The arrival was, as always, a sensation of nonexistence and another of falling; it was like returning to the body after having drowned. I was in a large, round square at least 30 meters in diameter; fourteen streets went out in all directions, and the center of The square was dominated by a statue of what seemed to be a goddess...
It was a colossal statue, more than 5 meters high, but the strangest thing was that no matter how much you moved around, the statue would always look at you....
Just by looking at it, you could tell that there was magic in it, but more than that, you could feel an aura of divinity and holiness emanating from it. Each of the streets had a small obelisk with a symbol: a flame, a snowflake, a wave, a mountain, a lightning bolt, an empty symbol, something that looked like a tree, a bone, an hourglass, a horizon, a sun, a dark spot, an eye, or a being pushing a stone. With the information I had, I could guess most of it, you didn't have to be very smart.
"Player, while you are in the sanctuary, you will not be hungry, thirsty or sleepy. Explore the sanctuary until you ask to leave, die or find the exit"
Before doing anything, I took out the gem I had left and focused on it while meditating. My breathing became more rhythmic, and I began to feel the gem, not as it was on the outside but as it pulsate and I noticed the energy it had accumulated, it wasn't much, just a small flame. I focused on that sensation and let it invade me... After a few minutes, I could no longer feel the energy inside the gem, and my affinity percentage with the mana of the gems changed to 5/100.
However, in that state of relaxation, I could feel another mana slowly flowing towards me from the statue. I got closer to it and continued meditating. This energy was warm, like sitting down to soak up some rays of sunlight on a winter morning. Time passed, and that flow of energy did not stop... When I realized it, Data's voice announced:
"Congratulations on being the first player to complete a secondary mana core during the tutorial."
Spiritual Mana Core, Level 1. 1/1000
Special-skill meditation. 223/1000
The sensation was as if another heart was beating in my right kidney; it was strange. At the same time I could feel that without the need to meditate that energy continued to flow towards me, fainter but the bond had not been broken...
I approached the statue, trying to return that same energy to interact with it; nothing happened, or maybe it did. For a second, I thought I saw that the statue was smiling, and for another millisecond, its eyes pointed to my right instead of being fixed on me...
There were three possibilities in front of me: the symbol of fire, the eye, and the man pushing the mountain... I walked past to try to decide. When I passed by the symbol of fire, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It was just a sensation, but guided by my sixth sense, I ruled it out. Which of the two paths would I choose? None of them gave me any special intuition so I cast lots, heads to the eye and tails to the man pushing the stone. It came out tails, I went to the entrance of the tunnel, it would be one and a half meters wide, with the walls made of pure white marble and the floor paved with rectangular marble tiles.
I walked in a straight line for ten minutes without any change, a torch every 25 steps, once to the right, once to the left, nothing out of the ordinary. If we didn't think at my pace, the tunnel must have been more than 1 kilometer, and there was no end in sight...
Another ten minutes passed without getting anywhere. Just in case my senses were deceiving me, I got a small cut on my finger, enough to leave a mark on the wall...
I advanced for another twenty minutes without getting anywhere or finding my marks. Frustrated, I decided to retrace the path... I arrived back at the square after 40 minutes of walking. There was no trick; it was 40 minutes...
Let's put the puzzle back together: a huge hallway with torches on the right and left, every 25 exact steps... I examined the cauldron of the first torch; it couldn't be turned or pushed, and there didn't seem to be any hidden mechanisms. All that was left was to turn off the torch. I repeated the operation every 25 meters (putting out all the fires behind me; this time it took me 40 minutes to reach the mark, and I got better and better) until I reached my last mark, a circle....
I continued advancing for another hour in a straight line, extinguishing the same torches... I believed that the effort was useless, that the corridor was eternal, and that there would never be a change in the monotony of the marble. When I was beginning to despair, the moment occurred. First change, I couldn't see the continuous light of the torches ahead of me; three more torches lit and then complete darkness...
I didn't turn off the lit torch; in fact I went back to pick up five others that were unlit and put them in my backpack, before going blindly into the darkness I would test the waters.
I took the torch from the cauldron on the right, the last one lit, and advanced through the tunnel. At the 25 steps, another cauldron was visible on the left, and the torch was out... I advanced, illuminated by the torch, another 25 meters, but this time there were no more cauldrons... I continued another 25 and still nothing; another 25 and no trace of more torches... I turned around to the unlit torch, and lit it with the help of the one I was carrying in my hand... I don't know why, but I decided to return the lit one to its original place and turn it off...
I returned to the now-only point of light in the hallway...
The obvious decision was to turn off this one as well, but before that, I moved to 25 meters again to check that there was no other cauldron. That was true; however, something, an instinct, told me to continue advancing to the limit of the luminosity that I had left. Back...
When you go down a straight corridor, without changes or wind, it is like walking in a continuous calm; however, further ahead in the darkness, I could notice a draft from my left...
With my dim vision, I could see how the tunnel continued forward, straight as before, but I headed towards that wall... I felt it. In the smooth marble, the block on the right protruded just 2 millimeters...
I tried to grab it, but I couldn't. Which I pushed to the side, and nothing. I pushed towards the other, and nothing happened either, so I knocked with my knuckles to listen to the sound it made, it sounded hollow...
I knocked outside that block to compare, giving the walls a more solid, muffled sound...
Not everything had to be precision, so I took the hand axe and hit the marble block in what I thought would be the weakest part, the center...
The first blow only took out flakes, making a small crack; with the Second, the crack widened in several directions. On the third blow, a piece the size of my fist fell on the other side. It didn't take me long to reduce the block to rubble and discover a small cavity, 1 meter high and 80 centimeters wide. Wide and about two meters deep...
Bingo, a small wooden chest, did not have a lock. In case there was a trap, I opened the lid by prying it from a distance with the tip of my spear... luckily nothing happened, Inside there was what looked like a gold ingot measuring about 10x5x4, another silver ingot of the same size, and another bronze ingot of the same size... there was nothing else...
I collected the loot and returned to the torch that remained lit... I turned it off. Wrapped in darkness, I continued walking with the clear desire to reach the end of the path. I advanced with my hand pressed against the wall on my right...
No. I can't tell you how much time I spent like this; for me, it was hours, but I couldn't calculate it... I could see how the tunnel ended... a marble wall closed the end...
I cursed, I became desperate, and I hit the wall and felt it, but there was nothing—no hollow sounds, no protruding edges, no mechanisms... nothing... I tried to see if I detected any magic, but I didn't feel anything, just the cold of the stone...
If this was a test, it had to have gone somewhere, right? Or was getting here the test in itself? There had to be something. After resting and considering my options, I returned, this time resting my hand on the opposite wall of the tunnel... Another half hour of walking in the tunnel must have passed in Darkness, When my fingers noticed a small protrusion, I knocked with my knuckles and heard that wonderful hollow noise. I broke the wall again, hoping that the solution was behind it, but it was just another chest with three more ingots.
For what I suppose were hours, I moved forward in the darkness... Hearing Data's voice startled me...
"Congratulations to the Player for reaching the next level with the dim vision skill. Dim vision skill*common* Expert Rank: 1/5000...
The difference was notable, before in complete darkness I could only see the outlines of things, the edges, now however it was like seeing in black and white...
I continued walking for what I think were days, not feeling hungry, thirsty, or sleepy, it was a continuous walk... in the process another 23 niches with ingots appeared...
I had a total of 25 gold bars, 25 silver and 25 copper... to fit them in the backpack I had to empty it of the torches, of which I only kept one, but the problem was not the space... it was the weight, each ingot weighed about 500 grams of medium (each metal weighed differently), so on my back I carried a whopping 37 and a half kilos... bearable, but this was like walking the Camino de Santiago loaded to the top... if we add the weight of my equipment and weapons he was surely carrying more than 50 kilos continuously...
I refused to believe that this test was over, that there was nothing, plus the return trip was being infinitely longer than the way out, and I never found the torches that, due to a lot of disorientation, couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 hours away. From the edge, and he was sure that he had far exceeded that time.
I wasn't sleepy, I wasn't hungry, and I wasn't thirsty, but on that eternal journey, my legs hurt, my back hurt... I opened more niches as I went. When I counted more than 150 ingots, I couldn't fit in anymore. The backpack and the straps threatened to break. I left the backpack on the ground and began to drag it. It was a relief, although moving forward became slower as I dragged that weight...
The next niches were a new problem, I didn't have a bag to put the ingots in, I loosened the straps of my shell and began to store them there, imprisoning them between the shell and my clothes... when they couldn't fit anymore, I started putting some in the rods of my boots, on my forearms...
Surely many of you are wondering why I continued to accumulate so much weight, what was the point, however I could only see the image of the symbol of this tunnel, a man pushing a stone... I was imitating him...
I had no space left to put it in. I lodged ingots inside my cloth pants... I lost count, but I probably had another 75 ingots on my body, plus the 150 that I was dragging...
Slowly, agonizingly, I advanced in that black and white world without stopping beyond catching my breath... however no more niches appeared, just an infinite tunnel...
A light... A light at the end of the tunnel...