Have you ever had one of those nightmares, where you are falling; and all you can do is wait for impact, but each second drags on without you hitting anything, then suddenly; slam! You smash into the ground and you are awake? Well, I was falling, and let me tell you, those nightmares don’t even come close; every second it was as if someone where plucking a string, and every time it would send a wave of tension over me, making me relive a fantom impact. And then came the impact, it was bad, I blacked out almost immediately, but I knew it was bad!


    I came round to a black world, a black world with a red pulsing to it, that meant I was low on hp, really low, ‘stats’ the thought brought up a window, showing health, manna, and stamina, health showed 2 out of 70, I felt a moments panic; this was the closest to death I had ever come! Struggling to concentrate, I managed to pull a healing potion out of my inventory, it was at that moment that I realised how painful moving was, I don’t know how long it took me to drink the potion, but eventually, with great effort I got it down, then waited as the freezing, burning, sensation began to run through me; soon I would be able to move without blacking out, it would probably take a few hours before I could move without any pain, but I was out of immediate danger. In the darkness to my left, something growled. I turned my head and stared into the darkness; I could see nothing. And I mean nothing! I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open or closed for all the difference it made! The noise came again, but it sounded different now. Less of a growl and  more of a groan, I raised a shaking hand and flared some manna, it came out as a misty cloud glowing ever so faintly,(it was hopelessly inefficient and you would struggle to read by the light it gave off, but it was the only thing I had) I sent the cloud out in the direction the sound had come from, it revealed a shadowy world; where I couldn’t be sure if what I saw was shadow or substance. I stood for a while trying to make sense of it, then the groan came again, and like one of those optical illusions that seem so obvious after you make sense of them, I recognised what was in front of me; “Tom!” I pulled out a potion as I stumbled towards him, pain rushing through my legs as I moved, I stopped next to him; fumbled to get the cork out, got it out at last, right then my excess manna run out and we were plunged into darkness once more. Sometime had passed since I found Tom and poured the healing potion down his throat. I wasn’t sure how much, there was nothing to go off except my perception. I was sitting in the dark a little way off from Tom, surrounded by the pungent smell of fungus, it had been present ever since we arrived, but I hadn’t noticed it until now; too preoccupied with not dying. In the darkness Toms breathing had settled, it was just a matter of time now before he woke up, my manna hadn’t recovered yet, so I couldn’t ‘look around’ anymore, I was stuck waiting in the darkness with nothing to do, and then I remembered ‘I had levelled up!’ With a thought I opened my menu here is what I saw;


    Health 70                                         Strength 5                                        Spells;


    Manna 110                                       Agility 7                                            Imitate level 1


    Stamina 30                                      Vitality 4                                            Distort level 1


    ‘You have reached level 5, you have 2 remaining skill points’


    (This is an explanation of the table above; Health: in Alba Health is really just an expression of how hardy your constitution is; in other words, how well, you would take being punched, poisoned, or falling through a dungeon floor, if someone were to cut your head off you would die, if you had 5 or 500 Health point wouldn’t make any difference. Manna: an expression of how much magic you have access too, also determines inventory size; the more stuff in your inventory the less available manna. Stamina: in most classes this is what is expended in order to use skills, if you have no skills that use it is still used in a similar way to adrenaline; i.e., it boosts strength, agility, and vitality, slightly. Strength: pretty self-explanatory. Agility: how fast you can move, how coordinated you are. Vitality: how fast you naturally recover; Health, Manna, and Stamina. Spell: Imitate; imitate this lets you make one object look like another object. Spell: Distort; this is not an optical spell- it doesn’t change the appearance of anything- this is auditory; it distorts sounds, making them unrecognisable.   Skill points: Skill points are awarded at level up; 1 skill point is worth 10 point in Health, Manna, and Stamina. 1 skill point is worth 1 point in Strength, Agility, and Vitality. You can also level up a spell, - if you have enough skill points- or acquire a new- random- spell. Available spells depend on your level.)


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    I had received the imitate spell when I got my class, and had spent a skill point to get distort when I had first levelled up, back when I still thought I was going to become some badass adventurer, after that reality had hit and every other level up had gone into my manna pool; boring but sadly practical. Level 5 was the first time I had gotten 2 skill points, the training manual that I had read called level 5 ‘the end of the early levels’ because you got 2 skill point from levels 5 to 10, but you needed more XP to level up. I gave a brittle smile in the darkness; it had taken me more than a year to get through the ‘easy’ levels, Oh brilliant. I am not sure how long I sat there in the darkness trying to decide where to put those 2 skill points; I wanted to get more spells, but I had wanted that before I had fallen through the floor, and so I found myself wondering if my desire was interfering with my judgment. Then again, having seen Xxavier move I could definitely see an advantage to having high agility, on the other hand my vitality was pretty low, at the same time I had a lot of health potions in my inventory, and fast recovery wasn’t going to help me if I didn’t survive an encounter… this carried on until I started to get angry at myself; everything needed more skill points in it, but I only had 2, I needed to work out what would benefit me the most. Then the absurdity of it hit me; out there in the darkness there could be anything, more of those level 40 bear monsters, a creature that level might have an agility stat over 100! And here I was sitting in the darkness wondering what to put my 2 skill points into, as if it would make a difference if anything happened, and with that cheerful thought I put 1 into agility and 1 into a new spell. The new spell that I got was; Fear level 1: Monsters up to level 3 feel a strong sense of unease when you cast this spell on them and may flee. This spell does not, at current level, have any effect on humans, or creatures with a high sensitivity to manna. This spell does not, at current level, have any effect on creatures over level 3. Manna cost 15.  I read through it twice, then rested my forehead on my knees, why couldn’t it have been something useful? Why? I didn’t know what I was going to meet down here, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be below level 3!


    It is hard to measure time when you are underground, without any constant to base it off. I would guess it was about an hour after I gave Tom the potion that he woke up. His voice sounded small and a bit dopy, “Where am I?” I wasn’t entirely sure of this myself, so I said “Somewhere below the dungeon. In some kind of chasm, or… shaft…” “Oh… Did you know this was under the dungeon?” I sighed inwardly “not until we fell through it! No.” “Oh…” Tom said shifting around in the darkness, “Don’t move around, there is nothing to see and I don’t know if the floor is safe!” Tom’s “oh” came back; “I don’t suppose you have a variance crystal in your inventory?” [Variance crystals give off light when charged with manna,] “No. I don’t normally carry any when exploring dungeons, with the manna veins giving off light I have never seen the need before now.”  “Oh Brilliant.”  I said under my breath, “I have something that might help though!” There were sounds in the darkness, like Tom was searching through his pockets, then a very small sneeze, and a second later a tiny flame appeared, almost like Tom had struck a match. Tom grinned at me in this new found light, and held up a small, red, and brown striped rodent, “this is Red, my pet fire mouse.” He said, then, seeing my surprise added “my class is Monster tamer.”