Chapter 109:

Ace sat down on the couch, with a table in front of him. He placed the box he had been given. It had an electronic lock, which would open in exactly 1 hour, 53 minutes and 45, now 44 seconds. Yes, Ace had been keeping count in his head.

Regardless of when it was meant to open, he grabbed his laptop, and a signal emitter, connecting them to each other. Ace assumed that the way it would work was that once the time began, a signal would go throughout the whole hotel, and open all the boxes. However, this was not an issue, but a boon. For the few that would be able to crack it open beforehand, it would allow them to get an early start on the challenges, which considering how hard they were supposed to be, would certainly be useful.

He began by testing out the more commonly used frequencies, but after 7 minutes, he noticed it would take too long. Instead, he spent 23 minutes coding a program that would emit a variety of frequencies. He spent another 2 minutes testing it.

There were now 1 hour, 20 minutes, and 57 seconds. It took another ten to crack it. It had taken quite a long time today, but in the future, it would be a lot faster since he had already programmed the code.

He opened the box once the lock clicked and opened, releasing the hold it had on the contents that would dictate how Ace would spend his next 24 hours.

The first thing he saw was a message: [We greet you and welcome you to our challenge, for the first day, you must decrypt a set of characters, once you have done so, simply input them in the keypad attached to the message, if it is correct, it will light up green, and you will have completed the challenge. You will have three tries, if you end up using them to input incorrect numbers, you will be disqualified. Good luck.]

Ace put the paper down, and began to take out the separate boxes that had numbers on them, from 1 to 6.

They each contained the separate puzzles he would have to solve to get one or more of the characters he would have to decrypt, once he got the list of characters, he would have to decrypt them.

He began by observing everything, looking for patterns and such, both in the note and on the various boxes. He also set the keypad to the side, he could clearly see displayed on the screen the time he had left.

He opened the first box… and smiled. Inside was a series of binary, Unicode and numeral characters. He would most likely have to convert it to get a message, which he did in his head in 20 seconds. It was a nice message: [The first character is : 278]

He noted it all down, not just the '278', but also the ':'. It was all part of the game, and this was one of the things they would use to get you. You would have to notice the space between the 'is' and the ':', in order to take it as part of the solution.

He opened the second box, where he found a wooden 3d shape, which had various pieces jutting out and interlocked. There was also a message which read: [The heart is the key], which clearly meant he would have to get to the core of the shape, by moving and loosening the interlocking shapes that made up the whole shape. This was one of the puzzles he had done the most, and while it was harder than most, it was still pretty simple, he figured it out within a minute and a half.

This time, what came out was a thin shape of wood that had some engraving in it. He noted it down and continued.

****

This went on for about half an hour, the last puzzle being by far the largest, he had to find a pattern in a long list of characters, and then use it to crack it to find the 1000th character in the sequence, which would be the last character.

Once he had everything, decrypting was easy, and within 5 minutes, he had inputted the correct decryption. It had all been done within less than 40 minutes, Ace had finished before the official challenge had even begun.

'Well, that was harder than I expected, which means that the last puzzle might actually be fun. I should also work on the puzzle I will create once I get to the final, considering it is pretty much a sure thing.

He spent the rest of the morning on that, only stopping a few hours after he had eaten lunch. He had decided on a variation of the MU puzzle. It was one that actually had a solution, which was one of the rules he expected to come up. Otherwise, everyone would simply use some of the impossible puzzles they had created before. Unluckily for them, even if they did so, depending on which one they chose, Ace would be able to solve it, or at least make it appear so, using various techniques to make the answer both confusing and close enough to the required solution that it would trick them into thinking he had figured it out.

That would, of course, kill all the fun, so Ace was already expecting the ban of impossible puzzles to be part of the set of rules.

***

"Well, how is it going? Are you here for a breather?", Edward asked, while taking a big gulp of the Dr.Pepper he was currently drinking.

"Oh come on, you know better, I've finished already, the answer was also approved, so I am done for the day, I think I might go out, nothing much better to do honestly…", Ace said, and waved goodbye to Edward. He had plans to go to a few art museums today, and was carrying his tablet and stylus in his backpack, just in case the urge to draw came up.

"Ok, have fun.", Edward said, going back to his obscene drinking.

***

Ace walked around the museum, astounded by the amazing art that covered the walls, all the while wondering how much of it had gone through Matis' hands before ending up here. It was ridiculous to think that such a close family friend was the main player in the Art Trade in the Western world. It was scarier to think about the great amount of respect a man that could afford to offend everyone showed to his grandmother. It truly put things into perspective.

While going around admiring the art, he spotted a pair of older teens walking around too. He recognised their body shapes and back of their heads from the assembly they had had, and apparently, from the way he pointed at him and she nodded, so did they.

"So, are you here trying to get some inspiration?", the boy asked, a slightly deprecating smile on his face, Ace just laughed.

"No, I already finished the boring stuff, I am having fun now.", he grinned at them, and enjoyed watching their change in expression to one of seriousness at hearing his words, he could be lying, but honestly had no reason to do so. Therefore, they took his comment seriously, and they were now all business.

"Is it now?", the girl commenced, "So, what was it?", they were now fishing for information in a pretty basic manner, they wanted to see if his puzzles were harder or easier to solve than theirs. They had most likely finished solving theirs as well, and probably thought they would be the ones with the shortest solving time.

"Just a wooden shape and a few decryption lists, easy stuff.", Ace downplayed it to the maximum, but the truth was that he had no reason not too. He gained nothing from boasting now, since all it would do was put them on guard for the next challenges. It would feel much better to boast once he had won by a landslide, and could truly say it had all been a piece of cake.

"Ah, ok.", the boy clearly seemed to despise him even more after this, which for some reason made Ace laugh internally. He was not a particularly petty person, but this guy just rubbed him the wrong way.