She was right as always, the level up did make him feel a lot better. Glad something sort of came from the death even if it was a selfish thing. Though he would probably need to be careful. The call to power over the killing of things seemed like a pretty slippery slope he could fall down.
He put his spare point into mind as he began to take stock of the station. He hadn’t really noticed since he was a little too busy but he was shocked at how ruined the whole place was.
The Kiosk was completely destroyed and all along the walls, ceiling and floor were claw marks matching the claws from that cursed sin monster.
“Yeah. When you severed that creature's hand. It got really REALLY pissed at you.” she responded with some fairly obviously commentary
“I am kind of surprised it didn’t smash the door to the break room and grab me.”
“I might have had a hand in that. It took a lot of effort and a lot of power but I helped mask your presence for a few moments so it couldn’t sense you no matter what. It probably thought the door was just part of the wall since it couldn’t see, and you'll notice claw marks on the door itself too. Also you are more than welcome. I will take your praise now.”
Quill looked over at the door and sure enough, there were claw marks. But nothing that would harm the integrity of the door itself which was good. “So hold on. You can just mask my presence just like that? Why didn’t you do it when I was getting chased in the tunnel?”
“I can’t do it just like that.” A finger snap could be heard in his head from her which he had no idea how she did that. ”Honestly I didn’t even know I could do it. But I didn't know if that thing could sense you or not so I did my best. At no cost to myself by the way. It hurt, like a lot. Plus in order to do it again, I put your soul at a very high risk. Sure you survived this round but I am not sure if you will be as lucky next time. Plus if I can do it again, which I am not sure I am able to. It won’t be for a long while. Also, you are Welcome! Feel Free To Praise Me Now!”
Quill winced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. Though thank you a lot for doing what you did. Even though it did hurt. I really appreciate it and the fact that I am still alive means you did a really good job too”
“Hehehehe. That’s more like it. You are so much better when you are obedient~”
He ignored the flirtatious comment and continued “So how would we be able to get you to do more of that?”
“Hiding your presence? You need to get stronger. The stronger you get, the more our bond will grow which will make it easier for me to do that kind of stuff. You WANT our bond to grow right?”
“Y-yeah” His mouth sort of moved without any input from his brain
“Good. Now we should focus on the task at hand. Which is reinforcements that are coming for us”
“R-right.” Quill looked around. He needed to first figure out where the secret door to the secret tunnel was.
“Don’t suppose you have any idea?”
“A few. But where is the fun in me just telling you. Come on. Put that great noggin to use and come up with something on your own! You got this, I believe in you! Hurrah!”
He almost felt like she just did a fist pump in the air and couldn’t help but smile just a tad at her encouragement. What he ever did without her was… What he did without her.. He was witho-
“Stop slacking and get a move on! You are kinda on a time limit here!”
Quill shook his head “Yeesh. I get side tracked way too much”
“That you do. Good thing I am here to keep you on track. Feel free to thank me. And by that I mean you better thank me!”
He chucked “Thank you. Now let me try to figure this out”
“Aye aye boss man”
Quill decided to first examine the whole station. Just because he thought all the rats were dead didn’t actually mean they were.
Once he ensured all the rats were indeed gone he couldn’t help but note that the station itself was a carbon copy of the previous station making him wonder if every station was similar and how many stations there were. Kinda seemed like lazy dungeon design to him.
“Maybe file a complaint?” She butted in snapping him out of his musings.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“To whom???”
“How am I supposed to know?”
He just rolled his eyes at that. “Need to focus on finding the entrance. Let me concentrate”
“Oh! Is that what you were doing? To me it looked like you were just standing around admiring the architecture of the dungeon and complaining about its layout. My bad.”
He ignored the biting sarcasm and decided to start looking around the area by the break room and gate. He didn’t really know what he was looking for but he started spamming his “identify” skill at every wall while looking for something that could be notch or a crack that could be a give away to the secret entrance.
After no luck on that front, Quill decided to check out the hallways that lead to either platform but came up with squat. Finally he went to check the actual platforms.
The very first thing he did was make sure that those cursed sins weren’t showing up anytime soon. Once he knew he still had some time, he began exploring the platforms.
He decided to start with the platform that he came from, there were no dead rat corpses littering the area which made him believe that the cursed sin monster probably ate all of them after it was done throwing its tantrum of not managing to catch and eat him.
And boy did it throw a tantrum. He thought the walls and floor were bad up by the gate and kiosk. But yikes. There were craters all over, likely from the hands smashing down with extreme force, along with deep carvings everywhere from the claws. Even the stairs were destroyed. In order to get to the platform, Quill had to jump down to the platform from atop the ruined stairs and onto rubble.
He was strangely thankful in an odd sort of way. He remembered how many rats were on that platform when he came out of the tunnels and there would have been no way he would have been able to handle that many in such a disadvantageous position without a whole lot of luck. Even if he did manage to get to the break room it would still be pretty touch and go with handling that many rats. Though he suppose in fairness it was pretty touch and go with the cursed sin too.
It took him about thirty minutes of examining the walls of that platform before he concluded that there wasn’t any secret entrance he could find. He was using the electric sign for when the cursed sin would arrive to keep track of time which proved pretty useful since he had nothing else indicating time.
He then mosied on over to the other platform and noted that the arrival for that cursed sin would be a few short minutes away so he decided to hide and wait for it to have passed.
He eventually heard the scraping of claws to stone and peeked out from where he hid
You are in-
Quill dismissed the notification telling him he was inflicted with fear. At this point he was pretty sure his annoyance with the very obvious status infliction trumped whatever fear he was feeling from the cursed sin.
There was some good news though. This one was a color he recognized with it being red. This of course begged the question of what kind of weird layout the train tracks had but who cares. He got a red color which meant he didn’t have to worry about yet another one.
“What if they’re multiples of the same color?” her voice suddenly chimed in, making Quill sag.
“Well if they’re multiples then I guess I gotta start killing these sins sooner rather than later” he barely whispered back and quickly tossed that hopeless thought to the back of his mind for later.
The cursed sin finally left and with plenty of time on his side, he headed down the stairs and began checking all the walls for anything that might indicate a secret passage or tunnel of any kind but still got nothing.
“Perhaps the secret tunnel is within the metro tunnel itself?”
“No. I wouldn’t think so. That Rat Kin seemed pretty adamant on not getting on the tracks. So….” Quill suddenly realized something and felt like an idiot “So the secret tunnel isn’t in the wall. It’s probably on the floor or ceiling.”
“Oh!... Well now we both feel like idiots. But I am not sure if your method of spamming Identify at every inch of every thing is a good method of finding your secret passage.”
“Yeah.. Let's head back up to the kiosk first. I might have an idea” Quill headed back up and took a deep breath as he started to manifest his energy. But instead of manifesting it into any solid object he then chose to use very faint wisps and began to touch it down to the floor. Commanding the faint wisps to snake across the floor as he moved with them so as to not expend too much energy.
He covered the area around the kiosk doing his best to ignore all the blood and the slowly decaying corpses of the rats but found nothing. So he then moved towards the hallways that lead to the platforms.
It was on his way to the platform that had the green cursed horror that his wisps finally snagged something. He made them as thin as possible, imagining them almost as a fog and as he slid them across the ground he kept trying to have them press downwards. This allowed him to catch the tiniest of cracks.
He quickly dissipated all of the wisps but the one that snagged and had it slowly stretch itself across the crack till it did a full loop. He could appreciate the fact that the rats had decided to make their secret tunnel door in the shape of a hole you would see in a cartoon that would depict a mouse.
Using the energy he lifted the latch up enough for him to get his fingers underneath and with a small grunt threw open the door and peered inside.
“I am going to have to guess the rats have some kind of darkvision cause I can barely see shit down there even with my enhanced eyesight.”
“I would have to assume that as the skill levels up, so will your ability to see in the dark. Sadly not much you can do right now. What about your ears? Anything?”
Quill strained his ears as best he could. Even sticking his head inside the hole to see if he could hear anything but still came up with nothing. So that was a plus sign at least. He probably had a little bit of extra time to prepare as best he could. He did note however that a little further down in the tunnel there was a weak lamp offering some minimal light. So at least the tunnels were completely pitch black.
“Sooo. Whatcha planning on doing to deal with the rat reinforcements that will most certainly overwhelm you?”
“Psychological warfare my dear. Psychological warfare.” She let out a malicious cackle in response.