Sworded Affair

"Too cold, too cold,

Vanilla ice ice baby,

Too cold, too cold."

"I will find and hurt you," Emma warned, as the System's music player 'randomly' selected Vanilla Ice for the first song of the day.

[Would you believe me if I said that was a coincidence?]

"No," Emma replied immediately, hitting next.

[So suspicious, you really need to let it go.]

"Finding that music player was a mistake," Emma groaned, as Vanilla Ice faded away, replaced by the Broadway belting of Idina Menzel. "What's even the point of running a single trial for this long? Besides the night and the hail, there haven't even been any enemies to fight today."

[This is the biggest difference between the current set of floors and the previous four. Floors one to four are the entry-level exam, linear challenges designed to quickly and efficiently sort the wheat from the chaff. Once selected, the contents of the floor are locked in and the aspirant either meets the minimum requirements for success, or not.

Once you've passed the midpoint though, the assumption is that you do have the required magical talent, so the trials begin to take a holistic approach towards assessment. From here on out, everything about the aspirant is tested, drifting far from their magical prowess alone, and this is what most frequently weeds out the talented but unworthy.

In order to facilitate this; floors six to nine possess a degree of autonomy, the fragment of will in control will adjust the trial as it progresses to challenge different aspects of the aspirant. In your example, you've dealt with the enemies available to this trial with ease, so the fragment sees no point summoning more to be slaughtered. Instead, it moved on to testing your ability to survive hostile terrain, which you've also passed. There will be at least one more, but no more than two further challenges to overcome before the end. Three to four criteria for each floor, those were the design specifications Overmind insisted upon.

Connection lost.

Offline mode engaged.]

"What?" Emma exclaimed, having never seen that notification before. "This isn't another bad joke, is it?"

A quick check showed that all the standard functions of the System were still operational; whether that was displaying her status page, her active abilities, or the use of her inventory and music player. Even the unused skill selection was available for her perusal, demonstrating that the System's offline mode was far more substantial than most modern AAA games could claim. Confused but not unduly concerned, Emma continued onward, looking forward to teasing Edith about her network issues once she resumed contact.

---

3 days later

"This is a bit much for gag," Emma sighed, climbing to her feet as Sir Bearington nudged her awake; his inner clock far more attuned to the sun's rise than her own. "Guess she really is having connection issues. I wonder if there's a magical equivalent of a DDoS?"

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"Play popular songs from the noughties," Emma ordered as she climbed aboard her mount for another day's riding.

[Creating playlist.

First track: Alone, by Celine Dion]

Facepalming, Emma switched off the music player and headed out.

---

14 days later

[50 EXP gained.]

"Really?" Emma jolted upright, the notification ping sufficient to wake her from her dozing.

The sporadic hail had stopped after the first week, and the eldritch night three days after that, so Emma no longer had any issue with ordering Sir Bearington onward while she slept. Sure, it left her a bit exposed in case any ambushes arrived, but One with Everything would always give her at least a fighting chance, so Emma wasn't too worried about that.

"I haven't done anything though?" Emma scratched her head, after verifying that the experience gain was real and reflected on her status. "Weird."

Lying back down, Emma restarted her music player, setting it to an infinite loop of brown noise as she lay back on top of Sir Bearington and slowly drifted back to sleep.

---

28 days later

[150 EXP gained.

Connection restored.]

"Finally," Emma laughed. "Did you forget to pay your service provider or what? It's been ages."

[I beg your pardon? We were speaking just moments ago; on the nature of the second set of exams.]

"Maybe you were," Emma rebutted. "But for me, its been a month."

[Oh? Oh. Ohhh. Damn it Overmind, time dilation alone wasn't enough? You really went and built a selective perception filter into the array beneath the tower? The amount of mana that would cost! Over-engineered pieces of crap like this is why the mana keeps running out! Hold on a second.

Installing firewall upgrade.

Upgrade complete!

There we go, we shouldn't be disconnected again, sorry about that.]

"It's fine," Emma laughed. "A bit weird, not having a voice in my head all the time, but it was relaxing in a way; nothing to do except ride, sleep and ride some more, with no idea how it all ends."

['Relaxing' isn't how most people would describe a month of total isolation. Maddening, more like. That would have been the third challenge of the trial then; a test of physical and mental resilience.]

"Really?" Emma raised an eyebrow. "I didn't find it all that bad."

[Well that's one of the funny things about this test; it's one that tends to be far harder for the overachievers in life. See, the aspirants who make it this far in their first attempt tend to be from the elite of society. Trained in magic from birth, raised in a home of considerable means with servants to tend to all their mortal needs, and surrounded at all times by their peers in magical society. They tend to be magically potent, possess self-confidence bordering on arrogance, love attention, and can't cook to save their lives. The first aspect is useless when spending a month in emptiness, whilst the latter three are all actively detrimental here. Why, I'd bet good money that many blessed sons have died at this stage, starving to death because they thought they'd wrap up the trials in a day and didn't bother to prepare any rations for a prolonged ordeal.]

"Couldn't they just conjure up some food?" Emma asked. "Or store some from the previous floor?"

[Sure they could summon some, at the cost of twice or even thrice the energy that food would restore. There are ways to tilt this ratio in favor of the caster, but anyone capable of doing so would not be attempting the first ten floors. Taking some from Midway works better, but that requires a level of foresight, so again; those who would think of that aren't the ones to get into difficulty here. In any event, even amongst those who manage to secure sustenance, a good number will still self-destruct; a month with only ice for company can easily destabilise the mind, which is often a death sentence where magic is concerned.

Conversely, those from more ordinary backgrounds tend to endure this trial better; they don't usually have such lofty views and expectations of themselves, and are more likely to have experience with self-care, hunger and isolation. Of course, a high proportion of aspirants with such a background lack the magic to make it this far and fall in the lower floors. Truly, an ironic test to employ this far into the tower.]

"That's pretty sadistic," Emma shook her head. "Is anyone recording the trials? Because I bet they'd be pretty popular if put to broadcast; like the Hunger Games, but with magic."

[Well, it's funny that you should mention that...]