As I ran into the deeper parts of the ruins, I analysed my surroundings. I had been expecting an ancient quarry or underground village, but instead found myself within some kind of maze.
An endless stone brick corridor spread out before me, which occasionally turned into a crossroad. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see. If it weren’t for this place having too few monsters and no system notifications, I would have thought it to be a dungeon instead, because its winding pathways seemed completely useless for any civilization.
In fact, my foremost theory was that this place had been a dungeon at some point, but wasn’t anymore. I just made no sense for this place to be manmade at all.
Soon enough, I encountered my first monster. Conveniently, it was a golem of some sort, made of the same bricks that the rest of the ruins seemed to be made out of. The dull grey bricks slotted together to create a humanoid form lacking a head. Instead, a single red rectangle shone from the middle of their torso, which shone its sanguine light, illuminating the tunnel a bit. Thankfully, I never needed light to see anymore, so I didn’t need to rely on the monsters to light up the area for me during battle. The golem stood at twice the height of an adult man, so his… head? Torso? Just barely stayed clear of the ceiling.
Our encounter had happened spontaneously. I had been running along when suddenly, one of the bricks on the wall lit up and tore itself out of its place, the rest of the wall following it to create its body. From there, it had instantly decided to attack me, leaving me no choice but to defend myself. The creature was remarkably tough, but it was hard to assign it a tier, because while it could boast of its strength and endurance, it was slow and uncoordinated, its movements not meant for battle. My overloaded orbs were rather effective and destroyed the creature in a few volleys, a testament to the golem’s durability. Even after the creature finally fell, the bricks that it had used were more or less still intact, making me theorize that my orbs hadn’t destroyed the creature so much as disturbed its mana with the ‘overloaded property’, which tended to upset mana it came into contact with.
All that was left of the wall that had come to life were… more bricks, somehow… Even where the wall had come out, more bricks laid in weight. Had all dirt turned into stone bricks around here?
Ignoring the morbid thought, I carried on and found a few more monsters as I traveled. All were made of stone, conveniently. Golems, gargoyles, and statues formed themselves out of the walls occasionally, always coming out one at a time. The battles became lengthier the more bricks the monsters used to create their bodies and attack me, but none could really touch me as long as I paid attention. It helped that they didn’t have ranged attacks. It was easy to see that even a group of ordinary classers could have issues with having to deal with repeated ambushes, though. If it weren’t for my endurance, I would need to take occasional breaks in this hostile environment. Thankfully, my efforts were rewarded by a level.
Ding! Combat finished. Congratulations on reaching [Hollow essence Knight] level 69!
For some reason, I instinctually felt that that was a nice number. Nonetheless, I had to continue delving.
After another half-hour of exploring, I noticed something peculiar. A single whisp of black mana floated around near a crossroad, with more mana of the same affinity visible down one of its four paths. Slightly on edge but curious, I decided to follow the mana. It took me down numerous different corridors, though each looked identical, until eventually, I found a set of stairs leading down.
I could have decided to scour the rest of the area, but saw no reason to. The largest and most valuable treasures tended to be kept further down, after all.
At the bottom of the set of stairs I found myself in another corridor, but this one didn’t lead to nowhere like the other ones. A few meters before me, a metal gate stood. A few dozen thick metal spikes went from the floor to the ceiling, keeping intruders out. Or in, I supposed. The monotone brick wall was broken up by a key-shaped hole on the left-hand side. Another one was visible on the other side of the gate as well.
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Out of curiosity, I drew my sword and hit the fence full force, even using my skills to boost my attack. My sword became covered in mana mid-swing, which rushed like the wind and hit the gate with a clang and piercing crack. Before I could react, a sickly green flash erupted and I was thrown backward.
My instincts kicked in so I jumped upright, searching for an enemy, but found myself alone, staring at that damn gate. Once I shook off the surprise, I noticed a strange feeling on my arm, as if a thousand spiders were slowly crawling up, only from the inside. I cast a glance at my sword arm, only to be met with it slowly disintegrating!
That sickly green light was eating my arm up, and I hadn’t noticed right away because of [Dark form], which kept me from feeling pain. Seeing that the skill wasn’t even healing the damage the light was causing, I made the split-second decision to cut the arm off entirely. I brought my sword to my shoulder and hacked at it, making my arm, clothes and all, fall to the floor with a dull thud.
I grimaced at the sight, but perked up when I saw my flash reform at my shoulder. It squirmed like an army of worms, slowly gathering and shifting, regrowing my arm. In a dozen or so minutes, I knew I would have a brand-new appendage.
The arm I had cut off, meanwhile, was still afflicted by the strange poison or curse. Now that the arm wasn’t being healed by a tier 5 skill anymore, its disintegration had sped up twentyfold. The light continued to spread, crackling while it tore through my ex-flesh until, thirty seconds later, nothing but ash and cloth remained. Out of morbid curiosity I stirred the cloth and ash around a bit with my sword, finding that my sleeve was still perfectly intact. Whatever that drab gate had inflicted upon me, it wasn’t acid, because my clothes and sword wouldn’t have survived. Poison didn’t seem likely, either. After all, I had never actually touched anything with my bare hands. That left the most likely possibility: a curse.
Curses were only usable by those with dark affinities. These horrid spells varied from anything as simple as a curse-mark to spells that could affect whole cities in a very specific way at once. By their very nature, curses were meant to be cruel. Whether that meant killing the target instantly or making them suffer for eternity was left up to the caster. Give it up to the system for inventing the most messed up stuff and giving it to the most unhinged people.
Ten minutes later, I stood there, staring at my reformed limb. It was every bit as good as its predecessor, thankfully. Now that I had recovered from the presumed curse, I was left with a choice.
Either I could leave and search for treasure elsewhere in the ruins, or I could attempt to get past the gate. Emeri had warned me that something fishy was going on with these ruins, and this curse seemed to be an indication of what lay in store if I chose to push on.
A part of me felt stubborn, however. Giving up now would be the same as admitting that Emeri was right and I shouldn’t have come here. For all I knew, a great artifact lay in wait beyond that gate! One that perfectly suited my affinity! The gate was probably what had led to the city opening up the ruins anyway. They were searching for the key by sending others to scour the labyrinth on their behalf!
That might be a bit of a reach, but still. Everything seemed too convenient to be explained otherwise. If I could just get passed that gate without needing to spend weeks, possibly months searching for that blasted key, only to lose it to high-tiered classers the moment I found it.
It was then that a dangerous idea came to mind. I had the ability to teleport, of a kind. With [Ghost apparition], I could just reappear on the other side of that gate without any trouble. There was just one issue with that, though. The creator of such a powerful curse would have countermeasures for sure…
Was it even a risk worth taking?
I imagined the conversation I would be having with Emeri if I turned back now. ‘Yeah, I found the spot with all the treasure, but it seemed too dangerous for me despite my pseudo-immortality, so I left…’
Helios, that sounded even worse out loud than in my head.
I huffed. The curse’s creator had already failed to kill me once with his trap and that was when he caught me by surprise. Who was to say he would succeed this time? The intangibility that the skill momentarily gave me would probably protect me anyway…
With my mind made up, I activated my skill and disappeared into a black tuft of mana.
Do your worst…