The entire dungeon shuddered and everyone stopped what they were doing, standing alert.
Space seemed to unfurl where the crack in space began, like layers of an onion peeled back. He could almost feel the beginnings of another space before the system intervened.
Spatial Anomaly Detected in Dungeon #011171
Temporary Admin has been Notified
Temporary Admin not Found
Error logged
No other system messages followed, and the crack started to heal. Before it healed completely, however, he focused his senses entirely on the layers that had started to unravel.
He could feel a network of ether connected to something his senses failed to perceive. He sacrificed vitality for perception, but even then he couldn't identify the core. Was it a core?
He didn't have a chance to find out before the crack sealed up completely and the layers that were visible a few seconds ago disappeared.
"What did you do." Melissa and Cassandra said at the same time with the same tone.
Why do they look at me... It could be anyone!
They didn't wait for an answer and started getting ready to leave. Cassandra quickly took her backpack and Melissa followed right behind her.
He wondered what happened with notifying the temporary admin. What was a temporary admin and why couldn't the system find it. He teleported above Melissa's head, not bothering to walk on his own.
"Really, what did you do? I've never seen that kind of response from the system." Melissa asked him while they were half walking, half running.
Kiel didn't move from his spot on top of her head. "I cracked the space... a bit?" he answered. He really wasn't expecting any reaction, much less from the system itself. Thankfully it seemed that was it. The response was a bit scary, but nothing happened and they were almost outside the dungeon.
And of course when he let out a sigh of relief that was when the system next found the time to drop them another notification. Or maybe it was just him because no one else reacted.
You have interfered with system procedural operations! Temporary title granted; Troublemaker.
He coughed in surprise, almost falling from Melissa's head. He quickly read the description of the title, feeling the unfairness rise in his body. Why was he getting penalized for experimenting! The title didn't even say for how long it would stick to him, and for that entire period he would be getting twenty percent less experience right when he needed it the most.
He thought that the system wasn't able to find a temporary admin, what the heck was this?
He couldn't help but want to vent somewhere, which was good because thankfully they were heading to another dungeon.
Cassandra wanted to roll her eyes at his antics, "Try not to piss off an omnipotent, omniscient, unknown and ever-present system... this time," she said and Melissa translated for him.
In response he pulled at the bag Cass was wearing, trying to store it in his inventory-like skill. She stopped her fast-paced walk, letting Melissa catch her breath. Knowing what she was going to ask, he answered Melissa, "I tried to help Cass with the bag. Didn't work."
Melissa didn't have the breath to laugh, but he could see her smile... after she removed him from her head. "You're heavy, also try not to give her more excuses to throw an arrow at your behind," she said.
She was too kind to do that. He was probably fine for another two or three attempts before she actually considered it... probably.
They left the dungeon shortly after and after a quick rest, they continued on to the lizard dungeon. Thankfully it was somewhat close, so they didn't have to walk far. A short forty-minute walk actually. The lizard dungeon was actually on top of a small hiking route on the other side of the mountain. The view was incredible and the sense of adventure excited him, getting his mind off the temporary title.
Before all that, however, he moved ahead of the group. "I want to test something," he told them.
He was in the first room, barely inside the dungeon. A soft pale blue light was emanating from the moss in the cave. It was almost an exact replica of the previous three dungeons they'd completed. He really hoped higher-ranked dungeons weren't like this.
He didn't move further inside and he hadn't even met the first monster of the dungeon. "This is barely considered inside the dungeon, right? Let's see how the system reacts now," he said out loud with grumbling meows, "It already gave me a troublemaker title. It's somewhat of a risk, but I can't leave my most potent tool on the table like that."
He really hoped the issue was with cracking the space inside the boss cavern, but he would be testing that too if this one went well.
He released the ether in the world outside and integrated it with the space in front of him. Space weakened far faster than it did inside the boss cavern, and he was able to cast Spatial Rend faster than he expected. The extra levels did help and he could see this being viable before the tenth level if all things went well.
The last time he used it in a somewhat normal space was inside Melissa's house. It made him wonder how powerful it would be now inside a quiet zone. That said, it was going to be hard to actually use it safely in the middle of a fight. More testing, more tests... it was high time he got to testing these things.
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Space cracked, twisted, and shattered in front of him. Although it was terrifyingly beautiful as always, he couldn't sense anything unordinary. He didn't know what he'd been expecting... maybe another alien hiding beneath the veil?
Pushing his will into the crack and with the aid of his skill, the crack expanded outward in the blink of an eye, draining his ether in vast amounts alongside with it. The tear got to about ten meters in length and less than a quarter meter in diameter before he could support its expansion no further.
If there were any monsters in its path, they would have been obliterated, which went about the same for his friends so using this in a fight would be... tricky. Not that he wouldn't try, he had a plan in mind. Hopefully though the skill became more usable at its level ceiling.
He really didn't want anyone near him when experimenting with this, and a dungeon seemed to be the best place for it, provided the system didn't take offense again.
When he went back outside he was almost out of ether with barely enough to teleport once or twice. Honestly, he should probably ease up on the teleports when fighting. It made fighting easy, but it could also act as a trump card instead of a crutch. At least for the normal lizards he would try to finish without it.
Entering with the rest of the group, they encountered the first lizards fairly fast. Neither Melissa, nor Cassandra bothered to attack in the first few caverns. Honestly, the lizards seemed even weaker than he was expecting. The ones he was used to fighting in the wild seemed more desperate once driven to a corner. On the other hand he could feel these lizards giving it their all from the get go and then... well, they killed them and that was it.
Being able to distinguish the difference in behavior between the ones outside the dungeon and these made them feel more... artificial.
True to his words, or at least the ones he said to himself, he didn't teleport once. Though he ended up taking a hit or two because of that, he wasn't really hurt by them. When the first lizard first landed a hit with its tail, he was expecting to be in a lot of pain, only to barely feel the attack. If the lizard didn't have the weight advantage, he wouldn't have even moved from his spot.
"You sure you're okay?" Melissa asked from behind.
He nodded and she reluctantly let it go.
It wasn't that they were weak, but more like he'd forgotten how much an entire grade worth of difference actually was. Granted, when swarmed by enemies that didn't really help, or fighting a boss, or mind manipulating flying nuisances.
In the end the lizards were much like the goblins. They had an advantage in strength and weight, but to compensate they were lower in number. He could handle that much with Edel alone. He didn't use his ether at all, letting himself regenerate it passively as he fought his way through the dungeon.
When the lizard's numbers and strength increased towards the end he did end up taking more hits but Edel fought more savagely in response, tearing apart the lizards two at a time.
Checking his ether, he noticed it was regenerating slowly but steadily.
Gathering ether passively wasn't a problem in high ether density areas, but he spent most of his time outside of areas like that, so... he turned to Melissa.
"Is there a way to speed up ether regeneration?" he asked her a few moments before they saw the boss cavern.
She nodded, sitting down and resting her back against the cold wall, her face illuminated softly by the glowing moss. "Are you planning on spending it all at once? And just for the record, meditation would do the trick but it's hard to keep active while doing other stuff without the skill."
They stopped to take a breath before entering the boss cavern. Although he and Edel had done most of the work, having Melissa and Cassandra helping from behind helped take the pressure off when the lizards got enough numbers.
He nodded to Melissa and told them to wait outside, he was going to try out something stupid, again, and as always.
Cassandra seemed to be... praying? Oh come on, have some faith in me!
Turning back to the enormous Lizard resting in the middle of the cavern he shook the idle thoughts out of his head.
The boss will rush towards me either way, so the rift in space doesn't need to reach all the way. A few meters should be enough... will be enough.
He released his ether in the space in front of him and took a step inside the large cavern. The bison-sized lizard quickly took notice as did another half a dozen smaller lizards. He ignored them, focusing on speeding up the process as much as possible while also not getting himself killed from his own attack.
The space in front of him was like a brick wall, but he'd been expecting that. He focused his will in breaking only a small point in the space in front of him and expanding from there. The Lizard boss reacted the fastest and being the quickest of the lot, it also got close enough that if it turned to attack him with its tail it would probably hit. But it didn't. It opened its mouth wide enough to eat two of Kiel and the rest of the lizards sped up in turn.
Even if they'd turned to run away at this point, nothing would save them.
Space cracked and if he could smile he would be wearing a Cheshire grin right about now.
The small crack expanded from the point of broken space, eating his ether like crazy and expanding in front of him. Cassandra was ready to step in, but Melissa held her back, sensing his smugness as space cracked where the boss stepped into the very next second.
The crack didn't go further than a meter away, and a quarter of that in diameter, despite eating the remainder of his ether. He aimed it right where its head would pass, making sure it would also cover him in case it decided to attack with its tail.
One step, then half of the lizard's head vanished. Due to the low light in the dungeon in general the others saw the lizard approach Kiel one moment and the next it collapsed on the ground, a big chunk of its head missing.
The other lizards rushing to attack, stopped. They looked at him warily, angered by the death of the biggest lizard in the room but not deterred by it. After seeing the boss fall, he helped the crack heal with Spatial Manipulation and gave the okay for the rest of them to enter.
Melissa entered last, attacking first, and taking care of a lizard with two fire arrows, each cast pushing back the dog-sized lizard and causing serious second degree burns. The second fire arrow ending the poor lizard's life.
Cassandra and Edel killed the rest in seconds, with Edel scoring one more kill than Cass in the end.
He checked a moment later to see a system message informing him of an increase in his body attribute, always nice to see those, even though his new title took away some of that joy. Maybe he wouldn't be leveling a lot, but he would be growing stronger.
You have killed an essence enhanced monster! Part of its essence joins yours, you have gained +1 in the Body attribute.
Considering he offed the boss before the others had a chance to enter the cavern, he was worried his actions cost the others the attribute point. Thankfully that didn't seem to be the case as all the others got the same system message.
Letting out a sigh of relief, he let out another one when he didn't get another message about cracking the space in the boss cavern. Whether that was because he closed the crack immediately after he killed the boss, or because he did it while the boss was still alive, he didn't know and didn't care to find out at this moment.
Name - Kiel
Level - 17
Titles - Traveler, Unyielding, Ritualist, Scholar, Troublemaker*
Body - 28
Mind - 27
Spirit - 35
Skills - Unbound Adaptation (Lvl 15), Climbing (Lvl 7), Ether Sense (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Sense (Lvl 4), Spatial Manipulation (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Rend (Lvl 6), Spatial Shift (Lvl 10) [Max], Ether Manipulation (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Storage (Lvl 2)
"That was amazing! What did you do?" Melissa asked in excitement, sneaking up on him and grabbing him in a hug.
He tried to escape, but lacking the ether to teleport, his only option was to wiggle out of her embrace. Not wanting to hurt her accidentally he didn't put too much strength into his efforts. She seemed determined to hug him to death and he meowed in protest.
After she eased on the hug, he took a shuddering breath.
He swore to save enough ether for a Spatial Shift next time, otherwise Melissa was going to be the end of him.