677 First Trial 3 (1/2)

Just as Dyon was about to think through what his next step should be, an unexpected notification sounded in his years that sounded a lot like his grand teacher trying to sound grand an imposing.

'The first stage of the trial has been complete. Would you like to quit and accept the appropriate rewards, or continue on to the second and final stage?'

To anyone else, these words would have seemed simple and meaningless. In fact, many might choose to quit. However, when Dyon heard these words, his eyes glistened and his focus sharpened.

Firstly, it told him that he was correct. The goal of the trial was to move outward, not inward. If not, then he wouldn't have completed the first stage.

Secondly, it completely eliminated the need for him to sit and wait to see if the walls would move again just when he was on the cusp of something. It was clear that this second stage had to do with the constant shifting of the walls, as such, it was named stage two. Stage one was a still maze, and stage two was a shifting one. Simple. And not so simple. All at once.

Dyon stood silently, quietly observing the shifting walls and ground. He didn't move an inch, but the calculations speeding through his mind told a different story.

This was a trial. As such, it had to follow a set of rules that might not necessarily be true in real life.

If this was the maze of a legacy world, the expert who built the world would have no obligation to stick to any rules. Although they'd never find a successor using such cruel methods, some experts were too selfish to pass on their teachings to begin with.

However, since this wasn't a legacy world, Dyon completely through out the possibility that the movements of walls were random. There had to be a pattern somewhere and it was up to him to find it.

You could imagine a circular maze as structure similar to what you'd see after slicing an onion in half. The only difference was that the layers had dips and turns an onion wouldn't have, and this was exactly what Dyon was observing right now. This was, of course, in addition to the fact that those layers seemed to be moving independently of each other.

The first thing Dyon observed almost immediately was that the layer beyond him had movement he could separate relative to the layer he stood in.

This immediately let Dyon know that not every wall was moving in the same direction and not every wall was moving at the same speed. It was very clear that the closer Dyon got to the edge, the faster the walls moved, and the closer to the center he approached, the slower the walls moved before they likely stopped all together.

Dyon had unwittingly stepped into the crux of the trial again. The solution was obvious. It didn't matter where he was now or where the maze's shifting was bringing him, as long as he used his observational abilities to continue toward the faster moving segments, he would be going in the right direction.