Paragon of Skills

Jacob is forced to use the Heartfire to generate a couple of wings on his back and slowly glide down to the floor.

He gets a notification that says, “Welcome to the Dungeon of the Worthy.”

Oh, man. Another Dungeon, then.

So far in this realm, he has been put to the test several times in these past few weeks, and he’s starting to get a little tired of it. He knows that apparently they have been plagued by the Primordial God of Apocalypse, and that there’s a war going on. But Count Myshkin was very evasive about the subject and didn’t really tell Jacob that much. So, as things currently stand, Jacob can’t even offer any specific help. Not that he didn’t try, but they don’t seem that interested in having him do anything but mine Mana nodes out. And the only way that Jacob has to mine more efficiently is to manage to convert Mana nodes by himself. And who knows what he might be able to do if he only managed not to reduce them to dust with his knowledge of all the intrinsic flaws that a multipotent Mana node carries with it.

So he looks around.

“Well, whatever gets me to the damn Book of Blade. And what a stupid name, by the way,” he mutters.

“Are you perhaps insulting our great ancestor?”

Jacob whirls on the spot and sees that the executioner has come with him.

Damn it.

“Sir? No, I was just complaining — just been thrown in a hole, not in the best mood. What are you doing here? Isn’t this Dungeon meant for me?”

“It is, but you won’t be able to access the Dungeon unless I am here. I am Kamenev, the Guardian of the Kingdom. Only I have the keys to—”

Jacob turns and sees that the door behind him — a silvery double door made of Mithril — has just opened.

“Did you open it, Sir Kamenev?”

The executioner looks at Jacob in confusion.

“Has someone tampered with this? Only someone carrying Rafnov’s legacy can access the door, and only someone who has passed multiple of Rafnov’s Tri—”

“Yeah, I carry Rafnov’s legacy. I have passed multiple trials,” Jacob says, facepalming. “Haven’t I said all of this already? I’ve said that I’m distantly, I guess, from Rafnov’s bloodline. Why are we doing this?”

The executioner, Kamenev, pauses for a moment.

“It matters not what your heritage is, but the fact that you can access the Dungeon of the Worthy means—”

“Yeah, whatever. So, if I finish this Dungeon,” Jacob says angrily, “can I finally access the Book of Blade, sir? I don’t wanna be disrespectful, but isn’t this whole kingdom on a strict timeline because of the Dungeon of Apocalypse? I have destroyed an Original Dungeon of Apocalypse. It was capped to Imperium Rank, so that helped — like, really helped — and I’m only Diamond Rank, though my fighting power is way above that. But I’m sure I can help. I’m sure I ended up here for a reason. I’m sure I’m connected somehow to all of this. Can we just get this done?”

“You have a lot of confidence,” Kamenev the executioner says.

“I have good reasons to have it,” Jacob replies to the serious man.

The first trial is a room of smoke and mirrors. A miner’s eyes need to—

Jacob looks at it.

Yeah, the door is in the far left corner. The other doors are fake. There are traps on the ground.

Then, to demonstrate that, he just walks quickly across the traps, not triggering them, and knocks on the door, opens it, shows it to Kamenev, and says, “There you go. Can we move to the next, please?”

Kamenev feels like he’s just been slapped across the face.

“Of course,” he says, regaining his composure and following Jacob through the next piece of the trial.

- - -

Princess Yekaterina is shouting at Count Myshkin.

“Why did you not test him? Why did you have to bring him here without giving him the slightest test? You could have asked him one question other than, ‘Have you been trained as a miner?’ He comes from a world where Skill Crystals don’t grow in mines, Myshkin. What are you doing?”

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She slams her heel on the ground. She is finally in regal clothes, and not in those dirty mine clothes.

“Your Highness,” Count Myshkin says, raising his hands defensively. “How could I have known all of that? And I asked him, ‘Were you trained as a miner? Are you sure you’re from Rafnov’s bloodline?’ I asked all the right questions. I just didn’t think that it was gonna be good etiquette for me to doubt him and ask him directly, ‘Oh, do you actually have any idea what I’m talking about?’ I thought it was a given.”

“Whatever. Let’s go see what’s happening.”

They enter the side room, where there is a crystal capable of projecting the events in the Dungeon of the Worthy.

“The first room is one of the hardest — and that’s the second room,” Count Myshkin says in awe as he points at where Jacob is currently tapping a foot on a floor made of glass.

“How did he reach the second room already? Didn’t he just fall? Did you go and take a break before coming here?” the princess asks, beside herself. “Myshkin, I swear, I don’t care about your status as a miner — if this boy gets killed because—”

“He just solved it.”

They see Jacob injecting Mana into the glass tiles on the floor and triggering a chain reaction in the Skill Crystals right underneath that shatters the wall that was hiding the real door. All the other doors lead to even more trapped rooms, and this is meant to prove whether a miner can recognize the path among obstacles and confounding variables.

Once again, Jacob steps toward the door, and they see that Kamenev is not looking like himself.

“The man looks a little pale,” Myshkin comments. “Could it be that he thinks that Jacob is going to make it?”

“If he is truly who he says he is, he might, right?” Princess Yekaterina comments under her breath.

Jacob Cloud is the sort of surprise that she would have never imagined reaching the court of Zamorye. And yet it looks like he has come precisely in the moment of need. Exactly when they needed someone just like him. She had been ready to bestow royal privileges upon him, to sponsor him so that he could take a look at the Book of Blade — since he was the first one who ever managed to fully master that hellish Primordial Spell that is the Wrath of Blade.

And so Count Myshkin and Princess Yekaterina watch, stunned, as Jacob passes one trial after the other, barely stopping, barely showing one ounce of fear or regard toward the executioner — whom even the royal family, and her royal parents, currently fighting on the front lines against the Nightmares of Apocalypse, would not dare offend lightly.

The executioner is an ancient human, much older than he looks, one of their ancestors, even though he doesn’t speak about his past. But he belongs to the royal family and has been the guardian of their secrets, of their techniques, of the inheritance of Rafnov. But he’s brushed aside several times when he tries to warn Jacob about this or that. It looks like Jacob barely pays any attention to the ruthless, cold man.

In fact, he has started addressing him by name.

- - -

“Kamenev.” Jacob yawns. “So, all three rooms beside these doors are good to go. What’s the trial in this room? Are you allowed to say?”

Kamenev is at a point he had never thought he would be in: Jacob Cloud has successfully completed so many rooms in the maze that is this Rafnov Trial that he has triggered a special event. And indeed, he has to say what is actually happening.

“No one before has completed all the rooms correctly. Based on the door you enter, you will suffer a different fate. Those who enter the wrong rooms usually suffer the fate of death, Jacob Cloud. This is the first time I am seeing someone make the three Mithril doors appear. And now you must choose the one that your Karma leads you to.”

Jacob just walks forward.

“So, they are all three good. Whatever.”

And he opens the first.

“What are you doing?” Kamenev says, actually losing his cool. “This is one of the most important choices there could be in your entire life. Do you understand that the fate of the rest of your existence might be influenced by this one choice and—”

“I’ve opened the door. It’s fine. Whatever you choose, at some point, things are going to happen. I don’t care. Please, let’s go.”

Jacob walks through the door, barely pays attention to it, and then sees that there’s only one other door. He checks with the Grimoire, makes sure, reaches the next door, opens it, and then hears Kamenev’s hum from behind.

“This— You managed to reach the end of a trial that should have taken weeks. Most get lost in here. Clearly, I misunderstood you and your sight. You are blessed by divine intuition and superior miner Skills, Sir Cloud. I apologize for believing you an incompetent, incapable, foolish, useless young man.”

Couple adjectives too many.

Jacob cringes and then looks ahead, seeing just a blank wall.

“Okay, so what’s the deal with this trial? It’s just, uh—”

“You triggered the easiest piece of the trial, Cloud. Sir Cloud. Which proves you are not indeed as useless as I thought you were. I thought you were here to steal from the royal family, to dazzle the princess with your devilish good looks, and perhaps take her—”

“Okay, don’t finish that sentence,” Jacob says, raising a hand. “So what’s the trial here?”

“It’s very simple. You will be gifted an extremely pure Mana node for your Rank. I suspect it will be Imperium Rank, the Mana node you will meet here. You just have to reap it, see what it gives you, and we can move forward with it.” Kamenev smiles warmly. “It’s actually one of the easiest, if not the easiest outcome you could have hoped for. It is a gift that came through the door you picked. So you picked extremely well, despite me believing you were so useless.”

Jacob scratches his chin and asks with such an expression it looks like he just swallowed an entire unripe lemon.

“Are you saying that there is a Mana node in there, I have to mine it, and if I don’t mine it, like… I die or something?”

“Well, I will have to kill you if you do that, because you will have officially failed the Dungeon. But that never happens. I’ve never heard of someone destroying a Mana node in my entire life. Well, perhaps once or twice, by someone who was trying to do something like that. But as long as you get any Skill, you will have passed the trial.” Kamenev laughs warmly and pats Jacob on the shoulder. “You truly are Rafnov’s worthy inheritor. So please go ahead.”

And he pushes Jacob forward.

Jacob looks at the wall, worried, and says, “Oh, so if I don’t mine the Mana node—”

“Yes, I will kill you,” Kamenev says eagerly from behind.

“Great,” Jacob mutters, looking back at the wall.