In the game, failing to answer the Whispering Hollow riddle correctly meant losing a third of your HP, no matter how high your Vitality was. Worse, regeneration, potions, healing spells, and immunity buffs were completely useless. If you guessed incorrectly three times, you were forced to restart the entire game from the beginning.

I still remembered the sheer frustration I had felt the first time I lost to this trial. I had spent dozens of hours grinding, perfecting my build, only to lose it all in an instant. The rage had been so intense that I slammed my keyboard hard enough to break it.

Fortunately, in the game, the riddle never changed. After a few painful resets, I finally memorized the correct answer and got past it.

But this world didn't play by the same rules.

The riddle given this time was one I had never seen before. It was new and unfamiliar. And now, we only had one guess left.

I swallowed hard. If it were just my life on the line, I might have taken a wild guess, answered with more confidence. But I wasn't just risking myself. Four other people were depending on me. The weight of that responsibility made my hands tremble.

I repeated the question over and over in my mind. I have many faces, but no eyes to see. I hold all that is past, yet cannot move. I speak without words and tell tales without sound.

I took a slow breath, gathering every ounce of knowledge I had, every fragment of logic that could lead me to the answer.

I spoke.

It was barely a whisper, my voice so quiet it almost didn't feel real.

The monolith reacted instantly. The soft blue glow of the runes shifted in color. Not to red, but to green.

My pulse thundered in my ears.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the mist vanished. Completely.

The suffocating heat, the crushing tension, it was all gone in an instant. In its place, the surrounding trees shifted again, revealing new paths that had previously been sealed off.

For a moment, none of us spoke.

"Haah…" A collective sigh of relief filled the air.

Orin was the first to break the silence. She threw back a healing potion, gasping slightly before looking at me with wide, admiring eyes. "Eryndor, that was amazing! How did you figure out the answer?"

Muradin clapped me on the back with a hearty laugh. "Hah! I never doubted you for a second."

Darwyn scoffed, crossing his arms. "Don't forget, we almost failed thanks to a certain dwarf and his reckless mouth." He shot Muradin a pointed glare.

Muradin, of course, only grinned, completely unapologetic. "Eh, no harm done. Erynd pulled through in the end."

I exhaled slowly, letting the tension finally leave my body. "I was just lucky," I admitted. "I spend a lot of time in the Grand Library. That's probably why the answer came to me."

Because the answer was something I had spent countless hours staring at. Something that held endless knowledge yet never spoke a single word.

A book.

***

After taking a short break to catch our breath, I led my team forward, carefully selecting one of the newly revealed paths. I chose the rightmost path from our previous entry point, the one leading to Glade 52, Mirrorglade.

As soon as we set foot in the clearing and touched the massive monolith at its center, total darkness engulfed the entire space.

For a moment, there was nothing. No sound, no light, just an endless void.

Then, just as suddenly as it came, the darkness vanished.

Everything looked the same. The trees, the monolith, the air itself. It was as if nothing had changed at all. Except for one thing.

There were now two Elenas standing before us.

Identical. Perfectly identical.

The objective of this trial was straightforward: Find and eliminate the imposter.

There was no time limit, which was a small mercy, but that didn't make it any easier.

Darwyn was the first to act. 'Name all of your siblings,' he asked quickly.

Both Elenas answered at the same time, their voices overlapping in perfect unison. Their tone, cadence, even the little inflections in their words, it was all the same.

Darwyn frowned, clearly unsettled. He glanced at me, then at Muradin and Orin. None of us could tell them apart.

Muradin and Orin took turns asking questions, even throwing in personal, private details. But every time, both Elenas gave the exact same response. They even refused to answer overly intimate questions, showing the same level of caution.

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It was as if their minds were linked, the imposter mirroring Elena's thoughts in real-time.

I knew there was a foolproof way to expose the fake. But I held back for now, observing quietly. I didn't want to seem too suspicious.

After a while, I finally stepped forward, breaking my silence. "Elena, name the weapon you're holding."

Both of them responded instantly. "Webweaver Longbow."

Then, as if realizing something, they both spoke again, their voices laced with growing alarm. "This is impossible. She… she can read my mind."

I smiled. "Don't worry about it. Use the skill from your weapon."

One of the Elenas stiffened.

Her fingers twitched ever so slightly, the mask of perfect composure cracking just a fraction.

In the next instant, she moved.

Faster than a blink, she raised her bow, drawing an arrow and aiming directly at the other Elena.

Swooosh!

An arrow shot forward and hit Elena right in the head.

For a split second, my blood ran cold. No. No way.

Elena's body jerked backward, her eyes wide in shock…

Then she crumpled to the ground.

It took a second for my brain to catch up. I turned sharply to my right.

Darwyn stood there, his bow still drawn, his breathing ragged.

He had shot first.

His arrow had torn straight through the imposter's head, killing her before she could release her own shot.

Elena, the real Elena, was unharmed.

The fake Elena lay twitching on the ground, blood pooling around her. Even as her form withered, her lifeless eyes still reflected Elena's face. The sight sent a shiver down my spine.

Darwyn let out a shaky breath, finally lowering his bow. His hands trembled slightly, but his voice was steady when he muttered, "Close one."

Not long after, the darkness swallowed us again, an eerie silence settling over the glade. When it lifted, it was Muradin's turn to face his double.

***

The imposters in Mirrorglade weren't just simple doppelgängers. They were perfect mimics, able to read and mirror the thoughts of the person they copied in real time. They could use every skill and spell their original possessed, except for those granted by equipment.

That small limitation was exactly what we exploited.

Muradin's fake was easy to uncover. The moment we told both Muradins to activate his finishing skill, one of them hesitated. A fatal mistake.

Darwyn's imposter fell just as quickly. His signature fire arrows were linked to his longbow. The fake couldn't use them.

When Orin's duplicate appeared, we had an even simpler method.

"Summon a potion in your hand," I instructed.

Orin's sub-space inventory allowed her to materialize potions at will. The doppelgänger, of course, failed instantly.

Before it could react, Muradin grabbed its shoulder in a crushing grip. "Nice try," he growled before slamming his shield into its face. The imposter crumpled.

Now, there was only one person left.

Me.

The others hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. Unlike them, I didn't have specialized gear. There were no weapon-bound skills or exclusive inventory tricks to exploit.

But I didn't need them.

The moment my imposter materialized, I was already moving.

BAM!

I drove my staff straight into his face.

At the exact same time, he did the same to me.

Our strikes collided with identical speed, except for one small difference.

Before the darkness swallowed us, I had activated Tempest Shield and Inner Beast.

His attack bounced harmlessly off my body. Mine, however, landed with tripled strength.

CRACK.

My imposter staggered backward, stunned and vulnerable.

Darwyn let out a low whistle. "You never fail to surprise me, Erynd."

The moment the final imposter collapsed, the glade trembled. A new path unfurled before us, revealing a few options leading deeper into the unknown.

Without hesitation, we pressed on.

***

Days had passed since we first stepped into the Northern Glades, and in that time, we had overcome more than twenty trials, each with a unique challenge and different levels of difficulty.

In Temporal Glade, we had to navigate a shifting reality, choosing the correct timeline where past and future twisted together in a delicate dance.

In Elderwood's Sanctuary, we sat in absolute silence for what felt like hours, listening to the rambling tales of an Ancient Treant. The challenge? Demonstrate patience and respect for nature. One wrong move, a single sign of impatience, and we would have been cast out, unable to reenter the place.

Then came the Echoing Labyrinth, a maze where the only way forward was to listen to sound cues. Our eyes deceived us, but our ears guided us through the twisting corridors.

But something felt off.

Each time I searched for hidden treasures, they were already gone.

A special artifact buried in a concealed path within the Echoing Labyrinth? Gone.

A hidden monster lair in the Crumbled Zone, only accessible by intentionally stepping onto the wrong stone and falling into the abyss? Already cleared.

Even the legendary flame of Emberglow Glade, where one had to carry a small ember through relentless, extinguishing winds. Someone had beaten me to it.

That shouldn't have been possible.

These were secrets I had painstakingly uncovered during my time in the game. Knowledge that took months to compile. Even the most dedicated adventurers shouldn't have known about these paths.

And yet, someone did.

Frustration gnawed at me. My meticulously crafted plan was falling apart.

I clenched my fists. I refused to return to the city empty-handed.

There was one last secret left.

Verdant Glade.

A hidden sanctuary that could only be accessed by unlocking every path leading to the portal of the second floor, and then moving against the natural flow, stepping backward away from the portal.

No one should have figured that out yet.

This time, I wouldn't let someone else claim it first.

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