The answer was a door.

In all fairness, it was a very ornate door. Technically, two doors, for there were two dark wood slabs set into the immense frame, but that was a distinction Alarion didn't care to make. To him, it was just a door set into that same claustrophobic stone room Valentina had used to test him twice before.

No, not a door. The Door.

It had been five days. Five days staring at the door. Five days of knowing exactly what he was supposed to do, but knowing that he could not.

Five days of wondering why Valentina had presented him with such a ludicrous challenge. Was she angry? Were her hands tied? She'd given him an odd look when he'd picked the magic challenge. Had that been pity? Surely, she must have known that the challenge was beyond him.

The door had seven seals. They were intricate, magical locks that barred access and protected the door's frame against mundane and magical attacks. Alarion was passingly familiar with their design from ZEKE's lessons. The Steelborn had provided just enough instruction that Alarion understood the mechanism, then left it at that. The boy might need to recognize such locks in the wild, but given that it was impossible for him to open them, going any further was moot.

Locks like these were ubiquitous in certain parts of the world. The most complicated required complex magical ciphers to open, making them essentially unbreakable for all but the most talented magical thieves. Others, like these, were simple. One only had to channel their mana into a matching construct, a 'key' to fit the lock, and it would open.

And therein lay the problem.

Alarion could not channel mana outside of his body!

He'd recognized the issue almost as soon as he'd scanned the room with his [Introverted Mana Sense]. The seals were clear as day, their markings scrawled onto the door, their essence gleaming brightly within his sixth sense. There was no mistaking what they were, and Alarion had turned on his heels at the sight. He'd intended to leave, to ask Valentina to 'fix' the room, or to select another challenge entirely.

But there was no door. The challenge was one gem. He couldn't die, and he couldn't fail, but he also couldn't leave.

Surely there had been some mistake. Valentina had been a god, but she was an Incarnate one. She was only human, and humans made mistakes. He'd cheated on one of her tests, after all. Eventually, she'd realize the error, swoop in, and change the test. Or at least allow him to pick again.

Anything would be better than an unbeatable challenge.

By the time he woke on the second day, Alarion was no longer so sure. That look hadn't been pity, it had been smug. He'd broken her challenge, so she would break him in return. With Valentina feeding him, he had barely scratched the surface of his rations. It would be a month before he was so malnourished that she'd come to save him. And then what? She'd blame her 'Mother'.

So sorry, Alarion, but it is out of my hands.

He raged, throwing everything he had at the door, its frame, and the walls around it. The door might as well have been invulnerable for all the effect his tantrum had; its enchantments repelled Alarion's heaviest blows and his most potent magics. He'd thought perhaps [Solar Burst] might have an impact if cast repeatedly at point-blank range, and he burned through most of his HP in his attempt to break down the door's defenses.

All to no avail.

Would she come faster if he pushed himself to the brink of death? Angry or no, the idea of self-harm just to draw her out was repulsive.

The third day was one of begging. Valentina had come to teach him when he'd wandered her infinite labyrinth. Surely, she would come if he asked, if his straits grew dire enough.

To that end, he earnestly attempted her challenge for the first time. He'd made token attempts during the previous days, an hour here, two hours there, but he'd never leaned into it, devoting hours to the struggle so that she could see that it wasn't only difficult, it was impossible.

It was like telling an armless man to grab a handful of air and to carry it across the room. The challenge was fundamentally at odds with not only his abilities, but his nature. [Introverted Mana Sense] allowed him to 'see' the locks, but he could not interact with them. Perhaps if he had another Awakened to channel for him, as he'd practiced with Sierra, he could have opened the locks. But to do it alone was out of the question.

Valentina had to know as much. So why hadn't she answered him?

The reality was simple. Nothing she could teach him would allow him to breach the door. He had made the wrong choice, and he would suffer for it.

He'd given it his all. Hour upon hour of focus. He'd willed the strings of mana at his core to reach out, to fill those empty spaces in the lock. Any Awakened with even a basic grasp of their magic could open these locks. Why couldn't he? Why was he so broken?

Alarion slept through much of the fourth day, waking only when rage overcame his ennui. The violence was pointless, but it felt good in the moment to strike his mace against those seals over and over and over again. It would only take a minor scratch to disrupt their magic. Break the underlying spell formulas inscribed into the door, and the magic would falter. But he couldn't even do that right.

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If he were a better mage, he might have developed a way to circumvent the seals. He couldn't channel energy, but if he found the formula for an unattuned mana bolt, perhaps he could have overloaded it. Or instead, maybe a void or decay spell, something that would eat away at the seal, dispelling it rather than opening it as intended.

Pity he lacked both the skills and the talent to try.

He woke early on the fifth day. Not out of any desire or eagerness, for there was nothing new, just him and the door. He'd slept too long, too deeply. His joints ached from napping on granite, and sitting was more comfortable than standing, regardless of his mood.

There he sat, watching the door. Glaring at it. Short of turning his back on it, there was no escaping the imposing edifice. When he delved into his mana sense, not even that was any help. The door was always there. Looming. Taunting. Seven magical rings that he saw every time he closed his eyes.

"Why can I see them?"

The question was overflowing with frustration, but it wasn't rhetorical. It was practical.

The simple answer was [Introverted Mana Sense]. The more in-depth answer was that his mana sense captured a sort of… reflection of the world around him. Most mages reached out with their mana, finding the contours of a spell or magical effect the way one might run their hands across an embroidered pattern to get a sense for the text. His way was passive. He let the mana radiate through him and built a model of the world with the help of his skill, like learning the dimensions of a room by listening to the footsteps of others.

He couldn't control the mana outside of himself, but if it had to pass through him… perhaps he could alter it inside his body?

Alarion scooted across the rugged floor, getting as close as possible to the door. Distance would only make things more difficult, and what he was pondering should already be impossible.

He focused on the nearest lock, pushing his [Introverted Mana Sense] to the limit as he struggled to get a perfect understanding of the seal. The trick was to hold the mana within himself and add to it as yet more radiated off the spell. Each subsequent wave added to the resolution of his image, the picture becoming clearer with each passing moment as Alarion held the artificial construct within himself.

It took nearly an hour and three failed attempts, but he did it. He held a perfect image of the lock within himself. But that was only the first step.

Next, he had to construct the key, a task made incredibly difficult by the fragile nature of the copy within. Traditionally, one would open such a simple lock by pushing mana into the gaps until the structure was complete, like pouring water into a glass until it reached the rim. With the copy within his body, that was impossible. The seal was already drowning in his mana. It was complete, but if he were to have any hope of success, he needed to excise his own mana from the duplicate, carving its outline while keeping his mana from rushing back into the fresh gaps.

It was no small task.

It took Alarion four attempts in as many hours before he had what he hoped was a finished product. He'd developed several strategies for the task, such as emptying most of his mana pool in advance, but by far the most effective tool at his disposal was a familiar one. By braiding and pinning large chunks of his mana, Alarion created a relatively clear space around the copy.

She had to have known. This was the challenge Valentina had been building him toward. Without [Introverted Mana Sense], the task would have been impossible. Without the fine control he'd learned from creating his implement, he'd never have been able to craft the duplicate, and without his practice with the siphons, he'd have lacked the inner control necessary to clear the space.

She'd offered him choices of which room to pick, but were they choices when she controlled what was behind the doors? Or did each door lead to a different variation on the same fundamental challenge? These were lessons, building one skill upon the next.

The illusion of choice.

Just how badly had he hamstrung himself by circumventing her last challenge?

Alarion shook his head and focused back on the task at hand. The final step was the most delicate, the most likely to fail. Alarion wasn't even sure it was possible, but the theory felt sound.

Like attracted like when it came to magical energy. All things being equal, a person's mana wanted to stay within the person, mana from within a spell wished to remain with that spell, and so forth. Sympathetic ties bound magic tightly, which meant that, in theory, any mana from the lock should try to rejoin its origin if placed close enough.

He had gathered a bounty of the seal's magic, and with a single touch, he fed it back into the arcane lock.

And hidden inside it was the key he had channeled inside himself—a traitorous passenger.

The seal revolted against his solution. It sputtered and jolted as the key fell into place, nearly rejecting it as parts of the key evaporated into the ambient mana. But Alarion had packed his key densely, a redundancy that made it last just long enough for the seal to register.

Click.

The first seal vanished in Alarion's mana sense. When Alarion opened his eyes, he saw that the markings on the door had changed. The seal was broken.

"Mm!" Alarion pumped his fist in satisfaction.

He'd done it.

Sure, it had taken hours to do what a traditional mage could have done in seconds, but he could get better at it. More important was what that lock represented. In its simplest form, the lock was a bound field, and while Alarion still couldn't interact with it directly, the successful test had proven that he could trigger a bound field in a roundabout fashion, given enough time.

The implications were staggering. He'd never be able to cast spells like a regular mage, but the inability to interact with most magical devices had been an enormous weakness. Who cared if he had to use the most counterintuitive way to activate them? That he could do so at all was a minor miracle.

Alarion spent the rest of the day disabling the remaining locks. True to Valentina's nature, each lock was more challenging than the last, but none threatened to rob Alarion of his victory. The hard part had been developing the skill. The remaining locks were mere training.

Skill level increased. Introverted Mana Sense is now Level 7. INT +4. PER +4. WIL +4. Skill level increased. Unbound Spellcraft is now Level 6. INT +2. PER +2. WIL +2. Skill level increased. Lockpicking is now Level 6. AGI +6. PER +6.

The last lock opened with the same satisfying click as the first, and Alarion felt his shoulders sag with exhaustion. His day had started early with a casting of [Valentina's Energetic Embrace], and he was ending very late if the remaining thirty-four minutes on his cooldown were any indication.

He pushed open the door, expecting to see Valentina cooking up a storm for his victory. Instead, he was greeted with something entirely unexpected.

Sierra.

"Finally." The young woman said with an indignant huff as she pushed away from the wall. "Alarion, it is time to go."

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