After I landed correctly, I took care to not move. Last time, my lack of experience caused me to rocket myself to the sky and I wanted nothing like that. First question was why. Why the fuck I launched myself when I simply pushed the ground? I only used the same amount of power I always did - no. If the way I used the power was on percentages, and my subconscious used the same percentage again without checking whether my power increased or not...

Worry started to fill me. The power management was always handle by the subconscious. If, somehow, my physical strength grew unimaginably then what would happen if I were to try to walk? How about breathing? Or the muscles on my heart? This was terrible. Why did my power increased in a moment anyways? Was it about the system? I thought of my status.

[ Status Screen

Name: Odds

Race: Lokkich

Class: Child of Luck

Level: 91 (61.86%)

Strength: 274

Vitality: 273

Sensation: 280

Perception: 276

Agility: 277

Dexterity: 275

Intelligence: 373

Skills : (Skill Points - 9)

- Manipulate Luck

Titles:

- Lucky

- Skeleton Slayer

- Enemy of the Skeletons

- The One Hated by the Skeletons

Items:

- Lucky Die

]

My status was mostly the same, but for some reason the numbers previously in parentheses became the default values. What was the difference between now and then? Sleep?

Was sleep the time when system increased our abilities? That would explain why this happened after I woke up. Perhaps system was also responsible for the sleepiness that came before? If it was, then why it happened after I reached the anchor/mountain? Of course. It was waiting for me to be in a safe spot, I was constantly fighting with skeletons before! That's why it never tried to force me to sleep, because it would cause me to be in danger. System was unexpectedly kind.

Still, this did not answer why only the force I used consciously increased. With this much increase, I would have expected my heart to get crushed under its own force. After all, my normal push was enough to make me fly to the height if a mountain. Perhaps my subconscious got slowly used to it while I was asleep? Or perhaps the system protected me. Whatever it was, not dying because of my own strength was nice. If I did not hit myself on a mistake.

Very, very slowly I took a step. As I slowly pushed the ground I felt the force increase and then, boom. I flew to the back, and crashed in to the ground. Whew. That was damn dangerous. If I were to fell in to the hole the chain of the anchor created... That would probably be death.

Nevertheless, I needed to move. Slowly straightening myself, I stood up once more. Trying to not make the same mistake again, I took a step even slower. It felt like my feet was not moving at all. But, needless to say, this resulted in another rocket launch.

Every time I flew to somewhere, I immediately stood up and tried again. Not being able to move as I wished was a terrible feeling. My body did not felt like it was mine at all. As the number of time I flew increased, the distance I flew each time shortened.

Then, after I took a step, I didn't fly. Just a very strong vibration happened as I resisted the urge to fly. It came as a surprise. My original thoughts was that I needed to practice this for quite a long time. My subconscious was getting used to it very quickly.

The practice about walking followed a step. Walking turned into running, and I could not believe how fast I could run now. In fact, I was sure that no one on Earth was able to run as fast as me. Knowing this power came from that terribly boring skeleton hunt made me think about it a bit more nicely. I still hated how boring it was, but getting stronger was nice.

The only increase was not on my strength either. My nearly everything was better. Much better. For example, after a few times I noticed that my crashes did not hurt me. Like, at all. My reactions were completely unnecessary, and out of habit.

My senses were much better as well. After waking up, I noticed this about my vision a bit, but now whenever I focused on a sense I got much better and clearer results. My eyes could see much much far away, the previously undetected smell of the ground assaulted my nose, the sounds of my crashes felt like a plane crash. Not having anything to eat, I left the taste for later. And I had no idea how to test touch.

My mind was much more focused as well. The increase in intelligence was not something I could detect, but the fact that my memories came much faster was not something I could miss. I remembered quite a lot of the stuff I read and watched before. While practicing my movement, I slowly got information about physics and few fantasy books with deep background about magic. Even if it was not true, I wanted to have at least an idea about what could be the magic.

But my research got cut short by the end of my practice. My movements were now much like before. That was actually wrong. My movements were much more fluid than how I used to move. This new fluidity made me aware of something I never thought was possible - the air resistance was very strong. It reduced my speed quite a bit when I was running around. Still, my speed was much better than before. This meant that I could reach the gate much, much earlier.

Next thing on my list was the anchor mountain.

Standing far away from the giant hole of the anchor, or more precisely the chain of the anchor, I debated whether to go in or not. The mountain was interesting, that much was true, but I didn't know what was beneath. If it was too deep than I would not be able to continue due to lava and the time I spent would be a complete waste. Though it awakened my adventurous nature. I wanted to know what was there.

After a few moments of contemplation, I walked towards the anchor. If I wasted time, then I wasted time. It was not like I had any reason to hurry up. Reaching Earth early would be nice, but I was damn sure there was nothing like this anchor there. And my speed was much faster now, so the time I needed to reach the gate was much shorter.

As I neared the hole, abyss, whatever you wanna call it, I noticed that the ground slowly changed color. Very slowly. It was just a change in hue, but it was noticeable. Ground was darker than normal, and this darkness increased near the hole. Whatever was the cause of this, it looked like it was waiting for me underground.

But, there was things to do before. First, I reached the aboveground parts of the anchor. It was on a deep blue color. And somehow, it was cold. That felt wrong. How come it was cold when it was under the constant sunlight? Only explanation that came to my mind was that something underground was causing the coldness as well, just like the color of the ground. But, that was weird too. The deeper you go, the hotter it should be, at least according to the normal physics and geology. Considering the things I saw before, it would be pretty normal if it was colder as you go down.

The anchor itself didn't look too different than the chain going down - same color, same pattern that made them look old, no, ancient. Whatever this metal or alloy was, it must've been very durable to stand like this on the ground, otherwise it would've already been crashed under its own weight. And if it had this much scratches and marks on it... I could not even began to imagine how much time passed since this anchor came into being. It was older than the human civilization, that much was certain.

The longer I looked at the anchor, the more I wanted to go down. What it was holding? How big it was? And more importantly, why something was needed to held that this kind of measure was required. If I was able to somehow illuminate the die, then I would be going down.

To my relief, the die lighted up with no problem. As soon as I wished for change, it turned into a miniature lamp on my hand. It looked rather nice as well. Not too bright, not too dim, just the way I wanted. A nice, golden color.

With all the problem handled, I checked my belongings before heading down. Die, check. Me, check. Everything was there. Now came the hard part. The descend. I first checked whether the die/lamp was bright enough - as it turned out, it was. The hole lighted up for about 20 meters with no problem.

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The distance between the edge of the hole and the chain was not massive, but it was still not something I could jump over. Instead, I decided to fly. With the experience I had from my previous totally-not-an-accident flight, I was confident with my ability to fly. Not really, but still, it was nice to have some experience.

I held on to the die with my both hands, but left out few gaps between my fingers for light to pass. It was a damn weird shape, as the die was too small for holding with both hands. Rather than both hands holding the die together, I was holding the die with one hand and my remaining hand was holding the one on the die. Damn awkward as well. Not comfortable, to say the least.

Still, whatever worked. The duration of my flight was not set to stone but if my stamina held up for that long of a walk, holding a die for few hours shouldn't be a problem. It should not be too deep considering the planet I was on (was Hell a planet?) should have about 7.000 kilometers radius. Of course, that was quite a speculation. The calculation assumed the density of this place similar to Earth.

Holding the die hard, I increased the upward acceleration. From my previous experience, I knew the needed acceleration to float. 12.x m/s. With the rate I was increasing, it didn't take too long to reach that much of an acceleration. The acceleration I settled on was 13.5 m/s. Not too high, not too low. After few seconds of speeding up, I lowered the acceleration and stopped. Now, I was floating about 5 meters above the ground. On top of that, I noticed something I didn't when I flew before. Probably because of the panic I was in - holding myself up did not take any force at all! This was a damn nice discovery. Actually, I should've assumed this after noticing the increase in my strength but... For some reason it never came to my mind. Still, it was nice knowing I would not be strained to hold myself up while descending a deep hole.

After relaxing myself for a bit, I found that holding the die with one hand was much easier - my increased strength made my weight feel like nothing. With that, my second hand was free - it would be useful in any difficult situation. I increased the sideways acceleration.

On a side note, I had no idea how I was increasing the acceleration without knowing the mass on the die. It should be somewhat impossible - what was the limits of this? Could I just put it under a car and increase the acceleration? Hell, was mass even a constraint? More experiments were required.

After few seconds, I cut the acceleration and let myself float a few meters before the wind resistance stopped me. The hole was just below me, and to be honest, it looked like a monster with its mouth open. It was somewhat terrifying.

I slowly lowered myself. As I descended, the sunlight disappeared and after a few minutes, the only light was coming from my die. The light illuminated the walls of the hole, and the chain. Now that I was even closer, its massiveness left my jaw open. How much material was used for this? If it was made from steel, earth probably did not have enough of it. This reminded me of the problem with the first design of Dyson spheres. Simply, the amount of materials required for a sphere to completely encompass a star would probably be collected if you mined the whole star system. That is, of course, assuming there was enough rocky planets.

Descent was going without incident, when I noticed the increase in markings, scratches, small holes on the wall and the chain. At first they did not make any sense, but as I moved deeper they somehow started to resemble something. It looked like as if someone or something tried to climb up, but after a while it slipped. Why did they? Was the chain slippery? It looked pretty easy to climb to me. Thinking that, I touched the chain and took back my hand immediately afterwards. The chain was cold! In fact, if I were to continue touching, the skin of my hand would probably be left behind. Did the increase in my stats not increase my resistance? Or was it too cold for even strengthened me. If it was latter, I could not imagine how it got cold this much down.

The last thought made me try to sense the outside. It should've been hot this much down here, but it was cold. Probably from the chain, but still, not seeing any increase in heat made me question my previous knowledge.

My descend continued. The markings stopped increased in size but the numbers were constantly going up. If this was the result of failed climbs, then either something tried it quite a lot, or there were quite a bit of whatever tried to climb.

Next few hours passed without anything new. I simply descended on a constant speed - 50 m/s if my starting calculations were correct - and stopped paying much attention to the walls. That lack of attention was probably the reason why I failed to notice that the distance between me and the wall increased. My descent route was based on the chain, so the distancing of the wall gone unnoticed for a long time. Until, I noticed how bright the surroundings looked. A bluish light was coming from the walls and from below! Something new was coming up. Impatient, I nearly doubled my speed.

After few minutes the hole started to grow, and then, it abruptly ended. Floating in mid air, I looked around. I was in a giant cave, with illuminating ceiling and nice terrain. The ground didn't look like it was in a cave at all. It was as if this was an underground world... And this underground world was absolutely breathtaking. My eyes were jumping around, trying to see everything interesting at once, the water flowing to the side, few hills around me, the stalactites and stalagmites dotted around... After the bland aboveground, this cave's diversity felt refreshing. It was like heaven for me.

However, I quickly noticed that this was not the end. The chain was going straight down in to a hole. But, this was a nice place to take a break. Touring around a bit would not hurt, right? Especially after that monotonous descend, I wanted to do something more interesting. Discovery of a giant underground cave would fit that nicely.

Deciding to visit the river first, I flew up and mapped the surroundings on my head. Not being able to find the chain afterwards would be disastrous. Scratch continuing the descend, I would not be able to leave this place. Well, I could probably create a hole with my die, but it was not worth trying.

After making sure I remembered everything correctly, I took off. I was still flying, because it was much easier to see where I was going from above. It was also fun, so it was no-brainer basically.

My surroundings were really as amazing as I saw from afar. The bluish light made everything look as if they were either wet or underwater. It looked really gorgeous, even though I didn't like the water, rather, sea and the ocean very much. Their only purpose on my life was sitting on the beach, and watching the waves hit the rocks. It somehow relaxed me. Remembering those times, I slowly relaxed. After the action filled days since I came to this foreign world, this relaxation felt eerily normal. As if I was getting used to this damn hell.

But no matter how much I got used to this place, I was going to leave it. If nothing else, just because it was not earth. No matter how much I didn't like the people around me, earth felt like home. That was where I came from, where I was born, where all my memories belonged to. It was basically my hometown. Even if I left to visit somewhere else, that was where I would return. Still, what was I going to do when I got back? There was no one waiting for me. Well, I knew what I was going to do first. Relax. Sit on the side of a nice, comforting place, and relax for few months straight. Then, perhaps I could be a merchant? If that was still a thing when I got back. Trading with no one to dictate my time would be nice. The strength I gained from here would probably help me. Or perhaps I could open a casino. Child of Luck and all, it would fit nicely.