The elevator floor came to a stop.

  Nathan stepped inside and ran his hands along the wall. The wall was made of a sleek black material that was smooth to the touch—something like marble. The same blue crisscrossing lines ran along the ceiling—the same ones that had lit up when Nathan had put his hand to the pedestal. Up ahead, there was another pedestal with a door behind it.

  Make a worthy offering.

  A foreign voice echoed inside of Nathan’s head. He put his pinky inside of his ear and twisted it back and forth.

  Make a worthy offering.

  "Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

  Nathan walked over to the pedestal and reached into his inventory. What would a worthy offering look like?

  He placed one of his D-rank magic swords onto the pedestal.

  It lit up red and nothing else happened.

  Nathan pulled the sword back and put it back into his inventory. He reached out and grabbed a rarer sword—a C-rank that he’d picked up some time ago.

  Another red light.

  Nathan scratched the back of his head. He did have the Pi?ata of Doom from the last circle, but he felt like it would be a bit of a waste to put it there. There was also the Key of Mildly Inconvenient Bullshit. Maybe that would do the trick?

  Nathan pulled out the key.

  Another red light.

  For a brief moment, Nathan considered using B32’s system corpse before he decided that would probably be a terrible waste—he still didn’t know what it could be used for, but he imagined there had to be a better use than putting it on a pedestal to leave forever.

  Actually, did he have to leave it there?

  He pulled the system corpse out of his inventory. It was a small metal cube—he hadn’t looked at it in a while, so he couldn’t help the faint trickle of unfamiliarity when he saw it.

  He placed it on the pedestal. It lit up bright green.

  The door swung open. He walked over toward it, then swung out his fishing rod, hook toward the cube. He managed to somehow hook it and tug it straight back into his hand—

  And the door swung shut with a thud.

  Nathan clicked his tongue. So that wasn’t going to work.

  He checked around the seals of the door—no, he wouldn’t be able to transform into water to skip past it.

  He scrolled through his inventory and came to a stop.

  There it was.

  The legendary McMuffin, unknown to the apocalypse prior to his successful obtaining.

  He tenderly took it out of his inventory and set it down into the pedestal.

  No lights lit up. Then it flashed red. Then it flashed green, then it flashed red again, before it strobed out between the two colors and finally settled on green.

  The door swung open. Nathan nodded to himself. The pedestal had good taste.

  He walked into the next room.

  A trial of patience.

  The words whispered behind his ear. He flapped the air behind him like he was trying to ward off a ghost.

  The room was completely empty, save for the doors behind him and ahead of him. Other than that, it was just the same blank, dark gray walls.

  Nathan paced around in a circle, then sat down on the floor. It was supposed to be a trial of patience? So was he just supposed to sit here?

  A malicious grin appeared on his face.

  They had no idea that he was a fisherman. He could sit in the same location for hours, doing the same repetitive activity over and over. Why, that was what made him such a legendary gamer back on Earth!

  The fools had no idea what they’d—

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The locked door swung open.

  "Eh?"

  Hadn’t it only been like five minutes?

  Nathan crept over to the door, poked his head in, then out.

  Okay, I guess I passed, he thought.

  He walked into the next room.

  A trial of balance, the voice whispered.

  To his right, there was some sort of circular outline where a sphere was meant to rest. Up ahead, there was a giant floating platform in the shape of a maze.

  And over at the top left? A sphere.

  Wait a second.

  Nathan had seen this before. A shrine? A physics puzzle? This was just like—?!

  B32, that unoriginal bastard! he thought. Come up with your own damn puzzles!

  Nathan stepped forward and a pad spun into the air in front of him. Nathan gave it an experimental tilt and the giant floating platform did the same thing.

  Nathan maneuvered the platform left and right, up and down, trying to get the sphere to roll its way down the maze.

  He’d carefully managed to avoid it falling out—

  Then it slid past the puzzle insert, slammed into the wall, bounced off a fence, and into the void below.

  Okay, second try, Nathan thought.

  As if on cue, a sphere materialized in the same location that the previous sphere had been before. Unfortunately, Nathan had tilted the platform such that the previous location was actually underneath the floor. As such, the sphere appeared into existence, then dropped into the void below.

  Nathan groaned and reset the platform back to its original state.

  The sphere materialized back into existence for a second time, but this time, it did not fall into the void.

  Okay, he thought. Third try.

  Nathan maneuvered the platform again, roughly replicating the approach that he went with last time until he got to the same problematic spot. His plan was to raise the platform so that it would slow down the speed of the ball and hopefully allow it to fall into the insert.

  The sphere rolled its way down. Nathan gently moved the platform up, and—

  His gentle movement turned out to be a sudden flick that sent the sphere flying into the air. It soared up, hit the wall, collided with a fence, then fell into the void.

  For the next 30 minutes, this pattern repeated over and over. It got to the point where Nathan was seriously questioning if this was meant to be beaten at all.

  “You know what?” he said. “Screw this.”

  He clambered his way up the fence and pulled out his fishing rod. He reeled it back, then chucked his line out. The hook smashed into the sphere and embedded itself several feet inside. Nathan gave it a tug and confirmed that it was stuck. He then snapped his arm back and the sphere followed the motion.

  He caught it in midair like some sort of basketball and then dunked it into the insert.

  Nathan rubbed the sweat off his forehead. A job well done.

  A sound like an ethereal choir rang out in every direction. A dozen transparent blue platforms appeared in midair, one after the other. They led up to another platform that Nathan hadn’t noticed before.

  With nothing better to do, Nathan stepped up the platform, one by one.

  When he reached the top, he was greeted by a decrepit figure inside of some sort of glass box.

  Okay, Nathan thought, this just went from “unoriginal” to outright plagiarism.

  “For completing the trial,” a foreign voice whispered in his head. “The blessings of the shrine shall be distributed once more. The Eye of the Sea watches over you, Fisher King.”

  Nathan’s eyebrows furrowed together.

  Fisher King? and The Eye of the Sea? That sounded an awful lot like—

  A funny feeling like pins and needles spread across his entire body. His hands stretched out into blue tendrils and floated up toward the ceiling.

  Again with the plagiarism, he thought.

  His entire body turned into these blue particles and everything went black.

  Nathan’s eyes snapped open.

  The warm rays of the sun hit his skin, a harsh contrast to the nearly sterile, almost air-conditioned room that he had just been in.

  “Nathaniel, you did it!”

  Harvester walked up to Nathan and shook his hand. “It must have been a great ordeal. I can’t imagine how difficult the trial must have been.”

  Nathan thought back to each of the trials.

  “No,” he said. “No, it was a lot easier than you probably think.”

  Harvester didn’t let this response get him—down, and instead clapped him on the shoulder. “Whatever the case, you definitely succeeded. I can feel the difference in the air.”

  Nathan paused and soaked in the energy around him. Harvester was right. It was nearly unnoticeable, but definitely there. A pleasant warmth wrapping around every part of Nathan’s body. It definitely hadn’t been here the last time Nathan had been on the surface.

  “You’ve done a good thing, here, Nathaniel,” Harvester said.

  Nathan gave him a thumbs up.

  “As awesome as that is, I would like it if you fulfilled your end of the deal,” he said.

  “Oh, of course! I mean, do you want to go now, or do you want to grab a quick meal or something—”

  “I don’t sleep.” Nathan paused. “And eating is probably optional.”

  “...that sounds unpleasant.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “This is it. The Cave of Wonders.”

  Nathan reached up and scratched the back of his head. “That was the best name you could give it?”

  Harvester shot him an offended look. “What’s wrong with the name?”

  “It just doesn’t look very... wondrous?”

  Rather than the grand door carved into a cliffside, the size of castle gates, the entrance was more just a sinkhole in the ground about the size of a manhole cover. Nathan would be able to squeeze his way down, but it would be a tight fit.

  “When it was first discovered,” Harvester said. “We had two options for names, and this was by far the better one.”

  “What was the other name?”

  Harvester turned and looked at him with a completely deadpan stare. “The Devil’s 13th Rectum.”

  Nathan stared back down at the hole.

  “You know what? The Cave of Wonders actually works fine.”

  Harvester clapped him on the back. “Good man. So, pay attention carefully to what I’m about to tell you—there are multiple wrong turns that you can make, which would lead to you irrevocably getting lost underground. I have no doubt you would be able to burrow your way out like a tunnel rat, but you can kiss your chance of getting to the fishing hole goodbye, since disturbing the dirt and stone too much would cause a rockfall.”

  Nathan tried to pay attention. He really did. But then Harvester had explained that there was a crossroads known as Final Destination where Nathan would either go into “Paradise Regained” or “The Colonoscopy Crevice,” and at that point, Nathan found it extremely difficult to focus on what Harvester was actually saying.

  “So did you get all that?” Harvester said.

  “Yes,” Nathan said.

  “Good. Best of luck, Nathaniel.”

  Nathan looked into the hole, sighed, then put his head in and slithered his way into the opening.