Chapter 274: Complaint
The blinding light faded slowly, leaving Kael standing in a place that looked nothing like the desert he had just escaped.
He found himself in a wide circular chamber of smooth gray stone, with no visible ceiling and no walls beyond a ring of pale mist. Three passages stood ahead of him, each blocked by a curtain of white light. The air was cool and clean, without sand in it, without the dry heat that had clung to his skin for days, and without the metallic stink of the old man’s blood. It should have been relieving. Instead, the sudden silence made everything that had happened feel heavier.
Christy and Hakim were gone.
Kael looked back instinctively, but the passage behind him had already sealed. There was no doorway to the desert, no sign of the trap, and no way to know whether the other two had been deposited somewhere else or pushed straight into the next stage. He did not like losing sight of them immediately after the tower had proven it was perfectly willing to rewrite a trial midway through completion, but before he could call out or inspect the chamber, several notifications began unfolding in front of him.
[Trial of Endurance Completed.]
[Evaluating performance...]
[Total Fracture Accumulated: 11]
[New Record Achieved.]
[You have completed the Trial of Endurance with the lowest Fracture ever recorded by a climber.]
[Previous Notable Fracture Records:]
[Fist King: 13]
[Leonard: 15]
Kael stared at the display, his irritation momentarily pushed aside by surprise. Eleven. After the desert, the starvation, the thirst, the monsters, the sandstorm, the betrayal, the ravine, and the old man being crushed at the exit, the trial had only managed to push his Fracture to eleven. He could still remember how the first few days had felt, how the tower had tried to wear them down through hunger and suspicion rather than straightforward combat. He had known that the Rune of Presence had dulled much of the mental strain that should have ruined him, but he had not expected the result to be enough to beat people like the Fist King and Leonard.
For a second, satisfaction pushed its way into him. It was difficult not to enjoy seeing his name over those two, even if the comparison was limited to one measurement. The Fist King would probably call it meaningless and then increase Kael’s training until he regretted ever noticing the record. Leonard, whoever he really was beyond the name scattered across leaderboards, had already become an irritating benchmark Kael kept accidentally trampling on.
Then the rest of the evaluation appeared.
[Overall Trial of Endurance Ranking Evaluated.]
[Your overall placement is: Fourth.]
[Reason: Hidden Objective Incomplete.]
Kael’s eyebrows pulled together. "What?"
The display expanded before him, responding to the confusion as if the tower had expected it.
[Hidden Objective: Slay the Dark Beast of the Rift.]
[Objective Status: Failed.]
[You have slain the Stone Maw Ravine Lizard.]
[Stone Maw Ravine Lizard classification: Mini-Boss.]
[The Dark Beast of the Rift remains undefeated.]
Kael read the message twice before letting out a slow, increasingly annoyed breath. The thing he fought in the ravine had only been the miniboss. He turned that fact over in his mind, remembering the low breathing that had rolled through the darkness beneath them, the sound that had convinced him not to linger after killing the stone lizard. He had assumed something more dangerous was hiding down there, but with a timer above his head and the old man already running for the exit, there had been no reasonable reason to look for it.
Not under the rules he had been given.
Kael rubbed a hand over his face, dragging sand and dried sweat from his cheek. If this had been the original Trial of Endurance, he might have accepted the loss with little more than annoyance. The hidden objective was hidden for a reason. Discovering it, judging whether the risk was worth it, and committing to the fight were part of the reward. He had missed that chance, and normally that would have been his problem.
But his trial had stopped being normal the moment that notification appeared beside the oasis.
Originally, the group only needed three people to arrive at the exit. That meant there was room to cooperate. Room to leave the desert, see the ravine, weigh the danger below, and perhaps decide whether challenging the hidden beast was worth doing before completing the floor. Kael could have told the others to wait near the beacon while he descended alone. He could have hunted the thing without worrying that the moment he looked away, someone would sprint for one of three available positions and force everyone else into failure.
The changed rule had stripped that choice away. It had turned the remaining climbers against one another, forced the old man into betrayal, sent Kael into the ravine in pursuit rather than by decision, and made every second spent fighting beneath the cliff a second in which someone else was claiming the exit. Then the tower had the audacity to mark him down for not taking his time to find a larger monster.
Kael’s expression soured.
"Torrac!" he shouted into the empty chamber.
His voice echoed through the mist and vanished.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Kael remained standing with his arms folded, feeling more foolish with each passing moment. To any normal climber, calling for the same administrator that had already tried to undermine him on an earlier floor would have sounded like an excellent way to invite another disaster. To Kael, it was simply the shortest route to an argument, and right now he had a very good argument.
A small circular portal finally opened several steps away from him, outlined by a frame of golden light. A familiar white-furred rabbit stepped through it, dressed in his immaculate twin-tailed tuxedo with the same monocle resting over one crimson eye. Torrac looked annoyed before the portal had even finished closing, his long ears angled backward in a way that made it very clear Kael was not the person he wanted calling him today.
The rabbit stopped in front of him and sighed. "Why is it always you?"
Kael gestured sharply toward the notifications still suspended in front of him. "The trial changed. You did something again?"
Torrac’s ears stiffened. His irritation deepened instantly. "Stop accusing me every time something unpleasant happens to you. I am an administrator, not your personal source of misfortune. I only became aware of what happened on the floor after the alteration had already been accepted."
"Accepted by who?"
"The Tower."
"That explains absolutely nothing."
"It is not required to explain itself to you," Torrac replied, adjusting the cuff of one sleeve. "Nor to me, in most cases."
Kael looked at him for a long second, trying to decide how much of the rabbit’s annoyance was performance. Torrac had interfered before, and he had not exactly been subtle about disliking Kael. Still, there was something different about his expression this time. The rabbit looked irritated, yes, but not pleased. If he had arranged that iron trap at the exit, Kael would have expected at least a little satisfaction that somebody had been crushed inside it.
Instead, Torrac seemed almost as bothered by the altered trial as Kael was.
"Fine," Kael said. "Then hear me out before you disappear and pretend none of this concerns you. I completed the floor with the lowest Fracture ever recorded, but I get placed fourth because I missed a hidden objective."
"That is generally what happens when climbers miss objectives," Torrac replied.
"Don’t be an ass. I missed it because the rules changed."
Torrac’s nose twitched. "Explain."
Kael pointed toward the line describing the Dark Beast of the Rift. "The hidden objective was down in that ravine. I know that because I fought the Stone Maw Lizard there, and the evaluation says it was only the miniboss. There was something else below us, something bigger, and if the trial had remained the way it was meant to be, I could have gone down there properly and hunted it."
Torrac tilted his head slightly. "You believe you would have done so?"
"I know I would have considered it. More importantly, I would have had the choice." Kael tapped the notification with one finger, though it offered no reaction to the contact. "The original rule only needed three climbers to reach the exit. With four of us alive, we could still cooperate, reach the final stretch, and decide what to do. Once the rule became first three to arrive, the trial forced us to rush. The old man destroyed the bridge because he believed one of us had to be left behind. I went into the rift because I was trying to catch up to him, not because I was freely taking on a hidden challenge. Then I had to leave the Dark Beast alone because if I stayed, I lost the entire trial."
Torrac was silent for a moment. His ears lowered slightly as he looked past Kael, not at anything in the chamber, but at some information only an administrator could access.
Kael continued before the rabbit could dismiss him. "So yes, I’m saying the trial changing cost me the chance to complete the hidden objective. Either my clear reward should account for that, or I should be allowed another chance to fight the beast under conditions that aren’t completely different from everyone else’s."
Torrac gave him a long look through the magnifying lens of his monocle. "You are extraordinarily demanding for someone who only recently learned that arguing with an administrator was an option."
"I didn’t know it was an option. I’m trying it now."
"That much is obvious."
Torrac sighed, then lifted one paw to his monocle and adjusted it carefully. His red eye narrowed behind the lens before both eyes closed completely. For several seconds, nothing happened beyond a faint shift in the mist around the crossroads. Kael waited, fingers tapping once against the edge of his gauntlet, trying not to let his impatience get the better of him.
When Torrac opened his eyes again, he looked displeased.
"It seems," the rabbit said, drawing the words out as though they tasted sour, "that you are partially right."
Kael immediately frowned. "Partially?"
"The Tower acknowledges that the rule alteration changed the behavior of the trial and created a stronger incentive for you to proceed directly to the exit," Torrac said. "You were operating under constraints that the climbers who earned the higher overall rankings did not face."
Kael nodded once. "Good. Then fix it."
"It is not that simple," Torrac replied. "The Tower also judges that you still possessed alternatives. You discovered the ravine. You entered the Dark Beast’s territory. You recognized that something remained deeper within it. You could have elected to fight the creature, and afterward eliminated one of the other climbers yourself to ensure that only three proceeded through the exit."
For a second, Kael simply stared at him.
Then his mouth opened slightly in disbelief. "That is the Tower’s argument?"
"It appears to be."
"That I could have killed one of the people I dragged through the entire desert, then gone looking for a hidden boss while the exit timer was running?"
Torrac held up both paws defensively. "Do not look at me like that. I did not say it was an appealing alternative. I said the option existed according to the Tower’s interpretation of its own trial."
Kael let out a breath through his nose. "That is a very roundabout way of saying I’m not getting paid for this fuckup."
"Not by me," Torrac said immediately. "If you believe the Tower’s ruling is incorrect, lodge your complaint with the Tower."
Kael stared at him again. "I can do that?"
Torrac’s expression became deeply unhelpful. "The Tower is very mysterious."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one you are getting from me."
Kael looked upward at the empty space above the circular chamber. There was no visible ceiling, no glowing eye watching him, no grand authority waiting to receive his grievance. Only pale mist and the three sealed passages ahead. Talking to Torrac was strange enough.
Talking to a building, or whatever consciousness existed behind it, felt like the sort of behavior that would make people gently take sharp objects away from him.
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