PART 1

Getting out is not an option. I think to myself. I have no way to climb that wall. Making my way through the slimy and wet floor, the stench of a rotting corpse assaults me. There lays a half-rotten man in a blue robe. His skull had been bitten off by some kind of small rodent, his shoes and other clothes except the blue robe also gave a rotten smell, only the metallic parts of the boots survived more or less intact, the rest is useless crap. Holding back my slowly rising disgust, I ‘clean’ his corpse of his valuables. His robe is expensive, though the scrolls inside were destroyed. Around his neck lays a deep ocean blue necklace. Made with a style completely unknown to me. I also freed him from his rings, two to be precise. After making sure that his rotten corpse has nothing of value left for me, I dump the whole corpse into my amulet. Luckily the space inside can’t get dirty.

Gotten rid of the stench, I continue to look through the skeletons lying around. There was a surprising variety of them around. Most had the features of human. A group to the left had obvious dwarf or gnome-like skeletons. They were picked quite clean. I imagine that they had some kind of armour and weapons, but nothing was left.

Upon closer inspection, I smelled a very strange smell. Moving a bit to zero in the smell, I found myself in the middle of the dwarf group. Thinking that it most likely is something below me, I took out my shovel and began to clean away the dirt.

The smell and an even stronger stench assaulted me in the middle of the work. Taking out a piece of cloth, I made it wet and put it in front of my nose and continued my work.

Sweaty and breathing heavily, I hit my shovel against something hard.

*clink*

Hoping that it isn’t a stone, I clean away the rest of the dirt and small stones. I find it very strange that in a cave in the middle of a mountain there is a place where I can use my shovel.

I unearth a rotting chest the size of a trashcan and a jade-like skeleton. It had a smooth, green-transculent consistency. It felt very hard and most importantly valuable. The Skull was the bone which I was able to smell from the cave. The other bones also have the same smell, just a lot weaker. The skeleton definitely belonged to a human-like creature. It was slim and surprisingly high at 2.13 centimetres. I would say that they are elves, but I haven’t heard of similar creatures yet and putting legends into this new world would be foolish.

The box was obvious very precious. The metal looks like the day it had been made, in comparison, the wood is slowly rotting away, very slowly I have to add. The piece of wood without any rot has a very smoothing touch, very hard even harder than stone. The metal it is made from has a violet-dark colour. Very pretty. It had a lock in the front with no visible key lock. It has some kind of other opening mechanism. Not wanting to take any risks, in case the box is trapped, I put it into my amulet. Which was surprisingly hard.

*ARGH*

I winced in pain on the floor, blood leaking from my body, pain wrecking everywhere on my body. I feel some fear. I never thought that storing that extraordinary box would be so dangerous. What happened is that for whatever reason, the amount of mana needed to store the box was ridiculously huge. It sapped all of my mana and then continued to use my vitality to fuel the process. At least I didn’t get killed. I jug down a health potion.

*ARGHHHH*

I cry in pain. This time a lot worse than before. I did get healed a good amount, but the expenditure this time didn’t look like a normal wound. Having no better alternative, I drop the idea of drinking any more potion. Way too painful, and most likely would do more harm than good.

Out of options, I simply take out some simple herbs with weak healing effects. These don’t use the body’s natural regeneration, they give the body medicine.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Before I could rest to regenerate, I moved my aching body to the entrance of the cave, where I landed and carefully planted half of my grenades there, I hooked it up with the barriers generator. Luckily, I didn’t use a lot of mana when nothing happens to it. I simply made it that when someone drops, the shield pops, and thus the grenades falls to the ground, where I put some mana active ingredients to overload and explode the grenade.

“This should be enough,” I said to myself.

Then I went inside to regenerate for a while. I expect that I should be reasonably healed after 3-4 days, fully only after one and half months or so.

Moving into the place I picked, A small corner with moss usable as a bed and some light, facing the thing on the other side.

The things an entrance, most likely the same thing my compass pointed towards, too bad that I don’t have any energy to remake it. Not in this state at least.

The entrance has been carved into the rocks. It looked somewhat like a Greek temple entrance, with big pillars ‘holding the entrance’.

The entrance itself was a big slope of dark wood, with metal mechanical pieces holding it together. An exquisite creation I would say. If I want to imagine how dwarfen architecture would look like, I would point my finger at the entrance. The whole diggy diggy hole thing is supposed to be a dwarf thing anyway. At least that’s what I know about them, they don’t like mages that much. I wonder why?

PART 2

After a day of resting and healing, I was able to move slowly again without hurting myself. Out of boredom, I made my way through the damp cave. The amount of corpses is really astonishing. I counted a grand total of 63 different corpse of 4 different races. The first three were the ‘elf’, the dwarfs and humans. The last were human-like, but with strange ‘extra’ limb at the back. They didn’t die of old age, so whether those bones were used for wings or an additional arm is hard to judge. Nonetheless, I did store three of the most complete skeletons of each race for further research. I suppose that the deceased persons should have been powerful before their death. Unfortunately, someone already brought out most of the valuables from the corpses. The only lootable things were from people who fell inside from the last dozen or so years. They were all apprentices and I surprisingly found a squire with a sword and armour. I, of course, stored all of their valuables, which, to be honest, weren’t a whole lot.

After 3 days I was fit enough to use magic again. I wouldn’t dare to fight an extended fight against anyone, but at least I had enough to use it if necessary.

On the fifth day of my stay, I recovered enough to continue my journey. The way towards the door was plastered by mud and bones. These were different than the other skeletons from before. I suppose that these were maybe the bones of the apprentice? Who weren’t resilient enough to stay whole?

In my thought, I made my way to the entrance. Crunching bones and other hard to identify stuff under my boots.

Following the now rebuild compass, I follow it to the right side of the entrance. There a part of one of the pillars light up with a very similar image to my compass,

*VROOOM*

The cave is shaking, dust coming down from the top, the door is slowly opening and unveiling the secrets inside. Slowly edging inside the new hall, I was greeted by a closing door, which made me panic a bit, to be honest, and a very plain hall, not decorated, but still made with style. In the middle is a shadowy podium, and beside it is a fully clothed corpse. The corpse is making me a lot more scared then the whole situation together. His state means that he has been inside for the same amount of time than the corpses outside, but neither his clothes or himself got any signs of it.

Approaching the podium, a fresh smell assaults me. A small part of my soul tells me not to breath it in. Hastily I make some countermeasures against it. Soulshield in combination with a wet towel works good enough. Still clueless why it should be dangerous, I take the black book from the podium, flipping it around, I notice the thick and heavy pages. The whole book doesn’t have more than 20 pages, but weighs 3-4 kilograms. I store it and continue my way to the person. She is very small compared to the corpses from the outside. She looked like a celebrity, just shrunken down by 36 per cent. A very strange sight, not for the average racist. She has a dark-shiny robe, at a side is a big gaping wound, most likely the reason she died. A one-piece dress underneath. The difference between a normal one-piece dress I know from earth is that there isn’t a place anywhere to take it off. I carefully take off her amulet and her rings, she had three. Somehow all wizards have a lot of rings. The amulet, I was unable to store, which made me very excited. Then I stored her body. This time I was very careful, ready to break off the process at any moment, not wanting to get killed by being sucked of all the magic from within.

On the other side of the room, there is a dark hallway there. I make my way towards it. Nothing is crunching under my feet this time, the room is pristine clean. Except for the blood from the corpse. Not even water can come into the room. In my book, it being this dry is a lot more impressive than the still intact door after the 3-4 century of exploration. You might be able to make something resist a lot of power, but making something in a damp environment which would stay for millennia dry, without water infiltrating it is very very impressive. The hallway continued for another four hundred meters, where I found another corpse, this one has the stench of a normal corpse, nearly everything has rotten off of it, except a small bag hanging on his hip and his shoes. As the good grave robber, I am, I store the bag and the shoes separately. The bag used up a big chunk of my mana, but by far not enough to make me dry like that box. The skeleton also came with me. I am pretty sure that the skeletons of powerful figures, preserved a good as this one could be useful for something in the future, unfortunately, I will not be able to show most of my loot. If the Order catches wind that I might have been inside here, all hell would break loose. I can’t imagine what riches they managed to excavate from here. Only the armour and weapons from the dwarfs fighting the blue robbed person should be absolute treasures. Whatever. On this end is another door like the one I used to enter, it is only a lot smaller. Like a mini version of the other door. I activate it with the same compass as the one I used for entry. While walking, I think why that other person didn’t leave. From the looks of it, he didn’t die from fighting, he should have had the ability to make the compass and leave this place. So why didn’t he? A mystery for another time