Too Stubborn to Die

Aaron mused over what trial to take next once he made it back to the hallway. He kinda wanted to jump straight into the fourth stage of the Trial of Endurance, but it was probably better to save until after he hit level 20. The fourth stage was meant to be a significant difficulty spike, after all. And he needed to tie the skills he had cultivated together before that.

He decided to go with the Trial of Survival. He figured he still needed another level, and didn’t want to get stuck grinding out months against the fourth stage of the Trial of Dominance, just because he got impatient. Also, he wanted to see if the armory would give him something worth using his upgrade kit on.

Selecting Oozagh for a change, Aaron appeared in a dark, seedy alley. An eerie silence hung in the air, only to be broken by sinister, cackling laughter a moment later. Glancing around, he didn’t see anything besides the faint residual glow of neons in the distance.

“A creep laugh and neon signs… that’s different,” he muttered as he slowly worked toward the hazy, flickering light projected across the damp bricks smeared with various graffiti.

Annoyingly, and increasingly normal it seemed, Oozagh stood beside him, doing nothing again. It kind of irritated Aaron. How many trials did the shadows not really help with? Then again, maybe he was meant to try more different shadows, and each shadow could only help in specific trials. Not that he intended to change his methods. He could find his own way through a trial if the shadows wouldn’t help, and he had a feeling that sticking to the gods that had already either blessed him or offered to, was the way to go. Maybe they wouldn’t help, but at least he had a chance to impress them, and who knows, maybe that would pay off.

Turning a bend in the alley, Aaron looked up as he came into view of the neon signs and mumbled, “Welcome to the circus?” as he read them. “Ookay, of course there was going to be a freaky one.”

The cackling laughter sounded again, and he turned around just in time to catch a shadow passing across the alley at his back, followed shortly after by a can rolling out and into the middle of the alley.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

There was no response.

“Should’ve guessed. Okay, whatever.”

It was going to take more than a creepy alley to frighten Aaron after everything he’d been through. If anything, it was a little amusing.

Between his perception and his acute awareness, he was aware that things were following him as he continued walking, sulking in the shadows. As with the other Trials of Survival, it probably wasn’t a good idea to try to fight his way out of this one. However, for now, Aaron would allow the creeping figures in the shadow to follow, since they had yet to spring an attack, and he was happy to study his environment. After all, the trials were an opportunity to train, or at least that’s how Aaron saw it.

Strangely, the longer he walked through the alley, the more he realized it was like some kind of movie set. The windows above seemed flat and lacked details. Not only that, but the alleys never found their way to any streets, simply veering off into more alleys. Not to mention the absolutely absurd number of neon signs with all manner of flashing logos, pictures, and words plastered all over the place. Like, who were they advertising to in this desolate alley?

“Dungeon Rules Apply,” read one sign, and another, “Formed from pocket dimensions, dungeons often contain their own special conditions,” and another that read “No cheating!”

Hmmm, interesting.

“Read the terms carefully before entering.”

Douglas mentioned dungeons a while back, didn’t he?

It wasn’t just those; there were a bunch of signs, all with similar messages. The theme was consistent: dungeons had special rules. He wasn’t sure what that had to do with the trial, so he wrote it to memory and kept walking, and soon, the path he had taken reached a dead end.

Metal bars were blocking the alley ahead, and to the side of the bars was one of those laughing clown circus games.

Aaron tested a powered-up punch against the metal bars, and he quickly discovered that whatever they were made of was extraordinarily hard.

“Okay, guess I can’t bash my way through.”

He turned to the clown face, jerkingly turning from side to side. Beneath it was a clear screen protecting several numbered columns. Curiously glancing back at the blocked alleyway, he realized that there was a number thirteen above it.

“Oh, I think I get it.”

Taking a ball from a bucket beside the game, he raised it to the clown’s mouth and waited. He could see a moving nozzle beneath it, which he figured was where the ball would shoot out from. Taking his time, he waited and timed his drop for when the nozzle would line up with the ten, figuring ten plus three was the easiest way to reach thirteen.

Aaron released, and the ball missed, hit the edge, and then rolled into seven. However, while it wasn’t what he had aimed for, he could still pass with just two balls if he landed on a six. Unfortunately, when he dropped the second ball, it also missed and landed on the column marked four.

“Oh, dammit, so close,” Aaron hissed and took another ball. However, this time, he attempted to use Fate Bender on the ball.

He hadn’t experimented much with using Fate Bender on inanimate objects before, but he actually found it surprisingly easy. In fact, it worked almost like a video game targeting system, where he could see the trajectory of the ball and how it would change based on when and how he inserted it. He fiddled with the way he held the ball and watched the shifting of the trajectory until it was right over the two, and dropped the ball

…And he mistimed it. He had hesitated just a split second, and that split second was enough for him to miss the window. It bounced off the rim of the two and clattered down into a hole marked five, pushing his total to sixteen. Flashing, red lights broke his focus from the game, followed by whooping sirens.

“Tattling on me, huh?”

Turning, he spotted the dozens of red eyes that had lit up the alley at his back. All of them were firmly fastened on him.

I feel like I’ve been here before.

Creeping out from the shadows were dozens of patchwork circus monstrosities. Clown faces and extra arms dangled from misshapen bodies. Strange growths covered grotesque forms, including hunchbacks and harlequins, among the rejected troupe.

He doubted his odds, but there was no point wasting good training, so Aaron squared up. However, what followed wasn’t much of a fight. Not only was this the third stage, but he wasn’t supposed to fight these guys. That was the entire point of this trial. Get away, and avoid your attackers.

They moved fast, like real fast, and were extraordinarily strong. Despite that, he still managed to draw the fight out for several long seconds as he read fate and dodged with impeccable speed and accuracy. He thought that was pretty good, though he didn’t actually get close to landing any of his own strikes, so obviously the fight was far above his pay grade. Still, it was nice to know he could dodge such powerful enemies, even if it wasn’t for that long.

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“I suppose I am getting stronger,” he mused as he lay on the tiles of the obsidian hallway. He knew he was, but it was a good feeling to perform better than he had expected, and he jumped to his feet with a deep-set grin.

But outperforming the level of dodging he was probably meant to reach at his level wasn’t what intrigued him about this trial. He had felt like he was on the tip of something bigger as he had read the fate of the balls rolling through the game. Like his Trait was trying to tell him something. Like there was a greater understanding ready to be revealed, so he rushed straight back into the trial without a second to waste.

Rushing through the alleys, he reached the laughing clown in seconds and attempted the same thing. But this time, he was channeling Fate Bender the entire time.

Taking a deep breath and reading fate, he recalled how he had mistimed the first attempt and adjusted accordingly. He dropped the ball exactly where it needed to be dropped and watched as it followed the thread that would lead it toward the ten. And it did, for a while. It went down the clown’s gullet and came out the nozzle, and was halfway to the ten looking perfectly on target when suddenly, the game’s lights lit up, and chimes sounded from it. And then, a freaking viny beam of electricity zapped out and disintegrated his ball as it rolled out and toward the ten.

Aaron blinked, dumbfounded. The game had cheated.

“What the actual fuck? You bloody, cheating little bastard,” he thumped the flat of his fist down against the game.

But his frustration wore off quickly. Not because he condoned cheating, but because he hadn’t seen it coming. Even if the game did cheat, shouldn’t he have seen it coming via his fate viewing trait? What was up with that?

Exhaling, he attempted the game again, and once more, it zapped his ball away before he could claim victory, and soon after, he was torn apart.

After four more deaths, he went back to attempting the game with pure skill. With his experience from using Fate Bender to do it, it wasn’t hard anymore, and only took him one more failure before he timed it correctly and got the ten. However, rather than immediately aim for the three, he stopped for a little bit.

He was more than a little pissed off. He had been tossed into the Shadow Trials with nothing, and his only boon was his Alpha Trait, and now the System was just going “fuck you” and nullifying it? He didn’t like it at all. The trait’s description said “you won’t bend to the multiverse,” but here he was, getting bent over by the multiverse anyway. That didn’t feel right at all.

More importantly, it was worrying. If his trump card was being so easily countered by a stupid carnival game, how would it fare out in the wider multiverse?

He activated the trait again and aimed for the three, and once again, the ball was zapped midair, and he was killed soon after. This made him even more unhappy. Not only was it able to detect when he used the Trait, it was able to zap the ball without him seeing it coming. Even when lightning was midair snaking toward the ball, the thread still showed the ball going into the hole.

This… wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. Was the stupid clown game stronger than him? Was his trait not everything Douglas had talked it up to be?

He went back into the trial, ran for the clown game, and started using Fate Bender again. This time, he looked as closely as he could at where the lightning had come from, trying to see if he could see anything. If it was detecting him using Fate Bender, then it was already detecting him now. That meant there should have been some kind of sign that it was going to activate, but he still saw nothing.

It was only when he actually dropped the ball that he first saw something. It was almost imperceptible, barely more than a flicker, but the thread changed. The ball’s thread disappeared beyond the point where it would get zapped. It reappeared before he could even be sure of what he saw, and the next, the ball was disintegrating again.

He didn’t even turn around when the clowns came to kill him, instead letting himself die and immediately going back in. He repeated this a few more times, and each time, the flicker grew clearer. The game wasn’t immune to his skill. It was just working around it somehow. However, although he could see it, that didn’t mean he could do anything about it.

After dying for the fifth time, he went back in, still using Fate Bender, and this time tried something different. Rather than aiming for any of the holes, he waited and watched until he found a specific point he could drop it where it wouldn’t land in any of the holes, instead rolling down all the way to the catch basin at the bottom.

To his surprise, the game did nothing about this. It simply let the ball miss. No alarms sounded, and no clowns came to kill him. He repeated this twice more to confirm it, then an idea formed in his mind. If he could just bend the string, could he make it in with Fate Bender? The name of the skill was Fate Bender after all. It would make sense that he could alter it.

He prepared to drop the ball again, and this time, while it was in midair, he attempted to alter its path. Nothing happened. Of course, nothing happened. He didn’t know what he was doing. But he was going to figure it out and probably die trying.

He tried bending the threads a few more times before he accidentally mistimed the ball drop, and it ended up flying toward the seven. The game didn’t like that at all, and zapped it out of the air, and soon, he was back in the hallway after being torn apart by the clowns.

He immediately re-entered, but this time, when he reached the game, he ignored it, focusing only on the basket with the balls. He didn’t actually need the game to test it. It didn’t matter what he did with the ball. He could still see its threads of fate. So, rather than playing the game, he took the ball and just dropped it on the ground.

The thread showed it falling, then bouncing a few times before rolling away, and that’s exactly what it did. And it continued to do that dozens of times, in spite of his attempts to alter the path. After a few dozen more attempts to alter the path, Aaron stopped counting how many attempts he was on and devoted his full attention to the ball and the threads.

He dropped the ball, and dropped it again, and again and again and again and again until he was too tired to pay attention anymore and got himself killed by the clowns so he could keep doing it with a fresh mind. Doubt grew in his mind as he wondered whether it was even possible, but so did his stubbornness as he felt there had to be a way.

As his mind started getting foggy again and he was getting ready to get himself killed, something finally changed. It was so subtle he almost didn’t notice it, but just like with the lightning from the game, he saw the tiniest of flickers.

Suddenly, he was wide awake again, and he quickly grabbed the ball to drop it again. The flicker wasn’t there this time, but a few attempts later, he saw it again. Worried that he was growing delirious, he got himself killed again, splashed some water on his face in the dining hall, then went back in to drop the ball again.

“Haha!” he shouted when he saw that not only was the flicker still there, it was stronger than ever.

He looked like a madman, smiling maniacally as he watched the ball drop over and over again, but each time, the flicker got bigger and bigger, and with it came a mild headache. He ignored the pain in his head, devoting his full willpower to making the flicker bigger and bigger, until finally, he heard a crack and blacked out. He woke up still in the Trial next to the game, the ball having rolled away from him.

He shook his head to clear the grogginess, then leapt to his feet and ran over to the ball. He had seen something in the last attempt just before he blacked out. He was sure of it. He had figured something out.

He held his breath as he lifted the ball again and dropped it. As soon as it started falling, his head screamed in pain, but he forced himself to keep watching as Fate broke. The single thread marking the ball’s path split into countless more, each with a slightly different trajectory. They were all thin and brittle-looking, and they almost seemed to shimmer, but they were there.

He dropped the ball a few more times, but the pounding in his head got to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. It felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to his amygdala, so he got himself killed with the game and went back fresh to try again. With his mind fresh, when he dropped the ball, it was more bearable. It still felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to his amygdala, but the jackhammer now had a rubber tip.

Now that he had other threads on the drop, he redoubled his efforts on trying to actually make use of them. Nothing happened at first, of course, but revitalized by his prior success, he just kept trying and trying until eventually, after the ball dropped, he managed to make it shift. It was ever-so-slight, but the ball’s path changed, and the old thread of fate became weak and brittle while the new one expanded.

Doing this almost made Aaron pass out again, and his head was hurting like never before, but he was elated by his progress. Three days of practice and death followed as he grew more and more adept at changing the ball’s fate until he woke up on the obsidian floor with a smile.

“I reckon I’m ready for the real thing now,” he said out loud before vaulting to his feet and rushing right back in.

***

While Aaron changed the ball’s path, Douglas was watching through his viewing portal, slack-jawed. That fool probably had no idea what he had just done. It shouldn’t have been possible for him. Without mana, or even aether, he had changed the path of an object in motion. It was just a simple ball for now, but how much further would he progress in the future? Even for the gods, altering fate was no simple business, yet this mortal with an impossibly strong soul was doing it anyway.

“Maybe he does deserve to be here…” he muttered.

Then he glanced around to make sure no one had heard him.