World-Tree's End

by E A Hooper

  The mercenary dropped his shoulders. “No, it ain’t like that. What, you think we’re assassins or something? Would assassins hang around the king’s castle in broad daylight? No, you idiot, we’re just mercenaries, plain and simple. However, we had a job offer that was too big for us to handle. One of my guys Scanned you, and he said you were a high-enough level to handle it. All you have to do is off the Sphinx of Zetha that’s on Ralic, so our employers can excavate the site.”

  “Ralic?” Vincent said, glancing at a branch of the World-Tree overhead. He knew Ralic was the sand-covered world covered with pyramids that hung in sight of the city.

  “Yeah, although there’s no Jump Gate on that world,” the mercenary said. “You’ll have to come with us on a week-long journey. We’ll travel with you to the Zetha Pyramid, but it’ll be up to you to deal with the sphinx.”

  Vincent glanced at the world again, noting how close it was to Cryasal. Both worlds were connected by branches that merged before they reached the base of the World-Tree.

  Instead of traveling to the crossroads, then following that other branch, I might be able to go where the gravity is weakest, then launch myself to Ralic with Zero Field. It’d take a ton of mana, though.

  “How about this,” Vincent said to the mercenaries. “If you guys load me up with ethers, I’ll go alone. It’d be much faster, and I’m sure the sphinx will drop something so I can prove I killed it.”

  The mercenaries mumbled to one another for a few seconds, and then they gathered a few dozen ethers and a handful of mega-ethers to give to Vincent. Before handing them over, however, the lead mercenary reached out his hand.

  The Silent Sphinx (NPC Quest) – You’ve learned from mercenaries in Crownkeep that there are people wanting to excavate the half-buried Zetha Pyramid in Ralic’s western hemisphere. However, a sphinx is protecting the pyramid from intruders. If you deal with the sphinx, you’ll receive 5,000 gild and an increase to your Respect Rating in Crownkeep. Do you accept? (Yes/No)

  Vincent shook the man’s hand, then gathered all of the potions together. Before the mercenaries could speak again, the Ranger took off at superhuman speed, rushing from street to street until he arrived at the gates. The soldiers were used to him coming and going in a hurry, and they quickly opened it.

  To conserve his potions, Vincent sprinted for a couple of hours until he reached Cryasal’s stem. He raced up it, feeling the gravity shift the farther he got away from the world. After several hours of travel, he couldn’t feel the tug of the world’s gravity anymore, so he stopped and looked up at Ralic.

  I think this might be a good spot. If not, there’s no telling where I’ll land when I start falling.

  Vincent cast Zero Field on himself and flew straight for Ralic. He waited until his mana was half empty before he started using any potions. As he drank and flew through space, he realized the world was a lot farther away than he’d thought at a glance. Even with his superhuman speed, Ralic never seemed to get any closer. After two hours, he’d burned through all of the potions with him and the rest of his mana reserve, forcing him to draw mana stored in Silpher’s Coat.

  Come on, come on. All I have to do is get caught in Ralic’s gravity well, then I’ll let myself fall the rest of the way.

  Vincent could feel gravity pulling on him from all directions. Even as the runes lining Silpher’s Coat started to go dim, he wasn’t sure if he was closer to Ralic or Cryasal. As desperation hit him, Vincent equipped his World Core and tried to scrape together some extra mana from it, although he found it difficult to do so while casting Zero Field. Still, guessed he might’ve bought himself an extra thirty seconds of flight time before he completely ran out of mana.

  Vincent could feel his momentum slowing as the World-Tree’s gravity tugged at him from different directions. At his current location, he wasn’t sure if he’d fall toward Ralic, Cryasal, the World-Tree’s base, or even slingshot himself toward another world entirely. He drifted for about half an hour as his moment crawled to almost a stop, but then he noticed himself moving slowly toward Ralic.

  “Yes!” Vincent cheered, gathering just enough mana from the World Core to give himself an extra push toward the desert world.

  His momentum started to pick up again as Ralic’s gravity well began to have more pull than the other worlds. Vincent smiled as he fell faster, but then his expression shifted into one of worry as he continued to gain speed.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  Vincent tried to focus on drawing mana from the World Core, but he found it difficult with the planet rapidly growing closer. His worry turned to fear as he broke the sound barrier.

  If I hit the sand, I’ll be fine. Oh, please let me hit the sand.

  His path curved like a comet tearing across the sky, but then his eyes fell on the massive pyramid of marstone racing toward him. With the little mana he’d gathered during his descent, he cast Zero Field a split-second before impact.

  Even with his high Perception, Vincent struggled to tell what was happening as he crashed through something hard, then a few floors and walls that were slightly thinner, then another thicker wall. He didn’t have time to comprehend that he’d smashed all of the way through the pyramid, at least until after striking a sand dune like an asteroid impacting Earth.

  Vincent tried to shield himself from the explosion of sand that spread over the region after his impact, but he soon realized that most of the bones in his left arm had snapped. The rest of him still felt intact, but he could feel that several organs had also ruptured.

  After the rain of sand settled, burying Vincent underneath, he climbed his way to the surface. Although he was out of ethers, he still had elixirs, so he rested until fully healed. His HUD showed his location as the Tizin Pyramid.

  Zetha’s in the west, he recalled, equipping a compass.

  When he stared west, Vincent saw a vast landscape of sand dunes and pyramids.

  Huh, maybe I should’ve asked them for directions before I ran off. Oh well, it’ll give me time to recharge my mana.

  Vincent jogged west, but he stopped at the first half-buried pyramid that he saw. There were mummy-looking monstrosities hanging around the entrance, but he only went close enough to check the name, discovering it was called the Hollowkin Pyramid. He continued past it and traveled northwest for about an hour before making a massive circle around that hemisphere.

  During those several hours of travel, Vincent discovered five more half-buried pyramids, but none of them turned out to be the one for his quest. Since he’d recovered his mana, and even refilled Silpher’s Coat, he decided to fly over parts of the desert that might’ve originally been out of his sight.

  He used about half of the mana in Silpher’s Coat from flying around so much before he finally spotted a pyramid sticking out from the side of a massive sand dune. Since there was another, larger pyramid on the other side of the dune, Vincent realized right away how easy it would’ve been for him to miss it when he jogged through that area. When he flew up to it, his HUD revealed the location as the Zetha Pyramid.

  Vincent’s eyes followed the lines and stonework of the pyramid, trying to find an entrance, but he didn’t see one. As he looked over the dune for a way inside, he noticed the head of a stone sphinx jutting out from the bottom of the dune. When he flew down and landed, Vincent noted the mouth of the sphinx was open wide.

  Just to be cautious, Vincent True Scanned the stone sphinx to make sure it wasn’t an actual sphinx in hiding, but his ability only showed him information on the materials that made up the structure. He hopped onto the sphinx’s head and stared into its open maw, finding a tunnel that appeared to lead to the Zetha Pyramid.

  With an illumination rune in hand, Vincent headed into the long tunnel. He couldn’t see an end to it, even after walking at a brisk pace for over a minute. When he glanced back, the light of the exit had disappeared, leaving only a dark corridor that continued beyond his sight.

  The sphinx wasn’t that far from the pyramid, so
I’m either inside it, or this is a never-ending-hallway type scenario.

  Vincent fired Mana Gun toward the entrance. He watched the green bolt fly into the darkness until it vanished. From behind him, a whizzing noise caught his attention, and he turned just in time for a mana bolt to hit him in the face.

  Oh, so it’s a looping hallway, not just an endless one. I’ve seen no markings on the walls or anything that would give me a clue of how to break the loop, though. Guess I could walk back the way I came and see if anything happens. Ooh, better yet, I could walk backward. Maybe that’ll trigger something.

  Vincent walked backward through the dark for a couple of minutes, but he got no closer to an exit. When that didn’t work, he tried sprinting at full speed one way for a minute, then tried the other way. After that failed, he used his Soulbound Rune Chalk to leave glowing lines on the floor, then jogged for thirty seconds before he saw them loop back around.

  Okay, so that gives me an idea of the tunnel’s length. It also means I’m not just walking through invisible portals repeatedly. Probably should’ve checked for that with True Scan, but I’ll burn through all my mana if I keep using it. That’ll be my back-up plan if I can’t figure this out in the next ten minutes or so.

  Vincent thought for a bit longer, then equipped Builder’s Tome. He spent a small number of points to open a square hole in the nearby wall, only for sand to pour endlessly from it.

  I guess I could open up a tunnel above me. If I’m still in the same area, the surface should only be a few meters up.

  Vincent had only saved about three thousand Builder Points since he’d arrived on Cryasal, and he spent half those trying to dig to the surface. However, after several meters of tunneling, the tome stopped working, and a massive wave of sand poured into the passage. Vincent spent a few hundred more points to seal up the opening, but that still left a wall of sand blocking his path.

  There’s no way I’m that deep underground. The tunnel feels perfectly level. It’s almost like I passed into a game instance at some point, but I never saw a fog wall to indicate it.

  Vincent turned and traveled the other way until he looped back to the runes on the floor. However, the pile of sand had vanished from that spot.

  Okay, I think I’m starting to figure this out. The hall itself, including the surrounding sand, resets as I loop around. It’s either changing section by section, or it happens all at once when I cross a certain spot. I should see if there’s a point where the end and the beginning meet. If I’m making changes to the hall, I should see it reset when I cross that line. That might be an area of vulnerability in this puzzle.

  Vincent equipped Endless Edge and poked a hole through the stone wall. As a thin line of sand ran down the wall, he walked a dozen steps, then stabbed through the marstone again. He continued this pattern, occasionally glancing back to see if any of his previous holes had disappeared. Eventually, he looped back to his runes, only to notice the holes ahead of him had already disappeared.

  I never saw the holes behind me vanish. That means it has to reset section by section.

  Vincent continued thinking of different strategies, but then he sighed and used True Scan on the empty passage ahead. A wall of text appeared, showing him details for himself. For a second, he assumed the spell had looped back around to hit him, but then he saw something unusual in the notes.

  Old Man Vincent (Duplicate) | Hallway Instance Copy #12

  “What?” Vincent said out loud, rereading the text. He skimmed over several more paragraphs of information, but nothing else stood out as abnormal.

  It’s not looping—it’s making a copy of the hallway. That means it also copied my Mana Gun and runes, though. If I had brought the mercenaries with me, I might’ve been able to solve this by keeping them in different copies of the hall. I bet that would’ve overloaded the instance to keep track of so many copies of people in different sections. Since I’m by myself, I’ll have to figure out something else. My best bet is to break the game the old-fashioned way.

  Vincent fired Void Gun, then stepped aside and waited for a copy to go flying past him. Instead of another Void Gun looping back around, though, he saw the air cut through the middle of the passage. Bizarre, multi-colored light melted down the side of the line as though the game itself was bleeding. Since Vincent hadn’t fired the Void Gun in a perfect line, the next time it looped around it was about an inch to the left of the original line.

  Vincent guessed he might be able to put more pressure on the instance if he forced it to reset, so he waited until the broken Void Gun was out of sight, then sprinted down the hall. He watched it repeat several times until he spotted white lines appear on the ground, separating the hall into visible sections. The next time he looped around, cracks appeared to spread from the white lines, and they spread outward with each go around he made.

  By the time Vincent made a third pass through the repeating hall, even the runes he’d drawn on the floor were bleeding various colors. Different sections of the hall turned pitch-black as Vincent continued through them without slowing down. Then he saw only darkness for one entire loop.

  Vincent felt something cut his shoulder, and he guessed he’d run blindly into the melting disturbances in the air. He stumbled right, feeling for the wall, but his hand touched an invisible force instead of the marstone.

  I think I broke this instance pretty good. Hopefully one more push will shatter it completely.

  Vincent aimed his fingers at the force where the wall had been, and he shot another Void Gun into it. A flash of rainbow color bled in all directions from the point of contact, shattering the instance around him as though it’d been an illusion. When the lightshow finally ended, the Ranger found himself standing in the same hallway as before, except this time he could see the entrance. His eyes fell on the darkness at the other end, and then he continued forward.

  The dark hall ended, and then rune torches came to life to reveal a huge square chamber. Passages lined the walls of the chamber, although they were full of sand and blocked by broken rubble. A square pit lay at the center of the room, but when Vincent glanced up he saw the roof dissolve away, revealing a gargantuan, three-eyed sphinx. At a glance, the creature looked almost comparable in size to the entire pyramid itself, but considering the wall of another chamber was visible behind the sphinx, Vincent guessed it to be an illusion.

  The sphinx is watching you. Do not attempt to follow any of the passages before you.

  Vincent ignored the sphinx for a moment, and he approached the square pit in the center of the room. When he stared down at it, he saw an exact copy of the room he was in with a small duplicate of himself staring into another pit. When he squinted at the tinier pit, there appeared to be copies of that room and himself going all of the way down.

  “Trippy,” he and his small duplicates said at once.

  Vincent hopped into the pit, but he fell much farther than expected. When he landed, the room seemed to have stretched to normal size. He glanced up, seeing the sphinx overhead rather than the chamber he’d been in before.

  The sphinx is watching you. Do not attempt to follow any of the passages before you.

  Vincent aimed his finger upward and shot the Sphinx in the eye with Void Gun. Cracks appeared across its face, bleeding rainbow light. However, the creature didn’t seem to notice or care, even as globules of flashing light dripped into the room and poked holes into the floor.

  “Okay, this is another instance, right?” Vincent asked the sphinx.

  The sphinx says YES. You may ask it two more questions.

  Vincent glanced at the copy of the room in the pit. The damage caused by the rainbow droplets were mirrored in that copy, and the next, and the next…

  “Did I already screw up this puzzle?” Vincent asked, looking up at the sphinx.

  The sphinx says ??? You may ask it one more question.

  Well, I’ve gotten this far by breaking the game. Might as well go all of the way.

  Vincent threw a
Voidfire at the sphinx, and the ceiling exploded with rainbow-colored lights. A split-second later, it turned to marstone, although a gaping hole to a chamber above had been revealed by the attack. The pit below had filled with sand, but a new passage had appeared opposite of the chamber’s entrance.

  Vincent hurried into the next room, which revealed another huge chamber, although this one had stairs leading up to a throne too large for a human. A sphinx, just like the one in the previous instance—though a bit smaller—sat on the throne. The creature watched as he walked up the steps toward it.

  Halfway up the steps, three walls of world magic rose up from the ground, blocking Vincent’s path.

  The sphinx commands you to halt. To continue, you must answer its three riddles…

  Vincent gathered mana from Silpher’s Coat and knocked all three walls down with Voidfire. As its defenses dissipated, the sphinx sat upright, and its eyes glowed with world magic.

  Be warned, mortal. Any damage you deal to the sphinx shall be dealt twice back to yourself.

  Vincent ignored the warning and shot the Sphinx in the head with Void Gun. As the attack struck, knocking the monster against the back of the throne, Vincent felt the top half of his head disintegrate in an instant. He stumbled for a moment, but caught his footing as he remembered Warro’s Necklace would keep him alive and conscious for a little while longer.

  Dang, that bypassed my Density Shield? I kind of figured it’d be like Void Gun hitting me, not just mirroring the damage directly onto my body. Ah, well. Just got to see if it drops an item to prove I killed it.

  Vincent’s strength began to drain as he searched through the sphinx’s dust pile. On the throne, he found a soulbound Sphinx’s Third Eye. He smiled to himself, then collapsed onto the throne as he finally ran out of mana.

  You’ve died. Respawning at Crownkeep…

  Chapter 12

  The pearly walls and bright-red roofs of Crownkeep loaded in around Vincent, and he hurried to the mercenaries, who looked surprised to see him.