Chapter 178: Chapter 169 – Solving the Subway Car

The puzzles needed instructions. Yes, they’d figured them out so far, but not everyone would have Serenity there to explain how magic worked, and what if someone didn’t realize that was the goal of the puzzle? They might have missed it if Mandy hadn’t gotten frustrated. Or what if someone didn’t recognize one of the other puzzles? Just a line or two about the rules would fix that.

Serenity watched his tablet as three lines of text appeared on Puzzle 6.

Click on a square to advance it and the squares next to it.

Color Order: White -> Yellow -> Black -> White

Goal: Change all squares to Black

Some of the squares were white, some were yellow, and some were black.

At least he knew what it would do now. It was significantly more complex than the first puzzle, but the layout was still simple and he solved it quickly.

The next three puzzles - another sudoku, tangram, and block sliding puzzle - were also quick to solve for all of them. The tenth puzzle was two dots connected by a line for Serenity, Mandy and Raz, but it was simply two dots for Roy. Serenity’s completed immediately again; Raz was able to simply project his mana and slide it from one dot to the other.

Mandy took a little longer, but Roy took the longest once again. He didn’t have to do both dots at the same time and connect them, but he did have to touch both dots within half a minute with magic, and his control wasn’t good enough. He spent quite a while practicing to manage it.

Mandy tried doing it for Roy, but when she did, the circles filled with a reddish-purple that Serenity recognized as “magenta” instead of green. The tablets could clearly tell that it wasn’t the correct person doing it, and gave the opposite of a positive response.

Roy eventually figured it out.

Puzzle 11 was another “Lights out” style puzzle, and it introduced a timer. Half an hour was significantly more time than any of them needed for any of the puzzles; in fact, it probably took less than that half hour for all of them to get through puzzle 14.

It was a problem on puzzle 15. For Serenity, Raz, and Mandy it was three dots connected in a triangle, while Roy had three dots. Roy tried for the entire half hour, but couldn’t manage to get the third dot in time; he was able to get the second dot almost half the time, but he was simply too slow for the third.

“I’m no good at this. What will happen when we run out of time?” Roy stared at his tablet in frustration. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get the third dot to light up before the first dot went out.

Serenity shrugged. “We’ll either have to fight something or we’ll be kicked out of the dungeon, whatever that means. Puzzle dungeons with straightforward loss conditions tend to be simple that way. Look, why don’t you try one of the other methods of moving mana? The running is slowing down your attempts; now that you know what it feels like, maybe you can do it without having to get yourself moving so much.”

Serenity had to admit he’d taken a bit of joy in watching Roy struggle. He was teaching Roy, of course, but it was still nice to know that the man who was spying on him was having issues. Serenity didn’t blame Roy for it; in some ways, he was happy the man was there. Or at least, he would have been if it had been anyone other than him that was being followed.

Roy didn’t manage it. The tablets all changed to say TIME in large red letters, then below that in smaller letters SINGLE FAILURE.

Serenity heard a crackling noise and looked towards it. There was a tiny energy wisp floating in the middle of the subway car. It was an extremely weak monster, little more than an aggressive spark of energy, but it did require magic to fight. Even against an ordinary human, it would give a shock and maybe a mild burn, but it wouldn’t do lasting damage unless you were really stupid.

Almost any magic would work. Serenity smiled to himself. That made it a perfect first fight for a child. “Mandy, would you throw your sparkles at that? Just the sparkles, I think that will do.”

Mandy nodded eagerly and threw brightly colored flecks of color across half the subway car. Fortunately, there was no one other than the wisp in the area. The wisp was cleanly hit by one and it sparkled brighter and louder than the other sparkles Mandy threw. “Oooh! Pretty!” Mandy clapped at the show.

The wisp was gone. Serenity looked down at his tablet.

ALTERNATE SUCCESS CONDITION MET

Break time: 14:53

Press RESUME to end the break early

“Looks like we have a few minutes. Hey, Raz, what language is your tablet in?” Serenity turned to Raz. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask; at first, there hadn’t been words, and since then they’d simply been solving puzzles without talking much.

Raz turned the tablet towards Serenity. “It’s in Bridge, fortunately.”

Serenity nodded. “We need to get you some way to speak and understand English. How are you at learning languages?”

Raz looked away from Serenity. “Terrible. I only know three languages, and one of them is Bridge.”

Serenity laughed a little, thinking of how many languages most Americans seemed to speak. He knew far more than that now, and had known five even before the Tutorial, but that didn’t change how many people he knew spoke only one. “Three means you at least know how to learn. Magic would be faster, but I’m not sure that’s going to be available, and knowing the language is better anyway. I really should have started teaching you earlier. Let’s see. The word for human is human.”

Serenity used the rest of the break to teach Raz a few simple words, but it was clear that this wasn’t the best environment to teach in; a subway car didn’t have many of the items Serenity wanted to point out, so he had to make the best of it and use the word in Bridge.

Serenity noticed that Raz’s hand had disappeared back into that pouch. Did he have a worry stone or lucky charm or something in there? Serenity wondered why he didn’t just take it out to fiddle with it, but that was Raz’s choice so Serenity didn’t worry about it.

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The next set of puzzles were difficult enough that Mandy needed some help with the sudoku and Raz ended up swearing at the sliding block puzzle. Fortunately, it seemed like the dungeon didn’t have any problems with them helping each other out on anything except for the magic manipulation puzzle.

Roy got the same three dots as the previous puzzle, while the other three got a more complex puzzle that included a direction to move the energy. For the first time, Serenity’s didn’t complete immediately, but he was able to simply trace the pattern that was needed and have it complete itself.

This time, Roy was able to complete it. He hurried up and down the subway car to get his mana moving, then tried to push mana out as he regulated his breathing while rapidly tapping the spots on the screen. His mana control was ugly, but it worked.

Serenity wasn’t sure how long they’d been in the dungeon, but during that rest break he pulled some snacks out of his bag. Roy turned them down, but the others ate.

Roy’s next puzzle wasn’t a Lights Out puzzle; instead, it was the two connected dots puzzle everyone else had gotten as the tenth puzzle. They were now on two separate paths; the others still had to all complete a puzzle before any of them could move to the next one, but they didn’t have to wait for Roy. They completed four puzzles and were about to start their next magic puzzle when Roy ran out of time.

Serenity had him take care of the wisp instead of letting Mandy do it. Roy was shocked several times before he could manage to pull mana into his hands at the same time as he hit the wisp to disperse it.

Roy was unhappy about the pain from the shocks, even though it was gone fairly quickly. Mandy was unhappy because she didn’t get to set off sparklies, so Serenity told her to go ahead once the wisp was dead.

Raz couldn’t suppress his laughter at Roy’s indignant expression.

Serenity had to admit that it was funny watching a grown man pout at a child for being able to use magic when he couldn’t.

They kept at the puzzles. Mandy seemed to have a grand time, and while it was common for the three of them to have to work together on one puzzle or another, they moved forward quickly.

Roy started swearing. Mandy smiled at him. “You owe me an ice cream!”

“What?” Roy looked at Mandy. Serenity started laughing at Roy’s expression of complete befuddlement.

“You said a bad word. When Mommy says a bad word she buys me an ice cream so I won’t tell Daddy. You owe me an ice cream.” Mandy nodded like it was the most straightforward expectation in the world.

Roy looked like a fish out of water. Serenity decided to rescue him. “We don’t have any ice cream, Mandy. Here’s a bit of candy, it’ll do instead.” Serenity handed Mandy a bit of Crystallized Sugar Ant Jelly. It had about as much of a relationship to Giant Sugar Ant Jelly as maple sugar candy did to the sap of a sugar maple, and Serenity had found he rather liked the spice it carried along with the sugar.

It seemed like Mandy did, too.

Serenity turned to Roy. “Please don’t swear, you’ll have to get her the treat next time. I don’t have that much candy on me.”

“...Right.” Roy looked back at the tablet and sighed. He’d finally managed to punch his third wisp the first time instead of being shocked, but he still hadn’t gotten the two-dot magic puzzle to work. He couldn’t hold the magic, he only seemed to be able to spark it for a moment.

Serenity watched as Roy put his hand on the first dot and breathed out. It lit and he drug his hand to the other dot while continuing to breathe out. “It worked?”

“You stopped overthinking it,” Serenity said. “You’ve been close, but whenever you see the magic you tense up and cut it off. I’m glad you figured it out.” He’d told Roy that exact thing earlier, but Roy hadn’t managed to act on it until now.

“Hey, what’s this?” Roy turned his tablet to face Serenity.

TABLET TRIALS COMPLETE

WAIT FOR OTHER PARTICIPANTS TO FINISH TO ENTER THE CAR TRIAL

“Huh. I guess there will be something else once we all finish. I wonder how close we are?” Serenity looked back down at his tablet. They’d managed to complete each set of puzzles in only a little more time than it took Roy to fail each puzzle, and were on the sixth set. Each magic puzzle looked more and more like a rune, and Serenity wondered what the sixth one would look like.

The sixth Magic trial was a simple firestarting rune - Fire with some modifiers to make it triggerable and controlled, essentially the same as a ‘Spark’ spell. Serenity traced it quickly and looked at the others.

Mandy was the second one done. It made sense to Serenity; her ‘sparklies’ spell was based on a similar pattern, even though it was a spellform rather than a rune. He was pretty sure that she also had a good Fire Affinity, though he’d never had her tested; that was the most likely explanation for how she’d managed to explode the pigs without knowing what she was doing.

Raz took a few tries. Serenity noticed that he had a tendency to trace one of the circuits backwards, but Raz caught his mistake and did it correctly right before Serenity spoke up.

The tablets all changed to a new message.

TABLET TRIALS COMPLETE

PROCEED TO CHALLENGE WHEN READY

There was a button that said READY below the message.