The Trial

Here it is, the one and only, the Hyper Dagger! ...Though the journey here has long worn off any initial hype I might have had. I wonder if I'll be able to handle the trial. From what I've heard, you can quit and try again as much as you want. The dagger is surrounded by these bizarre golden birds, but I pay no heed to those details as I mentally prepare myself to touch the dagger.

I reach out, and as my hand touches... no, more like enters or experiences the dagger, my senses are immediately overwhelmed. It feels like I'm accelerating fast, and my vision matches that, but it stops almost immediately. My hand is now golden and bizarre, like those birds I saw earlier. Just as I've seen with every dagger user, I blast out a stream of smaller golden daggers. Then I stop and start shooting those daggers in bursts. I feel confident, thinking, "I can shoot daggers now, pretty typical for daggers but considering that I'm new it's pretty cool." and then the trial begins.

My head is suddenly filled with information about what I can now do, my abilities, and the enemies I will face. From what I can tell, my body is just better—with all the crazy movement I have, from bunny hopping to using those dagger bursts as an extra jump.

The trials start. It begins with skulls, then snakes, then scuttles, and spiders. I am stupid and awkward with my fighting at first, but over time, I finally manage to get the hang of everything and fight half decently. And by "over time," I mean five years of pain and suffering. All the enemies are big and imposing, and I died many times until I was no longer intimidated by them. And by "die," I mean getting my body brutally shattered and broken by the sheer force these enemies can hit me with. Seriously, a slight graze and I'm on the ground like Yamcha from Dragon Ball. The constantly chasing skulls are the worst, and I have to seriously learn the technique of moving fast because running is just not cutting it. The dagger jumps feel like uncontrollably getting flung by an explosion, which is a pretty accurate feeling. Overall, it is just hell.

After I finally feel like a confident fighter—after getting brutalized an unspecified number of times—I am putting down these enemies with lasers and my feet better than ever before. But then,

"Aagh!" My scream is pointless as I am instantly hit by an emerging centipede from the ground and die, restarting the trial. At this point, things are getting pretty hopeless. I am constantly suffering through this arena, running only on my emotionless resolve to get it over with, I'm just in the motions of this trial. By this point, I have lost track of time and am fully dedicated to this arena. I can now see how people spend centuries on a trial like this. But even after I can take down that centipede like the insect it is, I am still having a hard time with the constantly increasing intensity of the fight and the ever-growing number of enemies.

So I keep going and going and going. Shooting down enemies with my unlimited arrangement of daggers and ability to turn dead enemies into gems for lasers. I am creating shockwaves by slamming on the ground from high up, moving around my enemies in an intricate dance practiced to utter and sheer perfection. Suddenly, all the fighting is abruptly halted by a black hole surrounded by biblically accurate angel wings in the same surreal goldness that all my enemies had. It pulls me in fast, and I feel danger from it. Which I don't really need to mention considering how it seems to be a literal living black hole, so I start shooting at it. But this... god? I don't know. I just know that. But it keeps pulling me in faster, so I keep shooting at it with the gems I get out of it and my burst shots. And right as it is about to consume me, I destroy it.

Suddenly, I am back where the dagger was right before the trial started, surrounded by those birds I saw over 500 years ago.