Ironically, Elias had recovered both physically and mentally from the quest reward—or rather, from the post-quest-reward reminder that his time in the dungeon was just beginning.
[Sub-Objective: Find the Well of Enlightenment: 0/1]
"Great…just go and find the Well of Enlightenment. Gotcha." he had thought; in between the cursing.
He ran his hand through his hair, no longer caring for the mix of blood, ichor and much that laced his skin. He was trying to figure out how to proceed, he had an idea, but it mainly involved charging head first in a direction chosen by his gut. He had no clue where the Well was, or how he could find it. In the end, it didn't matter, he could spend days contemplating where the Well was and never get closer to his objective.
In terms of the reward itself. Elias had considered using the Tier 0 Skill Enhancement Crystal for a while, but decided against it. He wanted to experience his newfound power first, to understand a little of its capabilities before enhancement. He could already take on creature one-on-one, so it made sense to establish a baseline before using the crystal. That way, he could measure the exact improvement it provided.
Why? Because he was curious.
Something about the Skills and the System fascinated him; as much as it frustrated him. When he was trying to unravel the mysteries they contained, nothing else seemed to matter. In his singular focus, he found respite from all else.
He looked over the new effects of 'Resilience' once more:
[Enhancement - Spirit - Level 1 - Epic
+4 to Willpower+4 to Willpower per level, doubling each Tier:
Tier 0: 4 — Tier 1: 8 — Tier 2: 16 — Tier 3: 32 — Tier 4: 64 — Tier 5: 128…
Affinity - Resilience
Resistance to Spiritual Attacks - MinorSkills you channel have an increased resistance to interruption - Minor.Mana your channel has increased stability - Minor
'Enhancement skill gems can be altered through Skill Fusion and Enhancement Crystals - Alterations are permanent and will forever affect your path.']
It wasn't exactly as Elias had envisioned when selecting 'Resilience', but, it was interesting. An increased stability to channel mana, did that include his Mana Barrier? Or his general Mana Manipulation? He was desperate to know.
The other two effects didn't have an immediate benefit, at least, he didn't see that they did. But he guessed that they could come in handy in the future.
He stood with his ragged backpack on, full of moss. He had his long sword in one hand and dagger in the other and his stomach was bursting in knots of anticipation, "Time to be hurt some more!" he said in his most heroic voice and his forced an overexaggerated smile on his face.
The next few weeks in the Dungeon consisted of fighting, eating, contemplating on his pain and sleeping, in that order. Elias's perseverance in the first few days of the dungeon had resulted in a burgeoning confidence, combine that with the moss's regeneration and his slowly increasing skill levels. He could continue on his mad conquest for the Dungeons 'Well of Enlightenment' forever.
As Elias sat, chewing on a particularly juicy portion of moss, he glanced across the desolate expanse of dimly lit rock and crystal, splattered with the ichor of various colours. Corpses of the many creatures he'd slain. He also spotted the pools of red, usually accompanying the ichor, he winced, Yeah, that was his blood…
One thing he'd found with the System-fuckery-of-reality was that the moss regenerating his Life Force also somehow regenerated his blood and his limbs. He'd lost more than his body weight in blood a few times over. As well as multiple fingers and the end of his ear. How? Well, Urstok may look ungodly, but Naeru were the most abominably foul creations of the Dungeon that he'd faced so far.
His first fight with one had been filled with overconfidence, he'd just reached level eight in Mana Barrier and five in Enhancement – Spirit. He was almost full of Life and Mana and his newly improved analysis skill, courtesy of Scan had shown his opponent as 'Equal' to him in a fight. Elias had taken that to mean that with his drastically higher Life Pool, the fight would be relatively one-sided. How wrong he was.
The Naeru had gone from clumsily scuttling forward to soaring through the air, its flesh-bound pincers spiralling like hurricanes across the battlefield. Elias had tried to summon Mana Barrier to deflect the relentless attacks, but he couldn't anticipate their erratic positioning. The Naeru's ability to leap from place to place with almost no delay made melee combat almost impossible.
It wasn't until he dropped his sword and grappled onto the sinewy muscle of its extended chains that he finally turned the fight around, with his less-than-ideal dagger, he hacked off the pincers one by one. By sawing through the thick flesh.
By the end of the fight, he was drenched in fluids—his own blood, yes. The Naeru's blood, yes. His sweat, of course. The Naeru's insides? Unfortunately…yes.
It had been a brutal wake up call that his own confidence had slipped into cockiness.
Eventually, after a half dozen fights or so, he'd worked out the general pattern of attacks and adopted a feature of his Mana Manipulation that he'd begun to experiment with. Mana Surge, or at least, that's what he called it, the System didn't recognise it as a separate skill. It involved building his mana into a ball in the palm of his hand – the closer to his body, the more stable. Once he'd gathered around twenty percent of his mana, he'd release it all at the destination of the Naeru's next landing. The surge of mana would throw the creature as if it had been struck in the air. Having no stability in its flight, it couldn't maintain its composure and would end up spiralling to the ground, usually upturned. From there, he could quickly chase down and assault it. They were surprisingly weak when engaged in close quarters and lasted only a few hits from the daggers tendrils.
But, that didn't mean that the pincers dealt any less damage; he'd not been able to master the deflection or mitigation of their blows, and as such, he'd taken as much as he'd given. The worst was when the pincers locked onto his fingers. Whilst the pincers couldn't clamp down through his arms of legs, they went straight through the small bones in his fingers.
He shuddered and rubbed the now regrown fingers on his hands.
Mooshrooms, however, weren't scary—despite their completely grotesque appearance; unnatural helpings of facial features spread across their spongey flesh and sharp teeth glistened in the open grins of their multiple mouths. Elias did, however, find them interesting; the Mooshrooms fought with mana.
They condensed their mana into elemental attacks – the aura of sickly green must have just been a feature of their overflowing mana pools. Why was it green? No clue.
The Mooshrooms would throw balls of mana laced with an element associated with that individual Mooshroom, fire, ice and lightning were the elements he'd experienced so far. He also noticed that their casting was almost telegraphed, he could anticipate the path of the attack with an ease that felt refreshing in his small-time career as a Dungeon Delver. He avoided most of their attacks and, when one did make contact, he had already erected a Mana Barrier to defend. It didn't mitigate everything, but it did prevent any major wounds.
Finally, Urstoks. He had nothing left to say on Urstoks, he'd fought many more and he had emerged victorious each time. He didn't enjoy fighting them, but, if he was honest. He didn't particularly want to be fighting anything.
The want of peaceful recourse was overshadowed by two things: The System, and, Elias's insatiable urge to get more skill levels. It was getting addictive at this point. Every time he levelled a skill, he felt a surge of power rush through him, empowering him. He also learnt more about his skills and how he could apply them the longer he spent in combat.
His curiosity was never sated.
He bit down on another helping of moss as he glanced over his Statistics window.
[Name: Elias Grey
Race: Human, Male
Age: 17
Disabled Functionality: N/A
Disabled Functionality: N/A
Life Points: 104 / 118
Mana Points: 96 / 118
Essence: 0 / 10
Strength: 21
Endurance: 19
Vitality: 19
Willpower: 54
Intelligence: 32
Perception: 24
Agility: 21
Luck: 37
Available Attributes for distribution: 0
Titles:
Brave Antagonist,
Potential Prodigy,
Survivor,
Seedling,
Aberration Slayer,
Skilled,
Dungeon Delver
Innate Abilities:
Corrupted Core - Unique - Tier 0, Level 2
Skills: 4/5
Mana Manipulation - Basic - Tier 0, Level 7
Mana Barrier - Basic - Tier 0, Level 9
Scan - Basic - Tier 0, Level 5
Enhancement - Spirit - Tier 0, level 6]
His attributes had improved drastically over the past few weeks. His wisdom had more than doubled, thanks to his new Enhancement Skill. His Intelligence, Perception and Agility, increased by more than twenty percent, and the rest of his stats increased marginally, the physical attribute boost being provided by his new title: Dungeon Delver:
[Dungeon Delver – Defeat more than fifty creatures of your Tier or above within a Dungeon – All Physical Stats: + 3]
Other points to note were that when Scan had reached level five, it had unlocked a new function. It displayed an additional piece of information when examining other creatures: Relative Strength. He didn't know how exactly it calculated the strength, but it so far yielded either: Weak, Equal Power or Strong. He was sure there would be more classifications of relative power, but here, his subject data was limited.
Mana Manipulation could now be used to tangible effect, although, he was by no means a master. He could channel the mana to achieve various effects; It was highly inefficient but could turn the tide of battle in a pinch. It could also be used for the most important things – Elias waved his hand, channelling a trickle of mana from his increasingly large pool, the moss in his other hand began to levitate, engulfed by his imperceptible power, he span the moss in a gentle orbit around a fixed point in front of him. He let a few moments pass and brought the moss to his mouth for a final third bite.
[Mana Points: 91 / 118]
He sighed, "Very inefficient."
With his hunger and thirst sated, he looked ahead, a week after he set off on his journey of exploration he'd discovered the edge of the Expanse. A rocky face glazed with the similar moss and crystals of the expanse. It shot up into the darkness above—the darkness that he now realised existed. Roughly twenty-five meters above him, there was some form of fog that obscured his vision beyond. He guessed that this was something weird that the System had done as he had a relatively unimpaired sight in all directions other than above—it was unnatural and disturbing, but, that was fine; what wasn't in this new world.
He'd decided to follow along the edges of the expanses border in hopes of another passageway or an obvious exit, like the one he had come through to enter. Another week in he'd found it. Although, it had been guarded by two creatures. An Urstok and a Mooshroom—he'd been reluctant to engage at the time, and it wasn't until earlier today that he had found the courage to fight.
And… he'd won, and it was more than a pyrrhic victory. Though he hadn't felt immediate or tangible benefits from the Enhancement – Spirit skill, the increase in his Willpower had nearly erased his hesitation in battle. Where he would have blocked or retreaded previously, he now stepped into blows he knew he could mitigate, opening up new counterattacks. He baited out strikes, pressing his advantage without a second though. It was as though his Willpower supressed conscious fears, letting him fight in ways he once considered reckless.
Yet, despite these gains, he still had doubts. Was acquiring the Spirit enhancement the right choice? The battles had become easier, but, was that because of his skill, or his growing indifference to danger?
He exhaled, pushing his thoughts aside, ahead of him were two corpses laying motionless near his rest spot, beyond them, a narrow passageway stretched out into the unknown.
A way forward.
"Please…please be a way out," he said, as he stepped forward.