For a second, I just stood there, pulse hammering in my ears. No blinding light. No competitors. No screaming arena. Just… peace.

  The world had changed.

  I was inside a long, rectangular stone building—or what was left of one. Most of the walls had crumbled, exposing the interior to the pale sky above. Huge chunks of ceiling had fallen in and become part of the ground. Thick wild grass and flowers grew across shattered floor tiles, curling around debris and cracks like they’d been waiting their whole lives for the building to give out.

  All around, there were statues. Dozens of them.

  Tall, human-shaped, but all headless. The stone was worn smooth from time and weather, but the bodies remained posed—some mid-step, some frozen mid-battle, some with arms raised as if saluting a forgotten king. Their heads weren’t gone, though.

  Each statue’s head was there, somewhere—just not where it should be. One had its head pressed into its chest, like it had swallowed it whole. Another cradled its stone skull in its lap like an offering. A third had its head jammed onto its elbow joint, like a grotesque growth

  The air was quiet, but not peacefully so. It was still in that weird, loaded way. Like the space itself was holding its breath, waiting for me to make a move.

  There was no point denying it. It felt like I was in an evolution of the space where I first received my Signature Weapon. This time, almost like the first time, was a terminal. I hadn’t touched it yet, but I could tell that it was different.

  “So, I triggered another checkpoint,” I muttered.

  I didn’t hear her footsteps. Just her voice, smooth and unbothered, sliding into the silence like it had been there all along.

  “You’ve grown so splendidly,” she said, voice like the ambient breeze.

  I turned fast and immediately went wide-eyed.

  She stood a few paces behind me, framed by the archway of the crumbled hall like she belonged in a painting. A woman, tall and radiant with curves that refused to be subtle, her bare breasts rose proudly under a fitted light-purple suit, tailored sharply to her shape, every button golden and fighting to hold her chest back. That suit was stitched with a faint checkerboard pattern–black squares criss-crossing the suit jacket’s left side—elegant, and weirdly hypnotic. Her pants hugged hips that could make lesser men turn their heads, and her heels—somehow—made no sound against the ruined stone.

  Her hair was a rich, flowing lilac, falling like silk down her back. A strand curved ever so slightly across one eye, further accentuating the directness of her steely blue gaze.

  I was immediately on guard. This felt like a woman who would keep her secrets by constantly probing for yours. Her wearing that checkerboard pattern wasn’t good either.

  “Don’t you look at me like that,” I muttered, almost to myself.

  She smiled. “Like what?”

  “Like you already know my name.”

  “I do,” she said, stepping forward, her walk slow and deliberate, like she knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “Set. Current participant.”

  I tensed. “Trial Overseer?”

  She stopped just within arm’s reach. Her eyes scanned me slowly, taking in every inch of me–grime and rage included.

  “No. Not at all,” she replied, shocking me. She placed her hand on her chest and giggled. “I am more like a personal adviser.”

  “What?” I replied. “An adviser?”

  “You may not understand it all, Set, but promising rising stars such as yourself must be nurtured, lest they burn away too quickly.”

  “Then… In that case, I have questions.”

  “As do I,” she calmly replied. “You’re a curious young man, you know?”

  “Why am I here? Where is this place? And the Trials–what is going on!? Where did all these people come from?!”

  I did my best to play the part of someone like Noah. It was hard. I could guess about many things. But the resident of this world–Set–would not be able to do so. Whatever comfort my guesses brought me–I couldn’t let her see them.

  “You came here because you gained—”

  The woman stopped herself and smiled.

  “Pardon me. You are here because you took the next step in your journey.”

  Bullshit.

  She was totally about to say that I gained a Level!

  “I took a step? The next one?” I replied, playing the part of a confused young man.

  The space suddenly shook. I even heard creaks.

  The woman sighed. “I would love to speak to you longer, Set, but I’m afraid we simply cannot.” She gestured to the terminal. “Typically, you would have been allowed the same amount of time as when you gained your Signature Weapon… but unfortunately, you triggered this development while in a Trial.”

  I raised a brow. “Was that bad?”

  “It wasn’t intended. It was no easy feat to pull you in here. And unfortunately, a compromise had to be made. You only have a few minutes to interact with that Terminal and take the next step in your journey.”

  My heart was racing. The way she was speaking–I had to ask more.

  “You… Adviser, are you different than the the Overseer?” I slackened my jaw and tried to look awestruck. “Are you really on my side?”

  Her face loosened, as if answering mine. She quickly snatched my right hand and held it up between hers. “Set, oh, Set, yes. I am on your side. I am interested only in seeing your journey continue.” Her eyes shimmered as her lips curled. “So please, darling Set… Touch that Terminal–that Nascent Terminal–and nurture your nascent power.”

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  A Nascent Terminal? Just like that?

  I turned to face it, my hand reaching for it.

  “Set, if I may… The berry. You ate it at such an… interesting moment. What possessed you to do that?”

  My heart rate spiked. She was asking this now? Not only that, I could hear the tinge of curiosity in her voice.

  I held my hand an inch from the terminal.

  “What you call my ‘journey;’ it was one where the simplest things seemed to give me the extra fuel I needed to keep going… My mother got that berry for me. I made a wish—that the dried berry would give me the extra fuel I needed to bash that man’s face in.”

  The woman gasped, her hand clawing at her chest. “Well, look at where it got you.”

  She reached up, as if to touch my cheek—then changed her mind and let her fingers trail down the front of my tattered vestment instead. I noticed her slight gulp before she spoke again. “Your wish came true, Set. Now, ignore me and go ahead. Activate that Terminal. I will be right here to supplement your knowledge.”

  My hand pressed to the terminal.

  It was warm—too warm for stone. A pulse moved beneath my palm, then a rush of cold shot up my arm and into my chest. It was electric after a moment–like I was being scanned.

  The world around me dimmed, like the sunlight had been muffled by rebellious clouds. The Nascent Terminal lit up with a soft hum, and a translucent interface expanded in front of me.

  A web of glowing paths with nodes stretched across the interface. My memories of Earth’s games jumped ahead of my cognition—Skill Trees.

  The trees pulsed faintly, waiting for me to interact them. Nine total trees, arranged in a semi-circle. I understood them whenever my gaze landed on them.

  I made a connection with two of them immediately–Death-Stealing Interloper and Water Glaive.

  A black web of thin, writhing lines, like veins pulled across the screen. I could sense my Trump Card nestled at the heart of it–Shadow Beast: Banishment. It was really at the center of the tree, surrounded by all the other nodes, but not connected to them.

  I got a sense of what was going on. For this tree, unlocking more of the unconnected nodes automatically unlocked a sub-sytem of nodes pertaining to the Trump Cards.

  I hovered my hand toward it and felt the presence of death, banishment, the hush of something dragged into the abyss–yeah, that was the perfect feeling for Banishment.

  Then the next one, Water Glaive.

  This one shimmered, cool and sharp. A ripple moved through it as I focused, and I felt like I was being rocked by waves. There was a node lit up on this tree–one that corresponded to my Water Glaive. There was an unlit Trump Card in this one’s center too. For this one, I could select one of the two nodes connected to the glaive attack, or I could start at the Tree’s proper root.

  Yeah, I understood why these two were here. I gained access to their trees by having abilities from the trees.

  But that was just two out of nine.

  I scanned the others, trying to piece them together. One of them glowed with a jagged red light and made my skin crawl. Another shimmered faintly, like an illusion with trickster energy. One outlined something that looked mechanical, like a mechanical arm. Did I get this one because of New Arm? Another tree was almost peaceful, and looked like it was outlining a mess of vines.

  The woman behind me–my adviser–hadn’t moved. She stood there quietly, watching me, her presence a gentle press at my back.

  “How much time do I have?” I asked, glancing at her.

  “Only a few windings of a time keeper shroom.”

  My mouth dropped with genuine surprise. “You know our mushrooms?”

  She smiled and winked. “Of course I do. I am your adviser.”

  The timekeeper mushroom was a fixture for most villagers. A ‘winding’ was equivalent to roughly two minutes. I wasn’t expecting her to say ‘minutes’ but this was eerie.

  “I don’t have a timekeeper,” I said.

  “I’ll give you a count of thirty when the end is imminent. I’m sorry, Set. We’re doing our best to give you time.”

  I focused on the trees once more. Looking at the glowing Skill Trees I didn’t have time to examine, frustration built. A growl escaped me.

  “Adviser… Can you answer me this? The Trial…”

  “Yes?” she replied, her voice bright.

  “Are we being watched?”

  The thought had been solidified in my mind since the Penalty round. Such a stupid penalty—the setup only made sense to me if there were some others, somewhere far away, laughing at us being stupid.

  The adviser smiled softly. “Of course. I was watching—as your adviser. The Saturial was watching too.”

  My eyes narrowed on her. Her expression remained unchanged.

  She wasn’t going to let anything else slip. I focused on the interface again.

  “Hey, listen. I don’t have time,” I said, speaking into the interface. “I don’t need something simple.”

  My jaw and fists clenched.

  “Point out something to me. Point out something that will provoke surprise. Point out something tricky!”

  “Set!” the adviser called.

  Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the rumble and the subsequent pulse of wind that detonated from the terminal.

  “I thought so,” I said, looking at the nodes that were more lit up than the others.

  Those other Skill Trees—I wasn’t going to bother with them for now. I was going to focus on the two who had greatly changed the course of my life. And of those two, the one I would select was the Tree whose node was breaking the rules and letting me select it ahead of time, when nothing else that I had unlocked connected to it.

  “Got it, Water Glaive. Let’s make Pretty Boy shit his pants.”

  A change was registered with my selection, and ripples spread across the interface. The new node was lit up, on the other side of the Water Glaive tree.

  The adviser let out a breathy little "ohh" and gripped herself as she shuddered. “Did you just make demands of the trees in that window?” she asked, eyes lit like she was watching something forbidden. “Because if you keep that up, I might need to note you done as ‘unnervingly intense.’”

  I gave her a side-glance. “It’s a day of firsts for all of us, right?”

  She bit her lip and tugged on her jacket. “It certainly is.”

  But then the air dropped. I suddenly experienced a vision of death–of this entire space being one of dark skies and dead matter.

  The lights on the terminal flickered, dimmed, and then twisted. The glow from the interface bent sideways for a second, like light caught in a current. A deep, cracking sound echoed from the interface like the window had been shattered.

  A black vortex opened up beneath the terminal, and skeletal hands reached out, clawing at the ground. And with those hands came laughter.

  It was familiar, coming in the same rhythm as all the other times I heard it. But this time, I could sense the emotion behind it–it was pissed off. It was laughing off its irritation.

  My spine straightened. My teeth locked. “Don’t tell me someone’s upset I didn’t pick him.”

  “Oh no,” the adviser whispered.

  She looked at me with genuine concern now. Her suggestive expression dimmed, replaced by a gaze far more professional.

  “Set, you only activated one node.”

  “Yes? Was I supposed to activate more?”

  “No, you were only supposed to activate one.” She turned to the terminal. “Stop! Do you hear me?! Stop!”

  I had no idea what this meant in the grand scheme of things, but I knew one thing–that Skill Tree wanted to give me power.

  I walked toward it.

  “Set! Stop!”

  “I clearly know nothing about this world.” I placed a finger on the Terminal, on the only option that I could pick. “My life was a lie. All of our lives are lies because there’s so much more going on. But you know what?” I locked eyes with the node as the skeletal hands began patting my legs and the laughter turned happy. “The first power that let me see the world was this one…” I grinned at the vortex below my teeth. “Jeez, I was going to pick you next time, you know? But sorry for offending you. Try to not be so clingy next time, huh?”

  The vortex kept laughing as it waned.

  “Oh, but if you really want me to pick you on the first shot, show me something amazing.”

  The vortex closed. Peace returned. I faced the adviser as she took a half-step back.

  “Set, you were only supposed to activate one node.”

  I shrugged. “Fuck me, I guess.”

  ***

  Activate a Nascent Terminal.

  +1 Level

  ***