Alarion was that kid when it came to puzzles.
Every village had one, or so he had often been told. The child who asked to be told a riddle, then got angry when the obviously set-up answer turned out to be a red herring. The one who started searching every 'clever' hiding spot when faced with a scavenger hunt instead of engaging with the clues presented. The sort who all too often rebutted the correct answer with 'no, that would be dumb', when teamed with others.
That wasn't to say that Alarion was bad at puzzles. All too often, brute force had an advantage all its own. When faced with a locked door, others would search for a key, while Alarion challenged the lock itself. Or the door. Or its frame. In his time among thieves, he'd once spent an entire night in a cramped closet trying eight thousand four hundred and twenty-two of the ten thousand possible combinations of a lockbox.
He was the sort of person to be terrible at puzzles, but still think he had a shot at solving them—the kind of person to enter a puzzle challenge when he really shouldn't have.
All of which was to say that when Alarion was faced with a seemingly infinite space, his first thought was to test those dimensions. To walk in as straight a line as he could for nearly an hour. It got him nowhere, possibly literally, given the nature of extra-dimensional spaces, but it gave him time to consider alternatives.
When he finally abandoned his initial 'solution', Alarion quickly moved on to the next. He leapt from one balcony and climbed back up another, testing if the verticality of the place was as immutable as its length and width. When that failed, he broke things. Not out of anger, but as an easy way of tracking his progress. One that proved fruitless, as the items repaired themselves the moment they were outside of easy perception.
He focused on smells and sounds for an hour, and when that failed, he seriously considered licking some items but pushed that further down the list in favor of other possibilities.
The statues were an obvious place to engage with the puzzle 'properly', but that proved no more fruitful than his endless walking. They were beautiful statues, but appeared to be just that. Statues. They did not contain any items, even when pulverized down to a fine powder, nor did their bases contain any hidden mechanism through which he could advance.
The first night, he slept curled up on one of the plush couches, his scarf pulled over his face to blot out the endless overhead lighting that had long since given him a pounding headache.
The next day proved no better. The ceilings were out of reach, but hid no obvious secrets after being subjected to several Void slashes. Digging a pit proved unsuccessful and took several hours with only the Duke's mace as an impromptu shovel. Walking backward did not produce the desired results, nor did closing his eyes or attempting to 'play' the instruments on the statues.
The second night, his sleep was fitful, and the pit was gone when he awoke the following morning. Probably for the best, given that he had intended to spend another few hours in the attempt.
Not that he had any better ideas. Alarion started his day with a walk into the endless halls, pondering and rejecting a hundred different solutions.
He'd been told it was a magical dungeon, which suggested that the solution would be magically related. According to Valentina, it was also tailored to his abilities, meaning that the magic he had on hand might factor into the solution.
He spent the rest of the morning testing that theory to equally fruitless results. Running through the halls with [Quicken] did not change anything. [Solar Burst] made a mess, but accomplished little else, while [Void Slash] was no different from simply smashing his targets with his mace.
Something had to change, but as the day ticked on, Alarion began to lose hope and, with it, his drive to succeed. Something was missing, and he did not have even the slightest idea where to look.
"I take it things are not going well?"
To his credit, Alarion did not jump all the way out of his skin at the unexpected sound of Valentina's voice, though it was a close thing. Having spent the better part of two days wandering the infinite halls and stairwells, the sudden appearance of the Incarnate was as welcome as it was startling, even if Alarion tried to hide it as he turned to face her.
"What was your first hint?" he asked in a decidedly sour tone.
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"Well, you are coming up on the record for the longest time spent on the first challenge." Valentina parried his irritation with sarcasm as she continued, "So either you like the aesthetics of my dungeon, or you are in dire need of assistance."
Alarion bit back a bitter reply, drew a breath, and said, "Will there be a penalty for this help?"
"Oh no, nothing like that," she waved away his concern. "Not unless I need to physically remove you from the room to save you from starving, but you looked like you still had plenty of rations."
"You have been watching me?"
"More like…. checking in periodically. There is only so much time a person can spend watching someone wander aimlessly and smash things."
Alarion shot her a deadpan look for several seconds before he sighed. "Which way is the exit?"
"I said I'd help you, not that I'd give you the answer." Valentina scoffed at the very notion, then gestured at the room about them. "What have you deduced thus far?"
"Nothing," Alarion answered honestly, his tone once again annoyed. Unlike many of the challenges ZEKE and Elena put to him, this one had proven inscrutable. It wasn't that he was struggling against a tough challenge or fighting to break through a plateau. After two days, he still did not have the slightest clue of where to even start. "But you know that, even if you were checking in periodically."
Valentina tilted her head in a slight concession. "That was what I thought, but I was hoping you might have some insight you hadn't verbalized. I'm not a mind reader after all. Or, well… I can be, but I try not to."
Alarion stared expectantly.
"I know of half a hundred ways out of this challenge, but most of them are out of the reach of a novice such as yourself." What was no doubt intended as an endearing smile came across as patronizing as she continued, "If your five senses can't deduce the puzzle, then perhaps a sixth?"
The young boy frowned. "If you are talking about sensing mana, I can not do that."
"No time like the present to learn."
"No," he protested. "I am unable to do so. My flaw makes it impossible."
Valentina snorted. "And who put that idea in your mind?"
"My instructor, ZEKE." His eyes were defiant as they met hers. "And I have experience to back it up."
"Let me guess, they looked at your flaw, tried for a few days, and declared it impossible?" The slightly embarrassed shift in Alarion's gaze was enough for her to press on with her assumption. "Typical. Tell me, do you feel this?"
There was a sudden shift, as if every drop of blood in his veins suddenly weighed a ton. It forced him to his knees and stole the breath from his lungs, as the air was too heavy to breathe. Something inside his head was pushing outward, intent on popping his skull like a balloon as he gasped and struggled.
Then it was gone as quickly as it came. There was no lingering pain, no deleterious after effects, save perhaps a slight ache in his knee from where it had struck the tile floor. Alarion looked up to find Valentina smiling, but could not muster the rage he normally felt at being struck or betrayed, because it hadn't been a strike. She hadn't lashed out at him. She'd stopped holding back.
"Well?"
"Y-yes," he stumbled over his tongue. He took a few shallow breaths to steady himself, then asked, "Was that all of your power?"
"Most of it. At least half," she winked. "In this place, I'm stronger than I was, even in life. Strong enough to kill someone of your rank outright if I put my back into it, even with your flaw. But to reevaluate, are you sure it is impossible?"
"No. But there is a difference between that and…"
"A quantitative difference, yes. But not qualitative." She offered him a hand, changing their dynamic as he stood over her again. "If you can sense my mana, then you can sense any mana. You just have to go about it differently. Your teacher abandoned the idea because his technique relies on something you lack."
"The mana gates?"
"Correct!" Her voice was singsong and cheerful as she turned to study one of the statues that dotted the room's four cardinal directions. "Traditional sensing relies on exterior pressure. You detect mana by the way it pushes against you, or you push out your own mana to interact with your surroundings. But there are other methods. What did it feel like when I let loose?"
He considered the question and the deeply unpleasant sensation he had endured. "Like I was going to pop. I was overly full."
"And why is that? Do you know your theory?"
"If my gates are open, then your mana overfills me?"
"Close." Her eyes were a little sad as they looked back in his direction. "The System won't allow you to have more MP than your limit. That seems to be a hard and fast rule. Your regeneration, however, is not. It can go as high as it likes, but your circuits can only endure so much, especially if they are underdeveloped. While it is an awful visual, imagine if I started dumping a river of blood into your veins. You'd notice rather quickly, no?"
"Gross. But how does that help me sen-" Alarion stopped himself as a thought occurred, "You are saying I can feel the mana inside my body?"
"With practice, yes. Normally, I would end the hint there, but you are short on time." She gestured to one of the nearby couches. "Grab a seat and we can begin."
Alarion started toward the couch, then stopped with a frown. "Are you even allowed to give hints?"
"It depends on the hint," Valentina said to Alarion's displeasure. "Some Incarnates are more strict with their dungeons, but I consider mine a classroom. I will never give you the answer to a test, but if you starve to death without even engaging with the lesson, that is a failure of the teacher, not the pupil. From the sound of things, you need a better tutor."
"Mm." Alarion adopted a slightly sheepish expression. "In his defense, he told me I was not ready. That this was a waste."
"Well, let us go about proving him wrong, then." The woman closed her eyes, and Alarion felt a weight come over him once again as her magic suffused his body. The sensation was weaker than the last time, but still oppressive enough to halt his breathing. "How does this feel?"
"Bad," Alarion gasped.
"Then it is working!"
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