Coney felt a lot more confident as he walked back into the cold halls. He wished he could have taken some of the books, or at least read them, but his body insisted he went on. “I hope those books don’t despawn or anything.” He said to the air as he moved around the corner.

Honestly, Coney was worried his paw was still glowing. What was it’s timer? “Uh… Help spells?” He asked, leaning against a wall so no one would sneak up on him distracted.

Spells: Spells are skills that take from one’s mana pool. Some spells are persistent, taking a constant flow from the pool, while others cost large single amounts. To look at skills, focus on your Menu. Within your menu, select the skills tab. Spells are in there.

Ah, well that was easy enough at least. Menu. He focused, using mental commands after dismissing the tooltip. In front of him was his menu, he quickly scrolled to the skill page without even looking at the first page, he didn’t have time.

* Light, Spell, Rank One

That was the only thing there. Not much information. Focusing on the Light spell he examined it.

Light casts light in a circle, which is centered on you, and has a radius equal to your intelligence modifier. Light uses 10 mana a minute at a constant rate

“Alright, I… I guess that’s useful.” Honestly his head started to get a little fuzzy as he looked at his skills. This layout just didn’t work for him. “I may have to talk to the devs about this… Although, the game bills itself as changing to fit people’s needs, so maybe that will change too.”

With a sigh Coney moved on, holding his cane like a club as he tried to move around the next corner. As he did, he managed to spot his next enemy. Sadly, the enemy spotted him too. With a screech it began to lurch towards him.

“What even are you?” Coney asked, bringing his cane down on its head. Its skin was peeling off, and it seemed to have tried to reem bowl itself multiple times.

You do not possess the correct skill to identify your enemy.

“Oh my gods shut up you stupid thing.” Sasha yelled at the menu, breaking character. He couldn’t think of this moment, of what he was doing, as he used his cane to cave in his enemy’s head. “This was easier when there wasn’t anything inside.” He hedged, breathing heavily when his enemy stopped moving. “Fuck… I’m not searching that thing.” He said “No way.” He stepped around it and kept moving.

Looking up at the little red dot, Coney took his frustration out at his viewers. “Look, if you think it’s so important to search every body for loot, I want you to tell me that when you’re elbow deep in some monster with massive amounts of guts shoved into it. Hell, I want you to tell me that after you start searching corpses that have been ‘ripe’ for several days.” He shook his head. “Nuhuh, not today.” There was a trail on the ground of blood, that seemed to come straight to his latest win. He decided to follow it, hoping it would lead him closer to an exit.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The undercroft kept going for a little bit further. As he walked, Coney found himself examining the walls. The stone of the walls was interesting, thick blocks of a brown stone, reminding him of walking through the nicer neighborhoods near the park. It was beautiful, and as he ran his paw along it he felt that it hadn’t been disturbed in years.

Finally, after a few minutes of walking, Coney reached a fork in the road. Looking down, he saw that the trail led to the right, where it seemed to also have disturbed some sand from the floor. In fact, looking in as he walked forward the cut brown stone turned into rough gray rock. It seemed to be a tunnel, deeper underground, which wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do. In the distance he heard the sound of shuffling.

“Nope.” Coney said, shaking his head. “None of that. Not right now. Other direction right now.” The other way was a door, which he opened to find himself in a new hall made of red brick. It had a circular ceiling, and cut into the floor was a flowing river. He could hear as it moved from his right down to the left. “Can I change my decision?” He asked no one. “I mean, this is a sewer. I just know it is.”

Sighing, Coney went through and closed the door behind him. Thankfully the game had decided not to curse his nose with the smell of filth. At least, that’s what he assumed until he leaned down. The water was… clean? Looking up stream he saw that there was a waterfall twenty feet away. Instinctively he walked over to the waterfall and looked around it. “Well, this is something that feels gross but isn’t.” He said, sticking a paw behind the waterfall to feel around. His paw grasped onto something, and he pulled it out. It was a bottle that lit up amber with his paw on it.

“Is this a potion?” He asked himself. “I mean, I suppose hidden potions are good. I wonder what’s in it.” He put it in his last pocket, a little bit sticking out, and began to walk down beside the underground river. “I think this is a… culvert? I’m not sure.” He walked down beside the river, and was startled when something came at him from out of it.

It scuttled out of the water and began to jab at him with it’s legs. It was massive, and looked a lot like a lobster. However, it didn’t have claws. In any case, it was dealing damage with its sharp legs, so Coney began to bash at it back. It was hard going, and honestly he thought a few good swings would take it out, but no. He had to basically obliterate the head. “Fuck you too.” He said, picking up the giant crayfish.

He walked down thirty more feet, avoiding being near the water. The water was so clear that when he held his hand over it he could see there were other enemies in there, and he did not want to tussle with them. His legs were already burning from the cuts, and as much as he wanted to dip them in cold water it wasn’t worth it. Finally he came to what looked like a ladder up.

“Well, there we go.” He said as he began to climb. “Easy enough.” But it wasn’t. Coney’s paws slipped at every step, and his grip on his prize slipped enough that he dropped it. Considering going down, Coney looked at it for a good five seconds, but continued up the ladder. It didn’t help that he saw one of the little creature’s cousins come to drag it’s body into the water.

When he finally got to the top, Coney tried to unlatch the cover. It wasn’t easy, the thing was heavy, and only with a slam of his body did he manage to get it off enough he could start to push it off. Finally he was in the fresh air and sunlight. Even though his paws were wet and his robes were dirty he still felt great. “I did it!” He said, holding his paws up. A few others around the area looked at him with disdain, all of them were humans, or at least human-like.

“What’s all this yelling?” An older man who had a sash over his robes asked, walking over to him. “Ah, Coney, it looks like I’ll be disciplining you again for disrupting meditation. Come with me.

“B-but!” He tried to insist.

“No buts young man. With me!” The old man said, and Coney followed without another word.