‘Inspect.’ x9.
** DING **
SYMPHONY. Serene Mind & Physique in harmony, become the eye and unleash the storm. You may now maintain an imperfect state of Meditation in conjunction with perceiving external stimuli.
Pain Resistance. Sometimes, it hurts to live, but living is what most all dedicate themself towards. your Will will hopefully make the hurt less so.
Fear Resistance. There is no shadow without light, no bravery without fear, may you embrace the shadows and thrive under the light. Your deepest fear is deeper still, but your Will is no less taller.
Heavy Armor Proficiency. Sometimes, the best defense is to have something thick and very hard between you and the enemy, offense could be that same thing in rigorous contact with them, repeatedly.
Taunt. Master the art of throwing the first punch, by making your targets futilely throw one at you. For some reason, you look like you deserve it!
Evasion. Dance the fine line between fleeing and fighting. Increase awareness of incoming danger, grants bonus to reflex and physical flexibility during evasive maneuver.
Harvest Fauna. Waste not want not for all life is precious. Bonus to tools mastery and quality when butchering an animal for resource, familiarity with a species increases efficiency and success rate for volatile or sensitive materials.
SmartMines.exe - Early. Novice Rank. 35 mana. Incomplete spell, upto Early only. Shoot a sphere of light that manifests various functions depending on its placement. The floor creates a landmine. A wall or ceiling will create a motion detector trap, the former triggers an arrow while the latter drops an electrocuting net. A smaller object would create a grenade that triggers on impact.
Will-o'-Weal - Early. Novice Rank. 25 mana / cast, Variable. Incomplete spell, upto Early only. Summon your very own good-natured tenderhearted creatures to assist you in your journey, foremost, to provide Light and Ignite a fire. Also keeps you and the vicinity Unsoiled, Disinfected or Distilled, they too, grant a modicum of health regeneration on contact that compounds with each additional creature. Five may fuse into a weal-spider with the tools and skills to Harvest Fauna. These mana creatures and their abilities are fueled by ambience mana. Mana overuse may cause dissipation.
Halfway through scrutinizing the skill descriptions, my resource pool completely filled up due to SYMPHONY. So I cast Pocket Suspense, with its internal time frozen. The process felt different than usual, where most spells simply help guide my mana in certain ways to produce certain results. This spell began by allowing me to feel something deeper inside my mana signature, kind of like I've been swimming in a wave pool and just now found the pump that is creating these waves.
But now that I know it's there, whatever that is becomes hard to ignore, I'm also feeling like I've found a long lost part of me. There is an overflowing sense of nostalgia blooming in my soul… as I am overwhelmed by the sensation, I notice the spell gently slip into that me shaped something, and then what is part of the mana I invested into casting the spell flowed through the substance and opened up a tiny space in its torso, before more of the mana seem to reach in towards the location where my repository resides, for a split second, I could feel two paths that connects me to it, before the new path is cut off.
The batch of mana that had just returned from that mysterious space approached, what I now believe to be my soul and followed the path traversed by its predecessor before depositing its load within. Then, a third batch of mana, what feels like about 70% of the mana invested into the spell merged itself with the deposited space, it is then that the small pocket of space in my soul suddenly felt displaced, like it was cut out of reality. Must be due to the stopped time.
All in all, it was an eye opener to me. My soul is now an ever present, infinitely far yet intimately close substance-thingy partly inside every cell that makes up my mind & body, and partly concentrated mana located deep inside of my mana pool. Not to mention that small bubble of space inside of it and the way I can somehow feel that time seems to flow over the bubble, instead of through it as how it should be.
After a few minutes of getting lost in my thoughts, I finished reading my Inspect results and decided to now test the pocket. Storing and withdrawing items out of it was very instinctive, feeling like I've had that pocket space with me all my life. So, using small pieces of concrete taken off the wall, shaped into various sized balls, I found that anything above six centimeters won't successfully go into the pocket. That's way too small!
Though still curious, I did more tests but in intervals of one millimeter and found that the limit is actually a diameter of 6.4 cm, assuming I made the sizes right. It's small alright, guess the spell is named a pocket after all. The test took quite a while, though more time was spent trying to shape the stones than actually using the pocket.
Meanwhile, the weal-spiders finished harvesting the core of all the Gobs and Roaches, leaving everything else behind on my command. Roach carapace? Goblin nails? Bleh!! They have also separated back into the smaller weal-lifes. There are now exactly 60 of them lurking around the room along with a tiny mound of cores, perhaps this will be the cleanest room on the whole planet tonight. As for what I should do with them, I have no idea.
Leaving what to do with them for the me of tomorrow. I collect the cores into my repository, counting them as I go, ending up with a total of 117 cores if I include the ones I harvested myself. That's ten more than what I had fought, mysterious. On that note, the two infused cubes are missing, leaving the last uninfused one behind.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
It's getting really late now, but my mana pool is once again all filled up. Oh, I love how SYMPHONY boosts my regeneration but still allows me to remain perfectly conscious, although the regeneration rate is slower than Meditation. So, I decided to once again try Pocket Suspense before calling it a day, this time setting the time dilation to half the passage of time. I'll also be leaving one of the smaller rocks inside to see what happens to it when the space is reformed.
Once again, I cast the spell and became hyper aware of my soul, the mana I invested into the spell went through the exact same process, same paths, same spot. Only difference being, the mana and isolated space already present within gently slid out and seamlessly merged with the outside world before the process continued as it had previously. This time, the pocket's displacement feels different, more like a bad signal rather than something completely disconnected. The stone I left inside popped out of me in conjunction with the old space. I didn't really see out of where exactly on my body, but I blankly stared at it as it rolled away on the floor.
Snapping out of staring at the stone, I spent another ten or so minutes testing the new pocket to find out that it has a diameter of 7.8 centimeters, which is not a lot of improvement from 6.4. Not very useful, and for it to be the most expensive item in the store too... lets just leave it as is for now. I had the weal-lifes stay away from the tiny entrance-hole on the wall and placed a SmartMine on the ceiling in the hole, that should drop an electrocuting net on anything that tries to enter. Finally, I lay back, time for bed…
y'know, my eyes reopened, I never really checked my map since purchasing it.
As expected, the map shows the path I've traveled from Garuda Hospital to the pangkalan ojek I stopped by earlier, as well as the areas in this building I've passed through. The map seems to reveal itself as my vision moves over the areas around me, which means it is blank beyond any walls or tree lines I haven't been through. The hospital is marked on the map with a name and a blue outline, whereas this mall has an oval shaped crystal marked on it. I mentally inquire the map about that mark.
** DING **
Unidentified Dungeon
Ah~, well that can't be good.
Curiosity, fear, excitement, uncertainty, various emotions flitted across my mind that instant. Sleep came slow as I tossed and turned on the foreign bed, this also being my first night out all alone in this changed world. Forcing myself to believe that I'm as secure as can be for now, though I did end up making the entrance even smaller as well as adding several bars where possible. So, eventually my mind sinks into unremarkable dreams.
---
Morning came as the sunray filtered in through the holes on the window covers. I woke up feeling slightly awful, sixty weal-lifes can sure make some noise, forcing me to shepherd them all, besides my initial five who lingered closer to the bed, out towards the supermarket before getting back to sleep. But, one bottled coffee and several crackers later, I managed to get up and feel ready to start the day.
The map shows no change from how it was last night.
I had the disk on my finger fly up and trigger the SmartMines I placed, BOOM, no harm done. Then suited up in armor and opened the entrance up. Exiting the makeshift side room, I stand in stunned silence, the supermarket is spotless clean, all corpses are clean, blood stains... nada. Dust, goblin excrements, food crumbs and spilled sauce, what's that? The creatures that caused this all are cozying throughout the room in various states of laziness. Heck, even the air smells fresh, I gave them a double thumbs up, yet, all 55 of them deign to even twitch at me. Gonna let them laze around here for now before taking them back with me, the hospital could really do with some extra cleaning service.
I send out a disk to scout outside for danger and a decent patch of land to make a grave of sorts. Soon, I had upgraded my Mold Earth spell and had successfully buried the ashes I cremated using Conjure Flames, due to limited space. I blankly watch the two ladies and three girls as their corpses turn to ashes. Anyway, the Basic mastery of Mold Earth being of similar nature to Shape Stone was obvious to me, though that might be influenced by my Immortal Mind trait.
** DING **
Spell mastery rank up, Mold Earth Early > Basic
"Rest in peace, hope you five are in a happier place now." I stand there in silence for a few moments, two disks hovering around me, just in case. Before making my way back inside to loot the supermarket. Mentally chanting; toys, snacks, alcoholic drinks and fresh produce.
A few hours later… I managed to salvage some intact toys and dolls, and uncover several bottles of beer and cheap wine under the rubble within the drinks section. Looking for the rest, I stumbled upon their storage behind a big metallic door the Goblins probably didn't note, where there are plenty of all four requests. Tsk! I gathered a few for now and some more for personal consumption, leaving most of it behind, wouldn't want my storage full before checking a dungeon out. Also, the hospital could make use of a lot of these things, and may spend some manpower to Mend several much needed but broken items, I plan to inform them.
But for now, the dungeon.
Zooming in on the map showed me an approximation of where it is, which is just left from the supermarket. Hmm, that's where the toilets are, I think.
An hour or two before noon, I make my way cautiously approaching the place whilst Sneaking, the armor once again made to camouflage me.
Nothing happened on the way. I reach the end of the hallway past several more rooms and a pair of escalators… lo and behold, where the small hallway that leads into where the toilet separates by gender into the left and right. Stood a majestic double door framed by an equally majestic doorframe, it's made out of a dark unknown material that seems to shift and fluctuate, wooden one second then metalic the next before becoming gemlike for a moment, very mesmerizing. One door is closed, while pitch black darkness is visible through the small gap on the other.
Visually, nothing seems to stand out in the surroundings, besides the door. Focusing on Mana Sense, the dungeon door excluded, clear! Nothing spoke out to me from the other senses too. Stop stalling! I chidded myself.
So, I affirmed my resolution and cautiously stepped forth! Nothing happens and I now stand before the door, within arms reach of it. What else to do but touch it, right?
** DING **
Chamber of Goblins (Uncleared)
Level 3 - 15 Dungeon
Party limit: 4
Instanced: 3 / 3
Slot available
Enter solo? Yes / No