“The second vote has concluded.”

  “System made roads will now be constructed.”

  “Completion time for all roads will be 1 year.”

  “The next vote will begin in 9 hours.”

  Eli groaned, he was getting restless and frustrated at all the politics and chess playing that was going on. In addition to that Bethany seemed to have something cooking against his mother who had her own plans. Life was just simpler when he was hitting monsters with a club alone in the forest. He was shocked at his reminiscence, he wasn’t yearning for his old life anymore he just wanted a simpler one now. Eli chuckled to himself that the old saying ‘careful what you wish for’ applied here since he wished for power while getting his ass kicked in that dungeon. Now he had power and he wished he had less.

  There was a lot of temptation to just teleport away and then come back in 9 hours but he didn’t think he had the magic for both trips. Also, he doubted the system would approve of him leaving, but that gave him another thought. The system wouldn’t want him leaving but it also would want him spending five days on his ass. There had to be something here that would allow him some adventure and a chance at some experience or some kind of growth. He blinked himself high into the air above the structure they were in and looked around only seeing water and the night sky.

  The only other place to look was underwater, but something made it feel like a bad idea. It felt like looking into a pitch dark cave and just having that gut feeling that there's a monster inside. The alternative was to go to the bottom floor and look around so he blinked back to the balcony and walked over to the teleporter wall, he put his hand on it and thought “Bottom floor” but nothing happened. Eli opened his map and read the label on each floor, his floor was labeled as his, the voting floor and the conference floors for each continent were labeled accordingly. The rest of the floors just said ‘living quarters’ but when he looked at the very bottom there was a greyed out area below the last floor.

  His best guess was that he needed to figure out the name of that floor to get to it, like a puzzle or riddle or something. Eli tried several variations of dungeon floor names and challenge floor names with no success, but when he said ‘trial floor’ he vanished and appeared in a damp stone cave with a teleporter wall on one side. The rest of the cave looked like a natural formation that had a path going through the middle to an opening on the other side. He walked slowly and softly but even with his bare feet, every step echoed louder than thunder vibrating the stone under his feet. He stopped breathing and forced his heart to slow just so he wasn’t making additional noise which helped since every step was getting louder.

  The noise was so loud it physically hurt his body and his ears were bleeding, he wasn't even a third of the way across this entrance cavern and he was not doing well. Stopping to further investigate seemed like a good idea, but even with his heart slowed it still beat and the noise was pounding into his head. The ceiling was made up of sharp needle-like stones pointing down with concave spots in between. It looked like more concave spots pointed near the end of this path probably making the noise amplification worse as you go. He didn’t know what the needles were for but he bet it had something to do with staying on the ground, the magic in them had something to do with gravity.

  Another heart beat thumped and the echo rocked him like a blow to the head, so he concentrated and stopped his heart with sheer will. He waited a few moments to see if he passed out or anything but he seemed to be doing ok. Next he used a bit of gravity magic on himself since his dense level 3 body weighed several hundred pounds his footsteps would be lighter if he weighed less. The idea came to him to blink to the other side of the cavern, but he remembered how the system had reacted the last time he tried to cheat and pushed that idea right out of his head.

  With his breathing and his heart stopped, while standing still it was silent, but when he moved his fuzzy underwear moved and made noise. He stopped and moved very slowly backwards until the effect was weak enough that he could remove them. Now naked and light on his feet he made it just past the halfway point before his steps were echoing loud enough to damage him again. Though this was frustrating and painful, Eli was smiling from ear to ear, finishing this trial was finally something to do that was worthwhile. He backed up and worked on his steps, adjusting the way he walked which helped but not enough, then he tried using magic to stop the sound with no luck.

  He had already been doing this for an hour but was barely able to get past the half way point. He was having fun but he couldn’t be down here forever so he tried one more thing, simply willing his steps to not make noise. This had confusing results since to his ears, it sounded the same but the echo was reduced, which led him to another hour of testing and trying different methods. Finally he thought he had it figured out with a mix of his will and a change in the way he walked, placing his toes first then rolling his foot slowly back to the heel. It was working until he was just a few steps from the end.

  The echo amplification at the end of the path was so bad he could swear he heard his brain and other nerves firing with every movement and thought. He decided that he wasn’t going to be able to stop those things so he just pushed through, maintaining his focus on his gravity magic and his balance and steps. The pain was so intense that his whole face and head was bleeding, though not much since his heart wasn’t beating. For the last three steps he decided to risk it and jump to the end in hopes that the echo stopped after the path stopped. Even his preparing to jump, tensing his muscles was so loud he almost blacked out, but he made it and the noise stopped.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Now that he was across to the opening in the cavern, he took a few minutes to relax before continuing. After he collected himself, he walked down the tunnel and got a system window.

  “You have completed the first room of ‘The Deep Trial’.”

  “Now when you enter the trail, you will start at room 2.”

  This would mean that he could probably leave and come back if needed, but he wasn’t going to leave until he had to, this was way too much fun. The tunnel turned and there was a teleporter wall at the end, Eli placed his hand on it and reappeared into nothingness. The light in the first room was dim but this room was unnaturally dark. His perception wasn’t even enough to see an outline, but he had been in dark rooms before and knew how to use his light magic. Always wanting to be fancy and dramatic when possible, he focused his light magic into his eyes and opened them. With his eyes being the light source there wasn’t any glare.

  Eli has had a lot of plans backfire, at best the majority of his plans have failed, but this one was the worst backfire of all backfires. The sound of a tesla coil buzzed and lightning shot straight into his eyeballs, and into his brain causing the kind of pain that nightmares are made of. He hasn’t used a bathroom in two months, his body having the magical capability to mostly survive off magic and any food or drink gets nearly completely converted to blood and magic, but the pain he felt now made him somehow magically shit himself. He fell to the ground in it and rolled around in agonizing pain.

  After the pain subsided enough for him to think, and he learned to ignore the smell, his first thought was to wait for his sight to return but what good was that in a pitch black cave. His mind was healed enough for him to problem solve now and there were two options, one is that light is attacked and two is that magic use is attacked. If this room followed a pattern and was similar to the first room then the sensitivity would increase as he moved through the room, which led to his next problem. He needed to know which way to go with no light and no sound in the room, he could spend days moving by touch, or use his magic sense.

  But this left him with another problem, his magic sense used magic. His soul contained his magic and it wasn’t a perfect container, it leaked depending on how much magic he had. Close to full it would leak a lot, near empty not so much unless he told it to but it was never closed without considerable concentration of his will on his magic. The magic that leaked out still had a tiny scrap of his will in it and when it reacted with something he could sense it. He was going to have to figure out a different way because he did not want to get zapped by the shit lightning again. To be safe he would go without light or magic.

  It took him hours of meditation and slipping into his own mind for extra time, collectively a full day, to puzzle out how to get his magic to fully stop leaking. His ‘soul on the outside’ nature, his high will, and his transcendent aspects all had to come together to make it work properly. The hardest part of it was that he still needed to sense magic to be able to tell where to go, so he basically learned to do what Audrey did. You keep drawing magic in to regenerate but instead of leaking it out you destroy it, the balance is hard to maintain but he had it down well enough for a slow walk. If he needed this for combat he would be screwed since magic went into every motion and ability while fighting.

  This different kind of magic sense was like suddenly watching a black and white TV from the 1960’s when you were used to high definition but it got the job done. He could feel a small amount of magic from the ground except for a path that winded around pillars with wire coils around the top of them. All he had to do now was move slowly along the path and keep the control of his magic from slipping, the pain from that lighting in his brain actually made him hesitate for a second before starting his slow walk. The beginning was boring and slow, so much so that after a while his concentration slipped and he heard one of the coils start to buzz which snapped his focus right back into place and the coil went silent.

  As time passed and he got further down the path he would move slower and slower, the magic coming off the coils was now very faint but there were more of them, a lot more. With each coil being weaker he supposed it would make them more sensitive, but with the additional coils they could fire in unison and still do some real damage. Eli was getting different feelings from his magic sense when using it like this, he couldn’t get the flavors of the magic anymore but he could feel the intent left in the magic. It was telling him how all of this worked and it would hopefully get him through the room without getting hit again.

  He was only about seven steps away from the end and he had to freeze mid step as some of the coils were starting to buzz all around him. This was probably like the last one where he needed to jump for the last part but he felt like he was still too far away and a jump would be too slow. He could blink the last bit but that lightning was probably faster than the time it would take for him to activate the skill. Jumping was worth the risk but he needed to hide his magic better and the only thing he had experience with was compression so that was going to be his best option.

  Eli stayed still, mid-step balancing on one foot and split his focus to compressing his magic. He spread his will around himself and pulled in compressing the magic to his bones, the buzzing stopped and he finished his step. With both feet down he prepared himself to jump but the buzzing started again. Focusing on his magic compression he stretched the limits of his will to compress his magic down to the size of a baseball in his stomach. As soon as the buzzing slowed down he jumped into a small tunnel that was at the end of the path, apparently he had subconsciously used a bit of magic for the jump and his left leg got tagged with lighting as he made it into the tunnel.

  The pain was bad but nowhere near the pain of getting hit in the eyes and brain. Ignoring the pain, he wanted to get to the next room before the vote started, so he pushed on but instead of a teleporter wall there was a hole in the floor that felt like it went down pretty far. Still afraid to use magic to see, he could just feel the rock around him but not at a great distance so the hole continued down beyond his senses. The only option was to go forward so he jumped in but it was filled with water, magic free water. It was strange that the water had no magic at all but he needed to move so he slowly let himself sink to the bottom where a teleporter wall waited.