The First Finals

Quests

Physical Make-Up Work

You have failed your buffness of body assessment. To avoid penalties proceed to room Nr. 223.

Psychopathy Make-Up Work

You have failed your psychopathy assessment. To avoid penalties proceed to room Nr. 13.

Extra Credit: Survival

You are among the top 5 survivors of your sector. Proceed to room Nr. 696 for a bonus survival challenge.

Extra Credit: Arcane Knowledge

You are among the top 5 arcanists of your sector. Proceed to room Nr. 1912 for a bonus survival challenge.

Valedictorian: Arcane Knowledge

You are the top scorer in Arcane Knowledge in your sector. Complete the Master of Arcana challenge in Room Nr. 5 to receive a unique award

"Well, I'm not doing any fucking psychopathy extra credit work, that's for sure," I said. "The penalties could be bad," Artemis said. "The challenge could be worse. I am absolutely certain that this Tower is designed specifically to make us into violent and paranoid weirdos. I don't think it's a good idea to give it any help," I said. "You get the issue though, right?" Anna said. "I guess. If we're going to complete all the quests we're going to have to split up. But we could stick together for the ones we have in common," I said. "Let's cross-reference what we have," Artemis said, and we did.

There was surprisingly little overlap, and even when we did have matching rooms- like, me and Anna shared the Room 13 challenge for psychopathy- which we were definitely not going to do together- they were never the same for more than two or three people.

Most people had ended up scoring high on the Survival assessment. Which made sense. Since we were all still alive. Me, Zack and Hannah were the highest scoring without any serious physical or mental damage. Anna had also somehow gained access to the challenge, perhaps because the rest of the top scorers weren't in any state to take on a serious challenge. The one-armed woman was in second place, and there was a man who kept trying to nod off, but every time he managed to fall asleep he almost immediately woke up screaming. Zack had a separate room, as the highest scorer, while I shared the survival challenge room with him and Hannah.

"I guess we won't know how to proceed until we check out what's behind the door," I said. "Alex, you're barely standing and you've been crying blood for the past ten minutes. We'll get out of here and you try hiding under the table. Do you think that'd work for your healing ability?" Artemis said.

I went to wipe my eyes, but hit invisible glass, of course. I knew I had tears running down my face, but had assumed it was just another way the stress had got to me. Artemis had no reason to lie, and I had no reason to think that my ability wouldn't work hiding under the table in an empty room, so I just said yes.

I did look over their shoulders as the Guild left, and explained to Anna how my healing ability worked. She furrowed her brow at the strange ability, but didn't press. Which probably meant I looked even worse than what Artemis had described or how I felt. There was another hallway of doors, but there were a few differences from the Halls as I knew them.

First, the doors were all numbered. The numbers were non-sequential and none of them visible from inside the waiting room were ones in my quest log. Second, the doors were only a few feet apart from one another. Finally, you could see the hallway ending in a dead-end a few hundred feet in either direction. So, in other words, you could no longer wander the halls avoiding the doorways like we had so many times before, in order to progress we would have to go through the doors.

As the last to leave Anna closed the door behind her. And alone in a dark room when I fell to the floor, I could almost not bring up the strength to crawl under the table, where I curled up in fetal position and waited for the ability to start working. The five minutes seemed to take forever, but finally it activated. Slowly, over the next twenty minutes, my organs and bones knit together, as my veins re-filled with lost blood and my mind came back into focus as my brain got unscrambled. I was breathing heavily by the time I was fully healed.

I slowed my breathing and entered a meditative state, which was a lot easier with my enhanced stats, and let my feelings pass me by. I knew I couldn't explore or even observe them right now, not if I wanted to keep going, but meditation can be as analgesic as therapeutic, so I let go of thoughts and memories until it didn't hurt so much, and then I took out my Journal and I chose the abilities from the level.

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I put the attribute point in strength. Min maxing is good and all, but I had two reasons to pick strength. First, the quest for physical assessment would likely involve physical prowess, and at strength 1 I would fail almost certainly. Second, honing one of your skills at the expense of all others may work in a game where you can either always rely on your party members, or your abilities to always make up for your shortfalls, whereas there were many things I couldn't do with magic yet that I could do by being a little stronger.

As always, I felt the change right away, and, as always, it felt good. I squeezed my fist together, and I could have sworn I could squeeze it much harder than before. I was still no powerlifter, hell, I was still below average, but at least I was not pathetic in that regard anymore (and one of those days I would put some points in self-esteem and stop thinking about myself like this).

For the ability, I picked the teleportation skill. The potential utility for it was limitless, even if I did eventually learn magic that allowed me to teleport it would be of high rank, mana cost and complexity, so having a free daily teleport would come in handy, even if it was likely to sooner be later than sooner.

I walked out into the hall fully expecting Artemis to be well in the process of organizing people to go through the doors in the most reasonable order.

So it turned out that we had to get to work. With six categories and a bunch of different quests depending on the outcomes, it wasn't nearly as clear cut as it seemed. For one thing, about half of the Guild had received failing grades. Those that had, had to take 'remedial' challenges, or they wouldn't be allowed to exit the Tower, which, I doubted meant that they would be expelled rather than killed. Then, those that had passed, gained access to optional rooms marked with a green piece of tape. Regardless of the number on the door that you had in your quests, if you had gained a grade rating D- or above, you could go through those doors.

Finally, several of the doors mentioned in the quests weren't there. Indeed, the doors in the hallway in front of us had no obvious order to them at all. Out of all of the doors mentioned in my quests, I only had access to door 696, for the survival bonus. Seeing as how most of us had scored quite high on survival, I had the feeling that we wouldn't be so much mastering wilderness skills as avoiding certain death in that room, so I was understandably hesitant to enter it. On the other hand, three of the other four top survivors were Zack, Hannah and Anna. It took us a moment to figure out why it was four instead of five, until we noticed the piece of paper that the edgelord guy that had vaulted out of the room as soon as he arrived- Jake Lafortier, apparently- had scored second highest in Survival right after Zack.

"Fuck," Artemis said, pacing up and down the corridor and matching people's quests up with doors. "We'll have to split up again. No balancing parties this time either," I said. "There has to be a trick," she said. "I guess we could take a large group of people through a challenge room, but-" I said. "That won't help the people with the lower scores. The ones who need it most," she said, finishing my thought. "Well, we could just ignore the rules completely. Open up a door, get everyone through, keep going until we can't," I said. "Please. Don't. It doesn't work out," Anna said, "You look a lot better." "Got my magic stick and everything. I don't know, Artemis. You've prepared them better than anyone could have expected. Maybe we try trusting them," I said. "We're not talking about sending the kids off camping overnight, people will die," Artemis said. "Artemis, I sincerely admire your compassion, but people will die anyways," Anna said. "Probably true, but we can also probably come up with some guidelines to make sure that the fewest possible die," I said. "I'm all ears," Artemis said. "We can at least get the low level folks our supplies. And I've been thinking about reforming the party now that Anna is here," I said. "Oh. Of course, Alex, it's your ability, you don't have to keep anyone you don't want in the party," Artemis said. I rolled my eyes at her. "The chat is the thing. I'll need to be in contact with you. I'd like to loop Anna in, because I don't want to lose her again," I said. "Aww," Anna said. "Shut up. Then we could separate the others into as few groups as possible, so at least we can keep in contact," I said. "Communication would be key. Good. Let me get to it," Artemis said, and walked off to do her thing.

"Nice gang you've got set up here," Anna said. "They're good people. But it's all her, really," I said. "Pretty lucky to find someone like that here. I wasn't so lucky," Anna said. "Wanna talk about it?" I said. "Yeah. Not now, there's more nightmares to make," Anna said. "If it helps, I haven't felt particularly lucky these past two days," I said. "Why would that help? I'm just glad you're alive," she said. "Me too. And in both the sense that I'm alive and that you're alive," I said. "Okay, what do we do now?" Anna said. "Well, let's see how Artemis' thing works out, but I was hoping to take you, Hannah and Zack into the survival challenge. Hannah's really solid, and Zack, uh, is also good to have on your side," I said. "We both have remedial psychopathy too," Anna said. "Almost everyone has that. I just really don't think we should take it," I said. "Let's see how it shakes out. I bet it'll all make more sense once we're a few rooms in," Anna said. "Unless we've got to split up. I'm taking the Arcana Knowledge room. Unique reward sounds worth the risk, and I guess no one else will be able to enter with me," I said. "We'll stick together as long as we can then," she said.

We found Zack and Hannah talking. Zack was, apparently, out of booze, which, again, apparently really reduced his combat abilities. I was back at full mana and Hannah was always ready to go, and with a second spellcaster among us, it still seemed pretty safe. I did kick Hannah, Zack and Chimo out of the party. Of the failure squad- which I never called them to their face, but I had to call them something in my mind- I added a small, balding Italian man named Luigi. Everyone from House Alsarab had somehow managed to squeeze out a passing grade, so I added Kristen to the party as well. With that and Anna, the party was full once more, and, at least for the first challenge room of each group, we'd have direct lines of communication.

Artemis came up with a pretty simple plan. Aside from us Survival squad, everyone else was separated between one default remedial room and one default challenge room for the failure squad and passing squad respectively. Artemis herself took the chance of going through the Teamwork challenge room with the others who'd gained top marks in that subsection.

The four of us stood in front of door 696, waited for a while, then entered.

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