335 Wooden Walls

BANG, CLANG

Alex slammed his sword right on top of the box, but nothing happened. Instead, his sword broke in two. "What the? What am I supposed to do then?" he asked in frustration.

He kicked, punched, threw it at the wall, and tried to use different techniques on the box, but it didn't open.

"ARGHHH" in frustration, he grabbed the box by the end of the ropes and started slamming it everywhere. He didn't let go and kept on beating it around.

Suddenly, he felt the load lighten. "Huh?" he looked up and checked. The box was a good 20 meters away from him near the wall of the maze. He looked at his hand and only the rope remained.

"Oh, it came off," he said and walked to the box. He picked it up and saw its pristine condition. "Damn, still no damage. Just how strong is thi—" he stopped.

He could now see something on the box that he couldn't before. There was a hole in it.

"Huh? How did it— Oh, it was covered by the rope. I should have ripped it off as the first thing I did," he said and looked at the hole.

For a few seconds, he didn't know what the hole did, but then he saw something. Inside the hole… was another hole. His eyes started shining when he saw that.

"A keyhole," he said in surprised. He quickly searched into his robes among the dozens or more talismans and brought out a key. This was the same key he had found deep in the swimming pool like course.

He inserted the key and twisted it.

CLACK.

The box opened. With slightly nervous hands, he opened the box and saw what was inside. When he finally laid his eyes on the reward he had been trying this hard to get, he was disappointed.

"Just a bunch of talismans?" he nearly shouted in angers. He calmed himself and said, "This might be good, don't lose hope Alex."

He checked the first one.

-15 seconds reduction from the result-

"That's just the first one," he said to himself.

-52 seconds reduction from the result-

"That's… not bad," he tried to deceive himself.

- 34 seconds reduction from the result-

This wasn't good, but he still didn't lose hope.

-16 seconds…-

This was bad.

-28 seconds…-

This was bad too.

-10 seconds…-

This one was especially bad.

-22 seconds…-

"Sigh, I wasted so much time." He quickly read through the other 5 remaining talismans.

"Huh?" when he got to the last of the talismans, he noticed something. There was something etched onto the wood on the end.

"What's this?" he thought and read it.

-Here lies the final one of the 3 -

-HKELOHOEA-

"Wait… this is!" Alex quickly took out the two types of talsman out that had a similar string of words written on them.

[CCHASTWDPH], [ETWLFEONT], and [HKELOHOEA]. If the information on the box was correct, he now had all the pieces of the puzzle. But Alex couldn't think of how they would fit.

"Hm, no matter what order I stack them in, it doesn't work," he thought. Putting the words in a straight line didn't seem to be the way to go.

"Are these abbreviations then? Probably not. These would be too long," he thought.

"Reverse then?" he checked but that didn't work either.

"Hmm, one is 10 letters long, while the other 2 are 9 letters long. How do I do this?" He spent a good 5 minutes trying to think of ways to orient them.

"Hmm, that is… I might as well try it," Alex thought after coming up with an idea. He took the broken sword and started writing the words on the ground.

He was still cautious the entire time about someone getting behind him while he etched the words onto the ground. Instead of writing them horizontally however, he wrote them vertically, side by side.

"Let's see what they read," he thought and tried reading in one way.

"CEHCTKHWE— Nah that doesn't make sense." He read it the other way this time.

"HECKTCEWH— Nah, not this one either. Am I even doing the right thing?" he wondered and read the final way.

"CHECKTHEWALLS— Wait… it's working. Check the walls… lemme read the rest," he thought and started reading it from start to the end. When he finished reading it, a massive smile appeared on his face.

The three talisman together read 'Check The Walls Of The Wooden Path'.

"So I have to check these walls?" he said as he looked at the wooden path that lied ahead of him. Without hesitation, he dug a little hole and buried the box before moving on.

As soon as he walked in, he started looking at the walls, but everything looked the same.

"What am I supposed to check here? Is there a hidden door or something?" Alex wondered. "If it's a hidden door then I should be able to open it by pushing on one of these walls, right?" he said to himself.

He ran his hands across the walls constantly pushing them. He also knocked on them to see what they sounded like. He did this for a few seconds when…

KNOCK KNOCK

He knocked on one of the walls and it sounded weird. He knocked again, and as he had expected, it was hollow. He tried pushing that part of the wall in, but nothing happened.

"Hmm… then should I pull instead?" he thought and searched for a something to grasp. After finding nothing, he used his Qi to pull the wall.

A drawer like box fell off from the wall and he saw a talisman inside. He picked up the talisman and saw read it.

-1 minute reduced from the final result-

"This is nice," Alex said, but it wasn't really worth wasting his time around. "How many even are there?" he said and sent out his spiritual sense to check the walls.

His eyes suddenly went wide in shock as he could only speak out only two words, "So many…"