A handful more fights like that and I'll run out of energy too. Hey wait a minute, I don't need glasses at all now. That's convenient, considering I left them on my bedside table.
Felix placed the fox corpse in his inventory and used the tree to pull himself up, careful not to aggravate his leg or arm wounds. The wounds seem to have stopped bleeding for now and Felix definitely didn't want to change that.
Open Map?
In front of Felix appeared a large map with only a small circle revealing itself. In the blackness of the unknown just to the north west of Felix was a small white dot. Lacking better options, a common phenomenon for him it seemed, Felix began limping towards the dot.
Pulling up the map every few hundred meters Felix made his way to the unknown waypoint. After just a few dozen meters of limping another fox jumped out from behind a tree and began chasing him down. Unfortunately 12 agility is not enough to safely outrun a large fox, especially not with a leg injury.
Felix ran as fast as he could gritting his teeth against the pain shooting up his injured leg every other step. As the fox cut it's distance to its prey down to about two hundred meters Felix spotted the waypoint in front of him. It was a hole in the side of a large stone sloping downwards like a burrow.
There was an archway engraved around the hole in geometric patterns. However, Felix didn't notice anything as he dove through the archway and smacked his hands where the handle would have been on a large wooden door.
Shit shit shit. Come on.
Puzzle Dungeon C
You have found a dungeon. Would you like to enter?
Yes
No
YES YES YES.
Felix found himself lying, face down, on the stone floor of a well lit corridor. Pulling himself up he looked around. Behind him hung a wooden door, identical to the one he used to get here. In front of him lay a long corridor ending in a fork.
Touching the door behind him Felix confirmed his suspicions.
Puzzle Dungeon C
Would you like to leave the dungeon?
Warning: You will be unable to retry this dungeon.
Yes
No
No.
Well shit. I guess it's kind of exciting. Also, thank god this is not a combat dungeon or something like that. First things first though. I need to figure out how to cast this stupid Mana Bolt.
Felix sat down and closed his eyes, based on all the fantasy he had read, he imagined a pool of blue liquid just behind his navel. He tried pulling a small thread from this pool and directing it into the shape of the spell form from the spell book.
His stomach grumbled, possibly in response to his attempted manipulation. Nothing else happened.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
After stubbornly trying and failing to summon arcane power for the majority of two hours Felix decided to just see what the dungeon had to offer. He got up and noticed his thigh was no longer complaining quite as loudly as before. Checking underneath his bandages, he noticed the wound was scabbed over now.
Checking his arm he found it mostly healed as well.
Vitality is awesome.
Felix stowed the bloody bandages in his inventory and started down the corridor with only a barely noticeable limp now. Reaching the fork at the end of the hallway he looked left, then right. Both forks visibly ended with a fork.
Felix went left for no particular reason. Coming to another fork he went left again. Felix followed the winding corridors at random until, finally, a room broke the monotony of the maze.
The room was entirely empty other than a large fountain in the middle and a table to its right. On the table lay a modest feast with enough food for 5 people to stuff themselves. The food itself was simple, some roast bird that looked like it could be chicken, fish, vegetable dishes and grains.
Is this supposed to be a rest room?
Felix sat at the table and ate as much food as he could. He also cured his mild dehydration he had been dealing with since he had woken up by drinking from the fountain. Finally he used the fountain to bathe himself. He carefully inspected his wounds for any signs of discoloration indicating infection of some sort.
Satisfied he wasn't going to die, Felix summoned his bed in the corner of the room and slept. He was surprisingly tired given he woke up only a handful of hours ago. Likely due to the spikes in adrenaline and the wounds healing themselves, and only partially a food coma setting in from stuffing himself.
Felix awoke some time later. Nothing in the room had changed except that the food on the table had replenished itself where Felix had taken his fill.
Felix stowed his bed and drank as much as he could. He then stowed all the food on the table in his inventory, hoping it wouldn't rot in there. He immediately realized his leg wasn't sore at all and stopped to check his wounds. They were completely gone without even a trace of a scar.
Felix made it to the first fork and was about to turn down the path he hadn't taken yet when he stopped.
Map
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Nothing happened. It seemed like his map was disabled within the maze.
That would have made this too easy. I should start mapping the maze myself shouldn't I? Then I'll know how to get back to the rest room, or the nearest one if there are multiple. Plus it should save a lot of time.
I have no writing utensil and barely a page of paper to write on. I do have 23 int though… I haven't used a mind palace since studying back in university. Let's see if I remember how this works.
Memory palaces aren't really designed for drawing out a shape and remembering it perfectly. However, I should be able to encode the turns I took to get here then just reverse them to get back. Then maybe I can figure out something better tomorrow.
Recalling the house he grew up in Felix mentally walked through his palace once, twice then a third time just to be sure he remembered. Then, he set out, this time every time he took a turn, he placed the turn in his palace at the next location.
For a memory palace to work effectively, usually Felix would exaggerate the information and make it ridiculous and therefore more memorable. Unfortunately, visually exaggerating a turn was difficult. Luckily his 23 intelligence seemed to make up for that. Felix followed the corridor and recorded his turn at every fork, only having to turn back and restart a half dozen times, until he reached the 100th fork.
Then he turned back and retraced his steps back to a previous fork and tried a different route. He continued this for a few hours until he finally decided to head back. He made it all the way back to the rest room and found the table remained empty, no new food had been replaced.
He sat down and pulled out a cooked fish fillet and made a salad. He quickly ate his meal and quenched his thirst. Then he set out again and continued to try different paths stopping at 100 recorded forks then trying again.
Finally after multiple hours of trying different paths Felix came across a room. Inside the room was completely empty except for a single chest at the far end. The floor was made up of a grid of tiles and looking closely Felix noticed two of the tiles were glowing.
Walking into the room, every time Felix stepped on a tile, the tile began to glow as well as all 4 adjacent tiles.
I recognize this, always loved these puzzles.
This was a fairly common puzzle in video games. It was simple enough, some of the tiles were lit, then he needed to press the correct tiles to turn them all off or on. With that in mind, Felix walked over to the lit tiles careful to step on each tile he crossed twice to keep the floor state unchanged.
Felix quickly depressed all of the glowing tiles. From there he stepped on tiles around those and quickly managed to put out all of the tiles. An audible click sounded from the end of the room and the tiles stopped reacting to Felix's steps.
Felix excitedly walked over and opened the chest. Inside he found a dagger, picking it up and inspecting it, it looked like a simple cutting tool.
[E - Common] Tutorial Dagger
A dagger, the preferred weapon of many. A simple cutting tool useful for all kinds of things.
Felix, only slightly disappointed, stowed the dagger in his inventory and continued his search. He backtracked and continued to try different forks for about 5 hours by Felix's estimate when he came across another room.
This room had almost the same layout as the last except there was no chest on the far end and a grid of tiles laid out in front of the empty space. This time, the tiles were smaller and there were two different kinds of tiles. Some were glowing while the others were evidently stone like the rest of the dungeon.
The glowing tiles were laid out in a grid amongst the normal tiles such that none of the glowing tiles were touching each other. The standard stone tiles formed paths to walk around the glowing tiles without stepping on them.
As soon as Felix stepped into the room all the glowing tiles dimmed. Then three of them lit up for a few seconds, then dimmed again. Felix waited a minute or so in case something else happened before doing anything.
Memory game? Simple enough.
Felix walked along the stone pathways and stepped on each of the tiles that had previously glowed. Upon stepping on the last one, all of the tiles glowed briefly then dimmed. Then after a second 5 tiles lit up for a few seconds then dimmed.
Felix continued to repeat the same pattern shown to him until there were 20 tiles lit, then the game changed. As soon as Felix recreated the pattern, the tiles all glowed then dimmed. Then the tiles started to light up in a sequence, each one going dim before the next lit itself. Twenty one tiles lit before finally they stopped.
Felix of course, recorded the coordinates in his memory palace and recited them perfectly.
This game continued until the sequence was 50 tiles long. Then they started to demonstrate the sequence faster, then a lot faster. At 96 tiles to the sequence, Felix could feel himself reaching his limit. He just couldn't record the tiles in sequence that quickly.
He barely managed to recall the 100 tile sequence when all the lights lit up, hopefully meaning he got it correct. At the end of the room the low rumble of stone on stone presented a chest raising from the ground. A short moment after the chest stopped it produced an audible click sound.
Felix walked over to open the chest. This chest was nicer than the last one, more ornate with fancy engravings and gold trim. The last one was a simple wooden chest you might have at the end of your bed, in the medieval ages.
Felix opened it to find a pair of boots. Pulling them out of the chest, he inspected them. The boots were made of a soft brown leather and reached just above his ankles. The soles appear to be made of some hard black material. The real strength of these boots however, surprisingly was not style.
[E - Special] Traveler's Boots of Sole Defense
Doubles your walking movement speed.
These boots are enchanted to prevent all damage and status conditions originating from below your feet. These will completely negate everything in the E tier or below and lessen the effect from any grade above E tier.
Lessening damage or status conditions above the E tier may damage the boots, permanently.
Sitting on the chest Felix slipped the boots on his bare feet. Astonishingly, even without socks, these were the most comfortable Felix's feet had ever been. The boots fit perfectly, as if they were magically molded to his feet.
Couldn't have been pants? The movement speed thing is nice but I'm not sure how useful the rest of the enchantment is.
Felix stood up and tried to stow the chest in his inventory, unfortunately he couldn't even move it. Giving up, Felix took one step and tripped barely saving his nose from breaking at the expense of his palms.
Doubles your walking movement speed, right. Baby steps then.
Felix carefully stood up and took another step towards the exit. Prepared this time, he managed not to fall. He circled the room a few times before getting the hang of it then set out. He checked a few more branches of the dungeon before deciding to just head back for the night.
Felix made it back to the rest room in less than half an hour.
I take it back, these are way better than pants. I love these boots.
Felix found the table completely refilled and stuffed himself before stowing the rest in his inventory. He quenched his thirst and retrieved his bed. Before sleeping however, Felix wanted to test an idea he had earlier.
The System said the stats are a representation of the real world, theoretically, I could work out to increase my stats then.
Felix ran through a basic routine of body weight exercises then ran a short distance down the current dungeon branch he was exploring before heading back.
No change, guess I can keep it up for a few weeks and if it still doesn't change I can give it up then.
He cleaned himself off in the fountain then fell asleep a short moment after crawling in bed. . . . . .