You have slain human Devon Black, level 8.
Soul item: Aura chain has reached level 9.
Soul magic: has reached level 5.
Power level has increased to level 7.
Soul magic level five achieved – Milestone ability granted:
Ability choices:
1. Duplication: Creates an illusionary clone of the user.
“Again, no choice in ability,” thought Barry with mild disappointment, “At least this one sounds pretty awesome I guess. I’m basically a ninja,” he sniggered as he thought back to one of his favourite anime from back on earth.
The laugh hurt Barry’s still exposed ribs and he winced at the sensation. At least the ever-present water droplets provided a mildly soothing sensation to his many burns. All Barry wanted to do right now was sleep. He was exhausted but his many pains made this task impossible. Instead, he just lay still as water seeped into his wounds. Looking for any distraction from the pain he opened his status screen and considered where to invest his four available points.
Reflecting on the recent battle, Barry had to admit he was fairly pleased with how things had gone. His tactics had managed to give him the edge over a stronger foe.
“He was a bit of an idiot though,” thought Barry, humbling himself.
Really the only thing Barry felt he could have done better was activate his heavy fortification skill before he was hit with the flame attack. Overall, he felt his vitality was crucial to his victory and he wanted to keep pushing it forward. His recent boost to strength had certainly helped and it was an area he felt he would want to keep improving. His mana stores were sufficient, but with learning his new soul magic skill he wondered if he would soon need more. Stamina was another stat that he wanted to grow further, as he had only just outlasted his opponent this time, far too close for his liking. He still felt that with his massive vitality he didn’t need to invest in dexterity or perception at this stage. He did want to invest in willpower, especially if he was going to clash with more people in the near future as he didn’t want to be subjected to anyone’s mind tactics that might render his huge health useless, plus the extra cognitive boost would always be handy. And he had no interest in manipulation. With that Barry placed one point each in vitality, stamina, mana and willpower and reviewed his progress.
Status Screen:
General stats:
* Race: Human
* Power level: 7
* Class: None
Magic stats:
* Magic level: 5
* Primary affinity: Illusion
* Secondary affinity: None
Item stats:
* Item level: 9
* Item name: Aura chain (epic)
Soul stats:
Physical stats:
* Vitality: 22 + 5 = 27
* Strength: 4
* Stamina: 3
* Dexterity: 2
Mental stats:
* Mana: 5
* Perception: 2
* Manipulation: 1
* Willpower: 3
Titles:
* None
Other:
* Free points: 0
Skills:
* Expert linguist
* Inspection
* Item duplication
* Rapid recovery
* Retraction
* Heavy fortification
* Duplication
Barry smiled as he analysed his stats. His vitality still looked ridiculous compared to everything else, but he felt comfortable with that. If he had just one or two less points in vitality he would have certainly perished in that last fight, let alone all his other life threatening encounters in the past few days. With that thought he looked across at Devon with sadness in his heart. The big man’s forehead was buried in the dirt. The realisation of what he had just done hit Barry and he felt ill. He rolled away from Devon’s corpse and dry retched, which further aggravated his wounds. Wincing in pain, Barry once again rolled onto his back as tears fell from his eyes. He had killed a person. He was a murderer. He couldn’t even claim self-defence as technically he’d antagonised his opponent. Maybe Devon wouldn’t have attacked him if he just helped him escape. Barry will never know. No matter which way he spun it, or how he tried to justify it, Barry was a killer.
Looking for any way of getting out of his own thoughts Barry turned his attention to his new ability. He may still have been low on stamina and health, but his mana levels were respectable. Without any hesitation Barry activated his skill and instantly a perfect replica of himself appeared standing beside him, giving him a fright. The clone was perfect, right down to every hair, every bruise and every scar that existed on Barry’s true body. Barry also found that he could mentally control his illusionary clone with ease, as if there was a separate part of his brain that he had never accessed before that knew just what to do. He could make the clone run, jump, and attack at his will, he could even make the clone speak. Most surprisingly, he found that he could see through the eyes of the clone. However, the new, broader view was awkward and uncomfortable when combined with his normal eyesight. The two overlapping planes of vision made his head hurt and after a second or two he had to close his true eyes to keep utilising the vision of the clone. Physical attacks would pass right through the clone as they did with his illusionary chain. Barry continued his experiments, testing out the range of the illusion, finding it could get around thirty metres away from him before he would lose control and the clone would vanish. The last observation Barry made, aside from the fact the skill was awesome, was that it drained his mana much quicker than simply summoning an illusion chain, lasting only thirty seconds in total before his mana depleted completely.
“So cool,” Barry thought, extremely pleased with the result.
Starting to feel a little better, Barry looked down at his current state. The diagonal wound across his front was still deep and prominent, however the round burn marks were healing nicely. His orange prison pants were now splattered brown and red from dirt and blood. He pushed himself to his feet with a groan as he began to look around, now able to fully appreciate this third room for the first time without fear of being attacked. One more realisation hit Barry as he assessed the environment, he had just killed the one person who might have had some clues about how to solve this caves puzzle. Barry didn’t believe for a second that the gods would create two separate challenges for initiates just to get to this point and be stuck forever. There had to be something here that the others had not found, and he was determined to be the one to discover it.
As he hobbled through the large cavern, partly hunched over to protect his wounds, Barry was finally able to fully appreciate the true expanse of the space. The entire cavern was completely flat with the exception of a multitude of large boulders scattered around. The red and white spotty mushrooms made up the majority of the ground, apart from the area where Devon and Barry had fought. There, only dirt and bits of squished mushroom parts lay. Barry also took the time to go around to each of the large boulders, thirteen in total. Each one was around four metres high, but they all differed in length, width, and shape. It looked a little, unnatural. The boulders were also positioned strangely. Most of them were spread equally apart in a near perfect circle formation, with the final boulder resting in the very centre of the circle, this one rectangular in shape, around four metres long but only twenty centimetres wide.
As he kept circling the stones Barry tried to uncover any hidden pattern, but nothing was jumping out to him. Every rock was unique, there were no similarities at all from what Barry could tell. The other thing he found interesting was the boulder that Devon had struck earlier had actually moved from its original position by about half a metre from the force of the strike. Barry placed his hands on the large stone and found that with just a bit of effort, he was able to move it. It seemed impossible that such little force could budge the massive boulder, but with everything Barry had been through already, nothing surprised him anymore. If he hadn’t of seen the boulder move from Devon’s strike, he wouldn’t have even tried to budge it himself, it was that unrealistic to comprehend. Barry nudged the boulder further away from its original position. Immediately a spray of mist shot towards him from within the stone and Barry felt his stamina drain significantly by more than twenty percent.
“Well, that’s something,” thought Barry as he walked around to the other side of the boulder and pushed it all the way back to its starting position without issue.
The hit to his stamina did cause Barry to reflect on his battle with Devon. Now that he thought about it, maybe Devon had been hit with the drain to his stamina when he’d mistakenly struck and moved the boulder. Perhaps without the cavern assisting in reducing the big man’s stamina, Barry might not have been able to defeat him. It was possible, probable even, but there was nothing Barry could do about it now and no sense in focussing on the past. He was the victor, regardless of what happened, and he had to solve this puzzle to escape this cave.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Barry spent the next couple of hours testing each of the rocks one by one. He found that the boulders on the edge of the circle all caused him damage to his stamina when he tried to move them away from their position. However, if he rotated them, he found that at a certain point they almost clicked into position, becoming much harder to move afterwards. Barry felt that he was on the right track so he went around to edge of the peripheral stones until he had rotated them all into their preferred alignment. After a few hours he finally clicked the last stone into place and found that still nothing happened.
“I must be missing something,” thought Barry as he turned his attention to the central stone.
As Barry circled the central stone, he ran his hands along its rough surface. Two thirds of the way along the length of the stone he noticed his fingers pass over a subtle vertical groove. Barry paused and returned to the groove, raising an eyebrow in intrigue. He followed the path of the groove with his finger and saw that it seemed to go from the ground all the way to the top of the tall stone, although he couldn’t quite reach that high to be sure.
“It’s not one stone, it’s two!” thought Barry as he realised something.
This shape was familiar, very familiar. The rocks formed a clock.
Barry scrambled up onto one of the peripheral boulders to get a better vantage point. The strange shapes of the boulders suddenly made sense to him now that they were all positioned correctly, and although they were not from any human language he could recognise, he somehow instinctively understood each of the twelve numbers. He almost felt stupid for not noticing it sooner, but it was only from this height that the true pattern of the stones was appreciable. Barry had a pretty good idea of what he needed to do, he had to move the clock hands to the correct time. But what was the correct time? Barry sat cross legged stop the stone and pondered. There had to be a logical time that the gods would use. Nothing else in this cavern had been random, there was a method behind the madness, and he felt this puzzle was no different. Despite this, no matter what Barry tried, he just couldn’t think of what the time could be given he was stuck in this damn dark cave. That was until he reflected back on the very moment he was brought to the training grounds. He thought about his previously weak body lying in the hospital bed back on earth and remembered it was almost midnight when the nurses had done their last ward round.
“I wonder if that’s it,” Barry thought as he decided to just go for it.
Jumping down from the large boulders with a thud Barry walked over to the central stones. The shorter boulder, which Barry guessed was the hour hand, was already positioned in line with the twelve, whilst the long hand, or minute hand, was facing the six. Barry placed his hands on the end of the longer stone and pushed it around until it was positioned right next to the shorter stone. The boulder clicked and Barry released his pressure and he felt hopeful that he had solved the puzzle. A second later he was hit with a powerful jet of water appearing from within the stone and his stamina was drained to nothing. Exhausted and frustrated, Barry collapsed to the floor, just barely able to hold himself up on his hands and knees.
“I guess I’m not that clever after all,” Barry thought as he coughed up water.
As he stared down at the mushroom covered floor before him Barry contemplated what he should do next. His stamina didn’t recover nearly as quickly as his vitality, or even his mana, and these middle stones hit like a brick. It was going to be a very slow process to work out what time he needed to set the clock to if he had this outcome multiple times. Barry’s vision was a little blurry from the exhaustion and all he could see was a sea of red and white from all the mushrooms. He willed himself to reach a hand to his bag to grab out some stamina grass and was relieved to find enough time had passed between his previous dose for it to have an effect. His stamina bar extended a little and his vision became clearer as a little energy returned to his body.
Still staring at the mushrooms Barry saw something odd. The mushrooms seemed to be arranged into circular groups. As he turned his head to look around it became clearer, they were definitely growing in little circular clusters. As he focussed further, he saw that all the mushrooms were red with white spots of varying amounts, except the central mushroom. Every mushroom in the centre of a cluster had exactly three white spots.
“Three in the centre, maybe that’s it?” thought Barry as he was beginning to feel rejuvenated.
Now well enough to get up and walk around he explored a little further. The pattern of rings of mushrooms around a central mushroom repeated throughout the cavern, always with three spots atop the mushroom in the centre. He decided to let his stamina recover a bit more before testing his theory on the clock boulders.
Barry spent the next bit of time reluctantly looting the corpses, finding nothing much of value. He would be willing to take the items and weapons of these unfortunate souls if he could find any, but he drew the line at removing their clothing, it just felt too wrong. He then went back to the battle site and managed to locate the knife that Devon had thrown away after Barry had stabbed him with it, as well as the empty vial that had contained the health potion Barry had consumed. Barry found it interesting that Devon’s staff had vanished the moment he died, and it seemed none of the other dead initiates had soul items with them either.
“Once the soul of the user dies, I guess so too does the soul item,” Barry thought.
After stocking up on mushrooms, looking around for any other clues, and waiting for his stamina to recover to an acceptable level, Barry finally made his way back to the central stones. He took a deep breath and rotated the hour hand stone around to three so that the time now read three o’clock. The boulder made a familiar click followed by a series of clunks. Suddenly, Barry felt water at his feet pooling up. He looked down and saw it wasn’t just his feet, the whole cavern was quickly filling with water. Barry saw the corpses of the fallen people starting to bob and rise with the water. He started to panic, fearing he had in fact triggered a massive trap, but there was nothing he could do about it now, he just had to focus on staying afloat.
Within a couple of minutes Barry guessed he must have risen more than one hundred metres in the air from where he had just stood on the ground around the boulders. Another minute passed as Barry kicked and paddled in place, thankful that he had waited for some stamina to return before pushing ahead with the clock puzzle, otherwise he would surely have drowned. Another minute went by and Barry was starting to feel as if this wet nightmare was never going to end. It was at that moment that he noticed something above... The ceiling. For the first time Barry could see the rocky roof of the cavern. He also came to the sudden realisation that if this water continued to rise as it was, he would soon run out of room and air as the water hit the roof.
He splashed around in the water but there was nothing to grasp, no options other than to stay afloat. The ceiling quickly approached, and just before Barry was about to take a final deep breath, the water stopped rising. Still paddling, Barry looked around and his eyes landed on a rocky platform resting at the same level as the water, protruding from the wall a mere two metres from the ceiling. Immediately he swam over to it, pushing the lifeless corpse of Devon out of the road as he went. Finally, his hands touched land and he scrambled up onto the platform. The moment his body landed on the rock the water started to recede back to the ground below. Barry’s chest heaved and his breathing was rapid, but he was back on dry land. After catching his breath Barry rolled over and peered carefully over the edge of the platform. The sight made his guts turn as he saw he was hundreds of metres in the air, unable to even make out the ground below. He quickly shuffled back, away from the edge and spun around to see another wooden door nestled into the rocky wall, this one glowing with a golden lustre.
“Here we go again,” Barry said to himself as he stood and walked over to the door.
It appeared to have a much stronger magical aura than the previous doors he had come across. It oozed with mystical properties and the golden light shone brighter through the cracks than what he was used to. His logical mind told him he should wait to restore his stats as had been his standard tactic so far. But the fear of falling from such a great height outweighed this, and without hesitation he pushed through the door and walked into the light.
Congratulations on being the first initiate to complete the hidden dungeon: Eternal drip cavern. Reward: 6 free points allocated.
Barry felt some golden energy enter his body as the message appeared in his mind. He smiled mildly, ecstatic with the fact that he had completed the cavern challenges, but still filled with sadness at the fates of the other initiates, even Devon. But now was not the time for mourning, Barry knew this was only the beginning of the challenges he would face within the training grounds. Six free points was amazing, the same as achieving three soul item or magic level ups, and a welcome boost to his stats. But that wasn’t all, for in the centre of the glistening room was a familiar gold glowing, intricately engraved, loot box.
Rushing over to the loot box Barry immediately opened it and reached in to access its contents. He pulled out what looked to be a thick, olive-green pair of trousers of some sort. The fabric felt sturdy yet soft and pleasant to touch. Barry ran his hands over the item, feeling the material flow gently over his skin. Like the gloves he obtained from the previous loot box this piece of clothing glistened with magical properties. Barry wondered if the items from these boxes were truly random as it felt a bit coincidental that he had just had his gown torn up, and straight away he was rewarded with a replacement piece of clothing, so he wasn’t completely naked. Plus, wearing nothing but a pair of trousers showed off Barry’s rapidly growing muscles, which he felt was a bonus. Without further ado, he tore off his tattered gown, saving only a few scraps of it in his waist bag that were still somehow relatively clean, and slipped on the trousers and inspected their properties.
Inspection:
Trousers of the brawler: A specialised lower body garment with a basic self-repair function that was traditionally worn by the pit brawler champions of Geldy. Provides one additional stat point to strength, stamina and dexterity when worn.
“Not bad at all,” thought Barry as his smile was starting to broaden to its normal level.
When combining the free points he received from completing the dungeon and the trousers, he had just boosted his total stat points by nine, which was an improvement of around twenty percent, a massive power up. Before distributing his free points Barry took a look around the small room to see if there was anything else of value to be found. Now that the loot box had been claimed the golden glow within the room was a little duller. Apart from a small container holding within it the same moss, grass and mushrooms he had come across during his travels through the cavern there was nothing else to be found. Barry swiftly stocked up on a combination of the three natural stat boosters and headed towards the door on the other side of the room that he assumed was the exit.
Before exiting, a few thoughts entered Barry’s mind. There was definitely something weird about the way time worked in this cavern. At least that is what it seemed from what Devon had said. And if that was the truth, then would he be returned to the same time from which he left? Barry had no answers, he would just have to find out on the other side. Just before he did so he chose to allocate his six free points, Barry decided that with his new bonuses from the trousers he would try and even out some of his stats a little bit, except for vitality of course. He then placed one point into stamina, two into willpower, and the final three into his vitality before smiling at his progress.
Status Screen:
General stats:
* Race: Human
* Power level: 7
* Class: None
Magic stats:
* Magic level: 5
* Primary affinity: Illusion
* Secondary affinity: None
Item stats:
* Item level: 9
* Item name: Aura chain (epic)
Soul stats:
Physical stats:
* Vitality: 25 + 5 = 30
* Strength: 4 + 1 = 5
* Stamina: 4 + 1 = 5
* Dexterity: 2 + 1 = 3
Mental stats:
* Mana: 5
* Perception: 2
* Manipulation: 1
* Willpower: 5
Titles:
* None
Other:
* Free points: 0
Skills:
* Expert linguist
* Inspection
* Item duplication
* Rapid recovery
* Retraction
* Heavy fortification
* Duplication
Barry grinned widely at his stats, five in strength, stamina, mana and willpower looked very good, not to mention the massive thirty in vitality after bonuses from items were added. He felt strong, powerful, and sturdy, he was ready for whatever the training grounds would throw at him next. Focussing his attention back onto the wooden door in front of him Barry placed a hand on the doorknob, twisted it firmly, and walked back out into the training grounds.