An intense wave of green light erupted from the giant turtle’s eyes, washing over Micro, Blue, and Kel before they could even brace themselves. Micro flailed his arms helplessly as he felt his body being dragged through space, unable to see anything but that swirling green light. It reminded him of his experience being sent to this world, but this was far less uncomfortable. It even crossed his mind that it was nice to be free of gravity for a moment, having spent so much time on two feet recently.

  As he expected, however, his feet eventually found themselves planted firmly on the ground. As his feet began to feel the weight of his body again, he looked down to see yet another stone floor expanding out from underneath him, as if the room were being assembled before his eyes. Brick by brick, the floor grew in all directions until turning vertically to form walls and arches.

  “I wonder where they get all the stones for that so quickly…” Micro wondered aloud as he watched the magical scene unfold.

  Before long, three walls had formed to his back, left, and right, and a long, straight tunnel extended endlessly in front of him. As he was about to begin walking, another object suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A round boulder almost as tall as him fell to the ground with a loud thud. When he looked closely at the boulder, the next thing he noticed was a very small, glowing turtle resting on top of it, looking at him with squinted eyes.

  “Hello,” Micro greeted the small turtle with a friendly tone. When the turtle didn’t immediately reply, he reached out to grab it in his hand, bringing it closer to his face. “Hello, turtle. Are you lost? You should be careful near roads!”

  At those words, the turtle’s eyes opened slightly, and it spoke with a slow voice, quieter than Blue’s, but not quite as high pitched.

  “I am where I am meant to be…” it replied. “I am an avatar of this dungeon’s overseer.”

  “I’m Micro.”

  “Your task is simple,” the turtle explained, then pointed lazily with its small front leg to the boulder behind it. “Push this boulder down the corridor, perhaps until you reach the end…”

  “Okay,” Micro replied quickly. He placed the turtle back on top of the rock, then placed both hands against the boulder. He took a deep breath, then pushed with all his might.

  “Good luck,” the turtle mumbled sleepily.

  “Thanks,” Micro replied, then grunted as the burning sensation in his legs increased. His back ached, and his arms began to shake, but he took another breath and pushed again. Finally, the boulder shifted. Micro knelt down to examine his progress, understanding the distance it had travelled by the deep marks it had carved in the stone floor.

  He pushed again, this time with a better understanding of which muscles to use, and it moved a little more. Again he pushed, and again it moved. After a dozen or so attempts, the boulder had travelled about the distance of a single pace. He frowned and looked at the turtle.

  “Is there a problem, child…?” it mumbled as if it were woken from a nap. “There are questions I can answer…”

  “I’m just worried this will take too long. I need to find a way home as fast as I can, you see?” Micro explained with a worried look.

  “Fear not, child…” the little turtle replied. “This is a separate space… and a separate time…”

  “Separate?”

  “This dungeon does not exist in the world you are from…” the turtle went on. “An eternity here… is but a moment…”

  “Umm…” Micro wasn’t sure what to ask.

  “However long this trial takes… whether one day or many more… if you succeed, you will be returned to the gate in your world… only moments after you entered…” The turtle turned around once, then yawned as it got comfortable. “Your only concern is succeeding in this trial… time matters not…”

  “So…” Micro scratched his head. “Even if it takes me a long time to get back, I won’t be late?”

  “Yes…”

  “That’s convenient!” Micro shouted happily. “How does that work? If I could do something like that, the old man would never be late again!”

  “What…?”

  “Teleportation, speeding up time…” Micro thought aloud. “This world has lots of convenient ways to travel. I wonder what else there is…”

  “Wonder as you will…”

  “Wow…” Micro’s imagination eventually calmed as he remembered the job in front of him. He took a moment to stretch, then returned to his favoured stance and pushed the boulder once again. It moved a little. “Okay. It’s lucky the boulder isn’t too heavy.”

  “It is not the weight of the boulder one fights…” the little turtle replied.

  “Oh?” Micro paused for a moment and adjusted his posture, but he didn’t see any point in waiting around. “Oh well…”

  He pushed it again, and it moved a little. He pushed it a little harder, and it moved a little farther.

  As he pushed the boulder endlessly, he occasionally looked behind him to see how far he had gone. The first time he looked back, the wall behind him was still close enough to count the stones it was made of. The second time he looked back, it was difficult to see. The third time he looked back, he realized it looked no different than the tunnel he was walking down.

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  The fourth time he looked back, he realized that the only way he could be certain which way he was meant to be going was by the trail he’d left behind him. That was the last time he looked behind him. From that moment on, he looked only ahead.

  At one point, he noticed he didn’t feel like he was running out of fuel at all, so he asked the turtle if he would need to eat something. The turtle looked confused, but it explained that his energy needs would be seen to by the trial itself, and that he need only concern himself with pushing the boulder until he reached his destination. His thoughts wandered for a while, filling the time with memories of his home and driver, imagining the places they would drive together when he returned one day. He thought of less happy moments in life, like the accident that brought him to this strange world, and the unpleasant experiences he’d endured in his short time in a human body.

  “Having memories is a bit exhausting…” Micro sighed at one point, but the turtle was uncertain how to reply.

  At a certain point, the endless stream of memories that swirled around in his mind began to fade, and his thoughts turned to the future.

  He thought about Blue, and wondered if she’d continue to be his passenger much longer. He thought about Kel, and wondered if he would also pass his trial as the heir to his sect.

  He wondered what an heir was, and he wondered how Core Cards would help him return home. He wondered where home was from there, and he wondered how much time had passed. He wondered why time would run faster in this world than in another, and he wondered if he’d need to refuel when he returned.

  He wondered how much time had passed, and he wondered if he’d been pushing the rock for a day, a year, ten years, or maybe a thousand. He wondered if it mattered. He continued to wonder, until he wondered nothing at all.

  The sound of the rock in front of him scraping against the ground each time he pushed it became like the ticking of a clock in his ears. The archways he passed beneath became like clouds floating by. The stone path beneath him became blurry, until it began to resemble a country road. The darkness that extended endlessly in front of him stopped feeling like a distant goal. It stopped feeling far away, but neither did it feel near. It felt less and less like he was pushing his way toward the darkness, and more like he was falling into it.

  Moments passed by without him noticing, until there eventually came a time when he stopped noticing time at all. Some time after that, he couldn’t be sure whether it was a moment or an eternity, he stopped noticing anything at all.

  The pain in his arms and legs were too distant a memory to recall. He wasn’t sure where his body ended and the boulder began. He only knew his destination was ahead of him.

  CRACK

  The boulder suddenly split into two parts with a deafening sound that made Micro feel like his entire world had just been cracked in half. However, the turtle which had been resting atop the rock without making a sound for so long didn’t fall to the ground. It landed softly in the palm of Micro’s outstretched hand.

  The sudden change in scenery, scenery which had become a permanent fixture of his existence, flooded his mind with anxiety and dread for a moment, but something glowing in the remains of the boulder distracted him from his confusion.

  “Interesting…” the turtle’s tiny voice mumbled, the sound of which sounded equally familiar and foreign to Micro’s ears. “You didn’t think to wake me…?”

  “Waking a passenger…” Micro struggled to vocalize after having been silent for so long. “Taboo…”

  “I was a passenger…?” the turtle thought aloud. “Interesting…”

  Micro couldn’t find words to reply, so he simply nodded at the turtle in his hand.

  “To pass this test…” The turtle yawned again, still in no hurry to explain anything. “To overcome this trial… One must perform their task… Until one can disregard their place in time… You went far beyond…”

  “My place in time?” Micro replied, his voice weak and dry. “What does that matter?”

  “That is a correct answer, but what you have done… Never mind…” The turtle shook its head. “This is the beginning of the art you seek. Patience is not the ability to endure through time, but the ability to detach yourself from it entirely… But you…”

  “Me?” Micro replied, clearing his dry throat.

  “Your will is inhuman…” The turtle nodded slowly as it spoke. “You were not tempted a single time to fall into madness… Your thoughts never veered from your destination… You never questioned whether it existed… You only pushed forward…”

  “So, this is the Core Card,” Micro said as his attention to the turtle’s words waned. He picked up the glowing green card from the rubble in front of him. It bore the symbol of a turtle which he recognized from the gate’s entrance. “Nice.”

  “I’ve seen no human with such will…” the turtle continued, unfazed by Micro’s lack of enthusiasm for its praise of him.

  “I’m a truck,” Micro commented as he closely inspected the card. “Honest mistake though.”

  “What—” The turtle froze in Micro’s hand for a moment before raising its voice with a less grand tone. “What’s that?”

  “You probably wouldn’t understand.” Micro shrugged, recalling his previous conversations over the body he’d inhabited until he was summoned to a new world. “Just look both ways before crossing the road, and you won’t need to figure out what a truck is.”

  “Not a human soul…” The turtle’s little eyes glowed for a moment, and then it nodded. “Indeed… Interesting…”

  “So where is the exit? There aren’t any signs here either…” Micro complained.

  “Very interesting, indeed…” the turtle commented, his voice slightly shaken as Micro began to turn and look around the hall again in search of a door. “Timeless, and yet so terribly impatient…”

  THUD

  Micro was suddenly aware of his head making contact with the ground, but he was quickly relieved to see he was back in the room with a giant turtle in the middle of it.

  “Was that a dream…?” Micro asked as he sat up and rubber his eyes. He looked around, and he noticed Blue sleeping on the floor next to him, and Kel was resting with his head against the altar. Above him, he saw the great turtle looking down at him.

  “You have overcome the trial of the Jade Fire Turtle Art, young one…” it growled. “You may leave.”

  “What about them?” Micro pointed to his friends, who were still unconscious on the ground.

  “They have yet to pass the trial…” it replied. “The older one is stubborn… The younger one may not fail… But you… Your will shall be rewarded…”

  Before Micro had time to protest, two glowing Core Cards materialized in front of him.

  “For overcoming the trial, you are awarded the Jade Fire Turtle Art Core Card…” The turtle’s voice boomed with authority as it bestowed the cards. “But to you, whose will cannot be shaken by the temptations of time, are deserving of more than I can offer… so take this Jade Fire Armour Trait Card in consolation…”

  “Oh, thank you,” Micro said as he triumphantly plucked both of the cards out of the air, one in each hand, then quickly stuffed them into his pocket.

  “Farewell, strange soul…” the turtle growled as a glowing green portal appeared behind Micro.

  “Wait—” Micro began to argue, but a powerful gust of wind suddenly pushed him through the portal, and he was once again lying on the cold, rocky ground of a cave. “That was rude.”