Walking through the room and passing the other new recruits, Tess found herself standing in front of a white door. She stared at it, a flicker of unease crossing her face as the unknown loomed before her. What exactly did the academy test entail? In all the hours she'd spent playing Last Era of the Apocalypse, she'd always skipped this part. Something about the word "academy" had made it seem trivial.
"I should have played that part," she muttered under her breath, silently cursing her past decisions.
"Enter," Gustav's voice cut through her thoughts. It was firm, commanding, but not unkind. He stood beside her, his expression unreadable.
Tess nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line, and stepped forward. The white door opened automatically, sliding soundlessly to reveal an expanse of pure, empty whiteness. She hesitated at the threshold, her eyes scanning the featureless room. No teacher. No recruits. No instructions. Just her, standing alone in an endless void.
The door sealed shut behind her with a faint hiss, and for a moment, there was silence. Then, a tingling sensation prickled the back of her neck. Tess's body stiffened as a scanner... invisible but invasive seemed to sweep over her, probing her very essence.
The world around her blurred and dissolved into nothingness.
When she opened her eyes, Tess was no longer in the white room. She stood on a single moving tile, which slid forward and backward in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic motion. Around her, other tiles floated... some stationary, others oscillating like hers.. but the gaps between them yawned wide, endless chasms of black void.
Her heart raced as the moving tile jerked beneath her feet. Without hesitation, Tess leapt forward, landing on a stagnant tile. The moment her feet touched it, the moving tile she'd stood on vanished, dissolving into glowing particles as if it had never existed.
A sharp ping echoed, and a translucent screen materialized in front of her.
[SYSTEM]
RUN
The ground beneath her trembled, and Tess's breath hitched slightly. She turned to see the tiles and the very fabric of the world behind her dematerializing, the glowing particles unraveling like threads being pulled from a tapestry.
She smirked despite the looming threat. "So this is how the academy test works," she murmured. "Brutal."
Tess surged forward, her boots striking the tiles with precision. Ahead of her, a cluster of rotating symbols hovered in midair... numbers, pluses, and minuses spinning in a chaotic dance. The digits flickered: 2, 5, 9, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 5.
"Mental testing, huh?" she muttered. Her mind worked rapidly, analyzing the shifting puzzle. As she approached, the rules clicked into place. The plus and minus symbols controlled the numbers, determining how many tiles would materialize ahead. Touching a positive number would cancel the others, creating a single path. Miscalculate, and the floor would vanish beneath her feet.
Tess reached out, tapping the plus sign and the sequence of four zeros. Instantly, four tiles materialized in front of her, forming a narrow bridge. She sprinted across, her heart pounding, and leapt onto a stable platform as the newly formed tiles disintegrated behind her.
The void's hunger grew. The dematerialization sped up, devouring the path she'd left behind.
"I like challenges," she muttered, her eyes narrowing as the next obstacle came into view. A towering wall stretched across her path, its surface adorned with intricate color patterns: red, blue, green, and yellow tiles arranged in chaotic mosaics. The patterns began to ripple, one color glowing brighter than the rest. Red.
The tiles beneath her feet mirrored the wall's colors, shifting to match its glowing patterns. Instinct took over. Tess stepped onto a red tile just as the wall's glow intensified. She moved swiftly, matching her steps to the wall's changing colors.. green, blue, yellow.. each fast and calculated. Her movements were fluid, unhesitating, and the glowing tiles formed a path ahead as the others crumbled into the void.
Moments later, the wall itself began to shift, folding in on itself with mechanical precision. It transformed into a doorway, its edges glowing faintly as it swung open.
Tess didn't pause. The dematerializing void was too close. She dashed through the doorway, her breath ragged, her muscles burning with exertion. She barely made it as the last remnants of the previous world dissolved behind her.
The new world was a stark contrast to the chaos she'd just escaped. Tess found herself standing in an infinite expanse of blank nothingness. The void was eerily silent, the kind of silence that pressed against her ears and made her heart thud louder in her chest. It was disorienting, oppressive.
She stood still, her breaths slowing as she scanned the featureless horizon. Her reflection glimmered faintly beneath her feet, as though she were standing on an invisible pane of glass suspended over endless depths.
"What now?" she muttered, her voice swallowed by the void.
And then, as if in response, the world began to shift once more.