‘Please state your first and last name.’ The cool voice sounded out in his head again.

  ‘Shouldn’t we already be registered?’ Justin asked.

  ‘We should be. It must somehow be able to detect that we’re different people.’ Dev said.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Answer it.’ Tae said. ‘Hopefully, you can overwrite Dev’s profile.’

  ‘Dev, what’s your last name again?’

  Dev sighed. ‘Cantor. Devikan Cantor.’

  Justin repeated that aloud.

  ‘Error. Devikan Cantor is already registered. You are not Devikan Cantor.’

  ‘Try telling it to overwrite the profile.’

  “Overwrite.”

  ‘Overwriting requires the permission of an administrator or the original owner of the profile.’

  ‘Dev?’ Tae asked.

  Justin felt Dev take control, saying, “Overwrite.”

  ‘Overwriting requires the permission of an administrator or the original owner of the profile.’

  ‘That’s problematic,’ Tae said.

  After a moment, he continued, ‘We should take a step back. Hopefully, if we retreat to our souls, it will not be able to detect us. If it still doesn’t work, we’ll probably need to make a new profile.’

  “What’s happening?” Terra asked.

  He glanced at her. “It’s having technical difficulties with my profile. I’m going to try and reregister.”

  ‘On three, then we wait five seconds,’ Tae said. ‘One, two, three.’

  Justin returned to his soul really quickly, then returned in time to hear the tail end of the response.

  ‘—complete.’ As it did so, he heard it start again. ‘Please state your first and last name.’

  “Devikan Cantor.”

  Dev walked him through each of the answers, finishing off with a question about patron deities (none, unsurprisingly).

  ‘Please place both hands on the Nexus Core.’

  Justin hesitated. ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Affinity test,’ Dev replied.

  ‘We should take a step back again,’ Tae said. ‘That will hopefully prevent us from contaminating the test. How long does it take?’

  ‘A couple of seconds,’ Dev answered.

  ‘Please place both hands on the Nexus Core.’

  ‘Okay, three, two, one, submerge.’

  Justin immediately slammed his other hand onto the orb, getting a nasty shock in return.

  ‘High Fire affinity, recorded. Please follow the highlighted path to the first testing area.’

  ‘Was that long enough?’ Elluvian asked.

  ‘Yeah, it’s done,’ Justin said. ‘Didn’t catch you at all.’

  “Okay,” Justin said to his three onlookers, “As you can see, I just reregistered myself with the temple.”

  “What caused the issue?” Terra asked.

  ‘Say you had a change in your affinities,’ Elluvian told him.

  “My affinities changed. Something about that messed up the identifier,” Justin lied smoothly. “I now have a high fire affinity.”

  “Congratulations,” Terra said. “How did that happen? I only have a medium fire affinity.”

  “I have no idea. If I did I would be doing it again. Anyway, you should probably get registered as well,” Justin said, taking a step back from the counter.

  As each of the others got registered, Justin turned his attention inwards. ‘Tae, how did you learn how to do that?’

  ‘I was in training as a runic archivist. You pick some stuff up.’

  ‘No, you don’t. There’s a big difference between learning to build the parts to a system and being able to exploit someone else’s.’

  ‘There isn’t, really,’ Tae said. ‘Didn’t you say that you had an internet? This is barely even exploiting something, we’re basically using it for its intended function.’

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  -----

  After the other three registered, they followed the sun dappled path to the archery range.

  ‘There are more targets than you said,’ Justin thought accusingly.

  ‘It’s been a few days,’ Dev retorted. ‘Maybe somebody changed the settings. Go and touch the orb in the wall. It will probably let you change the settings.’

  Walking over, Justin touched the orb.

  ‘Dev Cantor, would you like to attempt the archery challenge?’

  “Yes,” Justin said, deciding to go for broke. Immediately, the targets started shifting, rearranging themselves until there were only twenty left, the extras slipping into the ground without so much as hinting at any resistance.

  ‘Please pick up the provided bow and proceed to the highlighted starting position. Do not begin shooting until the targets are raised.’

  ‘And you’re sure that the range provides arrows?’ Justin asked. ‘I don’t want to dry fire a bow in the temple of the god of archery.’

  ‘You’ll get your answer if you just do as it says,’ Dev snapped back. ‘You don’t need to question every single thing.’

  Justin bit his tongue before he said something else, instead retrieving the bow. He walked to the lighted section, where he stood calmly and waited for the test to begin.

  When the targets lit up, the quiver of arrows Dev had described appeared before him.

  I wonder if they adjust the conjured arrows to the user, Justin mused as he drew one out.

  Nocking the arrow, he drew the string back to his chest. Looks like a light fifteen, twenty pounds.

  Choosing a target, he released the arrow, resulting in it flying two inches to the side. Carefully drawing a second arrow, he shot for the same target, this time clipping it.

  ‘You’re pretty good at this,’ Dev said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Justin growled back at him. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’

  He continued through the rest of the test in much the same way. He would draw, select a target, and get it within two shots. Thrice, he hit the target first try. When the quiver was emptied, it refilled itself automatically, and he made it seven arrows into the second quiver before the suns powered off.

  ‘For the record, I am not good at archery,’ Justin said, walking back to the orb on the wall, ‘I am acceptable at most.’

  ‘Archery challenge completed. Score: 15/27/20. Evaluation: Medium. Please proceed to the next test, or state your intention to retry this test.’

  ‘See? I only got a medium.’

  ‘Still better than my evaluation of poor,’ Dev said, ‘Do you think it’s something you’ll stick to?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Justin said. ‘It’s built into this technique, but maybe I’ll modify things.’

  “As you can see, that was the basic archery challenge. It is not overly difficult, and you should have no problems.”

  “What score did you receive?” Ethan asked.

  “Medium, this time. Last time, I received an evaluation of poor.”

  Justin watched on as each of the others completed the test, with Terra and Clair both receiving mediums, and Ethan shamefacedly announcing his poor.

  “It’s okay to not be very good at it,” Justin said. “We can’t all be geniuses like those two.”

  Ethan brightened up a little and led the way down the new path.

  Following him into the next room, Justin saw that this room was exactly as Dev had described, around twenty feet across with a great bronze orb floating in the center.

  Justin followed the lines on the floor to the control orb.

  Touching it, he received a message. ‘Dev Cantor, would you like to begin the thermoreception challenge?’

  “Yes,” Justin said.

  ‘When the bronze sun lights up, you must determine it’s temperature. After each response, the orb’s temperature will change. You will have ten chances. Prediction is set to a tenth of a degree. Would you like to change precision?’

  “Yes.” Justin said. “One degree.”

  Who even set it to that high?

  The sun lit up, and he called out a temperature. “108.” It changed. “317.” Again. “276. 654. 764. 436. 173. 900. 632. 540.”

  Justin had no idea how he did until he touched the control orb again. In truth, he was only guessing at heat ranges based on experience from cooking on campouts.

  ‘Thermoreception challenge completed. Score: 265. Evaluation: Medium. Would you like to see a breakdown of your score?’

  “Yes,” Justin said.

  ‘The correct answers were: 117, 303, 275, 637, 724, 448, 234, 980, 627, 566. You were off by 9; 14; 1; 17; 40; 12; 61; 80; 5; 26; for a total of 265.’

  ‘That’s way better than I did,’ Dev commented. ‘My score was six hundred something.’

  ‘Please proceed to the next test, or state your intention to retry this test.’

  Justin released the orb, turning to the others. “And that’s the heat detection challenge. It’s really quiet straightforward as a test, just difficult to actually get a handle on.”

  He stood to the side and watched as the others took their tests. While they were preoccupied, he turned inwards once more. ‘Seriously, Dev, we are going to have to discuss the connection between your world and mine.’

  ‘What is it this time?’ Dev asked.

  ‘Did you not see what I just did?’ Justin said. ‘I just accurately evaluated temperatures using a system from my world. Using Fahrenheit. Your world uses the same system for some reason! Why do you even use Fahrenheit? Why not Celsius?’

  ‘Okay, you’re going to have to slow down,’ Tae said. ‘What exactly is the issue?’

  Justin sighed. ‘Earth uses two primary systems of temperature measurement. Fahrenheit and Celsius. Celsius is generally considered the better system, but I am better at Fahrenheit. Regardless, though, it doesn’t make any sense that either of them would show up here.’

  ‘That is odd,’ Elluvian remarked.

  ‘Thanks for stating the obvious,’ Justin said.

  ‘There’s no need to get hurtful,’ Tae said. ‘I have a theory. Two theories, really.’

  ‘What are they?’ Dev asked.

  ‘The first is that Justin’s Earth was a founding member of the empire, and their ways of life persisted to this day. I think we can rule this out, as Earth was non-cultivating, right, Justin?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Then it’s decidedly unlikely that it became a significant powerhouse all on it’s own, though not impossible. The other possibility is a lot more straightforward: Apollo simply has regular contact with Earth, and has influenced events there.’

  ‘So we’re back to asking Apollo,’ Justin surmised, ‘But this time about a world he is regularly visiting, presumably without telling the empire, given that Earth isn’t integrated.’

  ‘That’s about right.’

  ‘We’re fucked.’