[Congratulations on passing the tutorial!]
[Selecting passing contestants…]
Auclair looked at the system with some minor intrigue as more text began sprawling cross it.
[The winning contestants are as follows: 'Auclair,' 'DeadManWalking,' and 'Lady Vere.' Additional passing contestants will be accepted into the Hex Trials but your rank will not increase.]
Auclair asked Norman out the side of his eye, "Would you happen to be the 'DeadManWalking' contestant?"
"Yes, I just chose something random." Norman responded with a slightly red face.
"I'm sure," Auclair said as he looked back at the message, "but who's this Lady Vere?"
***
In the vast hallway that stretched out before the Vault's treasure room, Gwen was staring violently at the message.
She muttered Auclair's name and looked down at her stomach's injury which should have made her long dead. She held her brother for the last time as her vision began fading to white.
***
Alex was shaking his leg as he watched the squad he had sent out heading towards the uncivilized world where Auclair's trial had taken place on.
"Sir, ETA is five minutes. Once we're there we'll replicate a space rupture." A man wearing military equipment and a gun said into a speaker.
"Watch out for any anomalies, we don't want Miss Whitewood to notice anything suspicious." Alex responded.
The man shifted and thought of a response. He hesitated, but decided to say it regardless.
"With all due respect sir, I've seen her operate. I have no doubt she's already well aware of what we're doing."
"You seem to have a big deal of respect for the woman."
"Yes sir, I do. She often spearheads her operations and is the first to arrive on the scene."
"I see." Alex responded while leaning back in his chair. He began twirling a pen on his desk while watching the end of Auclair's trial as the contested started disappearing.
He briefly recalled a conversation he had with his father not too long before the whole Auclair's ordeal even began. It was when he was learning the secrets of the Tower that the Syndicate had taken over.
"Next up, we'll talk about the subterranean games." Hero had said to Alex with a complicated face.
"The what?"
"It is a game that the gods used to let mortals participate in. The gods lived on the bottom floor of the Tower, all the way beneath the planet. Every floor, starting from underneath the ground floor, is a part of the games that the old mortals used to indulge in."
"And the goal?"
"Well what do you think? Obviously to reach the realm of the gods at the bottom. They were like micro challenges, a testing phase for the Hex Trials if you will. These underground trials are now defunct though, they aren't being used at all. But with effort, contestants can apparently head to the lower levels."
"So what's the significance of you telling me this?"
"Unless you pass the Hex Trials, there's no way to get in, and that's where the contestants go once they finish a Hex Trial if they don't give up. That's just the way Erus repurposed the lower portion of the Tower, always managing to inconvenience us in some way."
Hero rubbed his chin and continued after a quick sigh.
"They could live down there for the rest of your life if they wanted. We can only communicate through the system, but we'd have to go through Yohr and then Erus for that."
The memory was from before Yohr had escaped. Alex rubbed his temples and wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing for him since now an additional obstacle was out of the way, although he might risk offending the gods.
Alex continued thinking about the past conversation.
"So it's basically sealed off?"
"Yes, unless a contestant gives up their right to challenge the Hex Trials and leaves, we won't even really know what's going on under there. It's where the contestants live in their downtime and as of now, the not a single player, to our knowledge of course, has ever reached the bottom. That's according to Reynfry, our latest champion."
Alex dropped the pen he had been twirling and stopped reminiscing. He wouldn't be able to send someone to kill Auclair while he was in the Iron Tower. It put a sour taste in his mouth, but Alex would rather not participate in the games just to get access.
***
Auclair found his vision shift to white before quickly swapping back to normal. He looked around and found himself in a stone hallway much like an old dungeon. He looked around and didn't see a single soul.
He trailed his fingers along the wall as he walked down the hallway with his shoes clacking against the hard surface.
'It's the Tower.' Auclair sighed while thinking, 'I can't remember what happened that got me to stop eating the world, meaning that dick-wad Erus still has some of my memories sealed away. What's his game? He knows I'll kill him unless he has some way to stop me.'
Auclair stopped walking and tapped his finger against the wall in thought.
'It's the system… That's what he'll use against me, but maybe he has another trick up his sleeve as well. I don't think he just wants me to help break out the gods. His mind isn't that narrow nor that straightforward.'
Auclair pushed himself away from the wall and let his hand fall as he continued walking down the corridor. At the end of the corridor was a large wooden door.
'It's one of the old trials. Hmm, interesting. That means I'm underneath the tower, I bet I could stop by my office eventually and steal some things. Well, I guess it wouldn't be stealing. Hah. Wait, I'd have to go up though and there's that strange Iron Syndicate. Did they send me here, or was it just Erus?'
He pushed open the door with those thoughts purposely clouding his mind to try and forget the memories that recently resurfaced. They kept popping up however, which was to be expected.
He found himself getting angry, but more often than not, he just got sad.
Once the door opened a bright light flowed in from an artificial sun in the ceiling which resembled a fake sky. Much like the realm of the gods at the bottom of the Tower, each of the trial rooms were separate planes of existence. All of the planes were handcrafted and place carefully into the tower.
Before Auclair stood very mountainous terrain stretching far beyond the horizon. At the bottom of the mountains, not to far from where he stood, was a large city that wasn't too dissimilar to medieval ones.
Auclair made his way over, completely oblivious to the fact that the races of the world had long past this era of civilization and instead were far into the space age.
He reached the town and found many people there talking amongst each other as if nothing of importance was happening. A lot of them wore fancy armor or at the very least had a nice looking weapon strapped to them.
Some of them looked over at the blood covered Auclair and began laughing at the sight.
"Guess a new batch will be arriving shortly. Welcome to Hexshade, newbie." Someone who happened to be walking nearby said aloud.
The others around them nodded or uttered an agreement.
Auclair ignored them and continued walking through the city without any destination in mind. He stopped for a moment and remembered he was going to investigate his system further.
'System.'
He called out to it and it appeared instantly. His upper lip curled in disgust as he remembered how much he hated Erus' magic. He had to admit that despite the fact, it would be very helpful to him if he excluded how it would probably hurt him in the long run.
[Voracious Appetite: Your hunger has grown irrepressibly in the passing eons since your entombment. The world has forgotten your hunger. Remind them.]
[Your strength grows with every consumed heart, whether it be from human, elf, planet, star, god or anything in between. Some hearts will give you additional traits or skills.]
He grinned momentarily but he still needed to fix his core before he'd see any affects from it. He decided he'd get some rest and spend some time working on it before heading to the next trial.
He then looked at his next trait that the system gave him.
[God Complex: As a creature at the apex of the world, your will alone commands reality. A god stands at the top and they know it. You have nearly been forgotten by time itself, as have all the gods. Return the gods to their former glory.]
[Your will alone can sometimes manifest changes in reality in points of determination. The strength of the effect depends on your determination at the moment of activation.]
Auclair's brows raised slightly. Depending on the situation, this could be stronger than Voracious Appetite. However, the former was much more useful than the latter overall. Then finally he looked at the skill he got from eating the outer god's core.
[Seeker]
[You will passively detect extraordinarily powerful hearts, relics, and creatures. Only works within a medium range.]
Auclair thought for a moment.
'It's definitely useful on paper, I guess I'll have to check it out in practice though.'
[Would you like to begin your next trial?]
[Yes / No]
Auclair tapped [No] without much thought. He would've been a fool to keep going at that point. So instead he began his journey in finding a place to stay. Not long after, he decided to just ask a random contestant.
After getting directions, he stepped up to a nice looking inn, but he felt an ominous feeling. Everything about the place seemed perfectly normal, but he couldn't shake the feeling.
He squinted his eyes in suspicion and pushed open the door slowly. As the door's hinges creaked, he saw the inside of the inn and his eyes widened.
There stood a woman talking to the innkeeper angrily. It was a woman that Auclair had assumed he had murdered not too long before, in the hallway to the vault. However she stood fine, her stomach had repaired itself.
But that wasn't the main reason Auclair was shocked.
Instead, it was the fact that she was now very much like him. She defied fate and thus her threads of fate had been severed completely. Despite the universe itself saying she was dead, she still stood standing.
Auclair would never again be able to detect her using his threads of fate at all. He hated those people the most as they were the most dangerous and obnoxious to kill.
Auclair immediately left the building. He couldn't kill her, not here. From what he gathered, it was a town filled to the brim with contestants, there were bound to be strict laws in place to stop infighting.
So he'd do it in a Hex Trial the first opportunity he got.
After leaving the building, a very peculiar person bumped into Auclair.
They wore a sleek black suit, had on pitch black gloves and had a golden watch on their wrist, but on top of it all, they wore a weird box on their head.
"Huh?" They had been looking at the ground so they quickly looked up. On the box was a face that shifted periodically with his emotions. Just then, it went from a blind stare to utter confusion.
"Excuse me, my mind happened to wander a moment there." They admitted before standing up straight. "You seem to be fresh blood… literally. As an apology, if you need help, I'd be more than happy to give it."
Auclair looked at the strange man in utter bewilderment but nodded slowly.
"Don't be put off by my appearance, it's just a mask. I don't wear it while I work." They stuck out their hand and said his name which, like Auclair's, was also his Hex Trial's username, "Jackson."
Auclair looked at the hand and shook it, "Auclair." He thought that he might as well get all the useful information out of the man before parting ways.
However, contrary to Auclair's expectations, Jackson would become his most valued ally in the near future. But apart from his apparently nice demeanor on the surface…
Jackson was a horrible person.