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What the abyss... Avan grumbled and held his head while leaning against the facade of the adventurers' guild in a side alley.
He had been heading south on foot for a week as he narrowly avoided soldiers and other shady characters here and there, all riding or marching east. Avan knew roughly from the map in one of the books from the Dungeon of Akkalon that there were some smaller and larger settlements and cities in the south, while down in the southern part of the continent was a completely different kingdom.
So Avan had always marched along the edge of the road to the south, avoiding any bandits or other dangers, all thanks to his regained sphere of influence. He had avoided the bandits and most of the wolves, so as not to draw attention to his whereabouts in that direction, always with the thought that if someone did come looking for him.
He had hardly needed food or something to drink, and only paused to wash at a small stream at the beginning of his journey, which his sphere of influence had easily shown him.
He also had a lot of messages to catch up on, it seemed, since the slave bracelet had suppressed his interface and mana, but it had nevertheless continued to work at full speed.
With the help of the kill notifications, he had finally figured out how to trigger his perk of rebirth. The system credited him with every direct death that accompanied the collapse of the dungeon tower, which had been clearly shown in over two thousand kill messages. Likewise in his accumulated experience.
If he hadn't ended up in the hole in the city wall hanging on to life by sheer force of will for as long as he had, the thousand souls wouldn't have materialized and he would have actually died, since the deaths hadn't piled up suddenly but some had succumbed to their injuries only after a short time.
But what surprised him most during his journey was the immense and gigantic progress of his level and his skills.
Avan Leaf
Level: 188
Free Stat Points: 470
Element: Celestial
Class: [Silver] Dungeonarchitect (Human)
Subclass: [Silver] Healer of Akkalon
Stats
Strength: 75
Dexterity: 130
Vitality: 135
Intelligence: 180
Wisdom: 170
Spirit: 267
Active Skills [3/8]
[Silver] Akkalon's Touch
[Silver] Akkalon's Form
[Silver] Celestial Storage
Passive Skills
Pain Resistance: [Silver] 9
Steady: [Bronze] 9
Potential: [Unlocked]
Celestial Affinity: [Bronze] 9
Identify: [Bronze] 9
Celestial Sphere: [Silver] 9
First Aid: [Silver] 9
Tracking: [Bronze] 9
Meditation: [Silver] 9
Pain Expert: [Bronze] 7
Perks
Cycle of Death and Life
Primary Resources
Health: 725
Stamina: 725
Ambient Mana: 7600
Souls: 341/1000
He had broken the silver barrier when he reached level one hundred, and had pushed many of his skills up to the next maximum level. The skills, which had immediately gained levels, were in retrospect only the logical consequence of his experiences of the last weeks. So his dungeon skills had made expreme jumps, as well as everything that was related to his experienced pain.
Active Skill: Akkalons Touch
With great strength comes great responsibility and more so with each touch. Heal or destroy.
When in direct contact, you can now inflict mana-based wounds to your enemies or infuse an ally with supportive energy.
[Bronze] You can use multiple appendages to inflict or heal many at the same time.
[Silver] You can now permanently infuse your mana into objects.
Active Skill: Celestial Storage
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As an otherworldly being, you now have access to your own private celestial pocket dimension to store a small number of items.
To access or store items, you need to imagine a small portal.
[Bronze] The Capacity is significantly increased. At the same time, the portal for storing and removing larger objects can now adapt to the size up to a specific point.
[Silver] Living, but non-sentient, things can now also be stored.
Active Skill: Akkalon's Form
By proving that you are incapable of preventing interference that is none of your business, you now gain even more opportunities to intervene. You can now summon up to any form of celestial mana that you can freely control in your sphere of influence with your will.
You can now also assign to your form the properties of the sky by day or night, be it the color, the glow, or other properties of the celestial vault.
[Bronze] The capacity of the summoned forms is increased by one. You can add twice the amount of mana to your creations.
[Silver] The limit knows (almost) no boundaries.
Passive Skill: Meditation
Through meditation, a true spirit can reach godhood through instant regeneration of health, mana, and stamina.
While not moving, you constantly regain health, mana, and stamina at a higher rate than usually possible.
[Bronze] Your very soul faced a flood of mana and not only survived the encounter but also came out of this ordeal more substantial than before.
Your body and mind are tremendously improved through mana infusion, and you now passively store mana in your cells. You are faster, stronger, and more resilient. If you wish, you can unleash small portions of stored mana through contact to corrupt your enemies.
[Silver] You have managed to create a healthy schizophrenia in your mind. Congratulations.
Allows you now to split your thoughts and concentration in meditation and to tackle different thoughts and tasks at the same time.
Passive Skill: Pain Resistance
While smacking your head face-first into obstacles, walls, and water surfaces, you don´t care. Your head has learned to tolerate your incompetence with handling situations with more sensitivity. You feel pain more bearable with each increasing level of this Skill.
[Bronze] Feeling pain will now replenish tiny amounts of primary resources per second.
[Silver] You can now redirect, reduce or turn off pain.
Passive Skill: First Aid
You have learned to bandage yourself in a crude but simple way.
Use clean clothes to close any wound on yourself or your allies. Does not heal any negative status effects.
[Bronze] You can now heal minor status changes such as bleeding or minor poisons.
[Silver] Your healing now can greatly reduce pain and heal most physical status changes related to the wound.
And so, at some point, he had arrived in the two-thousand-soul village of Tria, and had immediately experienced the backlash to his massive growth in such an unhealthy short time in his own body and soul.
Passive Skill: Celestial Sphere
You are a Dungeon. You are nurtured by the tremendous amount of ambient mana that encircles you. You can harness and use ambient mana in your sphere of influence at will. Your Sphere of Influence is sphere-shaped, with you as the anchor point and heart of the dungeon.
Your celestial power now radiates from your dungeon and can illuminate you surroundings with light. Only the highest beings can distinguish and sense your Dungeonheart. But always beware of your higher mana density.
[Bronze] Range is multiplied by 5. (50m)
You are now able to store various mundane materials and keep them physically stable inside your sphere of influence. You have unlocked an anchor point.
[Silver] Range is multiplied by 5. (250m)
You are now able to store advanced materials and keep them physically stable inside your sphere of influence.
His sphere of influence had increased another fivefold, resulting in two hundred and fifty meters of range in all directions. When he had taken the first steps towards the small town, all the impressions, conversations, movements and simply everything he could now perceive in this huge range had almost overwhelmed him and he lay curled up for hours at the edge of the forest to the town border, as everything hit him at once. The previous fifty meters had been kind of okay, but the range now was multiplied worse and more powerful.
After the first hour, Avan had taken refuge in his meditation, where he was thankfully able to gradually block out unimportant information. Things like motionless, non-living objects, and everything in his sphere of influence that did not want to exert an immediate influence on him. His sphere could fortunately, like a sense of danger, distinguish whether someone or something had to do with Avan or not. He also somehow had the feeling that Horn was playing a big role here and helping him, even if he still didn't know where Horn had gone.
That was another mystery, because although he had gotten his mana back, he couldn't hear or see Horn, but inside he knew he was still in his dungeon.
And so he had devoted himself to the long overdue plan of registering with the adventurers' guild. Upon entering the small town, he had had to pay three coppers, and had immediately gone to the adventurer guild to register and finally get to know the next best thing to dungeons in a fantasy world; adventurers and quests!
And now, after he had registered, everything was explained to him and he had apparently collected a lot of interested looks with his high level, he stood outside again and struggled once more to filter all impressions, because his concentration had briefly slipped away.
Deep breaths in and out later, and a good portion of meditation to apply his filters again, and he felt better. Sneaking up on him was now no longer possible, and if he concentrated he could even listen to the conversations inside the houses, as well as the guild building itself, which made him briefly listen to the conversation of the small group, and he became aware of how much he must have attracted attention.
On the way to Tria, he had removed his tattered clothes, leaving only his linen underpants, which fortunately had not suffered any damage and only needed to be washed urgently.
Avan's idea of using his forms as clothing had succeeded more and more after the first few days, so that he had now arrived in the city with a kind of billowing gauzy black and gold robe. This had also earned him a few raised eyebrows, but apparently sufficed. The mana had remained stretchy and malleable, which made it look like a magical fabric, even if it looked more noble than Avan actually wanted it to, but with the celestial mana it couldn't quite be prevented.
Now that he had regained control of his impressions, and had received some worried or odd looks from people hurrying by, he pushed himself off the wall again and did some stretching exercises with his neck and shoulders.
With his head tilted, he considered his next steps.
What now? Go to the tavern and wait? Probably the best idea for now... And a real bed would be great. Whereas my forms as a waterbed have already worked quite well, hehe.
Hm... yes. Ale, something hearty to eat, and maybe a few hours of sleep until this adventurous group comes looking for me would be really heavenly right now...
Only two inquiries with passers-by later, he had already found the apparently only inn in the small town and was standing in front of the half-timbered house, which had two wooden jugs above the entrance as decoration, which were just bumping into each other.
Avan stood in front of it, his head bent back, his hands in his pockets, and let the building take its effect on him until, with a satisfied nod, he turned his gaze to the door and entered.
He had already known what awaited him inside, but to experience something with his own eyes and senses was still something completely different. A multitude of tobacco smells, alcohol, light soot and a lot of delicious spices of dishes penetrated him at the same time, while everything was accompanied by a cacophony of laughter and conversations.
His gaze wandered as he calmly made his way directly to the presumed tavern owner, who, in typical cliché fashion, was behind the counter drying pots with a kitchen towel.
"Welcome to Trias Rast! What can I get you?"He was greeted warmly in a bass-heavy voice as the barman smiled at him and continued to dry the next wet jug with practice.
"Um, an ale would be excellent. And something warm to eat." Avan replied back, not unkindly, whereupon the barman hung the towel over his shoulder and tapped the just-dried jug of ale, calling out something to the back of the kitchen.
With a sound of wood on wood, he set the full frothy ale jug down in front of Avan. "Today we have wolf stew. It's in season again. With seasonal vegetables. My wife always cooks fresh every day. Ale is 5 coppers, a bowl of stew is 3."
Avan nodded back and pretended to pull the money out of his robe pocket and placed the 8 coppers on the counter, where with a single practiced wipe of the barman's hand the coins disappeared right into his own coat pocket and he nodded to him and went back to his business.
With the ale in his hand, Avan strolled to one of the four small booths, the only one still free, and sat down on the bench with his back to the wall. The ale tasted as usual, but had a tart-sweet note that he liked very much, and he let his thoughts run free while he looked around inconspicuously and drank the ale.
He would take a room after the meal and hit the hay for a midday nap, and then, fresh and perhaps even washed again, he would talk to the group of three adventurers, with the one guard.
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