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Alex opened his eyes and looked around to find himself in a corridor underground, stuck in a cavern. His memories had been sealed again as he began to face the new trial before him with nothing but his bare soul.

Alex stood in the middle of this cavern with no idea whether to go left or right. He stood there letting his gut feeling direct him on which passageway to go down as he faced the crossroads.

Alex drew a deep breath and confidently walked down the left pathway and down into the long corridor. Nothing happened for a while until the passageway went upstairs.

"Ughh, stairs again" Alex muttered. The mental impact of the previous trial still bared like fresh wounds on his soul.

Alex was confused right from the moment the trial began, opening his eyes to this realm. He knew one thing though and that was to keep walking no matter what, so that was what he did.

Into the left corridor, he saw nothing but cave walls lit up by brilliant crystals and a tiled floor. It looked strange that someone would tile a passageway in the floor of a cave especially one so complex.

Walking through the tunnel there were no signs until Alex was met with a dead-end.

Reversing his steps he returned to the cavern and followed the other corridor on the right. Continuing his trek until he finally arrived at another cavern that now had 4 corridors of which he had to choose one.

Without hesitating he once again chose according to his gut feeling. Choosing the right-most path and quickly walking down it only to end up at another dead end.

With no alternatives, Alex walked down to the previous cavern. Out of the remaining three passages he chose the one right in the middle. Which to his luck didn't end up as a dead end, leading him into a cavern this time having 8 more passageways which led in every direction.

Without giving it much thought Alex walked into a random one and this time to his surprise at the end of this passage was the cavern with 4 corridors, although it was clearly a different cavern.

At this point Alex began to get impatient as for the last 6 hours he had still gotten no clue about the reasons for the lack of change in landscape, save for the caverns getting larger with more and more zig-zagging corridors. Clearly, the Labrinth did not want to give him up so easily.

Taking a deep breath and settling his mind Alex knew that going the way things were he would never leave this maze any time soon.

He began to calmly inspect the corridors in front of him, making sure there were no details left behind. To his surprise, pressed into the first tile of each corridor was a tiny simple glyph similar to a motion sensor. It gets ignited briefly once anyone walks past it.

Interestingly, Alex noticed these and inspected the glyphs taking avid note of each of them as he walked down the individual corridors. One after the other noticing that out of the four corridors and four glyphs.

One led down to a massive cavern, one to a dead end, one would lead to a smaller cavern and the last would lead him to another dead end. Taking note of these outcomes, he moved further into the massive cavern.

Noticing that none of the previous glyphs appeared within these corridors the glyphs on this path were entirely unique. Completely different from the others with little to no relation.

So Alex began to memorise every last glyph and found that 6 corridors were deadends and for the two others one led to a massive 16 corridor cavern and the other led to a 4 corridor cavern.

Keeping note of each glyph's nature was a challenge, as each corridor seemed to never end. Making Alex anticipate the result of either a dead end or a new cave desperately.

The distance within each corridor stretched for what seemed to be miles, forcing Alex to pay rapt attention throughout the journey. The slightest slip-up in remembering the glyph may cause him to get lost in the repetitiveness of the maze.

To make things more difficult he noticed that after a period of time, the glyph at the entrance would be changed, causing the outcome of the corridor to change suddenly.

Alex first noticed this after identifying half of the glyphs in the cave, forcing him to repeat the entire attempt all over again.

Eventually, some familiar glyphs reappeared after 8 rounds of swapping. Alex quickly confirmed the outcome for these glyphs had remained unchanged.

Upon returning to the cave he sat down and began to confirm the outcome of his research.

"This is a maze of unimaginable sizes with an irregular map that changes every so often. With the glyphs as the only identifiers and each glyph having its own unique outcome.

"The corridors increase the number of possible answers and multiply the options exponentially. However, in every set of corridors and glyphs, there is only one correct glyph among them.

And the other number of them would only lead to dead ends or take you around in a circle" Alex thought aloud.

'Indeed,' a whisper appeared out of nowhere. Bringing with it a wind that blew in from all the corridors at once. And like a mighty chariot, it stormed into Alex's mind and stole away all his thoughts and deductions returning him to a blank slate state.

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Out in the Origin Realm, Felix and his sister Gaya looked on as Alex began the so-called trial of idiots.

"This trial's first stage is a test on retaining one's stream of thoughts under pressure with a myriad of distractions for a long duration."

Felix explained the basic knowledge of the trial

"The trial gives the challenger a series of glyphs to memorise and keep in their memory for a prolonged period. These glyphs are the key to mastering the first phase of the trial.

"Normally the trial realm would not interfere with the thoughts or the memorising of the challengers until the last stage of the first phase. But when it does, it is at that point that most of the challengers fail and end up as complete idiots."

"Brutal indeed" Gaya commented.

At that moment the gateway pulsated strangely releasing a powerful burst of aura that assaulted Alex's mind.

"Oh no, so soon!" Felix said looking worriedly at Alex hoping he would not end up a total idiot as the trial realm had launched its first attack way too early.