*ting~ Dimly I awoke to the notification noise going off and wearily opened my eyes, trying to fend off exhaustion as my body demanded rest. What greeted me was a large screen,
You have defeated a level 19 desert goblin [Scout], level 19 desert goblin [Assassin], level 20 desert goblin [archer], level 29 desert goblin [Knight], level 23 desert goblin [Mage (Fire/Earth)], level 22 desert goblin [archer], level 46 Desert Hommagna Lacerta [Berserker | Berserker], level 18 desert goblin [Assassin]
You have leveled up four times!
Your skill Polearm Mastery has risen to Beginner Level 3
+6 Str | +6 Dex
Your skill Sword Mastery has risen to Beginner Level 2
+3 Str | +3 Con
Your skill Auditory Perception has risen to Beginner Level 2
+6 Mnd
You have gained the skill Final Stand Beginner Lv1 !
You have gained +10% Familiarity with Raphael
You have gained +3% Familiarity with Ariel
You have discovered a new dungeon! Fallen Underground Desert Sanctuary ! Experience gain increased for 168 hours!
You have entered a safe zone within the dungeon - Alcove of Spirits
The spirits have taken a likening to your aura!
You have been healed by the spirits!
You have gained the title ~ Blessed by the spirits of light ~ Title equipped
You have gained the title ~ Blessed by the spirits of wind ~ You can change your titles in your status screen.
“Blessed by the spirits?” I muttured in confusion. “Hmph, as they rightfully should be.” The girl sniffed, and the woman pouted; “So no cutting them?”
Tinkling laughter, nostalgic of the time my children were born, gently caressed my ears as I finally started to observe my surroundings. I was laying on the hardpacked ground of an underground alcove, light shining from thousands of tiny crystals fused with the sandy stone-brick walls. Half my body was submerged in gently tugging water, and I ungracefully pulled myself up onto dry ground to escape. I grumbled in annoyance as I felt the weight of my wet clothes, While sand won’t get in my boots, water definitely can. The girl scoffed again; “Stupid water, touching our divine body without permission.”
Looking around some more I found a small altar in the center of the alcove with hundreds of multi-colored lights dancing around it. Are those spirits? “Can we cut them?”
A few of the lights, formless as they were, flew around me and seemed to tug on my clothes. Pulling me towards the altar. Shrugging I let them pull me closer, then reached out and touched the small depression on its side.
[ Can you hear us? Can you hear us? ] A multitude of excited voices asked repeatedly, and I blinked in surprise before responding.
“Yeah, is there something you need?” The voices cheered at my reply, then descended into tinkling laughter.
[ No no, nothing we need. Stuff we want though~ ] They said with the enthusiasm of a child who wanted their parents to guess.
I smiled wryly, “And what is it that you want?”
[ We want to play~ *giggle* We want a conduit. We want to be used. We want a caster. We want to be given form and life~ ] However they sighed and worriedly examined me. [ But right now you’re too weak. Your body won’t be able to handle bringing us form… Say, do you think you could grow stronger and come back to us? Do you? ] *ting~
New Quest!
You have found one of the few remaining spirit altars in the world and communed with the spirits, who have taken a likening to your aura! The spirits have asked you to grow stronger and return to them in exchange for unknown power!
To Complete:
* Reach level 10 and return to the spirit altar
To fail:
* Die before reaching level 10
* Never return to the spirit altar
Rewards if succeed:
* All elemental affinities increase by 1%
* ???
Consequences if fail:
* Intimacy with the spirits decreases
“I accept.” At my words the spirits danced happily.
[ We’ll be waiting~ ] *ting~
Time returned to normal and I stood up, taking my finger away from the altar and severing the connection to the spirits. Let’s see, I’m inside a dungeon so there is definitely monsters of some kind… unless it is a trap dungeon… The problem is I have no information on this area. Dungeons, in good VRMMORPG’s, cannot simply be ‘dived’ into. If you’re going into a zombie dungeon you’d need very different gear than a golem dungeon.
And out of those two types I am actually better equipped to deal with zombies. If I am lucky I’ll have normal flesh and blood mobs I can fight, and hopefully this dungeon isn’t laced with traps.
Also hopefully it is at, or near my level… “Hmph,” The girl crossed her arms in my mind, “Even if it isn’t they shall kneel before us in the end.” The woman giggled, “Yah~ we will cut them no matter how powerful.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I sighed, Glad to see you two are optimistic. Ignoring their replies I peeked outside of the alcove. The river that swept me in here was rather shallow, but the current was strong enough to sweep me off my feet if I am not careful. Across from it was a platform like in the halls of a sewer. Of course this is much cleaner than a sewer, with sandy-yellow stone bricks lined with pictograms of various desert animals. Looking down the hallway in either direction I found it curving gently till it was out of my sight, sloping ever so slightly down to the left.
So is this the hallway between floors? Or are floors generally three dimensional? Carefully I lowered my stance and waded through the tugging river. Luckily the bottom was rough and gave me good purchase with my water-clogged boots, if it was smooth brick like the walls there would have been a problem.
After making it up onto the walkway I decided to head downwards, even if it might house stronger monsters. After walking for a good fifteen minutes I finally noticed the slope evening out, and the entrance to a room peeking around the corner.
Preparing Ariel for close quarters fighting I warily approached the entrance, and spotted several things inside. Wispy distorted imitations of the creatures on the walls awkwardly pattered and walked about. Various colors clad them, and crackling sobs echoed off the creatures, similar yet far from the laughter of the spirits at the altar. Don’t tell me this is an immaterial dungeon? Bloody hell I wish I had something along the lines of appraisal.
I continued observing the beings from outside the doorway. Another thing is this whole ruin glowed with the blue lights of mana, which collected in the nooks and crannies between bricks as small glowing crystals, and distorted the air when it drew near the creatures. As if twisting their flesh… “Pathetic beings. We should purge them now.” “Yes, cut them~ Cut Them~”
They seem to not have actual vision, as they would have already spotted me in the entrance. Collecting myself I stepped into the room, and as if a signal the nearest being froze, and like a wave of stillness they all sixteen became silent one after another, then charged as if going into a frenzy, screeching with fury. Half of them were shaped like distorted wolves, various limbs added randomly. Similar to those were four birds who could not possibly fly normally with extra wings, legs and heads. Three more of them appeared to be large rats, and the last one was some type of big cat, tiger maybe? Switching Ariel with Raphael I swept her through the wolves in the lead, and had a mixture of horror and relief when I first saw Raphael harmlessly pass through, then the afterimages actually cutting through all the wolves but one that was dully glowing gold. However none of them were dead, merely stunned due to the damage. Switching Raphael with Ariel I stabbed her into the golden glowing wolf as it lunged at me, her curved blade sliding through its throat while the following winds coming off her ripped through its body. So I was right, the colors represent elements. Gold was light, and I checked whether green was wind by sweeping Ariel towards the remaining wolves and seeing the winds cut through all but the soft green.
However it appears these beings don’t have vitals as the most massive parts of their bodies continued to move unnaturally. Luckily they at least lose mass, which means they can be killed. The green wolf-spirit got close and lunged at me; I switched Ariel with Raphael and used the staff to knock it away, then thrust Raphael into its head area and swirled it around to destroy as much as I could with the after images.
The three rats reached me a second later, two green and one black, and lunged at my feet while screeching. I swung Raphael down by my toes, lightly scratching the floor with her tip as I cut through the rats; half of their bodies dissipated while the other half continued to lunge at my feet. I grit my teeth and I tried to slide away but one of the green ones clung onto my boot and started angrily gnawing on it. No damage? I glanced at the rat, and since it didn’t seem to weigh anything and I didn’t want to accidentally stab my foot I left the rat where it is. It’s green, so wind. Do they only deal elemental damage? While hesitant I let the black rat remains attack my foot as well, and instantly the toes of my boot were crushed sending bright pain up my nerves. Yelling I pulled out Ariel and swiped at my foot, destroying the remains the black rat.
Growling in annoyance and now with a visible limp, I ignored the two green birds flying at me and sliced into the red and brown ones, their small bodies being their undoing as they dissipated in puffs of smoke. The tiger was still standing in the back as the wolves continued to try and goad me into over extending.
The green birds were now furiously pecking at my head, but I didn’t even feel a breeze from them, as if they weren’t even there. Definitely elemental damage. My high affinities to light and wind probably makes me immune from those types. My other affinities all being above 50% probably helps, I would hate to see what my foot would look like if they weren’t.
As it was I focused on cutting apart the mobs that weren’t gold or green, quickly crushing the rest of the wolves. To actually kill them I found I had to get their remaining parts less than half the size of my palm, small enough to be annoying but not small enough to be impossible. It was alot of work, the damn things taking dozens of swings to kill. Sometime when I was finishing the last wolf the tiger jumped at me with an ear-shattering roar, but I left the golden tiger to gnaw on my arm while looking at the things that dropped from the corrupted spirits.
Fire Avian Spirit Ring - C Spirit Class (Level 32)
Type: Ring
Elemental Defense: 10 - 12 Fire
Fire Wings | +1% Fire affinity
A ring dropped from a avian fire spirit. It contains a bit of the spirit’s power.
When in the air you can activate the rings ability to form small, flaming wings allowing you to glide for four seconds.
Watery Necklace - E Spirit Class (Level 28)
Type: Necklace
Elemental Defense: 1 - 3 Water
Element Damage: 1 - 1 Water
A necklace dropped from a water wolf spirit. It contains very little of the spirit’s power.
Dark Spirit’s Needle - C Spirit Class (Level 33)
Type: Throwing Dart/Dagger
Elemental Damage: 20 - 20
Dark Poison | Dark Weight
A ten cen long needle that looks somewhat like the tail of a dark rat spirit that it dropped from. It contains a bit of the spirit’s power.
When it is stuck in an enemy it deal 3 Dark damage every second.
When stuck in an enemy all movements are slowed by 2%.
Unfortunately it seems that the battle notification wouldn’t come up while enemies still remained, even if they couldn’t do anything to me. Sighing sadly I looked at the tiger who was weightlessly beating on my with its claws while my shoulder was in its jaw.
Stepping I grimaced as pain shot up my shattered toes. Sighing I looked down at found a small bit of blood trickling out of my shoes- which was being drunk up the green rat spirit-
-I blinked in surprise. It’s no longer crying? I knelt down carefully and realized that the rat spirit was also healed, its extra limbs were gone, the distortions on its body were now evened out, and it seemed to be squeaking in happiness. Noticing me it looked up and squeaked what was probably a thank you before scampering towards the hallway I came from. I watched him go in curiosity then turned to the tiger still biting my shoulder. Gently I my arm and ‘grabbed’ the tiger, careful not to use too much force on it and brought it down to my foot, where I promptly took my wet boot off and pushed the tiger to my toes where the blood was coming out. As if starved the tiger rapidly began licking the wound, its spiky tongue scraping against my flesh but failing to rip it off like a normal one would.
Taking out the skinning knife I carefully sliced open my palm and lifted it up to the birds rapidly pecking my head. Entranced they instantly flapped to my head and stuck their beaks in the wound. Quickly the little birds, which were no bigger than finches, lost their sickly extra appendages and gained a soft glow with a gentle breeze. Flapping and tweeting with tinkling laughter they flew around my head, then into the hallway after the rat. All that was left was the tiger still licking up the blood from my foot- which felt strangely pleasing- and the two injured wolves, one gold and the other green. Looking at my palm I blinked in surprise at the closed wound and then cut it open again and held it out to the wolves gnawing my waist. Like puppies they let go and crowded my hand, lapping up the blood flowing from it. I yawned and noted myself getting somewhat light headed. Probably from lack of blood. “These peasants should worship us for feeding them!” “Aw~ They’re so cu~te~ *giggle* Drink up little ones~”
The wolves showed changes first, reverting to pure appearances and howling in delight before running off towards the altar. I checked my palm again and sure enough the wound was healed without a scar. Turning to the tiger I found light slowly returning to its body, the random limbs slowly shrinking into its body. Somewhat light-headed I yawned again and held my hand infront of my head, curiously watching as it trembled due to my qualities. Half a minute later I was considerably light headed and the tiger finally stopped drinking my blood, shining with all its glory as it bashfully turned its head away. *ting~