Devi struggled to resist the urge to faint, right there on the rocky ground. She knew that if she did, she wouldn’t be getting up again. Her mangled left arm was still bleeding, and she was covered in a mess of cuts, scrapes, and bruises. She could feel a massive headache beginning to form from using so much of her Mana, and she was avoiding looking at her Status which was sure to have her Health, Stamina, and Mana in the single digits based on how she felt.
First things first, I have to deal with my arm. If she didn’t, she would bleed out, and all her hard work would be for nothing.
She vaguely remembered a tourniquet was the way to go to stop blood loss, but, it came with some downsides. But she couldn’t remember what those were.
Regardless, she didn’t have any other options right now.
Devi fumbled with her belt, her trembling fingers barely managing to undo the clasp. Every movement sent a fresh wave of agony through her mangled arm, and her vision blurred with the effort. Finally, she managed to slide the belt free and loop it around her upper arm, just above where it abruptly ended.
Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt that much.
"Come on... tighter," she muttered through gritted teeth, pulling the belt as hard as she could. The pain was excruciating, sharp enough to make her gasp, but it slowed the bleeding almost immediately. She secured the makeshift tourniquet with a shaky knot and leaned back, gasping for air.
The rocky ground beneath her was rough and cold, but she didn’t have the luxury to care. Her mangled arm still throbbed painfully, but at least it wasn’t gushing blood anymore. She felt a tiny flicker of relief—a battle won, however small.
Though, she needed medical care, and fast.
Not like there is any out here, she thought bitterly to herself. Maybe one of the people chose the novice healer class, and could help? Maybe one of them could grow her hand back.
It was honestly her only chance now, it wasn’t like she had a magic potion--
She slammed her palm into her forehead. I do have a magic potion. The blood loss must be getting to me.
Digging through her bag, she found the three vials, labeled Health, Stamina, and Mana, in an odd language she somehow knew how to read. Pushing down her curiosity on that, she hastily uncorked the Health one and chugged it. The potential benefits of it being a healing potion far outweighed the potential of it turning out to be poison.
The potion burned as it went down, sharp and acrid, making Devi gag and cough. She forced herself to finish it, every swallow sending shivers down her spine. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a wave of warmth spread through her chest, coursing outward to every part of her battered body.
Small cuts closed up instantly, while larger lacerations began to scab over. She looked down at her stump and saw the blood had barely coagulated, forming a plug that would helpfully stop her from bleeding out.
As quickly as the healing started, it stopped.
Devi stared at her arm, her heart sinking. The potion had done its job, but only partially. Her stump was no longer bleeding, but it hadn’t miraculously regrown, either. She flexed her fingers instinctively—only to feel the painful absence of them.
“Figures,” she muttered, sliding the empty vial back into her bag. “No miracles today, huh?”
Her body still ached, but the worst of her injuries had been addressed. All of the minor ones had been healed completely She could move without feeling like her entire body was on fire, which was more than she could have hoped for a few minutes ago.
Her eyes drifted to the remaining two potions in her bag. The Stamina potion was tempting, but she hesitated. Using it now might give her a boost, but she’d burn through it quickly if she wasn’t careful. The Mana potion was an even bigger gamble. She was far too drained to face anything significant, and drinking it might not be enough to tip the scales in her favor if something attacked her.
A sudden grinding of stone snapped her out of her thoughts.
Whipping her head around, she saw a slate grey pillar rise out of the ground in the center of the room. It looked oddly familiar, and it only took her a moment to remember back to the Pillar of Civilization that had stood in the middle of the clearing. It felt like it had been ages since she had been there. This one though, was much smaller, being only a bit taller than her.
Hesitantly, Devi reached out her hand and placed it on the pillar.
Pillar of Civilization (Temporary: Dungeon)
Store
Leaderboard
Items
Skills
Race
Class
Vocation
82 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes
“82 days!” She shouted in shock. That ment she had been in this dungeon for 17 days. Which was far more than the week she had initially thought. And that week was a high estimate in her eyes.
I guess time does really fly when you are having fun, she thought with a forced chuckle.
Pillar of Civilization (Temporary: Dungeon)
Store
Leaderboard
Items
Skills
Race
Class
Vocation
General
* [Inspect] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Fire Afinity] (Uncommon) 2,700UC
* [Mana Sense] (Common) 900 UC
* [Mana Sight] (Rare) 8,100 UC
Class
* [First Aid] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Mana Shield] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Attribute Drain] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Magic Tool Proficiency] (inferior) 300 UC
Vocation
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* [Sketch Design] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Improvise Material] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Assess Item] (inferior) 300 UC
* [Mental Note] (inferior) 300 UC
Universal Credits
32,405
Devi stared at the glowing menu, her eyes fixed on the absurdly high number of Universal Credits displayed.
"Thirty-two thousand?" she whispered, her voice tinged with disbelief. She rubbed her eyes, half expecting the number to vanish. But it remained, unwavering and brilliant. "How in the world…?"
Her thoughts raced as she tried to piece together how she had accumulated so many credits. Was it from all the battles? The traps she had disarmed? The puzzles she had solved? The memories were hazy, but she didn’t have the luxury of sorting them out now. What mattered was that she had resources—resources that could change everything.
Devi quickly scanned through the options, her mind racing with possibilities.
[First Aid] was something she almost had to get, given her state, but, there were so many other tantalizing options. [Fire Afinty] called out to her, not that she was a pyromanac or anything. She had just used a lot of fire recently and it had been useful. Only reason.
[Mana Sense] and [Mana Sight] both seemed very useful. She had been going at everything effectively blind, having to feel her way through creating magical effects with only rough feedback to go off of. These Skills promised something better. How much better was the question, since they cost a pretty penny.
Then, there were the rest of the Class and Vocation Skills she could take. They all sounded extremely useful, though slightly limited in scope. And she only had two slots left to slot Skills into. Meaning she’d have to choose only two for each of her Class and Vocation.
Before, her lack of UC was the limiting factor for her Skills, but now that she had a surplus of those, she was starting to see that it was the slots that probably limited her Skills more. If it was this easy to earn UC, then, finding ways to get more slots seemed far more important.
As she looked through the Skills, she remembered that the last time she had bought any, the price for all of them had increased. She didn’t know for certain if the higher rarity Skills also increased in price, but she was pretty sure the pattern held. The more important thing she didn’t know was if they increased separately, or did all the Skills raised their prices across the board.
Though, knowing her luck, all of them would increase once she bought one of them.
That made her choice pretty easy, choosing the most expensive option she wanted first, [Mana Sight]. With only a bit of hesitation, she made her purchase and accepted the prompt that popped up after, slotting the Skill in one of her three [EMPTY] general Skill slots.
The moment she did, the world exploded in color. Though color was the wrong word.
The "colors" Devi saw weren’t colors at all—not in the way her eyes perceived light and dark. It was more like an overlay, a second sight, layered atop her natural vision. Waves and ripples of Mana pulsed in the air around her, filling the world with vibrant energy. It was both breathtaking and disorienting.
The pillar itself radiated a steady, pale glow of Mana, organized in complex, interweaving patterns that shimmered as she moved her head. The lines and movement of those colors were fuzy, like trying to see something out of focus. She could see vague forms and details, but they were ill-defined, as though they were veiled behind an intangible curtain. Her newfound ability to see Mana didn’t make everything crystal clear, but it provided her with a foundation to build upon—a starting point.
Devi took a deep breath and steadied herself. The swirling currents of energy were mesmerizing, but she couldn’t afford to get distracted. She returned her focus to the pillar’s menu, her mind already churning through her remaining options.
"Alright," she murmured to herself. "[Mana Sight] was worth it, but now I have to decide what else to prioritize."
Her eyes lingered on [Fire Affinity], which had jumped all the way up to 3,600 UC, 900 more than before. [Mana Sense] and increased by 300, while all the inferior Skills only jumped by 100.
She couldn’t stop herself, and before long she was looking for a pattern in those numbers. It had to do with how many total Skils she had bought or had slotted since those numbers were the same for herself. Inferior Skills looked to increase only 100 UC per purchase, Common jumped by 300, and Uncommon by 900.
That meant Rare Skills increased by a mind-boggling 2700 UC for every purchase if the math kept constant. Each rarity seemed to multiply the last by 3, which was odd. There were a lot of threes in her Status window too. Three Skill slots, and three resources as well. Though, everything was in base 10? The starting point for the Skills was 100 UC, not a multiple of 3 at all.
Devi felt like slamming her head into the pillar in frustration. Nothing made sense, at all.
Devi took another steadying breath, shaking her head to clear the swirling thoughts of patterns and theories. This wasn’t the time to solve the mystery of the universe’s numerical obsession with threes. What mattered now was survival.
And fire.
She immediately bought the [Fire Affinity] Skill, because, well, why wouldn’t she? Devi felt like she needed something fun after surviving and having to deal with the headache that was her new reality.
When she accepted the prompt to slot the Skill, she felt something shift within her. A warmth that began as a faint ember in the pit of her stomach and spread outward, suffusing her body. It was as though a fire had ignited in her very soul—gentle, yet undeniably potent. She closed her eyes, letting the sensation wash over her, and when she opened them again, the "colors" of Mana from her new [Mana Sight] had changed subtly.
Around her body, faint strands of red and gold mana began to radiate outwards, dissipating once they got only a few centimeters away from her.
Devi marveled at the vibrant aura now surrounding her, the red and gold strands dancing like flames in the wind. [Fire Affinity] wasn’t just a passive boon; it felt alive, eager to be used. She clenched her fists, and the embers around her seemed to flicker brighter, responding to her will.
“This is... incredible,” she muttered, her earlier frustration melting away in the glow of discovery. She raised her good hand, letting her newfound affinity flow through her. The warmth was comforting as if the fire were an extension of herself rather than a foreign element. Even with her mangled arm and her exhaustion, she felt powerful—alive.
She had always felt a connection with fire, the duality of it. One moment bringing destruction, and the next, life. How a roaring inferno could be stoked from the faintest coals barely alive. Its flickering nature, being large and fierce one moment, and then dying down to nothing the next. How it was necessary for creation, the energy it contained parament to make anything. One of the first ways her ancestors had tamed the natural world, bending it to their ways, but, it was still wild, ready to turn on its new masters at a moment’s notice.
It was a struggle, but Devi managed to wrestle her thoughts away from fire. I am not a pyromaniac, I am not a pyromaniac. The fire inside will never be let out, never again.
She still had five more Skill slots to fill, one general, and two for both her Class and Vocation. [Mana Sense] seemed to be an inferior version of her [Mana Sight], or at least that’s what she assumed, as it was rarity lower. That left her with only [Inspect] for her general Skills, and she purchased that without hesitation.
More information was always welcome.
“[Inspect]”
Devi immediately turned to the pillar and tried to activate her newest Skill. She could feel something try to activate, a twinge of mana entering her eyes, only for nothing to happen. Devi could feel the Skill activate correctly, there was just nothing.
She tried it again, this time looking at the corpse of the massive monster, but again, nothing. That didn’t change as she tried it with the numerous smaller monsters that had collapsed when she had killed the big one.
It wasn’t until she tried it on herself in frustration did she get any success.
[Human - lvl 8]
That caused her to pause. Her race level was 8, but her Class was at 9.
I guess it only shows the level of the race? The implications of that were imentse. It meant that her [Inspect] could tell her someone was a lot weaker than what there were in reality. Which could prove probablimtic if she relied on it too much. At the very least, it did serve as a benchmark for the power of other people, although, that hinged on the idea that she could use the Skill on them on the first place.
With her general Skills all filed, she had her Vocation and Class to consider. And it was not an easy choice. [First Aid] seemed like it would be very beneficial, with her arm missing and everything, but, the extent of her injuries meant that something called first aid wouldn’t be equipped to deal with it. Maybe if it was called magical first aid or something, she’d consider it, but, with her arm in its current state, she didn’t see it being useful.
That said, in the future, it could be of use. Patching up smaller wounds would be good, but not parament. She needed something far more robust to help her immediate survival and recovery. Devi’s gaze lingered on [First Aid] for a moment longer before moving on. If her arm were in better shape, or if she had a healer nearby, it might have been worth it. But now? She needed Skills that would either keep her alive or give her a fighting chance against whatever this dungeon threw at her next.
Her eyes settled on [Mana Shield]. It was an inferior Skill, sure, but the name alone promised a defensive edge. In her current state, any form of protection was better than none. Devi didn’t hesitate long before purchasing it, slotting the Skill into her Class slot.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the mana to spare to activate the Skill. She’d have to experiment once she had rested.
Alright,” she muttered, turning back to the menu. “One more Class Skill and two for Vocation.”
The [Attribute Drain] Skill caught her attention next. The name sounded ominous, but also... useful. If it allowed her to sap strength or abilities from her enemies, it could give her a much-needed edge in combat. Plus, the thought of evening the playing field against stronger opponents was too tempting to ignore. With a deep breath, she made her purchase.
Finally, Devi turned her attention to her Vocation Skills. [Sketch Design] and [Improvise Material] both sounded practical, especially for crafting or repairing gear. [Assess Item] seemed invaluable for identifying loot or tools, while [Mental Note] intrigued her as a potential aid for organization and memory.
After some thought, she decided on [Assess Item] and [Improvise Material]. These Skills made sense together—letting her understand materials and create or modify them as needed. They'd make tasks like keeping a notebook or sketching designs easier, though she could technically manage without them. In contrast, the other Skills offered abilities she could probably easily replicate. Once slotted, she didn’t feel any immediate change, which matched her expectations. Based on her experience, Skills seemed to fall into two types: passive ones, which caused instant changes she could sense, and active ones, which required use to understand their effects.
With those final purchases, she had finally filled all of her Skill slots, so she went to pull up her Status to make sure they were there, only to see the mess of notifications that she had been subconsciously ignoring.
“Oh, I should go look through these I guess.”