Aster climbed. She climbed for an hour. Then she climbed for two hours before she stopped again. After four hours, she’d made up new curses for herself to use. After five hours, she thought she might be able to see the top. After six hours, she began to consider if it was wise to invest so much time into what would absolutely turn out to be a massive time-sink.

  After eight hours, she did have to rest for a bit to restore her stamina. The space-dilation was making it more and more difficult to move forward. Thoughts of falling had long since passed out of her consciousness.

  She passed the time by singing songs, inventing new swears to utilize should she ever meet the maker— creator?— of this forsaken tower, and dwelling on the past. Needless to say, singing was the most productive of any of those.

  It was only after twelve hours of near-endless climbing did she crest the top of the little plateau that capped the structure and laid her eyes on the obelisk that stood atop it.

  The obelisk was golden, and seemed too large to her eyes for the amount of room it seemingly took up. She still remembered the sight of the honeycomb structure from the ground, and she would have remembered seeing a golden monument that stretched beyond the clouds. Honestly, the damn thing was big enough to have its own weather patterns.

  Once she finished pulling herself all the way up top of the plateau, something snapped, and she felt space constrict. No longer was she in a field of spacial-dilation, and she hurriedly brushed aside worries of having to hike for miles and miles to get to the obelisk that looked to only be twenty feet in front of her.

  An obelisk, she could now see, that held a doorway. Video game logic for the win, Aster thought as she approached the entrance.

  The structure was about ten meters tall and hexagonal in shape. Three-quarters of the way up the structure, the angle at which the obelisk reached for a point increased sharply, making Aster think of the Washington Monument. It came straight out of the ground, seemingly made of not just the same material, but the same structure itself. Shallow, honeycomb-like indentations frequented the top of the obelisk, becoming larger and less frequent lower down the monument.

  Inside the doorway, Aster spied a staircase going up even further. In for a penny, she thought as she stepped inside— or tried to. The entrance was there, but a shield of… something… blocked the way. It felt similar to the sensation she’d experienced when she’d climbed the last bit over the edge onto where she stood now. Was it the same thing? Could she push through it with enough time? Something in her gut told her not to try.

  What the hell? Aster fumed. She’d climbed all the way up here and for what? “What am I missing?” she asked herself, resorting to logic in an attempt to cool her temper. Her skin was prickling with the heat, like it was trying to escape. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  What had brought her here? Video game logic, obviously. What else might that say about this place? Large, climbable structure hiding a doorway, blocked by an impenetrable barrier. Do I need a key? Is there an objective I have to figure out first? Or maybe there’s a—” Her vision darkened momentarily, as though something had shrouded her in darkness. She opened her eyes and spun, the heat in her skin flaring back up as she focused on finding whatever had moved.

  “—Boss battle,” she said aloud as she found the shadow. It was in the sky, with wings extending back from a slim body, and it was barreling down at her from the sun overhead.

  Having been seen, the beast loosed a scream that echoed in Aster’s ears and resonated through her bones. It flared its wings, showing a wingspan the length of a schoolbus and loosing a blast of wind that sent Aster’s chain shirt blowing and almost knocked her off her feet. It slammed into the ground in front of her, looking down at her from a height of over four meters.

  [Sunburst Tapejara - Level ???]

  Aster stood frozen, both terrified and... somehow weirdly confident the reptile had no intent to harm her. She had no clue how she knew this, only that her other option was to not trust her intuition and instead freak the fuck out.

  It was tall, with a stork-like face topped with a crest that made up a good quarter of its height. Whitish blue scales covered its belly and the undersides of its wings, fading into a yellow on its back. Glistening veins of orange scales ran throughout its crest, coalescing down to form a diamond over its eyes.

  As much as the beasts’ presence was intimidating, Aster wasn’t able to look away from those eyes. They were golden, glowing like the sun, and they held fire within. Its beak came dangerously close to her face and its nostrils flared, taking a deep breath. It seemed to pause for a moment, tilting its head to the side. Then it backed up and those eyes blinked as a voice appeared in her head.

  “Child of fire, are you to attempt my trial?”

  Aster blinked and her eyes went wide. It had just spoken to her! “Uh…”

  The birdlike reptile settled down onto its haunches. “Do I surprise you?”

  Yes. “Nope,” Aster said. “This is all totally normal.”

  The massive reptile lacked the musculature to smile, but it managed to convey the expression anyway. “We are here together in this tutorial, are we not? My world is also recently integrated to the wider multiverse.” It said this as it made itself more comfortable on the ground. “I may have been here a little longer, but I also am having to accustom myself to the ways of you other-worlders.”

  “That’s the least insane thing I’ve heard in a day, now.” Aster thought about this and realized the opportunity before her. “Actually, what can you tell me about this place? What the hell is going on here?” She had a more questions than stars in the sky, but experience told her now was a time to listen and not to speak.

  “I don’t know much more than you,” said the Sunburst Tapejara. “I do know that should I open that trial gate for you, you will not exit alive unless you surpass an exceptionally high level of progress before the week’s end.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “How do you know that?” Aster bristled at the intentional vagueness of the beast.

  “Because it was I who stands to benefit, should you survive.” The reptile lowered its eyes down to her level. “Should you perish inside, or perhaps if none of your kind had shown up to attempt the trial, I would have been held in stasis. Once you enter, however,” and at this point the Sunburst Tapejara lowered its head until it was inches away from the trying-not-to-cower human being standing before it. “Once you enter, however, you will unlock something that will matter much to me.”

  “How so?” Aster cooled the heat inside of her.

  “Regardless of whether you succeed in the trial, my prize awaits me.”

  “Regardless?” Aster now scoffed at the pride-riddled bird.

  “Indeed,” it said, sitting back on its haunches. “Because, even should you succeed, I will take my prize from your decaying corpse.”

  Aster’s fire nearly burst through her skin. “What’s to stop me from fucking murdering you right now, you overgrown budgie?”

  The Sunburst Tapejara made a consecutive series of noises that Aster would eventually interpret as laughter. “Because you’d have not a chance, little ape. Now run along and fetch me my prize.”

  Aster grit her teeth and considered just climbing down the damnable column, but her competitive spirit told her that that would be a mistake. Sure, maybe this fucking over-enabled lizard could win right now, but after a week?

  “You’re on, you limp-dicked, Thanksgiving-main-course, reject of a proper dinosaur—" Aster caught her breath— "you discount pteranadon piece of shit even the new Jurassic movies wouldn’t stoop to include,” she spat out. “I’m gonna go into that fucking weird-ass stairwell and when I come out you’d best be ready to meet Darwin himself and explain to him what a failure you are.”

  It not-smiled again. “I’ll see you soon, then, Child of Fire.”

  “And why do you call me that?” Aster’s spear was in her hand now, though when it had appeared there she didn’t know.

  It was a long moment of silence before it responded to her. “Like calls to like,” said the Sunburst Tapejara, before it flapped its massive wings and took to the air.

  Aster didn’t know what that meant, but she knew that it wouldn’t matter. Once she beat whatever trial she found inside that stairwell, she’d only ever have to see that irrationally irritable airbound lizard one more time.

  She was still fuming as she ascended the steps, the entryway no longer barred to her.

  --

  Aster climbed the stairs, imagining all the different ways she could grill up the tapejara once she was through with it. She daydreamed about skewering the thing on her spear and constructing a spit to turn its meat over.

  Aster has some anger issues, guys, in case you hadn’t noticed.

  Anyways, the rest of the climb was rather uninteresting, as the staircase lacked motifs or detail of any kind besides the obsidian that formed the walls and steps. Somehow, light from outside still made it through enough for her to be able to see where she was going. It helped her notice the door in front of her before she broke her nose on it.

  It was a large door made of boarded wood, entirely out of place in a tower of black glass. When she touched it, a System prompt appeared.

  Tutorial Challenge Dungeon Discovered!

  Challenge Dungeons found throughout the multiverse offer danger and rewards hand in hand, being known as natural treasures.

  This variant is only found within the Tutorials provided by the System to newly integrated races. Enter at your own risk.

  Requirements to enter: Must be level 10 or below in any class or race. Must be top 15% in tutorial points.

  Congratulations! Requirements to enter met.

  WARNING: Only 1 challenger allowed per Challenge Dungeon.

  Enter the dungeon?

  Y/N

  Definitely something good, she thought. Also, pretty cool to see I’m in the top 15%. That was what, 180 people? She’d better be in that top group if it was that large.

  Aster took a moment to clear her head before making her decision. Obviously she was going to go into the dungeon. Hell, it was a challenge dungeon, and was there even anything else the System could dangle in front of her that would make her more excited?

  She knew it had to be dangerous. Not only had the sunburst tapejara insinuated that she’d die before succeeding, but her own intuition was telling her that this was not going to be easy. A small fire started to spark in her gut at the challenge.

  She selected “Y” and jumped when a door made of the same obsidian collapsed from the ceiling behind her, locking her in.

  “Well,” she said, rubbing at the smooth skin on her head, “that might as well happen.” She turned back to the door and frowned. A selection loomed before her.

  Lifeblood Challenge Selections

  There are three options available to you. Please make a selection.

  Option 1: The Bloodforge Labyrinth

  Option 2: The Ironclad Arena

  Option 3: The Gauntlet of Endless Strides

  Well, labyrinths are kinda cool, Aster thought. She envisioned a maze of some sort, probably even filled with traps and monsters and stuff. This would all be easier if I knew what waited for me at the end of these choices. The tapejara outside had said there was a “prize” at the end, but also that it didn’t matter if she completed any of these challenges or not.

  Before she continued considering her options, something gnawed at her about what the tapejara had said. It had mentioned a time limit of “the weeks’ end”, suggesting that once she entered the dungeon she wouldn’t be able to leave before the end of the week. If that was the case, and assuming there was any sort of logical cohesion between these dungeons and the tutorial challenges at large, there would definitely be ways to level up while inside whichever dungeon she chose.

  If she was to level up, that meant fighting and danger, which, while obvious, only served to reinforce her image of the Bloodforge Labyrinth as not just a maze to be solved, but an environment to survive as well.

  Maybe I’ll get some more information if I select one? There’s usually a confirmation screen after a selection like this, right? Aster bit her bottom lip and mentally selected the first option.

  Bloodforge Labyrinth selected.

  Vitality is the stat of Health, fighting off ailments of all kinds; from stab wounds to poisons. Introduce yourself to the concept of Vitality as you traverse the Bloodforge Labyrinth.

  The environment within the Bloodforge Labyrinth will cause you to lose health. Throughout the Bloodforge Labyrinth are challenges in the forms of beasts and traps which will reward you with life upon their defeat. Other rewards may lie inside the labyrinth’s walls.

  Survive until the end of the Bloodforge Labyrinth.

  Proceed.

  So I was right, Aster thought smugly. Her smugness wore off quickly, however, when her attention was caught by the lack of a “?” after the word, “Proceed.”

  Sometimes, it turned out, there wasn’t a confirmation screen after all.

  The door in front of Aster disappeared in a flash of darkness, instantly replaced with a sconce-lit hallway of gray, blocky bricks, straight out of a cheap Dungeons & Dragons module.

  “Well, fuck.” She said, her voice echoing hauntingly back to her from the dim maze.

  The darkness did not respond further, only seeming to beckon her forward— opening like the maw of a gigantic beast.