The gemstones were arranged in some sort of pattern, but what kind, Caleb had no clue. Chiseled lines covered the entirety of the wall. They converged around the position of each gemstone – one yellow, one green, one blue, and one much larger red, each with a soft glow to them. The larger red stone was in the center, the lines emanating from it dominated over half the wall. Each other stone – sapphire, emerald, topaz – were placed further out. It was like a wealthy caveman's version of modern art.
Caleb stepped closer, reaching out and tracing one of the carvings with a finger, going up, reaching a sharp point, and then steeply back down. His hand grazed closer to the topaz stone – it was roughly the size of his fist. Quite beautiful really. Back on earth, the thing would be worth a fortune, or it would have been – the apocalypse couldn't be good for the jewelry market.
He touched it, expecting nothing of course, but was met with a pleasant surprise. It glowed even brighter, shining like someone had just turned a flashlight on it. The light sparkled, filling the room in warm yellow. Then it became somehow more powerful, so blazingly bright Caleb had to turn his gaze and squeeze his eyes shut.
After roughly five seconds, the light faded, and the gemstone was as it was before.
"Well, that obviously means something," he muttered, stepping back to take another look at the larger picture. But what? And why did the blue one look familiar?
His eyes shot wide. The one set in the archway! Caleb turned and jogged out the room, into the much larger chamber, and then out the archway and into the bitter cold. He looked up. There it was. Set into the highest point of the arch, the color of the deep sea, was a matching pair.
An idea was already taking shape inside his mind. He ran back to the gem-studded wall and touched the sapphire. Just as the topaz, it too, grew blindingly bright. Caleb didn't wait around for it to die down. He shaded his vision and stumbled, eyes closed, back out.
The other stone was glowing as well. They were more than just a matching pair. They were linked! Like two signaling devices, touching one would cause both of them to radiate light like the sun.
All of the curving and sharp lines on the wall, they weren't random, they were a map. A map of the mountain range, each peak carved into the stone, valleys winding through like rivers. The blue gemstone near the righthand corner was signifying where the gemstone in the arch was in relation to the others. He could see it now.
I bet each of the gemstones is telling me where one of the Dungeon's bosses is located. Bolvun was here. He touched the stone near the sapphire, avoiding the gem itself so he wouldn't set it off. The other two Hands are the yellow on here, and the green one near the top of the map. The central ruby is undoubtedly Thrymm. Shit, I hope me touching these gemstones isn't setting off some sort of alarm to the other bosses. If they have a map like this in their lair as well, I might as well be shooting off a flare, telling them exactly where I am.
He shrugged. Oh well. If that were the case, so be it. It would save him the trouble of having to hunt them down. But he needed to get much stronger first. Bolvun had been level twenty-five, Caleb was just now level twelve.
There were still some things that he wanted to test to be sure that his hypothesis was correct. Caleb pressed his fingers against the cool topaz, the ran back outside. It was easy to spot. Burning like a signal fire, far away across the mountainous terrain atop a distant peak, shone a matching yellow light.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. One of the main things he'd been worried about was actually finding all of his enemies. It didn't look like that would be an issue now.
He repeated the process with the red gem and saw it shine from the tallest mountain like it were a volcano ready to blow. The emerald gem, Caleb had to climb up the wall to reach. He probably could have leapt and touched it, or just broke his hands into the wall with his incredible strength, making his own hand and footholds, but instead he climbed it as he would've before, slowly creeping up, pads of his fingers barely biting into the rough carvings. Sometimes it feels good to do things the old fashioned way.
After touching the final gemstone, he ran back outside, but he didn't see a green light shining in the distance. For a brief moment, he was distraught. Was his idea not correct? But that wouldn't make any sense, the other two had worked pretty much perfectly.
However, after a few more seconds studying the map, Caleb deduced that the lair of the emerald Hand was just inconveniently located, blocked from his view by the terrain.
There was still one more thing he wanted to test. Something that he hoped wouldn't break the map. Caleb pried his fingers into the stone around the sapphire set in the map. It cracked and broke beneath his powerful fingers as they worked themselves in like tree roots. He clenched his eyes closed, bracing for the onslaught of brilliant light, but it never came. Even though his fingers were embedded into the rock, clutched tight around the gemstone, it was no brighter than normal, soft as a glowstick.
With a final tug, he wrenched the thing out of its setting, and beheld it in his hand. I love super strength. It weighed about a pound or two, about half the size of a baseball. But why wasn't it shining?
His first panicked thought was that by ripping it from the wall, he'd ruined whatever magical connectivity had been there. However, as soon as that thought crossed his mind, light erupted from the stone. He dropped it clattering to the ground with a surprised yelp. It rolled across the stony floor, and the light receded.
"What the hell?" Caleb leaned down and poked it. Light. Then again. Light again. A quick glance out the doorway proved that the two gemstones were still connected – when he touched one, they both shone.
Caleb grumbled. "This thing will be incredibly annoying to carry around if it flashbangs me every time I touch it." He picked it up, ready to drop it into his chalk bag as quick as he could, but, again, it didn't shine. "Okay, now I'm confused. Do you work or not?"
As soon as he spoke, it burst to light again. His eyes widened with realization, then squinted against the harsh, painful glare. That's it, isn't it? It only works if I intend it to, or at least it doesn't work if I don't intend it to.
Now that he made the connection, he could sense the aether within him. He could feel the pull and push of power in the gemstone. The crystal was able to draw that energy in only if that was his intent, then, like a spark igniting a forest fire, the latent aether within the crystal itself would activate. It must have been sensing his unconscious desires the first time that he'd touched one of them.
A few more tests and his hypothesis was confirmed.
Activation energy. If I will it to work, it does. If I don't, it won't. Caleb grinned, tossed the thing in the air, then caught it and deposited it in his chalk bag, cinching it closed. Best part is, it still works. I wonder if there will be magical items and if this is how they work?
Over the next few minutes, while the sun slowly began to rise, creeping over the distant mountains and igniting the snowing range in shades of gold, Caleb collected the other gemstones, including the second blue one in the crown of the archway. All except for the hefty ruby in the middle of the map. That one would be far too bulky and unwieldy to carry with him. Luckily, there was no chance of him losing track of where its companion was – at the top of the tallest mountain.
Bag full of crystals, Caleb began his trek. It was a long way between peaks, having to climb all the way down a mountain to travel through the valley below, or hike a winding path along the ridges themselves. He chose to descend to the valley.
Caleb had been an adept climber and hiker before all of this. Now, he was at another level entirely. Like a goat bounding down the mountainside, Caleb ran. He leapt over boulders, sprinted through snow, skidded across patches of rock or ice, catching and swinging himself with his powerful hands. His coordination was near superhuman. His body was built like a tank. Drops that would break a normal man's legs were nothing to him. At one point, he slipped, but was able to right himself in mid-air, catch the side of a protruding stone with his spectral arm, and flip himself back. He breathed in the cold mountain air rushing by his face and let out a whoop of exhilarated glee.
Freedom.
***
Based on the orientation of the sun as it rose through the sky, he was heading West. The blue mountain, as he was calling it because it had held the blue gemstone, was in the southeast of the range. The yellow mountain, his current destination, was in the southwest, green due north, and red between all three.
He was down in the valley, walking along the banks of a frozen river. Water flowed at a sluggish pace, great chunks of ice clunking against each other. Even with his iron-clad body, he did not want to fall in there. Between the bone-chilling temperature and the slabs of crushing ice, he wouldn't last long.
But that didn't mean he couldn't have a drink. Caleb knelt along the edge, scooping a handful of the water to his lips, and gulping it down. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was. Fighting sure has a way of taking it out of you. Pretty soon, he'd need to find a food source. Eating boggarts didn't sound like the most appealing thing.
In fact, he'd left the corpses of many of them scattered across the side of the mountain. They had ranged in level from four, all the way up to ten, and he'd gained another level. It was also good fighting practice. His Brawling skill gave him a deep understanding of how to fight, how to move his body, anticipate his enemies movements, like new software had been downloaded into his brain, but he still had a lot to learn. He knew the how, he was learning the why. He could feel himself getting stronger with every fight, honing his skills and his body through action.
Thirst sufficiently quenched, Caleb got up and started walking again.
His thoughts drifted to what his strategy should be for completing the Dungeon. Relying on a falling rock to kill all three Hands and Thrymm felt like wishful thinking. And he'd struggled a decent bit against the level thirteen ice troll, which had only been two levels higher than him at the time. If he wanted to have a chance against the other hands, he needed to get a lot stronger. Likely level twenty-two or twenty-three at the least.
So far, Caleb hadn't found any way of leveling up other than killing monsters. But, it wasn't the act of killing that actually leveled him up, it was when he would absorb the aether of the monster after the fact. And he could feel aether within the signaling crystals, in fact, he could feel it within the very air around him. Ambient aether. It was faint, almost imperceptible, but it was there, like the tiniest bit of moisture in the desert. If he could find a way to absorb that, he could get stronger just by existing.
There wasn't a time limit on the Dungeon, at least not one Caleb was aware of, so he could theoretically take as much time as he needed in killing the bosses. But that wasn't acceptable to him. If he could grow stronger, why couldn't the creatures in the Dungeon as well? Plus, he'd gotten titles from being the first, he'd taken hold of a powerful advantage and he wasn't about to let go out of laziness. There was no telling the direction the world was headed in. If might made right, he didn't want anyone ever telling him he was wrong.
He could feel the faint fuzz of the aether in the air, a subconscious sensation. He crested the top of a small boulder by the river, climbing up it with ease. Then he sat down, closed his eyes, and breathed.
A mix of aether and oxygen pulled into his lungs, swirling together, absorbing like heat into a cold stone. It was faint – almost imperceptible. But it was there. Power.
Around him at all times, in his muscles, in his breath, in the flow of the frigid river beside him, in the howl of the wind, the rays of the sun. He could draw it in. He could control it. He could–
"This is boring as hell." Caleb stood, brushing off his knees. He'd never been one for sitting still. "I'm gonna go kill some shit."