The object of war is victory; that of victory is conquest; and that of conquest the preservation of lives.

  ~Montesquieu

  Sarah managed to cross those tiny stepping-stone pillars like a boss, leaping nimbly from one to the next before landing on the inclined rope bridge. It was not as securely anchored as she would prefer, and it swayed dangerously as she tried to climb it, but again she maintained her balance without effort. It was as easy as sitting in a really tame porch swing.

  “E10 Agility for the win,” she grinned as she started climbing the ladder, barely needing the loose rope hand rails.

  Good thing, because they were pretty useless, and trying to rely on them would no doubt just pitch her over the side and into the lava and spikes.

  Climbing an inclined rope bridge that swayed crazily as she moved turned out to be a blast. Sarah marveled at her new level of balance and nimbleness of foot. She was literally running up a swaying rope with bare feet, but her footing was absolutely sure, her balance perfect.

  Halfway up, she laughed with pure joy. “This is incredible!”

  The situation still sucked, but who wouldn’t get a total rush from enjoying superhuman agility for the first time? Each second, she adapted better and better to the changes wrought on her body, and moved with ever more confidence.

  Sarah landed on the next solid stone platform with a flourish and another laugh, but then her grin faded. A pull-up bar was positioned above her head, with hooked openings marching up the walls on either side.

  The only way to get up to the next platform would be to walk the pull-up bar up each step. Some super athletes pulled off that stunt on shows like American Ninja Warrior, but Sarah used to hat doing pull-ups.

  She was not the same person she used to be, but her Strength hadn’t gotten super-boosted like her Agility. So why not change that? She had seven free points, after all.

  Sarah willed open her character sheet page and mentally applied one of the free points to Strength. Surprisingly, she got an error message.

  Stats locked during the challenge dungeon.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she complained loudly. Maybe she should have dumped those points into her stats when she had the chance.

  Still, her Strength had hit E0 and had supposedly gained an extra 20% effectiveness. Time to test how much raw power that translated into.

  Sarah jumped up, grabbed the bar, and did an experimental pull-up. Her smile returned with her confidence. Easy peasy.

  With her next pull-up, she gave it a lot more force, pulling herself up high enough to try yanking the bar up to the next set of grooves. She managed to pull the bar out of its current position, but had never tried feeding a pull-up bar into another set of grooves higher up the bracket.

  She might have superhuman agility, but still botched the tricky move and fell back to the stone platform. Annoying.

  Growling, she jumped up and reset the pull-up bar, then tried again. Once more she failed and fell back down, but on her 3rd attempt, she managed to move the pull-up bar up the first step.

  “Yes!” She cried, thrilled by the success. A bit more practice, and she’d have it down.

  A loud popping noise below her drew her gaze down, and she gasped. “You've got to be kidding me.”

  The stone platform underneath the pull-up bar had disappeared. Apparently, the system assumed that since she had managed to move the bar once, she no longer needed the safety net platform to land on.

  Stupid path.

  With a surge of power, she did another aggressive pull-up and managed to move the bar one more step. On her second step, she missed the right side opening.

  Before she could catch herself, she fell. Superhuman agility and strength didn’t help when all you had to hold onto was a pull-up bar no longer attached to anything.

  The stone platform was no longer there, so there was nothing to catch her, nothing between her and those sharp spikes and floor filled with lava.

  Sarah screamed, flailing her arms and legs and the pull-up bar, but it was totally useless. She tried to spin herself in mid-air to at least land on the spikes feet first. The thought of impaling her feet and legs on those sharp spikes was terrifying, but not as bad as dying when she hit, or slipping into that lava.

  She couldn't twist, though. It was like she'd been hit by a giant, invisible flyswatter that was slamming her down toward the spikes so hard she couldn't even twist.

  Sarah screamed again, her terror overwhelming her ability to think. She couldn't do anything, death was rushing up to greet her. The system was about to kill her.

  Then a burning heat erupted from her heart, just like that fire she’d felt when leveling up. The wave of energy swept through her, empowering her, and when it reached her mind, her vision sharpened.

  The dungeon somehow warped in her vision, and for a second, it was like she could almost see through everything. Symbols glowing with golden light appeared within everything, embedded in walls, floors, and all of the obstacle course components.

  It was magical, and the sight helped ease her panic for a second. There was something else there, some kind of power she sensed just beyond the edges of her senses. She grasped for it, reaching with all her will, snatching for salvation, and the wisp of hope that she could change something, anything.

  The feeling vanished, her vision snapped back to normal, filled with stone spikes and lava, and she slammed down onto them with horrible force.

  She tried to scream again as white-hot pain seared her vision and lava seemed to race down every nerve ending. The world went black.

  Then everything stopped. She felt nothing, saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing. It was like she dropped into a total void.

  Was she dead? Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of light?

  Then the world blinked and reset. Once more, Sarah found herself standing back at the starting point, facing the pit with its narrow stone beam, as if her entire first run had been nothing but a nightmare.

  Sarah sagged with relief, laughing weakly. She was alive! She blew out of breath, ran her hands across her face and her hair, and just exalted in still living.

  Right, the challenge dungeon was a dream sequence. The system had dragged her into some kind of super-realistic dream. It was so convincing, she had forgotten it wasn’t real.

  A new message popped up in front of her.

  Challenge Dungeon attempt one failed. Health points reduced by one. Second attempt beginning . . . Now.

  “Second attempt?” Sarah groaned. Her entire body was shaking from the memory of just dying. What was going on? She was not a video game character.

  Number of failed attempts prior to a successful Challenge Dungeon run will be calculated as part of the final reward. Each failure will result in the reduction of your health points by one. The Challenge Quest will not complete until you successfully reach the end. Good luck.

  Sarah took a deep breath, trying steady her nerves and settle her racing heart. That was insane. The system should have warned her that she would get chances to respawn in this crazy game dungeon challenge quest thing.

  She had honestly thought she was about to die, and she was still trying to cope. It wasn’t a simple thing to adjust to the fact that she was not only still alive, but had to run the challenge dungeon again.

  She wanted to scream at the nameless path to stop messing with her life, but didn’t bother. It wouldn’t do any good.

  “I can do this,” she told herself. “It’s just a stupid dream. I can’t actually die, so stop whining and make this happen.”

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  In response, the sound of the stone wall beginning to move echoed from behind her. There was only one way forward, so she gritted her teeth and ran.

  Sarah speed across the narrow beam, which again groaned and swayed under foot, but did not break. Without slowing, she shot down the short tunnel to the enormous cavern and leaped across the stone stepping pillars, then swarmed up the rope bridge.

  She managed four pull-up steps before she slipped again and once more fell to her death.

  Despite knowing she was stuck in some kind of virtual reality game nightmare, she could not help but scream in terror as she fell toward the sharp stone spikes and the lava again. It felt too real, and she could not make herself accept her impending death with calm. She tried to reach for strange power that surged from her heart the last time, tried to see through the world around her to spot those symbols again, but she got nothing.

  Once more, she splattered onto the stone spikes, then respawned at the starting point. Sarah screamed with frustration and beat her fists against the wall behind her until it started moving, pushing her toward the edge.

  She was so freaked out, she slipped off of first narrow stone beam. With a scream, she caught herself, but the weight of her body slamming onto the center of the beam cracked it and sent her tumbling to her death yet again.

  When she respawned again, her fear was replaced by anger. Every time she failed, she respawned with one less health point.

  “Get it together, Sarah. This is a dream, a game, remember? Own it!”

  If she did not get her act together, could she die in this stupid challenge dungeon enough times for her health points to reach zero? If she did that, would she wake up finally or would she die in real life, maybe have a heart attack in her sleep?

  She would not put it past the system do actually kill her.

  “So stop failing,” she growled to herself. She would beat this stupid challenge dungeon, and she would do it fast.

  So Sarah charged the course, throwing herself into each challenge, trusting to her newly-enhanced instincts, her high stats, and her anger to carry her through. In record time she traversed the initial pit, reached that insane cavern of death traps, and traversed the first challenges all the way to the pull-up bar.

  Growling with anger, she worked that pull-up bar faster than ever, walking it up step by step until she reached the upper shelf and flung herself onto it with an backflip that was so cool, she had to pause for a second to pump her fist in victory and laugh. E10 Agility was the best!

  With a shout, she raced into the next challenges. Barely slowing to assess each one, she raced across swaying balance beams, dove through fiery hoops, and even managed a strange hopscotch-like jumping challenge, while snatching up a pistol and shooting floating targets twenty feet away.

  That one pushed her agility way harder than the rest, but still she managed it well. Sarah powered through almost a third of the cavern, drawing on her anger to fuel her strength. Then, as she raced down another narrow balance beam, it split into a Y, the left side angling upward while the right dropped down a series of steps to a much lower platform.

  Barely slowing, Sarah chose the left fork, but within two steps realized she’d made a mistake. That side reached a ramp that spiraled up around a wide, stone pillar, but did not actually reach the top. It was a dead end.

  She skidded to a halt, planning to backtrack to the other fork, but the entire balance beam crumbled under her feet, sending her plummeting down again.

  A considerate blue screen of annoyance popped up and followed her all the way down to her next death.

  Backtracking in the challenge dungeon is not allowed. Good luck.

  She tried it three more times, leveraging her anger to power farther and farther through the course. She made it more than halfway through the huge cavern, but still kept falling, dying again and again, and each time she respawned, her total health points were reduced by another one.

  She needed to try something different. So when she spawned again, she instantly leaped forward to race across the balance beam like usual, but her rage had faded, like her fear before that.

  As she barreled through the first half of the course, which she had run so many times that she’d memorized it, she barely had to focus, and she had a moment to think. As she ran, jumped, dove, climbed, and shot her way through one challenge after another, she reached a new level of clarity.

  In the restaurant, when she'd reacted to those gunmen, it had not been fear or rage that helped her see the right path. She’d felt a cool, almost detached feeling where she could see everything, analyze everything without emotion, and choose the best course.

  She tried to recreate that cool, detached feeling, but it eluded her. The challenge dungeon was different, and she felt totally engaged. No, she didn’t need a total lack of emotion. She needed focus. Calm, focused determination. Put her enhanced perception to better use.

  That was when she recognized something she should have seen much sooner. As she tore through the course, she realized there was a pattern. The areas she'd already overcome and learned the pattern no longer posed any real danger.

  The first welcome message had said it was a challenge dungeon, not a death trap. Again, she thought back to that moment in the restaurant when she'd reacted to the gunmen. She dove farther than she ever had before, but somehow she’d known she could do it. She’d trusted that instinct, and survived.

  The challenge course was a challenge. The weird path that had invaded her life had amazing and mysterious and seemingly impossible powers. It was granting her boosts to her physical stats, and even a new title and abilities.

  The system understood her capabilities better than she did. It was challenging her, pushing her. Everything it had done to her so far served to make her stronger. This challenge dungeon had to be calculated to do the same thing.

  With that understanding, Sarah threw herself into the rest of the course, traversing the new sections that she had never reached before with determined focus. If the challenge required her to run across a tiny beam that would have been impossible to her previous self, she had to assume her new self could actually do it.

  When she had to make a seemingly-impossible tumbling leap, or scale a rough, chimney-like wall by jumping back and forth between the sides to gain elevation, like the character in The Prince of Persia games, she trusted that it was possible. She used it as a chance to learn and test her limits.

  When she had to snatch pistols, rifles, or shotguns out of the air or off of waiting racks and shoot moving targets, she had to trust that her Basic Small Arms Mastery ability would help her make those difficult shots.

  She did not hold back, did not hesitate, but pushed herself to her uttermost limits, trying to squeeze every ounce of benefit from every last stat point.

  And she died. Five more times.

  Her little epiphany did not instantly make her a super challenge course champion, but with each attempt she made significantly more progress, and she found herself relishing the challenge and looking forward to the next obstacle. Dying was no longer so terrifying when she understood it was not real, and that each attempt offered a new chance to learn.

  She finally reached the end, landing a difficult tumbling sequence that required her to leap through hoops high in the air, vault between swinging platforms, and catch that bouncing shotgun to land her final shot, just like she had at the restaurant.

  Challenge Dungeon successfully cleared. Congratulations. You receive two free points.

  Sarah pumped her fist in victory into the air, then the world flashed to black again. She woke up in her own bed, blinking away sleep.

  Sarah sighed with relief and lay back, wondering about the crazy nightmare. Had that been real, or was it just an adrenaline-fueled nightmare from the crazy events of the evening?

  She threw off her blanket and went to the bathroom to wash her face. On a whim, she sniffed at her hair and grimaced. It smelled like sulfur. When she glanced down, her t-shirt was wrinkled and her sweatpants clung to her legs, damp with sweat.

  “No way.”

  When she checked her character sheet, she sucked in a sharp breath. Her health points were down by nearly 50 points, and her free points had ticked up to nine.

  She’d fallen asleep at midnight. It was now 1:30 AM. The challenge dungeon had taken her an hour and a half. As impossible as it seemed, the challenge dungeon had been at least partially real, even though it was also a dream.

  “Toto, we have left Kansas way behind,” she muttered.

  Sarah wasn't sure what to think but honestly, that challenge dungeon had tested her and pushed her to the limits, then rewarded her two more free points. Despite the drop in her health points, she'd learned a ton in the process. Now she understood so much better about what she could really do with her enhanced stats.

  That again begged the question what would have happened if she had failed to figure out how to beat the dungeon before she ran out of health. Could she have actually died?

  Sarah refused to believe it. The path was helping her grow stronger. It was challenging her, pushing her, making her do things she would not have otherwise done, but it was rewarding her.

  Not that she wanted to miss another daily quest and have to deal with another challenge dungeon, though. Beating the challenge had won her only two points, while finishing the daily quest won her four.

  The math was easy. Any new points were great, but getting twice as many every day was definitely better. So she had to make sure to complete the daily quest every single day, no matter what interruptions or problems she might run into.

  That assumed she could do something with those free points. As she thought about that, another message box appeared, almost as if in response to her thoughts.

  Milestone unlocked. You have been granted access to the System Store menu. Free points can be used to increase body stats, or purchase available items.

  “No way!” Sarah gaped as she reread the message.

  A system store? Despite all of the seemingly-impossible things that the system had already done, the idea of a store in her mind was beyond insane.

  Of course, in most video games and a lot of fantasy novels, a system store was an iconic feature, but how was one appearing in her mind? Feeling a giddy sense of excitement, Sarah opened her main menu. Sure enough, a new menu option was visible, titled System Store. She immediately clicked it, and a new interface appeared.

  Welcome to the system store.

  Below that, three columns ran down the screen titled “Item”, “Description”, and “Price”.

  Her enthusiasm faded when only one item appeared in the lists.

  Path of Ancients Tutorial 1. You have unlocked your bloodline and shown that you are willing to work hard to progress. This first tutorial is an introduction to vital foundational information. Cost: 9 points.

  A tutorial, huh? Sarah grinned. She'd been wanting a tutorial for days. It would cost all of her hard-won free points, but she needed information.

  “So, not exactly ‘free’ points, after all,” she muttered.

  The fact that only one item was available to purchase, and it happened to cost exactly as much as her available points made it clear the system wanted her to choose the tutorial. It was rotten that it was making her pay for the tutorial, but she would get additional points.

  Hopefully additional items would populate later. Would she actually be free to spend them any way she liked, or would the system keep pushing her along a chosen path? She’d know soon enough.

  So she mentally selected the tutorial, then selected yes when a confirmation prompt appeared.

  Purchase confirmed. Path of Ancients Tutorial 1 will be available in the morning.

  “Good. It can wait. I’m tired.”

  With a sigh, Sarah crawled back into bed and closed her eyes, eager for normal sleep. Her thoughts drifted back over the challenge quest and the impossible tumbles and leaps she’d made, or shooting like someone who had way more training in firearms.

  As terrifying as it had been at times, that challenge course had forced her to master her new stats. She might not have figured out exactly how much she could do for quite a while, otherwise.

  She could not limit herself based on what she used to be able to do. She had to seize the opportunity the path was granting her and push herself to the limits. With the tutorial coming up in the morning, she grasped a new hope that she was about to finally start understanding what was going on.