He was in a wooden area with lots of trees larger than he was. This, unlike the previous environment, was crowded with significant obstacles. It was a biome that suited him against the bigger opponent. The only issue was that it was clear between him and his enemy, and the nearest tree was over five metres away. But, if he could duck out and get behind the cover, then he had a chance.


    The countdown finished, he went to charge, but, in a very familiar way, he found himself observing the arena from above. Below him, his body fell into multiple pieces.


    “Very good,” Amkhael praised Gruh Mul immediately upon them reappearing in the common area. “If you had closed with Tom, you might have lost. Attacking from afar guaranteed his loss.”


    “Never; he is too slow, and I can easily beat him in a straight fight.”


    “Maybe,” Amkhael said. “But he has tricks if you get too close to him and it would have been embarrassing to have lost in such a fashion.”


    “I wouldn’t have lost.”


    “It would only take a single mistake for you to do so. One tap of his spear.”


    “By the time he achieved that, I would’ve carved him in two.”


    “Which is something he might survive, and then you’ll be stunned while he kills you.


    Before Gruh Mul could respond, he vanished once more, and a new duel started between him and a type of slime. Gruh Mul was enveloped and defeated. Unsurprisingly, neither of the other two reached the ten victories’ conditions. Excluding the easy kill of Tom, Baptiste managed only one further win before dying again, and Gruh Mul only got three others in before he, too, was taken out. For fresh inductees, it was a great outcome, even with Tom’s complete failure factored into the numbers.


    Corrine, Baptiste, and him chatted - then, before he knew it, he was drawn into a festive atmosphere as they counted down until the first official duel.


    The prompt for the official duel appeared, and Tom accepted instantly.


    Just like he had been told, rather than going straight to the arena he found himself in the holding room. There were three doors for him to leave through, with each having both words and pictures to signify the GOD’s shield arrangement they were to grant.


    He knew which one he was taking, but, just in case, he pulled out his disk. He spent ten fate to prime the heavens, and then flipped it. The wood spun awkwardly through the air; it smacked against the ground, bounced, rolled, and came to a clattering stop in the corner of the room.


    Tom went over to look down at it and saw the zero facing up. There was no need to continue any further. The probabilities had spoken. To go shieldless, he required a minimum of seven ones in a row. A single zero, like what had just happened, meant that he was going with the full shield.


    With a sigh, he walked through the most elaborate door. Then he accepted three prompts confirming he understood that he was accepting a full GOD’s shield for the fight, and his rewards would be reduced accordingly.


    With the formalities done, a prompt appeared.


    You are fighting a representative of SUPREME. It has one recorded incapacitation and zero kills.


    Tom nodded as he read the details. He was dead. If whoever this was had gotten an incapacitation awarded through their own efforts, then he was massively outclassed. But there was no avoiding it, so he kept walking, and the portal flared and placed him in a new location.


    It was desert-themed, and he was standing mid-way down a sand dune. They were going to be fighting across the slope. Going left would take him down the dune, while the right could give him the height advantage – if the adversary did nothing, which was unlikely. As always, there was an outer edge. In this case it was a dome that encased around a football field worth of volume that started near the base of the dune and stretched most of the distance to the top. There was little other information to be gathered, as his opponent was hidden by the system magic and had been replaced by a patch of light to signify where they were standing.


    Tom watched the countdown, preparing to act the moment it triggered.


    It displayed zero, and he sprinted to the right to seize the high ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his opponent. It was a squat, ugly thing with soft short fur that highlighted its many legs and compressed body structure. It was crab-like, even with its mammalian aspects.


    There was a boom behind him, and he felt stinging pain from fast moving sand followed by a heavy blast of air that almost made him lose his balance. That explosion had definitely originated from where he had been standing a moment earlier.


    Time slowed dramatically as the enemy focused on him.


    It was only a three times dilation, so relatively speaking, this opponent was weak - at least, physically so. But, as it relied on ranged attacks, it was unlikely Tom could win this.


    How fast would it be able to recast? He thought, and then realised that it didn’t really matter. The most likely answer was faster than he would like. He zig-zagged back. Still angling toward the crab thing, but now running down instead of up. An explosion nipped his heals. It unbalanced him and forced him to do a forward roll. For a moment, he lost control of his descent, and sand sprayed everywhere in front of him. In seconds, he had slid downwards over eight metres.


    He rose to his feet, and now because of how far he had slid he was looking up at his enemy.


    It hadn’t moved, and…


    Tom was suddenly back in the common area, along with everyone else. At least two people were missing and there were multiple injuries. Throm had lost over a dozen arms, but Tom’s eyes fell upon one of the aquatic people in his own pool. The person, a battle seal with sharp armoured blades covering its flippers, was alive, but looked like it had been cut into pieces. There was a parallelogram with a trident through it carved across its forehead.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He stepped forward to try to heal it, but Corrine’s arms wrapped around him and stopped him in his tracks. “You can’t help. You can’t heal others. It’s a restriction.”


    “But it’s dying.” Tom protested. It was true - everyone present could see that the wounds, which had been stabilised when it had first appeared, were starting to deteriorate and open up due to its slight movements.


    Corrine’s arm tightened around him. “Watch and absorb. That’s what a partial God’s shield does when the opponent succeeds in murdering you.”


    One of the bigger gashes was definitely coming apart, and Tom could imagine a third of its body literally peeling away and falling. That was going to happen immediately if it moved too much, but even it stayed still, such an outcome might only be a minute away. While he wouldn’t die from injuries like this, Tom understood, it was the wounds he couldn’t see that were the problem.


    “Help. Help.” The bird that had been closest to the injured person had been squawking the entire time, and, finally, there was a reaction.


    Abruptly, the ground itself changed as the stone transitioned into water and another aquatic person - this one shaped more like a sea horse than a seal - swam over. She held a vial filled with a glowing liquid that she brought close to the injured battle seal. There was a flash of light, and, as though that was a permission, she poured the vial onto the largest wound. Most of the liquid went straight into the body, entering via the massive opening in its chest.


    The wounds healed visibly, and, in moments, the wide-open gashes had been reduced to barely visible scars.


    “That was a recovery potion,” Corrine told him. “The light was an emergency healing transaction. The elixir costs ten coins if you buy it directly from the shop, but in this kind of desperate situation the system takes its pound of flesh. That just then cost the seal nineteen coins. Eight of them being taken by the system, and a single coin profit for the person who brought it over. It’s a waste, but it’s better than someone dying, and the fact the emergency transaction went through means that the injured person would have died otherwise.” She sighed and then looked at him. “I take it you lost?”


    Tom nodded.


    “Yeah, me too. I tripped at the wrong time, or else I might have had it.”


    “Yeah, me too.” Tom agreed.


    She glanced up in surprise.


    “I meant the trip part. There was no way I was ever going to win.”


    She laughed, and then pointed at one of the terminals.


    Remember to fill in everything you learned.


    He did so. He found the person to attach the record too. Then he added his estimate of their speed and a description of the explosive attack they had used, and that it had been chained three times in a row. The entries from everyone else were far more comprehensive. It had an annoying magic-assisted leap ability that let it escape to the other side of the battlefield whenever anyone got too close. It seemed to be unlimited in terms of the number of times this could be used. That evasion ability was coupled with impressive magical defences, and it could sustain its attacks for minutes. The explosions seemed to be both its go-to and least efficient form of magic, but it had a lot of force variance attacks that seemed to be able to wear down most people. He doubted his own observations would ever help anyone get a win, but they were worth putting in, just in case.


    Another two days passed as he ramped up his practice without any tangible advances, and, after a brutal hour of theory, he returned to his body.


    The usual rush of memories assaulted him, but this time they caught his attention fully. It was like he was experiencing the memories fresh.


    The word ‘Trials’ was scribbled in large bold letters on the blackboard.


    Dimitri was standing up the front and addressing them. He explained the eight types of trials quickly and efficiently. They were Coliseum, Battle, Boosting, Challenge, Affinity, Special, Quest and Bottomless.


    The different categories were not new knowledge to him, as the tutorial books covered it. Colosseum and Battle was a fight for random rewards. Boosting was used to enhance the levels of a single skill or spell that you already possessed. The Challenge ones enabled you improve an area of expertise. In his first life in Existentia, he had greatly boosted his earth magic due to outstanding success in a Challenge trial. While Challenge trials could help anyone improve a chosen aspect of their build, the value of an Affinity trial was dependent on its nature. Like the crystal he had consumed, it was capable of boosting an affinity by a significant amount. It was on par with the divine fruit, but just for a single affinity as opposed to all of them. No one would turn down the option to use such a trial, if it was for one of their primary affinities. Tom understood their value, and, if he heard of a precognition trial fifty years’ journey away from him, he would make the trip without hesitation, no matter the danger levels - that was how valuable they were. A two-point increase in his precognition was going to catapult him to be on a trajectory to be a realm wide powerhouse. If it was on top of the fruit, that impact would be even higher, but it was all theoretical, as there were no rumours about anything like that existing.


    The final three categories were: Bottomless, which was what Throm used to get his power, and Quest trials, which created an elaborate world for people to solve before receiving rewards tailored to them, while Special covered everything else.


    “As I was saying,” Dimitri continued. “The frequency of trials is based on that order. Within our town’s influence, there are twenty Colosseum trials, with only one being against sapients, eleven Battle ones, four Boosting, and one Challenge. We don’t have any Bottomless or Quest ones in all of the human territory. That scarcity does not just apply to us. For example, there are no known Bottomless trials in any of the nearby countries. That doesn’t apply to just the nation clusters - that’s any country we’ve had contact with or their neighbours. As for Quest, they aren’t quite so rare, and there are a few in the closest nation cluster. Special trials are different. We have two in our small town.”


    There was a murmur of conversation at that.


    “The first is the one you enter weekly. It’s designed as a training benefit for us, and is linked to the competition. The second is one of the darkhole trials.” Dimitri paused, looking sad. “These, as far as we can determine follow all species, and plague their top four population centres. They are deadly and most civilisations use them to execute criminals, because they extract a blood price on every sapient species. While they can be challenged at any time, if insufficient people do so over the four Existentia years it remains dormant, then it activates.” The big man stopped for a moment to take a drink of water.


    “Do they come alive?”


    Dimitri only shrugged in response to the question from his audience of little people. “I don’t know the details. But I do know that darkhole trials terrify me. When they activate, they wander. They leave their secured location and find people who are bored, or down on their luck, or depressed or have a weakness. They find that type of person and then offer them something they desire to trick them into entering the trial. But don’t listen to it!” Dimitri yelled. “It’ll promise you what you want to hear, but do not heed its lying honeyed words. The thing’s a trap, it’s evil, and it’ll lie to get your attention. Thankfully, it doesn’t target children, but when you’re older, remember this, and if it wanders near you, ignore it. It’s enough of a menace that we’re thinking of stopping it from waking.”


    “How would you keep it asleep?” the same talkative boy questioned innocently.


    Dimitri hesitated. For a moment, he appeared to be lost for words. He scratched his ear ruefully:


    “Let’s just say that’s an adult thing and not talk about it.”