He opened the window at least once a day to check his age. Every year on the day you were born, a person''s unallocated Stats increase by ten Points until you werethirty-four years old. On his birthday he would haveten more Points to allocate. He would also know that roughly four months had passed since he had been thrown in here.
He tried to keep his health intact but it was getting harder and harder. Each meal helped less. He felt such weakness. A complete lack of energy. Sleep had stopped helping at all. It was time. He might as well start allocating his Points to Vitality. He had already wasted so much on Luck that he had wanted to save the Points he had left for something that might contribute to his future. But that was a dream from a time before.
He didn''t hesitate.
He allocated 5 points to Vitality and felt a warmth and strength wash over him. Compared to the power of his Luck allocation it was nothing. In terms of the feeling itself, it was less cerebral in nature than Luck, less mystic, but more real. It felt like safety and strength rooted in the physical world. It brought images in his mind of the wide earth and stability. He cried as his aches disappeared briefly. He let himself enjoy it, he tried to take note of everything he was feeling, he didn''t want it to end. The warmth faded and he barely noticed the drawback. It was nothing. He would savor his Vitality allocations.
Time passed.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Sometimes food came, sometimes it didn''t. Sometimes different men came to ask questions about the night of the raid. Some gave him food, and in one case some sweets. Some gave him pain. For some reason, he never went into complete detail about the experience with his Luck allocation. The way he had been able to tug at reality. It was a small omission but it was a source of pride for him now. One thing he had to himself. One act of defiance that kept him from breaking completely.
He increased his Vitality whenever he felt despair threaten to overcome his mind. He always allocated 5 points, the brief warmth gave him something to live for, he worried about what he might do when his Points ran out.
The cell was cleaned rarely and he had gotten used to living in his own filth now. Scabs from cuts had gotten infected, butscratching them was also a source of pleasure. A source of being. Had he been in here weeks now? Months?
Time passed.
Breath in, breath out.
He spent much of his time focusing on breathing. It gave him a sense of existing. In the utter darkness. In filth and pain. He existed. He breathed. Breath in, breath out.
He imagined a kingdom, his cell was his domain. He had a mental picture of it. Of each crack, each bump in the smooth stone walls. He knew the way the north wall (he did not know if it was actually north, but he imagined it as such) rippled as you passed your hand over it. He knew the sharper corners of the east wall. He knew the way his dining corner had a groove for him to sit comfortably, and the way his bedroom had gentle almost imperceptibledivots on the stone floor.
He imagined a clean water pouring in from above and filling up everything. Washing out the impurities. Washing out himself. Drowning and cleansing his small kingdom. The geometry of it. He sometimes hallucinated impossible shapes. Fantastic colors. A world overlaying his own, yet fitting in with each and every corner of his world. Sometimes he escaped his body a floated freely.
A window popped up.
He almost choked in his shock. Coughing weakly he just stared at the window. He played around with his Stat screen often for lack of anything else to do, but had almost given up on earning more Skills. Not to mention two at once. Something that was almost like hope started to appear in him. That was risky. It had appeared too quickly, just waiting for its chance. He quashed it and calmed himself. He ignored the screen and focused on breathing.
When he was ready he brought up the window again. There wasn''t really anything for it, unlike Night Vision these sounded like they might be helpful in some way. And he knew that even if Night Vision had impossibly appeared before him again just now he would take it, if only for something new. He mentally accepted the Skills filling up 2 more of his precious Skill slots.
| Human Male, Age 14 |
| MP (mana) 81/81 (*regen 0.463/second) |
| SP (stamina) 0/310 |
| Stats (Un-Allocated: 60) |
| Strength: 1 |
Vitality: 31 |
Dexterity: 2 |
| Intelligence: 3 |
Wisdom: 0 |
Luck: 51 |
|
| Skills |
|
Hide (passive) Level 4: *58/100 till next level
You become harder to locate. Hidden Items: *none*
|
|
Endure (passive): Level 1. Multiplier: Vitality. *2/100 till next level.
You can endure more. You have gained SP (stamina points).
|
|
Sense (passive/active): Level 1. *0/100 till next level
You can sense the world around you.
|
| *none* |
| *none* |
| *none* |
|
Vague descriptions, but he couldn''t expect anything else from a level 1 Skill.
He thought about it. Often related Skills appeared at the same time, the reason for it being a simple one. The way his books explained it was through a made up example. Say you have two Skills: Skill "A" and Skill "B". Skill "A" normally requires you to walk 20 miles to activate it, whereas Skill "B" requires you to run at full speed for exactly one hour to activate. By running at half speed for 15miles it is possible to activate both at once while not technically fulfilling the requirements of either. The thought was that somehow the similarities boosted compatible Skills and helped with activation requirements.
Often people would aim for dual Skill activations as a way to get around strict activation requirements. The potential downside was that you must accept both of the Skills or none, which would fill up two Skill slots in one go. Given the importance of Skill choices, most people liked to choose and attempt for Skills one at a time. Alan couldn''t be picky given his situation, though he did wonder how Endure and Sense were related and what the exact requirements were for each. He had really hoped to get some more active Skills next that might help him escape, but oh well.
He had something new. He let himself indulge in a small smile.
Time passed.
He Sensed the world around him. The cave was his world. He Sensed the smooth surface of the walls. He Sensed the small and subtle shifts in the stale air. He sensed the latch closed tight against the outside world. He expanded beyond himself and focused on sensing, and existing, and breathing.
His birthday had passed a while back. He was fifteen now. He had been in this hole for at least four months. Only four months? Already four months? Time was a fluid thing in his domain. He was fifteen years old now.
He spent hiswaking hours practicing his new Skill Sense. Though it was a passive Skill by default, it took an active effort to expand it and raise its level. He knew his cell fairly well at this point which made his Sensing exercises easier. Endure was going up on its own just by living in his own filth and wasting away in the darkness. Thank the gods for small miracles.
Sense had opened up a new world for him. He didn''t know how he had lived without it. Improving it gave him a purpose.
Endure steadily rose on its own, his harsh living conditions testing the Skill automatically. As its level rose he began feeling less hungry, less scared and overall just better. His festering wounds were even beginning to heal up. He was still a wreck and his body ravaged, but somehow he was a more bearable wreck.
He was devoted to raising his Skills and seeing where it took him. He had nothing else.
A long time passed.
He could Sense when food or questioners were coming now. He was very close to raising the Skill to level 5 and his awareness had recently begun to expand into areas he had never been before. It had taken time. Starting out had been a lot easier because he was so familiar with his immediate surroundings. Moving beyond his cell had taken a lot of time and effort but it had begun paying off.
He practiced it constantly, testing its boundaries. When he extended it outwards it depleted his MP and he was getting quite good at knowing exactly how much MP it would consume the further he tried to Sense. He was practicing it just now when he had suddenly noticed a change.
He sensed someone approaching.
He sensed the vibrations with each footstep taken towards his home. Sensed the heartbeat and breath of the man. And he didn''t recognize who it was. He had memorized the food guards'' presences, the questioners'' gaits, Blake''s solidity... Whoever was approaching was not one of his usual visitors. Not Blake. Not someone accompanied by guards. Something new was happening.
He waited as the presence stopped next to the latch. There was no light leaking through. The man had come in the dark?
The latch began to open.
Alan went to the corner crouching low.
Chapter 11. Alan.
"Hello? Someone down there?" a voice said in a lazy drawl.
Alan remained silent for a moment stunned by the sudden question. He didn''t move as his mind struggled with how to respond to the situation. Should he say something? What if the man meant him harm? Why wouldn''t he know if someone was down in this cell?
Suddenly he [Sensed] the man who had called out begin to move away. His decision was quickly made.
"I''m down here!" Alan said urgently, desperate for whoever was up there not to leave, his voice coming out in a harsh croak. He felt hope and fear mingling in his heart.
The other man stopped at the sound of Alan''s voice and then move back. A moment passed before Alan heard him clearing his throat.
"Yes well, I''m up here" the man drew closer to the edge. "It doesn''t smell great down there if you don''t mind me saying. I can''t stay long I think" The man trailed off sounding distracted. "But well I''m here so before I go let''s see if I can help you out."
The tone was almost flippant. Who was this man? He could [Sense] the strong frame and the relaxed bearing of the other man. But Alan wasn''t heartened by the lazy, almost confused tone of the conversation. And he was still too shocked by the strange man''s sudden appearance to feel anything other than a confusing mixture or hope and dread.
Was this a dream? A trick?
The man started waving his arm in a strange circular motion, and before Alan could wonder what he was up to a rope appeared in his hand as if from thin air.
"Looks like it''s your lucky day," the man said seeming genuinly surprised by the rope in his hand. Hope, confusion, and suspicion all mingled together within Alan making it hard to process the situation. "I''ll go ahead and gift you this fine rope here," the man continued. "From there you''re on your own. I know this is probably pretty sudden for you, but well it''s somewhat strange for me as well and I don''t particularly feel like explaining. So please spare us both some time and don''t ask."
Alan couldn''t believe what he was hearing. After who knows how many months of being trapped he barely dared let himself hope that he might get out, and now that it was happening it was too sudden. The situation too bizarre. "Why?" He asked weakly, ignoring the man''s comments.
He could sense the other man hesitating and then heard him give out a reluctant sigh. Suddenly the rope was thrown over the side and the man''s presence went to the edge of his hole once again. "Given your situation, I would recommend against going back towards the surface directly," he called down, ignoring Alan''s question. "You''ll be found quickly if you do that so I would try for a different way out. This place seems to be built into an existing cave structure, meaning you''re gonna have to go deeper so good luck with that. Do not try to follow me in any way either, not that I think you could, but I would not appreciate that if you understand my meaning..."
The man began to back away. "If luck has it perhaps we''ll meet again." And suddenly the man''s presence vanished from his [Sense] perception. Alan was startled. He must be using a Skill that hid him from even [Sense].
Alan stood there in shock. This seemed too abrupt. The changes in his life lately had all been too sudden and out of his direct control. But he didn''t have time now to worry. He turned to the rope still swaying from being thrown over the ledge. He was suspicious of course, but he wouldn''t waste this chance. He gave it a test tug.
It turned out to be harder than he expected to climb out of his prison. He was weaker than he had imagined and he briefly debated allocating some points to Strength. He didn''t have time to waste. But his Stats were already a mess and he didn''t want to skew it any further, so he decided to keep trying on his own. If too much time passed he would move some Points to Strength.
He tied some knots in the rough heavy rope making some footholds for himself on the way up. He was nervous and looping the rope around itself, he strained his Sense to check for approaching Guards. Heart in his chest, he eventually managed to make his footholds and began his climb up. The knots helped until he reached the highest one at which point he summoned the last of his strength and powered himself upwards. A task that would have been easy for him before his time in prison now took everything of him. But he was going to make it. Grabbing the rough stone ledge at the edge of the open latch, he pulled himself up using the last of his strength and managed to fall over the side onto the ground. He was out.
A window popped up.
| You Have Been Granted Skills "Escape" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
He mentally set aside the prompt. He didn''t have time for this now.
He was out. He was free. He could breathe. He needed to focus and with a mental effort he picked himself up off the ground and set off at a walk. Though it did not matter he was suddenly oddly conscious of his nudity. Over the months that had passed the guards had not brought him new clothes and his old ones were no longer wearable. Nothing to do about it now, and at least it was dark.
It was quiet. He [Sensed] the empty halls around him. No sign of his rescuer or anyone else that he could [Sense]. But that didn''t mean there was no one there. Time to go.
He hadn''t moved much for a long time now but his Vitality had increased, and [Endure] actually turned out to be pretty versatile and gave him more energy to continue on in his current situation. He took his mysterious savior''s advice and avoided going upward which he assumed led towards the surface. The only other direction was to go deeper underground. He turned to go further down into the tunnel. His body felt weak and each step carried a sense of pain and exhaustion. His limbs barely moved and he just wanted to lie down. But his adrenaline was pumping, helping him ignore his weakness and he forced himself to continue on.
Without [Sense] he would have been lost immediately. There was no light in the tunnels and it was only through his Skill that he managed to even find the correct direction to go and walk without tripping over himself. He could now use [Sense] passively and without thought within a radius of roughly 2 to 3 meters around himself. Extending it any further required him to concentrate and use up small amounts of mana. Practicing in his prison hole, he had found his maximum [Sense] range was around 80 meters or so around himself. He could only maintain that range for a second before his MP was completely drained, so while it was good to know, it was not very practical at long ranges.
He continued walking, trying to be quiet, and occasionally expanding his [Sense] perception to detect any people that might be nearby and gather his bearings. It seemed he was being held alone down here. He sensed no other people as he made his way deeper into the tunnels. At first there was the occasional door in the side of the cavern walls, and the floors had clearly marked paths and signs of at least somewhat recent use. But as he made his way deeper in, the doors stopped appearing and the ground became less marked and more natural.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
After an hour or so of walking, he stopped and sat down on the side of the cave tunnel. He barely had any strength left. There was a fork up ahead. He didn''t want to let his guard down but he was exhausted and his escape was turning out to be surprisingly easy all things considered. A fork in the road was as good a place as any to rest and he worried about needing food eventually since he was already hungry and poorly fed. He could [Sense] some creatures around him if he concentrated, things like small lizards or spiders, nothing substantial but perhaps something that might prove edible. Then again he would have to somehow catch them first.
As he rested and let his mind wander he also regretted not taking the rope with him after climbing out of his prison. There had been the occasional hole that he might have been able to go down. It wasn''t like him to forget such advantages. It wouldn''t help to regret it now, he put it out of his mind.
He took stock of his Stats. Now that his levels were higher, the descriptions were clearer and he could utilize his new Skills better. After Level 5 he was able to pull up a more detailed description of his Skills. [Endure] in particular had been rising at an unmatched rate. He hadn''t even seen his SP above 0 and he knew over the past months since he acquired the Skill it had been constantly increasing due to his imprisonment and terrible living conditions. He wondered how people raised such a Skill outside of living in squalor and hunger and pain.
| Human Male, Age 15 |
| MP (mana) 48/86 (*regen 0.463/second) |
| SP (stamina) 0/460 |
| Stats (Un-Allocated: 55) |
| Strength: 1 |
Vitality: 46 |
Dexterity: 2 |
| Intelligence: 3 |
Wisdom: 0 |
Luck: 51 |
|
| Skills |
|
Hide (passive) Level 4: *58/100 till next level
You become harder to locate. Hidden Items: *none*
|
|
Endure (passive): Level 6. Multiplier: Vitality. *33/100 till next level.
Physical pain affects you less. You are resistant to hunger, physical injury, exhaustion, disease, and mental distress. You have gained SP (stamina points).
|
|
Sense (passive/active): Level 4. *96/100 till next level
You can mentally visualize the world around you through all of your senses. You have gained the ability to sense ambient Mana and Mana within yourself.
|
| *none* |
| *none* |
| *none* |
|
Given it was past level 5, looking at [Endure] on its own gave him more information.
|
Endure (passive): Level 6. Multiplier: Vitality. *33/100 till next level.
|
|
Physical pain affects you less. You are resistant to hunger, physical injury, exhaustion, disease, and mental distress. Low-level negative status effects related to physical health do not affect you. Low-level mental attacks do not affect you. You can now analyze statuses affecting your body.
You have gained SP (stamina points). Stamina points are based on Vitality (SP: Vitality * 10). SP allows you to exhaust your body beyond its limits. If it reaches zero, only then will your health start being affected by endurance draining activities.
Attribute multipliers (SP: Vitality * 10). SP regenerates at a 1/second ratio normally and 10/second when sleeping. Diet and your current physical state affect regeneration rates.
|
Without [Endure] he was sure he would''ve gone mad or been dead some time back. [Endure] and [Sense] might end up being useless Skills in the long run but he didn''t regret accepting them. He was about to open up the window for the [Escape] Skill he had been granted when he heard a noise. He paused and extended [Sense] as far as he dared without draining his MP too much. He didn''t notice anything, but he remained still as he strained his ears.
He heard it again. It was very faint but there was noise sounding in the direction from which he had just come. He immediately felt panic. He felt trapped. But he also felt tired.
How easy it would be to just stay there. Give up. End it. He was past exhausted and his body was sore and covered with infected cuts and bruises. He stretched out his arm, almost skeletal in its thinness, and thought about how he hadn''t eaten a solid meal in months. He was glad he didn''t have a mirror, he was sure he would not recognize the person looking back.
He took a deep breath. Breath in. Breath out. And he got himself up.
At the fork, he arbitrarily chose the left path. He was sure he was leaving a trail for anyone who knew how to look, but had no idea how to cover his tracks. He wanted to go faster but his body could only do so much. Too slowly he made his way deeper into the caves. More forks and side-tunnels appeared as he went and he kept choosing routes at random hoping to throw off his pursuers. He had no doubt now the sounds behind him were getting closer. He thought he could make out the sound of voices echoing in the distance.
The tunnels became more and more narrow and Alan noticed a small partially hidden opening on his left. It was just big enough for him to get through and he was able to [Sense] a larger opening on the other side. He hesitated a moment and then started crawling through the small hole. The hard and brittle cave wall encompassed him in the darkness. It was smaller than he had thought and he struggled to keep sliding his body through, his arms extended over his head as he inched forward through the passageway. The rock cut his skin as he kept pulling himself forward and he began to feel a rising panic. An instinctual fear of being buried alive.
He was stuck. The cave hugged his body tightly and he wiggled, inching himself slowly forward. The rock wall scrapped unyielding against his skin. So tightly was he held by the stone that he could barely fill his lungs to breathe. His entire body was now constricted and he struggled to wiggle forward. He felt panic threaten to take over but fought it down. If he had not [Sensed] an opening in the passage just in front of him he didn''t think he would have been able to keep calm. Still, he struggled harder moving his wedged body slowly but surely forward. He could sense large spiders and other creatures not too far. His efforts didn''t seem to be moving him forward anymore.
Despair. Exhaustion. Fear. Pain. He wanted it to end. He emptied his lungs letting out all of his air and making himself as skinny as possible. Alan then summoned all of his strength and pushed forward. His body shifted and his hands managed to find a holding in the rough rock. Arms stretched above his head, Alan was able to pull himself outwards inch by inch.
And he was out on the other side. The change was abrupt and he managed to crawl the rest of the way out and onto the floor of the cavern he now found himself. He let himself sit there for a time enjoying being able to take a full breath. The fear of being buried alive retreating. He didn''t let himself rest for too long.
Reaching out with [Sense] he didn''t notice anything unusual about the cavern in which he found himself. It seemed much like the caves he had been wandering through before. He slowly got up and kept walking. He would not give up just yet. The cave extended much further it seemed. He noted multiple passageways and hidden entrances as he stumbled deeper into the earth. Sometimes he chose more obvious routes and sometimes he went into more hidden areas in the cave. He lost track of time and thought. His head felt fuzzy and he couldn''t think clearly.
Downwards and downwards. One step after another. He began counting his steps to himself, before quickly tiring of that and eventually just noting each step as he went. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.
And down he went until his body gave up and he collapsed on the ground. He tried to keep going, but his body would no longer move. He waited, trying to be silent, listening for any noises. For a long time, nothing happened as he lay breathing quietly in the dark using [Sense] to check around him periodically.
This was it then, he thought as he listened for the sounds of pursuit. He couldn''t hear anything but that didn''t mean he had escaped. He had pushed himself as far as he could. He didn''t care anymore and closed his eyes, letting unconsciousness envelope his mind.
Chapter 12. Alan.
A noise.
Alan shot upright. His head was spinning from being forced awake so quickly. Where was he? Was a guard coming to bring him food?
A noise sounded again in the distance, and he suddenly came to himself. The sound echoed through the small tunnel in which he lay. The memories of his escape flooded back to him and the dreariness of sleep was cleared from his mind immediately.
He needed to run away. But he could barely move, let alone run, so he forced himself to lie still and continued listening while checking his Stats quickly. His MP was fully recovered, but he would wait until the noises were closer to start Sensing outward further. Were there Skills that could pick up on his use of Sense?
[Hide] was at Level 4 *63/100 till the next level. It had been stuck at *58/100 for months, something had caused it to rise in the short amount of time since his escape. That was both worrying and revealing. [Hide] must be working against whatever was tracking him, but was it enough? He tucked himself further in the corner, the sound of his breath the only thing in the darkness.
He focused on breathing and listening for any noise, but there was nothing but silence around him now. A deep silence. [Hide] rose to *64/100. Something was definitely searching for him somehow, probably using some sort of Skill. Sitting in the silence, he began to notice his hunger. A deep and empty feeling. A weakness that affected his whole body...
He waited for some time, resting and dozing in and out, remaining silent and keeping an eye on his Hide Stat in case it started to increase. After nothing happened he worked his way up, forcing his aching body to move as best he could. His joints hurt and his muscles were sore to the point where even the smallest movement sent jolts of pain throughout his body. It hurt to move anything, and over all of the pain was a deep hunger and an even deeper feeling of weakness.
Slowly he was able to get up and start moving once more. He needed food quickly. [Endure] had almost risen to Level 7, and even so, he was barely able to muster the strength to get moving again. His hunger was becoming unignorable.
He shuffled along keeping his senses active and trying to remain hidden. The soft sound as his feet hit the ground was the only company in his world of darkness. He expanded [Sense] sparingly trying to not use up too much MP and relying on the shorter 3-4 meter default range to find his footing and know his surroundings. It felt like being in a small bubble outside of which all was unknown. That was his world as he made his way through the various tunnels and caverns, looking for anything that could be food: lizards, mushrooms, spiders, anything.
Then suddenly he smelled something. Something amazing. It was the smell of something cooking. Of herbs and spices. Of meat. He paused unsure what to make of it but he had already made up his mind. He needed to go towards that smell. He needed food. But he proceeded cautiously, trying to remain hidden by sticking next to the wall. Given he was in total darkness he didn''t see how it mattered, but it couldn''t hurt. And suddenly he noticed a light flickering up ahead around a curve. He crouched down.
He was drooling at this point. His hunger and exhaustion threatened to override his senses, but he just needed to hold on for a little longer. The flickering light was still far ahead but if he strained his ears he could hear hushed voices echoing in the distance as well. The whispers were unintelligible but someone or something was just up ahead. Had his pursuers passed him by?
Slowly he began to move towards the light and noise and smell of food. He worried about his stomach making noise, but luckily his body kept quiet. His Hide Skill progression went up by a point as he moved, but he didn''t let it bother him. If anything it reassured him that his Hide Skill was protecting him from being discovered.
He went slowly. Methodically putting one foot down after the other, each step taken was soft and deliberate. It took time but soon he was close enough to the light where he felt uncomfortable out in the open so he crouched down and continued on the ground. He saw a silhouette and crawled towards it. As he got closer he could make out more and more of what he was coming upon, and it wasn''t what he had expected.
In front of him, he saw a group of lizardmen huddled around a cooking pot.
There were three of them. Each was large and heavily muscled and were strangely quiet only letting out the occasional soft hiss. Alan had never seen any, but he had heard of them. These ones in particular were a bit different from what he had imagined. For one they were a pale, almost sickly white color, rather than the green he had assumed. And more frightening was the fact that they didn''t seem to have any eyes, sunken holes where eyes should be. It made for a terrifying combination.
They were all wearing armor made up of some sort of rough hide and had crude clubs and spears that rested on the ground near their feet. Their tails were long and straight, trailing behind them. It was very quiet and he noticed them gesturing back and forth to each other as they ate. He vaguely wondered the purpose of their motions since they clearly couldn''t see. Other than the gesturing, there was a stillness to them that Alan found eerie. They seemed to move in bursts, or remain very still.
Another strange thing was that the light he had assumed was from a fire was actually coming from a man tied up on the ground towards the back of the makeshift camp. He couldn''t make them out well, but there seemed to be two prisoners in this camp. Oddly enough one was glowing. It looked like he must be utilizing some Skill in the hope someone might notice and come to rescue him. The lizardmen didn''t seem to care or notice, but it appeared the lizardmen were blind. If they called these caves their home, they must use other senses than sight to get around these dark tunnels.
Now that he was close enough Alan expanded [Sense] to get a better idea of the situation. He made it brief and used up almost all of his MP expanding outward as far as possible. He didn''t [Sense] anyone else nearby, just the three lizardmen and two normal men. More interestingly he recognized the two men from his Sensing. They were the guards who had been responsible for "delivering" him food in his cell. He had practiced using [Sense] on them whenever he had been given the opportunity, and now he recognized them instantly.
The guards were bound tightly and both had their legs broken. The one not glowing moaned softly, prompting the nearest lizardman to deliver a kick to his stomach. The guard made a rough grunt and then kept silent.
Now that Alan paid closer attention, the lizards themselves seemed to be in rough shape. All three were covered in wounds that were smeared with some sort of thick mud. Some of the injuries were rather severe. For whatever reason, [Sense] had a hard time penetrating bodies, but he thought he could make out at least a few broken bones in the creatures.
It was a strange situation, but Alan focused on one thing. The food pot. That was his goal. It was the source of the delicious smell and was placed in the center of the camp. He watched as one of the lizard men went to spoon up more food into a small stone bowl before sitting back down in the corner.
He could assume from the situation that the two tied up guards had been pursuing him after his escape, and that they had followed his trail using whatever Skills they had available to them. At some point in their search, they must have been captured by the lizardmen who dwell in these tunnels below the earth. But none of that really mattered. They could very well be only a small part of the search party that was looking for him. It would be stupid to assume he was safe from pursuit. What mattered was getting food then leaving this place without being seen.
He wanted to wait, but he also worried that they would eventually eat the entire contents of the pot. For all that he knew, lizardmen only had one meal a week and this was it. He couldn''t hesitate here. At least one way or another this would be over. One way or another. He waited for his MP to recover while he thought over his options.
The scene before him didn''t change much over the next several minutes. The lizards continued to eat and occasionally gesture or hiss softly to each other. The three lizardmen were positioned around the food pot and he could only hope that they wouldn''t move while he allowed his MP to recover. The captured prison guards were tied up to the side a little away from the food. Both were motionless though one continued to glow softly, lighting up the scene.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He had a rough if simple plan and decided to go for it. Alan waited for his chance. Once his MP was full and before he could rationalize what he was doing, he moved into action. His heart was beating wildly and the surge of fear and adrenaline that coursed through him gave him a momentary reprieve from his overall weakness. It was now or never. He picked up a stone from the ground and threw it with all his strength towards the other end of the camp.
It wasn''t much of a plan.
He would throw a rock and if the lizardmen heard the resulting noise hopefully they would rush towards it. While they were distracted he allocate some of his precious Points into Dexterity and would quickly sneak up and steal the food pot. [Hide] should keep him from being discovered too quickly and he would run away as soon as he had the food.
It was actually a pretty terrible plan, but he had nothing else and he was so so hungry.
Alan watched with his heart in his throat as the rock soared through the air quickly moving out of eyesight. When it landed the distinct sound of stone hitting stone echoed through the tunnel.
It was like an alarm sounding. For a moment the world seemed to pause. Then there was commotion everywhere. Two of the lizard men moved fast towards the noise, and the last headed towards the captured guards. The two guards started screaming for help and the large creature quickly bashed them over the head with a dense and brutal looking club. It happened quickly, and when the lizard clubbed the guard who was glowing, some counterattack seemed to have been triggered as the creature let out a loud inhuman screech in pain.
Whatever had happened to the lizard, the glowing guard must have also been hurt because the world once more plunged into darkness.
It all happened in the blink of an eye, and Alan had not moved. It had definitely been a bad plan.
The lizards were too spread out. He couldn''t expand [Sense] to cover a wide enough area without draining his MP too quickly. The lizardmen were hissing loudly at one another and Alan heard them moving around in the dark. Now was the time. He would use his MP in two bursts of [Sense]. One now to get his bearings and one once he had picked up the food in order to find his way back. Aside from those two bursts, he would expand it outwards an extra 5 meters around himself during the whole process. He should be able to [Sense] about 15 meters in each burst, which all together would take his MP close to 0 once he had escaped.
He flashed [Sense] outwards. The food was still up ahead and belatedly he hoped he could carry the pot, it actually seemed rather large. One of the lizards was fanning out to search for the source of the noise. The lizard who had hit the guards was now on the ground unmoving, and the other one was beyond his [Sense] perception. Using that brief glimpse, he tried to visualize the path to food in his mind. The layout of the ground. The places to avoid.
He allocated 7 Points into Dexterity. He didn''t dare do more for fear of the drawback. He ran as the allocation hit him.
He felt it immediately. Different than either Luck or Vitality, his Dexterity allocation made him feel... well dexterous. Suddenly he could make no wrong movement. He was in precise control of every action he took. His body became fluid and easy and fast. It even seemed as if his thoughts had sped up as well. He was in complete control of himself. Where his Luck allocation had been control of.. well of something? Vitality had been solidity and warmth. Dexterity was precision and speed in all things.
He ran quickly and silently. Or at least he thought he did.
Shortly after he had moved, he heard a louder hissing from the lizard men. Afraid of being attacked Alan changed his plan. The main pot was still far but the bowl one of the lizards had been eating was closer.
Alan flashed his Sense again finding the bowl on the ground not too far from him. During that brief moment, he felt his fear spike. The lizard who had clubbed the guards had been close by and was almost on him. Alan had assumed the creature had been incapacitated by whatever the glowing guard had managed to do to it, but it looked like he had been wrong.
[Sense] had also shown him a discarded knife on the ground not too far away from him. Abandoning the bowl of food, Alan dropped down and sprang for the knife instead, moving with the sure-footedness of his allocation.
He kept [Sense] expanded to a seven-meter range. And suddenly both the knife and the attacking lizardman were in that range. Each heartbeat sounded loudly in his ears, almost as if he were underwater. He pushed his body, pushed his will to its limits. The stagnant underground air rushed by his ears as he moved faster than he ever had in his life. He was entirely focused on reaching for the crude knife when the lizard slammed into him. Pain spread through his side instantly as his ribcage caved in. He flew against the wall and landed with a thud. The lizardman had managed to hit Alan with his large club and literally slam his body away.
Air was forced out of his lungs and Alan crumpled to the ground struggling to breathe. He could [Sense] several ribs were broken and he choked for air as he rolled to his side. Not all was lost, in his hand he clutched the knife he had been after. His body was facing the wall of the cave, not moving on the rough stone floor. He [Sensed] the lizardman who had attacked edge closer.
He clutched the knife tighter. The lizardman was moving extremely slowly, and Alan Sensed something wrong with it. He had not been wrong, on top of its existing injuries, the glowing guard must have done something in that brief moment further wounding the creature. Its tongue flickered in and out, presumably testing the air for something. Alan held still, body tense.
The lizardman hissed something and then darted forward suddenly. Alan moved at the same time. Using the last of his strength he waited till the creature was just about on top of him. Then Alan turned and stabbed. Faster and faster. The knife caught the lizardman by surprise and was buried halfway in its throat instantly using the creature''s own momentum to do the job. Alan felt hot blood against his hand just as its club battered him once again but this time in the shoulder. It was a glancing blow but pain shot through his arm and neck.
The lizard struggled even with the knife in his neck, tearing at Alan. Sharp claws raked his skin leaving trails of blood. Alan held on afraid to do anything more. His arm felt like it was coming out of his socket but somehow he managed not to let go as the lizard screeched and flailed hitting Alan and clawing deeper into his skin. Alan focused on holding the knife in the creatures neck, trying to bury it deeper, and slowly its struggles weakened.
After what seemed like an eternity, his enemy crumpled to the ground, and Alan almost crumpled with him, but he gritted his teeth and Endured. He stood in the darkness, panting over the body of his fallen enemy. His shoulder rang with pain. His back was dripping blood from claw marks. It was hard to breathe.
A window popped up.
| You Have Been Granted Skill "Vital Strike" Level 1. Do you w... |
He dismissed the prompt and checked himself.
| MP |
11/86 |
| SP |
0/460 |
| Status: |
- broken ribs
- light internal bleeding |
This was not good, there were still lizardmen out there and he was wounded, almost dead, exhausted, and he had very little MP left to use [Sense]. The status confirmed what he already knew from [Sense], though the internal bleeding was news to him. He didn''t like the sound of that, but at least it was light? Not much he could do about it now.
He expected to be struck down at any second, but he would be damned if he would give up before then. Ever since his village had been attacked it had been one thing after another. He was sick of it. But somehow the injustice of his treatment, the anger he felt at his situation, these things just drove him harder. He might die, but HE WOULD NOT GIVE UP AND DIE. Fuck the rest of the world, he would struggle till the end.
His breath came raggedly. He felt blood on his side and down his back. Ignoring the larger pot, he limped over to the bowl of food, somehow miraculously unspilled, picked it up and began limping away from camp. The silence in the darkness betrayed the violence that had occurred just moments before.
Each step Alan took was harder and more painful than the last, and each step he was surprised to still be alive. He kept on going. That was all he could do. Just keep on going.
And no one stopped him. There were still two lizards out there. But as far as Alan could tell they had disappeared in the darkness. Of course, they could be just right outside the range of [Sense] and he would not know. Nothing he could do about it. What he could do was keep walking away.
So that''s what he did. Fully expecting to die any second he eventually found a hiding place out of the way to sit down. And he placed the bowl to the side while he waited for the drawback to hit him.
It didn''t take long. It was SHARP. It felt as if millions of needles were being stabbed into his body. But 7 Points was nothing to him at this point and he clenched his jaw and waited for the stinging agony to pass. When it was over, Alan let out a breath that he hadn''t realized he had been holding in. The sudden absence of the intense pain made his body shudder in the darkness.
And then he ate the remains of the lizardman soup.
It was bliss. The soup was hearty. It was a thick sauce filled with meat and mushrooms. A whimper escaped him. It was the best meal of his life. He was thankful lizardmen apparently had similar tastes to humans, he had considered that he might have been risking his life for food that was inedible.
The bowl was large and still plenty full and Alan savored each mouthful. He had lived on rancid food and foul water for so long that the tastes he was experiencing seemed impossible. He could almost die happy.
After finishing the bowl, he gently lowered himself to the cold hard cave ground. He was alone, buried who knew how deep under the earth, and at most only a hundred meters away from a camp of hostile lizardmen. But he had eaten a delicious meal.
Tears dripped into the now empty bowl, leaving a lingering salty taste as they fell over his mouth, wasting precious water.
Chapter 13: Alan.
Alan sat in the dark for a time feeling every ache and pain in his body. He didn''t let himself think. He didn''t let himself care. He just lay there staring into the darkness. His side hurt. Any movement sent waves of pain through him. His back was cut to shreds and he felt it. And that wasn''t accounting for the miserable state he had been in even before his escape. He was more of a large wound than a human at this point.
After eating the soup, he spent a long time hidden away in his cubby resting. Only moving to find somewhere to relieve himself, he took his time recovering and trying not to move too much. Eventually though, he would need more food.
After everything that had happened, at least he had gotten a decent amount of experience points for his Skills. Sense had finally risen to level 5. Alan checked out the more detailed description that had become available with the level increase.
| Sense (passive/active): Level 5. *04/100 till next level |
|
You can mentally visualize the world around you through all of your senses. By extending your Mana beyond yourself you have gained the ability to recognize ambient Mana and Mana within yourself.
Sensing occurs automatically without MP consumption within a radius of 3.3145 meters around you at all times. Beyond that distance, sensing requires concentration and uses up Mana at a rate of 1.034/second/cubic-meter. Low-level Hiding abilities are ineffective against Sense. You are immune to low-level illusions.
|
It more or less confirmed what he had already thought. Alan sighed to himself. Three Skill slots already used. He didn''t regret it of course, as each one had probably saved his life multiple times over, but it still hurt to think about. Choosing Skills was supposed to be a deliberate thing done with your future in mind. Which actually reminded him.
He pulled up the Skills that had appeared when he had escaped and stabbed the lizard man.
| You Have Been Granted the Skill "Escape" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
| You Have Been Granted the Skill "Vital Strike" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
He could guess, but he had no idea as to their actual effects. He had six days from their first appearance to decide, at which point the option would be taken from him and the Skills would be declined automatically. And once he declined a Skill, it would never appear before him again. He tried to look into them more to see if he was able to get more details but was unable. In most other settings there would be Skill books or people to help, but it seemed that all he had were the names themselves.
Of course they would be nice to have, but they didn''t seem useful enough to waste his three remaining slots on. He mentally dismissed the options. No reason to decline them right away.
He expanded [Sense] momentarily and got a better idea of his surroundings. Not much to it, just an empty cave. The old lizard camp was too far away to [Sense]. He had initially rejected the idea of going back there as it wasn''t worth the risk, but the more he thought about it the more he knew he didn''t have much of a choice. It was the only place he knew where there might be food and supplies left.
And really, he had nowhere else to go. He was still hungry. He needed food. After his meal, [Endure] would make sure he wouldn''t starve to death anytime soon, but he would have to eat at some point. Better the enemy you know or something right? Trying to remain silent he stood up. With the lizardmen fresh in his mind he wasn''t about to make any unnecessary noise. He stifled a groan as his body protested the movement. His back stung and every movement sent a shock to his side. He hoped [Endure] gave his body some sort of healing boost.
He walked a good distance and stopped around where he thought he had encountered the lizards. He expanded [Sense] in the direction of the camp. With the recent level up, he found he could now expand it in any direction he choose rather than just radiate out in a circle from his position. This was good. It would help him conserve MP. Soon he [Sensed] the camp. The pot was still there and not empty. The dead guards were still there as well, though the lizard he had killed was gone. That was something.
So they had been back for their fallen comrade, but had they truly gone? Perhaps they had left traps, why else wouldn''t they take the pot of food back? He continued to check [Hide''s] experience to see if it changed. It was getting to be a less and less of a reliable method as [Hide] grew in level, since each experience point took longer to go up. Still, can''t hurt to keep an eye on it.
He set about [Sensing] around the camp in every direction he could, as far as he was able. It took some time as he had to wait for his MP to refill multiple times, but after an hour or so he was satisfied that he was probably alone. Getting up he made his way into the camp. First, he slowly approached the body of the dead guards. So far so good.
The smell was horrendous. Alan grimaced as he [Sensed] the caved in skull and unblinking eyes of the dead man below him, and he steeled his mind as he set about his gruesome task.
He started with undressing the dead man. Though the clothes were stained at this point, the guard''s long tunic shirt was in surprisingly good shape and Alan took it off the corpse and put it on himself. It felt strange but good to wear something again. Less vulnerable. He continued searching the body and found a belt to put on. Nothing else useful turned up, the lizards must have taken everything of value already.
Next, he moved towards the pot of food. There was still food in there, just enough for a bowl or two. And he could even smell it. Slightly soured but still food. He wanted to test the pot for traps and couldn''t think of any better way so he picked up a rock and prepared to throw it at the small cauldron to see what happened. Rock throwing seemed to be the solution to a lot of his problems lately.
Trying to do so with as little noise as possible, he tossed the rock over. The sound that rang out in the silent cave as the rock hit metal made Alan cringe. Holding his breath he waited. Nothing happened.
Ok, step two. He threw another rock inside the pot. Less noisy, it landed with a dull plop and again nothing seemed to happen.
Shrugging to himself, Alan took his empty bowl and moved forward. He needed food and here it was right in front of him. Without a second thought, he dipped the bowl into the pot gathering up the congealed soup, making sure not to spill any. Satisfied and a little uncertain, he began to eat. The flavors were the same as before, if slightly sourer and with a congealed texture that had not been there previously. For him, it was still delicious. He made sure to not eat too quickly this time.
He didn''t bother checking around him. Whatever happened would happen. He fully expected to fall over from poison or for lizardmen to come surrounding him at any moment. But at this point in time, he could no longer care. He ate his fill. Filled his bowl once more and brought it with him back to where he had slept the night before. Belly full for the first time in a long long time, he sat down and let his exhaustion take over.
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His base was a good ten-minute walk from the abandoned lizard camp, and he spent the next several "days" exploring the area. He had not found any hints of water or food or anything really, but he didn''t dare go too far. He had briefly tried to go back the way he had come from, but the caves were extensive and he had been half delirious and panicked when he had made his way here. If he set out too far trying to go back there was a good chance he would be lost forever. Not that he wasn''t already lost, but still.
Mostly he rested and tried to let his body heal as much as possible. He rationed the remaining soup, but too soon it had run out. While eating the last of it, he had made his decision.
He would attack the lizardmen. He would find them, and he would kill them. Perhaps he could eat them or steal food. Whatever the case he was done being so careful and afraid. He was done being a victim. He brought up his Skill choices in his mind.
| You Have Been Granted the Skill "Vital Strike" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
It looked like he had run out of time to accept [Escape]. Luckily that was not the one he was interested in. He accepted [Vital Strike]. For his plan to work, he needed an offensive Skill and that was the only choice he had right now. He checked it out.
| Vital Strike (active): Level 1. Multiplier: Dexterity. Cooldown: 5 seconds. *00/100 till next level |
|
Deal critical damage when attacking vital areas. Increased speed and accuracy when attacking a vital area. A chance to instantly execute a secondary critical attack after the first one.
Requirement: must be performed with a sharp object.
|
It was surprisingly descriptive for Level 1. Perhaps it was a higher tiered Skill? Usually, you needed to evolve an existing Skill for that. Either way, he could work with this. His Luck might even be helpful here for the secondary critical attack though he certainly couldn''t rely on it and was not even sure what it meant entirely. He checked his Stats.
| Human Male, Age 15 |
| MP (mana) 74/86 (*regen 0.58/second) |
| SP (stamina) 0/460 |
| Stats (Un-Allocated: 48) |
| Strength: 1 |
Vitality: 46 |
Dexterity: 9 |
| Intelligence: 3 |
Wisdom: 0 |
Luck: 51 |
|
He had 48 more points he could throw into Dexterity. Based on his recent experience, the allocation boostwould last around 6 or 7 minutes until the recoil hit. He could use this. The question was how many of his ever-dwindling supply of Pointsshould he use?
He spent the rest of the day testing his new Skill and exploring his surroundings. He had stupidly left the knife buried in the lizard, so he walked around looking for sharp rocks and trying to "use" [Vital Strike] with them. He wasn''t quite sure how he would know if it worked, but his other Skills had eventually turned out to be rather intuitive. He hoped [Vital Strike] was the same.
He stared down at the body of the dead guard he had dragged over. It was starting to decompose at this point and somehow smelled even worse than before. The way he would have to test his new Skill was not one he would have preferred. Whatever, he had been through worse.
It took a lot longer than he had thought, and as he stabbed down at the body he wondered if the Skill would even activate on a dead person. It was a messy process. His hands were covered in decomposing gore, and he had to force himself not to throw up the little food he had been able to acquire. The guard''s body quickly turned into a mess of blood and guts, much of which ended up on Alan. Good thing he had put his stolen shirt away before he had started on this process.
He had to manually sharpen the rock a bit himself, but finally, after many attempts, he stabbed down towards the bloody remains of the guard, where the heart should be, and he felt it. It felt smoother, faster and more deadly. The air whistled as the makeshift knife passed through it and then buried itself deep into the messy remains with an audible "thunk" sound. Focusing his mind a bit he could somehow sense the cooldown period.
[Vital Strike] cooldown 1/5
[Vital Strike] cooldown 2/5
[Vital Strike] cooldown 3/5
[Vital Strike] cooldown 4/5
[Vital Strike] cooldown 5/5
One [Vital Strike] every 5 seconds. He checked the Stat progression: *0/100 till next level.
It looked like using [Vital Strike] against a dead opponent didn''t count for experience. Expected but still disappointing. He very briefly considered [Vital Strike]ing himself to gain experience points, but quickly decided against it. It seemed as if he needed to use it in a meaningful way for it to count.
Even so, he practiced using [Vital Strike] and other moves against the dead guards, warming up his aching body to movement. It was scary how quickly you could become desensitized to something. He no longer shied away from the gruesome reality of what he was doing. Still, he would be rubbing himself all over with dirt from the cave after this was done.
He found 2 other rocks that he could use [Vital Strike] with and put them in the belt he had stolen. Eventually, he felt good about his progress and fell asleep in his normal spot.
Over the next couple of days, he continued practicing [Vital Strike] and going over his plans. He scouted the area as well and though he was worried about expending too much energy, he practiced running and moving quickly using Sense and [Vital Strike] together in the darkness. He would arrange the mutilated bodies in different areas of the cave and set himself up some distance away. Then he would run through self-made obstacle courses and use [Vital Strike] as he passed by the guard''s bodies. He found that attacking the heart, neck, head, kidneys, or liver would usually activate the Skill.
Finally, he felt ready. It was do or die. [Endure] would only support him so much, and the corpses were now in a state where he really couldn''t use them anymore. He needed more food. He had hoped to find a source of water somewhere in the caves but he had not had any luck. He would rely on the lizards for that as well it seemed.
The next morning (or what he called to himself as morning) he began his trek. He walked determinedly in his pocket of [Sense] towards the direction where the lizards had run off to. He would occasionally flash [Sense] to get an idea of his wider surroundings. He was getting rather good at keeping an image of an area in mind from brief flashes of [Sense]. If he expanded each [Sense] flash out to around 19 meters it consumed somewhere between 7 and 9 MP meaning each Flash lasted around a third of a second. If he expanded it only in front of him it consumed 4-5 MP. His MP refresh rate was not great. The boost from 2 Dexterity was negligible so for all intents and purposes it only refreshed at an un-allocated rate. So every 20 seconds or so he would [Sense] in front of him to get his bearings, and occasionally he would wait another 15 seconds or so to [Sense] out 360 degrees to get a complete picture and make sure no one was coming up behind him.
He had done the calculations earlier, but it was becoming more and more second nature for him to the point where he no longer was constantly aware of his lack of sight. If anything he "saw" a lot more than he had back when he had lived in the light. However, he still couldn''t help but feel uncomfortable in the periods between [Sense] flashes.
He had wanted to make similar calculations with SP as well. And while he had pieced it together somewhat, it was less straightforward due to the fact his SP had yet to go above 0 (he was constantly hungry and exhausted) and was affected by too many variables to work out: his injuries, his [Endure] Skill, food, and rest to name a few.
He continued walking through the empty tunnels, keeping a steady pace and trying to remain quiet. The longer he walked the more uncertain he felt, the anger from before was fading and being replaced by a deep and weary determination. After what he assumed was several hours he began to worry that he had gone the wrong way, that there were no lizards nearby at all, and that he had made a mistake. All of his plans were based on him finding more lizardmen. It was hard to keep being vigilant and on edge for so long. But he kept going. He had no other options.
Flash. Walk. Flash. Walk. Over and over. Just empty caves with no signs of life.
Flash. Walk. Flash. Walk. Flash.
Something was there.
Alan immediately became alert and stopped in his tracks straining his ears. He didn''t hear anything, but remembering how silent the lizardmen had been, that was not surprising.
He took his time creeping up and flashed [Sense] farther out in the direction he had noticed the movement. His heart beat in expectation as he let his MP fill up while moving slowly forward. And finally, he [Sensed] it. There were two lizardmen up ahead.
His body ached. His ribs were still broken. His back was scabbed and itching. And though he was no longer completely starving as he had been before eating the soup, he was still exhausted and aching from hunger. He was beaten and dirty. But he was no longer prey. He moved to the corner of the passageway and a smile crept over his face. No matter how it ended, he was in control of his own fate now. He was not a victim.
He [Sensed] towards the lizards ahead.
Chapter 14. Alan.
The two lizards appeared to be some sort of soldiers or warriors. Each was equipped with what seemed to be a long spear and from what he could [Sense] they were both wearing light leather armor. They were walking down a tunnel that lead away from him.
Alan silently stalked them. As he moved closer, he expanded [Sense] to make sure there were no other lizardmen nearby. All clear.
Closer and closer Alan crept. The lizards were in no rush apparently and were strolling almost lazily. He was beginning to feel nauseous, his mouth felt dry, and his hands were cold and sweaty. He tried to gulp down his terror, and with his heart in his throat, he attempted to keep quiet as he closed the distance. Closer and closer.
Pressing his body against the wall and hiding behind any rocks he encountered, he moved silently. Without warning the lizardmen suddenly stopped in the empty tunnels and began to reach for their weapons. Something must''ve triggered them, and in that split second Alan made his decision. He allocated 25 Points to Dexterity, knowing full well he could not turn back from this.
He was familiar with the feeling from the last time, but the extra Points made a big difference. Time itself seemed to slow as his body and mind sped up. The lizards, which had seemed fast and deadly before now appeared more clumsy and predictable to Alan''s senses. He felt the potential for motion inside of him. He felt like he could be the wind.
He moved.
When the lizardmen had stopped, they had been five to ten meters away from him. Alan closed that distance in an instant and used [Vital Strike] to stab down at the first warrior''s neck, wasting no time.
All of this took place in a split second. The lizardmen had not even had a chance to turn around. Alan felt [Vital Strike] connect. Combined with his sudden Dexterity allocation, the sharpened rock punctured a deep wound in the lizard''s unprotected neck severing its arteries. Feeling the effectiveness of the attack, Alan did not pause and immediately moved out of reach from his first target and towards the remaining lizard warrior. He was a blur of speed and motion.
But still, he was not quite fast enough. The other lizard warrior was ready for him and when Alan went to attack, it was able to block his crude knife somehow while bringing his spear swinging towards Alan''s face. Alan stepped back instantly, barely managing to dodge the thrust. The warrior promptly followed up on the first attack and Alan moved to avoid it feeling the weapon scrape against his head in the process. Alan focused on avoiding the lizard''s spear, and quickly realized that stepping back further had been the wrong move. Given their respective weapons, distance was not his friend.
The lizard''s eyes narrowed and muscles bludged under the leather armor. It suddenly let out a shrill screeching noise that carried throughout the cave as it continued to jab its weapon at Alan. Alan''s whole existence was focused on dodging the spear, barely avoiding the attacks through sheer speed. Heart pounding, ribs radiating pain with every movement, he avoided death with each second. He clenched his teeth as his opponent continued to shout in alarm. His inexperience with fighting was becoming more of a problem the longer this went on.
Still screeching, the warrior jabbed at Alan''s torso, and suddenly three spears were coming at him. The lizard warrior must have some spear Skill Alan realized belatedly. He would have been dead right there except for the fact that thanks to his Dexterity allocation he was able to notice this change immediately and without thinking activated [Vital Strike] slashing down at the spears coming towards him while simultaneously moving to the side. Miraculously the Skill activated. It looked like even weapons could have vital parts. Even with that, he had not been able to avoid the attack entirely. The spear was cut in two, but one half was now lodged into his upper arm. The warrior wasted no time abandoning the broken weapon and leaped at him as Alan struggled to maintain his balance.
Alan ducked low just as the creature''s claws raked over his head. A sharp and sudden pain flashed through his shoulder with the movement as the broken spear unlodged itself from his arm and blood began to flow freely. He couldn''t let it distract him. He tightened his grip and used [Vital Strike], slashing upwards as he bent, in an attempt to gut his opponent. [Vital Strike] had not yet cooled down and did not activate, which resulted in his knife scraping harmlessly again the warrior''s thin armor. The lizard landed behind him. Thinking quickly Alan decided against turning and facing it head-on. Instead, with the path now open in front of him, he took off at a run almost tripping in the process even with his new allocation in Dexterity.
He ran without thought. Fueled by fear for his life, he flew through the cave tunnels. He heard something clatter against the cave wall close to his head, but he couldn''t give it any attention and kept moving. The element of surprise and his Dexterity allocation had been his two primary weapons, and the surprise was now gone. He also worried about other lizards coming to help out as even now the warrior continued to let out a loud hissing siren which echoed throughout the tunnels. He was not ashamed of running. He had never wanted to face one of these things in a fair fight. [Sense] did not show anything directly ahead and given his speed the warrior was soon out of his range of perception.
He noticed a side passage and moved towards it. Stopping quickly and silently, he took account of his time. He panted catching his breath. That whole exchange had probably taken less than a minute, meaning he had roughly six more to get to a safe place before the allocation recoil hit him. His left arm was bleeding heavily from where he had been pierced, but it was still usable and he barely felt it with the adrenaline coursing through him.
He focused on hiding. He didn''t quite know what these creatures used to sense their surroundings, but he hoped that being still and quiet would be enough combined with [Hide]. Too soon he [Sensed] his opponent running in his direction. The lizards were fast, and Alan was sure without the power of his recent allocation coursing through him, he would be dead already. As the lizard approached, it didn''t seem to notice Alan hiding on the side of the cave wall.
The lizard warrior was just about to run past his hiding place. Coming to a decision, Alan sprang up, putting all of his speed and dexterity into the attack. He activated [Vital Strike] and stabbed towards the creature''s neck as he flew across the passage. The Skill activated successfully, but somehow the lizard had been able to react in time and everything seemed to slow down as Alan''s attack passed through thin air. The lizard had twisted its neck out of the way, and Alan could see its muscles tightening ready to pierce the spear upwards into Alan''s torso. Just as his [Vital Strike] finished however, he felt something different. He was somehow able to attack again instantly and instinctually.
Blood sprayed in his wake. The lizard''s neck was punctured brutally. Alan fell onto the ground on top of the creature managing to avoid skewering himself on its upraised spear at the last second. And just like that, he was down and his opponent was dead. That must have been the secondary critical [Vital Strike].Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
He breathed heavily in the sudden stillness, for once thankful for his Luck allocation. He felt dirty, covered in grim and copper scented blood, but he could not rest just yet. He picked himself up off of the ground and crouched by his kill. He flashed [Sense] outwards and confirmed no less than eight more of the creatures were heading his way. He had to hurry.
He had roughly five minutes now before the allocation drawback and maybe twenty seconds before the other lizards were on him. But he had come here for a reason. He [Sensed] quickly, the dead lizard had a knife on his belt that Alan took for himself. Aiming carefully he used the knife to cut down at the lizard''s exposed arm. Giving up soon after being unable to saw through the bone, he still managed to skin off a hunk of muscle and scales. He picked up the meat, pocketed the knife, and grabbed the two pouches that were attached to the warrior''s belt. One pouch sloshed pleasantly, and Alan hoped it was a water bag.
He took off. He had never run so fast in his life. His flashes of [Sense] had a hard time keeping up with his speed, and his MP began to lower significantly. Yet he moved his body surely, adrenaline pumping he was able to react instantly to any objects that appeared within his perception. And so he ran for several minutes before he stopped. He could no longer [Sense] the lizards behind him, but that didn''t mean they were not following.
He had a few minutes to find one of his hiding places. He had scoped out several such places on his walk for just this situation and now headed towards the closest one. It was a small hole in the cave floor behind a large boulder. Lowering himself down into it, he had to squeeze through the tight passage for roughly twenty meters before it opened up into a wider area where he could rest and hide. Without [Sense] he would never have attempted such a thing, but with the Skill he was able to verify that he would not be leading himself into an area where he would become trapped or stuck.
His Dexterity attribution had let him make his way through the tight spaces and tunnels with surprising ease, twisting his body to pass through the darkness with solid earth packed around him threatening to bury him. Briefly, he worried about his supply of oxygen, but it was too late for that.
Safely in his hiding spot, he put his prizes down. He had maybe a minute, maybe two. He sat down in the most comfortable position he could manage and waited for the allocation drawback to hit him.
He used the last of his MP to [Sense] out through the earth in the direction of the lizards but still did not find anything. Breathing deeply he focused on slowing his heart. It had been a very intense several minutes and he figured his allocation drawback should be coming any time now.
He put the cloth of his shirt between his teeth and tensed his body, preparing for the pain. His breath came in ragged huffs. When would it come? He shut his eye tight to prepa... PAIN.
Torrential PAIN.
It was horrible. The drawback from the 7 Points previously was nothing compared to this. Luck had been worse, but a piercing onslaught of unrelenting agony shot through him. Fast and sharp and unending. The sensation of millions of needles stabbing into his body was multitudes worse than before. He even noticed blood begin to spray around him as if it was actually happening. His spine twisted and every nerve in his body felt like it was being pierced. But he gritted his teeth and ENDURED. He was Alan Trevin. He would not be beaten. He had survived the destruction of his town, imprisonment, torture, and starvation. He had just killed two creatures that in any other circumstances he should stand no chance against. And he was still here. He would not let mere PAIN break him. HE WOULD NOT GIVE UP.
Alan sat there. Eyes open. Teeth gritted. Blood spraying from his body as if from thousands of stabbing knives. In the silence and darkness beneath the earth, he embraced the pain. Because he chose this route. Because he had won his battle with the lizardmen. Because he was alive and no longer a prisoner to his circumstances.
He rested deeply after the drawback finished. Too exhausted to do anything else or worry about pursuit. He had done what he could.
Now propping himself up in the darkness of his hideout, he turned towards his rewards. He actually felt surprisingly good all things considered. Still hungry, still bruised and broken, but he was alive. Allowing himself a small smile he picked up the knife he had taken from the lizard warrior.
It was not metal but seemed to be made of a strange type of stone. It was sharpened to a fine point and would certainly be useful. He set it aside carefully. He opened one of the pouches the lizard had been carrying and dumped the contents on the ground. A pile of dirty coins fell out, along with a small dried foot of some creature tied to a string which Alan assumed might be a charm of some sort. Whatever it was it didn''t seem to have worked for the lizard. He moved the contents of the pouch over and tied the pouch itself to his belt. The small bag was going to be more useful than what he had found inside of it.
The other pouch was filled with liquid Alan assumed and hoped desperately was water. He tested it out on his tongue. It tasted stale and warm, but he was overjoyed to be right. He gulped much of the contents not realizing just how thirsty he had been, but he made sure to save at least half for later on.
Finally, he turned to the meat from the lizard''s arm. He focused [Sense] on it. In his haste, he hadn''t managed to get as much meat as he had wanted, and much of it consisted of skin which was oily and scale-covered. It didn''t smell great. He frowned at it.
Taking his new knife he began to skin it carefully. The task was harder than he had imagined and messy. The knife was not quite sharp enough for the task and he ended up having to pry away the scales from the skin with his hands making an even worse mess in the process. The scales on the arm were hard to peel away and adhered stickily to the hide underneath. The lizard''s muscle felt both soft and firm as he peeled away the scales. It was still warm.
Finally down with his gruesome task, he [Sensed] the result. His frown deepened.
At least it now seemed more like the raw meat he was accustomed to. Ideally, he would want to cook it, but he had no way to make a fire. Even if he could, it would just suffocate him down here.
He sighed deeply into the nothingness.
He hoped [Endure] would keep him from getting sick. He knew he was relying on that Skill more and more to do things that he couldn''t know for sure it actually helped with, but he needed food. The few bowls of soup he had eaten had done less to satisfy his hunger than to make it more apparent just how poorly off he had been. After his Dexterity allocation and fight with the lizards, he felt the gnawing weakness of hunger even more.
Nothing for it. He took a bite of the raw lizard meat.
He paused, steeling himself before starting to chew. The texture was more gritty and rubbery than he had hoped. He forced himself not to gag as the rancid smell of the meat overpowered his senses. Each bite was a struggle as his teeth chewed up the rough sinew. It had a sickly sweet taste to it and he held his nostrils closed hoping that would help the process. He chewed the sour meat until his jaw ached, but it was incredibly gamey and resisted his attempts. Eventually, he closed his eyes in the darkness and forced himself to swallow.
As the sickly meat slid down his throat, a window popped up.
| Skill "Endure" can now become "Sustain" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
He almost choked in his surprise.
Coughing in the darkness, Alan caught his breath and for a moment focused on not throwing up what had taken him so much effort to get down in the first place.
After calming down, he refocused his attention. [Sustain]?
He knew Skills could change or in rare cases combine. Everyone knew that. It was what study of Skill Paths was all about, but even so, he hadn''t been expecting it. With the random and frankly disappointing smattering of Stats and Skills that he had been choosing out of necessity, Alan had not even thought about such things when making his decisions.
He was naturally a bit wary of losing [Endure]. Who is to say how he would be doing without resistance to mental distress, a higher pain tolerance, and resistance to physical injury and exhaustion. Probably not very well given what he has been through.
Still, it was somewhat exciting.
He moved the remaining lizard meat over and checked out his new upgrade option.
Chapter 15: Alan.
The door was massive.
Absolutely massive. It took up one whole side of the spacious cavern. Alan could only [Sense] the outer layer, but somehow he imagined it was a dark red color, made of thick and heavy iron. It was far from the first time he had spied on the giant closed gates. It had become his mystery. His goal. The only clue he had to an exit from these wretched caves.
He had been wandering these lizard infested tunnels for what must be months now.
It was hard to gauge time in the darkness, but he had just turned sixteen a week or so back which gave him a much-needed frame of reference. He had been expecting the change for a while now, but it was still a shock when it happened. It had been a year and several months since he had been forced into his prison. It was a long time to live as he did. His life during this period was one of darkness and danger and more than anything, one of loneliness.
But if all went well, soon he would be done with it.
Those first days in the caves had been astonishingly severe. After losing [Endure] he had almost gone mad. Mad with grief, with pain, with hunger and disease. He didn¡¯t regret accepting [Sustain] at this point, but those first couple of weeks after had almost broken him. Still he had pulled through. He had managed to overcome.
He had clung to his desire for freedom and his longing for revenge. He refused to let himself be beaten before he had made the instigators of this tragedy suffer.
After he had somewhat healed up and gotten more used to his circumstances, he had spent a long time wandering through the tunnels. He would hide from the lizards, occasionally ambushing them in the dark for food and supplies. His only goal had been to stay alive, and if he could, to keep going upwards towards the surface.
As the days went by, he had begun to have a sneaking suspicion that he was instead going much deeper into the earth. The caves felt strange, almost alive in a way. Sometimes he would be in a tunnel that clearly headed towards higher ground, but when he would turn around and check, he would [Sense] that he had actually moved further below. In his darkest thoughts, he imagined the earth was playing tricks on him, trying to swallow him whole.
Everything had changed when [Sense] reached level 6. It was at this point that he had gained the ability to [Sense] ambient Mana in the atmosphere.
Supposedly since level 5 he should have been able to do this. It clearly stated in the description: "By extending your Mana beyond yourself you have gained the ability to recognize ambient Mana and Mana within yourself." Except Alan had no idea what that meant.
Of course, having nothing but time on his hands, that did not stop him from trying. It was an odd feeling, trying to use [Sense] to track the Mana that [Sense] consumed by being activated. He figured if he expended his MP by using Skills he should be able to [Sense] some flow of Mana within himself. It was a place to start, and he was almost shocked when it had worked. Just barely he felt a shifting of density, a slight distortion of space inside of himself as he drained his MP. Just barely. He admitted that he might have been imagining it.
He had no luck at all recognizing Mana outside of himself. But still, he kept at it. He had plenty of time, and he was discovering he could be pretty patient about such things.
When [Sense] hit level 6 his attempts had made a breakthrough.
He had created various mental exercises to go through with [Sense] when he was bored and had nothing better to do. After his recent level increase, he had been particularly excited to try them out and see if he noticed any difference. He started by using the Skill as he normally did. He concentrated his mind in the way he had done many times before. It involved a slight mental tightening that once focused he could spread outside of himself and into the world around him. It was a familiar feeling by now.
He conceptualized his perception expanding outwards. Not just a vague thought, but a rock-solid mental image that took into account every detail, every curve, and every angle of his consciousness. This had once forced his mind to its limits but now came as natural as breathing.
At this point, instead of expanding [Sense] out further as he would in a normal situation, he doubled it back into itself, to get a feeling for the Mana within his body. His mental map could not falter in any way during this process. And there it was. It was slight, but he felt it. A ripple in his essence. A ripple that moved with his perception, fueling it. Straining his concentration, he solidified the feeling and tried to expand it outwards as well. Sweat was forming on his forehead and his brow furrowed with focus.
Something in his Mana "caught" for lack of a better term, and the density of his perception shifted. He felt he was almost there and his body began to shake with the intensity of his concentration. He tried to re-expand his understanding once more bringing his Mana along with it. Slowly... Carefully...
His Mana exploded outwards in a burst, and his MP plummeted instantly to zero. At the same time, a throbbing agony shot through his mind causing his head burst with pain almost making him black out. The single-minded focus from before slipped in his head and shattered. He clutched at the ground and struggled to remain conscious. A wide and uncontrollable grin broke out on his face.
It had worked. He had expanded his Mana outside of himself.
From there he had taken to practicing [Sense] with a vengeance, and after several days, he was finally able to expand his Mana outwards without injuring himself. It was hard to maintain, and it leaked from his control draining his MP rapidly, but he could do it. And once expanded outside of his own body, through it, he could perceive the flow of Mana in the atmosphere itself. It was a vague feeling, but it hadn''t taken him long to realize the ambient Mana around him was moving in a specific direction. Like an invisible current in space.
Of course, he followed it.
That had been perhaps a month or two past. The Mana appeared to flow upwards through the tunnels. Even when it felt like he was headed down, or pushing deeper underground, he would turn back and somehow he would be at a higher elevation than before. He didn''t understand how the caves worked, but he began to trust the flow of Mana around him. He followed it.
He hid from the lizard tribes, moving around them if he could, and through them if he had to. He would raid or ambush weaker members when his supplies ran low. He would explore their territories and study them, but he never stopped following the flow of Mana. He never stopped moving towards what he hoped and believed was the surface.
And it had led him to the door.
It was the first man-made thing he had sensed since his escape, and it filled him with something almost like hope. It was more massive than anything he had ever experienced and oddly enough [Sense] could not penetrate it. It was somewhat concerning. Whenever he tried to use [Sense] on the structure, it felt like the world just ended. True [Sense] was more difficult to utilize through walls or any sort of barrier, but this was different. He could [Sense] the outer layer, a thick and metal frame, but going deeper was met with... nothingness.
The main point was that the door was something new. Something different. And if all went well, soon he would finally know what lay on the other side. He refocused on his targets.
At the foot of the giant door stood fifteen lizard shamans and thirty brood warriors. He had made up names for the various types of lizards he had encountered after being down here for so long.
The brood warriors were a completely different beast than the foot soldiers he had encountered at first. They stood four or five meters tall and were hulks of pure muscle. He had sensed them in action and had no desire to face even one of the creatures, let alone the thirty that stood guarding the doorway.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
The shamans were another matter entirely. They could be devastating, but most of their Skills seemed to be less focused on single targets and more useful against larger groups. Their Skills appeared to be centered on manipulating the earth around them. He had sensed one move the very structure of the caves once, rock and dirt surging from the ground, crushing dozens of other lizardmen in its wake.
The lizards fought often which gave him plenty of time to observe their capabilities from a distance. As it turned out, the lizardmen did not like each other. Frequent battles and attacks by other lizard tribes were just a part of daily life for the creatures.
Alan had become somewhat of an expert of lizard society. The main take away was that they were extremely violent.
Not counting the battles between the various tribes, even lizards of the same tribe often attacked and killed each other over mating, loot, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all. There was, however, a rough hierarchy in place and the shamans and brood warriors stood at the top. The foot soldiers he had first encountered were actually quite weak. As he had recovered his health and stamina in the caves over time, he realized what he had taken for deadly lizard warriors were in fact the weakest segment of lizard society. Aside from their sheer speed and numbers, they were hardly worth worrying about anymore. They had instead become his primary food source.
Of course, he still avoided direct confrontations. He would attack swiftly and quietly. If he did his job right, the creatures would get no chance to retaliate before they died.
Whatever the reasons, no matter the type, the lizards were violent and territorial. In fact, it was this violence and animosity between the tribes that part of Alan''s plans hinged upon. He didn''t know what lay beyond the door, it was always guarded by a ridiculous number of lizards, but it was his only clue, the only thing he had found that might lead to an exit.
He dreamed of seeing light. He dreamed of fresh air. He dreamed of other people.
However, he was getting ahead of himself. He admitted he was nervous. It had been too long. He had been hiding out in this cavern for what he counted as at least two whole days since he had set his plan into motion. He had expected it to happen by now, but the cavern remained tediously quiet as the brood warriors paced the ground below. Perhaps the lizards were not able to discern different tribes purely through scent?
He would wait a bit longer.
He was absent-mindedly running through [Sense] exercises in his head when he heard something strange. At first, he thought it must be his imagination playing tricks on him, but more and more distinctly he began to hear noises coming from the main entrance of the cavern. The distant sound of fighting. The silent hisses and clashes of rock that accompanied the battles between the lizards. It began to grow louder, and Alan tensed up.
The noises continued to grow. Alan could [Sense] the lizards guarding the door move about restlessly as they noticed the sounds as well. They began moving erratically, gesturing wildly to each other, clearly nervous. Soon it sounded like a full-fledged battle and Alan resisted the urge to [Sense] out towards it, knowing he couldn''t waste his MP here.
Suddenly, a group of foot soldier lizards burst through the entrance and ran up to the larger mass of brood soldiers. One lizard hastily came forward while waving its fingers in the air in an intricate pattern, frequently brushing its hand against its hind leg and making the occasional hissing noise. It was frantic.
It had taken Alan an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out the exact nature of how they communicated. It turned out the lizards had some sort of secretion gland in their back legs that they would rub their hands against and from there proceed to "draw" the scent through the air in specific patterns. The occasional hissing was almost secondary. At least that''s how it seemed to Alan who had little else to do but spy on lizards for the past however many months. This was also a crucial part of his current plan.
His plan.
He found that most tribes had an area where they laid their eggs. It was usually deep into a territory, but he had become very proficient with [Hide] and with plenty of time on his hands it had been easy enough to sneak into one such region. He knew now that the creatures lived in their dark world using a combination of scent and sound to make out their surroundings. Luckily for him, [Hide] seemed to be very effective against their perception as long as he didn''t make any overt noises and didn''t get too close.
When he had stumbled upon his first incubation area, he had been overwhelmed by the sheer mass of eggs he could [Sense]. He hadn''t wasted any time and stuffed as many as he could into his pouches. It would be a welcome change from lizard meat and mushrooms. He had filled up his sacks and left quickly thinking that he had been pretty good about leaving no trace of his visit behind. There were so many eggs, he just assumed that the lizards would not even notice the small amount he had taken.
He had been very wrong.
As he escaped with his eggs through the tunnels he started to hear strange noises. Curious he had turned around and snuck back to see what was going on. What he found had shocked him.
The lizard tribe was going ballistic after his visit. They were hissing in a way that he had never heard before and attacking each other, running off into the caves, and some even harming themselves. The brood warriors of the tribe in particular began crushing anything that moved, their power literally shaking the halls of the cave.
The earth rumbled with their anger and Alan had been notably thankful that he hadn''t been caught in there. It was an easy decision to leave quickly and find a place to sleep very far away that night.
But the experience had given him something to work with.
He needed to get the lizards away from the door. His first thought was to steal eggs from the tribe guarding the doorway in an effort to make them go erratic and forget their stations. That had proven to be a dead end when he couldn''t locate that particular tribe''s nesting ground.
A minor setback for him, using his knowledge of the creatures he had come up with a new plan.
The first step had been to prowl through the darkness and kill a few foot soldiers from the tribe that guarded the giant door. An easy task for him now, he picked them off one by one and soon had enough for his purposes. He carefully cut out the glands from their legs, a small sticky sack that rested just behind their knees. He gathered twenty of these in total and combined, they gave off a sharp scent even to Alan''s senses. From there he had made his way towards the nesting area of a different tribe nearby.
It had been pretty easy actually, though he had been understandably nervous about being caught after the previous reaction he had witnessed. He really didn''t want to risk getting caught in an incubation room. But aside from a few lizards lingering on the edges of his perception, the area had been rather empty. Not one to pass up an opportunity, he made his move.
He quickly stole some eggs into his pouch to eat later; they had turned out to be surprisingly good compared to his usual fare. Then he began desecrating the place. He almost felt bad about it. He stomped on eggs, kicked them around, and in general tried to make a mess of the place. As he did so, he rubbed the glands over everything he could find. They were about the size of a large grape, and he squeezed them until a thick, viscous liquid dripped out. If he was correct, then the tribe would be able to make out the scent.
He didn''t linger, not by a long shot. Finishing quickly he ran far far away.
There was admittedly a lot of guesswork in this plan, but he had really nothing to lose by trying. This was not the first time he had attempted to manipulate the creatures and failed.
Even separated by thousands of meters of dense rock, he imagined he could hear the uproar he left behind. Not daring to turn back he had picked up his pace heading even further away.
It had been several days since then and he was getting worried that this plan had failed as well. But finally, something seemed to be happening.
The brood lizards and shamans had all come forward now. Every lizard was gesturing wildly, and light but intense hissing filled the cavern. Their tongues flashed like lighting, and the sound of fighting began to grow louder. The gesturing and hissing began to become more and more panicked, more frantic, more violent.
It was getting louder and louder. Louder than anything he had heard since arriving in these tunnels. He listened to a distant rumbling roar that reverberated through his body. Sounds he had never heard from lizards before were echoing through the chamber. He felt sweat begin to drip down his forehead.
Suddenly one of the brood warriors slammed a large club into a foot soldier, instantly pulverizing it. This caused the rest of the lizards in the room to pause momentarily, and after a few quick gestures, the attacking warrior began heading towards the exit ignoring the rest. The rumbling of earth echoed ominously in the rocky cavern. Just as the brood warrior was about to reach the exit, a different group of lizards burst into the large cavern followed by a host of shamans.
Several enemy brood warriors quickly intercepted the one that had been heading towards the entrance. Alan could almost feel the power and impact of the quick struggle, and it set off a flurry of movement from every other creature in the cavern.
Alan''s heartfell still as he sensed out towards the mass of reptiles below. The lizards typically engaged in smaller battles, he was starting to feel a bit uncertain about what he had unleashed.
As the two armies of brood warriors charged towards each other, the shamans on each side immediately began raising their hands in the process of activating their Skills. Quickly meeting in the center, the brood warriors clashed in a mighty torrent of teeth and claws and blood. It was raw and primitive and violent, but even that was secondary. Alan was focused on the shamans. He sensed the Mana in the room. One second it was a gentle stream leading towards the door, and in the next, the entirety of it suddenly plunged downwards into the earth, guided by at least forty different shamans. It was an invisible avalanche of power.
Alan pulled back his senses as his own Mana threatened to be sucked downwards. Then he felt something below him move, he felt it with something deep inside of him, something other than [Sense]. As a violent battle raged below, Alan felt the very bones of the earth start to tremble around him.
Chapter 16: Alan.
Alan did his best to run for cover as the Mana drained from the air and into the earth below.
It started with a deep rumbling, the cavern itself seemed to ripple, a wave passing through the rock. Even the unstoppable violence of the warriors below seemed to pause momentarily as the ripple passed. There was a sudden stillness in the chaos.
Then the world exploded.
Rock rose up from every part of the caves, spraying outward in a torrent of flashing rubble, tearing through flesh and bone. The brood-warriors unfroze and continued to fight through the flood of rock and gravel, somehow appearing even more brutal than before as they ignored the buckling of the earth and the speeding projectiles that flew through the air around them. The ground moved and swayed violently beneath Alan''s feet. He struggled to stay upright and suddenly [Sense] caught a sharp flash of movement in the surface below him. It was too sudden, he had no time. He dove just as the land exploded below him, right where he had been standing just a moment before. A deafening blast roared in his ears, and his body was thrown from his perch into the turmoil of rocks and lizards and death below.
He landed hard against the ground in the midst of the battle. His SP shot downwards absorbing the damage through [Sustain]. He flashed [Sense] outwards immediately while he picked himself up and shook his head trying to clear the ringing in his ears.
Madness all around him. The battle between the hulking masses of reptile warriors had reached a fevered pitch. Lizards tore each other limb from limb, using clubs and claws and teeth in a celebration of violence. Some of the warriors rode upon a type of lizard Alan had never observed before. A giant yet thin creature with massive fangs jutting out of its lower jaw. It plowed through the fighting, whipping its tail and crushing its opponents. [Sense] showed one of the things chewing its enemies alive as smashed other warriors with its heavy claws.
Through it all the earth continued to shake, fissures opening up in the ground, debris spilling from the ceiling. There was no order to the fight. No reason. No sanity.
Alan didn''t bother with reason, he ran. Lizard warriors clashed in and out of his [Sense] range, and he single-mindedly bolted for the door trying to avoid being trampled and crushed to death. His hearing still seemed hazy from the explosion before, but he didn''t have time to think. Rocks and boulders shot out all around him and pounded against his head, his body, his legs. Before this whole experience would have been an immediate death sentence, but now aside from unbalancing him, Alan was mostly able to ignore the damage with [Sustain] as he watched his SP sink dangerously low. It was at 113/690. Fear powered his movements, and he scrambled through the madness to escape.
This was easily the most dangerous situation he had found himself in, in a long time. Perhaps ever. If his SP hit zero, he was dead. He needed to get out NOW.
He allocated 33 Points, it was everything he had left.
It was do or die. 10 Points to Dexterity to help him move through the swirling chaos of rock and violence. 13 Points to Vitality to increase his SP count and let [Sustain] keep him from being viciously injured. And lastly, he wasn''t sure it was the best decision, but even if it was mostly useless later on, the nature of his first Luck allocation had saved his life, so he threw 10 Points into Luck.
In the insanity around him, the world seemed to pulse once as his three allocations hit him. It was the first time he had allocated into different Stats at the same time, and it sent a very physical jolt through his spine that felt like lightning. It was an almost euphoric shock to his senses and reality.
The combined effects strengthed him, balanced him, and gave him an instinctual confidence in the world around him all at once.
He ducked the lightning-fast swing of an approaching brood warrior just as the ground surged beneath the two of them, throwing the creature high into the air and threatening to knock Alan over in the pitch of battle. His Dexterity saved him as he shifted his left foot behind himself, twisting his body and landing upright upon the billowing ground. As he landed, he shifted his feet again, spinning towards the door just as a different warrior stabbed a crude spear through his ribs. The attack pierced deeply, but Alan moved with it, quickly kicking the weapon out, his SP plummet to 30/885 in the process. Thanks to his new Vitality allocation and [Sustain], the attack left no wound.
He sidestepped the next spear thrust as the brood-warrior continued to barrel towards him. The warrior quickly closed the gap. [Sense] showed a mass of teeth and muscle suddenly materialize next to him, threatening to rend him apart. Alan somehow felt his next action before he took it and launched his body low to the ground just as a massive slab of rock flew through the air above him, pulverizing the attacking warrior and anything else that happened to be in its path. A burst of wind following in the wake of the stone blew above him in a bloody mist, and Alan immediately sprang back up into it and continued his mad dash for the door.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
It was pandemonium, and madness, and destruction. Alan weaved and ducked and sped through it all. Rock and teeth, blood and death, and so much noise as the earth continued its violent upheaval. His SP hit 0, and suddenly overpowering exhaustion hit him, almost causing him to stumble. The millions of pebbles flying through the air suddenly began to leave bloody marks on his body. Still, he wasn''t about to give up, and he ignored the smaller injuries and focused on avoiding the more substantial dangers. His adrenaline pumped, his body moved, and his heart beat so fast it seemed to be motionless. The world was a blur, and Alan balanced on it with his life on the line, too focused to fear, too intent to cower.
He spun with the rock that crashed into his side painfully to avoid the worst of the damage. He sidestepped a brutal swing of a club as the terrain tilted and threw him near two brood warriors that were tearing into each other. He ducked and dashed through a mad melee relying on speed and instinct to carry him through.
He [Sensed] the tail of one of the monstrous lizard creatures coming at him at an impossible speed. It was too fast, and he couldn''t avoid it. He brought his arm up in a vain attempt to block it. It all happened in an instant. The tail slammed into him. His world was restructured into a jumble of confusion and pain as he was propelled through the air along with several warriors by the sweeping blow. He tumbled onto the ground and felt hard rock tearinto his shoulder as he landed.
He teetered for a moment and picked himself up. Or tried to.
Instead, he slipped and fell back down to the earth unbalanced. He almost couldn''t process what [Sense] was telling him. The pain of it had not hit him yet. Below his left elbow, the arm he had tried to use to pick himself up, ended in a pulverized mess. He was sure his side had been injured by the attack as well, but he couldn''t focus. His arm. He couldn''t make sense of it. He screamed.
Still, he could not stop. He picked himself up with his other arm and continued to run. Screaming. The pain which had not been there before came back full force as he processed the injury. But he couldn''t focus on it. He couldn''t. He was not safe yet. He needed to get out. He screamed. He ran. His MP was running low so he stopped flashing [Sense] and focused entirely on the area around him that did not consume MP. He felt delusional, almost separated from his body. As if he was unrelated with what was going on around him. As if he merely watched some other broken boy careening through a swarm of lizards converged on bloody slaughter.
And just as it seemed it would never stop, as if he would never be free of the brutality of the battle, he was through it. The ground beneath him evened out and stopped convulsing. The worst of the bloodshed between the brood warriors was behind him. It seemed almost calm compared to the thick of the battle, but he was not out yet. Not by a long shot.
He was standing in front of a group of lizard shaman. They must be preventing the earth around them from being overly disrupted as they continued waving their hands in the air. Intent on the Skills they were casting, they had yet to notice a thin dark young man running, unguarded in front of them.
Alan kept moving towards the door behind the shamans. If he stopped, he might never get moving again. He pumped his legs. His concentration was slipping, and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. He put everything into running towards the damn door. It was his goal. His purpose. His desire. If he could just reach the door...
He fully expected a shaman to notice him at any moment and to crush him in a wave of earth and stone.
Instead, he ran right by the group unnoticed. The noise and disorder of battle, combined with [Hide] and their lack of sight, must have made him all but invisible to them as he flew past in a flurry of fear and burning desire to survive.
And he was at the door. He was not the only one. The massive door was slightly ajar, revealing a small opening through which several shamans were fleeing. Alan joined them and continued to be ignored as each creature was intent on its own survival. It felt a bit strange to finally reach the object of his study for the last few months and immediately run past it, into whatever waited beyond.
He barely spared it a thought as he ran through it. He didn''t want to die.
The moment he passed through the door a cold wind crashed against his body blowing his hair and tattered clothing behind him, finally causing him to stop.
It was cold, and wet, and abrasive. There was suddenly water flowing on the ground below him. The noise from the raging struggle behind him was cut off, and he heard a boom of thunder echo through the cave. He imagined he could see, vaguely making out the hard details of the rock around him. And most of all the smell. A damp, musty, moldy smell. The smell and sound of rain. The sharp yet solid scent of wet earth. It was a sense of being outside.
He collapsed to his knees. A fleeing shaman shoved him from behind frantically as it passed him by, knocking him onto the ground. Waves of pain passed through him unnoticed as he landed on his dead arm. Still, Alan did not move. He could not. His body wouldn''t listen any longer, and his mind was overwhelmed. Too much was happening. His MP was too low, so he could not [Sense] outwards. His SP was zero, so he was not protected. His arm was no longer recognizable. His body was past being exhausted.
But he wasn''t dead yet.
He concentrated his will and began to crawl haltingly up the tunnel, streams of water flowing around the fingers of his good arm. One handed, he dragged his body onward leaving a trail of blood in his wake. A brilliant flash of light appeared high above, outlining the texture and jagged rock in a moment of detail, soon followed by a crackling rumble that ricocheted into the cave around him.
A storm. Alan was crying. An actual storm.
He continued to struggle upwards, pulling himself over the wet earth.
Each movement hurt. Each centimeter was an achievement. Suddenly a wave of something passed through Alan, causing him to lose consciousness momentarily, but he picked himself up and continued to crawl onward. His good hand slipped against the wet rock, cutting a gash in his palm. Blood mingled with dirt and water on the ground of the empty cave. Alan continued to crawl. To move towards the outside.
He looked up and actually SAW the cave around him. Vague outlines in the darkness shone in his eyes. It was beautiful. It felt wonderful. He was almost outside. He was almost free.
His allocation drawback HIT.
He stood no chance.
Chapter 17: Alan.
Alan''s vision blackened with the intensity of the drawback. Shock and agony and delirium concentrated inside of him. His body spasmed and he struggled on the cold, wet ground with the sound of thunder rumbling through the tunnels. He realized he was screaming ¡ª a harsh, animal noise. The very physical shock sent his body tumbling back towards the door, splashing along with the streams of water that ran urgently downwards across the cave floor.
He had somewhat prepared for this, but the immediate shock of it all threatened to overwhelm his senses. His reality faded in and out, yet the pain remained, unstoppable. The hunger was overpowering. It staggered his mind. The exhaustion threatened to sweep him away. He was ravenous. He was a mindless will to live.
His heart beat once. Twice.
With an effort of will, he used everything he had and reached through the pain, reached with his good arm into the pouch he had taken from a dead guard ages ago. He pulled out the lizard meat and eggs he had saved, shoving it into his mouth, barely chewing before he swallowed. He almost choked in his haste.
Alan ate as waves of pain pierced him. Sharp and dull, persistent and eternal. It was the agony of bone being snapped in two. It was the shock of being stabbed through by a rusted blade. It was an endless burning of a fire, eating at him from within. It was unending HUNGER.
Every nerve signaled torture. Still, he ate and quickly ran out of the meat that he had saved in his pouch. What had been several pounds of raw food was gone in an instant.
It had not been enough.
He struggled against the cold wet floor, screaming. It had always been a gamble. He concentrated his will and flashed out [Sense] in a desperate attempt at... at something.. Through the waves of fire and pain, he noticed a body laying not far from where he had collapsed. A dead lizard? Alan attempted to reach out just as a soul-crushing avalanche of agony crashed down upon him. His grip on consciousness slipped...
Blood. Pain. Hunger.
Alan gasped. He was chewing on something. His jaw ached. Reality faded once more into darkness...
Where was he?
[Sense] was a bubble around him streaked with his anguish. There was a lizard moving nearby. He staggered and the world spun in an excruciating blur... [Vital Strike] activated and met with something. The stab of an opposing knife tore through the dead flesh of his broken arm. The pain was nothing compared to the waves of dark black hurt that spread out inside of him. He collapsed forward onto his victim and bit down hard, teeth sinking into flesh, the scent of blood. He fell...
He coughed, choking on gore and sinew. What was he doing? He felt an intense pain in his abdomen. Alan continued to chew. A deep hunger inside of him. He drifted in and out. His jaw moved. Chewing chewing. He clung to life by desire and fear and willpower.
An eternity passed.
Surrounded by brilliant red darkness, coated in the taste of guts and blood, Alan chewed.
Alan woke up, choking. A sudden exhale created bubbles in the congealed blood around him. He gasped, jolting upright, which caused an intense shock to run down his back. The feeling momentarily disabled him and he collapsed back to the hard ground. In his surprise, he swallowed something chewy and rancid that had been in his mouth. He could [Sense] the mutilated corpse of a lizard shaman next to him.
He breathed in deeply. An intense silence stretched out around him.
Still alive.
Alan shuddered unable to move for a brief moment.
He was still alive.
The moments after his drawback hit came back to him slowly in a disorienting blur. He had not been all together cognisant during that time andit took him a while to come back to himself.
After a while, he flashed [Sense] around himself to gather his bearings. The gnawed on remains of two lizardmen lay littered and broken around him. It was a mess of blood and bone piled behind the massive door. Alan noted absentmindedly that the door was shut now.
He had a vague recollection of finding the first body collapsed on the ground nearby. A shaman who had succumbed to wounds from the battle earlier as it tried to escape. He somewhat remembered attacking a second lizard as it came through the door.The pain and hunger made things harder to recall.
Whatever he had done it had clearly been violent and messy. The reptile bodies were hardly recognizable. It seemed as if some insatiable beast had eaten them alive and spat out the remains. Even the bones were gnawed and broken.
But there was still strands of flesh left. Still bone marrow. Still rough scales in the mutilated pile of gore.
And Alan was still weak, still hungry.
Alan crawled over and used his good hand to leverage himself closer to the mutilated corpses. The head of one of the lizards was still somewhat intact. There was a faint light in the tunnels, and as Alan got closer he looked into dead eyes staring out of a half-eaten face. He imagined the blank stare judging and condemning him.
He coughed once and moved his face downwards. He couldn''t stop here. He bit down and tore at the remains. The meat of the flesh was tough and leathery and rancid all at once. His jaw hurt, but that was nothing.
[Sustain]. It was not the most elegant Skill, but it was effective.
His SP worked differently now thanks to [Sustain]. It didn''t help him recover any damage he had already taken, but when it was not empty it prevented him from taking injury.
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Sustain (passive/active): Level 5. Multiplier: Vitality. *73/100 till next level.
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You have gained a unique class of SP (stamina points). You have immunity to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and damage through SP. You can instantly convert SP directly into MP at a rate of 10SP to 1MP.
Low-level poisons and negative status effects resulting from consumption do not affect you.
Attribute multipliers (SP: Vitality * 15). SP regenerates at a 0.2/second ratio normally and 3/second when sleeping. Diet and your current physical state affect regeneration rates. SP regeneration through eating and consumption of nutrients is multiple times more effective. Eating food you have killed yourself regenerates SP at the highest rate.
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Which meant as long as he kept eating, his SP would try to regenerate, and his body would have something else to carry the burden of pain and exhaustion and distress. As he continued to consume the lizard remains, his SP did not rise above 0 but with each swallow, he felt a brief jolt of respite. Or he thought he did, the feeling was so small that it might just be imagined, but he was still alive so he must not be entirely wrong.
Since gaining the Skill, Alan always saved some emergency food in his largest pouch. If he was ever in danger, it gave him something to replenish his potentially life-saving SP. This time he had waited until his drawback hit, hoping that the sustenance would give him a chance. He had suspected it wouldn''t be enough, but even still he had either overestimated his Skill or underestimated the drawback. He had needed more. A lot more.
So he continued to eat the remains of the lizards. Due to the nature of his Skill, his stomach would not fill until his SP maxed out. In his current situation he worried that if he stopped eating, or if he ran out of food, he might not make it. As far as he could tell, [Sustain] was the crutch on which his life rested and Alan''s willpower latched on fiercely to the gruesome thread of life available to him.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
So he ate. And ate. The gore ran down his lips. Bone cracked as he bit down through the hardness. Scales cut the inside of his tongue. Eyeballs squished unpleasantly in his mouth. Nothing was off limits. If it was even remotely edible [Sustain] seemed to let him digest it.
Bite. Chew. Bite. Chew.
There was nothing left of the bodies at this point. Alan checked his pouch and his Status. What must have been three hundred pounds of meat had still not managed to take his SP past zero. It was a new record for him.
But he was not about to fall over dead. An improvement.
Alan stared at his broken mess of an arm. It barely hurt compared to what he had just been through. Still, it bothered him more than he knew it should. There were healing Skills out there that could fix it, but they were incredibly rare and prohibitively expensive since such Skills always came at a significant cost to the caster. Something like healing his arm would cost a small fortune, and that was assuming he could find someone who even had such a Skill.
Nothing for it.
Alan picked himself up slowly. He tried to keep his mind blank as he walked up through the tunnels. There was too much to think on, too much happening. He just had to keep going a bit longer. There was no more food here. Thunder still boomed in the distance, and the noise and flashes of light grew more intense as he staggered forwards. He felt the hint of a breeze against his skin and paused briefly. At least he had made it to the surface. He could taste the air. Feel the wind.
He had considered trying to wait out the storm. But Mana-storms could last for months, and he could not [Sense] anything that might serve as food in the cave tunnels. He needed to make his attempt while he still had even a modicum of energy.
The tunnel seemed to go on longer than he had imagined, but eventually he crested a rise and stared out into the world. Outside. It was his first glimpse of the surface in almost two years. It was staggering.
Awe filled him.
An unimaginable storm raged in the vast and open landscape.
Massive dark clouds spun violently in the air. Lightning seemed to fall like a waterfall in places, and multiple vortexes of hail and wind and energy reached through the sky, leaving gouges in the earth where they passed. Ice and rain slammed into Alan standing at the cusp of the small cave entrance, cleansing him.
It was beautiful. Alan felt tears fall silently from his eyes.
Alan watched the power of nature decimate the earth and shake the heavens. Thunder roared in his ears, overpowering the cacophony of wind and rain that already threatened to confound his senses.
An enormous flash lit up the sky. Brighter than the sun, it outlined the landscape in an instant of illumination. It was remarkable and gone just as quickly as it had appeared, plunging the world into a dark maelstrom once more.
A silent moment. Then it happened. Thunder ROARED through the atmosphere, tearing the very air apart. It was an impossible sound. An unstoppable and all-encompassing impact crashed through the atmosphere. It filled his being, reverberating his soul. It SHOOK existence.
The unimaginable force behind the thunder blew away his small thoughts, insignificant in the face of whatever force could fill the world with such massive might. It was the sound of pure and unrelenting POWER. Something colossal, something beyond his existence. Pure and unstoppable. To Alan, it sounded like God.
It was energy. It was light. It was the void.
Alan was stripped bare. Nothing else could exist in response to such a thing. His soul was blown away and cleansed. There was only the absolute weight of the storm and sound. The voice of the universe.
Existence seemed to bend. Possibilities shifted in the rumbling vibrations.
He had felt something similar before.
Alan smiled and took a single step out into the Mana-expanse, expanding [Sense] and his own mana perception as he did so. The ice and rain had already drenched him by the time he took his second step.
The Mana-expanse. It was a threat that only the Territory barriers could guard against. It was deadly in part because of the monstrous creatures that called it home. But it was the Mana-storms that were the true danger. They were unpredictable and unstoppable. A supreme force of nature that uncaringly crushed anything in its path.
Not only were the elements out of control, but these storms caused the mana in the atmosphere to churn wildly. Dense, almost visible patches of mana swirled and streamed over the land and sky. The human mind could not stand being encompassed by such dense mana for very long. If caught in such a patch, a person would quickly pass out, and then die soon after.
It was suicide, but Alan was beyond any choice. He began walking into the storm towards a repeating flash of light to his left. The signal had not been hard to find. The lighthouse of Boulder. The beacon in the storm. And it was so so close. It seemed like he had barely moved at all in his two years underground.
The capital city of Boulder was located on the edge of the Territory border, and like all border cities, a lighthouse was manned at all times so that any travelers between Territories had something to look for if they were ever caught in a storm. Of course, such travelers usually had Mana-guides to protect them, but here he was. Alan adjusted his direction as the lighthouse flashed again in the distance.
He chuckled. He was relying on his sight to move forwards. Seeing! His laugh was swallowed by the pounding of the storm around him, but that did not stop him. He laughed as he stumbled through hail and wind and rain. He extended his mana out around himself in a vain attempt to avoid the denser swaths of mana swirling in the storm.
He had not gone far. [Sense] gave him precious little warning. A patch of mana passed through him briefly, and he felt his consciousness threaten to collapse. He paused in his trek and held on, shutting his eyes against the feeling of swelling in his skull. And then it passed.
Alan continued forward against the violent wind. The rain felt sharp as it pelted against his skin. He was so close. Almost there. The lighthouse blazed nearby.
One step, then the next. A minute passed in the cold, harsh environment. He did his best to avoid areas where he could [Sense] mana was clustering. Lightning flashed around him. In every direction, the horizon seemed to stretch endlessly.
He had saved the last of the meat and ate as he walked. His SP was still zero, but he had no doubts that [Sustain] was pretty much the only thing powering him at this point. He chewed constantly. He did not stop eating. Never full. His Skill fueled his body, staving off the exhaustion that threatened to destroy him. Bloody and wet and cold, he chewed on the flesh of the lizards from below the earth. He walked, a speck of nothing inside the overwhelming force that was the Mana-storm.
Suddenly a distinct moving light appeared up ahead in front of him. Alan tried to lift his head up to get a better view but quickly abandoned that as the harsh wind cut at his face.
The moment had been enough. In a brief outline of lightning, he saw it. Two figures were approaching him. His heart sped up. Without thinking, his legs moved faster.
"...Down!!" he heard the faint call of one of them in the distance.
He couldn''t make out what they were saying just yet so Alan kept walking, if he stopped he might never get up.
The figures were close, Alan peeked up and saw a large man with a scarred face and full beard running towards him. A person! A real person. Was he shouting something? After so much, after everything, it was a person. He was no longer alone. He had really done it!!
A violent patch of mana burst up suddenly, out of nowhere. The density of it hit hard, slamming into his mind. Alan stopped in his tracks and focused his attention away from the approaching men and simply tried to not fall unconscious. He waited for the patch of mana to pass.
Except it did not pass by as quickly as the others had. The pressure kept on coming, on and on. Alan collapsed, his mind seemed fuzzy and full. Breathing was difficult and strange.
He moved all of his own mana inwards in a desperate attempt to guard his mind. With [Sense] he focused his internal mana in an area around his head. Perhaps he could defend himself in some way? But the dense mana of the storm kept on coming, ignoring his feeble attempts. He could [Sense] it but not stop it as it smothered him. He grabbed at his head.
He thought he heard voices. He felt something grab him. A firm hand on his shoulder.
The pressure eased up somewhat, but his mind still reeled with the onslaught. He opened his eyes, disoriented. There was the face of a man screaming next to him. The man''s face was close. Alan could smell something acidic on his breath. He was shouting something. What was he saying?
Sound crashed in and out. He finally let go. Something was shoved in his mouth. He swallowed whatever it was without thinking. Eating was his specialty after all. The man was saying something. His mind struggled to make sense of his surroundings.
"Catch it!" Suddenly sound crashed into him again. "In your mind!" The voice screamed over the thunder and torrential downpour. "A net! Imagine a net, catch it and move it!!"
A net? What was the man saying? Alan couldn''t see anymore. Were his eyes closed? He wanted to look at the face of the man. It felt good to see another person. But he couldn''t see. Why not? At least he could hear again. The voice of another person.
"Follow the flow! Focus on the pressure points! Imagine a net and move it!! Don''t guard, flow!!"
What was the man saying? Guard? Flow? Why not?
He realized he still had his internal mana tensed up in his mind. Why had he done that? The dense and violent mana of the atmosphere no longer assaulted him like before, but it seemed like something was still stuck. The pressure remained in his mind.
Flow?
He relaxed his mana. A net? He stopped fighting and reshaped his essence around his mind. Suddenly something shifted.
| You Have Been Granted the Skill "Mana Manipulation" Level 1. Do you wish to accept? |
Sure.
It became a bit easier to push against the onslaught.
He moved the flow around his perception. He floated with it in a dream. His cognizance, his will, guided and was guided by the stream. Around and around.
The pressure around his mind eased, and tension flowed out of him perceptibly. With his tension went his awareness. He felt strong hands under him, holding him.
The last thing he remembered was hearing deep voices shout against the wind above him.
"...insane... fucking... no idea... came from..."
"...weak... definitely shifted... goes to the guild..."
Darkness.
Chapter 18: Alan.
The bed was comfortable. A warm light filtered through the window into the small room bathing the scene in a peaceful glow. The nostalgic sounds of people starting their day drifted hazily into the room as a gentle breeze briefly lifted the sheer curtains, sending them fluttering lightly. For the first time in a long time, Alan felt safe.
He didn''t trust it.
He had woken up what must have been an hour ago and had been on edge ever since. A confusing mass of emotions boiled within him as he tried to let himself enjoy the simple pleasure of lying in a bed. But it was hard to relax. One feeling surfaced above the rest: Fear.
Here he was, a lone boy found stumbling around the Expanse. Suspicious didn''t even begin to describe it.
He had needed to get back to civilization. There was nowhere else for him to go, but that didn''t mean he could trust any of it. He had no idea if his captors had forgotten about him after all of this time, or if they were still searching for him. He had to assume the worst and that they would be waiting. He knew he would die before being taken prisoner again. He had promised himself that he would never go back down into that hole.
If his fear was sharp and bright inside of him, then the hope he felt was a jumbled mixture of excitement and relief.
He had made it back. That alone was more than he could have hoped for, and the harsh cruelty of his time with the lizards in the dark was already fading away like a bad dream. A horrible nightmare.
He got lost for a moment watching the curtain move in the breeze, and he compared what he was seeing to what [Sense] told him was happening. It was a bit disorienting, but also enjoyable. Everything was filled with so much color and light.
Alan liked the simple room he found himself within. He liked the polished smoothness of the wooden floors, which gave off a warm and comforting feeling. He liked the bed itself, the only piece of furniture in the room, which was simple yet functional. And he was terrified of whoever might come in through the closed door across from him, interrupting the tranquil stillness.
Naturally, he had tried to run away when he had first woken up, but of course, the door had been locked. The window was too small for him to fit through, which left him no obvious way out. Then again, realistically, where would he go? The short move from the bed to the door had been surprisingly exhausting for him. His body lacked strength, his muscles ached, and he felt weak. So, sore and hurting, he had stumbled back into the bed to wait. And wait.
Wherever it was that he had ended up, he was being treated nicely. He had been given new clothes to wear made of rough but clean wool. His arm was tightly wrapped in a sling, and various other scrapes and injuries had been bandaged. It did not seem like the actions someone would take if they were planning on locking him up in a dungeon. But there were just too many unknowns.
So he did what he could to prepare.
First, he had checked his Status and considered his new Skill [Mana Manipulation]. His eyes tightened slightly as he recalled the delirium he had been experiencing when he acquired the Skill, as mana had flooded his mind.
| Human Male, Age 16 |
| MP (mana) 70/95 (*regen 1.166/second) |
| SP (stamina) 0/885 |
| Stats (Un-Allocated: 0) |
| Strength: 1 |
Vitality: 59 |
Dexterity: 44 |
| Intelligence: 4 |
Wisdom: 0 |
Luck: 61 |
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| Skills |
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Hide (passive) Level 7: *89/100 till next level
You become harder to locate and track. Those with low perception will easily overlook you even if you are directly in front of them. You are immune to low-level tracking and sensing skills. Mid-level skills directed at perceiving you are debuffed.
Hidden Items: *none*
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Sustain (passive/active): Level 6. Multiplier: Vitality. *12/100 till next level.
You have gained a unique class of SP (stamina points). You have immunity to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and damage through SP. You can instantly convert SP directly into MP at a rate of 10SP to 1MP.
Low-level poisons and negative status effects resulting from consumption do not affect you.
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Sense (passive/active): Level 8. *13/100 till next level
You can mentally visualize the world around you through all of your senses. By extending your Mana beyond yourself you have gained the ability to recognize ambient Mana and Mana within yourself.
Low-level hiding abilities are ineffective against Sense. You are immune to low-level illusions and resistant to mid-level illusions.
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Vital Strike (active): Level 5. Multiplier: Dexterity. Cooldown: 5 seconds. *93/100 till next level
Deal critical damage when attacking vital areas. Drastically increased speed and accuracy when attacking a vital area. A good chance to instantly execute one or two secondary critical attacks after the first one.
Requirement: must be performed with a sharp object.
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Mana Manipulation (active): Level 1. Multiplier: Intelligence. *17/100 till next level
You can move nearby ambient mana. Cost 20MP/second/cubic-meter of mana. Distance and density of Mana increase this cost.
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| *none* |
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The good news was that [Sustain] had leveled up. Thinking about it reminded him to try to eat as much as possible to build up his SP again. It was at zero, meaning he was in too bad of shape for it to rise on its own. Not surprising.
The bad news was that [Mana Manipulation] looked like a horrible choice of a Skill for him. He had been focusing on allocating to Vitality and Dexterity and Luck, and even that was a stretch. Most common logic recommended only distributing your Points into two primary Stats. Sometimes if you had the right Skills, it would make sense to allocate between three Stats, but any more and everyone agreed that the Points became too thinly spread to be effective.
Which meant that [Mana Manipulation] would be pretty much useless to him since he wasn''t about to start allocating into Intelligence now.
He stifled a sigh as he stared out of the window. His allocations just kept becoming more of a mess. Still, it was not as bad as it seemed. Everyone knew about [Mana Manipulation], and having it could work in his favor.
So Alan waited. Frustration mingled with hope, and fear, and joy, and exhaustion.
He flashed [Sense] outwards at intervals. The door to the room was not overly thick, so it didn''t block his perception much. He occasionally was able to [Sense] someone walking down the hallway or moving around, but so far no one he recognized. The rooms on either side of him mimicked his own but remained empty. All told it seemed like a nondescript, normal building, still mostly empty in the early morning.
A knock on the door.
Alan''s heart hammered. He had [Sensed] the person approaching so was not surprised by the sudden noise, but he couldn''t help his body''s reaction. He was unsure if he was excited or fearful at this point, but he tried to calm himself down either way.
"Come in," he said in a hoarse voice, clearing his throat.
The sturdy wooden door began to open slowly, creaking its hinges and rubbing against the floor. A thin man with a simple face and several medical looking instruments strung around his neck stepped through and turned towards Alan with a relaxed smile.
"Hello there, I see you''re awake. How are you feeling?" The man stepped further into the room looking Alan up and down.
"I''m feeling fine I guess, Um... Who are you?" Alan asked. He just realized that this was his first conversation since his imprisonment. It shouldn''t matter, but he suddenly found himself nervous.
"You can call me Dr. Belman" the man answered. "And that''s good to hear. I must say we were quite shocked when they brought you in yesterday. Very happy to hear you are doing well. Very happy. But let''s make sure of it, shall we? Do you mind if we go through a few exercises?"
Alan was having flashbacks to his time at the guardhouse in Stonewall. "Of course" he responded carefully.
The doctor smiled and after setting himself up began gently poking and prodding Alan with the variety of tools he had brought with him. He made Alan focus on objects with his eyes, do some light physical activities, and perform various breathing exercises. He poked at the fingers of Alan''s ruined hand with a thin needle, and Alan was disappointed to realize that he could not feel anything.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
He had been thinking over what he would say earlier, but it turned out to be unnecessary as Belman seemed happy to blather on as he worked without any need for encouragement.
"Obviously we have a lot of questions for you," Belman began. "And now that you''re awake I''ll be calling the Mana Guild members over since they were very clear that you were theirs. Ah, but how rude of me, first I''m sure you''re curious about where you are. Luckily for you, I think I''m at least allowed to tell you that." Belman stopped prodding and began rotating Alan''s arm in a circular motion. "You are at Sage''s Hospital, and I am a doctor here. As you know Saga is proud of providing the Territory with quality health services, so rest assured we will take good care of you. You came in here with some nasty cuts, a shattered arm, several broken ribs, and a rather nasty case of mana poisoning. Luckily it looks like none of those things proved to be too life-threatening." The doctor paused and made Alan take a deep breath.
Alan''s mind raced. There was a lot to unpack there, and he was barely able to digest what the man had said before Belman continued talking.
"You are young, and aside from the arm, I have no doubts that you will recover. Still, we aren''t out of the woods just yet. I imagine your body is quite sore and you have a general feeling of weakness yes?" Alan opened his mouth to agree, but the doctor continued before he could answer. "I thought so. So before I go any further, I want to get a list of your Skills. This will let us best know how to treat you. Some people try to leave things out or hide their Skills, and of course, I can''t just force you to say what you don''t want to say, but know that I am under oath to keep what you tell me confidential. It is an oath I take very seriously, and know that leaving anything out about your Skills, even things that you think are minor, could end up putting your life in danger as we treat you."
Indeed, Alan had been ready to tell a very abbreviated version on his Skills, but oddly he found himself trusting the talkative doctor. It was tempting just to confess everything and be done with it. But he wasn''t an idiot, the urge passed quickly.
"Ok, that makes sense." Alan thought for a second, "I have a Skill that lets me eat to recover stamina. And now I have [Mana Manipulation] of course, though my Intelligence Stat is low so I''m a bit upset about that one. That''s about it as far as Skills go." He wasn''t about to give away anything more than he needed. But if he could get them to give him more food, well that would go a long way in helping him feel better.
"A Skill that recovers stamina through food?" Belman tapped at his leg as he stared hard at Alan. "I assume you have Stamina Points correct? Does your SP have any additional benefits thanks to this Skill? Is your Skill [Over Eat] or [Metabolize] perhaps? It couldn''t possibly be [Gluttony] right?" Belman continued to stare at him and folded his arms. "Well whatever it is, it is clear you are holding a lot back here so once again I will recommend highly against it, if you just tell me the exact description of your Skills I can put together a treatment plan that will suit you best." Belman pointed to Alan''s arm in the sling, "for example, depending on what Skills you have, your dead arm may not be such a lost cause."
Alan met the doctor''s eyes. "I appreciate that you are trying to help me, but that''s all I''m willing to say. I will admit that giving me as much food as possible will help me greatly." Alan could at least be direct with the man.
Belman sighed and stood up, wiping his hands on pants in the process. "I understand, I''ll send word to the kitchens to cook some extra portions," he smiled gently. "Get some rest and think on what I said. We''re here to help so just knock on the door if you need anything. I shouldn''t say much more, but the Mana Guild representative will be here soon, and they can answer more of your questions."
With that the doctor finished packing up and left the room, leaving Alan alone once more.
Well now, that was interesting.
Alan thought through the exchange. Clearly, the doctor was under some orders not to reveal too much to him, but then again it didn''t look like the man took that order too seriously. More importantly, he was not in Strength!
Alan hoped that he had been able to keep the shock off of his face as the doctor was talking. He was in Saga! This improved his chances drastically. He had assumed that he had ended up in Boulder since it was the last city he had seen before being trapped underground. Instead, it looked as if he had crossed under the Expanse in his journey through the caves. The tunnels must extend further than he thought.
Saga. The Wisdom Territory. It was centrally located amongst the other Territories and known for its merchants and for the council that ran its government. However, that''s about all Alan really knew about it, and he suddenly wished that his education had not been so Strength specific.
Either way, it was a good thing. He didn''t yet have a mark to prove or disprove his Territory citizenship and whoever had imprisoned and tortured him, whoever had forced him underground and had killed everything and everyone he had ever known. Whoever might still be watching out for him. Whoever they were, it was likely they would not be checking other Territories too carefully. Likely but still not impossible, it wouldn''t do to let his guard down just yet. Or ever.
Alan was feeling a bit more confident in his situation. A knot of stress he hadn''t even known was there seemed to unwind itself in his neck. He relaxed in the bed and continued flashing [Sense] as the sun rose higher and the day truly began.
Nurses came and went. Unlike Dr. Belman from before, they refused to talk to him. One nurse, a rather thin and pale man, seemed to actively dislike him, glaring at him openly every time Alan asked a simple question. Eventually, food came and Alan began eating. And eating and eating. And then he continued eating.
Belman had been true to his word and sent up large portions of food, but a look of uncertainty spread out among the nurses after he had cleaned his tenth bowl. The food was a simple thick soup, made with vegetables and chicken and served with a hearty bread. It was basic but filling, and Alan ate it almost as fast as it came to him. His SP was still zero, but he was beginning to feel better all told.
They eventually stopped giving him food after making sure he was alright, and he found himself falling asleep against his will as the warm sheets wrapped him tightly and food filled his stomach. His breathing deepened, and his eyes felt heavy. It was so easy just to rest his eyes for a moment...
Alan''s eyes shot open. He rolled away from the bed immediately but not elegantly, and ended up hurting his arm in the process and tangling the sheets around himself. He was barely able to maintain his balance as he landed on the floor and crouched down low ready to attack or flee.
Startled, disoriented from the combination of [Sense] and sight, and with his mind still waking up, he found himself staring directly into a pair of dark blue eyes narrowed in amusement.
"Oh?" The owner of the eyes put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him. She looked down at him.
She was a squat, solid woman with dark hair and dark eyes. She wore a bright red uniform and had her hair tied back tightly. She must have stepped into the range of [Sense], alerting him of her presence. After living in constant danger for so long, Alan had come to rely on the Skill even in sleep.
The moment stretched as Alan continued to stare at her.
"That was a very curious reaction young man. Can''t say I was expecting it." She took a step back and leaned against the wall opposite the window. "But we have plenty of time to delve into all of that later. For now, let me introduce myself, my name is Jan and I''m here on behalf of the Mana Guild. How are you feeling?"
Alan forced his body to relax and flashed [Sense] to get a handle on the situation. Coming in through the door behind Jan was the man that Alan remembered from stumbling around in the Expanse. The man with the beard and the scar across his face. The one who had saved him.
A few rooms away, Alan [Sensed] doctor Belman waiting with some men he did not recognize. Everything else was a random assortment of people going about their business. At least it was easy enough to verify that he was definitely in a hospital.
"I''m alright, you just startled me is all." Alan went back to the bed to sit down. The abrupt movement had not been good for him. "Mana Guild you said?" The man with the scar moved to stand behind the woman.
The woman''s eyes crinkled up again, and she answered with a smirk.
"Yes, Mana Guild. And I won''t let you pretend you don''t know what that means. And while we''re at it lets not pretend that the way you were found isn''t suspicious as hell. I don''t think I''ve ever heard of finding someone wandering alone in the Expanse before, at least not someone without a decent level of [Mana Manipulation] in their Skills, and you know we keep good track of such people. Which brings me to the main reason we''re all in this nice little room right now insteadof you being questioned by the guards. I hear you obtained the Skill [Mana Manipulation]? Give me your hand. Don''t speak. Just obey for now yes?"
She held out her hand expectantly. Alan was wide awake now and thinking through the situation. He reached out for her hand. It was surprisingly soft.
She closed her fingers around his hand. "Now take some ambient mana and try to push it into my fingers. There''s a lot less mana to throw around inside the barrier, but I should still be able to feel anything you try to do." She looked at him expectantly.
Alan obeyed quickly, hoping he was right in understanding where this interaction was heading. He hadn''t had much experience with [Mana Manipulation] other than when he had been struggling to keep conscious, but if it was like his other Skills is should be pretty intuitive. Focusing on the air around Jan''s finger he tried to activate the Skill.
Nothing happened.
"Any time now." Jan''s grip tightened around Alan''s hand.
Ok then.
Alan tried to [Sense] the Mana first. Maybe if he could [Sense] it, then he could use [Mana Manipulation] to move it more easily. He focused [Sense] and caught the perception of the mana at his core pushing it outwards in an attempt to feel the ambient mana around Jan''s hand.It was a simple process for him now. But as soon as his mana moved outside of his body, he felt Jan tense, and before he knew it the man with scar was next to him throwing him to the ground and pinning him to the floor.
"Stop!" Jan yelled loudly into the room at the same moment. The pain hit him a second later and his breath left him. The man with the scar did not seem inclined to let him up.
A moment of stillness. He heard Jan''s footsteps circling him after a time. It was hard to breathe with the man''s knee in his back and his face pressed against the wooden flooring.
"That was not [Mana Manipulation]. That seemed more like [Sense] or a thin [Shield], but I can''t be sure. What did you do?" The circling footsteps stopped.
"[Sense]" Alan choked out, face pressed against the floor. He didn''t think it was good to lie right now. "I was just trying to do what you told me to."
Another moment of stillness permeated the room. The pressure kept increasing, and Alan was finding it harder and harder to fill his lungs. For some reason, from the corner of his eye he noticed the curtains once more being pushed around by an easy breeze.
"Let him up."
At Jan''s words, the pressure eased and the scarred man backed up against the wall once more. Suddenly free, Alan coughed catching his breath. He took a moment for himself and then patiently stood up. His body felt weak, but he forced himself to stand straight and look directly at Jan across the room.
He coughed once more. "What was that?" He couldn''t help but ask. He genuinely wanted to cooperate here. It was an unexpected turn, but the Mana Guild could be very useful to him.
"What that was," Jan said after a time, "was you being an idiot. Or maybe just a good lesson. Don''t manipulate mana in unexpected ways when a Guild member has opened themselves to your manipulation." She sighed and shook her head as if clearing it.
"You seem confused, but suffice to say I wasn''t expecting that. How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen? Assuming you''re telling the truth, which trust me, we will figure out, how in theseven hells do you have [Sense]? I''ve seen maybe a handful of people who have managed toacquire that Skill, and none of them are even close to young. Though I do guess that explains how you reacted to my approach earlier... " She trailed off and looked at Alan curiously.
"Whatever," she shrugged. "We''ll figure it out back at the base, but I do need to confirm that you have [Mana Manipulation] before we go further. Let''s try this again, shall we? And this time try not being so rude."
She smirked as she held out her hand once more.
Not really having much choice in the matter, Alan reached out and took it.
Chapter 19: Alan.
A young man led the way across the courtyard. "This is pretty much it for the South Edge City branch of the Guild," he gestured lazily at the brick walls that enclosed them. "It''s mostly offices and whatnot, but we hold classes here as well."
Thomas was his unwilling guide for the day. Looking to be a few years younger than Alan, the boy was blond haired and handsome, and from what Alan could see he wasn''t shy about using his looks to his advantage. He was smiling at practically every girl that passed by during his tour.
The boy pointed to his left as he continued walking. "The big entrance you see over there leads to the main hall. That''s where people can come in with transport requests or other business for the Guild. If anyone is going to be headed to another Territory, that is where they start. Also, if you get lost you can go there, the receptionist at the front desk should be able to point you to wherever you need to be."
Thomas had been showing Alan around while Alan tried to follow along with the crude map that they had gifted him. The campus was quite large, and Alan was having a hard time remembering all of the various buildings and their functions. He had a feeling he would be making his way to the receptionist quite a bit till he got his bearings.
"That small grey building over there," Thomas pointed up ahead at an old looking structure situated off to one side. "That''s where Director Mahon''s office is, and where you''re headed. It''s not often that the Director herself bothers with a student, let alone a newly minted member."
Thomas paused in his speech and turned back around. It seemed to take him a moment to spot Alan even though they were standing right next to each other. Alan waited patiently for the boy''s eyes to focus on him. This had been happening a lot recently, the effects of [Hide] were turning out to be more of an issue than he had imagined.
The boy was obviously curious about Alan and seemed to be waiting for some sort of response. Alan refused to play along and looked at his guide blankly. "By director, you mean Jan?"
"Jan?" Thomas backed up slightly looking alarmed, "I mean yeah but seriously I wouldn''t go around calling her that. Especially not to her face, she''s known to be strict about such things. Director Mahon is your safest bet, otherwise don''t blame me if you get on her shit list before you even begin." Thomas leaned in a conspiratorial manner. "Rumor has it that one time a student bumped into her in the hallways and didn''t apologize fast enough for her liking. Not even a big bump or anything, just kind of accidentally knocked shoulders. Next thing you know, he gets sent on an assignment way above his Skill level, ends up deep in the Expanse, and was never heard from again." The boy made a slicing motion at his neck.
"I''ll keep it in mind," Alan responded, thinking back to the confident, somewhat annoying woman who had burst into his hospital room a week ago. The image didn''t fit, were they really talking about the same person?
"Do all of the other Guild Halls have students as well?" Alan asked, changing the subject as they continued walking towards the grey building ahead.
"Nah," Thomas shrugged. "Just this one in Saga. One hall in each Territory is used for training new members. Of course, I''ve never been to any of the other Territories, but that''s what they say. I''m hoping to get placed in Sine once I get [Mana Manipulation], I mean they don''t send just anyone there, but think about it, Sine!" Thomas smiled.
"It''s supposed to be a beautiful place. Giant forests, trees stretching up to the sky." Alan said, enjoying the boy''s easy-going manner. He thought back to the mosaic depicting the Five Territories that had been in the Marketplace where he grew up.
"Not only that," Thomas continued excitedly. "Because it''s mostly cut off from the other Territories, I hear they know a lot of secret Skill Paths that you can''t find anywhere else. I''m willing to bet a guy could make a good amount of money with some of those." He rubbed his hands greedily as they approached their destination. He stopped and gestured to the door in front of him. "Anyway, we''ve made it to the admin building. Her office is just through there, go straight up the stairs to the very top, and you''ll be in the right place."
Alan approached the door. "Any last advice?" The boy seemed to have been here a while and knew his way around, might as well get his opinion.
"Might have some," Thomas flashed a winning smile. "If I know a bit more about your situation and why she wants to see you."
"Ah, too bad." Alan opened the door in front of him. "Thank you for the tour."
"Didn''t really have much of a choice, but yeah no worries, see ya around!" Thomas called to his back.
Alan entered the building and found a large, spiraling staircase in front of him. He thought back over the last week. He had been staying in the hospital, gaining back his strength and, as one nurse had put it, eating through their entire food supply. The Guild had assured him that the extra food and everything else would be paid for, but he knew that nothing was free and worried about what they were going to ask for in return. Not that he had any choice but to go along with it.
Whatever the price, the hospital had been good for him. He still couldn''t feel or move his left arm, he still had broken ribs and cuts and bruises all over, but his SP was finally full and he was feeling good. The doctors had mentioned that he was healing quite quickly.
Overall the last week had been wonderful. It honestly didn''t seem to take much, just sleeping in a bed was a luxury that he hadn''t ever thought to have again. Adjusting to having people around was proving to be a bigger issue than he had imagined, but luckily no one seemed to expect too much from a hospital patient. He had cried himself to sleep those first few nights. The stress and fear that had been his constant companion deep under the earthwas slowly unraveling itself. Not that he was about to let himself relax. Not by a long shot.
Alan stopped in front of the large door at the top of the stairs and knocked. Here goes nothing. Never his strong suit, he was still getting used to talking to other people again.
"Come in," a voice sounded from the other side.
Alan took a deep breath and opened the door. The room that greeted him was larger than he had imagined. There were many desks covered in papers and files organized neatly in rows, and a long table placed in the center of the room. The space was empty aside from the three figures sitting at the table on the side furthest from Alan. Jan was there, but the other two were unknown.
Sitting in the center of the group was an ancient looking man, Alan had never seen more wrinkles on a person before. The man seemed to be glaring. To his left was another serious, if younger, man dressed in a sharp uniform. There was a moment of silence as the door opened and the group turned to look.
The older looking man waved him over. "Come sit down, Director Mahon tells us you''re just out of the hospital, no need to worry about formalities at the moment."
Alan nodded to the man''s request and walked over to seat himself at the other side of the table. He glanced at Jan who was leaning back with a slight frown on her face. The older man who had welcomed him cleared his throat, bringing Alan''s attention back to the situation at hand. "Now what''s your name boy?" The man asked.
"Alex Stone, sir." Alan had given a fake name back at the hospital. He wasn''t taking any risks. Maybe someone had some Skills to see if he was lying, but he couldn''t let that stop him from trying.
"Nice to meet you Alex," the old man sighed grumpily, indicating it was anything but nice to meet him. "I''m Walter. Let''s keep this quick, shall we? You know Director Jan Mahon, and to my right is captain Henry Jacobs." Jan just glanced over while the captain nodded slightly at the introduction. "Why do you think you are here?"
Alan cleared his throat and concentrated on stilling his shaking hand. "I have been lucky enough to acquire the Skill [Mana Manipulation], and this is the Mana Guild. I know I am required to join, but I assume I''m here to learn what that means exactly." He didn''t know why he was so nervous. He had faced down armies of murderous lizards and survived, what was this meeting compared to that? Unfortunately, his pounding heart and shaking hands refused to listen to his mind''s logic.
The man nodded along. "That is true," he replied. "But that''s not all. You''re also here to once again go over the circumstances in which you were found. Captain Jacobs is not a member of the Guild, but a member of the Guards. He has requested to be present at this meeting to confirm your story and your intentions before allowing you to enroll with the Guild. We aren''t necessarily suspecting you of anything, but we do take the safety and responsibilities of the Guild very seriously. Basically, as long as you''re telling us the truth, you have nothing to worry about." He turned to the stern looking man, "Captain?"
The captain nodded matter of factly. "Yes, thank you Walter. Nice to meet you Alex. As you might have guessed, I''m the captain of the Guards here in South Edge. Can you tell us once again how you ended up alone, out in the Expanse, unprotected and injured?"
"I don''t remember sir." Alan was ready for this question, having encountered it several times already. "I have no memories of my time before waking up in the hospital. The first thing I remember is deliriously stumbling through a massive storm and collapsing just as someone came to my rescue. I know my name, but that''s about it. I''m sorry I can''t be of more help." Alan did his best to look genuine. He had tried to come up with something better than just forgetting who he was, but couldn¡¯t think of anything reasonable to explain his situation that wouldn¡¯t give him away. Until he figured out the truth of what had happened to him and his town, he was better off disassociating himself from his past. Amnesia it was.
The captain''s face remained blank as he looked at Alan before going on. "You have been confirmed to have the Skill [Sense] as well as [Mana Manipulation]. Rare Skills, [Mana Manipulation] usually takes years of practice before being able to activate it successfully. Even then the survival rate is... low. Yet here you are, there are no records of you training with the Guild previously and no missing prospective members that fit your description. Acquisition of [Mana Manipulation] with the intent for unauthorized use is a serious crime, so if that''s what was going on when you were found, then it''s best to admit it now."
The man paused once more, looking at Alan. He hadn''t asked a question, so Alan just stared at the captain silently, unsure what was expected of him.
After a tense silence, the captain continued talking. "You have the protection of the Mana Guild and that gives you a bit of leeway here, which frankly I do not like. However, they have agreed to allow us to track you on a probationary status for a year, at which point we will review your case again. I have the Skill [Track] which will allow me to know your location. I''m going to have to put my hand on you now to activate it. Every ten days you will have to come by the Guardhouse to have the Skill re-cast. You also will be required to stay within city limits. The Mana Guild has already agreed to these terms."Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!
Alan was getting a bit tired of not having any say in anything, but he tried to keep the irritation off of his face. The guard had once again not asked any questions, so Alan just nodded his understanding as the man stood up and started walking towards him.
"This will be quick, just hold still for a moment." Coming next to Alan, the captain placed his hand upon his shoulder for several seconds. Walter and Jan just watched as the captain used his Skill.
"Done." The captain stepped back with a slight frown.
"Thank you captain," Jan said from across the table. "That should satisfy your requirements for now. Alex will be seeing you in ten days, thank you for coming." She folded her hands, clearly dismissing the man.
The captain of the guards looked at Jan. "Thank you for having me, Director. I''ll take my leave." He nodded in their direction before heading out of the door Alan had come through.
Once the door had closed, Jan let out a huff. "Don''t let him get to you, Jacobs is known to have a permanent stick up his ass."
"Ha! More like a whole tree." Walter huffed.
Jan ignored the comment from the ancient man and looked back at Alan. "Feel free to relax a bit, the guard is gone and it''s just us Guild members now. As you might have picked up, your situation isn''t exactly normal. Not even mentioning the way that you were found, the fact that you were able to activate [Mana Manipulation] without the supervision of the Guild or a Guild member... well honestly I know this can''t be the first time it''s ever happened, but hell if I can remember any others. And on top of that, you have [Sense]. You''re a puzzle, and a more pessimistic person than myself might assume some rogue member had been teaching you in order to subvert Guild efforts or start a smuggling operation." She paused, letting his situation sink in. "But I''m more of a glass half full type of gal. Also, it goes some way that you didn''t seem to have the Skill when you were found and only just obtained it." She shrugged as if the matter was beyond her and thus not relevant. "So all of that aside, how are you feeling?"
This was another question Alan had practice answering. It was the question that he had been asked the most often over the last week, and he knew how to respond.
"Good." He said.
Jan stared at him and silence filled the room momentarily.
"Don''t talk much, eh? Well that''s fine, I''ll do the talking then. You can ask questions after." Jan shifted in her seat, while Walter put his feet on the table and appeared to be dozing. Alan was having a hard time understanding the dynamics of these particular people. Maybe he had been underground too long.
"We''ll start with your hospital fees," Jan continued. "Hospital care is free up to a point, but you have swiftly passed that point, and that doesn''t even include the ridiculous food bill that we got. So what this means is that you have two options right now.
"Option one," she held up a finger. "You pay us back the hospital fees, register with the Guild, and go on your merry way. As someone with [Mana Manipulation] you are required to become a guild member, and as such you will need to come back to one of our Guild Halls and check in every three months. When you check in, you submit a report on your use of [Mana Manipulation]. We also require that you don''t use [Mana Manipulation] to engage in competition with the Guild in any way. You''ll be getting some papers outlining all of the official rules later, but I can tell you right now the most important one.
"No unauthorized travel between the Territories. Some people will offer quite the price for a Guild member to smuggle someone or something between the Territories off the books. But I''ll be clear now, it''s not worth it. All travel between Territories goes through the Guild. If you are caught breaking that rule, and we will catch you, you''ll be dead no matter where you end up. And it won''t be a quick or pleasant death."
Alan knew this. The Guild had a monopoly on the one Skill that allowed people to pass through the Expanse safely. A monopoly sanctioned and backed by all five Territories. It was why everyone knew about [Mana Manipulation].
"So that''s option one. Pay us and follow the rules, and you go on your way. Of course, that includes obeying the good captain''s rules as well. But I''m willing to bet you don''t have the resources to go that route. So option two." She held up two fingers. "Option two is you train with and work for the Guild. What this looks like is a bit different in your case. Ordinarily, no one learns [Mana Manipulation] without our help. We accept about six-hundred students each year, and it''s fairly competitive. If someone gets accepted, they go through three years of training and preparation, after which the final exam involves taking you out into the Expanse to actually acquire the Skill.
"If you survive that experience, which most do not, you get one more year of training on how to utilize it. From there, most choose to work for the Guild even if they can afford tuition, as it pays well, is easy and guaranteed work, and frankly the whole reason that they applied to us in the first place.
"Suffice to say most of our students are the leftover sons or daughters of relatively wealthy households that want a connection within the Guild or to other Territories. We offer scholarships for exceptional talent, of course.
"And what do you know, lucky you, you just qualified for a scholarship. That means your tuition along with your hospital bills become a low-interest loan offered to you generously by the Guild. A loan with some strings attached. Simply put, after graduation you are required to work for us until your debt is paid off. Before I go further, let me ask you, what option will you choose? You don''t have to decide now if you need some time to think it over."
"Option two," Alan responded. He didn''t see a choice.
"Amazing," Jan said matter of factly, clapping her hands together. "So usually since you just recently acquired [Mana Manipulation] you would enroll with our graduated members for the upcoming year. Timing is a bit off since the final exam is in a month, and the classes start a month after that. But this actually works out in our favor because everyone else in that class will have three years of training before they obtained the Skill. Three years of training that you do not have. Frankly speaking, if we threw you in class now, you''d slow everyone down. Which brings us to Walter here." She turned towards the old man who seemed to have fallen asleep.
He must have just been pretending because at the mention of his name, his eyes opened and focused on Alan. Steel grey eyes stared out hard from within the creases and deep wrinkles on the man''s face. Alan stared silently back.
"I don''t want this." Walter started pausing to see Alan''s reaction. When he got none, he seemed a bit disappointed but continued. "Even though I''d prefer not to, I''m here to teach you until your official classes start. See if we can get you caught up. Normally, such a task would be beneath me, and I''m not quite convinced that it isn''t given that I''m a senior member of the Guild. Retired actually. Living a peaceful and safe life in South Edge where I get to spend my days spoiling my favorite granddaughter as much as I want. A happy life in my later years that I am not happy about being interrupted." He trailed off grumbling before coming back to the subject.
"But the Guild can be very convincing, and they seem to want this," Walter smiled, which just made him look scarier. Rather than a smile, it was more like he was baring his teeth. Except the teeth were rotten, and he was missing several of them. "The reason they want me specifically is because of [Sense]. I hear you have it, which I don''t understand because you''re way too young, but I also have it. The Guild values the Skill highly, so they want me to teach you and make sure you don''t fuck it up as its a tricky Skill to master. So let me start with this. What level is your [Sense]?"
Alan didn''t see any reason to lie, even if he didn''t find himself liking the old man, he hoped that he could learn from him. "Level eight sir," he replied. The old man didn''t react, but Jan let out a low whistle at his answer.
"Bullshit," Walter exclaimed after a time, looking if anything angrier than he had before.
Alan looked from one person to the other waiting for someone to explain.
Apparently, eight was a pretty high level for [Sense]. Or at least higher than they had expected.
Apparently, his lack of Points into Intelligence was a huge problem. Also something they hadn''t quite expected. The atmosphere had noticeably cooled when he had mentioned his Stat allocation, but at least it didn''t seem to change the outcome much by what he could tell.
The rest of the meeting consisted of a lot of questions and setting up his schedule for the next couple of weeks. Walter was very clear he didn''t like or believe Alan, and Jan seemed to be happy to let them figure things out between themselves.
By the time it was over, the sun was starting to set outside. He would be taking lessons with Walter three times a week, and the rest of the time was his to do with as he pleased until classes started. It gave him a lot of free time, but from the way they had been talking, he didn''t think his time would be his own.
He had been given a temporary room to stay in while he found his own accommodations. It was all set up and paid for by the Guild (which went towards his ever increasing debt of course). He wasn''t sure how he felt about the Guild members that he had met so far, but all told he was pretty happy with his situation. He had housing, food, safety, and most importantly, a way to get back to Strength.
He felt a cold emptiness in the pit of his stomach when he thought about it.One thing at a time. He shook himself off as he continued making his way across the campus to where his temporary apartment was located.
Alan stopped briefly to admire the sunset and readjust his grip on the large package of papers he had been told to go over. The smells and sights and sounds of everything around him threatened to overwhelm him after his time alone in the caves. The bustle around the Guild campus brought the evening alive. Smoke and music and laughter filled the quad as he made his way across. People of all ages walked with purpose to wherever they were headed for the night.
He didn''t stop long. As much as he enjoyed breathing fresh air and beingfreefrom the caves, the longer he stayed out the more [Sense] continued to bombard his perception,making him feel nauseous and causing an increasingly painful migraine. Hepicked up his pace.
He reached his building as marked by the map. A bit out of the way in a much less busy area, the two-story wooden building was non-descript but clean looking. Alan found the stairs and made his way to room forty-three. The room they had given him.
Putting the key in the lock, he let himself inside. He wasn''t sure what he had been expecting, but it was underwhelming. It was a small windowless room with nothing to it. It was dark inside, and while it was not the overwhelming darkness of being underground, it was dark enough that if he didn''t have [Sense], he wasn''t sure how he was supposed to see anything.
A bed and a dresser were the only pieces of furniture in the cramped room. He was only here for two weeks while he searched for his own place, so it didn''t matter much. He had arranged a loan of five hundreddrams with Jan, which was renewable month to month. He was hoping he could get a job soon to offset the massive amounts of debt he was already accumulating. Over fifty thousand drams so far. He shuddered. It was a staggering amount for someone with literally nothing to his name.
As promised, in the corner of the room were two dirty pouches and a dozen rough stone knives arranged neatly on the floor. The items that they had found on his person when they picked him up. He [Sensed] a candle and some lighting tools on the dresser, and quickly walked over to it. Soon, a soft flickering glow filled the room.
In the light, his items looked even shabbier than he had imagined. Not only did they look like garbage he would find on the street, but they seemed to smell like it as well.
He sat down on the rough bed and picked up the larger pouch. He emptied it onto the bed beside him. There were a few trinkets, the foot of some creature that he had assumed was a good luck charm for the lizards, and some leather cord he had figured would be useful. His entire life savings. After fingering the charm for a while, he carefully put the items back into the pouch. After everything, as dirty and useless as they were, the objects meant something to him.
He was alone in a foreign Territory living under a false name. At the end of the day, he had no one he could really trust. It was a lot to deal with, but somehow the presence of his worn items and dirty pouches comforted him. It had been his life for the last year or two. He had survived in the dark caves, and he would survive here. He just needed time to adjust. He could wait for tomorrow to deal with all the Guild logistics and everything else.
As he focused [Sense] on the bag in his hand, he noticed something. Reaching inside, he dislodged a small, oval-shaped object from the between the folds at the bottom of the pouch. Picking it up between his fingers, he stared at a speckled egg in the dim candlelight. It was oddly cold.
One of the lizard eggs he had saved to eat as an emergency food source must have gotten stuck in the pouch during his struggle out of the caves. He set the small egg down on the bed gently and stared at it. Tiny dark specks stood out against the off-white, shifting with the flickering of the candlelight.
For too long, he contemplated the egg. It was oddly meaningful for him: one last memento from his time in the caves. How many of these had he eaten? Hundreds? Thousands? He touched the smooth surface, before gently placing it on the dresser.
As he prepared to retire early and go to sleep, he went over the days events in his mind. He thought over the events of the last week, of the last couple of years. He had a lot to figure out, but he was starting to feel more confident. His biggest worry was being discovered to be lying about having amnesia. It was a risk, and it didn¡¯t sit well with him but he hadn¡¯t been able to come up with a better alternative.
He was sure Jan and the rest suspected something. Both captain Jacobs and Walter had practically told him to his face thatthey didn¡¯t believe him. Alan sighed as he moved himself into the bed. It seemed fine for now at the very least.
As he let his mind wander and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position, a thought came unbidden. He once again contemplated the lizard egg he had found. The one that had miraculously survived his journey intact and uneaten.
Was it still possible to hatch it?
Chapter 20: Alan.
There is a certain type of silence that exists below the earth. It is an all-encompassing and powerful thing, an absolute absence of stimulation. The silence is pervasive. It is not gentle. It smothers you, it crushes you, and it seeps into the very being of who you are.
Alan had been living in such an environment for two years.
Now he was bombarded by a constant stream of noise and motion during the day. His perception was attacked by smaller sounds and furtive movement in the night. It was overwhelming. Yesterday, he had woken up early and tried to go out and take a walk around the city. As the crowds grew thicker and the day brightened, he had quickly abandoned the idea and instead made his way back to his new room to hide.
He knew he had a lot to do: find a place to live, find a way to make money,look intooptions to heal his arm,learn more about South Edge as a city, figure out how things worked in the Guild. The list went on and on, but he wasn''t doing any of it and his headaches were getting worse. Instead, he had spent the entirety of yesterday hiding in his room.
He rolled over on his bed, putting his hand over his ear. Why couldn''t it just be silent for a moment? It was early enough that the sun had yet to rise, but even in the early morning calm the tiny endless sounds drilled at his consciousness.
It wasn''t just the noise, [Sense] was turning out to be a major problem. There was too much going on, too much to focus on. Within the stillness of the caves, each movement was important. He had existed in isolation, in complete stillness. He had trained himself to concentrate on the smallest motion, the slightest change, straining [Sense] to its peak because any change in the environment had been a matter of life and death.
That focus was now paralyzing him. The city itself was like a living being in constant flux. People walked, shoved, shouted, ran, played, gestured, lived. And that was just people. Horses pulled carts along the streets, dogs ran about yards, and the sheer number of insects that inhabited the city was astounding. Behind walls, under the floors, and on the streets, bugs of all shapes and sizes darted constantly.
He could [Sense] that there was nothing on him, but still, he imagined the small critters crawling over his skin and under his clothes.
In the hospital, he had been shocked enough that it just hadn''t fully registered. Meeting and talking to people again, being taken care of by others, eating real food, it had all distracted him from the constant and never-ending MOVEMENT. It also didn''t hurt that they had been giving him some sort of medicine which had the side effect of putting him in a state of blissful drowsiness for most of his time there. Now on his own, alone, exhausted, he was realizing the enormity of his situation and the task before him.
He rolled back over on the bed.
In the caves, he had been proud of his resilence, of the fact that he would keep going no matter the odds. It felt terrible to have that thrown into question now that he had made it back to civilization. Still, it wasn''t like he had given up. Sure, yesterday he had done nothing but stay in his room, but he had concluded that he was alright with cutting himself some slack here. He was giving himself the benefit of the doubt. These things took time.
Easy to think, harder to believe.
A bell rang in the distance five times. Time to get going, he reluctantly got up. This was the first day of his lessons with Walter. He hoped the older man could tell him what was happening to him, even though he didn''t like the thought of relying on someone else.
Opening the drawer, he pulled out and dressed in one of the three outfits he had been given. He was still getting used to operating with one arm and putting on the clothes took longer than he had imagined. He eventually found himself in a rough brown tunic that was too large for him, but still one of the nicest things that he had worn in a long time. As he adjusted the clothing on his body, he realized that he would need to figure out how to take care of laundry sooner rather than later.
Another item on the list.
For now, fully dressed, armed with the map he had been given, and a pouch full of money, he was ready to set out.
Walter glared at Alan from across the courtyard. He was holding a makeshift flag in his right hand, a pole with a red cloth tied to the top that hung loosely at the side. Next to him stood a girl who looked to be a few years younger than Alan. He wasn''t sure what she was doing there, but the possibility of dealing with someone around his age, a girl no less, made him slow his steps as he walked towards the pair.
She was pretty for her age, thin with a delicate face and bright eyes. She absentmindedly moved a strand of blonde hair behind her ears as he approached. Glancing towards Walter, Alan couldn''t help but contrast the two. The old man was short and mean-looking. His hair was nothing more than a grey wisp, and his skin looked spotted and dry. More unnerving was the fact that Walter was smiling at him menacingly with his rotten teeth. It gave Alan the distinct impression of approaching a dried mummy who held a vindictive grudge against him.
"Finally decided to show up did you?" the old man said simply as Alan came up to the pair. Two beady eyes behind a mass of wrinkles bore into Alan.
"I made it, I''m sorry I''m late," Alan responded. He had run into some trouble finding the exact courtyard where Walter had wanted to meet up for class. It was a small grassy area located in the center of Hubert Hall, which as far as Alan figured was more of a maze than a building. Even with [Sense] he had to have people point him in the right direction to get to his destination.
Looking at the man, he suspected that Walter had purposely chosen a hard to reach location for their meeting.Alan''s head had started to ache again and his mood was sour. [Sense] had been grating on his nerves especially hard today. The headaches were definitely getting worse.
The two stared at each other as the silence built up. Alan wasn''t sure what was supposed to happen now, but somehow he didn''t want to give the grumpy old man the satisfaction of asking.
"Uh..." the girl broke the silence, glancing between the two of them. "Grandpa?"
Walter groaned and tore his eyes away from Alan long enough to glare at the girl next to him.
"Yeah yeah sure," he cleared his throat, looking back at Alan. "Frankly I don''t give a fu-" he stopped midsentence as he glanced back at his granddaughter. "I don''t give a flying hoot where you came from or who you are. Hell, I wouldn''t believe you if you told me. If you want to lie to the Guild, to me, to whoever, I don''t really care. Simply put I don''t care about you, or care for you. That said, I do care about my reputation so we might as well try to do this right. Lie all you want, but be on time in the future and be honest when you tell me about your Stats and relevant Skills." He glared at Alan, "do you have the papers I asked for?"
Alan handed over the papers that outlined his Skills and Stats. He had a copy to give to the Guild as well. It was heavily edited, but he had been truthful about his Allocation and about the Skills that were related to mana.
Walter glanced over the documents. While he did so the girl next to him, presumably his granddaughter, held out her hand.
"I''m Sara, as you might have guessed I''m his granddaughter. When Grandpa came home and started talking about you, it sounded exciting, so I volunteered to help out," she smiled.
"Alex," he took her hand and shook it. He felt nervous and sweaty and hoped she didn''t notice, or would at least blame it on the heat. It was a strange feeling, being upset, grumpy, and nervous at the same time. Also what exactly had sounded exciting about this?
"Don''t mind grandpa there," She said. Walter grunted unhappily at her comment as he continued reading. "He looks mean and angry and likes to put on a tough front, but he''s a big softy really. He was pretty well known back in his day, so you actually got really lucky to get him to teach you."
"Back in my day?" Walter grumbled as he read. "I''m well known now."
Alan glanced at the man, remembering how he had complained that he would not be able to spend as much time with his favorite granddaughter. Somehow he thought that her perspective might be a bit skewed when it came to him.
"Somehow I think your perspective might be a bit skewed here, but I''ll keep it in mind." He said bluntly. He was trying hard not to focus on [Sense]. "I don''t think he likes me much and he has already pretty much said that he''s actively rooting for my failure."
Walter had given up reading and was glaring at Alan.
"Enough chit chat," Walter scowled, interrupting the conversation. "First of all, you¡¯re right I don¡¯t like you. Second of all, I can''t say I much like being talked about behind my back even if it''s in front of me. I''ve read over your Stat papers." His frown deepened.
"Your level in [Sense] is too high," He said directly. "It doesn''t make sense. With your Intelligence at four, which is pathetic by the way, you shouldn''t have been able to level-up [Sense] at all, let alone get it to eight. It''s not that Intelligence is a multiplier for the Skill because it''s not, but at higher levels there''s too much going on for the mind to process. Having a higher Intelligence doesn''t affect the Skill itself, but it re-wires your brain in a way that allows you to process the information coming to you more effectively. Frankly, we thought that having at least one hundred Points allocated to Intelligence was a hard condition for activating [Sense], but it looks like we were wrong so hurray for you, you may have just improved our understanding of its activation requirements. How are you feeling? Any headaches? Fever?"
Alan felt a surge of hopeat the question. "I have pretty bad headaches which I suspect are related to [Sense]. They seem to get worse in busy areas, or the more I use my Skill. Sometimes I get nauseous but that could be for a number of reasons I think. Is this a normal thing?" Alan tried to keep the desperation from his voice.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Figured as much. The symptoms you''re describing with your headaches are what we hear from people with low Intelligence who have increased [Sense] too far for their own good. By low Intelligence, I mean lower than two-hundred, so you fit well into that category. And it only gets worse. In these cases the headaches don''t go away and start to compound, usually takes several years or more after leveling to have it become unbearable, but given the complete disparity between your Stats and levels, I imagine it will happen much faster for you. [Sense] isn''t a Skill you can turn off so you''re probably just going to go insane in a few months anyway which will save me a lot of trouble."
He had hoped for better news, and Alan was genuinely worried by what he was hearing, but Walter didn''t pause.
"Given your memory loss," Walter rolled his eyes, making it clear what he thought of the story. "We can''t know how you were able to do any of this without already going mad or becoming some sort of hermit. Just so you have a reference, I have [Sense] at level seventeen, and my Intelligence is two-hundred and eighty. My level in the Skill hasn''t raised in over ten years because my mind won''t handle the information overload at higher levels, and it becomes increasingly harder to gain experience once you hit that wall. It shouldn''t be possible for you to be at level eight not only because you''re too young to activate the Skill, but because your low Intelligence level means that you should not have been able to focus [Sense] in any meaningful way that could increase it."
"So what I''m saying is that youshouldn''t be possible and I don''t like you." Alan waited for him to continue, but Walter just crossed his arms and nodded with a pleased expression on his face. As much as Walter didn''t seem to like him, at least he was straight forward.
"I mean I appreciate the information," Alan said carefully, "if not the personal attacks. But I don''t have the Points to raise my Intelligence at the moment, and I don''t think I even would want to since my Allocation skews in a different direction. Is there any other way to fix this?"
"None, your Stat allocation is an idiotic mess. Basically, you screwed yourself over for life, and if you hadn''t by some miracle activated [Mana Manipulation] no Guild or job would have you." The old man smiled.
"Ow!" Walter yelled as Sara kicked his ankle.
"Be nice grandpa!" She turned and gave Alan a thumbs up and a wink. Alan stared at the two expressionless.
"Ok fine," The old man rubbed his ankle. "If it were possible, I''d say we need to decrease your Skill level, but that''s not a thing so we''re left with trying to get you thinking in a way where you can ignore your own perception. Whatever we do, we do not want to increase your level any further, so if you notice your progress in the Skill going up as we practice, let me know immediately."
"For now, I have a little test prepared for you. I have placed some flags in the area just like the one in my hand." Walter lifted the waist-high flag fluttering in the wind. A simple red cloth tied to a wooden stake. "They are various sizes and whatnot, but I''m going to give you 90 seconds, and I want you to find as many as you can and tell me whatever other details you notice about them. That should give me a good idea as to your proficiency with the Skill before we go further."
Alan nodded his head. "Will they all look like that?"
"You tell me," Walter said, arms crossed. "Any information about the flags you find will count in your favor. Size, material, anything at all. No time like the present. We''ll begin on the count of three. One, two, three!"
Alan wasn''t ready but didn''t hesitate and immediately closed his eyes and concentrated. For some reason, he felt determined to impress this angry old man. The condescending tone, the headaches, the unfamiliar environment, it all grated on him which instinctively made him want to fight against it. His MP was at 95, and his SP was full, so that meant he had 90 seconds to use up 183MP. He knew that showing off everything might raise questions, but just by being here he raised questions and he found that he wanted to prove himself. Whatever that meant, whatever the reason, he wasn''t about to hold back.
He instantly flashed [Sense] outwards in multiple bursts. To save MP, instead of expanding it outwards in a bubble around himself, which was the most natural way to use the Skill, he focused and sent out tiny needles of perception towards the areas he was interested in exploring. He was able to flash around twenty needles at once, and his perception shot outwards in lightning quick pulses. He ignored the ground beneath him and the sky above him, focusing on places where flags might be located. In ten seconds he had a good overview. He could already feel a terrible migraine coming on, but he gritted his teeth and continued to the next phase.
He estimated [Sense] had expanded out around four hundred meters. So far so good, his MP was now down to 54/95.
He had counted 14 flags in that brief moment and several objects of interest that might be flags. There were also several areas where his perception could not penetrate. He noted those for later. Walter had asked for Alan to give him details, so Alan sent out larger, more focused streams of [Sense] towards the 14 flags he had found. They were various shapes and sizes and he tried to keep track of the differences, but his head was pounding now and he was starting to lose focus.
He felt a wave of nausea pass through him, and his head radiated pain. Eyes closed, he sat down and breathed deeply sending out [Sense] at a slower, more steady rate. He didn''t want to pass out.
Once he had categorized the flags, he focused on the five objects that he was uncertain about. One, about two hundred meters out, was very small and his head hammered in his skull when he tried to concentrate on it. He bit down hard on his tongue, using the pain to center himself.
He didn''t know why he was taking the test so seriously. But he suspected Walter had set things up for him to fail, and he didn''t like losing, or being looked down upon. He was finding a core of pride in himself that he refused to extinguish. He had survived situations where many would have died and he wasn''t about to let some sad old man get the best of him.
The next several seconds was spent looking into the other objects. He decided two more were flags.
Next, he would focus on the areas he couldn''t correctly [Sense]. Time was running out, but he needed to give his mind a quick rest first.
"20 seconds left!" Walter called out from across the field.
Only 20 seconds. He could endure it for that much longer. Alan gritted his teeth and [Sensed] out towards the empty areas which he named perception "deadzones." He felt a flash of agony stab through him and held in a cry of pain as he braced himself against the ground. He spat out and breathed heavily.
His MP was at 3/95, some of the flags were quite far away and were costing him a lot of MP to look into. Could he have been more economical in how he tackled this challenge? He transferred all of his SP except 5 into MP, and soon he was back at 91/95MP. He gripped at the hard rocky ground to settle himself.
He refocused on the deadzones and found two that seemed softer. It was hard to describe, but somehow they seemed malleable. He pushed his perception harder into them and with a sudden popping feeling was [Sensing] inside of it. In the center was a flag. It was murky and his head felt like it was about to explode, so he wasn''t able to grasp any real details.
"Five seconds!" Walter called out.
Alan stopped [Sensing] immediately and threw up on the ground, panting and heaving in the summer air.
"Three seconds left, but I guess we''ll call it there," Walter said tonelessly, looking down at Alan.
Alan''s body felt cold. He shivered in the warm air, and the throbbing in his head continued relentlessly. After 90 seconds, he was mentally and physically exhausted. He could only hope it had been worth it. Shivering and trying to warm himself up, he promptly threw up again.
"Not a pretty sight that," Walter said without a hint of sympathy. "I knew [Sense] would be hard with an Intelligence of four, but if this is how it''s going to be, then you''re pretty much worthless till you raise it. Did you even find any flags? Hopefully, we can call this charade what it is and let the Director know it''s not worth the time until you raise your Stats."
The old man''s casual dismissal of his efforts and Skills somehow calmed Alan, and his breathing came easier. He glared up at Walter looking down on him.
"I discovered seventeen flags, not including the one that was next to you." Alan''s voice came out hard and angry. He pointed, starting with the ones closest to him. "There was one right out of sight to your left behind that tree over there, and a smaller one behind a column supporting that stone building. The pole on the one behind the tree seemed to be made of metal I think, though materials are still hard for me to determine properly. The flag part of the smaller one was overly large and dragged against the ground. Those flags were around twenty and thirty meters away respectively." Alan continued, "I found two on rooftops over there. One was on that brick building behind the chimney, it was slightly taller than the one in the courtyard, and the other was on the building next to it. You can actually see that one up there if you squint. They seemed to both be made of wood, but the pole was thicker on the last one. I estimated both to be about 50 meters away."
Walter''s face seemed frozen mid-sneer, the only thing moving was his eyebrows rising as Alan continued.
"There were five in various buildings, and one in an alleyway, but rather than set in the ground, it had either fallen over, or you just threw it there without planting it. We are now in the 50 to 100-meter range. I''ll describe them more once I''m done listing the rest, though as I get further out it becomes harder to be certain of details. There was a tiny flag, not much bigger than my hand around 250 meters out, it was stuck on the side of a potted plant in a doorway. I honestly am not sure if that one was part of the test, but it was a flag, so I counted it. In that same range-"
"Hold on," Walter sputtered, hands out. He turned back towards his granddaughter standing next to him. "Was that small flag one of the ones you hid?"
She smiled and nodded enthusiastically. "In the prep guide you gave me it allowed for it, I was thinking for sure he wouldn''t find it though!"
"Keep going," Walter motioned for Alan to continue.
Alan went on to describe the other flags he had discovered and whatever details he could name about them. There were flags in rooms of buildings, in windows, on pathways. Walter nodded along, and he started marking off something in a notepad he had brought out. The old man''s mood seemed to have done a complete turn around as Alan continued to list more and more flags.
"Finally," Alan said, wanting this to be over with so he could do something for his throbbing head. "There were a few areas... where I''m not sure how to describe it but I couldn''t [Sense] into them. One of them was around 80 or so meters out, and I was able to push into it somehow and [Sense] a flag in there. The flag seemed large, but I couldn''t focus on it for too long. The other deadzones were further away, I couldn''t penetrate them."
Walter stared at Alan for a moment. "Well fuc-" he bit his tongue as his eyes darted to Sara, who was sitting patiently next to him. "Sorry, let me give you some medicine to help with your head, you really pushed yourself and [Sense] headaches are a bitc- really hurt." He reached into his pockets and pulled out a small black pill.
Alan was in no shape to be suspicious and immediately took the pill and swallowed it. There was no immediate effect but he hoped whatever it was that it would start working soon. It tasted familiar, and he remembered what the guards had shoved in his mouth when they had found him stumbling through the Expanse. Alan had been upset to note that the headaches persisted even when he had SP available, meaning [Sustain] wasn''t helping here.
"Thanks," he panted. He imagined a slight easing in his mind, a shift of focus. Feeling awful but a bit better, he looked Walter directly in the eyes. "So do I pass?"
Walter stared blankly for a moment before bursting out in laughter. Unlike his dusty and frail look, the laugh boomed out of him. It lasted for a while before he leaned over, smiling. His rotten teeth and wrinkled face looked no less menacing than it had before, but there seemed to be an almost joyful glee in his small dark eyes.
"Kid, this test would be challenging with [Sense] at level 10. And I''m talking about people with years of experience, high Intelligence, and a lifetime of training. I let my granddaughter here set most of it up, and honestly was expecting you to fail miserably, which would get me off of the hook. Fuck, I only spent the time to do it so thoroughly so that I could go back to the Director and honestly say you failed if anyone looked into it. You found seventeen out of twenty-five flags, one in a hidden zone, I had planned for you to find one or two at most."
Walter paused, and his dark smile widened.
"I don''t know who you are or what level of hell you popped out of, and like I said, I don''t care. Once I''m done with you, you''ll be a mother-fucking monster. That cock-faced, son of a bitch Rueben has been going on and on about his genius apprentice this whole year, as if he and that kid are the gods'' gift to the fucking world. I can''t wait to see him shithispissflaps when the results of the trial get recorded." The old man barked out another loud, raspy laugh into the empty air.
Alan looked on, unsure about how to feel. He glanced uncertainly towards Sara who was staring open-mouthed at her grandfather.
Chapter 21: Alan.
"Are you really sure you''re focusing like we talked about?" Alan could see Sara trying to reign in her frustration. Not that he could blame her.
He relaxed his focus, letting out a deep breath. It had felt right.
"Yes I''m sure. I''ve been doing the mental exercises every night, my MP just dropped by twelve, and I''ve gained some experience towards my next level since we started. Are you really sure you don''t feel it?"
Sara made a face, shrugged and fell back onto the bench with a loud groan.
It had been four days since his test with the flags. Sara and Alan were sitting in the center of that same courtyard as birds chirped pleasantly in the morning air lending the space a tranquil atmosphere. The overgrown grass swayed gently in the morning breeze, making a light rustling noise. The courtyard had very obviously not been tended to in a long time and nature was aggressively reclaiming the area they sat in, but Alan didn''t mind. Now that he was somewhat able to ignore the army of bugs [Sense] revealed, he was starting to like the space.
The schedule they had come up with, such as it was, had been to meet every day at the sixth bell, which was early enough so that [Sense] wouldn''t overwhelm Alan on his walk over. The sessions would start with Sara teaching him mental exercises and foundations for [Mana Manipulation], at which point Walter would arrive to instruct Alan on how to control [Sense]. Walter hadn''t arrived yet, but they had been practicing some basic manipulation exercises for almost an hour now with no obvious results.
"Ahhhhhhh!" Sara screamed out of nowhere, destroying the momentary peace. The birds scattered in a panic before quickly settling back down on an adjacent tree. Alan glanced over lazily; he was getting used to her outbursts of frustration.
"Alright I officially give up, Grandpa should be here soon and we''ll see if he can do anything to help." She sighed dramatically and turned to Alan, looking him up and down. "But you are actually trying right?"
Alan stared blankly at her.
"Just making sure," she lay back on the bench they were sitting on, looking up at the sky. The cloudless blue sky reflected the color in her eyes almost perfectly.
Even though moments like this were frustrating, Alan found himself enjoying the sessions with Sara. While only thirteen years old, she was proving to be a capable teacher. She had been training herself to follow in her grandfather''s footsteps since before she could remember, and now that she could acquire Skills she was officially able to enroll in the Mana Guild. Alan had not been surprised to learn that not only had she been accepted, but that she would be skipping 1st-year and jumping straight into 2nd-year classes.
After their first meeting, Walter had proclaimed that teaching Alan the basics would be a good experience for Sara. The old man had made sure to point out that he was so far beyond the basics that he would have a hard time even remembering such rudimentary exercises, which Alan took as Walter finding any excuse to get out of his responsibilities by forcing it upon his granddaughter.
Alan glanced over at Sara. Why anyone would want to emulate the crazy old bastard was beyond Alan, but he had to admit they were both knowledgable.
The silence stretched out, and Alan was just about to go back to practicing his manipulation exercises when Sara tilted her head to look at him. The frustration was gone from her features and her blue eyes now sparkled with mischief.
"Hey Alex," she started. "I know th-"
"Nope. I don''t remember anything. Nothing to tell." Alan cut her off, already knowing what she had been about to ask.
"I promise I won''t tell anyone," She pleaded with an enthusiasm that had been markedly absent during their practice sessions. "I''m great with secrets, and it''s not like everybody doesn''t already know you''re lying. Seriously you''re way too secretive, but whatever, I know you''re being stubborn, so I was thinking about it and you don''t even have to tell me, I''ll just throw out some possible scenarios and you can blink twice if I''m getting close."
Sara had been pestering Alan every chance she could get about his mysterious past, and Alan had been forced to resign himself to these daily inquiries. He found silence to be the most effective response to the situation, but if he was honest with himself, he actually enjoyed Sara''s company. She could be annoying bordering on rude, but she also had a genuinely open and curious nature. He was still getting used to being around people and having someone like her to plow through his social uncertainties was actually turning out to be... enjoyable.
"Ok so here it is, just blink when I''m getting close," Sara started excitedly, placing her hands on her knees and turning towards him.
"You are a spy on a secret mission gone horribly wrong. Your codename was Arms, because of your dead arm of course, but you never let that stop you. You were planning to infiltrate a Territory in order to destabilize their government for political reasons, but a rogue Guild member stumbled on you in your attempt and... No? Ok, how about this." She shifted her position to face Alan more directly.
"You''re a wisened criminal on the run after stealing from a wealthy merchant. You were able to get your hands on millions of drams in precious jewels, but there was a trap you hadn''t accounted for which blew up your arm. With your arm rendered useless, you barely managed to escape and even had to leave the safety of the Territory borders to shake free of pursuit. Of course, you only took the risk in the first place because the merchant was wildly corrupt and your plan all along was to give the money back to the poor families that his business had bankrupted..." Alan continued to stare at her unblinking. Her guesses were getting specific and oddly dramatic. And why did they all have to include a bit about his arm?
"Ok, this is a good one. You are a prince cast out of your Territory by an opposing royal faction. Given the high stakes nature of the situation, you have to pretend to be a lost wanderer with no memories until you can plot revenge on the family that took yo-"
Alan blinked twice. He might as well have some fun with it.
"Wait, what?" Sara pulled back, and a skeptical look quickly took over her face. Her small nose scrunched up as her eyes narrowed. "Haha very funny, looks like even you can try to crack a joke once in a while."
Alan shrugged affecting nonchalance, "I really can''t say."
"I mean I know you''re messing with me..." Sara trailed off, blue eyes drilling into him. "You''re not actually a prince... That''d be ridiculous... I mean it''s just I haven''t seen you make a joke and I was making up stupid scenarios..."
Alan raised an eyebrow mysteriously.
"But seriously though, I know you''re lying," Sara said matter of factly, "...right?"
Alan decided to see how far he could take it.
"Ok, but you must keep this secret." He could easily [Sense] that they were alone in the courtyard, but he looked around conspiratorially before leaning in towards her, shielding his mouth with his hand. He whispered in hushed tones as she edged closer to hear what he had to say. "My true name is not Alex, but Prince Alex of Sine. The plotting of my nefarious uncle has forced me from my rightful place as next in line for the throne, but I''m here to..." he looked around again as if fearing spies or anyone listening. "I''ve already said too much."
He glanced over only to find a very unimpressed looking Sara.
"Really, that''s what you''re going for?" she asked dryly.
"Prince Alex." he repeated softly with a knowing nod in her direction.
"Oh Alex Alex Alex. I get you''re trying to be mysterious. But really, as my first disciple-"
"Nope, not your disciple."
"As my hopeless disciple," Sara continued, "I am positively ashamed for you. Trusting your master with your secrets is supposed to be common sense. And you could at the very least lie more convincingly. Sine isn''t even a Monarchy moron, an Oligarchy called the Federation governs it and the Chancellor that presides over it is voted into office. Meaning it is in no way an inherited position... even you should know that much." She managed somehow to look both disappointed and disdainful, completely ignoring the fact that he was supposed to have lost his memories.
"When you think about it, it''s a truly tragic story." She stood up suddenly, talking to herself as if Alan were not sitting right next to her. "Enchanted by my beauty, he begged to learn from me, but he sadly lacks talent and worse he is cursed with an ungrateful and unpleasant attitude. Even so, being both beautiful and magnanimous, I give him my undivided attention, toiling away in the early morning to draw out even a drop of ability from his small and feeble mind. And he does not even trust me enough to tell me his past! He concocts idiotic lies, pathetic attempts at deception that would not even fool a child! Why am I cursed to-"
"Going well?" Walter interrupted, appearing at the southern entrance to the courtyard. He stared quizzically at his granddaughter, who was now posing dramatically, arms raised to the sky.
"It is going very unwell!" Sara shouted into the air, keeping her hands up for dramatic effect. An effect lost on Walter as he proceeded to ignore her and walk up to Alan.
"Figured as much. No progress?"
"Not really." Alan stood up, replying unhappily. The wrinkled old man was surprisingly spry given his age, and Alan did not have to wait long for him to sit down between them with a loud groan. Walter grimaced at Alan, his small eyes somehow receding into his wrinkles in the process.
"Well let''s see what you got, kid. Sara told me last night that she can''t even feel a hint of directed flow, but your experience is rising so you must be doing something. Probably something idiotic and dangerous of course, but still something." Walter raised his arms and held out his palms towards Alan expectantly.
Rather than respond to the insults, Alan placed his own palms over Walter''s and concentrated. The old man''s hands felt like dry leather but also had an unexpected sturdy quality to them. He idly wondered if Walter had invested some Points in Strength. More likely he was powered by pure vindictive malice. Casting his thoughts aside, Alan imagined a mental net covering his palms using the techniques he had been practicing with Sara.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He activated [Mana Manipulation] and focused, concentrating his mind in a similar way to what he had done many times before with [Sense]. In this case, he formed the image of a net against his palms and held it in his head. Once he had a solid image of his mental net, he shrank it in on itself over and over again, folding it until it only occupied an infinitesimally small space. During this process, his focus and mental imaging could not falter, any lapse in concentration during this phase or afterward would result in the Skill failing to activate.
The process alone would normally strain anyone''s thoughts, but Alan had been using [Sense] continuously for years, and it seemed as if the two Skills operated on similar mental models. Soon his net was as small as he could make it, and his mental image was steady. According to Walter, he needed it to be small because his Intelligence was "disgustingly low," making him incapable of moving larger chunks of Mana at Level 1.
Keeping the net in his mind, he pushed outwards, moving it from his palm into Walter''s. It felt like it should work. He could almost feel his net "catching" the ambient Mana. This part at least Sara had been able to confirm. For phase two, he wrapped the net in on itself and tried to direct it in a single stream, guiding the imperceivable Mana along a set trajectory.
Several seconds passed when Alan suddenly [Sensed] a violent movement behind him. Without time to think he barely managed to dodge the stick that went sailing past his body. His mental net shattered and Alan let out a breath he had not known he had been holding.
"What the hell?" he turned to find a very smug-looking Sara, arm posed to throw another stick.
"I asked her to do that," Walter responded for her. "You''re still focusing on [Sense] too much even when you should be focusing on [Mana Manipulation]. If you weren''t shitting the bed with those mental neglection tricks we''ve been going over, that stick should have hit you right in your ass."
Walter had given up on holding back cursing on the second day, in return for eliciting a promise from Sara that she would not tell her mother or grandmother.
"So if I succeed I get hit with a stick? Not much for motivation there." Alan turned back towards the old man.
"I''m motivating you, you little shit, by not dying from your mental pathways being overly stimulated before you can raise your piss poor Intelligence or we find some other solution." Walter''s harsh advice was offset by the evil grin he was giving Sara standing behind Alan with the stick still in her hand.
"But moving on, there are a few things to discuss. Sara darling you can either stay or go at this point, up to you." Sara dropped the stick and sat back down, clearly ready to stick around from whatever her grandfather was about to say.
"So a few things," Walter began as Sara settled down. "Going over that little exercise just now, Sara I don''t blame you for not noticing, and honestly I don''t know whether to be fucking impressed or fucking disappointed. I think I''ll go with both. Congratulations, you succeeded in directing external Mana in a steady concentrated stream into my palms. It''s just that the stream was the thinnest I''ve ever felt. Fuck me, but if I hadn''t been doing this same shit for years, even I would never have noticed."
"Usually we grow by moving larger and larger chunks of Mana, but well that''s not an option for you so maybe the fact that you can move such thin streams of Mana is a good thing. Can''t see how, given our main job is pushing enormous swaths ofthe stuff out of the way in the Expanse, but shit-on-a-rope, it''s a place to start. For now, keep at it and raise your [Mana Manipulation] Level. Since you''ve caught on pretty quick, Sara can teach you some more advanced meditation tricks as well."
Alan didn''t quite know how to feel, but it looked like he was using the Skill correctly, so he decided to count it as a success.
"Now I was thinking over ways to help you with your low Intelligence before you go batshit insane and I''ve landed on a few options. It will be up to you to make the final choice so listen up."
"Let''s start by outlining the problem. You have an Intelligence of four, which hurts me just saying out loud because it is gods-damned pathetic. At the very least we''ll need to raise that as much as we can on your next birthday, with [Mana Manipulation] and [Sense] that is the barest of the bare minimums. For a kid with a ridiculous amount of Points in Luck, that''s some shit luck since you said your birthday wasn''t too long ago, so we don''t have time to wait for that."
"So other options. You have five Skills accounted for: [Mana Manipulation], [Sense], and three fucking mystery Skills that you''re too much of a little shit to tell us about. Knowing you, they''re some shitty things that serve no purpose at all. Here''s the part where I once again strongly encourage you to tell me what they are since it could affect the options you have at your disposal." Walter paused and waited for Alan to say something.
Alan only shook his head no in response.
He really did want to tell Walter about [Sustain] [Vital Strike] and [Hide], but hehad only known the man for less than a week and there was no going back once he came clean. Those three Skills had too many unknowns attached.Theycertainly didn''t paint a pleasant picture of Alan''s mysterious life before he was found stumbling through the Expanse. Best case it would raise questions, questions which Alan did not want to answer and he worried that his "lost memories" excuse would no longer suffice. Worst case, one of hisSkills was illegal in Saga. [Vital Strike] in particular was worrying, it was hard to imagine a Skill that revolved around dealing killing blows to vital areas would not be, at the very least, taboo.
Walter grunted at Alan''s lack of response. "Well, I can''t force you to tell me your Skills if you don''t want to, but you''re only fucking yourself over kid. Whatever the case, you have one Skill slot left, meaning we need to choose a Skill that will help your mind process all of the information [Sense] is throwing at it. Unfortunately for you, most Skills that could help have an Intelligence multiplier. More shit luck and not the best solution."
"Before you start bitching, let me throw some good news at you. You also have forty-four Dexterity, and that my boy is something we can work with. Dexterity increases the speed of MP regeneration, helps with your balance and your reflexes, and it improves the speed of your thinking. Now its nothing compared to Intelligence for rewiring your brain to process large amounts of information, but some Dexterity-based Skills might work for our purposes. I was talking with some friends who have more experience with such things, and we came up with two potential Skills you could acquire that might help."
"[Accelerate] is the first one. The name kind of says it all. Simply put, while activated, you get faster. Everything. Your movement, reflexes, and the speed at which you think. From what people say, it feels a bit like when you allocate Points into Dexterity. If we can level it enough where you can leave it activated for extended periods, then it might help you with your [Sense] problem. Then again, it could make it worse, might just boost [Sense] to pull in more information and fry your brain that much faster."
"No idea, I don''t know anyone with both Skills to comment. So the best case is that it works and the worst case it that it could make you go insane that much sooner. So that''s option one."
"Option two?" Alan asked, not quite loving what he was hearing.
"Option two is [Fast Cast]. This is an interesting one. At higher levels, it all but removes anything but the longest cooldowns and decreases your activation times for any Skills that require time to prepare. It''s an active Skill but it increases MP regeneration by a fuckload so it''s an easy one to keep activated constantly. From what people say, it feels like your mind is humming. It doesn''t lend to your speed of thought like [Accelerate] would, but more like something in your subconscious mind is going into overdrive."
"This could be better suited to your problem since a lot of the processing for [Sense] probably happens subconsciously. It has the benefit of being a rather well-trodden path. It is a popular Skill because it can be upgraded into [Merge Cast], which doesn''t help your situation but is a damn cool Skill to have."
Alan didn''t like the number of probablys and maybes Walter''s explanation contained, but it was more than he thought he would get out of the ancient husk.
"What does [Merge Cast] do?" Alan asked out of curiosity.
"Basically, lets you combine two of your Skills into one for a period of time. At higher Levels, you can even merge three together. I''ve seen it used for some gods-damned impressive results. Has some drawbacks of course, but you can probably see why it is a common Skill to go after. Helps with a lot of crafting professions and not hard to activate either."
Alan asked the question that had been on his mind since Walter mentioned using Skills to combat his [Sense] headaches. "What about Vitality-based Skills? My Vitality is at fifty-nine, which is a significant amount higher than my Dexterity. Shouldn''t there be something to help me with this?"
Walter shook his head. "More shit luck there. We already know you have some Vitality Skill or other thatistriggered in some way by eating large amounts of food. Tell me, how''s that working for you?"
"Not great," Alan admitted.
"You''re damn right not great.You''re not the first to be in this situation, maybe the first to be so far into itthat your head ended up deep enough in your ass that shit is coming out of your mouth,but people have leveled up [Sense] too much for their own good before. It''s not a physical problem so right off the bat most Vitality Skills are going to be useless to help you. That said there are some Skills that give you a bit of mental fortitude, but not only are the activation requirements a bitch on those, they still don''t help you out. This isn''t about mental or physical resilience, you simply need to be able to think through loads of information."
Walter reached in his back pocket and handed Alan a crumpled piece of parchment.
"Anyway you''re going to have to trust me on this one, Dexterity is your best bet and [Fast Cast] and [Accelerate] are your best options. There are some others that might work, but these were the only two we found with pure Dexterity modifiers andare also straight forward enough with the activation requirements. I took the liberty of copying over the details of the Skills for you. Better choose well, because I know you don''t want to be doing something like losing your mind before you get to show up that piece of shit Rueben and his annoying brat."
Alan reached out and grabbed the parchment from Walter''s hands.
"Ok!" Walter clapped his hands. "Now that we have that out of the way, let''s get started."
Walter had Alan focus on ignoring [Sense] for the rest of his session, and despite Walter''s constant grumblings, Alan was pretty sure he was getting better. Today''s practice had consisted of walking around the courtyard. He would focus [Sense] on areas that were "boring" where less movement was going on, and in doing so, ignore his perception around him by concentrating on that single spot.
Alan likened it to being in a conversation with a group of people. Except while the conversation was going on, there was a voice screaming in his ear giving him details about the subtext of what everyone was saying. His goal was to try to get the yelling voice to talk about a separate, more boring conversation that was happening in the distance, and while he did this he still needed to pay enough attention to respond to the original conversation.
His metaphor needed work, but suffice to say it was hard to separate his focus in such a way and more often than not he found himself bumping into trees and tripping over roots jutting out of the ground. Alan couldn''t help but remember the mirthful glee in the old man''s eyes when he ordered Sara to sneak around and throw small pebbles at him intermittently.
Getting hit was considered a success.
Still, progress was progress. According to Walter, his stumbling around was a good thing since it meant he must be ignoring [Sense] to a certain degree. If it hadn''t been for [Sustain] Alan would be covered in bruises and cuts at this point. As it was, the Skill had easily absorbed any damage he might have taken.
Alan was now back in his temporary apartment, considering the dirty parchment in his hands. Walter had written down information on both [Accelerate] and [Fast Cast].
[Accelerate]
Activation requirement:
A minimum of 40 Dexterity. You must move swiftly over uneven terrain at speed equal to or over 12 meters per second for a period of 30 or more seconds.
It seemed straight forward. He was pretty sure he couldn''t run that fast at all, let alone for thirty seconds, but he assumed Walter had a way around that. Alan moved on to the second Skill written in the same scratchy handwriting.
[Fast Cast]
Activation requirement:
A minimum of 10 Dexterity. Cycle through any three active Skills, taking no more than a quarter of a second between deactivating one and activating the next. Do this 100 times in a row.
That was even simpler. He would have to work out MP usage and the exact details of the cycle, but he was confident that he could activate [Fast Cast] immediately if he really needed it.
Going with either Skill was a risk, but he could feel that his headaches were getting worse at an alarming pace. Alan didn''t think he could afford the time it would take to do more research, not that he would even know where to begin. Walter had proven himself knowledgable and dedicated, if not pleasant, so Alan would trust that these options were good ones.
He stared at the parchment, thinking over his plans, but already knowing which Skill he would choose.
Over the last several days, he had outlined a rough plan for himself. It was time to take a more active role in deciding his life, and only one of the options gave him a long term advantage for what he would be trying to attempt.
He just hoped it was the right choice.
Chapter 22. Alan.
The meat buns were hearty and cheap. Spicy, rich juice dripped down Alan''s chin as he licked his lips savoring the flavor. He had been experimenting with different foods and so far these meat buns were the most economical for the increase in SP that they gave. It didn''t hurt that they were absolutely delicious.
Of course, compared to raw and sinewy lizard meat anything would taste incredible, but still, these meat buns were damn good. Alan wiped his face as he finished chewing and focused on keeping his head down. He attempted to ignore [Sense] while he made his way to the guard station.
It turned out to be a plain-looking building located to the side of the grand market. The vendors of the market were just getting set up in the early morning, but even so, the bustle and activity around him triggered the ever-present pounding in his head. Ignoring the pain, Alan shoved his map into his pocket and made his way up the short flight of stairs to the large double doors of the building. A small bell hanging from the door chimed as he went inside.
A sleepy-looking man with a messy beard and unkempt uniform turned towards him from behind the front counter before yawning and going back to whatever he had been doing. Behind the man stood rows and rows of files stacked haphazardly in piles. The building itself was clean and orderly.
Alan walked up to the desk. "Good morn-"
"Holy shit!" The man interrupted, jerking back in surprise. A few files were knocked off the desk and for a moment they just stared at each other. Calming down and focusing on Alan, the man composed himself and cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed by his reaction.
"Sorry I didn''t see you there." He wiped his hands on his pants and smiled sheepishly. "I uh, well welcome to the South Guard Station, again sorry for that reaction, can I help you with something?"
Alan sighed.
He had been having issues with [Hide] since he managed to make his way back to civilization. Not to mention the fact that ever since the captain had cast [Track] on him, the Skill had been steadily ticking upwards in experience. He wasn''t sure if that was a good thing or not, but given what he had come here to do, he''d probably find out soon enough.
"I''m here to see captain Jacobs," Alan said, ignoring the guard''s reaction. "I have a ninth-bell appointment."
The man looked at him skeptically, before looking over one of the files in front of him. "Alex?" he asked, somehow finding what he was looking for in the mess of parchment.
"That''s me," Alan replied.
"Just head up to the third floor and the captain will be-."
"Alex." Captain Jacobs appeared in the hallway behind the receptionist who immediately stood up and saluted to the approaching figure.
The captain waved him back down. "I''ll take it from here Hobbs. Alex follow me." The captain beckoned Alan to follow, leaving him no choice but to run to catch up.
"Thank you for coming." The man said simply as they made their way through the station.
Wearing the badges of his station and dressed in a spotless blue uniform, the captain walked through the station with apparent authority. He radiated the same cold and imposing presence that he had when Alan had met him, and the people they encountered in the hallways parted as they made their way.
"Of course," Alan responded quickly. He guessed that Jacobs must have realized his arrival through [Track]. He focused [Sense] on the ground below him and sought to ignore the pounding in his head. "I know we got off to a rough start and while I''m here I wanted to offer my apologies and ask some questions if possible. I know I''m probably low on your list of priorities, so I can schedule an appointment with you later if you do not have enough time right now."
The captain ignored Alan for a moment as he paused at a simple wooden door. The door looked the same as many others along the hallway except carved in large brass letters was a name: Captain Henry Jacobs. The man opened it and stepped inside.
"That will not be necessary, first come in and sit down." Behind the cold facade, Alan thought he could detect a bit of wariness in the older man''s voice as he stepped behind a very worn but orderly looking desk. He proceeded to sit in the large leather chair located behind it and motioned for Alan towards the smaller chair across from him. Alan moved to comply.
"Now that you are here, I am certain of it." The captain stated without preamble just as Alan was starting to sit down. Alan paused in the process, uncertain.
"Sit down now." The captain said, his voice cold. Alan sat.
"You are resisting [Track] in some way. Tell me how and do not lie to me. You have one chance."
Well this wasn''t off to a good start.
"I have a Skill called [Hide] sir, it''s passive, so I can''t control the effects, but I would guess that it works against [Track] somehow." Alan went with the truth; he didn''t like the look in the captain''s eyes.
Jacobs stared hard at Alan for several long seconds. Alan was painfully aware of his own heart beating, the pounding of his heart seemed to match the painful rhythm of hammering in his head. He desperately wished [Sense] would give him a break, he was barely able to concentrate despite the tense environment, and he needed his wits about him.
The dripping from the water clock in the corner was the only sound in the room as the captain''s icy blue eyes continued to glare at the young man across from him.
"The fact that you came here of your own accord and have not tried to flee or venture into more suspect parts of the city makes me want to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you had said [Stealth] or any other activated Skill, we would be having a very different conversation right now. It is illegal to impede us from keeping tabs on you while under a probationary status. Luckily for you, I am familiar with [Hide]. Based on what I am feeling, yours should be at level eight or nine." It was not a question, and the captain''s gaze did not waver from Alan''s face for a single moment.
"Level eight sir," Alan responded quickly. Back in the caves, he had been granted an upgrade from [Hide] to [Stealth] after a particularly surreptitious and violent run through lizard territory. He was suddenly very glad that he had not accepted it.
After a tense moment, the captain sighed heavily, and his body seemed to deflate in the process. "Is it too much to ask you to make this easy on me? Tell me your Skills, tell me your past? The law prevents me from forcing these things from you, and it''s not like there are Skills that can reliably read your mind. I have a hard time believing you''re up to no good, but you are making it very difficult for me to give you any trust here."
Alan didn''t know how to respond, which left him staring blankly at the captain as the silence stretched out. Drip by drip the clock in the corner measured the passing of time. The captain saved him from having to answer as he straightened himself back up. "What did you want to ask me?" The weariness was gone completely leaving Alan to wonder if he had imagined it.
Once again in familiar territory, Alan didn''t waste any time.
"First, I wanted to thank the guards that found me in the Expanse. There is no question that I owe them my life. I have a few questions for them as well about how they found me since I am looking for clues into my past." As good as an excuse as any.
"Admirable, I will have Hobbs give you their information if they are willing. What else?"
"Thank you sir. Second I was hoping..." Alan had rehearsed this part on his own, but with the unexpected interrogation and a [Sense] migraine piercing his brain, he was having trouble focusing. "I am looking for work and I was hoping I could find something here. I would be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for some training and instruction. I know a select portion of Mana Guild members get selected to work with the Guards after graduation, and I very much want to be that in portion. The Guards have more leeway in leaving Territory borders, and I feel it is my only chance to explore the mystery of how I ended up out in the Expanse. It also gives you the double benefit of keeping an easy eye on me. I''m willing to do anything and work any hours I can as long as it does not interfere with my Guild schedule."
"I see." The captain leaned back and sighed.
"Look son, I am going to be blunt. I could recommend you to some parttime positions around here but knowing your reasoning, I will not be doing so. The fact is that you have no chance of being chosen to work with the Guards of any Territory with your arm the way it is. You would be categorized as unfit for service, and this is something I can speak to with certainty because I am involved in the selection process."
"And before you press further for training or special treatment, let us get this straight: we are not baby sitters. If you want to engage in more martial pursuits, then there are trainers around the city that I can refer to you. However, I was at that meetingten days ago, and I am fairly certain you do not have the money for it. Honestly son, your best bet is to focus on training your Skills to work for your Guild as a transporter between Territories. It''s a good life that only a select few achieve, much safer than what you are asking for, not to mention well paying."
Completely shut down.
Alan knew it had been a long shot, but he had imagined he could at least do some menial labor around the station and spy on the Guards doing training drills.
"However, I am not completely heartless," the captain continued. "I do not take particular pleasure in turning away determined young adults from their goals. I will have Hobbs give you a list of martial instructors that we know are reliable along with their specialties. Most have no openings, but I will throw in a recommendation to anyone you choose which should get you a place in their classes. If you can pay the fees, you can work these classes around your schedule and make of it what you will. "
"I will reiterate, with your arm the way it is you will not be allowed to join the Guards as a Guild contractor. Even if your arm were not damaged, the other members of your Guild would make the task all but impossible for you. The kids you will be competing with have been training their whole lives with the best instructors for this very purpose. Again I do not want to step on your goals, but you need to go into this looking at the reality of the situation. That is all I will say regarding your request."
"Thank you sir," Alan said, maintaining a calm facade. It wasn''t ideal, but he wasn''t leaving empty-handed. He had hoped for more but had been prepared for worse.
The captain pulled out a small quill from his side and began writing as he continued speaking.
"Officer Michael will be handling your case from here on out. His [Track] Level, while lower than mine, should be perfectly capable of ignoring a Level 8 [Hide] debuff within the city limits. I''ll call him over now to introduce himself and cast [Track] on you. I wish you good luck young man, unless you find yourself in some trouble I doubt we will be meeting again any time soon, so here''s hoping that this will be the last that we see of each other for a while. Despite your circumstances, you seem like a good young man and believe me when I say I do sincerely look forward to uncovering your past."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Was that a threat? The captain''s face gave away nothing.
"Thank you sir," Alan replied, not realizing that his face and tone had been equally stoic throughout their entire conversation.
That could have gone better.
Alan found himself waiting by an intricate fountain on the other side of the market, going over his meeting with the captain. The sound of the water gently splashing behind him helped to soothe his nerves somewhat. He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. His day was far from over, but the ever-growing pain in his head refused to cooperate.
Alan glanced at his arm, still in the sling.
Forced to confront reality, he admitted that he had been purposely keeping himself from thinking about it. He knew the fact that his arm was disabled was a huge issue for him, but still he kept pushing off dealing with it till later. The truth was that he just didn''t want to acknowledge the situation.
It still didn''t feel real.
The arm was healing well, according to the doctors. Alan suspected [Sustain] was preventing any new damage to the appendage, which was allowing it to heal faster than usual. Staring at it, his forearm looked fairly normal if a bit beat up. He just couldn''t move it or feel anything below his elbow. Something about the body''s chemical signals not reacting anymore, according to doctor Belman.
Alan tried moving the fingers to no effect.
Since his stay at the hospital, he had been forced to notice a few things. For one, his general balance had been thrown off a lot more than he had expected. It was a strange rebalancing of his center of mass, and even when standing still, he sometimes felt like he was about to fall over. His Points into Dexertiy probably helped in that regard, but it nevertheless caught him off guard.
Then there were the moments when he would try to reach for things.
A handrail. A book. A jar of water. A thoughtless but natural movement. And every single time when nothing happened, when his arm failed to move, there was just the briefest moment of confusion. Of panic. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach while his mind caught up to his body''s instinctual responses. With it the recognition that his life might never be the same. That he might be a cripple.
His jaw tightened as he looked away from the arm. He had overcome worse, he would overcome this too.
"Alex!" Thankfully, a voice broke him out of his thoughts before they turned too dark. Alan turned to see a handsome young man running up to him.
"Hey Thomas, thanks for meeting up like this." Alan stood up to greet him. Thomas looked much the same as the day he had been tasked to show Alan around the Guild campus on his first day out of the hospital.
Alan was thankful that they had run into each other a few days back and were able to set up this meeting.
He had been visiting the help counter at the Guild Hall on that day to ask a few questions about finding apartments. Lacking friends, and slightly scared of asking too much from Walter, Alan had been relying heavily on the people who worked at the Guild help desk in the mornings to answer his general questions. Even though his inquiries tended to be a bit out of the normal scope of the job, they were usually kind enough to help out where they could.
As he was leaving the Hall having had his map marked up with areas to check out, he had run into Thomas. Remembering the boy from his time showing Alan around campus, the two had gotten to talking, helped in no small part by Thomas¡¯s outgoing nature. After hearing about Alan''s living situation, Thomas had offered to help out and show Alan around a few places.
"I''m just glad you found the place alright," Thomas replied, smiling. "Did you just get here? I passed by the area a few minutes back but didn''t see you so I went looking around in case you had gotten lost."
"Yup made it no problem," Alan said. He had actually arrived early, having finished his meeting with the captain sooner than expected. He didn''t say it, but he suspected [Hide] might have prevented Thomas from spotting him earlier.
Thomas smiled. "Good to hear, so let''s see what you''ve got so far."
Alan only had fournights left with his free housing situation and had been checking out apartments whenever his headaches didn''t prevent him from venturing outside. He didn''t want to end up on the streets, but he had been starting to resign himself to the fact that he might have to be homeless for a while. His estimates about the cost of living in the city had been extremely off, to say the least, and five hundred drams per month was turning out to be nowhere near enough to live on. Rent was expensive. Food was expensive. Everything was expensive.
He debated going back to ask for more loan money, but thinking back to Jan, he didn''t imagine it would go over very well. Not that he didn''t think she would do it, but the terms of the loan would be frightful.
He handed Thomas the stack of fliers in his hand.
?1200/month: 1 bedroom in a 3 bedroom apartment in Mana Park.
?250/month: 3 square meter storage space in Mana Park.
?900/month: shared studio apartment in Dressoria.
?500/month: 1 shared bedroom in a 2 bedroom apartment in Western Field.
?1900/month: studio in East Mana Park.
?900/month: studio apartment in Western Field.
?500/month: 1 bedroom apartment in South Western Field.
These were the best he had been able to find. The cheapest thing had been some storage space for two hundred and fifty drams per month, and technically he wasn''t supposed to live in it, but it was looking to be the only affordable option so far.
He needed a job or a miracle or both.
Thomas glanced through the stack nodding to himself. "Looks about right, though some of these can probably be talked down, while others seem suspiciously low. Gotta be careful of scams. And I would throw out the apartments you have in Western Field. Trust me, it is not the safest neighborhood, and once you''re on the south side, well don''t be on the south side of that area."
"I see," Alan responded gloomily. If this didn''t work out, he might as well start scoping out the best places to sleep on the streets of South Edge.
Done with the fliers, Thomas looked up. "These are pretty normal, but I can do you better. You remember our deal, right?"
Alan looked at the other young man. "You''ll show me some places that your family owns, and if I take one of your places, I get one free month and a good deal on rent. In return, I make sure to introduce you to Sara."
Thomas was nodding along.
"Not to question this too much, since it seems like a good deal for me," Alan continued hesitantly, "but couldn''t you just introduce yourself normally? You know, ''hi I''m Thomas'' and all of that?"
Thomas was giving him a shocked look.
"Alex, you seem like a nice weird guy, but clearly you do not understand the delicacy of the situation." He ran a hand through his perfectly crafted hair. "What would I say from there? Where would I even run into her before class starts? And once class starts she''ll have her pick of any guy she wants! I need to get in there before she has other options, otherwise I''ll be just a face in a sea of eligible bachelors!"
"I see."
"I don''t think you do." Thomas put his arm around him in what Alan guessed was deemed to be a friendly gesture. "Look here, the places my family owns aren''t spectacular, but they''re far from the worst, and I''m going to be giving you a great deal. As part of this great deal, you don''t simply introduce me to Sara. I can see you thinking it''s as easy as saying ''oh hey Sara this is Thomas'' and leaving it at that. Nope, not good enough. We''re going to become friends you and I, and as friends, you''re going to find ways for us all to hang out in natural, normal ways. In return, you''ll get the nicest landlord you''ve ever had the pleasure of leasing from."
Thomas was smiling as he patted Alan on the back. "Follow me, my man, and we''ll see what you think."
Thankfully Thomas began moving away from the bustling market and down some quieter, residential streets. The people walking around seemed reasonably well off and the houses matched the people. The neighborhood seemed calm to [Sense], which Alan appreciated.
"What if she doesn''t like you?" Alan asked as they walked, wondering what type of situation he was getting himself into. He liked Sara, and he wasn''t sure how he felt about this.
"Then she doesn''t like me and you still have the nicest landlord in all of Saga." Thomas took a left at one of the intersections with a small clothing store on the corner. Foot traffic was picking up.
"Look I like to think if we had known each other better, you would introduce me to her without any pretext. Just like I would rent a place to you if I knew you were looking. That''s what friends are for, and that''s pretty much all there is to this. I''m not looking for some skeezy deal here."
"Why Sara?" Alan asked.
"Uh, have you seen her?" Thomas responded incredulously. "Well I certainly have. She''s around campus now and then because of who her grandfather is, and for the life of me, I haven''t been able to find any reason to introduce myself. I heard not too long ago that she''s skipping a grade and going to be in my class this year, so I was wracking my brain for a way to get closer to her before classes start. Then here you come along looking for housing and telling me you''re taking lessons with her and her grandfather. Seems like fate to me."
Soon enough, they stopped in front of a small building.
"And here we are!" Thomas gestured grandly.
"An apothecary?" Alan looked at the storefront. It seemed nice enough.
"Didn''t I tell you? My full name is Thomas Hackett, and my family owns Hackett Apothecariums. We have twelve wonderful locations around Saga! Four are located here in South Edge, though the main office is in Central of course."
Alan thought a moment.
"Why are you enrolled in the Mana Guild?" He asked.
"Same reason as everybody. Adventure!" Thomas grinned waiting for a reaction. Alan stared back.
"Also money," he continued a bit dejected after getting nothing from Alan. "Many of the best ingredients for our potions and tinctures come from outside of the Barriers. You wouldn''t believe what people charge for some of these things, and a lot of it isn''t even that hard to find once you''re out in the Expanse. Having someone on the inside is well worth it for my family, and I''m a fourth child, so off to the Mana Guild I shall go. Which suits me just fine as I hear the women in other Territories are more generous then the ones you find here if you get my drift." Thomas smiled knowingly though having lived in Strength, Alan didn''t see much difference when it came to such things. He kept his mouth shut as Thomas continued speaking.
"It also means that we have some space above our stores, which is just being used for storage because it isn''t worth the trouble of renting it out. I took over an apartment above one of our nicer locations when I enrolled here, and another buddy of mine is renting from me as well. A little extra income never hurt anyone, so like I said no big deal. Anyway, follow me and we''ll check out the place."
The two boys walked to a small door to the side of the store, and Thomas pulled out some keys. Walking up some stairs, they arrived in the apartment.
It was filled with boxes and strange instruments, but overall the place was better than any he had seen so far by a wide margin. It had hardwood floors that were clean and didn''t creak, wide vaulted ceilings, and large windows that brought in plenty of light. To Alan, it was the most luxurious apartment he had ever been inside, which made it all the harder when he had to turn it down. [Sense] was killing him, and this apartment was severely triggering his headaches. It seemed the apothecary shop below had too much foot traffic and movement.
"Do you sell anything for headaches?" Alan asked as they went to try a different location.
The other places Thomas had shown him were all within areas of heavy foot traffic; it turned out that the first place they had visited had actually been the quietest. It made sense that stores would be placed in areas where people would congregate, but Alan needed a place out of the way where his [Sense] headaches wouldn''t become a constant torture. He asked Thomas about any options in more remote locations that he might have, and the boy had promised to check on something and show him more later, but Alan wasn''t hopeful.
He had lived underground in caves for two years, he could live on the streets for a month or so while he looked for work.
More importantly, after his meeting with captain Jacobs, he had come out more determined than ever to overcome his situation. His main take away from the captain was that he needed to get his arm working and find a way to improve his physical ability to a level above the other students.
With those thoughts in his head, the next day saw Alan once again standing in the courtyard facing Walter.
"So?" Walter asked, waiting for Alan to speak.
Nothing for it. Alan needed to get back to Strength, and he needed to do it as part of a unit in the Guards.
It was his one of his few leads. The deputy commander of Strength had ordered the road closing around his town during the outbreak of the fictional Ash Plague. He wasn''t naive enough to think he could just walk up to such a person and start asking questions. Being a part of the Guards, even as a member of the Mana Guild, would give him a route to the man and a way to start investigating from the inside. Otherwise, he would just be acting as a Mana mule, escorting people and goods back and forth between Territories.
Actually, given his low Intelligence and inability to move large swaths of Mana around, it was doubtful that he would even be able to achieve that much. More likely, he would be stuck doing simple errands for the Guild while hopelessly struggling against his ever-increasing debt. It was a future that he needed to avoid.
He had asked Walter every question he could think of about the requirements and what they look for when placing Guild graduates. He knew the roles they sought to fill for the Guards, and more to the point, he only had one year in which to prove himself fit for them. It wasn''t the option he would have chosen otherwise, but he knew what he needed to do to give himself any chance at all. He had resigned himself to giving Walter a full listing of his Skills to be sure of his choice, but he was ready to move forward.
He stared determinedly as Walter leaned against a wall looking up at him with vague interest.
"Teach me [Accelerate]."
Not the chapter you were looking for...
So it''s that time. The time where the author of a series you (hopefully) are enjoying comes to say that the juices just aren''t flowing and something is not clicking and the progress of the story will be taking a bit of a break.
Yup that time.
I''m not happy about it, and I know you aren''t either. Actually, I feel really bad because I love having all of you give me feedback and be excited about the direction of the story. But I can only give you a taste of what''s been going on, and my thoughts going forward.
I have the broad strokes of this story filled out. The major events that will take place, the history of the World it happens in and how it relates to what we have already seen and will see, and Alan''s journey and final role in this whole story. It''s all there.
The finer touches I like to leave to my characters. I throw them into situations and let the events happen and see how they react, trying to let their personalities and goals drive them forward. Sometimes they surprise me, sometimes things go as planned.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Lately, since we have introduced Alan back into civilization, those finer touches have not been clicking right with me. And they continue not to click. I''ve written chapter 23 about three (very) different ways at this point and not terribly happy with any version. I feel like the story is losing its tone.
And I could be very wrong here... it might just be all in my head, I mean we''re still pretty early on all things considered, and this is all just a first draft, but I want to be happy with what I''m writing, and I want to keep this being a hobby that I enjoy.
All of this is to say, I can''t say when chapter 23 will come out. I''m going to be making some changes to previous chapters, maybe adding some things and rewriting some things, because if I''m being honest, that''s what is exciting me right now and what I''m looking forward to doing. I want to rethink the tone of things since he escaped the caves, maybe add an extra chapter of him living his life down there with the lizards, and in doing this regain the tone and excitement that seem to be slipping for me.
Thanks for reading! I''m sorry for delays and excited to keep telling the story, I appreciate everyone following!