Ander crept down the hallway, noticing the tracks of small critters all over the place. It was nothing like what he had seen in the chasm, where everything seemed to be grown to a gargantuan size. Here, the tracks made it seem like everything was normal. Of course, that was until he saw the print of a foot. A bare human foot. Looking closer, ander could see a number of such prints going this way and that, and it seemed to Ander that whoever made these tracks was searching for something, maybe even hunting. At first Ander had been excited at the prospect of seeing another human, or Exodar as the case may be, but whoever this was… Ander needed to be careful. If someone else was trapped down here like he was they might not be the most stable individual.

Ander pressed on. He checked each room as he proceeded down the hallway, but most everything was reduced to rubble. Ander wasn’t interested in trying to dig through any more piles of debris for the odd magic pen, and so he passed them by. Near the end of the hallway however, one of the rooms seemed to be severely damaged. Light shone through a large crack in the back wall illuminating another room filled with the same dirt and debris, except that in the middle of the room was a figure. It crouched over the corpse of a large rat, tearing into it with fingers and teeth. The figure was vaguely humanoid, and quite naked. It was badly emaciated, and had growths coming from every part of its body. Most were odd lumps, but a few sprouted tufts of hair, had fingers, and one disgusting piece coming from its right shoulder blade had a milky eye lolling around in a deformed socket.

Ander stood in horrified fascination as he watched the creature devour its meal. Slowly he took a step back, but a rock crunched under his foot, and the creature whipped its head around to stare at Ander. The face was a mangled mess of small growths that seemed to wiggle around in the air. The creature had three eyes, but the left eye was oversized, with the two right eyes sharing the same socket. Only one of the two seemed functional. The creature’s mouth was larger than it should be, and packed with far too many teeth. Ander could see bits of skin and fur caught between jagged stumps. The whole visage made Ander gag in repulsion. At that moment, the creature struck.

Ander barely managed to raise his blade to intercept the claws of the creature as it grinned at him manically. Ander stepped back, avoiding a second claw strike to his middle. A third claw strike scratched his shoulder. Where did the third claw come from! Ander swung his sword, trying to get some distance, and the creature nimbly jumped out of his way before coming back in for another attack. Ander danced backward, carried by the wind as he used everything in his power to get away from the now cackling monster. Before he knew it, he slammed into the doors back into the main room, remembering too late that they opened the other way. The creature carved lines of fire in his chest and side, punishing him for his mistake.

Ander lifted a leg, and kicked the creature away from him, causing it to fall to its back on the ground. It only stayed like that for a moment however, coming to all fours in a flash. It gave Ander the moment he needed however,as he chopped off the creature’s two left arms. The creature gave a cackling scream and launched itself at Ander in a suicidal bid to end Ander’s life. With a single slash of his blade, it was over.

Ander collapsed to the ground, holding the deep wound in his side. The wound screamed in agony, and Ander needed to get it patched up. The creature’s claws had still been covered in the rat’s viscera, which would not be good for Ander in the slightest. However he had left all of his medical supplies back in his hideout in the chasm, which meant that he had to return to patch himself up. However, he did remember seeing something in the labs that might be of some use to him. With effort, Ander got to his feet. He sheathed his sword, and held the light ball in one hand while holding his wound with the other. He returned to the large main room and went through one of the doors he had declined going into before. It was the same as the others in most respects except that ten feet down the hall were a large set of doors, with a sign above them. Ander had discounted it at first, as it was in a foreign language. However to Ander’s surprise, and then chagrin, he could indeed read the sign. It seemed as though his Walker of Memories skill was helping him out. And so, Ander walked into the infirmary.

Ander quickly found everything he needed. Bandages, needle and thread, and an antiseptic smelling medicine from one of the cabinets all sat on the table next to him. Like everything else, the infirmary was odd in dozens of small ways. The stone walls for instance. There were privacy screens set up between beds, but instead of loose curtains like you might see on earth they were hard panels on wheels. However when taken as a whole, everything was largely the same. It was rather unsettling to Ander, who turned to working on his wounds to take his mind off what he was seeing.

Ander was pretty sure that creature was once an Exodar commoner. It had a significant number of similar features once you stripped away all the growths. And the extra eyes. And teeth. It made Ander wonder what would have caused such mutations in the creature. He remembered the words of the robot AI voice thing that kept putting out his torches. If there was a hazardous spill there once, all evidence seemed to point to the fact that the spill took care of itself a long time ago. Still Ander checked his status effects to be sure that there was nothing out of place.

The only thing on his status page was the Quickened Growth effect which still hadn’t gone away. All of Ander’s clothes were tight now, and if this progressed any farther he wouldn’t be able to wear them at all. Ander didn’t fancy going around naked. That brought his mind back to the creature. This place felt kinda like a starter zone in a video game. There were some things to explore, relatively easy monsters to defeat. It was a morbid thought, but part of Ander couldn’t shake the feeling that this creature was a player who never managed to make it out of the starter zone.

Heh. Noob.

Through his musings, Ander managed to disinfect the wounds. He bandaged the wounds on his chest immediately afterward. They looked nasty at first, but his ribcage prevented the claws from going too deep. His side however needed stitches, and he decided it was better to simply get it over with. The stitching was a nasty, painful process, and it left an uneven puckered mess on his side. But the wound was closed and disinfected. He was also pretty sure he had managed to clean out any foreign matter in the wound. That process had made him nearly pass out. Exhausted, he shoved a chair in front of the door and laid down on a stretcher to sleep.

Ander awoke some time later, hearing faint noises through the stone walls. He checked the wound in his side, which was looking quite good. It already seemed to be closing. Ander marveled for a moment. A couple days and he would be as good as new, though he would probably be left with quite the scar. He was no medical professional and his stitches were not very even. Settling his shirt back in place, Ander stood up and pulled out his sword. He wanted to check his notifications but he had to go and see what those noises were first. He went and checked the door to find that it hadn’t been disturbed at all. Moreover, when looking through the glass of the door he couldn’t see anything in the hall beyond. In fact, it seemed that the sounds were coming through the wall at the back of the infirmary, where it shared a wall with the damaged hallway.

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Ander pulled the chair away from the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. When he saw the coast was clear, he went to the end of the hall and checked the main room. Also clear. It wasn’t until he cracked open the door to the damaged hallway that he saw what was making the noise. Ander peered through the gap at two more mutated commoners. They seemed to be feasting on the remains of the one he had killed earlier. Ander slowly closed the door. He was not ready to deal with two of those. He had barely killed the other one, and he was reasonably sure that the only way he was able to was because of his Way of the Wind Skill. Without it, he would have been eviscerated by the attack that had gashed his side open.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Ander dragged furniture in front of the door until it was completely obscured by the barricade. He needed to be a bit stronger before going in there again. Hopefully he would find some really awesome things down there. But for now, he needed some levels. Ander returned to the infirmary and packed up the medical supplies in a small bag he found. He would return to the surface and find some monsters to fight. But first he checked his notifications.

Congratulations! You have killed Mutated Mariner, level 15.

XP earned.

You have leveled up! You are now level 6.

+4 Conductivity

+4 Wisdom

+4 Regeneration

+2 Beauty

+4 Presence

+40 free stats.

Ander raised his eyebrows in surprise. Level 15. He should have tried to identify the creature before fighting it, not that he had remembered to use identify after the first day. If the number of stat points he was getting every level was indicative of all Exodar, that thing had several hundred stat points on him. If he didn’t have Way of the Wind, he would be dead. Of course, Ander had used his longsword, and so hadn’t progressed Way of the Wind at all.

And so, Ander returned to the staircase where he gathered his small pile of loot from the previous floor and returned to his hideout. Moving the distance both pained and tired Ander more than expected, so he decided that he would kill a single boar for the meat, and retire to his bear fur for the remainder of the day to heal. Ander set out quickly, finding the corpses, now merely bones and scraps of meat, of the boars he had killed the other day. From there, he searched and it wasn’t long before he was able to find another lone boar. Ander used identify.

Iron Tusk Boar

Level 4

The boar didn’t last more than five seconds. Ander removed its head with one clean swing, and then gutted it before dragging it back to camp. This was the first time Ander had killed something he had outleveled, and the creature didn’t even realize he was there before it was dead. It was a far cry from the Mutated Mariner he had fought the previous day, who had almost killed him just as fast. He was lucky that the Mutated Mariner didn’t seem to have much health. He wondered if he could look at the combat logs and see what was going on. He returned to his camp and got the boar ready to cook.

With several large hunks of meat spitted over the fire, Ander opened his status page and started looking around for some sort of prompt to view his combat logs. He found that when he looked at his notifications, that there was an option to instead look at the combat log.

…

You use Winds Downward Slash (Longsword) on Iron Tusk Boar

Iron Tusk Boar takes 200 damage.

Critical Strike.

Iron Tusk Boar takes an additional 200 damage.

Iron Tusk Boar has taken fatal damage.

Iron Tusk Boar has perished.

…

Ander raised his eyebrows again. 200 damage seemed like a lot. Unless this system was really unbalanced, Way of the Wind was really badass. Ander shook his head. Everything was too weird. But that wasn’t what he wanted to look at anyway. Ander scrolled back to his previous combat.

…

You attempt to sneak. Sneak Failed.

Mutated Mariner has detected your presence.

Mutated Mariner lunges at You.

You successfully dodge Mutated Mariner’s lunge.

Mutated Mariner uses swipe on You.

You successfully dodge Mutated Mariner’s swipe.

Mutated Mariner uses swipe on You.

You successfully dodge Mutated Mariner’s swipe.

Mutated Mariner uses swipe on You.

You partially dodge Mutated Mariner’s swipe.

You take 32 damage (47 damage mitigated.)

You suffer injury [Lacerated Chest].

Mutated Mariner uses swipe on You.

You partially dodge Mutated Mariner’s swipe.

You take 46 damage (82 damage mitigated.)

You suffer injury [Lacerated Abdomen: Right].

You use Wind’s Upward Slash (Longsword) on Mutated Mariner.

Mutated Mariner takes 350 damage.

Critical Strike

Mutated Mariner takes an additional 350 damage.

Mutated Mariner has taken fatal damage.

Mutated Mariner has perished.

…

Another critical strike. Ander supposed that it was in part due to the fact that the Mutated Mariner had been nearly rabid in its desire to get to him. If the thing had tried to dodge, it probably would have been able to mitigate most of the damage. Ander shuddered. He was lucky to be alive. If the Mutated mariner had been a bit more intelligent. If Ander didn’t have Way of the Wind. Hell, if Ander didn’t have Walker of Memories, he would be dead. Game Over. Ander wasn’t quite ready to learn how the respawn mechanics worked, if there were any such things. Ander would have to get a few more levels. He wouldn’t go back down until he was level 15. It should make the Mutated Mariners a walk in the park. If Ander had his guess, this one was a low level one. He would likely find even more powerful individuals wherever the crack led.