Rin spent a good fifteen minutes bounding about the room from one stalagmite to the next. His agility was astounding. His new prehensile tail made midair somersaults effortless, swinging his body around so he always landed on his feet. Bellows of laughter escaped his lungs as he reveled in the sheer pleasure of leaping.
When he opened his status, he laughed all over again. The lemur had its own status, although it was slightly shorter than his human one.
Rin Cartwright
Level 7 Lemur (Stone Type) [CURSED] Level 6 Potato Farmer
Attributes:
Strength: 20 (+7)
Dexterity: 35 (+20)
Perception: 18 (+3)
Stamina: 28 (+13)
Toughness: 18 (+10)
Current HP: 140/140 (+60)
Recovery: 35 HP/min (+5)
Magic: 10
Current MP: 90/100
Absorption: 5 MP/min
Charisma: 20
Inherited Abilities:
Power Leap: Grade F
Bash: Grade F
The list was sprinkled with improvements as the monster’s attributes were added to his own. His Current MP had decreased by 10, so the Transmutation ability certainly had a cost, albeit a small one. Rin didn’t mind in the least—he was a physical fighter and didn’t have much use for his MP in the first place.
Besides the major boosts to his physical attributes, a new section called Inherited Abilities was displayed, listing the monkey’s Power Leap and Bash techniques.
This transmutation ability has crazy potential!
Ideas sped through his mind, many of them revolving around the bat shaft above the pit chamber.
The boy returned to his human form with a mere thought and a billowing cloud of mana essence. He stepped from the cloud and noticed the feeling of grit between his toes. Rin peered down at pale befreckled skin. A lot of it.
“I’m NAKED!”
He bolted back to his discarded clothes and hastily dressed.
There shouldn’t be any other teams coming through, but jeez, I’ll need to be careful with this ability.
Fully clothed, he raced back through the dungeon chambers. His Charisma was so outlandishly high that the monsters paid him no mind. If anything, they acted positively friendly, with sorrowful demeanors when he passed them by.
Upon reaching the pit room, he transformed into a level 5 Quad Bat and checked his status screen. Other than the whopping boost to his perception, his other attributes had gained far less than when he’d transformed into the level 7 Lemur.
Rin Cartwright
Level 5 Quad Bat (Stone Type) [CURSED] Level 6 Potato Farmer
Attributes:
Strength: 15 (+2)
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Dexterity: 20 (+5)
Perception: 65 (+50)
Stamina: 25 (+10)
Toughness: 9 (+1)
Current HP: 120/80 (+40)
Recovery: 32 HP/min (+2)
Magic: 11 (+1)
Current MP: 95/105 (+5)
Absorption: 6 MP/min (+1)
Charisma: 20
Inherited Abilities:
None
He was surprised the Inherited Abilities section was empty. Apparently, level 5 Quad Bats were so weak they had no abilities whatsoever.
Maybe I need a bat with a higher level. Or perhaps it’s only boss monsters and elites that have abilities?
He shrugged, the distinctly human gesture appearing comical with his tiny bat shoulders. When he leaped into the air, it was evident this bat form would take far longer to acclimate than the lemur. It took several minutes of fruitless flapping and crashing into walls before he finally veered upward.
His perception was superior in every sense of the word. He didn’t ‘see’ the room exactly, but rather experienced it via a grid of vivid green lines displayed in his brain via echolocation. It was a wild sensation, but also a powerful ability, allowing him to see around corners because of how his voice ricocheted before entering his ears. It was more like viewing a model from above than using regular eyesight. He knew what lay behind every corner, but the farthest edge of his mental map warbled and jostled as his perception frayed into chaos.
With great care, Rin first navigated into the seemingly bottomless pit by the ledge. His newfound vision indicated it was a pit like all the others, thirty feet deep, with a springy moss covering the bottom. He swooped to the chamber’s ceiling and careened off several stalactites before finding a perch. Several quad bats clung there, huddled in the dark.
This is where the bats spawn. So what’s the shaft for?
The passage was too narrow to fly, so he grasped its walls with his wing thumbs and scrambled up inside. The climb was grueling, especially using his new bat body that was better geared for flight. After several dozen feet, he glimpsed the shaft’s end lit up in glorious sunlight. He finally emerged in a spacious room, cut straight into the stone, with an expansive wall-to-wall window overlooking the cobbled square outside the dungeon. A treasure chest lay in the room’s center, elaborately carved and patiently awaiting his arrival.
Rin reverted to his human self, and his perception of the room abruptly changed from open and spacious to close and dingy, no more than eight feet wide and long. He clung to the floor, afraid someone in the square below would see his nakedness at the window. But instead of glass, it had a mysterious blue veil stretched across its opening. It was the same kind of magical shield that blocked the hole in the ratback chamber. No matter what he tried, his hand wouldn’t pass through it.
This is a secret room. I bet you can’t even see it from the outside. It would have been obvious otherwise.
He turned to the elaborate chest, triggering Identify with disappointing results.
Secret Treasure Chest
One swift kick later, and the lid popped open, revealing a thin roll of parchment. The boy’s shoulders sagged. He had been sorely hoping for gold. Or a massive flying sword. Instead, what he actually received was:
A Dungeon Map
Rin groaned out loud. He had heard of these. The maps were useful for adventurers setting out for a dungeon they’d never been in before, but this was a beginner dungeon, and he’d already explored it, top to bottom.
The parchment appeared positively ancient, yet unfurled smoothly in his hands. He was astounded at what he saw.
This isn’t a map of this dungeon. It’s a map of all of them!
The Kingdom of Hask was evident in its center, with the unmistakable Steppe Mountains forming its northern border and the telltale coastline of the Grim Sea outlining the south. Several strange X symbols were dotted about, indicating the location of various dungeons, according to the legend. Around the map’s perimeter were strange scripts and runes that glowed with a faint cerulean blue. The level of detail mystified Rin. It was going to take him extensive study to discern its depths.
I wonder what this is worth?
A loud gurgle from his stomach reminded him to get going. He went to stash the map and realized that, once again, he was naked. He’d have to wrangle the map all the way down the shaft in bat form.
He got to work, cramming it sideways into the hole as he scrambled down with his wings pressed tight against the passage’s walls for leverage. When he popped free into the open cavern below, the map slipped from his grasp. He fluttered madly, snatching it before it fell into the deep pit, then swooped to his belongings, where he hastily transformed and reclothed.
Setting off for the dungeon’s entrance, he came to the room full of sand and froze, his mind struck by an idea. A Greater Cave Wriggler popped its head from the sand, cooing in his direction. It behaved suspiciously like the one he’d charmed and abandoned earlier.
What would it be like to transform into a Cave Wriggler?
One bright flash later, and Rin did just that.
The wriggler had no abilities on its status sheet, just like the bat, and his attribute boosts were nothing noteworthy. Its body was even more disorienting than the bat. Fat and unwieldy, he lay on the sand, struggling to wrestle his way beneath it. The monster’s anatomy was so alien to him that it took several minutes just to face the right direction, let alone submerge beneath the sand.
Once fully buried, however, his body ambulated naturally through the ground. He even felt a certain bliss with the movement as billions of passing particles scoured his stone skin clean. It wasn’t long until he was diving deeper, exploring the edges of the sand pit. His body reverberated, sending out a kind of sonic bouncing effect through the sand, not unlike the bat’s echolocation, although far more primitive and close-ranged.
To Rin’s surprise and mounting excitement, he discovered something special.
A secret tunnel beneath the sand.