Passing through the hallway, Aaron made his way up to the trial dial and selected Oozagh. It was fitting, as the ogre had accompanied him on the vast majority of the Trial of Endurance stages, and they had even led to his patronage so many trials ago.

  Checking for trial compatibility…

  Prerequisites met: Challenger has a divine blessing.

  Trial starting…

  I wonder if he knows Lenriel?

  The trial transported him outside an unsuspecting cave, with Oozagh beside him. It kind of felt like graduation, as Oozagh’s avatar materialized, looking like a proud father. And surprisingly, Oozagh’s avatar was not a shadow. For the first time, it had appeared full of color and life. But also, it looked… younger? And also a little smaller, especially the gut.

  “Don’t look at my belly, tiny man! It’s embarrassing. Up until now, my avatar has been but a weakened version of my true self, but took this likeness…” Oozagh sighed. “For this trial, my avatar resembles what I actually looked like at this stage of my ascension.”

  “So that’s young man Oozagh?” Aaron said, eyeing the young ogre.

  “Yes. That is correct. Have your fun. Mock my tiny body, and my disappointing gut. It is only fair.”

  Aaron looked at the avatar. Oozagh still looked like an eight-foot sumo.

  Small, yeah, right.

  “Hey, by the way, Oozagh. Do you know Lenriel?”

  “Why do you speak that name?”

  “I met him. Said he’s going to take over my universe. Told me to comply, and a bunch of other stuff. Said you’d agree that he was mostly benevolent, and that I should accept his offer.”

  Aaron continued explaining the conversation he had with Oozagh.

  “I agree that his word is good. That much is true. I also cannot help you against such an adversary, not anytime soon. The nature of his divine purview dictates his interest, which is an ever-expanding empire. Just as mine does, my unending desire for delicious treats.”

  “So, I should submit to him?”

  “Bahah! That’s for you to decide. But he will not surrender this idea. For now, I recommend that you do not go creating enemies. Continue on your path. He gave you no deadline. Make use of that. You have a hundred years before the barriers around your universe come down. Though if he had a lieutenant in your sector, that would be a more pressing matter. Either way, you still have at least a year after the trials to understand the multiverse before making a decision.”

  “A year?”

  “Yes,” Oozagh nodded. “World barriers last a year. Sector barriers are ten years, and one hundred years for your universe barrier. If this Pentival character has been tasked with bringing the sector under his control, conflict will no doubt come quickly to your sector once the barrier has fallen. But until then, you have time to grow and learn.”

  “For now, focus on yourself. But when you get time, try to learn a little more about the multiverse at large. This will take time and context to truly understand, so do not force it. I believe that a competent man like you can figure it out. Even if you are a tiny, delicate human.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Oozagh.”

  “Now, back to the trial. You’re about to experience a great challenge I once undertook. A progenitor of my world, I found myself in many difficult situations. This was a dungeon I found myself in not long after returning to my world from the Tutorial.”

  “It… it changed me. Inside is where I strengthened myself against powerful forces. Good luck, puny man. For I, the Great Oozagh, will not be joining you on this one. You must overcome this challenge alone.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “It was. Very, very hard. I would have confidence sending a few others into that cave alone.”

  Aaron blinked at that. He was going to have to defeat a challenge that was difficult for a D-grade progenitor who went on to become a god? Then again, it was the tenth stage of the trial. But if Mo’han could beat a tenth-stage trial, so could he.

  Aaron stepped into the cave as the youthful Oozagh waved him goodbye.

  “Wish me luck.”

  “You don’t need luck, puny human. You have that incredibly stubborn noggin of yours.”

  Inside the cave was dark, but a single hellish red flame sat burning in a metal saucer light hanging from the ceiling. The red flames created ominous shadows around the damp cave and a chilling effect.

  “Positively creepy,” Aaron muttered as he made his way inside.

  At the far end of the cave was a pool of impenetrably dark water. Light from the flames was completely absorbed by the darkness of the pool, and it looked to disappear into perfect black.

  Furthermore, the shadows seemed to dance around him as he walked closer. When he was looking ahead at the pool, the shadows appeared like humanoid figures moving around his peripherals, but when he turned to them, they returned to featureless shadows.

  “Okay… that’s a little odd,” he murmured, continuing toward the pool.

  He tried to focus on them without looking, but it was extraordinarily hard. The more attention he paid the shadows, the more evasive they were. But they didn’t attack, nor could he sense any energy or life within them, and so he continued.

  Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be a Shadow Trial without something odd.

  Reaching the pool, he looked down where his reflection should be. He had thought it was water, but now he wasn’t so sure. It seemed thicker, denser, almost metallic like, and when he stared at it for too long, he got vertigo, and felt like his vision was zooming in, and his peripherals were spinning.

  “Fuck,” Aaron grunted and stepped back, but held himself from walking around.

  He got a strange feeling from the pool, but it wasn’t energy as he had felt in people and on constructs, but something different. Was it testing him somehow?

  Forcing himself to be composed, he knelt beside it and extended a hand.

  “What is this stuff? It feels like the universe compacted into a tiny space…”

  He wanted to reach out and touch the strange pool, but had no idea what it was. Neither his mana barrier nor his spirit touch provided any answer, either. All he knew was that it was incredibly dense, and any attempts at trying to sense its nature were repelled with an extraordinarily nauseating effect.

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  Rising to his feet, he glanced around again. But no matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t able to pick up anything else within the room. Something told him that the shadows were somehow related to the pool, but that also meant that the pool was undoubtedly the target of his trial.

  “I’m going to have to touch that thing, aren’t I?

  Well, it wasn’t like he had death to fear, and even though he felt incredibly uneasy around the pool of mysterious liquid, he wasn’t about to just walk away. If the trial could be completed, he was going to do it.

  “Why do I hesitate?”

  There was something deep, ancient, and instinctual telling him to stay away from the foreboding liquid.

  But what was hardcoded evolutionary fear in the face of one determined, very hard-to-kill young man? Of course, he dipped his hand into it.

  Suddenly, a thudding sensation rushed into him, and Aaron almost jerked back, but he resisted and anchored himself in place. Then, the incredibly dense fluid pulled on him, and he actually felt like it was dragging him into it.

  Aaron's eyes widened in realization. He wasn’t sure how he knew what he knew, but he knew this to be the void. A dark power at the corners of the multiverse that filled the gaps.

  A power to be feared.

  His initial reaction was to resist, but then something greater came over him, and he relaxed, giving into the power that pulled him.

  At that moment, he entered a deep meditation at one with the void. And the dark secrets of the multiverse were revealed to him in that moment.

  He understood that this dark energy was important in the multiverse. A divider between the mortal and the divine. But it was more than that. A building block, and he came to realize that it was also linked to the trials.

  Were the assistants somehow related to the void? Perhaps they were crafted of the stuff. And if so, did that mean that the trials and all those who operated them were somehow existing within a realm between the mortal and the divine?

  He could not truly understand or comprehend what he was seeing, but he knew there was a truth to it. It made sense. The assistants were no normal species, and the communication room led him to believe that they had some greater purpose beyond the trials.

  But how was any of that linked to the divine? That wasn’t an answer he would be receiving, not now at least. But this introduction to the void was priceless, and it widened his understanding of the multiverse, even if it created more questions than it answered.

  Greater powers were at play, and there was a tapestry that brought it all together, a tapestry he was desperate to understand.

  But he wasn’t ready, and suddenly he felt great pain overcome every inch of him. It was as if the void itself was tearing at his limbs, and a sense deep within pinged with danger.

  The void was of the same energy used to create the trials, and suddenly, he realized that he had made a grave error. This energy could destroy him, as could divine energy.

  The resurrecting abilities of either the trial or his own trait were nothing in the eyes of these greater powers, and if they wished, they could snuff out his persistent life with a flick of a finger.

  But even as turmoil threatened to overwhelm him, he gritted his teeth and willed his mind to remain in control. Something as mundane as fear couldn’t defeat Aaron Dober.

  But it was eye-opening. Perhaps he had become too complacent with his near indestructible nature, because the void made him understand true fear once more.

  He was but an ant looking up a staircase that titans climbed on the way to the heavens. He was nothing. It wasn’t even gods, he realized. There was a vastness out there to the multiverse his little primate brain couldn’t even hope to grasp.

  It wasn’t Lenriel himself who threatened his universe. He commanded countless warriors at higher grades within the mortal realms that could conquer entire sectors without breaking a sweat.

  This was true power, and it shook at his core to even gaze upon them through the limitless bonds of void energy that connected it all together.

  He was trembling now, but he understood. It was trying to put him in his place, but even as it tried, his overwhelming willpower pushed back.

  “My place? Never!”

  Suddenly, the void energy around him rippled with anger. An ant was refusing his place in the multiverse, and that simply wasn’t allowed.

  But Aaron had remembered Oozagh in a moment of clarity. Not only had the god overcome this himself, but he had let him enter. If this pool of void was truly as deadly as it had tricked him into believing, then there was no way Oozagh would have let him attempt the challenge without more information, was there?

  A new resolve came over him, and he stubbornly delved deeper into the void, despite its protests and constant reminders that he was neither deserving nor able.

  “What… what do you hide from me?!”

  And as he delved deeper and deeper still, hours and then days passed, and he traveled down into the lightless depths.

  In protest, the void offered him all kinds of powers, but he could feel the sinister desires within. The thinly veiled threats. The compromises and sacrifices he would have to make in return, and he scoffed.

  The void offered power, incredible power, but it wanted to change him, to alter him at his core in return.

  What an insult.

  He cared little for offers of power so great that he would be able to fight off divine entities that threatened both Earth and the sector. For he would not let this void corrupt who he was at his core. As it wanted to change the very essence of who he was.

  “Fuck off!” He roared as he swam deeper. “I am not your toy!”

  His eyes turned fully white, and he had entered a trance once more, but this time he was not battling against death, but the intrusive offers granted by the void itself.

  And several days later, he resurfaced with a gasp. The impenetrable black water had turned color, purified to spotless white, and bubbling with raw aether.

  “You survived,” Oozagh’s avatar stood over him, agape as he emerged from the pool. “ And you’re not void tarnished… how, though? The void… It’s purified.

  “Wait, hold on a fucking moment there. Could I have gotten void tarnished for going in that thing? Why didn’t you say something, mate? I thought you had my back?”

  “Bahaha. This was your trial to pass. And you did so with flying colors. You even turned the void-touched water into spirit water somehow. Quite fascinating indeed. Even I couldn’t purify the void until much, much further along my path. That is quite the impressive gift.”

  “A warning would’ve been nice. But I suppose I kind of understand,” Aaron sighed, and then looked at the water. “So, what does that mean?”

  “Not much, to be honest. It’s impressive, but D-grades don’t really have to deal with the void anyway.”

  “Oh well. At least I beat the thing.”

  Looking around, Aaron realized that even the shadows had changed and now resembled spirits as he knew them.

  He wondered what the implications for his powers were, and if there even were any. Was the void something that people regularly had to deal with in the multiverse at a certain stage? Was being able to purify it important?

  “So, when does this void purifying stuff come in handy?”

  “Not for a long time. But you never know for certain. Sometimes it appears unexpectedly.”

  “Right,” Aaron groaned. “Why so cryptic?”

  “We gods play by certain rules. And some things we don’t just tell mortals, even if they are blessed by us. Some things are a rite of passage you just have to figure out for yourself.”

  “I thought you might say something like that. Well, thanks anyway.”

  It might have taken a little while, but he had beaten the tenth stage, and that was reward enough. Besides, at least this would be handy in the future, even if he had no immediate use for it.

  Stage tenth of [ Trial of Endurance ] COMPLETED!

  Trial of Endurance COMPLETED!

  You have tested yourself against a great obstacle once faced by one of your patron gods and have overcome its challenge. Rewards chosen by patron god.

  Quest Rewards: Supreme Ogre Pot [ Mythical], Playogre magazine issue #81501837 The Bigger the Better [ Common ], Crafting Station upgraded to level 10!

  Experience rewarded for completing a quest!

  Ding!

  [ Empty-Handed Energy Monk ] has LEVELED UP!

  36 → 37

  Ding!

  [ Empty-Handed Energy Monk ] has LEVELED UP!

  37 → 38

  Title acquired: Endurer.

  Complete all stages of the Trial of Endurance.

  Reward: +10% to Fortitude, Willpower, and Vitality

  “Okay, that’s not half bad, is it?” he said, seeing the Mythical item in his rewards.

  Wait, Oozagh gets to choose my reward?

  Aaron narrowed his eyes at the second reward, then turned to the smirking ogre avatar beside him.

  Oh no…

  Patreon!