Twelve hours later, my next class trial run turned about a bit better than the first. Admittedly, that was a low bar, but I was happy to prove that my previous failure was a fluke.

  Into my class space, down the stairs, into the tunnel, I repeated the many well-worn steps that signaled the start of my trial. This time, I made sure to be vigilant from the get-go, and when the first strike came, I spotted it from a mile away. A few quick dodges later, and the tunnel ended, spitting me out into the trial propper.

  “Who designs these anyway? The gods? The system? I feel like there should be an option to lodge a complaint.” Without a doubt, the Arcane Vision trial was worse than any that had come before it.

  The layout of the trial, if a bit strange, wasn’t actually that complex. Ignoring the short tunnel I’d just run through, the entirety of the challenge took place in one giant circular room. The circle was cut like a pizza into ten slices, with each slice dedicated to a different type of mana -- life mana, for example, had a fairly standard forest in its sector, while air mana’s slice was filled with raging winds.

  In and of itself, that wouldn’t have been so bad. The ten sectors, while often bizarre, were rarely deadly in their own right. Instead, that honor went to the trial’s ten assassins, similarly themed after the ten different types of mana. They followed me as I traversed the room, taking turns trying to catch me unaware. Invisible to standard sight, each of the ten could only be seen with their respective variant of Arcane Vision.

  Thankfully, some assassins shied away from certain regions -- the earth assassin, for example, wouldn’t follow me into any sector that didn’t have a dirt floor -- but even so, I was forced to constantly flicker through multiple variants of Arcane Vision while keeping my head on a swivel.

  To add one final piece to the puzzle, each sector had a weapon hidden away which was capable of killing the corresponding assassin. On paper, then, my task was simple: find all ten weapons, and use them to kill the ten assassins. In reality, I knew what it truly was: a giant pain in the ass.

  Less thinking. More running. The trial began in the sector for standard, neutral mana, and while it wasn’t the worst of the ten, it wasn’t where I liked to start. Gray, lifeless, and filled with obstacles of all shapes and sizes, the region looked a lot like a concrete skatepark, or perhaps a haven for colorblind parkour junkies. I sprinted through the monochrome terrain while flickering through my vision variants, often having to throw myself to the side whenever I spotted an attack coming my way.

  Eventually, I made it to the center of the room without incident, where all ten slices met at a single point. Spoiled for choice, I transferred to my preferred starting region: air. Unlike many of its counterparts, the air assassin could follow me into every other sector, so I tried to eliminate it as early as possible.

  By the same token, this was the region I’d cleared the most times, and by now, I had it down to a science. Raging winds threatened to bowl me over, so strong in some spots that they were essentially solid, forming impenetrable walls. Gust Sight highlighted these sections, transforming what looked like an otherwise empty region into a labyrinth.

  Overall, not the worst of the challenges. The trick was to memorize the positions of the wind walls whenever I switched to one of my other vision variants to check for attackers. Otherwise, I would constantly find myself ramming into them whenever I tried to dodge incoming blows. In short order, I navigated to the center of the maze, the winds falling away as I reached the eye of the storm.

  As I’d come to expect, a wispy spear hung in the air, waiting for me.

  Air-Sealing Spear

  I snatched it from its spot, waiting for the air elemental to attack. Seemingly having gone shy, it allowed its siblings to accost me for a while, but at last, it arrived. Vaguely humanoid under the gaze of Gust Sight, the living mass of wind swooped in, intent on running me through.

  Sadly for it, it wasn’t the only one with a weapon this time. As soon as it neared, I ran it through. The spear hummed to life as I made contact, and like a vacuum, it greedily sucked up the elemental until nothing remained. Having completed its singular task, it dissipated, leaving me empty-handed once more.

  “All right. At least we’re not dying before the first kill like last time. Just nine more times.” Bolstered by my success, I quickly ran through the labyrinth in reverse, ready to turn one victory into two.

  “Gross, gross, gross, gross.” Covered in dirt, my hands brushed up against the sticky, decaying flesh of a recently buried corpse.

  Fittingly, the death sector was styled after a graveyard. Frankly, when Cal and Verin had told me they’d cleared a cemetery region, I’d been relieved I hadn’t come along. With my trial, I already spent far more time amongst the gloom and the graves than I wanted to.

  Still, it was one of the easier regions to clear. Rows and rows of tombstones lined the sector, occasionally interspersed with small mausoleums. The sector’s weapon had been entombed with one of its deceased residents, its location changing every run.

  Ghost Eye revealed the undead and the recently dead. While most of the corpses in this region had been gone for too long for the skill to work on them, a smaller handful would light up under the skill’s effects. Without fail, the spear was always held by the most recently buried corpse, which glowed the brightest to the skill.

  Of course, the difference between the bodies in question was often so small as to be almost unnoticeable, which occasionally led me to dig up caskets with absolutely nothing to show for it. Thankfully, this was not one of those times.

  Squatting by the side of the grave I’d just dug up -- slowly, as I’d had to take a good deal of breaks to dodge my assailants -- I ripped a black blade from the rotting hands of its previous owner.

  This time, I didn’t have long to wait. As if offended by my graverobbing, the death elemental arrived almost immediately. An intangible spector, it reached forward with a frail gray hand, intent on turning me into just one more corpse amongst the rest.

  With ease, I cleaved it in two, the blade meeting almost no resistance as it passed through its torso. Rather than offering me a dramatic death, it merely faded away, banished from the rest of the trial.

  Two down. Not wanting to spend a single second more in the dreary graveyard, I rushed out, following what was by now a well-traveled route to the next sector.

  As I’d long since learned by now, every elemental had its advantages and its disadvantages. Nowhere was this more true than in the starter region against the neutral assassin.

  Its glaring disadvantage was the distance from which I could see it. Plenty of my vision variants had set ranges they operated within, like Ghost Eye and Vitality Sight, which meant I wouldn’t spot their respective elementals if they were far enough away. Neutral mana had no such issues, often allowing me to spot an incoming attack long before it arrived.

  On the flip side, those same variants allowed me to see through a small amount of solid material as well. If the death elemental tried to surprise me by hiding behind a wall, for example, I’d have no trouble picking it out. This, in turn, was the neutral assassin’s main threat: While the standard Arcane Vision allowed me to spot it, I needed to have a clear line of sight.

  In the air region, completely empty save for its wind walls? No problem. In the graveyard? There were always some close calls, but by and large, the tombstones weren’t large enough for it to hide behind. If I tried to move onto some of the other regions -- the tree-filled forest, for example -- leaving the neutral elemental alive was pretty much a guaranteed death sentence.

  And thus, the standard region was always my third stop. Returning to the bland, concrete obstacle course, I flitted between all manner of geometric protuberances, careful to not to round any corners the assassin could be waiting behind. Not that it was the only threat I needed to worry about, of course.

  Heat. Right as I was skirting a large sphere that would have looked right at home outside of a Target were it not for its color, I spotted a patch of superheated air floating over. Lit up in an angry red-orange from Heat Sight, it swooped down in an effort to boil my blood.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Thankfully, I still had a bit of time before things really took a turn for the worse. With each elemental I sealed, the others grew a bit stronger, making more frequent appearances and rushing me faster and faster. With only two assassins down, the heat elemental wasn’t yet so fast as to pose much of a threat as long as I caught it early enough. Hopping atop the sphere, I watched as it flew through the space I’d been a moment before, leaving me alone now that it had taken its turn and failed.

  Which is nice, but where’s the weapon? The standard region was simultaneously incredibly straightforward and painfully frustrating. Every time, a tiny dagger would be hidden somewhere at random, often obscured by the chaotic landscape. On the plus side, it glowed with mana, making it stick out once it was in my field of vision, but with how large each region was, hunting it down was like finding a needle in a haystack.

  Leaping over hurdles, crouching under low-hanging arches, and climbing atop brutalist pyramids, I canvassed the area all while throwing myself to the side at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, the obstacles didn’t just look like concrete -- they felt like it, too. After a while, I was covered in bruises from hasty lunges that brought me slamming against sharp edges and corners.

  When at last I spotted my quarry, I cursed. A giant hollow cube lay before me, missing one of its walls. The dagger sat within, effectively invisible unless I happened to approach from the right angle. No wonder it had taken me a while this time around.

  With some muttered grumbling, I quickly entered the cube and collected it before making to leave. As long as it doesn’t take me too long for it to show- SHIT! The very moment I left the interior of the cube, a blur of mana rushed at me, lying in wait right behind the wall.

  Dumb mistake, dumb mistake, do better! I’d been so relieved to finally find the dagger, I hadn’t even realized how good an ambush I’d just walked into. More on blind instinct than anything else, I jerkily stabbed forward. Whether from conditioning or sheer dumb luck, the dagger sunk into the assassin’s indistinct form before it could fully reach me. Sucking up the clear blue mana like a battery, the weapon glowed brighter and brighter until the entire elemental disappeared. Then, with a pop, so too did the dagger.

  When it was all over, I heaved out a relieved sigh as I gave my heart a few moments to calm back down.

  “A little rocky, but three down. Time to climb some hills.”

  The earth sector was abuzz with motion in an entirely literal sense. Mounds, hills, spires, and all manner of earthen protrusions dotted the area, each of them subtly vibrating at different frequencies.

  The constant feedback made using Tremor Sense a hellish affair as I struggled to sift out the real information from the static. More than once, the earth elemental had used the vibrations as a smokescreen, sneaking up on me while burrowing through the earth.

  Not that it was always a huge deal when it did. One of the few “assassins” that wasn’t actually lethal, the earth elemental simply dragged me calf-deep into the dirt whenever it caught me. Of course, this left me as a sitting duck for the next attacker, but now and then, I’d managed to free myself in time.

  The real issue was finding the weapon, though. Often, I was stuck wandering the sector for the better part of an hour before-

  “Oh.” Just ahead, Tremor Sense alerted me to an impossibly dense mass tucked beneath a tiny mound of dirt. A few brief sweeps of my hand were enough to uncover the object hiding below, a weighty stone hammer. “Well, nice.” Wrapping my hand around the haft, I hefted it up with some difficulty.

  Pretty sure that’s a new record for this region. And lo and behold, the trial’s momentary kindness wasn’t over yet. Tremor Sense picked up a new signature headed my way, which meant the earth elemental was offering itself to me on a silver platter.

  Raising my hammer as high as I could, I waited for it to arrive. At the last moment, a tiny bump appeared on the earth in front of me, a tad of earth mana poking out from below. Giving the hammer my best whack-a-mole swing, I clonked the assassin on the head, the weapon shattering in the process.

  I could only hope the remaining six would go just as quickly.

  “Gah, why does it have to be so cold?” Contrary to what the temperature might indicate, I was not in the frost sector. Instead, I was taking a plunge into one of the many rivers in the water region.

  Out of all ten of my Arcane Vision sub-skills, Water Sight was perhaps the strangest. Whichever way I looked, it would give me a sense of how far away any sources of water were in that direction, often giving me multiple signals if there were different bodies of water along the way. The pull also varied based on how pure that water was -- with a high enough Intelligence, I could even get some weak feedback while staring at a human just from their blood.

  All in all, I pretty much never used it. Once or twice, it had revealed an interesting secret within a dungeon, but it seemed to be designed as a survival skill. In my case, if I ever got stuck in the wilderness without water, I’d just conjure some.

  Naturally, that didn’t stop the trial from including a water region to challenge me, which once again would have been fine if all the water involved wasn’t so damned cold.

  Right next to the forest, the water sector continued the same general theme, but most of the trees were traded out for rivers, creeks, lakes, and tributaries. It had taken me over a dozen runs just to figure out the area’s trick, but by now, it was one of the easiest of the ten for me.

  The goal was simple: Find the purest water.

  Some of the water was downright foul, filled with mud and sediment. Some of it was so clear as to almost be invisible, only one step away from being entirely distilled. There was always a little bit of impurities dissolved within.

  At least, almost always. Diving down to the riverbed below, I followed the pull of Water Sight until I arrived at the singular patch of 100%, perfectly pure water. While I couldn’t actually see anything there, as soon as I reached forward, I felt my hand close around something solid.

  After too many times getting dragged into the mud and drowning, I’d learned the hard way that I couldn’t clear the region before killing the earth elemental. With it already defeated, however, I managed to swim back to the surface without issue. When I emerged, the thus-far invisible weapon in my hand came with me, a massive trident formed from crystal clear water.

  When the heat elemental arrived, I half considered letting it nick me just to warm me up, but I quashed the impulse, dodging each round of attacks until the misty water assassin reared its head. Perhaps the most traumatic of the ten, whenever it caught me, it would shove itself down my throat, drowning me from within.

  Eager to return the favor, I pierced it with the three tines of the trident, its mist sinking into the weapon. Its task completed, the trident lost its cogency, splashing apart in my hands.

  Rough bark scraped at my hands as I underwent a different sort of trial, one I hadn’t practiced since childhood. Much as it pained me to admit it, this was one of the hardest parts of the trial for me: climbing a tree.

  The life sector wasn’t all too dissimilar from its aquatic counterpart, with the first task being rather simple. All I had to do was find the tree with the most vitality. Slowly, I’d learned the signs that let me home in on it, to the point where it usually took me less time to track down than any of the previous regions.

  And then, sadly, I had to climb it. Not a hard task until one recalled my Dexterity was gone.

  That, and there was also the fact that I wasn’t free from being attacked during the climb. As a saving grace, the tree had a wealth of sturdy branches, to the extent that there might have been a ladder leading up it. As a frigid form flew in, hoping to turn me into an ice sculpture, those branches were sorely needed. Jumping from one limb to another, I barely managed to avoid its icy grasp, feeling a tingling chill against my skin as it passed.

  Somewhere in this mess of wood was a singular branch more lively than all the others. Not that it was usually that hard to spot: It was always too conveniently spear-shaped to stay hidden for long. Once I broke it off, it would serve as the weapon I needed.

  Slowly ascending, I continued to scan the canopy, Vitality Sight turning the entire scene into a sea of glowing green.

  There. Only a few meters above me, a blindingly bright branch jutted out straight from the trunk, only partially hidden by the leaves around it.

  Just as I was starting to celebrate, however, I spotted another flash of green, this one much closer. Surging up the tree trunk from below, it made a beeline to my position. I tensed my muscles, ready to jump to safety, but it was already too late.

  The life elemental had arrived.

  On the ground, it was much like its earthen sibling, simply binding my feet in vines. In the trees, sadly, it was a bit more aggressive. At a speed which defied reason, a new branch began to grow from the trunk, level with my chest. Extending faster than I could react, it rammed into my chest with a solid thwack.

  While not lethal in its own right, it didn’t need to be. With my already precarious perch, it didn’t take much to topple me over.

  Down and down I fell, hitting every branch along the way as I frantically tried to arrest my descent. With my pitiful Dexterity, I failed miserably, crashing into the ground, battered and bruised.

  Not dead. Not dead yet.

  Of course, that wasn’t true for long. Sore and aching, I failed to pull myself up in time to dodge the next blow. My skin began to singe and my blood began to boil as the heat elemental finally caught up with me, my death so fast, I didn’t even get a chance to exit out.

  Before I knew it, the familiar notification greeted me once again.

  You have failed a class trial!

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