After sliding down, I find myself in the center of a vast room with 3 clear exits. There are 3 doors the first door is made of dark metal or stone, smooth with subtle etched patterns that could either be abstract symbols or geometric shapes. The second door looks simple, just a plain wooden door with a regular knob. The third is the most unusual: it's made of black, smooth rock, but what stands out are the numerous keyholes embedded into it. In the middle of the room is a puzzle pedestal.
Upon closer look I see on the pedestal is a clearly carved riddle that I probably need to solve to see what door to go into.
The riddle is displayed clearly in front of me says:
"I have keys but open no locks.
I have space but no room.
You can enter, but you cannot go outside.
What am I?"
I pause, thinking hard. Then it clicked It's a keyboard. "I have keys but open no locks," I think. A keyboard has keys, but they don't unlock anything in the traditional sense. "I have space but no room," the spacebar! "You can enter, but you cannot go outside," the Enter key is used to input commands but doesn't actually let me go anywhere physically.
The first door looks like it fits the riddle, with its geometric patterns. It almost seems to resemble a keyboard. I choose it, trusting my instincts.
I pass through the door and find myself entering a narrow, winding corridor. The path is dimly lit, and the air hums with disorienting whispers. They come from all directions some say "Go left," others shout "Go right," and a few even tell me to turn back, claiming they'll hurt my friends if I continue forwards.
I know better. The loudest whispers are usually lies. I tune them out, focusing only on the faintest, most consistent sounds. I march forward, straight ahead, not deviating. After nearly two hours of walking, the whispers become more predictable. I begin to sense a pattern in their cadence. Eventually, I hear a faint "go right" a quiet voice I've been following all this time. It's consistent and persistent, and the louder voices that had been trying to sway me now seem distant and irrelevant.
There's a door up ahead, glowing with light that looks warm and welcoming. The whispers I've been following say to ignore the light and go right, so I turn toward the right, there I see a black door barely visible in the dark. It looks like it's labeled "Gravity Well."
I step through the black door, and suddenly I'm in a room where gravity fluctuates unpredictably. Some parts of the room feel crushingly heavy, and I can barely move. Other areas feel weightless, sending me floating and out of control.
I need to get to the door on the other side to escape, but the gravity is becoming more erratic the closer I get. The floor is scattered with rocks, and climbing them feels like a struggle against a force trying to throw me off. Each step becomes a careful calculation, especially when I step on a pressure plate that tilts the room. I brace myself, ready for the shift, and use the momentum to climb faster.
As I continue, I start to anticipate the changes in gravity. I position myself carefully, avoiding pressure plates, sliding when necessary, and climbing when the gravity lightens. With each shift, I grow more aware of the patterns and how to move quickly before the room tilts too far. I make it to the other side and through the door.
I find myself on a large central platform, surrounded by rotating mirrors and glowing symbols. From where I just came a singular light beam falls onto a mirror on the floor. I realize this room is full of hundreds of mirrors and mirror puzzles. Each segment of the room holds different colored images, and abstract, and geometric shape puzzles to solve.
Patience is key here. I can't rush. The time limit is still not too bad, but if I let the pressure overwhelm me, I'll make mistakes. The clock ticks down currently at 56 hours and 23 minutes left. I focus, blocking out the mounting stress, and tackle the simplest puzzles first with my phantoms. We begin with geometric shapes: starting with simple triangles then moving on to squares, rhombuses, rectangles, trapezoids, and finally, abstract shapes.
There are about 300 geometric shape puzzles and 50 abstract ones. The last section, with the image puzzles, will be the longest. I only have 48 hours, and 53 minutes left, but if we keep focused, I can finish this with at least 35 hours left. The trick with the image puzzles is to solve them in the order the light reflects off of them, following the beams to their next target.
It's slow progress, but I keep moving forward, piece by piece trying not to mess up and do something wrong. It's hard and tedious but with the help of my phantoms, I finally reach the last set of image puzzles. The light refracts in a way that leads me to a mirror on the wall. It's curved, and when the light hits it, it shifts sideways, revealing... Whoa, who would've guessed yet another staircase passageway!
After the last room, I am expecting something big for the final stage of my exam but all I see at the end of this staircase is a small room lit with candles. When I get to the room I see Isaac Netero sitting in a chair behind a table and another chair across from him. On the table, there is a board with a 9 by 9 grid on it.