The price of using Intent caused a lot of mental exhaustion. Considering he'd only used it for a few seconds; the trade-off wasn't worth it. Realizing he needed to enhance Intent further, he tried to study why it consumed so much brainpower.
Activating Intent again, he focused on how his brain reacted to the technique. The first thing he noticed was that it drew on all his neurons simultaneously—which obviously accelerated his exhaustion. This could be an easy fix, something he'd done naturally from time to time.
Mana could improve not just his physical body, but his mind too. Sending mana to his brain sped up mental processes, though it also increased mental fatigue. This time, he'd try something different.
Using the mana in his body, he slowly directed it to his brain—not to enhance it, but to vitalize and reinforce it. This approach wasted some mana, and he would have preferred to target just his neurons and synaptic connections directly. But that was impossible for now. There were about 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections. He could maybe handle a thousand neurons before passing out.
Aasal immediately felt the difference. His mind felt less strained, his physical senses sharpened, and his mana perception became more profound. He could somewhat keep up with the golden light now, though his mind still throbbed.
That wasn't the only reason, Aasal realized, stumped but preferring a challenge. Since studying his brain had revealed nothing unusual, he focused on his vision instead. At first, he found nothing. But when he saw it—or rather, figured out why—he was flabbergasted.
Humans are born with three cone photoreceptors: red, green, and blue. Trichromatic vision—a fancy way of saying we see the world through three color channels that combine to create the entire spectrum we perceive.
Dogs see shades of blue and yellow, with everything else as variations. Birds see four color channels including ultraviolet—dazzling patterns that appear plain to human eyes. Mantis shrimp can see up to sixteen types of receptors, perceiving colors humans could never begin to imagine.
This technique had somehow warped the nature of his photoreceptors without changing how many he had. He could see well beyond sixteen channels now—and that was only what he was currently aware of. His vision wasn't the only sense affected, though the other changes were too subtle to identify while the technique remained mysterious to him.
Having solved one piece of the puzzle, he sent mana toward his retina—the region at the back of his eye. Similar to how he'd vitalized his brain, he channeled it through every neural pathway. The relief was immediate. Now he felt barely any pain beyond a slight tinge.
He took it one step further, using the technique to limit how much he perceived, since the overstimulation overwhelmed his brain. Drowning out the excess colors, hues, sounds, and other enhanced senses he wasn't used to, he focused solely on the golden light. It took several minutes of intense concentration, but gradually the other sensory information faded from his awareness. The data was still there—he simply chose not to perceive it unless necessary.
Aasal focused on tracking the golden light, struggling with its sheer speed. He turned his body in every direction as it flickered through the passages—appearing right in front of him one moment, behind him toward another passage the next.
He had to enter the passage with the golden light. That was his only lead. The maze had to be changing extremely fast, or at least the space around it. Before he could make a turn, the layout might be completely different—though he'd have no way of knowing.
Watching the light dance before him, he fell into a trance, trying to decipher its pattern. Hours passed in this hypnotic state of extreme focus. Just as he felt on the verge of understanding, an alert jolted him awake.
[Night 2 Complete]
[Difficulty Increased!]
"How the hell has the moon already set?" Aasal muttered, shaking off his trance.
The situation became clear quickly. Though the temperature maintained the same boiling heat from the first night, he now felt an additional sensation that contradicted everything he knew. It was getting colder.
"Shit." Aasal immediately increased his processing power and began reinforcing regions throughout his body and skin. Before, the mana had burned away his essence. Now it felt like it was tearing him apart. The combination of scorching heat and bitter cold created a deadly contradiction that made defending against both simultaneously nearly impossible.
It took several hours for the temperature to stabilize and for Aasal to move again. Running Intent while defending against the temperature extremes was building fatigue, but he had no choice.
He hadn't fully deciphered the maze's shifting pattern, but now he had an intuitive sense of it—a subtle tingle.
"I can sense it... oh, I can sense it now," Aasal smiled, shaking his head at how that might sound out of context.
Using his internal clock, he waited.
"NOW!" Aasal shouted. His muscles bulged as he blasted toward the passage where the golden light would soon appear. The charred dirt, hardened by cold, exploded away from him in a small dust cloud. Running at full speed, he worried he'd started too early—the golden light was still dancing through other passageways.
The light was currently darting around the maze's periphery. He'd calculated that after fifty movements, it would appear in his chosen passage.
Just an arm's length away, Aasal counted in his head as he tracked the light's position.
"Forty-seven... forty-eight... forty-nine... fifty." On cue, the light materialized ahead of him. He plunged through it and into the maze.
He knew he'd succeeded when the golden light remained visible, and he found himself truly within the labyrinth. Smiling at his victory, he caught his breath and began jogging to explore the difference.
Without Intent, choosing the correct passage would be nearly impossible unless someone had godly instincts. Though with enough luck, anything was possible...
He continued running through the passageway. After some time, his frown deepened. Previously, he would have reached the beginning again by now. Instead, he remained perpetually within the maze. He ran further, and that's when the structure shifted. Before, there had been simple turns. Now multiple paths branched out: straight ahead, left, and right. He followed wherever he saw the golden hue.
More and more paths appeared—soon there were dozens of different routes, and unease crept up his spine.
Some paths with golden hues led to dead ends, forcing him to backtrack. The maze was becoming... aware. Usually the golden hue indicated success, progress. Gold for victory. But he had the growing suspicion that the labyrinth understood what he was doing and was finding ways to exploit that knowledge. A maze personally crafted for each individual.
He started taking random paths. That's when he encountered the traps.
He was running when a feeling of imminent death crawled up his spine. He instantly ducked. From the side wall, a blue laser shot out, absorbed into the opposite tunnel wall.
There was no doubt it would have killed Aasal instantly, regardless of where it struck. He didn't know what had triggered the trap, but staying alert, he worked his way through the passage, narrowly escaping death several more times.
Now there were hundreds of paths branching in every direction, and Aasal didn't know what to do. That's when he saw it—a massive golden glow emanating from one particular passage, brighter than anything he'd seen before.
Normally, he would have chosen this option without thinking. Now, he hesitated. It felt wrong that such an obvious beacon would appear now. Perhaps his technique wasn't detecting something crucial.
It can't be the technique—it's only the user who doesn't understand. The technique could perceive all intents and couldn't be deceived. The shortcoming was his own. He willed himself to see the other lights from Intent's enhanced perception, but found no meaningful differences—just random colors scattered throughout the maze.
Despite his second thoughts about any other passage, he entered the bright corridor cautiously, staying on guard.
Deep within the golden brilliance, barely perceptible threads of black and crimson fed like parasites—a warning Aasal had no way of recognizing. After all, gold could signify the greatest challenges, and it didn't come without risk.
He had no idea what was waiting for him.