----------------------------------------
Avan sat on his knees and scribbled the current rune into the last of the nine small stones with as much effort and accuracy as possible.
"That's not even close to all the runes, but I don't have many more options. Whereas ... I could still use the small sticks ..." He pondered as he went through his inventory once more. "Yeah, why not, actually."
With a mental command, he summoned the eleven remaining wooden sticks to the ground in a pile in front of him.
Each individual stick was almost exactly ten centimeters long, and for his intended purposes he divided each stick into three parts.
With the thirty-three small sticks, he set about carving more runes on one part each.
By the time all the sticks had been carved with one rune each, Avan had traced a good half of the runes visible on the huge gate.
He stowed all the stones and sticks back in his Celestial Storage and looked around for his dungeon companion, whom he promptly found sitting on top of the hemisphere engraved in the ground.
Horny sat with a rather expectant look right next to the dungeon sphere carved into the ground and just chewed with pleasure a few blades of grass, which just disappeared little by little between his jaws.
"Well you're having a good time while I'm working here. Yeah well ..." As if playfully indignant, only to clasp his hands behind his neck, and with a plop, let himself fall backwards onto the ground. With his legs outstretched and his head resting on his hands, he looked up at the wonderfully decorated starry ceiling and allowed himself a momentary rest before continuing.
"I wonder how Elisa and Yue will get along with the bookworm?" He asked himself the question that was currently running through his head. After a few moments, he braced himself back to a sitting position and stood up to wipe his hands on his black leather pants.
"Let's take a look at how I can open this door, then."
His white fluffy friend continued to watch him, chewing grass, as Avan walked toward the gigantic gate, placing his hand partly on the marble and partly on the decorations of the door.
Following his first intuition, Avan tried to let his Celestial Mana flow through his palms into the door, as he had done before. This time, however, his mana stopped, as did his sphere of influence as a Dungeon was cut off from the door.
Thoughtfully, he withdrew his right hand and scratched his stubbly beard while once again looking at the pattern of lines and runes on the door.
The entire ornamentation formed roundings and self-contained circles, which all converged in the center to form the dungeon sphere. However, the dungeon sphere was a good ten meters above the ground in the lower center of the door, which Avan could not reach.
He let his eyes wander over the patterns, following the lines from the center sphere through the runes and root-like interweaving to the outer lines that spanned the doorway and gate.
After a few minutes of pondering, his gaze caught on the outer lines, which seemed to flow over into the semicircular plate on the floor.
Suddenly tensed, and with a different perspective, he stood with his back to the marble gate and for the first time took a closer look at the overall picture that opened up before him on the floor.
The dome, which ended exactly with the gate, had under it, as if protecting it, other formations. On closer and more creative inspection, Avan could identify abstract buildings, figures, as well as something similar to trees.
It almost seemed to him as if the dome was being fed by the dungeon sphere floating above, enclosing and protecting everything beneath it. Much as if it represented Avan's own sphere of influence as a dungeon, with only buildings, flora and fauna, and living creatures included.
Suddenly interested, and still following the line of the dome up to the upper dungeon sphere, he cautiously approached the round structure, with Horny sitting beside it chewing grass and looking at him.
"You already knew that ... Didn't you?" He spoke out quietly to his crony, stopping just short of the sphere engraved in the ground, only to kneel down and take another close look at the beautifully complex pattern.
Quite the opposite of the Staff of Akkalon he had seen in the sketch in Akkalon's hand, looking at this illustration caused him no dizziness or discomfort.
Carefully, remembering what had happened the last time he touched such a sphere, he ran his right index finger over the edge of the fifty-centimeter sphere and felt the craftsmanship that this masterpiece had required.
In contrast, and with an audible exhale from Avan, fortunately this time nothing happened with a mere touch.
"I wonder if letting my mana flow in here will do any good?" He speculated.
Shrugging his shoulders and taking another quick look at the rabbit, which was still chewing with relish, he let his mana run free.
Immediately he felt the mana flow through his sphere of influence into and through his soul core, to flow in floods through his arm in his hand and into the picture on the ground.
Briefly, Avan panicked as his body tensed and stiffened, and as if motionless, he could not stop the procedure.
When he was finally able to raise his hand again, he stumbled backward a few steps and fell on his butt, only to stare at his intact palm, and took a deep breath.
Reassured that nothing else had happened, he finally noticed the strong pulsating lines which wafted and flowed in ripples from the sphere he had just touched across the entire pattern on the floor.
Wide-eyed, he quickly stood up and moved next to Horny outside the stone floor, and spun around to gaze open-mouthed at the spectacle before his eyes.
Light, which traveled like liquid magma from the sphere in the floor as if through veins through the lines, traveled over the intricate patterns, runes, shapes and engravings across the floor. It turned up over the thick lines at the edge of the archway and through the root-like lines and runes to the center of the gigantic door.
As the liquid light touched and filled the circle in the center, it almost seemed as if the dungeonsphere began to spin and take on a life of its own.
Stone dust hailed down from the ceiling of the cavernous structure, and a deep rumbling and scraping of stone on stone traveled through the floor, walls, and ceiling.
Avan took another, slightly fearful, step back, only to stop rooted to the spot when he saw Horny continuing to chew in silence. His dungeon companion had turned his rabbit head to his right, and was looking at him calmly.
Still amazed and open-mouthed, Avan turned his head from top to bottom, and left and right, looking at the increasingly glowing runes on the white marble gate.
The decorations and engravings glowed and pulsed with a golden and blue light until a vibration passed through the stone, and the door seemed to slide sideways into the wall with a loud roar and rumble to the right.
When the gigantic door disappeared entirely into the wall and everything came to a halt again, a deep and amused laugh suddenly thundered and boomed through the cavern.
"Oho! Congratulations, Avan!" Thundered the same voice amusedly from everywhere and nowhere. "I'll see you, or rather hear you, when you reach the lowest level. And there should be no doubt about that at all, since you've already made it this far!"
Avan jumped backwards in surprise as he looked around frantically, almost tripping over his own legs, but not catching sight of anyone far and wide. "What the abyss ...!" He cursed loudly, running his right hand over his hair.
"Good luck, young Dungeon." Echoed the booming voice one last time through the surroundings and then fell silent just as abruptly as it had appeared.
He just shook his head and sat down on his butt, limbs trembling slightly. With both hands on his head, still in disbelief, confused and surprised at the sudden appearance of a strange voice, he tried to calm himself down a bit.
He was startled one more time and briefly cried out when he felt something hard on his left elbow.
Incredulous, and briefly a little angry, he stared at his white little friend, who had merely nudged him gently with his horn on his forehead. Before he could get angry, Avan pulled himself together, and briefly laughed slightly hysterically. "There I am slaughtering my way through Kobolds, Wolfhounds, and street thieves, and a sudden voice upsets me like that ... Kind of poor ... Avan." He spoke to himself as he continued to stare at his fluffball, running his right hand quickly back and forth over his hair in a calming manner.
After two more minutes he had regained his composure, and stood up again, still a bit shaky on his feet, and looked at the now again harmless looking runes and decorations on the floor and archway.
Where the gate had been before, there was now a large staircase that led evenly and in a familiar blue pulsating light down and deeper into the levels of the dungeon.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Taking a few more breaths and shouldering his backpack, Avan took his first steps through the archway and found himself at the top of the stairs, which led around to the right and down a gigantic spiral staircase.
Here, in contrast to the cavernous structure of the previous levels, the staircase, the walls, and even the ceiling were all white marble. Only the blue glowing and pulsating runes between the wall and ceiling were still identical, illuminating the huge stone spiral staircase down in a twilight and dim light.
The staircase, like the doorway before it, was ten meters wide and also high.
With Horny at his side, Avan took the first step and just as he had taken a few more steps, the gigantic door behind him rumbled and closed again slowly and with a loud bang.
"Nothing I can do about it now..." He muttered with a sigh to himself, shaking his head as he stood sideways on the stairs, looking at the closed door at the top.
Pulling once more on the straps of his backpack, he set off with renewed vigor into the unknown of the next level.
He didn't know how long he had been striding down the stairs like this with his dungeon companion beside him, but could swear that he must already be several hundred feet below the last level. Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, because he had lost all sense of time, he saw an open archway appear around the bend.
With one hand on his hip and the right scratching his chin, he stared out into a purple crystal plane that stretched as far as he could see. Everywhere, stalactites and stalagmites jutted down and up from below and above, and here and there he could even make out crystals floating and moving slightly in the air.
For the first time since Avan had awakened on Eos and Aorus, he found himself facing a scene and landscape that could not have ever existed on Earth.
The air was dry, and neither hot nor cold, but there was an unnatural stillness.
The glow of the familiar sparkling crystals in the ceiling was reflected everywhere in various facets in all the purple crystals.
Also here, in contrast to the previous layers and levels of the dungeon, he found the floor, the very distant walls and also the ceiling at a height of a good hundred meters, of white marble.
The crude cave systems and rough stones were nowhere to be seen here, and instead everything was otherworldly beautiful and chaotically perfect, which all the crystals on this level only accentuated.
With a mental note to mine as many of these crystals as he could and take them with him, Avan took his first step into the sixth level of the Tower of Akkalon.
Avan Leaf
Level: 58
Free Stat Points: 30
Element: Celestial
Class: Healing Dungeonheart [Human]
Subclass: [Bronze] Healer of Akkalon
Stats
Strength: 75
Dexterity: 130
Vitality: 95
Intelligence: 110
Wisdom: 75
Spirit: 105
Active Skills [3/8]
[Bronze] Akkalons Touch
[Bronze] Akkalons Sphere
[Bronze] Celestial Storage
Passive Skills
Pain Resistance: [Bronze] 7
Steady: [Bronze] 8
Potential: [Unlocked]
Celestial Affinity: [Bronze] 5
Identify: [Bronze] 6
Celestial Sphere: 1
First Aid: 7
Tracking: [Bronze] 7
Meditation: [Bronze] 9
Pain Expert: 9
Primary Resources
Health: 525
Stamina: 525
Ambient Mana: 825
Celestial Storage
[Bronze Coin]: 10
[Silver Coin]: 67
[Gold Coin]: 35
10 [Golden Meaples]
1 [well-used Spear]
3 [Water Flask]
1 [short sword]
3 [blanket]
1 [tent]
1 [short ax]
1 [used iron knife]
1 [bow]
3 [wooden iron-tipped arrow]
79 stacks of [berries]
11 dry [Roots]
122 [Lymia Herbs]
3 [Cup of steaming Lymia Tea]
113 [Hound Fangs]
9 [small rune engraved stones]
3 [Wooden Logs]
33 [small rune engraved Wooden sticks]
Debts
-
----------------------------------------