’t have wings, but I can glide through the sky. I am made of bangonro, and my tail is long. What am I?’ We all instantly say. “Bangoro.” (A bangoro is a lantern made by a special red bark that is really thin-Bangonro- and has a tail of paper and a candle at the top of that paper in the lantern. You light the paper tail, which lights the candle, and launch it into the sky on Janro- New year.) The door opens, and the voice says. “Correct.” We all clap our hands together in celebration. “That one was easy!” I say happily.

The next riddle however was not. ‘I can be long or short, depending on how much you have of me. I can be painted or left bare, and I am often seen but seldom noticed. What am I?’ Dalyva thinks. “I feel like I've seen this one before…” she says. “Though I can't seem to remember it.” She thinks for a while, and by then me and Taegan had given up, and had started to just play bop.

Quite simple, actually. When you touch the person, you have to say bop, and then run away before they can bop you back, the person who has been bopped last when we get bored or have to go is the loser. I run to Taegan, but he’s fast, and dodges. I stumble, laughing. “Aawwwww.” I laugh, mockingly disappointed. “Not going to let me win?????” Taegan laughed at my disappointment. “Hell no.” He says. “I’m a proud warrior of the sands, I'm not losing!” Sadly, the proud warrior of the sands won…

We play for a couple more minutes as the voice counts down. “Two minutes left.” It says just then. Dalyva then perks up. “A line.” She says confidently. A door opens. “Correct.” Says the voice. By now Dalyva was starting to get confident, and as we entered the next room, it was completely different.

It was in the ancient runic language. To me and maybe Taegan, it looked like a mass of just random lines and circles, but to Dalyva it clearly meant something.

She looked at it, and wrote it down in her notebook. “Uxciesa (pronounced you-X-see-ah).” She muttered to herself. “Dk ara?” She said in confusion. (She’s speaking the Ancient Runic language. ‘Dk ara’ means ‘and what?’ She’s confused about what she’s translating.) Taegan leans over. “Can I read it?” He asks. She nods, and passes it to him silently. “No, that's not Uxciesa. Cause Uxciesa is a goddess of the sands sort of, so this is different. Oh, it's Vuxeadine, the descendants of Uxciesa. (Pronounced V-uh-ck-z-ah-d-i-n.) They looked very close, so you were on track.” Taegan supports. She nods, but then points to the rest.

“So what’s all this.” She pointed to the next part. “Vuxeadine Ue Tenkejest (V-uh-ck-z-ah-d-i-n you-eh t-eh-n-ck-eh-j-eh-s-t.).” He reads out loud. I’m just listening in, having not learnt that much of the ancient runic language. “It basically means- ’Vuxeadine greet Ghost mask?’” He sounds unsure. Dalyva lights up. “Ghost mask is a spirit who supposedly wanders the world when it is the festival of Uxciesa wearing a white mask, and always being incorporeal and ghostlike. they watch the people below, but no one knows why. Some say they’re the manifestation of people's dead loved ones, and some say it's just a spirit who loves to see people happy.” The voice pipes up. “Correct.” Having heard Taegans answer and Dalyva’s explaination of Ghost mask.

Suddenly a token appeared in front of Dalyva. She grabs the hovering token, and looks at it. It has the same symbol of a brain on it, and has the words ‘Smart Token’ inscribed on it.

“We got our first token!!” Dalyva yells out with celebration. “I grin, and we walk out the door that just appeared, leading to the central room of the trials. As we walk out, I pat Taegan on the back in congratulations. in the main room, Guide greets us as he says. “Smarts trial- completion in 15 minutes and 36 seconds.” We all grin. “That was good!” Commented Dalyva, before asking Guide. “How long is the average or expected take?” Guide responds. “The expected take is 5 to 6 fails before a finish time of 19 minutes and 45 seconds.” After doing some quick math, I say. “That means we got it 6 takes 4 minutes and 9 seconds earlier than expected!” We all high five.

“What's next?” Asks Dalyva, eager to do the next one as she crosses off the smart trial with a tick. We all crowd around her notebook. “Strength?’ Asks Taegan. “That’d make use of your torture training yesterday.” She glared at him, remembering yesterday's training. “Yeah, we all did it.” I perk up. “We can make use of it.” We head over to the door, which has the symbol of a muscular arm flexing.

We open the door carefully, and peek in as we all walk in. as expected the door closes behind us, and it's less unnerving now, because we’re used to it.

The room is just like the last trial, except instead of inscriptions on the wall, there is a huge door, with three hand prints. On top of the door that looks to be made for giants, it says one word. ‘Push.’ We all put our hands on the door, and start to push. It’s not that heavy, and swings open pretty easily. The next door is about double the heaviness, and we have to push a bit harder, but otherwise it's still easy. The next however, we did struggle a bit, since it was again double of the last door. About medium difficulty for us now. We all push hard, our muscles being put to work as we open it enough to get through, dreading the next door.

The door is just like the last, and as we take a rest before trying it, I say. “Is this all the trials are going to be?” I ask, confused that it would be just one thing for the strength trial. “Probably not.” Says Taegan as he gets up. “There'll probably be a different bit of the trial behind these doors or something.” Dalyva nods in agreement. Placing all our hands on the door, we push with all our might, and it opens up a crack that quickly closes as we take our hands off the door. “C’mon, we can do it!” encourages Taegan, putting his hands on again. “One, and two, and three!” he says, pushing with all his might. I join him, using all my strength too and as Dalyva joins, the door finally cracks open enough for us to pass through, we quickly slip into the next room before it closes.

This one’s certainly different, as it says on the board in front of us. ‘Each person has to do 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 sit ups total, no exceptions. The room knows.’ Well, that's certainly an ominous message at the end, but I guess it's valid. “Hey, Taegan.” I say, and he turns to me from reading it. “Yeah?” he asks. “Can you hold my feet so I can do my sit ups, then we swap.” He nods in agreement as I get down, and he holds my feet. Sit ups are the most easy, as they don’t take up much energy, and a mere fifteen are easy. He holds my feet tightly, as I do my sit ups.

Dalyva walks over to the bar, reaching up to it, and grabbing on to the bar, starting her pull ups. She’s done four by the time both me and Taegan are finished with our sit ups, but that's probably because she’s not that strong, and pull ups are hard. Once she finishes, Taegan helps her with her sit ups, as I start my pull ups near them on the bar. Starting down, I pull myself up. My muscles aren’t used to it, and protest, but I continue. Going down again after touching my chin to the bar, it's incredibly hard to find the strength to pull up, but I find it, and pull up again, my chin touching the cold iron bar. Falling down in relief, I struggle again through pulling up. It’s almost worse than Dalyva’s torment.

Two to go. I motivate myself by saying as I fall down again in a controlled manner, in order to not hurt my shoulders. As I pull up again, I almost slip off, but my hands grip white, and I resist, wanting to finish even just this before I fall off and have to get on again. Seeing that Dalyva’s done with her sit ups, and watching me, I fell down, controlled to do my last pull up. My hands and shoulders, as well as my poor arms ached with exertion, but I pulled through it, and did my last pull up. (pun intended) Jumping off the bar with joy, I sigh as I stretch out my muscles in my arms and wrists.

All of us get down in a front support position, and start to do push ups. I do about three before my arms protest. Dalyva had been sitting down between her pushups, her arms sore from the pull ups and her core from sit ups. I go down again, pushing out one more before sitting up. I take a long sip of water, and then continue. I do another, and then another, and then another before I just quit again. Taega, like the superhuman he is, has already done his push ups. I however still have three to go. i get down again, and start to lower myself down. It’s not that bad, and i do two, but my body really protested, and i try to ignore it, and Taegan, who comes over to cheer me on, motivates me to continue, and I lower down, my muscles shake in protest and exhaustion, but i used the last speck of energy to push myself up.

I let out a sigh of relief as I collapsed onto the hard but relaxing floor for my poor muscles. Taegan shakes his head at my dramatics, and goes over to encourage Dalyva, who has only 4 left. I watch her struggle, and see how she’s trying to circulate her spesh while doing something, so she gets better at it, and it's sort of working as well! However, it's making her more tired, since it's using up her energy. But she managed to push through and finish her push ups. As we all stand, the voice says. “Participants challenge finished, opening next door.” It’s certainly different from what the Smart trial voice said with just correct, and automatically opening the door. A door opens in the wall, and we walk through, regardless of what it said.

The next room has many vines hanging from the ceiling, tinted purple just like everything else, with a ledge about halfway up the vines and across maybe 8 vines from where you would first climb up. Unfortunately, if they wanted us to do it now, we were hungry, so as we sat down, Taegan hands out to each of us a bag. of trail mix, and we all eat it up hungrily. The taste of nuts and granola, with a bit of dried fruit thrown into the mix. As I look around the cave, I notice that basically everything is covered in moss, and the green purple tinted vines even have little glowing orange berries. I pick one curiously. “Dalyva, is this safe to eat?” I ask, showing her the berry in my hand.

She looks at it for a sec, before nodding. “Of course! they’re scattered in all the forests of Dajennu, and are harmless to eat. They grow on almost anything, and are a staple food of some smaller towns.” I popped it in my mouth as she finished her sentence. It tastes surprisingly good. A mixture of almost mango juice swirls in my mouth. Immediately I looked at Taegan. “Taegan.” I say, chucking him one, that he catches swiftly. He eats it, and his eyes light up. “We can use our old trail mix bags.” He says, and hands me my old trail mix bag. He gets his, and hands Dalyva hers, and the glow berry collection commences.

It takes us almost an hour or two of climbing around on the vines, which we discovered were very thick and not going to break and now we have 7 bags of about 15cm long and 6cm width of glow berries. We stack them away carefully in the dimensional bag. Of course, we did eat a few, couldn't resist, but not that many. We shimmy up the vines one last time, and hop onto the ledge. We survey what surrounds us now. There’s nothing much, just a door, but as we walk through it, another token appears in front of me, and I cheer. “Alright, we did it!”

I high five Taegan, and then Dalyva as we head back to the main Trial room. “Completed in 3 hours 5 minutes and 13 seconds.” Says Guide. That's pretty decent, but even though it's practically still the afternoon by my internal clock, I don’t want to continue. I say this. “Taegan, do we have to continue?” I ask, all my muscles sore from the work out and climbing around on the vines. Taegan sighs. “Dalyva?” He asks. She nods. “Yeah, I agree with Shankhe.”

And that’s how we started to put up the tents in the main trial room. We don’t have much food, only the berries, no pasta bake because we finished it, grains, three bags of trail mix left and some beef from the cows way back. All the spices had been used up, and we had none left, so the best thing in the bag was the berries.

Then I bring out Frognii, and Dalyva snatches it. Taegan gets out his earrings and just stares at them before gathering some sand, and making it poke a hole in his ears, which clearly hurt by his wince, and he quickly slides the earrings in, putting on the back. He removed all the sand from his ears and rubbed his ears soothingly.

I watch in pity. I look to where Dalyva is with Frognii, and see she is cleaning her with her clothes. I’m bored, yet tired, though I can't go to sleep because it's too early in the day. I groan, and lay on the floor just wanting for something to get rid of this muscle pain. I rub my core, those muscles the worst of all. I almost nodded off as I closed my eyes, and just decided to have a nap, so I got up, went into my tent, and lay down on my sleeping bag. Lying there, I could feel all the muscles in my body that we used today. Core, arms, my legs as well from climbing the vines. My hands which had vine burn from sliding down one, and just in general my whole body.

Slowly, my body starts to tire, and I fall into blissful unconsciousness.