The fourth Challenge should have been simple.

  [Welcome to the 4th Challenge!

  4th Challenge

  Challenge Objective: Retrieve one of the keys hidden around the arena and escape through the corresponding gate.

  Challengers escaped: 0/50

  Time Left: 59m, 40s

  You will be transported to your arena shortly.]

  Penelope frowned at her own window. “That’s strange. We have five more minutes. Why are they announcing the Challenge early?”

  Rounin made an oh-shit face. It was the face he made whenever he forgot his wallet after demanding I let him pay for whatever we were buying that day. It also made frequent occurrences whenever his phone died.

  “Maybe it’s strategizing time,” Icarus suggested.

  “No, no, look at the counter.” Valerie pointed into empty space, forgetting that none of us could see her window except for her. “Fifty chances for escape. That means only fifty people survive out of…this many?”

  Penelope shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Mine says fifty-one. We’re probably being split up. I’d wager it’s still in groups, just smaller ones.”

  “That checks out,” Icarus said absently, narrowing his eyes at the people in the room. “I’d guess there are two hundred to two hundred fifty people in the room. Four or five different arenas.”

  “Like I said. Cutting the numbers down by anywhere from seventy-five to eighty percent of the Challengers makes the game no fun.” Penelope’s eyes darkened.

  “Ooh,” Rounin breathed in the oh-shit voice that accompanied the face.

  I followed his gaze to where two people were apparently in a knife fight. They were both rather clumsy. I couldn’t tell if I was disturbed, concerned, or amused.

  “Seems not everyone is as smart as you, Penelope,” Rounin said, grimacing.

  Valerie glanced back at us nervously. “Should we…do something about this?”

  “Not yet,” Rounin sighed. “It’s just a minor scuffle, and we’re ten minutes away from the start of another Challenge. It’s not worth the energy, and it’s worse if you get hurt.”

  “Hm,” I mumbled. That was fair…though cold.

  “Minor scuffle?” Icarus said incredulously. “They’re knife fighting!”

  “It’ll only get worse from here,” Penelope murmured. “Some Challenges require murder.”

  Icarus’ eyes widened, and he placed a hand on his stomach. “Do you think these Challenges will require that?”

  “It’s inevitable,” The outsider said simply, as if it were merely a fact of life. To her, perhaps it was.

  Icarus exhaled, then stood up. “Then I’ll do something about it while I still can.”

  “Hm. Be careful. Do you want backup?” I offered.

  “I’m good. Probably better. I’ll signal if I need you.” Icarus smiled gratefully, nodding as he turned to run towards the two fighting men.

  When he was halfway there, a third party stabbed one of the fighters in the back.

  Chaos broke out. Everyone in the area began screaming and pushing. Weapons flashed as frazzled, on-edge, paranoid people began to turn on each other.

  “That was quick,” Penelope muttered, glitching out of existence and reappearing in the fray. She pulled two men apart and threw them to opposite sides, then punched one in the face to make sure he was unconscious.

  “Oh, shit,” Rounin mumbled. “Yule, start freezing people. Freezing one or two might intimidate the rest.”

  “They might not survive that!” I protested.

  “Uh— right. I…forgot,” Rounin mumbled. Golden threads snaked out of his hands, but before they reached the riot, it stopped.

  “For fuck’s sake, quit it!”

  Someone went flying as Icarus’ wing flicked him to the side like he weighed nothing. I identified it as the man who’d made the first kill. The chaos abruptly stammered to a stop as everyone stopped to stare at this competitor who was very obviously much stronger than them.

  “No wonder he could kill the cetus,” I mumbled to Rounin.

  Rounin’s eyes went wide. “He…did what?”

  “Are you all crazy?! Have none of you learned anything from history, or even, hell, the movies?” Icarus shouted, his shining wings throwing blue-tinted light onto the floor, adding to the almost angelic effect. “We don’t have to fight. There are multiple arenas— we can all get out. You should be making alliances to ensure you can all find a key by the time the—“

  [Congratulations on completing the 3rd Challenge!

  Reward: 5,000p]

  I grabbed Rounin’s wrist, trying to ensure we’d stay together. I wasn’t sure if that was how it worked, but his skin against mine sent a little spark of warmth to my chest.

  [The 4th Challenge will begin shortly.

  Transporting Challenger to the assigned Dungeon…]

  Rounin was still with me, his fingers now laced through mine. He was squeezing so tightly that my circulation was cut off. The new arena was…warm. Everything around me was blanketed in soft shadow, the canopy of leaves above me obscuring the sun. Soft sounds of wildlife whirred, almost drowning out the sound of dripping water. Trees taller than most buildings I knew loomed over me, green vines winding around the bark and bromeliads perching on the branches. I’d never seen anywhere so alive. A layer of leaves and mulch coated the soil, broken up by ferns and other smaller plants.

  It was not as warm as I expected a rain forest to be, though I suspected my boots were helping with the heat. Rounin seemed unaffected, but that wasn’t surprising. He had always been good at dealing with heat.

  The problem was, I was now supposed to find a key in a rain forest— and we had already lost five minutes to the waiting room.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Go, go, go!” Rounin gave me a light shove, and we both started searching.

  I ran a light circle around the clearing we were in, purposely kicking up decaying leaves in case there was a key hidden somewhere. Rounin was sitting on the ground with his hands buried in the mulch, eyes closed.

  I trusted him. He was probably being productive.

  I kept looking, careful not to wander too far. I wasn’t sure where the other Challengers were, but I wasn’t going to risk him being attacked without me there.

  “Found two. Come on, hurry.” Rounin was at my side in an instant, holding my hand once more as he pulled me along, two golden threads trailing in different directions. “The keys are very spaced out.”

  How useful was his ability? This didn’t seem fair. His powers healed, bound, searched— mine stabbed things that weren’t too hard and made stuff cold.

  He dropped to his knees and started sifting through the mulch where the golden thread ended.

  Rounin pulled out a wooden key and pressed it into my palm. “Find the gate. I’ll catch up.”

  “What, no! I’m coming with you!” I protested, dropping the key in the Inventory. I was not going to finish this Challenge until I knew Rounin was finished first.

  Rounin gave me a loving yet exasperated look. “I’ll attach a thread to you. If the thread disappears, I’m out.”

  “Or you’re dead!” I countered. “I don’t care if it’s more efficient. We are not. Splitting up. Unless I literally cannot help it.”

  “Have I ever told you you’re my best friend?” Rounin said absently.

  “Hm. Now come on.”

  We found the other key with no issues. We bumped into another Challenger, but she wished us the best of luck and kept moving.

  Rounin waved the key in satisfaction. “Okay, now for the gates. Let’s get moving.”

  We found our first gate easily.

  Rounin paused about a minute after we started walking. “Yule. Does the ground…feel funny?”

  “What?”

  He turned in a little circle, stamping his foot. It thudded.

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  Rounin knelt, brushing aside the leaves at his feet, then stopped and shuddered as some insect I didn’t identify in time ran over his hands.

  “Let me,” I said quickly, finishing it for him. My fingers brushed against polished wood, matching the keys we’d found.

  “A gate!” Rounin exclaimed. “Quick, find a, uh, a keyhole—“

  I scanned the forest floor for a moment before finding a slightly raised section. The mulch revealed a keyhole of the same polished wood.

  We looked at each other in unison.

  “You first,” I insisted, crossing my arms.

  “Yule—“

  “Rounin, I swear to everything below, on, and above earth—“

  My best friend sighed. “Okay, okay.”

  He squatted to the floor and stuck the key in.

  “Uh, this doesn’t fit.” He said after a moment.

  Right. Because certain keys fit certain keyholes.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled, trying my key. It did not fit. “An hour? Do we just…try the other forty-nine?”

  Rounin stood, pocketing his key. “It’s a Challenge. Like Penelope said, they want some of us to win. There’s probably a puzzle of some sort. Some hint we need to find. Clues, you know?”

  He looked at me pointedly, like I should be making a connection there.

  “Uh. Okay…let’s go…look for hints?” I suggested. “Or the corresponding key.”

  Rounin squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, mouthing something. Lip reading was not an ability I had, but I was pretty sure I saw my name in there. Perhaps he was praying.

  “We can do both at the same time,” He said eventually. “But I think it’d be a little cruel to other Challengers to hog keys, especially when there’s only one per person.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. Keep looking.”

  The second time we found a gate, it was once again not one of ours.

  The gate was set in a huge tree, thicker than any I’d ever seen before. Rounin’s eyes were sparkling as he took it in. He wasn’t even paying attention to the polished gate in front of us.

  The gate looked exactly like a plain wooden door, only with a keyhole where the handle would be. A spiral was carved into the center.

  “Hello?” A cautious voice asked. I turned to see the source. “Oh, it’s you two again.” The woman from earlier said with a smile, holding up empty hands to show she was nonthreatening. “You do know the gate’s symbol corresponds with the symbols on the keys, right?”

  She dug out her key and pointed at the bow, which had a spiral on it matching the one on the gate.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, smacking my forehead.

  “Well, there’s our hint,” Rounin said, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

  “Uh, well, best of luck to you,” She said, eyes flickering between the two of us, edging towards the tree.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t take the key from you,” Rounin reassured her quickly.

  Relief watched over her face, and she walked past us with ease. “Thank you both. By the way— there’s a hint on the shaft. Like, uh, mine says ‘big tree’. Again, I wish you all the best.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I nodded.

  She smiled and disappeared as soon as she turned the key.

  “How did we not see that?” I asked.

  Rounin shook his head, scrunching up his nose.

  I pulled my key out of my inventory. “…’Sky’.”

  Rounin quickly pulled out his own key, squinting at it. Perhaps I should take him to the eye doctor. His eyes were plenty abused.

  “This says west edge,” Rounin mumbled, looking up. “I suspect edge means edge of the arena, so that’s fine. But west…this isn’t good. It’s…” He checked his watch. “…about ten AM, but I can’t see where the sun is thanks to the canopy, and I didn’t see a compass in the Items Shop earlier. Oh, if only this compass engraving was real—“

  I pointed at the really fucking big tree next to us. It certainly looked tall enough to rise over all the other trees. “Tree.”

  “I don’t know how to climb a tree with no low branches.” Rounin groaned, rubbing his temples as he sat on the dirty floor. “I can barely climb trees with low branches. Half the time, my arms aren’t long enough to reach branches anyway!”

  “Ladder,” I suggested. “Check the Shop.”

  Rounin paused. “That…I think I did see one. And I’m going to buy it.” He shot a pointed look at me. “You need the points for emergency health potions.”

  I shrugged. “If you think so.”

  Rounin smiled smugly.

  We both stared up the hundred-foot tree, then glanced at Rounin’s eighty-foot ladder.

  “How are we going to get this…up there?” I asked, pointing.

  Rounin was frozen, looking up at the tree blankly.

  “Oh, dear.”

  I closed my eyes. As book-smart as Rounin was, he was occasionally a bit lacking in the common-sense department. “It’s fine. We can keep think…don’t you have control over threads?”

  Rounin frowned. “I can’t generate enough for a ladder yet.”

  Golden threads restraining a thrashing dragon flashed across my mind’s eye, along with the same threads wrapped around what was left of charred flesh.

  “Hey, Rounin, off topic, but…did you have any weird dreams before the—“

  “I got it!” Rounin snapped his fingers. “I can use the threads to hoist the ladder over the tree branch, and then you pull it down like a pulley. That’ll do it. They’re practically thin tentacles. Mad helpful.”

  He looked at me with an absent smile. “Did you say something?”

  “Uh— it can wait.” I decided. “Are you sure this is…safe?”

  “No, not entirely. One can’t be sure about these things, but if I fall, I’ll just heal myself. The benefits of being a healer, I guess,” Rounin said absently. “And you can always cushion my fall with snow. We don’t really have any better options.”

  I frowned. “Icarus broke ribs when I did that for him.”

  “Like I said! Benefits of being a healer.”

  Rounin weaved thirty or so threads into a braid just thick enough to be comfortable to hold onto, then looped them into a knot around the top rung. He positioned himself to smoothly hop onto the ladder when I pulled it up, then threw the gold rope.

  I watched it keep soaring up until it disappeared through the canopy. It came back down fifteen feet away. It looked as though it was looped around a tree branch, so I hoped it was.

  “Okay, I’m going to drop a log from my inventory when I’m at the top to tell you to stop pulling, and then once I’m done looking, I’ll drop another one to tell you to let it down,” Rounin proposed, tugging lightly on the rope to check the slack.

  “Alright. Remind me, how much do you weigh?” I asked Rounin absently, looping the rope around my left hand. It was oddly soft, like it was made of the highest quality silk.

  He looked away. “I don’t want to tell you. You’re going to yell at me for not eating enough. But you can definitely lift me easily, especially with the stats.”

  I scowled at him. “That’s enough of an answer, I guess. Okay, on three?”

  “Yep. One, two, three.”

  I leaned my weight backwards, keeping an eye on Rounin as the ladder slowly rose. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it wasn’t exactly light. He didn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds. I was going to force some food into him as soon as we got out. He could not keep eating a single packet of Shin Ramyun the whole day, whenever he was too lazy to cook for himself. For someone who wanted to be a doctor, his lifestyle wasn’t even close to healthy.

  Then again. Rounin’s cooking was probably not healthy either. I would have to start cooking for him. I was lucky our colleges were close.

  A log dropped with a thud, and I stopped pulling. I felt his weight shift off the ladder.

  He was up there for around ten minutes— just enough time for me to start getting nervous— and then I felt his weight on the ladder again, and then the second log dropped.

  Rounin jumped once he was around three feet off the ground. “Well, that was terrifying, but I had a great view. Gorgeous, actually. Okay, do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  “Um. Good?” I shrugged, exhaling in relief.

  “Good news— I found your gate. Other good news, it’s very close on a map! Bad news— It’s floating roughly two hundred feet in the air and I have no idea how to get up there.”