Connor Elysium
"An overconfident failure."
Soul: N/A
Essence absorbed: 17
[Trial failed]
Connor found himself in a black void devoid of anything to experience. He didn't even have a body, all he could do was stare at his status and those words stuck at the bottom.
'I'm dead aren't i?'
...
'Wait why can I think then?'
Connor was still conscious at least, though he was confused about a number of things. Though he quickly understood why he was able to think as he could feel something manifest in his mind
[Trial assessment proceeding]
[consistently defeated beasts of a higher level of power making it eight tenths of a way through the trial before stumbling upon the area of a greater predator and being lethally wounded. Though the trial taker managed to escape he was later eaten by wolves while unconscious.]
[Assessment: good]
[Remark: Ambition without the safety to back it up is only recklessness.]
'Well to be fair its not like i could have expected the forest to come alive and try to kill me. But I probably shouldn't have gotten greedy, just with basic hunting i would have already had an above average amount of essence and I would have passed if i just kept skirting around the edge of the forest looking for weak prey.'
'I had my reasons but taking a risk is just as it's stated, a risk.'
He was starting to feel his mind fade again, merging into the dark void around him.
'Oh i guess it just wanted to tell me how i did before I die for real. I did good but good isn't enough sometimes is it? Icarus flew too close to the sun and all that.'
And without further thought he embraced the blackness and closed his metaphorical eyes. Though the end he was waiting for never arrived.
Suddenly he felt the weight of his body, and the light shining on his eyelids, The twitch of muscles in his left hand and the feeling of air in his lungs. And with sensation came all the emotions that having a noncorporeal form apparently blocked.
Frozen in a state of shock his breathing became erratic as he could feel his throat closing up. His eyes slowly opened and with them a stream of tears fell down his face like a river. And then he screamed, he didn't know what to do or how to feel so his body could only thrash around slamming his fists into the ground.
Often a panic attack can feel like the worst thing in the world. As if someone reached into your chest and grabbed onto your rib cage. As if you had the weight of an elephant on your chest.
For Connor it was like a massive sense of overstimulation not only of his fear, pain, panic. But as if his body wasn't something he had ever been in before, as if he had never felt a sense of touch or sound.
It took Connor minutes to finally tire himself out. He was still shaken not in the best mental space but he could push it to the back of his head and think at least.
"Well.. at least my ankle is actually connected to my body again. Though those wolves probably did a lot worse to me." The thought of being eaten by wolves still made him gag a little bit but he wasn't going to worry about that.
Finally taking a look around he saw that he was in a room made of onyx black stone with a pedestal in the middle, the place he woke up on. Intricate carvings lined the walls and in front of him was an ornate red door with golden flourish's.
'Overall very fancy.'
Besides the door though there wasn't anything else of note in the room so he walked forward and pushed the door open. In his immediate field of vision he could see a lobby like area with chairs and other doors leading into different areas.
Though the thing that surprised him the most was that there was an actual person sitting at the desk up front who had just turned to look at him.
"Oh hello there could you please come over here sir? I know this might be a bit confusing but ill explain everything for you. Also please grab one of the gowns on the rack to your right first your a bit nude right now."
'I really should have thought about that before opening the door butt ass naked.'
The embarrassment took other thoughts off his mind at least so he took a gown and dressed himself back in the pedestal room before walking up to the mans desk and taking a seat as instructed.
"Could i please have your name sir?"
"I'm Connor Elysium, now could you please explain this whole thing a bit?"
The man wrote down Connor's name on a piece of paper before looking back up at him and saying
"Well it will probably take you quite a long time to get acquainted with everything but let me be concise. You failed the trial of the first floor, usually its something along the lines of a kill quest looking for different beasts or monsters. You can share your experience if you want but we can save that until everything is completed."
"The Obelisk is the name of the place you currently are in, and occasionally it assimilates people or even worlds into itself for purposes unknown to me. The effect it has though is newly assimilated people will be put through the trial of the first floor to see if they can successfully advance or be useful to the Obelisk. Seeing as you are currently here you did decently enough to not be considered useless."
That was where Connor had to interrupt and ask
"So the what would have happened if I wasn't deemed worthy?" He was actually quite curious to know about how the Obelisk judged things. But he already had an idea of what i would have done.
"Well judging by the fact that no one has ever returned with less than a rating of 'adequate' after failing the trial the Obelisk most likely just lets those people who do perform worse die for real." the desk worker said.
The Obelisk only wanted things it deemed useful of course. Connor didn't know the actual use that bring in random people or entire worlds and testing them had but it must have been lucrative.
"And speaking of that what rating were you given by the obelisk?"
Connor didn't really see a reason to lie about the information a good assessment probably wasn't really some exciting or impossible achievement anyways. And he was correct after answering, the worker only showed mild enthusiasm. He told Connor that only around one out of five people got a good rating, though that was for people who passed the trial so he was actually marginally impressive.
The talk went on for another thirty minutes before the worker wrapped things up and in that time Connor had learned quite a lot of things. Firstly he was currently still on floor 1 though he wasn't in the trial anymore.
This was the free area of Floor 1 a place where all Obelisk ascenders could stay within after completing or failing the first floors trial. It was apparently a massive sprawling area with every type of biome you could think of and it was inhabited by the majority of people within the Obelisk.
As people ascended through the Floors and completed trials they would unlock the free area afterwards. Each free area had an almost limitless size though usually they were more themed in one direction instead of being diverse like floor 1.
The people of the Obelisk had thus decided to create their own civilization centered around the floor 1 free area. Of course there were many different independent powers but they all had a general alliance pushing towards the singular goal of reaching the top of the Obelisk.
Connor did also learn some even better news, apparently he wasn't fully cut off from the path to ascension as he had thought. Everyone who failed the first trial was given the opportunity to attempt the trial of the second floor whenever they wished.
But it wasn't really that simple, clearing the first trial would apparently have a persons body go under a sort of baptism of essence. Incorporating all the essence they had absorbed into their soul and giving them a substantial power boost and resetting the amount of essence in their body. This allowed more essence to be absorbed than before, because unfortunately to Connors dismay there was a cap to the amount of essence a person could handle.
Normally this wouldn't be much of an issue since the cap would be raised after each trial completed and baptism received. But Connor not only hadn't received a baptism due to his failure he would also have to spend a long time hunting or doing other activities in the free area to reach his essence cap to even have a chance at completing the second floors trial.
To sum it all up he was a bit screwed.