The initiation trials began not with a bang, but with a whimper – a rather high-pitched, squawking whimper, to be precise. My first trial was, according to the rather unhelpful pamphlet I'd been given (printed on suspiciously thin, almost translucent parchment), a "test of speed and agility." This translated, in reality, to a race. Not against another student, mind you, but against a tortoise. A hyper-speed tortoise, to be specific.
This wasn't your average, slow-and-steady garden variety tortoise. Oh no. This was a creature of terrifying velocity, a blur of shell and determined little legs, leaving a trail of dust and bewildered butterflies in its wake. Its name, according to the equally unhelpful elder who introduced it (with a disturbingly gleeful grin), was Sheldon. Sheldon the supersonic snail.
My glitching spiritual system, naturally, decided to celebrate this momentous occasion by malfunctioning spectacularly. Instead of enhancing my speed, as I'd hoped (and desperately needed), it decided to activate my "reverse gravity" ability – a skill I'd accidentally unlocked during a particularly chaotic attempt at brewing an anti-gravity potion (which, needless to say, had resulted in me floating upside down for three hours).
So there I was, hurtling backwards at an alarming rate, Sheldon's shell a mere speck in the distance, the finish line a distant, receding mirage. I tried to use my "enhanced agility" ability to adjust my course, but instead, I began to spin uncontrollably, becoming a human top, a dizzying vortex of limbs and frantic apologies to the bewildered spectators.
The elder, Sheldon's handler, merely chuckled, his mirth echoing across the dusty training grounds. "Ah, the joys of the unexpected," he commented, his voice laced with a distinct lack of sympathy. "I haven't seen a contestant regress so spectacularly since… well, let's just say it involved a catapult and a particularly stubborn goat."
My second trial was even more… unconventional. Sword fighting. Against a flock of geese. Angry geese. Apparently, the academy had a surprisingly large and aggressive goose population, a fact that hadn't been highlighted in the brochure. These weren't your average barnyard birds; these were feathered ninjas, their honks like war cries, their wings surprisingly sharp.
My glitching system, feeling particularly mischievous that day, decided to turn my sword into a rubber chicken. Yes, a rubber chicken. A bright yellow, slightly squashed rubber chicken. My attempts at parrying and thrusting resulted in a rather undignified flailing of poultry. The geese, meanwhile, seemed to find my predicament utterly hilarious, their honking escalating into raucous laughter (or at least, something that sounded remarkably like laughter). One particularly bold goose even landed on the rubber chicken-sword, using it as a perch to survey the battlefield with contemptuous disdain.
The elder overseeing this trial, a woman with a magnificent handlebar moustache and a surprisingly sharp wit, simply sighed and shook her head. "Perhaps," she remarked, her voice echoing with weary amusement, "alchemy isn't your calling. Maybe you'd be better suited to… goose wrangling? We could use a new assistant in the poultry department. They seem to have taken a particular liking to you."
My final trial, if one could even call it that, involved climbing a wall. A seemingly ordinary wall, about ten feet high. Except, as I approached, it began to inflate. Slowly, ominously, it transformed into a gigantic, bouncy castle. A bouncy castle, complete with slides, inflatable animals, and a disconcerting amount of giggling children who had somehow infiltrated the initiation trials.
My glitching system, choosing to make this its masterpiece of chaos, activated my "levitation" ability just as I launched myself onto the bouncy castle. Unfortunately, my levitation skills, like most of my other abilities, were slightly... off. Instead of a graceful ascent, I began to bounce uncontrollably across the inflatable behemoth, my trajectory completely erratic and unpredictable. I bounced off inflatable unicorns, somersaulted over bouncy castles, and narrowly avoided colliding with a group of gleefully screaming children.
The elder responsible for this particular trial (a man whose beard seemed to consist entirely of entangled garden gnomes) simply watched in open-mouthed astonishment. "Well," he finally stammered, "I've seen a lot in my time, but… that was certainly… something. I'd say you passed. Barely. But you passed. Congratulations."
Thus concluded my humiliating, utterly chaotic, and spectacularly embarrassing initiation trials. I hadn't exactly excelled, but somehow, miraculously, I had survived. I earned my place within the academy – a testament not to my skills or prowess but rather to my remarkable resilience and the apparently limitless capacity for malfunction inherent in my glitching spiritual system. The adventure, however, was far from over. The coordinates from the cryptic message still beckoned, the Obsidian Hand still loomed like a dark cloud on the horizon, and I, Jian, the glitching initiate, was ready to face whatever bizarre challenges awaited me. Perhaps I'd even get a chance to master my reverse gravity ability – after all, a good escape strategy is essential for anyone facing an army of vengeful geese. And maybe, just maybe, I'd learn to brew a potion that doesn't turn my master's beard a vibrant shade of fuchsia. That was a rather persistent stain, to say the least. The gnome tug-of-war team had, however, taken an unexpected liking to it. They'd used it to create miniature dye-bombs, which had proven surprisingly effective in their recent inter-gnome turf wars.
The next day brought a new set of trials, these ones focusing less on speed and agility and more on… let's call it strategic thinking. The first task was solving a riddle posed by a sphinx, not the majestic, wise creature of myth, but a surprisingly grumpy, overweight feline with a penchant for tuna and an alarming lack of patience. Its riddle, predictably, involved a series of wordplay puns that were both deeply illogical and incredibly offensive. My glitching system, sensing an opportunity for comical mayhem, decided to translate the riddle into Klingon.
I spent a good hour trying to decipher the guttural, seemingly nonsensical phrases while the sphinx glared at me, its fur bristling with frustration. It finally succumbed to a fit of pique, spitting tuna and declaring me the winner by default. "You may pass," it huffed, "but next time, get your own damn tuna."
My second trial was a test of alchemic skill, which naturally, went spectacularly wrong. I was tasked with brewing a potion that could enhance one's ability to resist interrogation techniques, which turned out to be much more difficult than it sounded. The potion that I conjured instead turned the interrogator into a small, fluffy kitten that insisted on cuddling with everyone, which, while not technically a failure, was hardly helpful in terms of information-gathering.
The final trial of this rather bizarre assessment involved a game of 'strategic combat chess', involving actual combat and actual chess pieces. The chess pieces were, of course, animated and each possessed unique and unpredictable abilities. My pawn, for instance, turned out to be a miniature dragon with an unfortunate habit of setting the game board on fire. My king, on the other hand, was prone to sudden fits of sleep. The opposing team's queen was a hyper-intelligent squirrel who possessed a baffling talent for manipulating the other pieces. The match ended with my dragon incinerating the entire game board while my king snored soundly, and the squirrel declared itself the victor.
Even though my performance, let's say, wasn't exactly flawless, the academy's instructors seemed rather impressed by my utter lack of predictability. A talent, they said, that would prove invaluable in the face of the Obsidian Hand. I was, after all, the unpredictable variable they needed.
The journey towards deciphering my glitching system continued, marked by a constant stream of hilarious malfunctions, absurd challenges, and moments of sheer panic. But amidst the chaos, progress was made. I discovered hidden patterns in my glitches, cryptic symbols forming a pathway towards the truth, a path that led me further into the heart of the academy's mysteries, and toward the shadowy figures of the Obsidian Hand, a step closer to unearthing the secrets of my malfunctioning spiritual system. The adventure continued, as unpredictable and hilariously disastrous as always.