by I. Felix
The next moment, he wasn't anywhere that he would expect. It was like a platform in a completely black environment, without anything around it besides the floating platform. It was a little nerve-wracking not to see either walls or the sky, the horizon.
"Maybe that's the start of it, to make you uneasy," he thought to himself. He couldn't see the minimap on the top right corner, as he usually could, and he also couldn't move.
As he was starting to panic, an NPC appeared in front of him. It was one small creature with pointy ears, big eyes, and clown-like type of clothes, bright red. It was called Control and it prompted Blake to talk to him with a dialogue chatbox on top of his head.
"Hello?" Blake asked.
"Hello. My name is Control and I'll be your guide for the next five floors of the Tournment. You're on the first floor. Your challenge will appear in 30 seconds, so get ready."
Then, Control disappeared and a counter appeared floating on the top part of his vision, counting down from 30 seconds. This made him even more nervous. There were no instructions about the challenge whatsoever and his hands started sweating thinking about what it would be.
When the counter came to zero, ten boxes appeared on the floor, being five rows and four boxes in each, all aligned and with about a foot between each of them. They were all identical, brown and closed. Control also appeared in front of the first row of boxes.
"Your challenge is to find which boxes have a red ball inside. You have to find five red balls. If you find a black ball, you're disqualified from the challenge. If you touch a box, you must open it."
"Oh, no," Blake said looking at the situation that he needed to face in front of him. He tried to open the chat to talk to his friends.
However, the chatbox wasn't working. It was all greyed out, impossible to be accessed.
"Oh, fuck," he cursed again, feeling the panic rising inside his chest. Maybe the black ball was some sort of bomb that would explode when touched, so it would kill him. Anyway, he wasn't willing to find out. He wanted to win that challenge and he'd do anything he needed to, even... reflecting on the challenge, something he wasn't quite used to do.
He tried to open the database, it was also all greyed out, which made him believe that no place where he could gather information would be accessible. That seemed obvious now that he was thinking about it. He cursed under his breath again. He tried to open the inventory and at least that worked, which was good because then he could rely on some sort of item to help him out.
He got Oliver back. However, when conjuring him, Oliver appeared too close to one box and it moved slightly. The box automatically opened while Blake screamed, "NOOOO!" but it was too late. Inside, there was a red ball. He breathed in relief.
"Oliver! Come on, man!" he scolded the big panther who didn't seem to understand what all the fuss was about. He then petted his head and took two steps back, getting away from the remaining boxes.
"I'm trying to figure out how you could help," Blake said aloud. He looked at the void and there was nothing there that could indicate some sort of tip. He bent over beside the edge of the floating platform and tried to look down but he couldn't see anything, some sort of barrier stopped him. He sighed and tried to think.
"What would Arche do?" he thought to himself. All the boxes looked exactly the same. He would need some sort of x-ray vision to see the inside of the boxes without opening them. He went to the closest box and walked around it, trying to look for some kind of pattern that would indicate a tip, but there was nothing. It was exactly the same on all the sides. He tried to stare at it really hard to see if he would be able to see through it if he concentrated hard enough, and nothing happened. So, he went back to the starting point where he was, sat down, sighing, and looked at Oliver.
"What will we do, Oli? I told Arche that he was the one that should be here!" Blake said, petting Oliver on his tentacles that were located on his back. The tentacles had small teeth at the end of it, that Oliver used to attack, and also it had something to do with his ability of displacement, which Blake had no idea how it worked.
"Oliver... could you..." he started saying, an idea forming inside his head. "Could you displace yourself to the inside of one of the boxes? But... then you obviously wouldn't fit inside and you would rip the box apart. If only we could have a way for you to get very small..."
He opened his skill tab. He looked at the Shadow Hiding property. Oliver was soulbond, so, maybe...
"Let's try this," Blake said, getting up. He held Oliver by the tentacles and, just to be sure, mounted on his back. Oliver roared, a little offended, a bit shocked by the audacity of it, but he didn't have time to knock Blake off. Blake activated the Shadow Hiding and he almost screamed in excitement when he realized both himself and Oliver disappeared. Oliver also had the Shadow property and he wasn't sure if that helped or not but what mattered was that it worked.
When he was hiding, his body stopped being material, which meant he occupied no space. In a game way, the body simply disappeared and he could only see the environment around him but not his body anymore, and, now he couldn't see Oliver either.
"This freaking works," he said, aloud, and he could hear his own voice even though his body wasn't visible. "Oliver, displace yourself inside one of the boxes in a way that my head gets inside it," Blake said, finding it bizarre even while he was saying it. He wasn't sure how that would work and Oliver didn't seem very keen on doing what the boy said, however, the homunculus obeyed their masters, so, the next second, Oliver did as told. Everything blinked and Blake was looking at the inside of the box, like if his head had been teleported there. He couldn't see Oliver, he couldn't see his body, but in a bizarre way that had worked. That box had the black ball, so he told Oliver: "Let's go back!" and so they did.
"Freaking teamwork!" Blake exclaimed, even though Oliver didn't seem as excited. Felines had the fame of being stubborn. "Come on, I'll give you a treat later. When we win that, I promise that I'll go fishing or something and get you a bunch of fish. I know you love fish."
Oliver seemed happier to do as told, while Blake kept asking him to displace them to the inside of the boxes.
Before long, he had found all the red balls and avoided being blown off by the black ones. As soon as he got the last one, at the last row, and Oliver displaced them again, Control appeared.
"Congratulations! You bet the first challenge Find the Red Balls! You got the right to advance to the Second Floor."
"Hey, Control?" Blake tried to say, unsure if Control had a limited type of AI or not, as he had seen in some NPCs in the game. "Can you tell me how to pass this test in the right way? Because I'm sure I didn't do it right."
"There's no right way, only the traditional way. The traditional way is to fly up and look down. It's impossible to see from here, but getting far away enough, there is another platform with the answer."
"Oh," Blake said.
"However, every challenge is different and random. No challenge is ever the same. The programmers decided to program the traditional way like that but after you finish it, it will be destroyed and substituted by a different test. Are you ready to move on now?"
"Yes," Blake said, thinking about how much luck he would have to have to generate an easy enough challenge on the next floor.
A portal appeared behind Control and he hesitated before entering it but he went ahead. There was nothing he could do, he wouldn't give up. So, he stepped on it.
He knew that it wouldn't be as easy as he was thinking when he saw where he was. It was a desert.
It was so hot that the moment he stepped on it, he started feeling as if he would melt. His skin immediately felt like it was on fire. The sun looked ten times as big as Earth's sun, and there was only sand around. He immediately thought about going away, running, doing anything but staying there but he couldn't move. Just as in the first challenge, he was stuck there in place till Control appeared in front of him.
"The Second Challenge is a Resistance Challen
ge. You have to stay fifteen minutes inside this map without dying. Because it's much hotter than a regular human would stand, your HP will start decreasing 1% every 5 seconds."
"What the hell!" Blake said but he still couldn't move.
"Your time will start now," Control said and disappeared. NPCs didn't seem to feel anything there.
However, Blake felt it. And it was so hot that he couldn't think straight, just like if his brain was melting together with everything else. 5 seconds didn't take long to pass. He did the math fast enough to discover that it would take him 500s to die. That was roughly 8 minutes, which was almost half the time he needed to stay alive in there.
He started panicking, trying to come up with any solution he could imagine. He looked around and all he could see was miles and miles of sand. He tried to think what those people that lived on deserts did, however, that was no regular desert. He was literally inside an oven that was so hot he would be roasted before he could imagine how he would taste like.
To make matters worse, a small square appeared by the side of the screen. It was a little drawing of a face with its tongue out and completely sweating. "Dehydratation status".
"You gotta be kidding me!" he exclaimed, feeling his mouth as dry as the sand beneath his feet. He needed water. That was torture, the worst torture he had felt so far in the game. And he had been devoured by a wolf, almost killed by a giant spider, and much more. But that was nowhere near those other deaths. He couldn't die, otherwise, he would lose the challenge. But he saw no way of staying alive. It was so hot that his eyes were burning and he couldn't see straight anymore.
He sat down and started doing the only thing he could think about doing. He started digging with every fiber of his being, the ones that hadn't melted yet. He felt his skin tearing apart because of the heat and the sand but he knew that underground should be cooler. He saw that on a TV show, ages ago. Or maybe he was hallucinating.
He would never be able to dig a hole big enough to fit himself, so he opened his inventory, summoned Oliver, and used the opportunity to drink as many HP potions as he could. That helped a little but not much. He was still suffering like a frying piece of chicken. It was too hot and the dehydration square was getting redder, indicating that it was reaching a very dangerous stage.
"Oliver, are you okay? Please, help me dig," Blake begged. Oliver didn't seem to have the same effect as he had. He seemed absolutely normal and fine. His powerful panther nails were able to open the hole much faster than the human player hands of Blake. In some seconds, the hole was big enough for Blake to sit on it.
However, it was too late. He felt himself dying. He couldn't handle that heat anymore, it wasn't possible. He was feeling in such distress that he even thought he was feeling physical pain, REAL physical pain, almost as his brain connected to the game was causing that to his body back on Earth.
Oliver saw that his friend needed help and started covering him with the sand, almost as if he knew that it was needed to hide from the burning sun. But Blake stopped moving. He was too weak and his HP was at 30% already. He had no idea how many minutes had passed. It sure felt like an eternity.
"But I won't give up," he murmured to himself in his thoughts, as his mouth wouldn't move. He suddenly remembered a Spongebob episode when Spongebob and Patrick entered Sandy's greenhouse and started dehydrating and dying. Those were images that haunted his whole childhood and now were happening to him.
He used all the strength he had left to open his inventory and start drinking as many potions as he could find. He had a bunch but they didn't seem to be healing him at a normal speed, almost as if that feature had been disabled in that map. Also, he was too weak to keep imagining that he was drinking that. Before he blacked out, he thought about activating the Auto Healing feature. It made him drink all available potions automatically till the HP was full. It was good because it made things automatic but bad because it drank up, literally, his whole stock. He didn't care about that now.
He closed his eyes. He was trying to stay awake while Oliver was doing his best to help him but he couldn't deal with that anymore. It was too much pain for him to handle. He fainted, the last thing he saw was Oliver's worried face.
And, sometime later, even though he wasn't sure how much time, he saw the notification:
"You died."
He had failed.
Chapter 17 - Renew
When Blake respawned at the castle, he wanted to cry. He had failed not even halfway up, it was only the second floor, the second easiest floor allegedly. He was expecting to come back to the tutorial part and then having to go to the most terrible place of the game, the Purgatory. Or at least he used to think it was the most terrible, till he met that desert. However, he was back at the castle. He wasn't sure if he should just walk out the door and leave or if he should try to enter the portal again and see if he could get away with it.
He got up and went to the NPC that was close to the lightning portal in the middle of the room.
"Hey," Blake said, unsure. "I think I died. Did I lose? Do I have to leave?" Blake asked, unsure. The NPC was one of the most common types of NPC in the game, a chubby man with a big mustache and medieval clothes, a blue type of apron on top of a bouffant white shirt.
"What do you mean? If you had died, you wouldn't be here," the NPC said, confused. He had dark hair and a frown. On top of his head, Blake could only read "Castle Manager" as a name.
"Well... yeah," Blake said, also not sure of what was happening.
"Control!" the NPC said and the little joker man appeared summoned by his side. "Tell me the history of this man here," the NPC asked. Control looked a little puzzled too and opened a scroll in front of his eyes.
"Blake, level 25, Thief... he has died indeed after 12 minutes, however, his homunculus survived enough time there for him to be considered approved, as the homunculus is soulbond."
"What?!" Blake exclaimed and opened his inventory to call Oliver but he wasn't there. So, he frowned. "Is Oliver still there?!"
"Yes."
"Bring him here!" Blake exclaimed, getting worried.
"I can't," Control said. "You'll have to do it yourself. Go there, get your homunculus, and enter the portal."
Blake shivered with the thought of going back to that horrible place. But Oliver was there, so there was nothing he could do. He'd have to do it.
He didn't think twice. As if he was about to rip off a bandaid, he jumped on the portal light before he changed his mind. Everything was white for a second and it blinked, the environment changed, and he immediately felt the pain on his skin once again. It seemed even more unbearable the second time around. He looked at the desert and he couldn't see Oliver. He was about to panic again when he thought about checking the inventory. His egg was there. Blake summoned Oliver and when the black panther appeared in front of him, he got to his level and hugged the big cat.
"I'm so glad I didn't lose you!" Blake exclaimed. Oliver meowed, a little confused, just like he used to do when he was just a little kitten. "Now, how the hell will he get out from here?"
His skill tab was still blocked, he couldn't use Shadow Hiding or anything like that. He couldn't open the chatbox but he noticed that the Map wasn't greyed this time, so he could open it.
"I guess it depends on the floor. Each floor has its own rules," Blake said, feeling a little more hopeful. He at least could check if the map would indicate the way out.
He opened it and saw that he could see where the light portal was. It wasn’t too far, so that filled Blake with hope and determination. He got to Oliver's back. "Sorry, pal, but you're my only hope again," he told the panther when he roared in protest. "Run as fast as you can, follow the line," Blake said, activating the navigation through the map.
Blake was starting to feel weak again. It was too hot, the dehydration stats appeared on the corner of his vision, and he knew that if Oliver didn't go fast enough, he would die on that hell hole of sand and the giant sun.
He clos
ed his eyes, bracing himself. It was all he could do. Pray that Oliver would go fast enough, try to stand the pain, the cutting sand, the dehydration, and how hard it was to breathe. He would do it. He could do it. He was sure. He wouldn't die...
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't in the desert anymore. Oliver had automatically come back to the inventory, and the dehydration stat had disappeared. Now, he was in another dark room, just like the first floor and Control was there, waiting for him. There was nothing in the floating platform, only a table with three bottles on top of it. The bottles looked like potions, each had a different color.
Blake wasn't feeling as bad anymore but he still felt weak.
That challenge was pretty damn hard and now he knew why.
He took another deep breath, for he needed to have courage, and got close to Control.
"What's that now? Do I have to choose the right bottle?" Blake asked.
Control smiled, wickedly.
"No. You have to drink all of them. Each will have a different effect that you have to survive. If you die before drinking them all, you lose. If you vomit or spill the content, you lose. Ready?"
"I'm pretty sure this will cause me excruciating pain and things like that, won't it?" Blake sighed, tired. He wanted no more of that but he was in such distress that he was getting to the point that he was simply laughing at it. "So, I have to drink all of them and survive without spilling it, huh?" Blake asked Control but the NPC didn't answer, he simply disappeared.
He looked at the potions. Each seemed to have around 50oz. They had different colors. One was bright pink, the other was bright green, almost neon, and the last one was black, which reminded Blake of a Coke. They all seemed menacing, like if they could kill him without any effort.
"I'm pretty sure I shouldn't just drink this," he said, aloud, to the void. He chuckled of himself. "Yes, I'm starting to lose it, I can tell," he said again.
He noticed that his skill tab wasn't greyed, so it meant that he could use some skill to help. He opened his tab to see the options, even though he doubted it would. The inventory tab was grey, which meant that he couldn't call Oliver for help, nor use any kind of potions against the venom. Not that he had any, anyway. He sighed, wishing Arche was there. He always had some sort of trick and potion to make everything better.
