At the bottom of a sinkhole sat Tyrian's mangled and contorted body, no life left within it as he had fell over one hundred and seventy feet and had several floors worth of stone fall on top and all around him. For several minutes, there was no activity besides the dust settling, any other creatures in the area most likely falling to the same fate as the adventurer. Within Tyrian's corpse, a sickly neon green light shown brightly, melting a lot of the rubble that had buried itself into the body and molding it into a dome of a pale blue-green hue, fully made from stone and a fleshy substance. Inside the dome, Tyrian's remains began to shape and reform themselves, arcane energy magically regenerating crushed bones and destroyed organs. A large stone floated out of what was left of his skull before it began to repair itself similarly to the rest of his body.
His brain was the first thing to reform, then his heart. Soon after Rymoris had sensed brain activity from him, she created a mental link between the two. Inside the link, Rymoris had made a small imaginary realm for the two to inhabit until she'd finish recreating his body and to speak to him for the time being. The two stood about ten feet from one another, eyeing each other down, one with resentment and annoyance, the other with smug superiority. Tyrian spat to the side before turning to the left and sitting down, observing the peculiarity of the mental realm. He sat on a dark indigo disk of energy, it didn't seem to glow or radiate any magic that he could sense at least. The disk was about thirty feet in diameter with shades of green and purple with the bold bright yellow swirling about like a tie die shirt. He watched with slight fascination at the colors before heavily sighing and turning to look at his patron again.
She smirked with satisfaction at his clear annoyance to her as he looked her up and down with dissatisfaction. "I forget what your ugly ass looks like." The words were spat from his mouth like poison, with revulsion at the mere thought of needing to speak to her. Rymoris gave a loud cackle as she put two hands on either sides of her hips. The Demoness stood a little shorter than Elleyh at 5'9 with a beautiful humanoid face and had lime colored skin that pulsed with energy, a paler hue of the same color flowed in patterns underneath as it seemed to struggle to contain the energy within her, instead channeling into runes that almost resembled shackles along her arms, legs and neck. She had four arms, two that were uncannily elongated whose hands sat on her hips and the other set were more normal length arms that crossed over her chest. She wore a black single-strapped toga with yellow embroidery along its edges that seemed to depict different symbolisms for plagues. Iconography of rats, undead, crows, crosses and other such things decorated the outline that the outfit had. Her hooved feet slowly carried her in a circle around Tyrian, her spiraled purple and black eyes stared down at her unwilling subject with a gaze that saw potential in him yet a tinge of disappointment, finding him wanting. Atop her head were two large indigo horns that resembled that of a carved stone. Jewelry laced upon and between them as a show of status. She had long dark seaweed colored hair that seemed to flow with an ethereal elegance to it, matching her sashay in a rhythmic sway from left to right with three tails that seems reminiscent of a displacer beast's tendrils that slowly danced about idlily.
"You've made it a habit to remember important individuals Boy, so I find that hard to believe." She returned to her original spot before nearly squatting down, a stone throne swiftly rising from the ground to meet her bottom halfway and lifting her above the disk, her feet dangling as she kicked them with amusement in her eyes. Tyrian watched her with wariness and suspicion. "So, what the hell was the point of killing me back there? That explosion, that felt like your power, it WAS your power." He said pointedly, a bit startled as a wooden stool rose from below him, floating in the air to be eye level with Rymoris. The smile on her face became a bit more annoyed as she stared at the Wolfkin male across from her. "That was not my doing, at least not intentionally. It was just a byproduct of looking into something that was tampered with." Between the two, a smaller disk materialized, several different sandwiches, stews, and lunch foods spread around as the Demoness quickly dug in, taking hold of a tortilla wrap and filling it with meat, pickles and carrot shavings, topping it off with some ranch sauce. She wrapped it up and took a bite before continuing her words. "While you were fighting those spiders, I caught a whiff of something deeper below. Upon inspecting it, I found something odd; Also you better eat, you will need the strength for what comes next."
Tyrian narrowed his eyes before taking a bowl of Butternut Squash Soup. He didn't recognize the taste, being a little surprised at its sweetness mixed with a twang of spice. As he sipped at the soup, dipping some bread into it whilst he ate and listened to the explanation. "Deeper into the dungeon, I caught a small sense of something very wrong, and sure enough after taking a peak into it, I found what I was looking for." She materialized an object in her hand and placed it on the floating disk. It was a small blue and red orb trapped in a triangular metal frame with yellow lining. The orb in the center of the item had lightly jittered around, letting the entire contraption vibrate softly until it hit a nearby plate, causing it to stop moving whilst it still vibrate in place.
"Found this little pest near your death site. It was disrupting the Arcane Matrix of not this dungeon, but one directly underneath the dungeon you were in. It is called the Tomb of the Spider Lady, since the one you were in was called the Hall's of the Spider Lord, the one below is a more powerful variant of the same thing, possible the bosses were lovers? I don't care either way." Tyrian looked at the magical item and picked it up. It was around the size of his palm. The orb had a cold and almost wet feeling to it, as if it was dumped in cold water for a few minutes, taken out then plopped into his hand. Putting it back on the table and looking at his hand, it didn't leave any liquid or residue. "The orb there is a blob of hastily materialized mana, mixed with that contraption around it, it's job seems to, as I said earlier, disrupt an Arcane Matrix." Tyrian furled his brow and looked at Rymoris. "What even is an Arcane Matrix truely? I know the basics of it but never got any detailed explanation."
Rymoris lit up and sat up in her throne, looking thrilled to be asked the question. "Ah, why yes my loyal subject, I will take care to educate your ignorant mind!" Adjusting herself in her seat, she put a hand on her chin and began to speak, Tyrian on the other hand sighing in exasperation, shoving a chicken leg in his mouth. "As you may know, an Arcane Matrix, or AM for abbreviation, is basically the thing that controls all magic parameters to a degree within an area, but that isn't what fully matters right now so you will get a better explanation on that when it is important. There are a few variants of it which are usually called Sub Matrixes, or SM. Think the one you disrupted back on the first layer of the dungeon, that Sub Matrix was responsible for spawning more monsters up there. But the science behind it all is that they are an accumulation of magic super condensed into one singularity point. It then gains a physical form and binds itself to that physical space which is known to be the dormant version of an AM and it stays like that for a while, could be decades or could months. The longer it stays dormant the more stable it is, the more stable, the higher the rarity, higher the rarity, the more mana it can control, thus restarting the cycle of creating more AM's and SM's." "So basically a mana generator that doubles as a control panel for the dungeon or Astral Space or whatever it is bound to that infinitely duplicates itself." "Yep! that's why a lot of high level dungeons are so big. The central Arcane Matrix was left alone to make an unknown quantity of Sub Matrixes, thus growing in rarity, power and most of all value."
She raised her hand, a glass of some odd glowing orange colored juice materialized within her grasp. She sipped at it for a few seconds before speaking again. "Oh, by the way your torso is done regenerating, and we've got about 10 more minutes here." Tyrian ignored that last part, giving a nod as he began eating a bagel. "So where is the part where you tell me why I exploded? That'd be part that I care most about." He look at her with his usual suspicious glare he always gave her, and for good reason. She was usually if not always up to something that could hurt him. "See, now that's the fun part." She spoke with a full mouth of another tortilla. This one was filled with beef, ham, bacon, eggs, and was dripping with ranch sauce. After demolishing the wrap and guzzling down more of the glowing juice, she wiped her mouth with a napkin before tossing it out into the swirling void around them. "See, unlike how you disrupted the Sub Matrix above naturally using a proper ritual and material components, etc., this one was forcefully disrupted. The difference being that while you've set that SM to be in an inactive dormant state where any magic that would have been built up over time was naturally expelled, basically making that area a rest station where your body can absorb the incoming magic being spat out by the SM to regenerate with no issue, the other SM however was basically a wild animal that got kicked a bunch, had a muzzle forced on its face then told to stay still. In scientific terms, it's magic was not released naturally but instead set to be stored and volatilely amped up on a multiplicative scale. Under normal circumstances, it would have exploded and caused massive damage inside the dungeon that it resided in. But due to me taking a look at it-" Tyrian's eye slowly looked around as he connected the dots. "You being a purely magical being basically made a connection to it, opening a channel for the energy to flow and launching it upward toward me, and thus because of you, I died."
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
No longer having an appetite, he stared angrily at Rymoris before throwing a chicken leg at her head, it bouncing off her tail that whacked it away before it hit her. "So what the fuck are you going to do to repay me! Y'know that blast definitely destroyed EVERYTHING I had stored up above! On top of that every adventurer in a ten mile radius more than likely know where this place is, whatever junk is left laying around is going to get scooped up. A whole MONTH worth of work, GONE, WASTED!! Not to mention your deal that every time I died, you'd sever more of my will power away! This wasn't on me!" His fury radiated in his aura. He nearly stood up, remembering that he was floating in a stool rather high off the ground and he didn't know what getting hurt from the fall in this mental realm would do to him. Rymoris tapped her finger on her mouth while in thought. "Well, there are a few things I could do, but to simplify it, I will give you three wishes, you may ask me to do three things within reason. Go on, ask away. Oh, and for later, I will grant you the knowledge of another undiscovered dungeon."
"Additionally, since it WAS my ...fault... you died..." She spat those last words out as if someone forced her to swallow vomit. "I wont increase the Willpower Penalty." Tyrian stared at her, a bit of his anger slightly dismissed but still present. "Fine, three requests. Request one, teleport me to Sophie and Elleyh when I'm done checking this place out." Rymoris nodded without a word, summoning another glass of juice and gulping it down in one sitting. "Second request; When I find a better bow, you reforge it into Relic Weapon. Same thing for Sophie's Behemoth Blade and the next wand that is suitable for Elleyh's Wild Magic" Rymoris squawked out in anger. "That's three things in one!" "Then Make it one ritual!" Rymoris stared in outrage as Tyrian made one more request. "For the final request, I'll tuck that one away for later. Never know when a rainy day might happen and you unexpectedly blow up." The Demoness stared at him with boiling anger, the ridges between her horns began to glow but slowly faded. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply before exhaling, staring daggers at her Warlock. "Fine, I will agree to these terms. However I will make the weapons Growth Items for the time being. We can talk about Relic weapons when you at least hit level 30." "Fine, I can work with that." He said before looking away. "Not like you had a choice to decline since you offered the deal..." He said under his breath but loud enough for her to hear.
The two spoke more about the details of what the second request would entail for several minutes, specifying more about the weapons. Afterwards, Rymoris stopped and tilted her head as if listening to a distant sound. She stared for a while into the distance before looking at Tyrian. "You may have some company when you revive. There are quite a few monsters being drawn to the protective dome's magic, perhaps you may make a return on the lost loot from the explosion after all." She raised a hand before lowering it. The disk being used as a table lowered and phased into the ground, the food spread atop it vanishing. Tyrian stood up as his stool disappeared, looking upward before trying to access his inventory. Whenever he died, all equipped items are sent to it for safe keeping, something that he was able to bargain into an earlier deal made with Rymoris. Putting back on his armor and equipment, he paused and took a moment to think before turning to his patron. "I just realized; I died, why can't I feel you regenerating my body like before? All I'm getting is a minor headache." he questioned. Rymoris looked at him and tilted her head to the side. "Oh yeah, I just realized that too. Who knows, maybe its because you died so fast your body and mind couldn't register it and thus no pain can be felt during the revival process."
That made sense to him at least as he has never had a painless death before so he could not tell if that was how it worked or not. Since Tyrian has started adventuring out into dungeons, he had died five times, this making the sixth but he was half on the fence for not counting this one since this was not a death of his own fault nor the result of him losing a fight to a monster or another adventurer. He remembered the other deaths so vividly; The first time he died was when he was too naïve about dungeon delving and undermined the reason why levels and ranks exists, at the time himself a level 2 and the troll he challenged a level 9. The second occurred during a small skirmish in the alleyways of a backwater town, he had gotten ambushed by some bandits, mugged, stabbed several times, and left to bleed out in a ditch. The third and fourth times happened on his trip to recover his stolen items, dying twice to the bandit leader before taking her down through the use of several poisoned arrows and a well placed stolen short sword. If the bandits were anything above level 4 at the time or better than mediocre fighters at best, he would have never succeeded. The fifth death came at the hands of a adventuring party that he decided to team up with. Sophie and Elleyh were there as well. The Rogue of that party attempted to assassinate Elleyh but instead, Tyrian got in the way of the attack. By the time he had revived, Sophie was covered in blood and gore, the remains of the party of 7 all over the room and the previous hallway. He'd never forget the sight of their tank who was embedded into the ceiling, his tower shield broken in half and impaled him in the head and torso.
By the time he had finished reminiscing on he previous deaths, he felt a connection between his mind to his body form, that being the usual indication that he had finished regenerating and was ready to resurrect. He gave another glance to Rymoris who was messing with some odd floating runes that he didn't understand. "Got everything ready?" She questioned, not bothering to look back at him. "As ready as I can be. Let's see what bullshit you got me into and lets see if I cant escape without dying again." "Mhm, ok. Same as last time, after you wake up, ten seconds then the barrier explodes. Make the most of it as it could be the difference between you walking home sooner or you paying me another visit." He ignored her final words after she gave him the time limit on when the protective barrier outside would break. Right after she finished speaking, Tyrian woke up laying on the ground in the real world. Getting to his feet as fast as he could. He summoned his dancing longsword and spoke its command word, the magical blade floating out of his hand and rotating around him. Next came his trusty longbow which had always been his favorite weapon. He always favored archery rather than melee combat but never shirked practice on either. "Four seconds left. Lets do this."
Steeling his gaze and focusing himself, he got into his battle stance as he took aim with a Swift Wind arrow and watched as light shined through a small crack that began to form, more and more of the barrier began to break as Tyrian cast several abilities to ready himself.
Tyrian Cast ⟪Lesser Elemental Imbue⟫(Cursed)!
Lesser Elemental Imbue (Cursed)
Cost: 20 RP
Cooldown: None
Effect: Imbue an item with Fire, Ice, or lightning
Cursed Effect: All other active damage types are converted to poison after 5 seconds
Requires a ⟪Minor Blood Sacrifice⟫ to subside Cursed Effects
Duration: 1m
Tyrian Cast ⟪Inferior Ability Boost: Burst Speed⟫!
Inferior Ability Boost: Burst Speed
Cost: 10 mana
Cooldown between casts: None
Cooldown between uses: 3 seconds
Effect: Boost movement speed in small bursts, leaving a trail of afterimages of the user. This ability cannot be used in rapid succession until further upgrades. If previous use of this ability leaves the user airborne, the user must touch the ground or any other solid surface to use this ability again.
Duration: 10m
Tyrian Cast ⟪Racial Skill: Feral Endurance⟫!
Feral Endurance
Cost: 25 Stamina
Cooldown: 1hr
Effect: Gain incoming non-magical damage reduction but gain a vulnerability based off damage reduction percentage to elemental damage. Reduced damage is determined by a percentage of the user's stats and level.
Current reduction percentage: 13%
Current vulnerability percentage: 6%
Duration: 30 minutes
Item: Swift Wind Arrow
Rank: Rare
(Consumable, Ammo, Magical, Elemental: Wind Affinity)
Stock: 10
Effect:
Common: When used, the arrow shoots forward in a straight line without loss of altitude.
Uncommon: Creates a magical breeze of the path it traveled, boosting the movement speed of the user and their party who stays along its path by 10% and reduced to 7% for 10 seconds while outside of the path.
Rare: Creates blades of wind that fire in an outward horizontal arc along the arrow's path.
As soon as he sufficiently buffed himself, the barrier exploded and he let loose the arrow, a loud screech letting him know he hit his mark without even seeing it yet as his eyes adjusted, jumping into combat once more.