You have spotted 5 slimes!
You have successfully dodged: Ambushing Slime!
You have spotted 4 additional slimes!
For a second, Jack felt nothing but blind terror as he found himself facing almost a dozen slimes, including the one that had nearly wrapped around his face and neck, the cubic foot's worth of gelatinous liquid extending one slimy pseudopod after another to feel the air in Jack's general direction as did all the others in eerie synchronicity, before each and every one suddenly budded massive bloodshot blue eyes on mushroom stalks now simultaneously peering Jacks way, all ten of them now slithering forward on slug-like slime trails that hissed and sizzled as they made contact with the marble stone floor.
"Level 1 my ass!" a surrounded Jack shouted as the horrors began closing in, more than one eye stalk actually seeming to swell up as they approached in unison, and Jack could all too easily imagine them blowing up as vile ichor balls in his face and the worst thing he could possibly do was stand there frozen so he gave a loud howl and just charged forward, shield charging the slime directly in front of him, heart jolting with terror as the slime seemed to give and ooze before him as if it would gladly let him fall into its depths.
Arcane Perception skillcheck: Success!
And that's when Jack sensed it... the shimmering, newly forged core at the center of its mass.
Exactly what he was aiming for.
"Ignis Sanguis!" He screamed in desperation he chose to think of as righteous fury as liquid flame roared forth, turning the slime into its own funeral pyre, blazing so hot and bright Jack hissed in pain, despite the minor heat and flame resistance he head earned with his Adept Rank in one of his favorite spells.
And he sure as hell wasn't going to let first degree burns or sticky feet or terror keep him from racing completely through that pyre and sprinting down the weirdly twisting corridor for all he was worth before spraying his blazing leather boots and hair with his own water spout as he gave an exhausted laugh, having tasted such dire peril, from nothing but a handful of slimes.
Because he was stupid enough to dare this alone, and almost hadn't spotted his foes in time.
"Doesn't matter. Doesn't fucking matter! What the hell do I do now?" he slowed his frantic breathing, for all that he sensed the horrors with their oozing probing eyes slowly sliding his way in the distance.
Because that was the point. They moved slow. And if he could think fast, act fast, and not fuck up... he just might survive.
"Formo!" he hissed after casting his basic healing spell, first degree burns quickly becoming the tingle of newly healed flesh, and perhaps the sweet rush of a surprisingly potent surge of experience filling his soul as he scooped up the marble flooring and hard basalt rock underneath, now flowing in his hands as easily as soft clay.
Scooping it up with surprising ease, he quickly made both trench and mound running the entire width of the corridor, pushing himself with desperate intensity, he ignored the twinge of tired joints and muscles as he continued pulling out great heaping globs of stone for all he was worth, expending only the tiniest bit of his mana reserves as he manipulated the essence of Shadow.
Congratulations! Artisanal Manipulation is now Novice Rank 2!
Jack ignoring further notifications, his anxiety and pace only increasing as he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the slimes as his rough pit approached both a depth and width of several feet, using that material to form the beginnings of a bulwark just beyond the pit.
He felt a cold shiver of horror when his Infravision picked up the closest slime approaching. He knew he should be grateful for the minutes it had taken them, but his guts roiled at the feel of this realm twisting and warping so strangely about him. And when he looked toward the approaching horrors just barely visible through the crimson mist, he couldn't tell if he was looking straight up or down a steep drop, or both, simultaneously, somehow canceling out into a perfectly flat plane of oncoming horror.
He choked back a sudden bout of queasiness as he quickly smoothed the side of the pit farthest from the approaching horrors before jumping to the other side and, squeezing the clay-soft basalt just as would a sculptor shaping clay for his life, squeezed up that wall like stacking blocks into a wall of clay with a lesser mound that would serve as a rampart, giving him a perfect view over the lip.
And with that he realized he was out of time, as the first slime sent pseudopods over the too soft lip of the crevice.
And Jack nearly collapsed, almost completely out of mana.
Congratulations! Artesenal Manipulation is now Novice Rank 5!
"Resilience!" He cried, not trusting it to be enough just to cut off the mana flow, happily spending life force instead of mana he didn't have, smacking a blood rune upon the hastily made rampart before him, claiming the structure and pit as two pieces of a whole, eyes alighting with fierce satisfaction when his fortification suddenly gained the resiliency of ancient bedrock or forged tungsten blocks, even as so much of the potency he had earned from that single sweet kill was spent on making his pit and wall perhaps the most real, most permanent structure within this hallway and all the branching corridors at his back, he had no doubt.
And it was enough.
Enough for him to stand firmly upon the hardened embankment that now effortlessly bore his weight and glare down at the slug-like slimes slowly oozing up the sides of his pit and parapet beyond it, the steep side now forming a wall now a good six feet from the bottom of the pit.
And as horrific as it was seeing them ooze up his fortification, at least they moved slowly.
Considerably slower even than their slithering crawl across the ground.
"Sagitta Acidum!" Jack roared just as soon as his mana had crept back up to a handful of points, surprised and relieved to find it recovering faster here than it had in the city proper.
Much faster.
Because he really was in a realm of Regio, an overlapping dimension of living dream, absolutely saturated with the potency of vivid nightmare and endless possibility.
And he was happily absorbing that dark potency in the form of experience points and mana, making it his own.
For better or worse.
"Sagitta Acidum! Sagitta Acidum!"
And how sweet it was to see the slimes lurch back and curl inward as what were now nearly volleyball-sized globes of dissolvent split four-fold in the air before smashing into them. And just as importantly, into the trench itself.
Because even if they were all but immune to the corrosive properties of proton donating agents, his spell was the liquid essence of dissolution itself, such that his rune-enhanced fortifications alone were immune to, transcending any inert chemical buffering that might be a natural part of slime biology, assuming creatures of shadow and dream were plagued by biological constraints, or anything but magic of the most twisted sort.
At the very least, his rain of Acid Arrows managed to cut right through their slime, sending the blobs falling into the rapidly filling trench of arcane solvent that was now a good several inches deep, even as he took care to thoroughly cover his makeshift wall with the balls of universal solvent so that the slimy fuckers could find no purchase. He flashed a fierce smile of satisfaction when he was done, for all that he was panting with exhaustion, waiting for his mana to creep back up as half the slimes floundered and sizzled in the trench... while the other half seemed to glare at him with their massive eyes and slowly slither up the walls, several safe feet from the barrier.
Jack chuckled softly. "Of course you're that smart. Why the hell wouldn't slug amoebas have brains in this fucked up world?"
He clenched his jaw in a tight grimace and cursed under his breath, but gave the dread trying to slither through his pounding heart no further purchase upon his soul as he allowed his mana to slowly tick back up, twice jolted with a surge of sweet, sweet potency as at least two more horrors succumbed to the bubbling acid trench during that time, the other 3 slimes that had fallen in too ruined to do much else save slither away.
As for the five fully intact specimens that were using the hallway walls to close in on him, Jack only smiled, his terror replaced by fiercest exultation, as the predators became the prey.
"Sagitta Acidum! Sagitta Acidum!" He cried, deliberately targeting the point where the amoebic slimes hugged the roof, feeling a surge of hot triumph whenever they were forced to tuck their countless squirming wormlike digits inward as they coiled up like slugs covered with salt before slipping off the ceiling, and right into the trench of dissolvent, whenever Jack could finesse the shot.
And for those that prove stubborn, slipping off only when they had crossed the impromptu six foot high barrier onto Jack's side, that was also just as he had planned, unleashing deadly blasts of Bloodfire and incinerating them in explosive blazing pyres he spaced out carefully. Only for a second did he worry about asphyxiation, feeling absolutely fine but having no idea if limited oxygen was a consideration down in these vast, magic saturated corridors, so he started making use of Wind Gust to push back the surviving amoebic slimes that had managed to make it this far without falling into pits of acid or pyres of flame, feeling the surges of potency from his kills go in a much needed direction, even as he breathed deep of utterly clean and fresh air, generated out of absolutely nothing save magic and his own iron resolve.,
You have successfully forced Injured Slime back over Rune Warded Barrier! Injured Slime has fallen into dissolution pit and expired!
Experience earned!
Wind Gust is now Apprentice Rank 2!
Acid Arrow is now Adept Rank 4!
Bloodflame is now Adept Rank 4!
You have successfully constructed a Lesser Bulwark! You have unlocked the engineering skill and will begin to feel an intuitive sense of the soundness of any building or fortification you encounter! Engineering is now Novice Rank 1!
You have embraced hardworking diligence resonating with your most disciplined self over countless forgotten lifetimes.
You have earned a permanent +1 to Strength as you begin to unlock ever more of your hidden potential!
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You have earned a permanent +1 to Vitality as you begin to unlock ever more of your hidden potential!
Jack laughed like a madman as terror turned to sheerest exultation, his body feeling more invigorated than ever as his soul drunk deep of the power of darkest dream and nightmare. His manic grin widened as monsters that had come so close to killing him became nothing more than slow moving blobs of experience points. Yet he still refused to underestimate his foes, assuming with the same unfounded paranoia that had kept countless adventurers alive before him, that there was some final track or trip or special attack that could kill him far too quickly, if he wasn't supremely careful.
So when he stood up as high as he could on his elevated embankment, gazing over the lip of the parapet down at the small handful of surviving slimes as soon as his mana pool had soared back up to full so damned quickly down here, he did not give them long moments to contemplate the human who dared survive, or waste seconds taunting the bulbous eyed creatures whose eye stalks seemed determined to stretch all too closely to him.
Instead, he washed them all in liquid flame.
"Ignis Ventus Sanguis!" he roared, flashing a fierce smile as the five surviving slimes were instantly obliterated in roaring whirlwind of flame, the backwash of heat so intense that he was sent flying back, smacking to the ground with a Medium Wound as the very air seemed to ignite, sending Jack flying back to land on the ground with a groan, wondering if his flame was closer to superheated plasma than he had thought. But of course it had ignited his trencher filled with liquid dissolvent that had catalyzed explosive force, even at only a few inches deep.
He shuddered to think what would have happened if the trench had been filled with more liquid, of if he didn't have a wall fortified with runes of Resilience and Permanence that had directed most of the blast away from him, or what damage he might have suffered if that explosion had been unleashed with a shock-wave in the world above, not down here, in air muted by the forces of living dream.
Living dream or no, one thing was for certain, he thought, catching a sudden whiff of sharp acrid fumes. He sure as hell did not want to inhale the caustic air at that moment, growing dizzy as he tapped in to his mother's gifts and whispered the words to the spell he had learned at Lauren's side. He cracked a relieved smile and took a deep breath when he felt life-giving air as fresh as a spring breeze whirling about him at such speeds that even enemy arrows would be yanked free of their trajectories. And the air around him was now free of any scent save for the delightful fragrance of wildflowers and evergreens.
He stood stock still, barely a hair rustled out of place as he was in the eye of his own private little storm, now closing his eyes and doing his best to sense the friendly little spirit he had first bonded with when learning that spell.
A gentle spirit laughing in his mind as it generated a continuous stream of perfectly fresh air all around him.
Jack bowed his head, feeling a sense of reverence as he whispered soft words of gratitude.
"Thank you."
His eyes widened in surprise when he heard tingling laughter and sensed an odd sort of... hunger.
He couldn't quite suppress a slight shiver when he unsheathed his blade just enough to nick his thumb... sensing a certain spirit drinking deep, and chortling for joy.
You have slain 5 slimes via explosive combustion! Temperatures exceed sublimation point of Dissoluent! Ward-Reinforced Wall serves as blast shield! You have avoided fatal shockwave! You have avoided self-immolation!
You have taken 2 Medium Wounds.
Windfire is now Apprentice Rank 1!
Congratulations! Due to your racial heritage and inherent compatibility, you have permanently bonded Air Spirit! Bond of Blood forged! Your Air Spirit will now resist all attempts to dispel her by foreign parties as if her Willpower was equal to your own!
Wind Ward is now Journeyman Rank 1!
In addition to knocking aside all mundane projectiles not enhanced by magic, martial feats, or gunpowder, Your Air Spirit has evolved an additional property! All those within ten feet of your person now benefit from the Spring Breeze spell at all times! No matter how nauseating (or toxic) the air around you is, you'll still be able to breath fresh clean air!
You have discovered a new class! Blood Witch! Summon and entice the spirits of earth and air to work at your behest, strengthened by bonds of blood! Lauren would be proud. So would your mother!
Jack was both awed and chilled by how close he had come to obliterating himself, promising himself right then and there to avoid firing his hottest spell into any liquefied dissolution pits of his own making.
But mostly he was in pain, knowing he had stunned himself. His ears were ringing, and he was suffering at least one cracked rib, if not worse. All he had to do was think back to the acid pit at the wolf den that he had filled with his Water Element based Acid Spray and not his Enhancer based Acid Arrow to realize how close he had come to absolute destruction that day. Humbled by just how perilous a game he was playing with his life, exploiting magic's potential in such staggeringly destructive ways.
He could only hope that he wouldn't end up a casualty of his own experimentation.
With trembling fingers, he did what he should have done from the very beginning, pulling free a certain rune-covered artifact from his soul pouch that he had expended so much of himself, the equivalent of 1 full level, in forging, and slipping it upon his left forearm.
Awed and humbled by the sudden surge of healing energies now flooding his soul. In just seconds he no longer felt dizzy and there was no more ringing in his ears. In less than a minute, even his cracked ribs had settled back into place, fully healed once more.
Jack took a deep breath and forced himself to move back even while healing, his own boosted heat resistance and the Wind Ward allowing him to ignore the now ridiculously hot air filling so much of the corridor, deciding to wait out the blazing fire by checking out the far end of this, the central corridor of this maze of hallways.
Because the dozen or so nightmare slimes were dead. And if the monsters who had forced innocent captives to become slime food had thought there was a prize worth claiming at the main tunnels end, then he'd happily claim it for them, before charring all their vile bones to ash.
"And with any luck, by the time I get back, things will have cooled enough to actually cross my own barricade and head out. Maybe see if I can save anyone else before they become slime food, though I hope I got them all. Then we hunt down the bastards responsible, and burn them all to ash. What do you think, Airy?"
He smiled to himself as he spoke aloud, throwing the final words to his the playful little wind sprite that now felt almost like an extension of himself, blinking in surprise when he felt a fierce surge of hot satisfaction at the thought of frying those bastards to a crisp.
Jack couldn't help chuckling, for all that the flash of thought was barely more than that. "You and I are going to get along just fine, Airy," he said, before focusing all his attention on the grand tunnel he jogged along, vaulted ceiling now soaring high over head, seeming to grow vaster and wider with each step, Jack catching sight of ever more branching corridors filled with evenly spaced doors visible on all sides for what could have been a few seconds or hours. And for all that he was both burning with curiosity to explore those rooms, and simultaneously dreaded whatever perils they might hold, not a one opened when he passed them by, his newly enhanced Strength and Vitality allowing him to jog at a faster clip than ever before, until he finally saw an end to the crimson mist ahead.
A massive black pulsating disk of darkness that seemed to be spinning at superluminal speeds with an eerie hum reminding him of the gate orbs in an old Skydragon game, and somehow Jack just knew that touching the inky darkness would instantly transport him to who knew where.
He slowed down to a cautious walk, noting as well the rune-covered pillar of a brilliant electrum alloy beside it with a diamond hook holding multiple crimson talismans.
He felt a shiver of awe and wonder as he approached the pillar after making absolutely sure no critter, hidden by light or magic, was about to strike him from above or behind.
Because all he had to do was touch a single talisman for his mind to be flooded with countless images of heroes ancient and deadly, his mind blazing with the realization that each Talisman marked the holder as a Guild sanctioned Delver.
Then he lurched back in surprise, feeling a burn on the palm of his hand as the ruby talisman he gripped marked his palm with a sigil he didn't dare look at too closely, though he carefully placed his talisman in his pouch, not even needing the sudden wave of foreboding to know he must never pluck a second.
Then he blinked, instantly understanding. No wonder the monsters in human clothing above hadn't wanted their victims to touch anything but the shimmering rim of the disk of spinning darkness Jack found himself inexorably drawn to.
Because the Guild sigils would mark them as anything but common serfs, and Jack could only imagine the consequences of slavers keeping adventurers hostage. And the gate? That was peril of a grander sort, and perhaps ultimate freedom as well, if one could survive the trials within and level up.
He gave a rueful shake of his head, knowing how lucky he was to even be alive right now.
He would be an utter fool to enter what he sensed was the true delve the Arcane Academy stood sentinel above without a party or a plan or any sense of what to expect or how to survive... especially since, for all he knew, the gate was one way.
His eyes then turned to the pearlescent frame that seemed to somehow be holding the portal in place. The one thing, the only thing the villains above had wanted their victims to touch, if they could survive the slimes.
Why?
Drone Slave.
Those had been the words he had heard.
Something that sounded utterly discordant within this wondrous realm of Italian Renaissance high fantasy combined with just a dash of Elizabethan era glory, as well as Potteresque top hats, wands, and wonder. Embracing technology that might be pre-steam, if not pre-industrial, limited more by the unstable nature of explosives and combustion in general in the high mana South, more than anything else. Architecture, medicine, food in plentiful supply, sewage so fine that the fine paved roads didn't stink of filth, and the water he washed with smelled clean and fresh, for all that he wouldn't drink anything save small beer or the pristine water he could summon into being himself.
But Drone Slave? - Sounded like a term right out of his favorite novels of a lifetime ago.
Cyberpunk or Sci fi space opera, not swords and sorcery.
But if Lady Sigrid's offhand comments were anything to go by, the North did indeed have technological wonders with a sophistication that only increased as magic grew progressively fainter under the ever tighter grip of increasingly stable forces and fields of predictability. As to how far that progression went? It sent chills racing down his spine to wonder, for all that it seemed that rifts of darkest magic were the bane of all lands, even the most sophisticated, and increasingly archaic seeming warriors kitted in silken robes and wands of wood or armaments of steel would always have their place, like favored celebrities, perhaps, in a part of the world that might otherwise see them as relics, even if they fit right in on this side of a river that seemed to divide an entire realm.
And all he had to do was think of the silvery tendrils he had seen shooting forth from Lord Hecklebart's unacknowledged offspring, strands of the psyche or soul, strands which he himself had caught before unwinding Eric's psyche and soul like a knotted skein of thread that just had to be undone... a spool of soul-silk that even now whispered to be used in the pack his mother had made just for him.
Like he and his sisters had so many times before against enemies that sought to invade their clan's sanctuary, only to forget all his family's dark deeds with the first light of a bright new day. A sleepy dreamer waking up from too much rereading of ntomes memorized long ago, met with indulgent smiles from parents and siblings looking every bit as tired as he had felt. Even if all of them felt a bit brighter, knowing their sacred little valley was that much safer than it had been days before.
Somehow, he just knew.
He suddenly shivered, shaking away dark trains of thought a part of him wished he had never awoken to... but the point was the same. Dark Masters, Mindlords, and others knew the arts of dominating body and soul.
Who was to say a Drone Slave wasn't just what they would order from slavers in the south? For all Jack knew, it was actually a class. The most twisted of classes an AI free of anything but the drive to create a universe complex enough to keep a billion billion souls eternally entertained might very well put in there, to the exquisite torment of anyone forced to take on the role of eternal victim.
Jack shuddered, gazing at the portal frame with newfound loathing.
Yet, still... perhaps there was more to it than that.
Far more.
Why the hell would the Guild allow such an artifact forcing such a twisted class, unless there was far more to it than that?
Perhaps it just as easily granted the any Delver who made it this far the ability to choose the class of their dreams.
Jack grinned at the thought.
But as tempting as it was... if he was wrong... if, in fact, the portal frame just forced someone to take a class, any class, before jumping through... then he truly would be cursed by his own folly if he dared to touch it now.
He hissed, all but clapping his hands behind his back to avoid all temptation, fiercely promising himself that should he dare that spinning portal that seemed to stretch into an endless curved hallways as he looked into its depths... he wouldn't touch the rim for anything. He would jump right through, and do his damnedest to get the tools he needed to forge the class of his dreams.
And settle for nothing less.
"Damn right I will," he said to himself before turning around at the sound of fresh screams in the distance.
Now dashing back as fast as he could...
Hoping against hope he that could rescue the latest batch of victims in time.