Instead of heading straight through the centre of the island to reach the southern part where the smoke from the Dimensional Tavern was visible, Adam followed the edge of the island around the western side. Despite Shitbox telling him nothing about the area, he had a sneaking suspicion that there was something hidden away there.

  Adam looked out over the edge of Interim Island as he walked, marvelling at how the clouds below seemed to stretch on forever. The sun above was on its journey towards the horizon, and within a few hours it would be dark. He hadn’t seen any lamps around the dumpy-looking buildings, so he wondered if anyone would be able to see what they were doing once the sun was gone.

  When he arrived at the western part of the island, he found a flower garden with a single square-ish dark-blue tent in the centre. It looked like something that might house a palm-reader or another kind of carnival scam artist.

  “What’s that?”

  Shitbox did not respond.

  That’s suspicious as hell. This thing usually never shuts up.

  Adam went into the garden from the edge-facing side. The flowerbeds were placed in three layers like some kind of strange symbol, with parts of the ‘lines’ missing to allow people to actually walk through without trampling the flowers. The outermost layer was a square, the middle was a ring, and the centre was a triangle, within which the tent stood.

  All the flowers were Dahlias, but they were painted in a seemingly-random array of colours.

  Maybe this garden looks like something specific from the air? Adam wondered, wishing he had the ability to fly. Given that he’d just fought sentient slime, getting such a power didn’t seem all that far-fetched a prospect.

  Inside the tent was just darkness. There wasn’t even a table or any chairs.

  “Seriously, Shitbox, what’s this place for??”

  The tesseract remained silent.

  “Is it a time-based thing perhaps?” he wondered out loud.

  [It is recommended that you also visit the Dimensional Tavern and the Player House.]

  “You’re a little shit. You know that, don’t you?”

  After looking around some more for a few minutes and even managing to climb on top of the tent, which was surprisingly-sturdy, Adam left the area empty-handed. He had played enough games in the past to know that the flower garden stank of secrets. Of course, it was possible that it was just empty, because it would house some special kind of vendor after later Stages.

  Adam continued to the southern side, while planning to revisit the suspicious tent after the sun had gone down. Aside from the unique areas like the Garden and the Market, the rest of Interim Island was filled with dumpy-but-quaint buildings that might resemble houses, if not for their melted-wax appearance and lack of doors. It was all just very samey, even the random plants and trees that sprouted here-and-there. It was as if some simple asset pack from a low-effort game had been utilised to make the island’s unimportant areas less bland.

  Could’ve saved the trouble and just squeezed the island down to a smaller size, making it less inefficient to travel between the areas that actually have stuff worth visiting.

  After his eyes had started glazing over at the uniform scenery, he suddenly reached the source of the chimney smoke. The Tavern was, unfortunately, remarkably similar to the other buildings, except it actually had a door and was both wider and taller. It stood three stories high and was like a red-brown loaf of bread that hadn’t been baked, with the roof melted into walls that flared outwards at the bottom, as though they couldn’t contain what was inside.

  Maybe this is just how they think architecture is meant to look? he wondered.

  [This is the Dimensional Tavern. Here you may freely order any food or beverage you desire. It is also possible to talk with other Players within and exchange information.]

  Freely order?

  I suppose I am quite hungry.

  He walked up the three steps to its front door. It too was strangely-organic in shape and had a knob handle that he pulled on to enter.

  As soon as it opened, the amazing smell of fresh-baked bread, sizzling bacon, grilled meat, beer, and spices flooded his nostrils, making his mouth water.

  Adam hurried inside, only to find that the interior was nothing like what the outside would suggest. The floor was perfectly-flat light-brown wooden boards. The wooden walls too were straight and normal. There were two floors above, though these were just walkways with railings and a few secluded tables and chairs. The ceiling had rafters running across it.

  Immediately in front of him were three long red-brown wooden tables that stretched from one end of the room to the other, with simple stools placed evenly along them. Despite what Shitbox had told him though, the place was empty save for another insect, who quickly approached him.

  “Hello, Adam, my name is Charlie,” the red ant introduced herself in a deep and comforting voice. “Would you like something to eat?”

  Adam looked around. “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. The food is very real, even if the kitchen isn’t.”

  He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “It won’t kill me, right?”

  “Of course not, silly,” she said and giggled in a way that sounded like bubbles in water.

  “What kind of food do you have?”

  “Anything you’d like, I can make.”

  “I’ll have to put that to a challenge I think. I’ve got some pretty specific things I want.”

  “Croissants from Jameson’s Bakery?”

  Adam’s eyes widened in awe. “You’ve got those!?”

  “Of course, Adam. Please find a seat and I’ll bring them to you. Would you like anything else?”

  His eyes glinted with sudden desire. “Black coffee with a splash of milk and two sugar cubes! Oh and dinosaur nuggets! Plus a pineapple pizza!”

  Charlie giggled again, before walking down the length of the tables and rounding a corner to where stairs seemed to lead up to the floors above.

  “Shitbox, where’s all the Players?”

  [The Dimensional Tavern is only active while you are seated.]

  “Okay?”

  Adam picked the nearest stool and sat down. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

  All around him, seated on the chairs along the three tables, were hundreds, if not thousands, of people with the appearance of see-through holograms. All of them were talking and eating, while constantly flickering in-and-out and being replaced by other holograms, as though the Tavern was trying to show him everyone that was actually seated within their own dimension.

  [A little under 600 million Players survived Stage One. Currently, 86 million Players are utilising the Dimensional Tavern.]

  The noise from all the talking holograms was deafening, but Shitbox’s voice came through clearly.

  “How do I mute them!?”

  Instantly the holograms fell silent.

  “Thank you.”

  [It is possible to state your intentions within the Dimensional Tavern to find others who may respond to your query. If a Player within this place fulfils the requirements, they will be able to hear your voice.]

  “So I can filter through the noise to find my friends and family?”

  [Possibly.]

  “I’d like to see everyone who is related to me.”

  The holograms all flickered and disappeared.

  “Okay, maybe they’re not dead but just in a different part of the island…” he tried to convince himself, as his heart rate began to run amok at the fact that the Tavern was completely empty.

  He scratched his stubble, as he tried to think of something to distract himself with.

  “Ehh, show me the people who were in the bakery with me when the Trials began.”

  Two figures appeared, the female clerk and the guy who’d been behind him in the queue. The guy was sobbing loudly, while the woman was eating a burger.

  That’s depressing…

  “Show me everyone who has the same Relic as me.”

  The holograms flickered and the three tables filled up completely. Some of the figures were eating, others were talking, but a lot either sat despondently staring into the air or were actively sobbing.

  “More than I figured, to be honest.”

  He’d thought that the rare quality meant not a lot of people would’ve gotten it, but when hundreds of millions of people were part of the equation, it meant that even a small percentage chance would lead to thousands.

  Wait, it said about 500 million… Without accounting for the fact that children and elderly, as well as physically-unfit people, were not included, that’s still billions of people that must’ve died!

  Sweat was starting to form on the back of his neck at the thought.

  One in sixteen people made it past Stage One… Everyone else died or is in ‘holding’, whatever that means. This is an extinction-level event…

  “Speaking of which. Where are all these billions of people and their ‘temporary holding’?”

  [Apologies for misleading you, that phrasing was incorrect. Every member of your species not currently on Interim Island has been consumed by the All-Seeing System to fuel the Trials of Defiance.]

  Adam’s heart skipped a beat. “But… You said they were alive and that their lives depended on me…”

  [The truth would likely not have motivated you properly for the first Stage. Now that you have survived it, there is no need to withhold the truth.]

  “Fuck you!” he yelled, surprising a few of the holograms, before he got up and they disappeared. He immediately pulled his sword and swung for the tesseract.

  Predictably, it teleported out of the way, but he didn’t let up. While he was chasing after it, running across the tables, it stated:

  [You may save your family, your friends, and your species, if you complete the Trials of Defiance. That is why it has been named this way. If you wish to defy the All-Seeing System and the extinction of your species, you must conquer its challenges.]

  Adam stopped mid-swing, his chest heaving from exhaustion and his saliva tasting like acid.

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” he promised the box in a dangerous voice.

  He sat back down and put his sword and shield next to him on another stool.

  The seats around him filled up with holograms of people again.

  “Show me all the Players who have the Blink Ring and understand how it works.”

  The holograms flickered and were replaced with just a handful of people.

  “I need someone to explain to me how the Blink Ring works.”

  Every single person turned to look directly at him. There was a caramel-tanned guy with tattoo sleeves and a buzzcut, eating a lamb chop; an Asian woman with black shoulder-length silky hair, slurping up noodles from a cheap ramen cup; two clean-shaven businessmen still in their suits, one of which looked Scandinavian and the other perhaps British; and, lastly, a woman with her dark hair in a long ponytail who was drinking a pink milkshake.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Do you have something to trade?” asked the guy with the buzzcut in a Spanish accent.

  “Trade?” Adam asked.

  Disappointment was obvious in their eyes and all but one flickered out and disappeared.

  “New to the Tavern?” asked the sole person remaining. It was the woman with the ponytail.

  “I spent some time looking around the Market and the Garden,” he explained.

  “Garden?”

  “It’s on the western side, there’s an empty tent there that looks like it might hide secrets.”

  “You shouldn’t give info away for free,” she warned him.

  “Why?”

  Her hologram flickered and he thought she’d taken the info and run off. Then she reappeared directly opposite him. She was wearing a tight-fitting light-grey blouse with long sleeves.

  “In just the last few hours there’s been kind of a trading system set up,” she said, clearly not happy about it. “At first everyone shared what they knew freely, but then it was like the idea that information had value spread. So, now most people who care about surviving are using their knowledge as currency. The Tavern’s design also seems to encourage this…”

  Adam frowned. “Why wouldn’t people just help each other out? We’re all fighting for the same thing.”

  She nodded.

  “Why do you want to know about the Blink Ring?” she asked.

  “I’m Adam,” he told her, reaching his hand across the table to her.

  “We can’t actually touch each other,” she told him, giving him a suspicious look.

  “I don’t care, just pretend to shake my hand at least.”

  She reached across and feigned the motion with him.

  “I’m Willow.”

  He finally noticed her accent. She was Australian.

  “So?” she prompted.

  “I’ve got the Duellist’s Glove.”

  “Don’t know what that is.”

  “It allows me to charge an attack that pierces armour.”

  Her eyes widened. “That’d pair well with the Blink Ring.”

  “Exactly. I saw it in the Market, but I had no idea how it worked.”

  Charlie the ant suddenly arrived with his food. Apparently Willow could see it all.

  “You must be hungry. Those croissants look good though.”

  “They’re from a place called Jameson’s Bakery. You should be able to ask Charlie to bring you some.”

  Willow turned away and started talking to someone Adam couldn’t see. He also couldn’t hear what she said.

  Adam lifted a croissant in front of him and bit into it. It flaked and crunched slightly, filling his mouth with the buttery pastry and sending him back to a few days earlier, when he’d first tasted one of them at the office thanks to Sharon.

  “Are you crying?” Willow suddenly asked.

  “They’re happy tears,” he replied.

  “That croissant must be really good.”

  He nodded, taking another bite.

  “Alright, so, the Blink Ring. It’s very weird and kind of dumb. I’ve got a bow, so it actually works with charged-up attacks, since pulling the string back is considered ‘charging’ it. Wonder if that’s intentional. Anyway, if you blink, the string immediately fires and the arrow teleports into the target.”

  Adam finished the last bite of the croissant, then wiped the flakes off his face. “That sounds powerful,” he replied.

  “Sure, if you can hit anything with it. Kind of hard to aim when you have to blink to fire. Also, it triggers on all blinks, so you need to learn to control that impulse.”

  “Does it make your arrows faster?”

  “No, it just eliminates the travel time. Means you won’t have to lead your shots as much. Do you have a bow as well?”

  Adam lifted up his sword and shield. “I picked Defender.”

  “Safe choice,” Willow replied. “I think more than half of the survivors picked that.”

  “Did you hear how many people survived the first Stage?”

  “Yeah… I think my brothers are all dead.”

  Adam frowned. “Have you asked your Shitbox about the ‘temporary holding’?”

  She nodded, a dark cloud falling over her expression. “I tried to kill it using my bow. I actually hit it, thanks to the Blink Ring, but my arrow just bounced off.”

  Adam grinned from ear to ear. This was what he’d been hoping to learn. Since the tesseract could teleport, having something that made his attacks instantaneous might enable him to hit it. And if the armour-piercing quality of his Glove was brought into the mix…

  “Thank you Willow. I’m gonna go get the ring.”

  “You should practice with it in the Player House. There’s a target dummy there. Also, if you kill your box, come back and let me know.”

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  With renewed vigour, Adam shovelled the dinosaur nuggets into his mouth and washed them down with the coffee, before folding up the pineapple pizza and eating it like a burrito.

  “Uh, you didn’t cut the connection,” Willow said.

  He gave her a deer-in-the-headlights stare and she started laughing.

  “Bye Adam,” she said between laughs.

  Then her hologram flickered and disappeared.

  After emptying his coffee and gulping down the last bit of the pizza, Adam stormed from the Tavern towards the Market.

  “I’ll buy the Blink Ring,” he told Lucca the spider.

  After spending time talking to another human, the creature seemed even more horrific than before. He tried his best not to look at her black eyes.

  “That will be 300 Points,” she said, sounding gleeful.

  “How do I pay you?”

  [Uttering your acceptance of the deal will suffice.]

  “Deal,” he said.

  < < Relic Purchased > >

  < Blink Ring (Uncommon) >

  < 75 Points Remaining >

  The ring appeared around his left index finger and it seemed that the Glove prevented him from wearing it on his right hand, which was peculiar. The Blink Ring was an iron-grey reflective band with a small engraving of a stylised eye that was filled-in with black.

  “Come back again when you have more Points,” the spider told him.

  Adam didn’t respond and just headed straight for the Player House to the east. The sun had almost set and part of him wanted to see if his suspicion about the tent in the garden was real or not, but another part knew it wasn’t the most important thing right now.

  If what Willow had said was true, he’d be able to land a hit on Shitbox by combining the effects of his new Blink Ring and the Duellist’s Glove.

  I wonder what happens if I kill it? If it is just one of countless ‘eyes’, then they’ll probably just send me a replacement. Or maybe they’ll kill me as a punishment…

  Fuck it. I’m going to kill it, even if I end up dead as a result. It’ll be my own small revenge for my family.

  Whether it was due to ignorance or arrogance, the tesseract floated along after him with not a care in the world. It did not fear his conviction, because it believed itself impervious to damage. Of course, it had the power to traverse dimensions and teleport him anywhere it wished. From its perspective, he probably looked like a pathetic little insect tapping on the walls of the cage it was trapped in.

  Adam was far from the first person to scheme to kill the box that represented the cruelty of the Trial, but he was possibly the only person who’d tried combining these two Relics to accomplish it. After all, anyone who took this Trial seriously would invest their Points in something better, like Potions, Rerolls, or more sensible Relics like the Healing Apple.

  What really made him certain that his theory was untested, was the fact that, of all the people in the Tavern with the Blink Ring, only a handful had apparently understood how to use it. It was also almost certain that they’d gotten the Relic from the Boss reward, since it was unlikely to be something anyone would spend their Points on at the Market, meaning none of them would have the Points to buy the Glove even if it did appear in the vendor’s selection. Of course, this all hinged on guesswork and the assumption that it wasn’t possible to obtain 500 Points from Stage One, but nevertheless he felt certain.

  The dumpy buildings parted to reveal a round patch of grass with a little house in the middle and a brown wooden fence around it. Within the fenced-off patch of grass was an apple tree, much like a smaller version of the one in the Magical Forest. Next to it hopped a small tennis-ball-sized slime. The house was pretty similar to the other dumpy buildings on the island, with a rounded straw-brown roof and white walls with black stripes that looked like melted wax. There were two windows and a brown door.

  [This is the Player House. Within is a Relic Storage, Practice Dummy, and Rejuvenating Bed. Any Accolades you have earnt will also be displayed here. In the garden around the house will be friendly variants of the enemies you encounter in the Trials.]

  “Accolades?” he asked.

  [Feats of Mastery, as well as other accomplishments, will be awarded with a Trophy visible inside the Player House, alongside a fitting prize that will be a boon to your progress through the Trials of Defiance.]

  “Like what? Can’t you give me an example?”

  [You will have to earn an Accolade first for me to introduce the topic further.]

  Adam frowned. “Whatever.”

  He eyed the slime warily as he went through the fence gate and across the grass. After pulling the door open and entering, he found that the Player House was much bigger on the inside, similar to the Tavern. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same light-brown wood and there were maybe 100 square metres of space inside. Strangely, though there were windows visible on the fa?ade, none of the walls within had any.

  The bed was a massive brick in the corner, next to a bunch of empty shelves, racks, and mannequins that seemed able to wear any of the Relics he wouldn’t use. There was also a large jacuzzi-sized bathtub that Shitbox hadn’t mentioned. Lastly, in the opposite corner from the bed stood a lone target dummy. It was basically just a man made of straw.

  Adam walked over to it, while drawing his blade from its scabbard.

  [This is a Practice Dummy. It is currently in its default state. It is possible to change it into a facsimile of enemies you have already encountered. Its defences are a perfect replication of any enemy it imitates.]

  “Can it be set to attack me, in order to simulate an actual fight?”

  [No, but it can perform evasive movements to aid in practising ranged weapons and attacks. Would you like to set it to the evasive state?]

  “No. This is fine.”

  Adam walked close enough that he’d reach the dummy if he swung normally. Then he tightened his grip on his sword’s handle and triggered the Duellist’s Glove. He immediately blinked without meaning to.

  When he opened his eyes, the bottom-half of the dummy was severed and it fell over backwards.

  Before he could ask if it was self-repairing, it started to flicker like the holograms in the Tavern and then materialised back into its original shape.

  Since the cooldown on his Glove was a minute, he spent the waiting time trying to land hits on the dummy’s chest with his blade, while his eyes were closed. It was a lot harder than he’d thought.

  When the Glove was ready again, he opened his eyes and gave it another shot, doing his best to delay his blinking until the perfect moment.

  Blink.

  The strike instantly finished its arc without any noticeable strain in his arm, nor any sound of the blade travelling through the air.

  What a silly yet terrifying Relic, he thought to himself, as he watched the dummy separate down the middle from his upwards slash. Two thuds came in quick succession as the halves hit the floor.

  [Impressive. Synergy between Relics is integral to conquering the Trials of Defiance.]

  Adam ignored it.

  Just wait until it’s your turn.

  Adam kept on practising for what might’ve been an hour, trying out various types of charged attacks whenever the Glove came off cooldown. His aim wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to bet on.

  After going at it for that long, he knew exactly what kind of attack he’d use against the tesseract. Although it was riskier, since it’d be harder to hit, he was going to try a charged stab to nail it in its eye. He had no idea if the piercing effect from the Glove would work on its entire fourth-dimensional body, and from his practice he’d realised that stabbing beat out any other attack in terms of speed. It also had the least-telegraphed movement, in case the tesseract was able to predict his intent and teleport away before he could trigger the blink strike.

  I kind of want to go to the tent in the flower garden first, just to satisfy my curiosity.

  Adam shook his head. It didn’t matter.

  “Shitbox, what can I expect from tomorrow’s Stage?” he asked, trying to distract it.

  He walked away from the practice dummy that he’d destroyed over fifty times, lowering his sword as he neared the tesseract.

  [It would be unfair to give it away in advance.]

  Adam closed his eyes for a full second before opening them. Then he started squeezing the handle of his sword.

  “You can’t even give me the name of the Stage?”

  [No.]

  Heat flushed up the back of his hand as the Duellist’s Glove began to activate and change colours.

  “Why is the Trials so intent on ‘fairness’?” he asked.

  The tesseract was floating at eye-level, only two metres away, staring right into his face. Adam tensed his forearm, as he prepared for a lunging stab from below.

  [The All-Seeing System deemed that—]

  Blink.

  His view went dark for the microsecond that he closed his eyes and when they shot back open again, his arm was stretched to its limit and holding the sword perfectly straight. At the end of his blade, the tesseract was impaled right through the eye. Perhaps due to its dimensional properties, the sword’s tip wasn’t poking out the back of its box-shaped body.

  [Urrr—] the tesseract groaned in a voice so deep that it made Adam’s breath catch in his lungs and caused his heart to trip over its own beat.

  Then it exploded.

  But it wasn’t like a firework.

  It was an explosion that took place in a dimension beyond the three that he knew. His sword was flung away, embedding itself in the ceiling above. The air where Shitbox had hovered became a jagged tear in the fabric of reality, while ripples from the shockwave travelled across his skin. The sensation was bizarre, almost as if it had frozen his whole body and stopped his heart.

  Adam coughed and tasted copper.

  He looked down from the rift in front of him and saw a large jagged shard of black glass poking out through the torso of his white shirt. Its reflective surface showed colours not present in the room, almost as if it was reflecting a beautiful galaxy above.

  His legs gave out from under him and his head bounced once when it hit the floor.

  Unable to move, he lay there, as a puddle of his blood formed around him.

  Then darkness covered the world.

  An eye opened in the dark and its pupil was the silhouette of a man. The man walked closer to where he floated in the nothingness. His hair was dishevelled and brown. The face had a chiselled chin, thick eyebrows, and amber eyes that reflected some unseen kaleidoscope of colours. The silhouette was clad in shadow from the neck down.

  Perhaps he had been in the darkness for too long, because it took him a while to realise whose face he was looking at.

  It was his face.

  < < ADAM > >

  With a gasp, Adam opened his eyes and saw moss spread out before him. There was the brown trunk of a tree further away and birdsong filled his ears. Something black and metallic was unfolding itself nearby, but he was unable to focus on it.

  What…?

  A tinnitus whine in his ears grew to deafen the birdsong, while the pulse of his heartbeat throbbed in his temples, fingers, and toes.

  Did I just…?

  Adam tilted his head up and the movement made everything blur. Colours mixed together into incoherent noise. He felt bile rise in his throat, before dropping to his knees and emptying his stomach onto the ground.

  He could taste croissant and coffee for a brief instant.

  With the act of purging his guts, he felt clarity return to him.

  I think I just died.

  But, that dark thing imitating me brought me back?

  Am I back at the beginning of the Trials?

  [Failed to select a Weapon Type within 60 seconds. You have been defaulted to the Weapon Type ‘Fool’.]

  “Huh?” he managed to blurt out, as a bracelet made of wooden balls on a string appeared around his right wrist. It seemed there was some kind of small pebble inside each of the balls, since they clanked like crazy.

  What the fuck is happening??

  < < Weapon Type Selected > >

  < Bare-handed >

  < < Player Status > >

  < Adam Fischer >

  < Fool >

  < Level 0 >

  < Stats >

  < Health — 50 >

  < Stamina — 200 >

  < Mana — 0 >

  < Damage — 200% >

  < Defence — 50% >

  < Speed — 200% >

  < Luck — 25 >

  < Upgrades >

  < — — — >