The next day, Alen got up early in the morning. He washed up, put on his fresh clothes along with his new dark navy cloak, and walked out of his room.

He checked out of the inn and started walking through the bustling city. He followed the long, paved streets heading straight toward the outer district.

After a few minutes, he finally reached the Gate of the Dimensional Link.

Several thousands of people were gathered just outside the massive swirling portal. They had all come here to participate in their respective trials.

As Alen walked toward the gate, several people noticed him walking entirely alone. Because the trials were notoriously deadly, traveling without a party was highly unusual.

Not wanting to associate with anyone, Alen kept his head down and continued toward the portal. Suddenly, someone called out to him.

"Hey, kid, wait! Are you here for the trial? Don’t you have a team? If not, are you interested in joining us?" a burly man shouted, waving him over.

Alen looked at him with a completely blank face.

"Not interested. I am a solo player."

"Solo player?! Are you serious, kid? Don’t you value your life? Are you trying to commit suicide?"

Alen ignored the man and kept walking. As he moved through the crowd, more people started trying to recruit him.

"Hey, little guy! Do you want to join our team?"

"Hey, cutie, join our party!"

Alen sighed and ignored everyone until he finally reached the edge of the gate.

He didn’t want to associate with people he didn’t know.

Fortunately, the team he had found during his first trial was trustworthy, but he knew he wouldn’t be that lucky every time. He didn’t want to risk getting betrayed by strangers in a life-or-death situation.

Furthermore, he firmly believed that he could travel alone without depending on others. He had absolutely no thoughts of joining a party—at least not until he found someone genuinely trustworthy.

For now, Alen just focused on whatever unpredictable trial he was about to get.

He took a deep breath.

"I just hope I don’t get sent to some disgusting, undead-filled swamp again..."

He stepped into the wormhole. The portal swallowed his figure, and he disappeared into the unknown.

...

The sun in the new realm shone so brightly that the entire world felt like it was burning.

Suddenly, a spatial wormhole tore open in the sky above a sprawling desert, where the only thing visible from the starting point to the distant horizon was endless dunes of sand.

A boy dropped out of the wormhole. As the blinding sunlight hit him, he quickly pulled his hood down to shield his eyes and adjust his vision. The wormhole closed instantly behind him, the space recovering as if it had never been disturbed.

Alen looked out at the massive desert. There was absolutely nothing in sight.

[Ding!]

[Location: The Infinite Desert] 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

[Trial: Find the Lost Solar Sigil]

[Time Limit: 12 Hours]

As Alen looked at the system interface, he sighed in relief. At least he actually knew what his objective was this time. Unlike his first trial, which was simply to ’Survive’, he now had a definite mission.

"So, where am I going to find this so-called Sigil? There seems to be no end to this desert..."

Alen muttered, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

"How the hell am I supposed to find the way?"

He sighed deeply. There was no other choice. The time limit for the trial was only twelve hours, and the countdown had already started. If he failed to complete the objective, he didn’t know what the Ascension Realm would do to him as a penalty.

Would he be stuck in this burning wasteland forever? Or would the world just instantly send him to hell?

Whatever the penalty might be, Alen didn’t want to find out. Having absolutely no sense of direction in the featureless landscape, he picked a random path and started walking, leaving his fate up to luck.

As he walked, the brutal sunlight beat down on the hot sand. Even though Alen was actively circulating his mana to regulate his body temperature, the desert still felt tremendously hot. It felt as if the environment itself was trying to suck all the moisture and energy dry from his body.

Sweat dripped constantly from his face as he pushed forward.

After three agonizing hours had passed, Alen finally stopped walking. He felt like he was wandering in an endless loop. Everything around him was just identical mounds of sand. The only defining feature in the entire landscape was the trail of his own footsteps trailing behind him.

He stopped and looked up at the sky.

The sun was currently positioned in the eastern half of the sky, casting a harsh glare that made him even more irritated.

"Sigh... It’s useless to walk endlessly when you don’t even have a clue where the Sigil is..."

he grumbled, slumping down onto the sand.

"Damn, even the ground is boiling hot..." "So, what should I do now? Just continue walking blindly?... There’s no way I’m going to give up... Humph!"

He folded his arms and closed his eyes in deep thought.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped open.

"Wait a second. The sun rises in the east. Judging by the position of the sun, which is nearly directly above me, it must be approaching noon."

He began to piece the puzzle together.

"I only have nine hours left. Which means, the further I walk toward the east—toward the morning sun—the faster I am walking into the passage of time."

"These trials aren’t designed to be completely impossible to solve, at least not in the early stages of the Ascension Realm. There has to be a trick..."

"If we take the time limit as a literal mechanic, then it is useless to walk eastward toward the sun. That is practically guaranteed to make me lose time..."

Alen stood up, his azure eyes gleaming with realization.

"I should walk in the complete opposite direction. I need to chase the sunset in the west. That is where the ’day’ will technically last the longest."

"It’s the same concept that applies to the real world. Different countries have different time zones for sunset and sunrise based on their geographic location."

"Of course, practically speaking, that concept has massive flaws. In the real world, I would have to travel thousands of kilometers just to reduce the time scale by a single hour."

"But I’m not in the real world..."

A small smirk tugged on Alen’s lips as he continued.

"I am in the ’Ascension Realm’, where bizarre, magical phenomena occur all the time. It is entirely possible that space and time are compressed here, meaning I need far less travel distance to experience a fluctuation in the time limit."

"Alas... I’m just guessing. I have no idea if this is actually going to work."

He dusted the hot sand off his clothes and stretched his legs.

"Well, whatever. If I lose because of this theory, then it will be completely my own fault. There won’t be anyone else to blame."

He turned his back to the harsh sun.

"Hehe... Let’s go. If I’m right, then I’m a genius. And if I’m wrong... then the World is wrong."

With a renewed sense of determination, Alen changed his route and started walking directly westward, heading straight back past the direction he had originally come from.