The second trip through was much different than the first, but not in a bad way. The mist washing over him chilled him, but it felt good after so much exertion in the past two days. The water running along his body finally began to wash away the blood from his battle with the cophinus, and he took a new, fresh breath as the pervading scent of iron finally went away. He’d gotten used to it after so long, but he would occasionally become aware of it at random moments.
The moderate cleanliness and relaxing cold made this trip worth it already. Still, he kept an eye out for any monsters who might attack him, despite the peaceful nature of the area.
He noticed more creatures glancing at him this time around. Either because he was an actual animal that they could eat, the blood that fell away from him, or that they simply did not know what a spirit was before and decided to ignore it before, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, as long as none tried to take a bite.
Down and down he went again, feeling the slick stone beneath his feet. He stayed aware of his balance, not wanting to fall.
After a long walk, he finally made it to the section where blue grass grew from the stone, and the sensation of walking on it felt good after stepping on only hard rock for the last two days. He wasn’t as afraid to let his guard down to Identify it this time, but he resisted the temptation to do so.
It was illogical, but Dei wanted to leave the why of everything being blue in this area as a mystery. It was already proven to be non-lethal, so he would have his moments of wonder.
Something he hadn’t considered before was the feeling of wet grass. It was familiar to him, and nice. He didn’t stop to admire the sensation, but he acknowledged it.
* * *
At last, the intersection to the watery cave where he could find his reflection was before him. Walking along the final stone boardwalk, he thought about what he expected to see.
Would he find a semblance of Leven in his reflection, an echo of his former self? Or would he be someone completely new? Would he recognize features from his parents?
He still dreaded it. Knowing. If he didn’t look at himself, he could forever deny an unnatural change to his body. But was that what he wanted? To eternally hate who he was? To have that sword hanging over his head, ready to drop if he glimpsed a reflection from the corner of his eye somewhere?
The cold of the area and grass under each step was nice, and he stopped thinking too deeply, living in the moment and appreciating where he was.
When he stepped onto the soft earth, he was almost weary enough to lie down here and handle the issue in the morning, but he still moved on.
The tall blue weeds pulled at his legs, slowing his walk to a snail's pace until they finally receded, shifting to red as he got closer to the white light of the cave in front of him.
Coming out into the open area, he blinked away spots and squinted as he looked around. Like last time, there still wasn’t much to see.
Now, he had [Tremor Sense] to use as a searching tool, and did so immediately.
The close proximity to all of the waterfalls still nearly blinded him with the vibrations they gave off, but such a small area could be searched using [Fine-Tooth Comb], and he did so now. Again, he did not sense any large predators.
Clever disliked being back here, but hadn’t opposed Dei when he asked if they could revisit here again. Clever remembered what happened last time, and didn’t want a repeat, but Dei managed to convey that it was important to him.
Dei wanted to inspect his reflection alone, so he asked Clever to stay back a bit with Fang and the red sword, before dropping them all off at the opening to the cave.
He walked towards the pool without fanfare, and he found that it didn’t scare him as much as last time. He was still afraid, but he felt a bit more prepared. More braced for what he would find. Now, the fear made room for his curiosity.
His heart quickened from both dread and excitement, but he easily made it to the pool without breaking down.
Finally he dropped to his knees in front of it, ignoring the feeling of mud on his legs, and leaned over, looking at himself.
He let out a quiet gasp as the first thing he saw was his eyes. So long ago, he’d asked the System to give him heterochromia, but forgotten about it in lieu of everything else. Now, he saw the results of this decision, and a jumbled mix of emotions rose within him.
His left eye was amethyst, while his right eye was ruby.
The right eye was what he focused on right now, seeing a familiar feature in it. His mom had ruby red eyes, and he was deeply reminded of her now. He could picture her face in his mind, looking at him with the brilliant sparkling red as she made him laugh just by playing with him.
He could feel the fur between his hands as he clung to her in the market, the sound of her voice, and the secure hand on is back holding him to her hip.
Looking at his left eye, he regretted his decision slightly to not pick the color brown. While it was generic, it was his fathers eye, and he would have given much to have a reminder of him now.
The past was the past, though, and he inspected the amethyst color, trying to suppress his regret and find an unbiased opinion on it.
The amethyst, like his ruby eye, had small glittering specks in the iris. They both had jagged edges, ending in the pupil, that gave them the look of cut gems. The purple also provided a beautiful contrast to the rubies red and, taken together, Dei felt some of the remorse about his hasty decision recede. It was weird, complimenting the look of his own eyes, but he couldn’t exactly help it.
Looking at them both, he felt a wave of relief. It was confirmed that this truly was him. He made the decision to have these two eyes, and he could see the result of that decision now. Whatever the rest of his body looked like, Dei could be sure that it was his.
The rest of his face was both expected and not. He could finally see that he had the white hair and skin of other gem dwellers. The skin, he knew about from just looking at the rest of his body, but it looked a bit odd after having memories of seeing Leven in the mirror of his past life.
It made sense, and he knew that his face and hair would be paper-white, but it was interesting to see.
The next, and most surprising feature on his face, was a massive scar along his right cheek. It startled him at first to see, because it was something he didn't expect. Thinking back, though, he remembered where he’d gotten it.
During his fight with the Wraith, its claw pierced his right cheek, completely tearing all the muscles in that side out, and causing it to hang limply. Now, the perfectly white smooth skin was interrupted by an uneven, discolored pink-ish gash.
He’d never seen scars on anyone back home, but he was sure they’d been injured before, meaning that there was a way to remove them. If he wanted to though, he would decide later. He didn’t like the look of it, if he was being honest with himself, but he thought it was a more accurate representation of how he saw himself.
He didn’t exactly like who he was at times, or how his situation made him act. When he decimated the Lorpee population, he felt hideous at the pain he caused them. How could people look at him, and not see that?
His mind wasn’t perfectly unblemished. It had hurt and healed, but the damage left marks. He would never be able to let his guard down like he had in his previous life, just relaxing without fear of attack. That wasn’t necessarily a bad trait to have in this dangerous new world, but it was a scar. It was a result of all the danger he’d faced and the defense of more to come.
How could he look inward, seeing the overgrown remains of an abandoned battlefield, and have no way to show that physically? To have his body be completely unblemished?
The scar was ugly, but it wasn’t bad. It was a feature of him, and it was accurate.
He stopped looking too closely at his features, just taking a moment to see himself in the reflection. He memorized his own face, so he wouldn’t forget it. The way his bone structure shaped it, the slight puff to his cheeks and the definition to his jawline…
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‘Wait a minute’ he thought to himself, and squinted as he looked close ‘I look like my dad!’ he realized, and laughed. Here he was, worried about not having a part of his father in his reflection, but he’d glossed over how the entire reflection looked like his dad.
Even the scar didn’t look out of place when he imagined it like that. Dei was an almost exact replica of a slightly younger version of his dad.
Even though his dad never had scars on his face, Dei wouldn’t be surprised if he had them along his body, and he looked like someone who should have scars.
The resemblance even helped him reconcile the look of his own ugly mark. While he didn’t like the look of it on his face, he thought it wouldn’t look bad on his father. People always saw themselves differently than others, so would people say the same thing about him? Would people say that his scar fit him well?
He took a deep breath and sighed as he stood up, finally ready to move on. He was glad he’d come all the way here, finally feeling peace at reconciling his mind and body.
He wasn’t okay yet, but he was getting better.
* * *
[Skill Leveled Up: Solidity (23) -> (66)]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Fortitude: Low-Common 73%] has strengthened into [Fortitude: High-Common: 28%]]
[Skill Leveled Up: Homeostasis (38) -> (46)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (66) -> (67)]
Again leaving the waterfalls behind him, Dei thought of how he had some sort of spiritual journey during both instances of venturing here. If this happened every time, he’d need to come here more often.
He found himself humming a tune as he continued on to checkpoint three.
* * *
The caves were quiet yet again as he ventured forward. It made sense that he wouldn’t be attacked constantly, as if everything was in a constant cycle of fighting, there probably wouldn’t be as many strong creatures.
He was also faced with a new interesting fact, that animals leveled up naturally from just living. Clever was telling him about it, and apparently, Clever was already level eighty one.
He thought on how this would affect the ecosystem, and saw that some animals might avoid fighting all together, in favor of endlessly leveling up. Even if it was slow, there had to be some that became strong enough.
There were also a few types of animals, in his previous world, that were functionally immortal. In a world of magic? He would bet everything that immortality was much easier to achieve. Were there some old giants out there who’d never fought anything, but were crazy high levels? Like an immortal jellyfish which managed to reach level two thousand because it’d been growing since the beginning of time, or something?
That particular situation was funny, but it did have dangerous implications on old beasts. More directly relevant to him, monsters wouldn’t risk fighting him if they didn’t believe they could win. Why take a dangerous shortcut when just waiting would get you to the same place?
It was getting later in the day, so Dei stopped thinking about monsters, and started looking for a good area to set up a camp for the night. “Camp” was a loose term in his case, closer to “a place to lie down.” Unless he intended to sit around Clever for a little bit, he wasn’t going to have a fire. His naturally high Physical stat helped protect him against the harmful effects of the cold, and his [Homeostasis] Skill was more than enough to retain heat in order to get comfortable. Finally coming upon a moderately-sized crack in the wall, he set about digging away the sharper stones before squeezing himself in,then widening an area for himself and using the extra rocks he dug out to block up the entrance a bit. He would still let air through, it would just be harder for monsters to immediately attack him if he was found.
* * *
Jolting awake shortly after he’d drifted off, Dei immediately had his hand on both Fang and the red sword, raising them as he squished himself further back into the crevice he’d dug into.
[Vigilance] was in overdrive, and he didn’t know why.
Clever stood guard near the entrance, startled by Dei’s quick movements, but Dei snatched him up, putting himself between Clever and the entrance.
After Dei opened a line of communication, Clever sent back feelings of alarm and confusion. He could not sense any monsters close to them, and was concerned for Dei.
Dei sent back that he did sense something, even if he didn’t know what. Vigilance was a Skill that took advantage of his subconscious mind. Even if he didn’t see anything or know what was out there, an unnatural sense told him that he was in danger.
Heart pounding in his ears, they sat in silence, waiting. Dei started saving up heat using his Homeostasis Skill the moment his eyes opened, and it was reaching a critical mass now. Instead of continuing to build it, he held the heat steady, ready to explode anything around them at a moment's notice.
Sweating from both the heat and nervousness, Dei carefully scanned everything with his Tremor Sense.
Fine-Tooth Comb found nothing, and he didn’t see anything, but there was something there.
Not even High Mind could piece together what Vigilance saw, yet everything else missed.
He was reminded again that, even if he had a high tier Racial ability, some creatures had higher tier Racial abilities. His Tremor Sense was not infallible.
Sitting in the silence for the next six minutes, Vigilance finally relaxed, allowing him to release a breath he’d held. He didn’t even know he could hold his breath for so long, until now.
He gave Clever the all-clear, that they were safe for now, and said they would be moving places.
They could either go back the way they came, or continue forward to checkpoint three. If Dei chose wrong, would he run into the creature again? Would it take the chance to attack him while he was more vulnerable, not protected by three walls?
He couldn’t risk it.
Instead of exiting his small camp, he turned to the walla opposite of the entrance, and started digging as fast as he could. It would take time, but there were other cave systems that would not be as easy to reach from the place he’d come. The only way to follow him would be to either take a winding path, break a wall themselves, or go through the crack he was digging.
He was using the dirt to block the path behind him, so his entrance wouldn’t be an option, and breaking through the wall would be much easier to spot. No matter how stealthy, digging a hole in the stone would always result in a hole that could be spotted.
Almost naturally, he slipped into the motions of digging through the dirt, lying on his belly and pushing forward. The stone was easier than mud to move, and he’d taken another deep breath before enclosing himself in the stone . Clever clung to his neck, protected from the falling rock by Dei’s body. Any time Clever said that he needed to take a breath, Dei would release some air from his lungs into the korgonda’s face.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it only needed to work for half a minute, until he successfully came out the other end.
Bursting through the wall into an almost disconnected section of the cave system, Dei got back into his feet and broke into a full-tilt sprint. He couldn’t let himself be caught.
What was one night without sleeping in favor of survival?
* * *
Panting as he came to a stop, Dei finally slipped back into another hole, hiding. He’d sprinted, ran, jogged, and walked in equal measure for the last twelve hours, and he had to sit and take a break.
He’d emptied his waterskin and filled it twice on springs coming from random points in the walls, and he emptied it again now, drinking greedily.
When he was done, he asked Clever and Fang to watch out, before falling into a fitful slumber.
* * *
Two more hours later, he awoke. Again, the situation played out where Vigilance spotted something nothing else could, and they tensely watched for enemies. Again, it went away after a few minutes.
Dei realized that it would not be so easy to escape whatever it was chasing them, and he would need the rest. It would be a risk, but he had to be in a better shape if he was going to face something with a high-tier stealth ability.
Making sure entrance was still blocked with enough holes for air, Dei made the executive decision to go back to sleep.
An hour later, the situation repeated.
Thirty minutes later, again. This time, he didn’t risk falling asleep, digging through the stone and running again. Three and a half hours of rest would have to do.
* * *
Only running for three hours this time before finding a place to sleep, he was ready when it happened again, two hours after he closed his eyes. He wondered if, whatever it was that tracked him, was trying to triangulate his location, pinging him them closing in, getting closer with each scan.
If that was true, the pattern would repeat. In one hour, it would find him again.
Sure enough, one hour after he’d gone back to sleep, he felt his Vigilance wake him, and he was ready.
He didn’t wait the extra thirty minutes, not worth the risk for the rest.
He broke through the stone once more, and set out running.
During his runs, he was safe. Vigilance never acted out. But when he stopped to sleep, it always found him.
Only when he stopped to sleep as well… exactly one hour after he closed he started drifting off, it found him.
Was it reliant on sleeping? Or… Dreaming.
Gargeth warned him that there was a Dream affinity, he was potentially being tracked by one such creature.
He also realized two things. One, it had to be immune to sleeping itself, or he would have left it behind when he ran for twelve hours straight. Instead, it still closed in on him. Two, it had to have some way to either phase through walls, dig, or travel a lot faster than him, since it was always the same interval of time before the next mental ping.
But what? What was it?
He looked back over the route he’d taken to reach his current sleeping spot, and there was something odd about the caves he’d taken, but he couldn’t spot what.
He kept running. He was well rested enough to be confident in taking something on, and he planned to begin resting in naps, rather than full rests, to help keep him running.
As the thought occurred to him, though, something else appeared in front of him. He ground to a halt, nearly tripping, as his Tremor sense detected a figure just around the corner.
Somehow, without his noticing, a familiar form got very close to him. He wasn’t sure if he should laugh, cry, or scream, as the figure could only be described as a human.