Waking up with a jolt, Sam felt his whole body tingle, like the inside of your mouth after eating a lot of pineapple or citrus. It felt, not painful but uncomfortable. Using the light in from the room ahead he quickly checked his thigh wound and it looked fucking horrible. The wound had not only not healed, but the surface flesh, though not bleeding, was oozing puss and just looked horrible...
Getting to his feet he managed to stand upright, to his satisfaction he could at least stand on the leg. It felt weird like he had been working out too hard and had sore muscles, but just in his right thigh muscle. Or rather, he felt that over his entire body, but it was noticeably worse around his wound. He needed to get out of this place asap and get this looked at.
Taking a quick check on things before he left, he looked through various menus and checked his stock.
[ HP: 6 / 35 █░░░░░░ ]
[ XP to lv.8: 318 / 640 ███░░░ ]
He was a bit surprised to see his health higher, he hadn’t been a Player long enough to know exactly how this worked, nor did he pay enough attention in the first briefing to remember if that explained anything. Based on that he felt... relatively rested... tall all things considered, he at least slept a few hours. He had five of the lower-quality potions left, and somehow all four of his daggers. He couldn’t remember how he got those after attacking the snake but they were on the floor around him. Convenient but strangely unsettling if he didn’t do it himself and just doesn’t remember it...
Not knowing what was ahead, he decided to consume the potions. It’s better to go in with as much health as possible if something happens. And if it was wasted, well, he’d rather waste money than die.
The five potions were consumed one after another, their effect stacking up to the value of one better-ranked potion.
[ HP: 23 / 35 █████░░ ]
Just seeing his health bar at all, and the text not being red did a lot of good for his motivation. Though peering down into the hole again didn’t do the same boon, but rather lowered it considerably.
“Cancel quest.” He tried, focusing on the Dungeon quest log, if he could just leave now he would be happy.
[ Compulsory Solo Dungeon cannot be cancelled. ]
“Fuck...” He didn’t expect anything else. And weirdly he would be almost more annoyed if it worked as he could have done that at the start when everything turned disgusting, or before the fights to not end up barely surviving.
Letting out a deep sigh, breathing the horrid air almost as if it were refreshing, he took the first step. The ledges that stuck out of the wall were crusty and slightly slippery. Though there was enough room for both his feet on most of the pieces, it was surprisingly slippery and unstable. There was a certain springiness, a give to them. Like pressing on a long nail, it was hard enough to consider it solid, but it still had a slight flex to it. He hated it. Not only did it feel unstable, it just felt disgusting.
The first few steps worked fine, he used his Psyhands to try and aid his balance as well as to probe and prod the coming ledge. If his Psyhands could move it or dislodge it, there was no way in fuck that it could hold his entire weight. He took his time, squatting down, using his foot to probe the next ledge and slowly moving onto it while holding onto the previous one. This would prove a good idea as one ledge gave in and crumbled under his foot. He had a solid enough grasp on the ledge he came from so this wasn’t an issue. But as the brown and crusty stone-looking ledge crumpled and fell, he could hear it hit other pieces, some breaking up as well and falling. More and more broke as it cascaded down into the darkness.
Now, it was good that he had held onto the ledge, but a problem was now that the next step was twice as long. He couldn’t do the same test to make sure it was safe or not. He probed the ledge the best he could do with his Psyhands, but the total force of them combined didn’t even hit a tenth of his body weight. He didn’t have any rope or anything practical to use to aid him here. He would have to... make a leap of faith...
Taking his time he considered this, how could he test this better, he could attack with his daggers but that could just create problems and make it weaker. He didn’t have anything he could throw at it or anything he could properly use either. The corpses had all been consumed during its opening and nothing he was carrying was good enough.
As he was thinking and trying to find a way to do this safely, he heard something which changed his mentality quite dramatically; flapping.
Looking towards the sound, and luckily still being in the lit-up area of the pit he could soon enough see something coming. It looked like small bats turned inside out, being all fleshy and gooey like everything else in this place. Their wings’ were made of stretched-out skin-like membranes, they had teeth and a strange almost see-through body. First one came, then another, then several more. A small flock of them came flapping towards him, looking hungry.
Now, though the situation was horrible, Sam was uniquely skilled for this kind of shit. Having a relatively large radius for his attacks meant that he could flail at them without problems. Though this would split his focus a lot, it wasn’t like he had a choice.
Pulling his daggers and handing them over to his Psyhands, he found himself swinging his four daggers around at the incoming bats. They flew surprisingly slowly, and were quite clumsy in the air, making for surprisingly easy targets. They fell one after another, again and again. A simple slice was enough to take them out and even when stabbed they weren’t large enough to clench around the blades, making for busywork more than an actual problem.
[ Flesh bat killed. Experience gained: +2. ]
This message pinged again and again, there seemed to be a neverending production of them. And they came in a steady stream, enough to keep him busy but not enough to feel like a danger. If his abilities made him tired, it would be a vastly different situation, but had this been in a safer and more relaxing situation it could have been a good passive XP farm, but alas, the ledge he was on could give in at any time, he needed to get to the next one.
A moment of split focus had him miss a few of the bats, allowing them to get in close and attack him.
[ Armour, Defence 5 has negated the damage. ]
They bit, again and again. Every time the message popped up. They did so little damage that his armour handled it without effort. They didn’t get through the protection, but there was another problem. In the brief few seconds he found this amusing, a large enough group had landed on him that his weight had shifted. The ledge he was on twisted slightly making him almost lose his footing. Pressing himself against the slick pit wall let him put his entire weight on the most stable part, but this raised some dangerous issues. The bats’ danger is not damage, but annoyance. Both in focus and in how they could latch on and pull on him, add weight to make his balance slightly off or just get in the way of him seeing.
Though his XP was racking up, this was worse than it sounded.
He used his Psyhands and daggers to get them off him, using his normal hands to just slam into them like he was pounding his chest. It was enough to kill some, and enough to get others to let go. But as he was doing this the ledge he stood on gave in, the movement and shocks had it loosen from the wall, sliding down slightly and forcing Sam to take the next step.
Half-jumping onto the next ledge he landed surprisingly heavy, this knocked that ledge loose which forced him to take the next step. Now he had momentum behind him, the momentum that sent him hurling forward without solid enough ground under his feet to slow down.
Panic kicked in, he needed to slow down. Instinctively he shoved the daggers into the walls but almost losing one to the friction and lacking strength of the Psyhands he had to change tactics. Pulling them in and using his normal hands to shove the daggers into the wall, they were dragged down, creating a long wound that followed him down the spiral. Every step was worse than the previous, every step as slippery as the one before, though the bats had let go of him he was losing balance, there was no way for him to regain it. His hands with daggers did only so much before they slipped out of the fleshy wall. The next ledge gave way as soon as he stepped on it, completely removing his footing. He slammed into the following step with his full force and curled around it like slamming into the side of a table.
[ Armour, Defence 5 has lowered the damage. ]
[ HP: 22 / 35 █████░░ ]
Though he only took one damage, given the damage reduction of the armour, this was a horrifying prospect. It still felt incredibly painful, like being punched in the gut. The force of his slamming into it loosened the meaty wall’s grasp on it, and as it tore itself from the wall, Sam fell. Freefalling for what felt like several seconds, plunged into more darkness he couldn’t see what was going on, he tried grasping at the walls, at... anything. He slammed into ledges on the way, all of them breaking as he did.
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[ Armour, Defence 5 has negated the damage. ]
Wanting to feel lucky that the armour handled the damage, it was somewhat undercut of his current situation.
Waking up with a jolt he felt his head hurt, his body hurt, everything hurt.
[ HP: 12 / 35 ██░░░░░ ]
It was dark, he couldn’t see anything at all. Using the feeling of his Psyhands he felt around, the wall, the neighbouring ledges, the ledge he was on and everything. The ledge felt incredibly sturdy like a stone slab securely fastened into a wall. He had slammed into it when falling, taking considerable damage according to his remaining health. He was suddenly very glad that he used the health potions earlier, or he’d be dead now. Looking up he could see the source of light and the spiralling ledges going down, many were missing. He didn’t know how far down this went. Taking some pieces of debris from the ledges above, he gently threw them over the ledge, listening carefully to the sound of their landing.
He waited minutes without any sound.
Hoping this meant that the floor was just soft enough that the sound didn’t make it up, he started considering if he should keep moving or relax. Though as he was considering relaxing a little he heard a familiar flapping sound.
“Goddammit...” He muttered to himself as he used his Psyhands to feel for the next ledge. He had to continue before those things caught him. Though they didn’t do any damage, their annoyance would be even worse in the dark.
He took a step, using his hands to feel the next, then took another step, and another. It was slow but steady. He didn’t feel any better due to the dark, but it seemed that if he was silent, using his hands to slap the walls around to distract the bats, they couldn’t see him either. Feeling happy that they didn’t have the echolocation one would expect them to have, he could somewhat trick them and keep moving.
Looking down into the depths, something new came to make his life worse. There was a source of light coming flying towards him, with the same erratic flight pattern as the bats he soon found out that it was a bat with something glowing in it. This was a blessing in disguise, at least in Sam’s head. If this creature came to light him up for the others, he could kill it and see its body fall, to find the bottom!
As it came into his Area of Influence, he reached out with his daggers and killed it. Like the others, it fell to one blow before the other daggers even reached it. Though as it died the light also extinguished almost instantly. He cursed internally as the bats flocked to the area of the attack, trying to attack the attacker which, luckily wasn’t over there.
Sam continued his descent, slapping the walls and flailing the occasional blade around all randomly, hitting something. Though it kept the bats off him it split his focus, it was manageable and better than the alternative. It didn’t take long before another glowing bat showed up.
This time Sam had a better idea. Bringing all blades back to his hands and sheathing them, he used all his eight Psyhands to grab the incoming bat. They weren’t strong, nor did they weigh much. He hoped that this would work better.
To his satisfaction, his plan worked out wondrously! This had the others flock around it, trying to find the assailant. He was far out of reach and he quickly found that he only needed three Psyhands to keep the glowing bat under control, giving him free hands to feel around for the next ledge. Though it wasn’t perfect, with the thicker flock of bats gathering around their glowing friend, he could use it as a horrible flashlight to see and get a glimpse of what was going on in front of him, at the edge of his Area to keep the other bats around as his glowing friend screeched in annoyance.
Working better than expected, this allowed him to keep moving, slowly, down the spiral. He could see cracks he might not have felt otherwise, avoiding the worst steps. Though he had to take some leaps of faith to get to the next one, he was prepared this time. The heavy landing would always get bats to attack him, but by curling up against the wall and using his Psyhands to slam the daggers against each other, this new and sharper sound was more interesting than his ‘lifeless body’, so they flew over there. It almost sounded dumb but worked incredibly well.
What felt like a tremor shook Sam in more ways than one. Firstly, it was an incredibly disturbing feeling in itself, secondly, was that several ledges loosened from it. Not just below him but above him as well. The sound of the fragments breaking above him, some large and some small, he couldn’t do anything besides curling up against the wall, hoping for the best.
[ Armour, Defence 5 has negated the damage. ]
[ Armour, Defence 5 has negated the damage. ]
[ Armour, Defence 5 has negated the damage. ]
Each hit of the debris was handled, and he felt good about this. Even the few larger fragments that hit him didn’t get through his armour. Having pressed himself against the slimy wall, face inward and his arms covering his head, he hoped for the best, and it looked good. But as soon as he started feeling positive, a large fragment hit the shelf he was standing on, breaking it along the connection to the wall.
Again finding himself in freefall, he flung the source of light down, trying to see what he could grab onto. The little creature shrieked in annoyance and panic as it was flung back and forth, towards this and that wall, hoping to find something. Seeing a longer shelf sticking out, he was falling at great speed, not enough to grab onto anything but plenty to hit it and take considerable damage.
[ Armour, Defence 5 has lowered the damage. ]
[ HP: 2 / 35 ░░░░░░░ ]
His left leg slammed against the hard substance sticking out of the wall, he could feel the bones breaking and the flesh tearing as he kept falling. He lost his grasp on the glowing bat as he kept falling, now sent into a dizzying spinning motion from the hit to one of his limbs. The stress and panic from the situation as well as the G-forces of his spinning got to him, he could feel that he was blacking out, struggling as he might he felt weakness taking over.
Waking up with a jolt, a powerful inhalation as he sat up like someone tased his spine, he immediately regretted this involuntary movement as he moved his left leg a lot in the motion. Letting out a loud grunt of pain
[ HP: 1 / 35 ░░░░░░░ ]
The terrifying red-coloured text was back, the health bar was gone, and if something slapped him hard enough he would most likely not make it out of it.
Looking around himself in the darkness, he couldn’t see anything, reaching out his hand he touched everything as far as he could, slapping the floor and wall next to him. From what he could feel he was on a floor, akin to the fight he had above it was fleshy, covered in some mucus and had surprising give, even under just his Psyhands. This must be what caught his fall and had him survive at all. For the first time, he was grateful for this fleshy prison.
Taking a few moments to breathe, he waited as long as he felt comfortable doing. Wanting to get back on his feet he dreaded even trying, even while lying down and not moving in the slightest he couldn’t feel anything but a sharp, throbbing pain. Each of his rapid heartbeats felt like a balloon of needles inflating and deflating inside his leg, adrenaline doing its best to dull it, but it wasn’t enough.
In the far distance above him, he could again hear flapping. Looking towards it he saw two of the glowing bats, and as he focused on listening he could hear that they weren’t alone.
Not knowing if they could critically hit him, and even if that would make it through the armour, just a single damage above his armour’s rating could kill him, and if there were a bunch of them, mathematically...
He started crawling along the wall, grunting in pain at every movement, he found his daggers on the way around the circumference, sheathing them to have them ready if nothing else he found an opening in the wall! As he got himself over there properly it felt like a hallway, and it didn’t feel entirely disgusting inside!
Crawling into it, he wanted to get out, more than anything. He already had a slight distaste for the Tower System, it was mostly due to his past and how it was thrusting the world into a major class shift, but this forced solo dungeon didn’t help in the slightest.
Entering the hallway properly he felt it going slightly upwards until it opened into another room.