The elevator ground to a halt.

  There was a wide open space made out of a dark gray marble. If Nathan didn't know any better, he'd say it looked like an arena.

  He took a few steps forward—

  Trial by Combat.

  A foreign voice echoed in his mind. He stuck his finger into his ear and twisted back and forth to try to dislodge whatever speaker had apparently gotten stuck in there.

  He pulled his finger out and looked at it. Nope, just earwax.

  The ground shuddered. A section of the floor opened up and the tip of a metallic object glimmered from the opening. It raised out of the floor until it reached level ground.

  It was like a turret with legs. There was a rounded head and a long, telescope-like body. A dozen metallic spider limbs stretched out of its bottom and supported its weight.

  Its head spun around in a circle and a red flashing light came on, creating a sort of eye. A red laser beam sprung out from it and targeted Nathan on the chest.

  Nathan threw his hands up. "Seriously! B32, did you even try?!"

  What an unoriginal bastard, Nathan thought.

  A loud beeping noise echoed out and Nathan quickly grabbed a shield out of his inventory. He knew how this was supposed to work. He'd played enough video games to see the obvious influences.

  One high-pitched ring came out and light gathered on the eye.

  Nathan hid behind his shield.

  Nothing happened.

  He poked his head out, eyebrows furrowed.

  The machine spun around in circles multiple times, smoke streaming out of its head like there was a house fire inside of its body. It sped up, faster and faster, until it made a high-pitched scream.

  The entire thing exploded into a shower of nuts and bolts. One flew forward and hit Nathan's shield, then bounced off and fell to the ground.

  Nathan crept forward and poked the remaining mass with the tip of his shield.

  Nothing.

  "Well that was horribly anti-climactic," he said.

  The door up ahead slammed open. Nathan walked over to it and entered in.

  Once again, there was a decrepit figure inside of a glass box.

  For completing this trial, a voice echoed inside of his head. The blessings of the shrine shall be distributed once more. Well done, Fisher King.

  "I didn't really do anything, but cool."

  His hands split apart into thin strands of light and he felt that familiar sensation of teleportation.

  As expected, the shrine was active and alight with blue lines. Nathan could feel a faint difference in the air, so he assumed that he'd managed to activate it. What's more, he was actually able to tell the difference now, unlike last time with Harvester.

  He arrived back in the village and forced his wig back onto his forehead.

  Someone running bumped into his shoulder. They both tumbled to the ground. The person who'd bumped into him quickly stood up and helped Nathan back to his feet.

  "Sorry about that!" the person said. "I'm just in a bit of a hurry—!"

  He grinned and broke off into a dead sprint. Nathan scratched the back of his head. What was that all about?

  Everybody seemed to be carrying a bucket of water, all of them with identical grins on their faces. Nathan would have thought that they'd been in a drought and they suddenly had all of their water returned to them—oh yeah, that's exactly what happened.

  He walked slowly through the town, watching these events with languid eye movements—

  Then he felt someone else bump into him.

  "Seriously? Again—?"

  Nathan stopped. It was the woman who he'd talked to before. She was staring up at him with an unabashed look of... Nathan didn't know how else to put it but idolatry. Her eyes were wide open and she was shaking.

  "It's you... You really did it!" she gasped. "Who are you?!"

  "Nobody."

  "You're not nobody, you're—"

  "No, that's my legal name. No. Body. There's a space in between."

  "Oh—okay?"

  "I wanted a reward, remember?"

  "Anything!" She dropped to her knees and held out her child. "You can even have my firstborn!"

  Nathan squinted his eyes at the sight and then reached up and massaged his temples.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "I do not need your firstborn," he said.

  Her lips quivered. "I'm afraid we don't have much else to give. We can give you the remainder of our food, but we need that to last until the crops start coming in—"

  "I don't want your food, either."

  "Then what do you want?"

  "Information." Nathan paused. "Also, for you to keep your mouth shut about everything."

  She nodded up and down like a bobblehead. "Yes, of course! What do you want to know?"

  "I'm looking for a fishing hole."

  She sucked in a breath, then stood up to her full height. She leaned in, a glimmer in her eye.

  "It's funny you should mention that, because my ancestor found a rare fishing hole in a cave far below the surface—"

  "Nope, try again."

  Nathan was not going to risk another celestial laser beam activation.

  She tilted her head. "Oh. Well in that case, grandpa had a fishing hole he used to go to every other day. It was just over to the north, past the really tall hill? It's the biggest one in the entire region, you can't miss it."

  Nathan shot her a thumbs up. "Thanks. That'll be a lot of help."

  He was a tad bit worried that he wouldn't be able to meet his class requirements without going to another one of those cave ponds, but at the same time, he really, really didn't want to risk another stupid incident where he'd somehow become the center of the plot. No thank you, no sirree. Let somebody else deal with killing the Dark Lord.

  He'd just come in at a later date right before they were about to land the final blow, then steal away its energy for use in reviving B32.

  "Are you sure that's all you want? This feels very disproportionate," the woman said.

  "Yep, that's all I want. Never talk about me to anybody ever, okay?"

  "...okay?"

  Nathan speed walked over to the direction she'd pointed out—

  "W—wait, stranger, there's something you should know."

  Nathan turned his neck back. "What?"

  "I know you said not to tell anybody about you, but, uh…"

  Nathan's heart sunk. "But what?"

  "You made such an impression when you came here earlier, I told everybody that a man with your hair and with your clothing and your exact description was going to try to challenge the shrine. I'm fairly certain that they can put two and two together."

  "Ah. I see." Nathan's expression changed. "Please tell me you at least didn't give them my name."

  "You never even told me your name, so that would have been a fairly difficult feat to accomplish."

  "Sweet."

  This is a random village out in the middle of nowhere, Nathan thought. The odds that somebody recognizes me or my alter ego based off of a description found in a remote village in the middle of nowhere is practically zero. I should really just calm down.

  "Just try not to talk about me anymore," Nathan said.

  "Whatever you ask."

  Nathan shot her a sloppy salute as a farewell, then turned around and walked off.

  Nathan adjusted his position on the grass.

  The woman had been mistaken.

  The lake wasn't past the hill, it was on it.

  It had been carved into the side like somebody had taken a chisel and flattened out a section purely to add in a fishing hole. It was one of the most bizarre natural landscapes that Nathan had ever seen.

  B32, the lazy bastard, probably couldn't be bothered to double check his work when he was making these damned Circles.

  A bite.

  Nathan reeled it back in and stuffed the catch into his inventory. Another duplicate. He double checked his progress thus far.

  [Hilly Biome Fish Caught: 326 out of 327]

  Nathan blinked hard and looked up at the sky. The sun was coming up.

  How long had he been here for? A day? Two days? It was getting hard to tell the difference between time.

  It wasn't like the Hilly Biome had higher odds of getting different types of fish. He'd mostly just been getting duplicates at this point. Over, and over, and over, and over. At the rate he was going, Nathan was worried that it would take him a week—maybe two or three—in order to finally finish catching all of the fish in the Hilly Biome.

  And that was ignoring the fact that there might have still been hidden fish in the cave hole that the woman had mentioned.

  Nathan really hoped there was some way to cheese the requirement or get a hold of the rare fish on the surface.

  He cast his line back into the water. This time, he darted his rod back and forth like a fly on the water, hoping to attract different types of fish.

  A bite.

  He reeled it back in—

  Another duplicate.

  He stuffed it into his inventory, then dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

  It was one thing when he was doing this in video games for 20 hours at a time. But it was another thing to do it in real life.

  It sucked. Massively. Fishing was not meant to be done for more than four hours at a time. Especially not fishing in an awkward position where he's on a slope and he had to twist his spine in order to face the fishing hole.

  Very human design, super cool, Nathan thought.

  He sighed.

  There has to be a way to speed this up. Maybe if I just dive in?

  He'd be able to see for himself if there was a different type of fish than the ones he'd already caught. He'd also be able to figure out where exactly the fish were coming from, because he was a little bit mystified as to how over 150 fish were coexisting inside of a fishing hole about the size of a particularly large SUV.

  He reeled back in his fishing pole all the way and stuffed it into his inventory. With that done, he dived into the water with a splash.

  It was hard to make out if there was actually things under the water or if Nathan was currently experiencing worms infecting his eyeballs.

  With that said, it really was difficult to make out anything at all. It was more just sort of a dark blue sludge from his perspective. He could sense the fish moving around thanks to the variety of fishing-related Skills he'd picked up,—and by the way, there were only about 10 of them, so how on earth were there so many that he was catching before?

  He swam deeper to the fishing hole floor. He bumped against a hard metal plate—

  Wait, a hard metal plate? What was a metal plate doing in a fishing hole?

  He swam along the flooring and kept his hand on the metal. No matter which direction he went, everything at the bottom was still the metal plate.

  A faint hint of black at the edge of his vision. He swam forward and approached it.

  It looked like it had been embedded into the metal—yet the metal perfectly wrapped around it like it had been designed for it. The black marble was perfectly circular, framed by metallic links from the plate.

  He ran his hand along it and—

  It lit up with blue wire-like lights.

  Wait a second. Hadn't Nathan seen this style of construction before?

  The hill shuddered and Nathan heard something shifting in the air above. He quickly swam back to the surface.

  The entire hill shifted upwards like a chick had begun the process of cracking an egg. Except the egg was a hill.

  And Nathan had no idea what the chick was, but he didn't want to find out.

  He jumped out of the watering hole—

  Then hit his head against a glass dome.

  He fell back into the water, and rubbed his forehead. There was a faint sheen that indicated the presence of glass. It had patched up the opening, creating a smooth hill surface.

  Rocks shifted behind him and the water made a draining noise.

  He turned his body.

  It was all flowing down—down and out in the direction of a door of some sort. It fully opened, revealing an interior of dark gray marble. A hallway, leading into parts unknown.

  The top of the hill exploded out dirt and rocks in every direction. A large metal structure rose up, then halted like it was stuck.

  Nathan squinted his eyes.

  That was...

  Wasn't that another railgun?

  No, they called it a Celestial Laser Beam Generator, don't they?

  The water fully drained away. Nathan collapsed to his knees as he stared up at the top of the hill.

  "What the hell is wrong with my luck?" he said.