Thankfully, the darkness around him slowly began to peel away like a heavy curtain, and after, revealed an eerie, abandoned ruin that seemed lost to time.
At first, Jarren saw towering stone pillars standing around him like behemoths, but their surfaces were extremely weathered and overgrown with tangled vines and twisted roots snaking through crevices.
Their stone blocks were gray, having a ting of the remnants of age-old wars, as if they had borne witness to battles now lost in the annals of history.
He looked down at his feet and saw that the ground beneath him was cracked and uneven, littered with shards of broken stone, fragments of once-grand structures that had long succumbed to decay.
Bathing all of this expanse of desolation was the redness of the sky above. And not a powerful, bright red like the color of cherries, but rather tainted oxblood, like a corrupted ruby.
It was oppressive, but the last light of the dying sun still managed to stain it. It gave everything a crimson hue, painting the crumbling havoc in shades of desolation.
The air was so dry Jarren found it tasking to breathe. With it, came the faint scent of ash and earth, and in the distance, the sound of wind brushing through the almost barren trees.
Jarren knew what this place was. It was a ruin, a place where so much was lost and abandoned, likely the cause of a great battle.
This place was dead. As far as he could see, there were no birds, no creatures, no life, save for the ancient forest that stood sentinel over the broken world.
Its trees were sickly, almost all the leaves were long fallen, and their barks were blackened and scarred, leaving Jarren to believe that the lore of this place was much deeper.
He had not thought much of it when he created this Corridor, but seeing it now, it was difficult not to come up with his own speculations of what happened to this place.
In the heart of the ruins, there was a massive chasm that splitted the ground. This gave more reason to Jarren's theory that the world had been torn apart by some cataclysm.
The chasm was wide, impossibly so, stretching infinitely to both ends of the ruins that Jarren's eyes couldn't see, with jagged edges that gave way to a fiery abyss below.
Minding his steps, he approached the chasm's edge cautiously, peering down into the depths.
As he suspected, there was a river of lava shimmering below, burning against the rocks and making them glow with a malevolent orange.
Jarren felt a surge of hope. For a moment there, he thought he'd forgotten about this Trial, but he remembered!
The moment his eyes traced the span of the chasm, memories of him hunched on his chair, writing the scene of this Trial flooded into his head.
The goal of this Trial was simply to cross to the other side.
It wasn't exactly something to be ecstatic about, seeing that crossing seemed objectively impossible. But because part of a Trial was figuring out exactly what the Trial wanted you to do, Jarren couldn't help but see this as some kind of win.
Nevertheless, back to the main issue at hand.
Crossing alone would be nearly impossible. Creating a bridge on his own? Even with all his newfound power, it would be an absurdly difficult task. He would need help, just like every other participant who faced this same dilemma in the novel.
The overall aim of this Trial was to create teamwork and trust amongst the participants, but seeing that Jarren was standing there, alone, he wasn't sure how that would work now.
More importantly, it wasn't just the boiling lava that awaiting participants down that chasm. There was a Paragon beast inside its depths, a Moltenshark of variating ranks depending on the Threat Level of the party facing the Trial.
Knowing his Threat Level was extremely high, Jarren sighed and stepped back from the chasm. There was no way he was crossing here alone. Even if he could.
Fortunately for him, the clock wasn't ticking yet; he had as much time as he needed in this Trial. Corridors only imploded after the Trial had been defeated, as long as he hadn't, he had a lot of time to himself.
This gave him the opening he needed to study his Discipline and Techniques in detail — something he hadn't had the luxury of doing yet.
He turned his head to the side, then shifted his shoulder and glanced around his new setting. 'The details in this Corridor are breathtaking. I really am an amazing writer.'
His eyes found a patch of small, scraggly grass a little distance from the chasm. The grass was sparse, clinging to life in this forsaken place. Jarren walked to it and sat down, placing his sword before him and crossing his legs.
He summoned his Status Cube and the black glass object appeared before him with a digital sound. Jarren placed a finger on his jaw.
'First, let me check if my physical attributes made any kind of growth.'
Last time he checked them, he had deemed them abysmal, so by all means, he was desperate to increase their numbers as soon as possible.
[Strength: 11 (+2)
Agility: 23 (+1)
Intelligence: 78 (+6)
Endurance: 22 (+5)
Speed: 56 (+1)
Perception: 34 (+13)
Health: 52]
Jarren pouted his lips as he thought. 'Well at least my strength made an improvement. That's a massive growth for my perception. But why?'
He thought about it for a second. 'Maybe it has something to do with my Techniques. Or my Discipline.'
Quickly, he summoned the interface for his Power Progression, and once again, he laid eyes upon his three Techniques and his Discipline.
[Writhe of Command], [Pale Reflection], [Mantle of Deference], and then, [False Knight].
After almost an hour of studying, Jarren had come to a very good understanding of what his Techniques were, including his Discipline.
[Writhe of Command] was an ethereal substance discovered in Dead Ark, the forsaken area in the Aether Plane where Void energy was in excess. This liquid substance had the ability to do just about anything, but its main power was to corrupt any target — living or non-living to its user's control.
It was the only upgradeable Technique he had, which wasn't surprising because physical Techniques were usually the ones that could be upgraded. His two other Techniques gave him abstract abilities.
[Pale Reflection] allowed the user — Jarren — to mimic another's emotional state, temporarily experiencing their fears, hopes, or motivations. At first, Jarren didn't know what to make of this Technique, he couldn't really think of a scenario where he would truly need it.
But then he imagined himself facing someone stronger, a Paragon beast perhaps. If he was too afraid to come up with a plan, he could simply [Reflect] the courage the opponent had.
In fact, the more he began to think, the more potential scenarios flooded into his mind.
As for his third, [Mantle of Deference], it almost seemed like an opposite of [Pale Reflection]. With this Technique, Jarren could generate an aura that caused others to instinctively trust, follow, or obey him.
In essence, it was a Technique that made him extremely.
After carefully studying it, Jarren understood that it wasn't a mind control Technique, it simply made him more trustworthy and others to be more susceptible around him.
It might not be a glaring one, but Jarren admitted that using this Technique was still imposing on someone else's free will.
From his understanding, the power could lead others to act irrationally on behalf of the user, but it was most effective in situations where social dynamics or hierarchy matter.
Jarren couldn't lie. It seemed that his Techniques were in some way... overpowered. He did not like using that word, and tried so much to avoid it when he wrote his novel as seeing it usually made him cringe.
However, it was true. His Techniques were quite difficult to understand and maybe even complex to use, but once he got the hang of it, he was certain he could cause some serious damage in this world of Uxetor.
Finally, his Discipline. [False Knight] was an odd concept; a knight who wasn't a knight, a soldier of lies, yet wielding a sword of deceit with power.
That being said, [False Knight] was bad news. Disciplines were usually given based on secrets, thoughts and feelings of the Awakened participant.
For Jarren, the Gates had given him the [False Knight], casting him as an outsider in this world, who is bound to forever hide his secret.
As long as his secret was safe and no one ever knew that he had reincarnated into this world from another, he would continue to amass great power.
But the moment his secret found the ears of another, his power and life would be bound to the person's will.
Jarren let out a curse. This was one of those Disciplines that Awakened people had to keep a secret, else they would be affected in one way or the other.
The reason why he had named them Disciplines had never been more clearer, even to him.
However, he acknowledged that keeping his secret would be relatively easy, especially since he was the only one who knew about it.
Still, he had to make sure to never slip up, to never mistakenly say the name 'Jarren Fletcher' out loud.
Deremiah Morcant might be only an extra, but there were certainly some people in this world who recognized him.
Jarren looked to the sky and realized that it was getting dark. With a sigh of resignation and a voice of resolution, he said; "From now on, I'm no longer Jarren Fletcher. I'm a boy from the Ander Salmarian slums, and my name... is Deremiah Morcant."