Ow.
Turns out, stabbing yourself fucking hurts. More than having a giant spider slam you into a wall. But it was effective. Through the panic, Cyn had enough forethought to try and hit somewhere without too many immediately vital organs, but still should do a lot of damage. Just below her sternum. She was pretty sure there was nothing she needed in that area right this second.
When she struck Cyn felt her health points tank, and continue to bleed out. Her resource regeneration rose rapidly, and as she stood Cyn had a distant thought that there must be something happening with the System that increased her tolerance for pain. Because there was no way she should have been able to handle this and continue moving. As she moved the blade cut into her more, increasing the damage she was bleeding out and making it harder for her to reach a regeneration equilibrium.
Ignoring that her equilibrium was totally screwed and just keeping one metaphorical eye on her health points, she used one hand to keep the knife in and tried to use her Freeform Mana Casting to vent mana out of the bottoms of both feet, hoping she would be able to run over the web. It took a few heartbeats for her mana to forge new paths out of her body, and as soon as she felt the mana leave her skin she tried to take a step. Then another. Then another.
With the confirmation her plan was working, and that she was still gaining mana despite actively venting some out, Cyn broke into a full sprint back towards the Queen and her party. Of course this jostled her dagger more, but since pulling it out would be worse she just kept holding on. She had not tried to do any running since they had entered the dungeon, so for the first time she could really feel her agility points at work. Cyn had been unathletic previously, but now she had no problems running at olympic speeds to reach her party in a matter of seconds.
Sam was still standing, although Cyn could feel he was badly hurt and envenomed, so she quickly threw a Purify at the Warrior before going for the Guardian first, who was still lying on the ground. He was alive, if just barely, and unconscious. The Queen had torn a massive hole through Scott’s chest, missing his heart by only a few inches. The wound was still bleeding, but oddly it did not feel like his health was changing. It was just lingering at a dangerous level.
Cyn did not have time to contemplate why he had not bled out completely, and instead knelt and poured a significant chuck of her mana into Overloading a cast of Restoration on the Guardian. The wound in his chest knit closed, and Cyn cut off Restoration as soon as his health points no longer felt dangerously low. He did not wake up, and she did not feel there was a good reason to use more mana than the bare minimum to keep him alive right now.
As she stood back up, the Queen let out a second pain-inducing scream. Cyn wasn’t prepared for the sudden damage, her vision blacking out a second as she scrambled to use Restoration on herself in an attempt to stabilize. When she could see again, the Queen was no longer near her. The Queen now had what appeared to be a second layer of bioluminescent veins, which Cyn took to mean the second Brood King Dana had been facing was dead. The double enraged arachnid was chasing Sam around the room at high speed. The Warrior was no longer glowing red, and was just barely keeping ahead of it.
She would not be able to heal Sam until either the Queen was dead, or focused on someone else. Attempting to get to him now would most likely only result in both of their deaths. Looking around for the other members of her party, she did not see them at first.
At least not until Hex was suddenly on the Brood Queen’s back, a powerful strike from both of his daggers causing the exoskeleton under him to fracture. It did not shatter, but the damage was enough for the Queen to change targets. She stopped chasing Sam, and instead reared back onto her hind legs, trying to dislodge the Rogue. It worked, since the skill Hex used consumed a large amount of his stamina, but before the creature could turn to attack Dana took the Rogue’s place on the Queen's back. Cyn heard a single, loud pop as what looked like a small explosion went off where the Archer was, sending Dana flying backward.
The Queen tried to turn, staggering forward a few steps, before the veins of glowing light across her exoskeleton faded away and the creature collapsed.
A notification pop-up confirmed the kill. The boss was dead, but the danger had not fully passed. They were all in rough shape. Since Sam was the only one close enough for Cyn to feel, other than the still unconscious Guardian, she went to him first. The warrior was staggering, clearly low on both health and stamina, and was sporting multiple deep wounds. Thankfully, they seemed to be mostly on his arms, with other shallow cuts scattered across his whole body. Cyn used Restoration until the worst of his injuries seemed stable, and once again tried to stabilize her own bleeding health without affecting her resource regeneration too much, but since she did not know Dana or Hex’s condition she tried to save her mana.
As the pair of them made their way back towards Scott, they were met by the Archer and Rogue. They were leaning heavily on each other, Hex seemingly out of pure exhaustion, since his health was doing better than anyone else's, and Dana from being badly injured. The other woman was missing one hand entirely, cradling a burnt stub to her abdomen, and had minor burns everywhere else. Under the fresh burns there appeared to be at least a few puncture wounds as well, and many smaller wounds that had mostly cauterized.
Cyn waited until they had all regrouped around Scott before trying to treat the Archer. The missing hand made her nervous. While she was positive about being able to fix everything else, she was not sure about trying to regrow a hand. As Cyn channeled Restoration on Dana, not able to afford Overloading it, the Archer explained she had taken her gun prototype and shoved it in a hole Hex had made in the Queen’s exoskeleton, followed by purposefully causing the unstable prototype to backfire. While Dana knew it would cause the weapon to explode, it apparently was a stronger explosion than she anticipated since it was the only time she had ever purposely caused it to backfire. The other times were while Dana was developing and testing it, and the resulting explosion had only resulted in minor burns and broken hand bones.
Cyn thought that was pretty resourceful, though a little unfortunate since Dana no longer had her prototype and would have to start from scratch. She was still working on healing Dana when Hex tentatively asked, “So…did you stab yourself on purpose or on accident? Because if it was an accident, we are taking away your sharp object privileges.”
Cyn started to laugh, but it turned into coughing up blood, to everyone's alarm. That was probably just a punctured stomach. She didn’t think she had managed to nick a lung. After a few moments she wheezed out, “On purpose. Can’t remove it until everyone’s healed.”
No one was able to argue with that, and Cyn continued to channel Restoration on the Archer for a few long minutes, regularly stopping to briefly heal herself. To her relief, they watched as Dana’s nub slowly grew out into a new hand. It was remarkable, although without her buffed mana regeneration there was no way she could have output that much healing in such a short amount of time. Hopefully it growing back at all meant that, left to just her own health regeneration, the appendage would have grown back on its own over a longer period.
Cyn was still impaled on her own weapon when Scott woke up with a groan. She needed to make sure she had enough mana to very quickly Overload a cast of Restoration, or else the sudden increase in bleeding when she removed the knife would be dangerous. So for the last little while, the whole party had just been resting. They had leveled up to six from the fight, and Cyn had hit level seven in Creature Handler. Hex also sensed some treasure nearby, that had not been there before the Queen’s death, but no one was inclined to separate from the group to find it right this moment. At least the baby Illuminants around the cavern were not approaching them.
Once Scott was awake, Cyn had Sam help her remove the dagger. She mostly just needed someone to try and put pressure on the wound while she healed it. The blade pulled free with a gush of blood, her health dropping dangerously for a moment, before Cyn quickly Overloaded a cast of Restoration and began gaining health as the wound healed. While she did this, the party went over what happened during the fight since they had ended up basically fighting three separate battles, and Scott was out of commission for half of it.
Dana and Cyn had encountered the same problem of the Brood Kings, and while Cyn ended up across the room and stuck to a wall, the Archer was able to kite the creature with little difficulty. She just could not help fight at the same time. Once Cyn explained what had happened to her, the party agreed that while it sucked majorly, she did not have a choice in killing her attacker and enraging the Queen.
Unexpectedly, when Cyn killed the first King, it had also appeared to enrage the second one alongside the Queen. Dana could no longer stay ahead of her pursuer, and Hex had peeled off to assist her without noticing that the Guardian had gone down almost immediately, and accidentally leaving Sam to fend for himself against the boss. Being able to hold off the enraged Queen for as long as he did made the Warrior quite the MVP. But all in all, the whole fight had been one big clusterfuck everyone was just lucky to have survived.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
And now, they were all ready to just leave. No one was at full health or resources, but where they currently sat felt like a bad place to linger in. It was still a spider nest, even if they had killed the biggest spider there. The party traveled towards the treasure, finding five magic tokens floating over what they assumed was the broken lift to the surface. A lift they would not be taking, since also on that lift was a freestanding door, presumably the exit to the next floor. But first, loot.
Dungeon Boss Treasure Token (Epic)(Soulbound) - Dropped from dungeon bosses. Infuse mana into the token to generate a reward based on your combat performance.
Dropped by Illuminant Brood Queen - Level 7.
Similar to the token dropped by the mimic, except this one seemed to be only usable by participants in the fight and was of a higher quality. If Cyn was being honest, she was kind of afraid of what this was going to generate for her. She had a bit of a theme going on, and frankly she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Holding her breath and infusing the token, her fears were validated as an ornate dagger replaced the token in her hand.
Blooddrinker (Epic)(Soulbound) - This weapon will feed on the blood of any creature it is used on to temporarily empower itself.
If left in a wound it will continue to feed until removed, doing increasing bleed damage. If Blooddrinker is permitted to feed long enough, it will create a burst of unattuned magic damage on removal.
If feeding from its wielder, Blooddrinker will return a portion of the damage dealt in the form of healing when removed, instead of doing additional magic damage.
Clearly, the only thing the System had registered from that fight was that Cyn had stabbed herself on purpose. Not how much healing she did for her party, or the cool trick she learned to walk across the web. The dagger wasn’t bad, she would even label it as good. But was this really the route she wanted to be taking long term? She wasn’t sold on it.
Regardless, Cyn would at least use it for now. It was just flatly better than the basic dagger she was using against enemies. Whether or not she made use of its healing effect remained to be seen. It only took another minute for everyone to look over and equip their own rewards before they were ready. Anticipating what came next, they linked arms before Scott touched the door, and one by one the party confirmed they were ready to move on to the second floor.
***
As Cyn left the first floor of the transitional dungeon, somewhere far away bets were being made. They had been being made since the moment dimension 242 entered adaptation, but with most of the dimension's residents having either died or entered the second phase of their adaptation process the number and variety of bets was rising quickly. Initially, the bets only revolved around if the dimension would survive. These would not be resolved until the terminus event, but most of the beings felt safe in their bet that 242 would fall. Not because it was performing particularly badly, it was just a fact that most dimensions failed to stop their own destruction.
Now though, outliers among the population of 242 had begun to make themselves known. Not on purpose, mind you, but the most powerful beings in the Collective had reasons to keep their eyes trained on newly adapting dimensions, and the means to pick out oddities. Oddities like sole survivors, early evolutions, extreme feats, and non-standard skill acquisitions. While these criteria may have put Cyn on the radar, she was far from the only one. Oddities made for far more entertaining bets among the elite. Would this sole survivor be able to finish their adaptation? Would this Mage end up blowing themselves up with their non-standard skill?
Entering the second phase of adaptation had another effect for both the residents of the adapting dimension and the Collective. It allowed for limited interference by the Collective to the benefit of the residents of the adapting dimension. This interference for most would come in the form of mentorship and knowledge sharing from the Collective. While it may not seem like much, the ability to just have basic knowledge questions answered often came as a huge relief for the adapting dimension.
Even in a form so limited however, it came at great cost for the Collective to offer assistance like this. It was only possible due to a close collaboration and sharing of resources between the Pillars. The Arcane Hall had to shoulder the brunt of the work, since the only method of interference was magical in nature. The only other Pillar that came close to providing as much for the Collective in this instance was the Bizarre Bazaar, home to the most skilled craftsmen across all dimensions. The Bulwark, the Colosseum, the Bullseye Range, and the Guild were able to supply mentors without having to do much else. Despite how much work it was, most agreed that so long as they could help one in five dimensions survive their terminus event to join the Collective, it was worth it.
This limited help was for the normal residents of a dimension, though. Just making it onto the list of oddities before reaching stage two of adaptation had extra perks. Primarily, the interference would come directly from one of the Paragons rather than from a standard mentor. Paragons sat at the highest point in the hierarchy of their Pillar, and for most residents of the Collective they were akin to gods. Or at least as close as a once-mortal creature could ever be. Statistically, most Paragons had lived through their dimensions adaptation into the System environment, and were classified as oddities. So it only made sense for the current Paragons to guide and nurture their possible future colleagues.
And this was why Stelphan, First Lichweaver and Paragon of the Arcane Hall, was now standing in his chambers and staring into his reflection on a full-length magic mirror. It was always best to make a grand first impression, so for all of his introductions he had been wearing formal Mage robes and cloak, only leaving down the heavily decorated, pale blue hood since his half-bone face never failed to signify his position of power for the new Mages. A little bit of fear never hurt as well. It was this robe and face he saw reflected back at him now, his puzzlement clear. Because he should not be looking at his own face in the magic mirror.
He had taken his share of oddities, some promising and most less so, and thus far everything had been standard. He would introduce himself to the oddity as they transitioned between step one and two of adaptation, answer a few questions, and instruct them on how they could use the blessing bestowed upon them to communicate with the Paragon going forward. Stelphan had drawn a lot of short straws while the Arcane Hall Paragons had been splitting up assignments, so it was no surprise the oddity he was trying to communicate with was one of the less promising ones. What was surprising was when he tried to introduce himself to this fledgling Mage, he had been prevented from doing so. Because despite not being one of the more promising oddities, someone else had already made use of the limited allowed interference for this Mage before Stelphan had been able to.
***
Pet ?
This was, by far, the strangest situation Cyn had ever found herself in. And that included the blue void that started all of this. Because now the black void was apparently asking to be petted. No, not asking. Demanding. She had already closed this pop-up multiple times, and it just kept reappearing. She assumed it was the black void anyway, since it was all she could see.
I am being held hostage by spam mail. She finally just relented, since it was clearly not giving up, and, as strange as it felt, Cyn attempted to use Pet. The pop-up disappeared, and was followed by the sensation of something small but heavy settling into the loose hood of her cloak at her chest. She did not have much time to contemplate what in the hell that could be, or the notifications that appeared, before she was whisked away to the second floor of the transitional dungeon.