Tribulations, p.1
Tribulations, page 1
Eternal Dominion Book 20
Tribulations
Bern Dean
Bern’s Books LLC
Copyright © 2023 Bern’s Books LLC
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
ED Year 6 Days 161-174.
Morning May 14 to Evening May 19, 2268 & ED Year 6 Days 175-192.
Morning May 20 to Morning May 31, 2268 & ED Year 6 Days 193-226.
Night May 31 to Morning June 11, 2268 & ED Year 6, Days 228-259.
Evening June 11, 2268 & ED Year 6 Days 260-261.
Morning June 12 to Evening June 17, 2268 & ED Year 6 Days 264-279.
Morning June 18 to Evening June 21, 2268 & ED Year 6 Days 281-291.
Announcement!
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Afterword.
ED Year 6 Days 161-174.
Aalin
As Aalin looked upon the inn that she knew that Xeal and Gale had their first experience in, she sighed as she selected the Hellish Nightmare mode of her tier-7 tribulation and confirmed that she wanted to start. After the warning messages that she acknowledged, the world around her dissolved and she found herself alone in an endless sea of sand. There was no notice of what her task was, or any clues as to what she would need to do to succeed in reaching tier-7. Had Xeal not warned her that some tribulations simply would observe the actions of the participant while giving no direction, Aalin would have thought that there had been a system error. Instead, she looked at the sun that was high overhead as if it was noon and just erected her tent as she used it for shade as she sat in an almost meditative stance.
Aalin stayed like this for hours as the sun worked its way across the sky. This included her discovering that there wasn’t enough moisture in the air for her to use her ability to create ice. While she could still create ice using a spell, it was much smaller than normal and even if she tried to keep it around longer with her ability to manipulate ice, it would be gone within minutes. When night came, she started to walk under the light of the stars as there was no moon. None of the stars were familiar to Aalin either and she couldn’t identify any that could act like the North Star and allow her to use it to navigate by; as such she felt utterly lost. Still, she continued forward as she hoped for something to break up the monotony of her walking but alas, nothing happened by the end of that first night. Aalin found herself resting in the shade of her tent once more as the day arrived and did her best to sleep, but felt like every time she was about to fall asleep, that something would wake her. However, be it a sound or a movement of the sand beneath her, nothing ever came of these moments and by the end of the first session of her tribulation she knew it was going to be a long one.
When she returned it was once more night and she had yet to get any rest. Plus, if anything, her time in reality with her daughter, Ahsa, only made the isolation she was feeling worse. Still, she kept walking forward as she was determined to keep moving forward in life and like that, one day after another passed as she pushed forward. By the end of the sixth session like this, Aalin had likely only had ten hours of sleep in ED and another six in reality. Simply returning to this was maddening to her as she found herself not wanting to surrender the connection that she had with Ahsa for the emptiness that was before her. It didn’t help that she was always worried that even a seemingly innocuous action could reveal something about her tribulation and cause her to fail by a technicality.
Luckily, nothing had as of yet slipped out. Still, she was beyond tired and her stamina was only lasting an hour of walking due to the exhaustion and other debuffs that she had picked up while stuck in her tribulation. To counter this, Aalin would only walk for a half hour before trying to sleep. This included at night as she was beyond trying to care if it was day or night, or even if it was in her tent or not. All she cared about was pressing forward as she believed it was a simple test of will as she dealt with isolation and having no direction. It was these two things that Aalin also knew were among her greatest fears.
It had been this more than caring about her friend that had led to her willingness in sharing Xeal. While she did care for Gale and was happy with where things were, Aalin knew that her own insecurities had pushed her towards it more than anything else. When Enye and Dyllis had come along, Aalin had once more stayed quiet and just went along with things as they were. She had told herself that those would be the last additions to Xeal’s life, only for Enye to make it clear that it most certainly wouldn’t be, as she discussed just how many nobles would be aiming for Xeal’s hand in marriage. It didn’t matter to many of these nobles if they would be the first, second, or even 100th wife, so long as they bore a child from him that they could leverage a possible branch house out of.
Thankfully, Xeal had not been amicable to such an arrangement as he sought to limit it and for a while Aalin had thought that it could work. That was until Mari and Lingxin arrived and the fear of a tidal wave of princesses chasing him became a new fear, as Aalin saw them both move closer to him. Mix this with Ava and Mia, who had gone from blatant gold-diggers in reality to actual friends and Aalin had been at a loss to understand her own feelings as she let them in. After that it just seemed like more and more women were showing up, as Xeal resisted their allure only to be drawn in more and more. It had truly become the role of those, like herself, who already had a piece of his heart to limit this situation. Though, even that was easier said than done, as it seemed that half of his wives were in favor of getting Xeal to a total of 19 wives then stopping, as soon as possible.
Yet for all of this, Aalin found that her new sisters, as they saw each other, brought nothing but warmth to her life. Something that had been missing in her own life in reality as it seemed like her parents only cared about results. While there was love and caring, it always seemed to be attached to doing as you were told and following the path that had been laid out by them. That was why simply joining her friends in trying to play ED professionally had been such an act of rebellion and it was why she raised her hand that day in the diner. Deep down, Aalin knew that she desired having direction in her life and that day and every day since then Xeal had given her that. It was his seemingly endless confidence that had drawn her in and was still driving her to keep going as she felt like each step brought her closer to where she wanted to be. Namely next to him, as they finally reached the point where he would be able to give her more than just a few hours of his time each week.
It was as Aalin was focused on this that she lost her footing and fell to the desert floor in the heat of the day of what would be day 174 in ED. Exhausted and at her limit, she struggled to at least sit up. She saw that her stamina wouldn’t even recover in the slightest at this point and she believed that if she didn’t sleep, she would actually die in ED. It was at this moment that Aalin found herself finally seeing another soul, as Xeal stood directly in front of her as he spoke.
“I have no need of the weak next to me. Still, you have come this far and you can always help to raise my children in the background. So, worry not, I will not abandon you.”
These words hit Aalin harder than if he had said that he would abandon her completely, as she struggled to care. She was at the point that rational thought was beyond her and in the moment, she truly thought that Xeal was before her. Even if his words felt off, she struggled to deny them as he wasn’t abandoning her which was her true irrational fear, he was simply relegating her to cooking, cleaning and dealing with all of his children. In many ways that was what she herself wanted as her favorite things in the world were seeing her children smile and seeing Xeal enjoy and praise her food. Yet, she couldn’t accept that. She had fought too hard to stay next to him. She had accepted sharing him, even learning to find the joy in it. She would not be the only one of his wives to not be next to him when he needed her. So, with far more effort that it should have taken, Aalin stood as she looked at Xeal while ignoring the fact that she only had 25% of her stamina left and spoke.
“I am not a decoration to be placed in the background as you keep adding new wives to replace me!”
“What are you talking about?” commented Daisy as she came into Aalin’s view.
“Yeah, we all know that Aila has already replaced you and Kate,” added Violet as she wandered into view.
“Indeed, it is only a matter of time before his level matches my own and I can finally join with him in every way,” stated Queen Aila Lorafir, as Aalin turned around to see her standing behind her. “You and the others are only needed until then, so just be happy that you were with him until now.”
“No!”
“Dear, it’s fine,” came Aalin’s mother’s voice as she and her father’s characters, Ren and Shua, came into view next. “We will happily have you and Ahsa come stay with us if you leave Xeal.”
Before Aalin could even process her mom’s words, more and more individuals, all encouraging her to give up, change paths, leave Xeal, accept being stuck in the background and much more kept appearing. This included all of the women involved with Xeal, to include both Princesses Lorena and Bianca, who only had the most insignificant chances of ever securing a piece of his heart. All of this threatened to overwhelm Aalin in her exhausted state as she found herself pulled every which way, until she finally had enough and strode forward in the same direction that she had since the start. As she did so, she closed the distance between her and Xeal and went to slap him, only he caught her wrist. As she looked at him with all the fury she could muster, he just smiled as he spoke.
“It seems that you still do have a bit of fight in you. Now let’s see how much.”
With that Xeal tossed her hand away as he drew his swords and Aalin instantly remembered the few times she had trained with him for close-quarters defense. Instantly she used ice magic to create a staff and focused on ensuring it lasted for at least a few minutes with her ice manipulation ability. As she did this, Xeal’s first attack came and she barely was able to block it, despite her knowing that it had been a lazy attack from him. When the next one came, she had already placed her force shield in its path as she split the staff into two parts and shaped them into thick blades as she attacked Xeal.
These blades were far too fragile to be of any use to a normal player, but Aalin wasn’t normal. No, the mark she bore from the phoenix of ice, Bīng, allowed her to ensure the ice held up to far more stress than was possible. However, that wasn’t enough in this realm as they became water in mere seconds. Water splashed on to Xeal’s face as he started to laugh and Aalin hopped back as she opened the distance between them. As she did this, she watched her stamina hit five percent. Uncaring about that, she instantly summoned more ice and created long thin needles that were thickest in the middle and sent them at Xeal. As they flew, Aalin was constantly controlling them while creating more as she started to go through her 183,080 points in her MP pool. It wasn’t long before she had created tens of thousands of needles as the area around her slowly cooled and the needles started to last a few extra seconds. With each needle taking all of one point from her pool to create as her ice manipulation actually gave it form, she could keep this up almost indefinitely. That was if her stamina hadn’t been empty as she was starting to lose constitution points as she just kept going.
At the same time, the smile on Xeal’s face had vanished as he fought to defend himself after being caught in the center of Aalin’s ice storm. He was constantly using his elemental blades skill to add fire to his blades to speed up the already quick melting of the ice. Only, like the realm itself, it seemed to be unable to keep up with Aalin’s output of over 100 needles per second. Were this the real Xeal, he would have had several ways to solve this situation, but it wasn’t, nor was it his doppelganger. No, it was the very sand that Aalin had been walking on this whole time and the cold was slowly killing it as it fought to hold on. It had been patient and waited until she had been at the very end of her rope as it learned all it could about her. To it, she should have failed to react and just wallowed in her hopelessness before being consumed like all others who had ever wandered its endless dunes. Instead, she was overwhelming it as fire was part of its intrinsic nature and it never thought anything could overwhelm that aspect of what it was, especially when the sun was out.
As the sand was trying to figure out what was going on, Aalin was watching as the rate of her constitution draining had slowed as the cold permeated all around her and she smiled. With this she stopped holding in her MP points, and focused on creating more and more ice as she pushed it out all around her. With this she finally felt her mind stabilize as she remembered where and what she was doing, and with it she knew that what was before her wasn’t Xeal. None of this was real, and whatever was creating it had the nerve to play with her heart and instantly she increased her output even further. As she did so, her constitution dipped below 100 and her MP pool dropped to just under 15,000 as 100 feet in every direction was covered in ice, to include directly down into the sand. It was at this moment that she received a series of system notifications as the world around her dissolved.
(Tier-7 Hellish Nightmare tribulation complete. Calculating completion rate… 95% completion, rank A. Rewards: 20 class skill points, level will automatically be raised to 200, 500 renown, 200 gold.)
(Congratulations, you are one of the first 5,000 tier-7 players. Rewarding a bonus 500 renown and 5 class skill points.)
(Congratulations, you are one of the first 5,000 players to complete a tier-7 Hellish Nightmare tribulation. Rewarding: 1,000 renown and 20 class skill points.)
(Caution, the ice phoenix mark is ready to break its seal. Please find a secluded location within an hour of returning to the main Eternal Dominion world, or the seal will break on its own.)
All Aalin had time or the energy for, was to hobble to the inn in front of her and send a message to Kate saying that she was done, but needed to recover. Once inside the room, she simply lay there and let sleep take her as she tried to recover by any means before the seal on the ice phoenix mark broke. Thus, an hour later she woke screaming as her whole body felt like it was on fire despite turning blue from the cold that was permeating it. As this happened, she watched as her health and constitution both plummeted at a dangerous rate, as she wondered if she would survive the seal breaking. As her constitution dropped to 10 and her health reached 86, it finally ended as she breathed heavily and struggled to even do that. Aalin knew that she had only survived by the slimmest of margins as her last level had saved her in the end. It was with this thought that she read the updated Ice phoenix mark.
(Ice phoenix mark: you have been marked by the ice phoenix and your body has almost completely integrated with the mark, increasing your control of ice magic further. Ice manipulation: you can make changes to the form of any ice you see. 1.25% boost to all stats and heightened senses at all times. 2 extra attribute points in MP, 1 extra attribute point to dexterity per level and 2 extra free attribute points per level. Access to ice phoenix skills through class skill points. Decrease to cost to acquire and use all ice-based skills and spells. All levels take 1.5 XP to reach. Lost upon death. Cannot safely log out while marked. As you increase your tiers, you may unlock more benefits)
As she finished reading this, Aalin lost consciousness once more as she drifted off to sleep with a single thought on her mind. It was time for her to ensure that she would never be pushed to the background again, and take the place that she knew she could next to Xeal. She had long since known that she was special to him due to the feeling he had towards her from his last life and she had refused to use that to her advantage before this moment. No longer, as she was done just going with the flow of the others as she was going to finally truly make her will known!
Gale
Gale stood on the spot that she had learned the requirements of her faith in ED, that included acts of an intimate nature with another in the game. The sudden realization that she needed to take a step that she hadn’t expected to do until she had at least had a partner she trusted had pushed her into a spiral. Especially as she had just shut down Ignis in reality and it seemed that Xeal didn’t want to notice her or Aalin. Had he and Aalin been a couple she could have given up on him and allowed herself to walk the route supplied by the system, but she knew that would almost certainly cause her to lose any chance of being with Xeal. The sequence of events that followed this could best be described as a true mess of awkwardness, as she tried to act confident with Aalin as they attempted to seduce Xeal, before ending up sharing him. While Gale actually enjoyed this arrangement, to include the addition of more sisters to the mix, she held guilt over almost forcing it onto Aalin.
While Aalin was happy, Gale knew that she would have been happier if it had just been her and Xeal, and yet she was always putting her own desires aside for the group’s. The worst part were Gale’s own desires towards Aalin that she knew would never be met. It was with this on her mind that Gale saw the Demonic mode option appear before her, as she sighed before selecting the Hellish Nightmare difficulty and acknowledging all the warnings as the world dissolved around her. When it reformed, Gale found herself standing upon a platform looking out over a massive army as she received a system notification.
