Ultimately, it took four hours for Valentina to teach Alarion something that was supposedly impossible.
While it was true that Valentina had access to a nearly limitless flow of mana that enabled her specific teaching strategy, Alarion could tell that it was more than that. She'd confessed that his particular flaw was one she'd never encountered, which meant that she'd made up her training regimen on the fly, but he'd never have known it otherwise. Every question he asked had a ready answer, every frustration a ready solution. She was patient but persistent, pushing the boundaries of his comfort until the inevitable breakthrough.
Introverted Mana Sense [Uncommon]
Description: Distinct from the more ubiquitous Mana Sense skill, Introverted Mana Sense produces similar results through a wildly divergent methodology.
Requirements: Major Flaw - Splintered Mana Circuits
Type: Active
Effects: Allows the user to detect and observe the flow and purpose of nearby ambient and structured mana. Owing to its nature, Introverted Mana Sense has difficulty detecting subtle changes in magical pressure, but is better equipped to examine whatever fluctuations it detects.
Growths: INT +2. PER +2. WIL +2.
"There. That wasn't so hard, was it?" The former god asked with a smile as sweet as those on the statues all around them.
Alarion was unconvinced. A new skill was a wonderful thing, and the rush of increased attributes helped to combat his fatigue. But her training had been exhausting. He was drenched in sweat, his skin a rosy hue from the constant pressure of her magical energy bearing down upon him. Her training had been as punishing as it had been successful, his legs unsteady as he tried to stand.
"No, no. Take a moment." Valentina scowled. "You are behind schedule, certainly, but five minutes to catch your breath will not make any difference."
He stared at her, about to argue, when his legs decided for him. He fell back onto the couch with a dull thud and a deep breath. There he relaxed, letting the cool air of the extra-dimensional space wash over him in the absence of Valentina's overbearing magical pressure.
"Were you always this strong?"
"Oh no, not remotely." Valentina scoffed at the very idea. "Even when I was a god, I was never quite this strong, and I didn't come to that until much later in life. I spent most of my early life as a teacher, actually."
"Really?" Alarion opened his eyes to see a scowl on the woman's face and quickly corrected his word choice. "It shows! I just can't imagine a teacher becoming a god."
"Well, I wasn't a schoolteacher. I was born only a generation after the System, and while my Aptitude was nothing to write home about, I took to its nuances like a fish to water and proved to be very good at explaining them to others. Mother was still adapting to the changes, and she sought me out as someone who could help her overcome this new challenge."
That raised Alarion's eyebrows, his voice carrying a note of incredulity as he said, "You knew more than a god?"
"Don't be so surprised. Gods are fallible. They are immortal, but they- no, that is not blasphemy, that is a fact." Valentina was again talking to the air, scowling up at the unseen. "Well, he has a point, doesn't he?"
"Should I…?" Alarion asked as the two bickered. It was an odd sensation, knowing a god was in the room with him, unseen but there. It also gave him an idea.
His eyes closed, and Alarion reached out with his new skill. He felt the cold ambient magic of the extra-dimensional space around him, the oddly solid mana that echoed from a nearby statue, and Valentina's barely suppressed grandeur. Yet next to her was a void, an emptiness that was hard to describe or comprehend with his limited understanding of the new skill.
He focused upon it, and his new sense fell away into darkness. There was nothing there—only a vast, cyclopean gulf in the world that filled him with an existential dread he could not comprehend or express. He opened his mouth to scream, and the sensation immediately snapped away as if it had never been there at all.
"W-what-?"
"I should have warned you," Valentina said apologetically. She was standing over him, the back of her palm on his brow. When had she moved? "You're a few hundred years too young to try to see the face of god. I would advise against doing that again."
"It was not that b-" Alarion frowned as a realization hit him. The sweat-covered exhaustion of a few moments earlier had abruptly given way to a sort of clammy soreness. "How long was I...?"
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"About two hours. Don't focus on her in the future, and you will be fine."
Two hours. The idea was preposterous but undeniable. "I should…"
"You should." Valentina agreed, offering him her dainty hand. "You know what to do from here?"
"I know where to start." Alarion nodded as he looked at the nearby statue. "It shouldn't take me too much… longer."
Valentina was gone, having vanished with the same effortless silence through which she'd appeared. Alarion prayed he hadn't been overconfident for once.
The puzzle revolved around the statues, of that he was certain. The only thing in the dungeon that showed any level of variation, Alarion had thought them magically inert from his many initial observations, but through the lens of his [Introverted Mana Sense], the individual instruments pulsed with what he could best describe as a magical 'charge'. The one nearest to him appeared empty, while others nearby were full or empty, seemingly at random.
Alarion approached the statue and focused more heavily upon it, examining the inner workings of the magic as best he could. His new skill allowed him to 'feel' the twisting intricacies of magic in a way that provided new insight into old concepts. The instrument was covered in an unbound field, with strings of magic trailing off in four cardinal directions. When he touched it, the device sapped a tiny fragment of his mana, so little that it had gone unnoticed on every previous attempt, and used that magic to change its state. It flipped from 'full' to 'empty' and sent a pulse along its connecting lines to nearby statues.
Those statues were at the edge of his skill, making them indistinct in comparison, but Alarion understood what had happened. Touching this instrument had cycled its state, then flipped the state of each nearby statue. Moving to one of those, Alarion confirmed his theory with a touch, watching as the state change cascaded back to its origin and the surrounding statues. Another touch, and the changes reversed.
His suspicions growing, Alarion triggered a few of the statues as he set off walking, carefully noting which ones were active and which were not. Within a few minutes, he noticed a pattern. Though the dimension seemed infinite, it looped at a clear point. Nine statues in any one direction. Nine 'across' and nine 'down'.
He knew what this was. And he hated it.
They'd had a similar game when he'd been very little, though he could not recall what they'd called it. It was a sort of logic puzzle with the goal of filling or clearing the board, with each move altering the surrounding squares. It was a game his father had been able to solve on a whim, but Alarion had only solved through brutal trial and error. He desperately wished he'd paid more attention when it had been explained to him.
Instead, he'd have to do it the old-fashioned way.
The first step was to create a 'map' out of broken stone and shattered bits of furniture, as trying to keep the grid in mind while only being able to see a fraction of it was a recipe for disaster. The process was slow and time-consuming, partly because he took the time to double-check his results. Just to be sure.
From there, he started iterating, testing a fast and reliable way to clear most of the grid. It was one of the few lessons he'd truly internalized from watching his father. If the grid were 9x9, clear it down to something more manageable, such as 5x5, and start from there.
That, at least, proved fairly simple. So long as one didn't care about trying to fill the whole thing, it was easy to 'walk' a charge along the entire grid, filling it piece by piece while leaving the spaces ahead empty. It took him the better part of an hour, but Alarion quickly reduced the puzzle to a manageable level.
Which was where things got frustrating. In theory, filling in the rest should be easy. It was literally a game designed for children. In practice, Alarion failed his self-imposed condition, a 'solve' with less than fifty moves, time and time again. He knew he could eventually brute force the puzzle, but doing so risked spending literal hours wandering around touching statues, all while Valentina no doubt snickered from the sidelines.
But as with any simple task repeated ad nauseam, one of Alarion's paths eventually found success.
Glad to be rid of this place, Alarion stood and quickly enacted his moves. He filled statue after statue, doubling back to push toward the 'corners' where the puzzle did not overlap. It was only as he reached the final piece, the five last 'empty' statues, that a horrifying thought occurred.
Were they supposed to be full? Or empty?
Alarion touched the statue and felt relief as the room flickered around him. Gone were the endless hallways, and the four corners of the room were replaced by solid stone walls. Above him, the curved stairway led to a familiar set of double doors.
"Oh, thank the…." Alarion started, then thought better of it. Was it blasphemous to say such a thing in the dungeon of one of those very gods? Or was it worse not to?
He thought it better to avoid tempting fate and instead made for the doorway.
Valentina was waiting for him on the edge of the desk, a Cheshire smile on her lips. "Ah, there is our new record holder."
Alarion winced. "Does that hurt my chances?"
"If you intend to keep to your schedule? Probably," She shrugged. "But here, I mostly keep track for bragging rights, or in your case, lack thereof."
He sighed and turned his attention to his notifications.
[Quest Complete – Escape The Room]
Reward: One Uncommon Dungeon Box (Reduced to One Common Dungeon Box)
Would you like to claim your Rewards? Yes/No?
He'd set the quest two days ago shortly after his arrival in the puzzle room. At the time, he'd thought a one-day limit had been a good idea, but judging by the reduced reward, that had been a bad decision. He accepted the reward anyway and stretched out a hand to catch the box as it materialized.
Only it didn't.
"Double dipping on rewards with your questing power, hmm? I'm sorry, but we'll have none of that."
[Quest Failed – Escape The Room]
"Hey!" Alarion protested.
"Apologies, one of Mother's rules," Valentina said.
"What? Why!?"
"Something to do with the Raven, is my understanding." The once god shrugged, as though it were out of her hands. "He abused a questing power to cheat his way through an entire challenge dungeon, so now no one gets to use them."
"He cheated?" the boy asked. "How?"
"I wouldn't want to give you ideas." Valentina smiled sweetly as she held out a tightly wound scroll. "Consider this a consolation prize."
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