Leo stepped forward into a wide, open room with a monolithic feel, it’s dull grey stone veined with faint lines of golden light.

At the centre stood a massive iron slab, dimly glowing sigils etched into its surface and pulsing like a heartbeat. Five thick black chains were connected to the slab, each one ominous to say the least.

The moment Leo stepped fully into the room, it felt as if the weight of the heavens dropped onto his shoulders.

“Oof that’s rough,” Leo said, voice strained.

Dust began to stir from the floor, drifting upward in slow swirls despite the complete lack of wind. A system message appeared before him.

Quest updated:

Trial of Strength initiated

You have entered the Trial of Strength. You will face two challenges to prove your strength. Not just the power behind your strikes, but also the skill needed to utilise it properly.
Danger may await inside if unprepared.
Rewards are granted based on performance
Good luck, initiate!

So a ‘figure it out’ kind of trial. Pretty on point for the system.

He wasn’t necessarily against it, actually quite the opposite. It would have been exciting if he wasn’t currently struggling to stand properly.

Each step towards the slab was rather difficult. The gravity here pressed down on him far harder than Earth’s, or the tutorial’s for that matter, which had turned out to be basically the same.

By the time he finally crossed the room, one heavy step after another, he was breathing harder than he should have been as he looked up at the towering slab. There were five sigils, etched on it in slightly different shapes. One of the sigils would definitely need him to jump to reach it… not exactly easy, but it was a Trial after all.

Leo stared at the slab, trying to work out what exactly it wanted from him.

Sweat was beginning to bead from his forehead as he tried to work out something with the sigils. The way they flashed. The chains, but nothing was coming to him.

Well, not quite nothing.

Leo settled into a fighting stance, drove stamina through his body, and punched one of the sigils with everything he had.

The slab didn't move. It absorbed the strike completely, but something did change. The chains connected to the slab tightened their slack just a little. At the same time, the pressure in the room increased just a little.

“Hit it until I can’t hit anymore?” Leo asked the slab.

The slab didn’t respond.

Leo’s blows hammered into the slab with all his might, vowing to take this damn slab down if it killed him. Each punch made the next one harder as the pressure in the room steadily increased. The chains had grown extremely taut at this point, barely any slack remaining.

It didn’t feel right.

Breathing heavily, Leo took a breath and forced himself to focus. The chains, the sigils, the pulsing.

The pulsing?

It wasn’t his heartbeat. A faint pulse echoed through the room, almost in time with his own heart. He would have missed it entirely if he hadn’t stopped searching for something else.

At no point had he looked for another method or any kind of sign. He’d just started punching until something gave out, same as he might have done weeks ago. How was that any different from how he’d fought before the first Goliath?

He was supposed to be better than that now. More aware, more deliberate. Less reliant on brute force.

Closing his eyes, Leo listened to the pulse in the chains and sigils until he caught the rhythm. They were in sync.

Once he felt the timing, Leo struck at the exact moment the pulse came. This time the slab didn’t swallow the blow. The force spread through the entire structure instead. The pressure in the room eased, and the chains loosened slightly.

This was it.

At least until the chains re-tightened again, the pressure more than before and growing. This was either the timer going off or Leo had done something wrong.

“I shouldn’t have stopped,” Leo muttered.

Waiting for his moment, Leo struck out in time with a pulse, then the next and the next after that. He followed it like a rhythm, trying to sync his breathing and attacks with the pulse. The rhythm changed depending on where he hit and how much force he put behind the strike.

After a few minutes of steady, well-timed strikes, Leo slipped into a kind of trance. All other thoughts were muted. The only thing that mattered was matching the rhythm.

The gravity had returned to normal at this point, it was no longer testing his strength of body. Now it was the strength of focus.

Suddenly, one of the chains snapped. Causing one of the sigils to light up with a continuous glow. From that point hitting the area of that slab felt like it had a reduced effect. Leo focused his strikes near the other sigils, hoping to break the other chains off. One by one the chains snapped until only one remained.

The sigil at the top.

It had been pretty neglected so far, the only times it had absorbed energy was if Leo jumped when attacking. Which in hindsight he probably should have more often.

Summoning his Cloak of Wind, Leo’s weight dropped enough to keep his attacks going while dashing up with his boots or Spark Dashing every time he dropped too low. The concentration to do all this while maintaining the rhythm had him expending more stamina than expected. But finally, after a well timed kick, the last chain snapped.

All the sigils on the slab brightened until they were all in harmony before dimming.

Leo looked at it wondering what to do next. The pulse was gone. The pressure completely faded.

Then it cracked. A room shuddering, alarmingly loud, crack. A chain reaction destroyed the slab within seconds, revealing a path beyond it.

Cheering to himself, Leo walked through to the next room and whatever next lesson was in store. If it was anything like this one then he was all for it. Fighting in the rhythm like that had taken him back to his days at Boyd’s gym where he’d spend time just losing himself in the strikes and rhythm.

His resources were okay, enough to keep going if this next part was similar in difficulty.

MP: 940/1220

SP: 899/1490

He felt like he’d used more than that but looking back on it, he realised that it had only been around ten minutes of actual controlled fighting. Before that it was just raw power and trying to stand, a challenge in itself. The mental strain he was feeling wasn’t recorded in his resources however and it was starting to mount after the crazy day.

No time to rest though. Leo had a trial to finish and the next room was awaiting.

As he walked into the next room it was like stepping into a brand new world. Instead of the dull grey monolithic stone, it was a vast, open arena, illuminated by a harsh white glow. At the center was a cracked altar with a pedestal on the top. Towering stone pillars were spread out like a forest, they were countless in the large arena. They seemed to hum faintly with restrained energy, carved with runes that looked like arteries.

Above, the ceiling looked a bit too low compared to the size of the room. Leo guessed there would be something about that as it just screamed wrong.

Taking a step forward, he heard a faint crack and saw stone chips flying out from one of the pillars.

“That can’t be good.”

Taking another step, it happened again, only this time it didn’t stop at one. Spiderweb cracks started forming all over the ceiling. A pillar on his left snapped at the base and began falling directly towards him. He didn’t need his reflex to dodge this one, swiftly sidestepping it.

The pillar hit the ground like a giant’s stomp and Leo instantly regretted his decision of dodging as the quake caused the ceiling to start falling in giant chunks on his position.

This time Voltaic Reflex helped him dodge any fragments that came from behind as he ran to a more secure position. Sadly there wasn’t much room to position anywhere as pillars began falling towards him.

Why did they keep falling his way? Most likely from the system causing it.

Leo changed his tactic and destroyed the pillar coming towards him with a fist crackling with blue sparks. Volt Crash demolished the pillar, the power of the strike enough to completely stop the subsequent quake. Only one issue…

The ceiling still fell.

It was at this point Leo realised that the altar in the middle of the room held what looked to be a gem encased in glass. How he’d missed it when entering he didn’t know, but it gave him an idea of what to do.

Protect the gem.

But how?

Leo stopped for a moment to observe everything around him and try to piece together the puzzle pieces that were slowly forming in his mind. The ceiling was cracking from the outside in. The pillars were falling towards him no matter which angle he came from. The places where the ceiling came down were no longer traversable as it turned out the ceiling chunks were as tall as the rest of the ceiling.

How am I meant to protect the altar and myself? If the ceiling comes down on the altar it's over for both of us.

There had to be something, had to be a way to–

There was a space.

The area where the pillar had first fallen and crashed into the ground, the ceiling that fell from above it did not crush it.

That’s it. Create my own ceiling!

Leo dashed to the altar, when the first pillar started falling towards him he moved as if to destroy it, but instead of just outright crushing it to pieces, his strike hit the side of it, causing its trajectory to fall towards the altar.

First piece in place.

From there, Leo dashed in a circle around the altar, and every pillar that fell towards him he tried to direct it to where he wanted it to go.

It wasn’t easy, as controlling a falling pillar while dodging chunks of ceiling that would crush him outright or at least maim him was harder than it sounded. Or maybe just as hard as it sounded.

His stamina was starting to wane. He hadn’t noticed—another blunder—that the pillars here were thicker and far denser than the pillars on the outskirts of the room. Navigating the room was a nightmare, and Leo almost cursed at the system for calling this a strength Trial. This was at least half agility.

As if out of spite, or perhaps a budding crescendo of the trial, two pillars came towards him at the same time.

“Oh come on!” Leo groaned in frustration

Leo unleashed the first kick of Echoing Talon on the pillar to his left trying to make it hit the other pillar that was descending his way, the second strike of the skill hit the other pillar after he Spark Dashed to the correct side.

Unfortunately his timing was completely off and the pillars missed each other entirely. So instead of colliding and forming a barrier, they became obstacles.

“This trial sucks! I wish I picked Agility!” Leo yelled as the next pillar came towards him.

He could complain after, if he didn’t die first.

After another few minutes of constant attacks and pillars, Leo had formed what he hoped would be enough to shield the altar from the weight of the ceiling collapsing upon it. Leo hit the last pillar into what he guessed was the correct place and took shelter next to the center.

All his work amounted to a maze of debris and hope.

The final ceiling piece began to fall—no longer supported by anything. Leo quickly looked around and judged that this was going to go poorly.

In a last ditch attempt to save himself and the glass case, he dove for it. It was wrenched off of the altar as the ceiling came from above.

Leo rolled next to a pillar that he had toppled with the case clutched in his arms. A devastating crash shuddered his surroundings as the ceiling landed on top of his tiny walled fortress of pillars.

He exhaled, glad he could do so. He wasn’t dead. That was a good start. Rolling over, his face was only a few inches from a slab of sandstone looking rock.

“Bit too close for comfort,” Leo muttered.

Another rumbling started, the whole arena quaked as if something more was collapsing.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Leo yelled.

This trial was ridiculous, how was anyone expected to do this? Leo could only prepare himself the best he could for what was next.

Just as he was prepping himself, the giant slab above him started to… rise?

The entire stone block rose all the way into the ceiling, slotting itself back in place like nothing had happened. Leo just watched in confusion, flat on his back with a glass case in his arms.

The case!

Leo looked down at it and winced, there were cracks going down the case with the gem inside being thrown around inside it. Not exactly a job well done if keeping the case safe was the goal of the trial.

A blue portal opened up just behind the altar. Leo sighed and dragged himself to his feet. The reward of this trial would likely be bronze at best. Maybe he would at least get to keep whatever was in the c–

The case dissolved into sand, the gem following suit.

Closing his eyes in resignation and tilting his head down, he marched his way into the portal.

~

Bjorn exited through a blue portal, finding himself in a white room. His armour was dented, his body bloody and battered. His eyes looked tired, almost solemn.

Why did he have to go and storm off into the portal like a child? The kid had only tried to cheer him up, he wished he could be as strong as expected.

Congratulations!

You have cleared the Trial of Toughness!

Calculating rewards..

Hits blocked successfully: 68
Health Percentage on clear: 38%

Silver rank reward achieved

All subsequent Bronze rank rewards have been granted

All wounds have been healed. All cooldowns have been reset.

Bronze re–

Bjorn dismissed the notification. He didn’t care about the rewards right now. That whole trial, he’d treated it as punishment, taking more hits than necessary just to try and prove something.

To be the ‘Guardian’ that everyone expected of him.

His worry was that he would never be enough. Be unable to protect those he cared about… again. His wife had already suffered in this place, his children… Well, they would always be fine.

Emotions started rising up in his chest, those of which he hadn’t felt for a long time. Panic, grief, guilt, anger. He forced them back down, along with the memories.

“Come on, man. Keep yourself together. There are kids out there doing way more and thriving. Enough!” He screamed the last words, hitting himself in the face hard enough to draw blood that flowed down his newly repaired face.

“Ah. That’s better,” Bjorn sighed in relief. He could think clearly again, no longer weighed down by his world shattering grief.

Taking inspiration from the wonder-kid, Bjorn would dedicate himself to this tutorial more thoroughly, starting with the next trial.

After a well needed nap that is.