Vaughn felt himself return to consciousness and slowly starting pulling himself up off the hard, rocky ground into a seated position. Vaughn tried to open his eyes and found that they were stuck shut, so he reached one of his hands up to clean them off. As his hand met his face, there was a lot more crust around his eyes than he'd expected to find. As he started rubbing it off, he noticed it wasn't just around where his eyelids met. In fact, it wasn't even just around his eyes. He rubbed his hands around his whole face and felt the same substance completely covering it. It was thicker in some places than others, but with a bit of elbow grease, it came off without much issue. There's enough of this stuff that it definitely isn't just... eye crust? No that's not what it's called... Ah! Rheum! That's it. There's no way it's not just rheum; there's way too much of it for that.
As he was sitting there brushing his face off and wondering what exactly it was he was brushing off, his memories started slowing coming back to him. He'd loved touring the various cave systems around where he lived, and he'd finally been visiting the last big one in his state and had been taking the guided tour. He remembered leaning over the railing to get a better look at one particular branch off the cavern into the depths of the earth. And then... then, he remembered someone pushing him, going over the rail, rolling down the side of the cave then... falling. Falling, and falling, and falling. And then nothing. Oh god, I think someone just tried to kill me!
As he tried to make sense of his situation, he noticed a glaring incongruity with the events he remembered. For the all distance he fell, he didn't feel any injuries; in fact, he was barely even sore. I mean, I'm not complaining, but I should probably be dead right now. I was falling for... Well, I don't know how long. A while? Sure, let's go with that. I fell for a while and feel pretty much completely fine. That's not how that works.
Either I'm in shock and I'm just not feeling the injuries yet or something else is going on. Okay, it's sanity check time. Am I in a dream? Vaughn pinched himself. Well, that definitely hurt, sooooo maybe not? Hardly conclusive though... I remember how I got here, so that's more evidence against the dream theory.
Still pondering his circumstances and crust brushed away from his face, Vaughn blinked open his eyes to take stock of his surroundings. Only, he opened his eyes to absolute darkness. It was the kind of darkness you'd only rarely encounter; there was not even a trace of light. No stars or moon in the sky, no light seeping in from under a doorway or through slight cracks in a wall, absolutely nothing. He waved his hand in front of his face and thought maybe he could see something, but eventually decided it was just his brain playing tricks on him. Duh. I knew I was in a cave. Of course I'm not going to be able to see anything. Vaughn, you're an idiot.
Vaughn remembered he'd been wearing a headlamp before he fell. It wasn't around his head anymore, so he started feeling around on the floor for it. After just a few minutes of reaching around in the darkness, he found it, when suddenly, he had a terrifying thought. Oh no! I never turned it off, and since I'm not seeing any light now, that means it probably ran out of battery. Vaughn felt panic starts swelling in his chest. Oh god, oh no, I'm gonna be stuck down here all alone in the complete darkness. Hoping against all hope, he frantically felt around for the power switch. He found it, and as he felt its position, a great rush of relief overtook him. Somehow, it had gotten turned off during the fall. Vaughn wasn't a religious man, but in that moment, he thanked whatever higher power there may be for his good fortune. He flipped the switch on his headlamp.
It started giving off light, but something was wrong about it. When he held it close to his face, it wasn't as bright as he remembered, but it was still strong enough to discourage him from looking directly into the light. The issue came when it was more than a few inches from his face. At about a foot from his face, he could comfortably look directly at the lightbulb, and at arm's length, it only appeared about as bright as a candle. As he looked around, he could make vaguely make out the uneven ground and a few rocks around where he was sitting, but anything beyond a couple feet out was just pure darkness. It wasn't just a lack of light; it was a true, oppressive darkness. But the most concerning thing he noticed wasn't oppressive darkness, the strange behavior of the light, or the cave around himself. No, the most concerning part was what he saw when he looked at himself.
His hands, his clothes, his arms, his... everything was all covered in a brownish, deep red substance. Dried blood. He'd never admit it to anyone else later, but to sum up what transpired for the next couple of minutes, Vaughn freaked the fuck out. There was perhaps a great deal of hyperventilating and screaming involved, but then again, if a man screams in a cave and nobody's around to hear it, did he even scream at all?
After catching his breath, Vaughn began methodically checking himself over for injuries and broken bones. He started off by feeling each segment of each finger, checking for open wounds or broken bounds. Finding none, he checked over his hands, then arms, then toes, then feet, legs, and knees. Then he moved his hands over his ribs one by one, checking for any pain or unexpected shifting of bones when he pressed on them. Astonished that he hadn't found any injuries yet, he started pushing his finger into different parts of his stomach and then running his hands through his hair and over his back. Nothing. Besides a bit of soreness from the position I was laying in, nothing hurts or feels broken. How is this possible?
As he was trying to figure out what was going on, he felt a nagging feeling that there was something he should do. No, it wasn't finding a way out of the cave; Vaughn knew he needed to do that, but it wasn't an immediate concern. He was still taking stock of his situation. Whatever this was felt like he should do it right away. Only, he didn't know what it was. What am I forgetting? I'm not hungry or thirsty yet. I know I need food and water and that I should try to find my water bottle, but that doesn't feel like whatever this is. I have my phone, but there's no way there's service down here. Ugh, what is it?!
The feeling wouldn't go away. Instead it only grew. Vaughn wracked his brain trying to figure out what he was forgetting, but still, nothing came to mind. The feeling continued to grow and grow until it was so strong he couldn't even think about what it was he was supposed to be doing; simply feeling the need was all his brain could process. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, something just clicked. That was the only way to describe it. A muscle he didn't know he had suddenly flexed. It felt like he reached inside and pressed some intangible button, and he instantly felt some sort of response. It wasn't a voice in his mind, nor thoughts entering his brain, nor anything his vision, but nonetheless, he found he could... perceive something. It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced, a sixth sense, and it was conveying words, but in another manner than he'd ever encountered before.
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Congratulations, Human from Earth! You found your way into the an enlightened plane! You are currently located in the Abyssal Depths on Levipoll, The World of Fallen Vestiges.
This message is provided to you by the framework. As a sapient being from an unenlightened plane, you likely have many questions. Unfortunately, the framework is not permitted to provide you with a tutorial; however, for your first 30 days (78.4 days as measured in Earth days), you will have access to extended information on your status.
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Status
Physical
Injuries: None (History)
Strength: 0.88 (Details) (History)
Resilience: 1.09 (Details) (History)
Arcane
Mana: 10 / 10 (History)
Affinities: [Dark - 1.04] (Details) (History)
Proficiencies: None exceed display threshold (Details) (History)
(Show Hidden Statistics and Effects)
[30.00 Days Remaining on Extended Information]
Current Time and Date: 49-65-37 : 22-Abolvin-501
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A quick - not glance since it wasn't using his vision, but something like it - later at the information available, Vaughn promptly came to a conclusion and ignored his new sense. Okay, that decides it. I'm dreaming. He had never mastered the art of lucid dreaming, but he figured this was his chance. Okay. Come on. Time to fly. Uuunnnnnggggggghhhhh come on come on come on, fly! Oh, and while I'm at let's not be in a cave.... hmm, Caribbean sounds nice. Okay, fly to the Caribbean. Vaughn closed his eyes and made a face like he was constipated as he tried to control his dream into letting him fly to the Caribbean. But as the minutes crawled past, Vaughn neither lifted off the ground nor managed to change his surroundings. After another ten minutes or so of failure at reality-bending, Vaughn concluded that this must be the kind of dream he wasn't going to be able to control.
If I can't control dream, I definitely wouldn't describe myself as a fan of it, so I guess I'll just wake myself up. Vaughn once again tried pinching himself, to no avail. Failing that, he figured that if he just went to sleep, when he woke up, the dream would be over. So he turned his headlamp off, brushed some nearby rocks aside, made himself as comfortable as the hard, stone floor allowed, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. You see, Vaughn was one of the lucky few with the ability to fall asleep at will just about anywhere, and he took full advantage of this ability.
A couple of hours later, Vaughn stirred from his slumber and opened his eyes to see... the same oppressive blackness. Ugh, maybe this isn't a dream? But that would mean... Wait! I think I know what's going on! I'm in a coma, and this is just a coma dream! That's... not good. Definitely not good. Well within the realm of bad. Well, if I'm in a coma, I might as well just go along with it; it'll give me something to do until I wake up. Okay, let's see if I can get that thing back. Vaughn tried to recall what it felt like to reach inside and press that button. He felt like as a fool as he concentrated on a muscle he definitely didn't have, but after a couple of minutes, he once again felt something click as he suddenly felt like his imaginary muscle was doing something. A few seconds later, he felt what could only be described as that same internal button he'd pressed before, and he pressed it again. As soon as he did, he immediately felt that same extra sense of perception as from before as more information appeared in his perception.
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Status
Physical
Injuries: None (History)
Strength: 0.88 (Details) (History)
Resilience: 1.09 (Details) (History)
Arcane
Mana: 10 / 10 (History)
Affinities: [Dark - 1.04] (Details) (History)
Proficiencies: None exceed display threshold (Details) (History)
(Show Hidden Statistics and Effects)
[29.95 Days Remaining on Extended Information]
Current Time and Date: 10-04-40 : 22-Abolvin-501
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Hmm, okay. So my brain decided I'm in a game. Interesting choice there, brain. I don't know that I've seen a game like this one before, and I didn't think brains could be creative during dreams. Maybe coma dreams are different? Whatever. Vaughn took the opportunity to start exploring his status, starting from the top. Ah! Injuries! Maybe the history will tell me how I got covered in blood without having any obvious injuries! Vaughn wasn't quite sure how to select any of the options on his status, but after considering for a minute, he supposed trying to reach inwards the same way he did to trigger it in the first place would be a good place to start. Having done so deliberately now, he found it was much easier to flex that imaginary muscle, but this time, instead of reaching for the internal button that created this status page, he instead tried reaching towards the History button next to "Injuries".
To Vaughn's slight surprise, it worked quite easily. His previous status page disappeared from his perception and a new one took its place.
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Injury History
20-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Congratulations - as your entry to an enlightened plane was the source of detected injuries, all injuries have been healed! Be warned - entry to an enlightened plane is the ONLY time the framework will ever interfere on your behalf.
18-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Injuries Detected: [Head - Severe Concussion, Shattered Skull, Broken Jaw, (More)] [Torso - Severed Spinal Cord, Punctured Lungs, 8 Broken Ribs, (More)] [Circulatory System - Severe Blood Loss, Multiple Arteries Severed, Contaminants Present in Bloodstream] (More)
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One quick skim of his list of injuries was all Vaughn needed to see to know that, dream or not, he had seen enough. Though the message about being healed was interesting, it didn't seem it was something he'd be able to rely on ever again. And... what was this nonsense about an enlightened plane? Vaughn thought the term sounded familiar from before his nap, but he hadn't really paid attention to his status then; once he saw it, he'd gone right to trying to fly and then leave the dream. Vaughn reached out with the same internal muscle as before and tried pushing the Injury History away. Oh wow, that actually worked! I'm getting good at this imaginary muscle stuff! Then Vaughn triggered his status window again so he could go through the rest of it.
Next in the status was his strength, listed at 0.88. That sounded about right to Vaughn, assuming 1.00 was average. He'd made efforts to work out regularly, but if he was being honest with himself, it was all too easy to say, "I'll do it tomorrow." He wasn't horribly weak, but he was probably a bit below average. Out of curiosity, Vaughn selected Details next to Strength to see what it'd show him. Unlike with the injury history, this didn't change away from the status. Instead, between the Strength row and Resilience row, more information showed up.
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Status
Physical
Injuries: None (History)
Strength: 0.88 (Fewer Details) (History)
- Arms: 0.94 [0.98 Biceps] [0.99 Triceps] [0.87 Flexors] [0.81 Other]
- Upper Body: 0.89 [0.85 Deltoids] [0.94 Pectorals] [0.93 Abdominals] [0.83 Other]
- Legs: 0.86 [0.90 Glutes] [0.85 Hamstrings] [0.91 Quadriceps] [0.80 Other]
- Other: 0.82
Resilience: 1.09 (Details) (History)
Arcane
Mana: 10 / 10 (History)
Affinities: [Dark - 1.04] (Details) (History)
Proficiencies: None exceed display threshold (Details) (History)
(Show Hidden Statistics and Effects)
Current Time and Date: 42-05-40 : 22-Abolvin-501
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Huh. It's got a breakdown of some of my muscle groups. You know, if this wasn't just a temporary dream, I could see having some objective measurements being good for motivation to keep working out. Having looked thought his strength details, Vaughn went on to check his strength history, just to see if there was anything there. He doubted it since the dream just started, and whatever this framework thing was didn't seem to be showing him injuries from before the dream. Sure enough, when he opened his strength history, nothing was there.
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Strength History
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Yup, no surprise there. Vaughn brought his status back up once again to continue exploring it. He found his resilience somewhat surprising. Based off his strength score, he was guessing around 1.00 was average or something like that, but he definitely wasn't more resilient than other people. He selected the details to see what it'd show him.
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Status
Physical
Injuries: None (History)
Strength: 0.88 (Details) (History)
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Resilience: 1.09 (Fewer Details) (History)
- Pain Tolerance: 0.74
- Mental Resilience: 1.13
- Skin Toughness: 1.24
- Flesh Toughness: 0.83
- Organ Toughness: 1.08
- Bone Toughness: 1.31
- Mutations and Evolutions: 0.00
Arcane
Mana: 10 / 10 (History)
Affinities: [Dark - 1.04] (Details) (History)
Proficiencies: None exceed display threshold (Details) (History)
(Show Hidden Statistics and Effects)
Current Time and Date: 03-07-40 : 22-Abolvin-501
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That's odd. I never really noticed my skin or bones being particularly tough; in fact, I always cut myself pretty easily. That's dream logic for you, I guess. Also wait hey, that's mean! My pain tolerance isn't that bad! Come on brain, if you're gonna dream me into a video game, stroke my ego some while you're at it. Or at least don't insult me! And what's this about mutations and evolutions? I'm guessing that since, last I checked, I'm still pretty human, that just doesn't apply to me? Just as with his strength, Vaughn checked the resilience history, not expecting to see anything.
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Resilience History
21-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Due to healing major injuries in an extreme mana density environment, your associated resiliences have risen drastically! [Overall Resilience: 0.97 -> 1.09] [Skin Toughness: 0.92 -> 1.24] [Flesh Toughness: 0.81 -> 0.83] [Organ Toughness: 1.02 -> 1.08] [Bone Toughness: 1.00 -> 1.31]
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Reading over his resilience history, Vaughn decided that maybe he liked dream logic after all. If it wanted to make his dream-self stronger, he certainly wouldn't complain. He wondered what the "extreme mana density environment" thing was about, but he figured that was probably just part of the whole fantasy / video game vibe his brain had going on. Speaking of fantasy / video game vibe, Vaughn had finished making his way through the "physical" section of his status, meaning it was time to check out the "arcane" section. His various histories strongly indicated magic was at play, but aside from that, everything else had been referring to fairly mundane aspects of himself. Now, he was getting into the fun stuff.
From his various video games, Vaughn was familiar with the concept of mana; in order to make his character use magic, he had to spend "mana points," so assuming it was intuitively named, he was guessing that's what his mana did: allow him to use magic. Isn't that exciting? I wonder what I can do... I'll do some experimenting to see if I can figure it out once I'm done exploring my status. I can definitely think of worse ways to spend a coma than just playing around with some magic. Without further ado, Vaughn moved on to checking his mana history.
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Mana History
22-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Due to an increase in maximum personal mana, mana from the environment was absorbed to increase current personal mana accordingly.
~~~~
Maximum Mana History
22-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Congratulations - as you entered an enlightened plane without any mana capacity, your maximum mana has been increased to 10! Be warned - entry to an enlightened plane is the ONLY time the framework will ever interfere on your behalf.
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Well, a bonus for not having any mana before? Yes please, thank you very much, mysterious dream framework. Vaughn was pretty sure he hadn't had any mana on earth, so his comatose brain coming up with a reason for him to suddenly have some wasn't surprising. He wondered how else his maximum mana could be increased, but he really wasn't sure. He didn't see any sort of experience bar or level, so it seemed that any sort of video game style leveling up was out of the question. The only thing he could come up with was that, just like a muscle, maybe exercising his mana would cause it to increase? Regardless, it was a concern for later, if he hadn't woken up before then. He would wake up from his coma. Vaughn was as sure of that as he could convince himself. Thinking too long on the alternative would send him down a bad path, so he just focused on being optimistic. He would wake up. He would not die in this coma. I have to wake up eventually. I need to! I need...
I'm spiraling. Okay time to distract myself with more status window things! Looks like I've got an affinity for Dark, whatever that means. Vaughn selected Affinities details in hopes that it'd provide him with more information or something resembling an explanation, but all that happened was the text "[All Other Elements: 1.00]" appeared right next to [Dark - 1.04], and "Details" turned into "Fewer Details". Huh. That's shockingly little information; I really have nothing to work with here. I guess... I'll just move on and come back to this later? Oh wait, I forgot to check the history! Let's see what that tells me. He selected affinities history and read over the resulting information.
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Affinities History
22-41-33 : 22-Abolvin-501 <> Due to absorbing attuned mana from an extreme mana density environment, your associated affinities have slightly risen! [Dark: 1.00 -> 1.04]
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Huh, okay. So the mana around me is "attuned," whatever that means, and absorbing it increased my Dark affinity, again, whatever that means. Usually something being attuned means it's attuned to something in particular, and since it was my darkness affinity that rose, I'm guessing that the mana must be attuned to Dark. Darkness? Yeah I'm going with that. The mana is attuned to Darkness, so absorbing it gives me the Dark affinity. Ohhhhhh that might explain why my headlamp wasn't shining properly earlier! Maybe the Darkness-attuned mana is interfering with the light! Okay, yeah that's my running theory.
Pleased with his conclusions, Vaughn moved on to his last row of information: his proficiencies. It seemed he didn't have any which, although disappointing, was unsurprising. He hadn't actually done any magic, so how could he be proficient with it? Out of curiosity, he selected proficiencies details, but as with the affinities details, all that happened was "None exceed display threshold" changed to "[All Elements: 1.00]." It seemed to use the same 1.00-based scores as most other stats, but that was about all he took away from it. And when he selected history, just as with his strength history, it didn't have any entries for him. Well that's wholly unhelpful. Come on, mysterious dream framework, give me something to work with here!
The "mysterious dream framework" did not deign to respond.
Whelp, onto my hidden statistics and effects! This oughta be good. Vaughn tried to think of what sort of hidden statistics would show and came up with a couple of ideas. A lot of his games had things like dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, or charisma, so maybe it'd tell him how smart he thought it was or something like that. Whelp, nothing for it but to try it out. He selected it and was rewarded with a number of lines of information showing up at the bottom of his status.
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Status
Physical
Injuries: None (History)
Strength: 0.88 (Details) (History)
Resilience: 1.09 (Details) (History)
Arcane
Mana: 10 / 10 (History)
Affinities: [Dark - 1.04] (Details) (History)
Proficiencies: None exceed display threshold (Details) (History)
(Show Hidden Statistics and Effects)
[29.95 Days Remaining on Extended Information]
- Unattuned Compatibility Coefficient: 0.9997
- Environmental Mana Density: 9.55
- Mana Regeneration Coefficient: 5.30
- Body Tempering Coefficient: 6.26
- Aspect: 77% Dark; 23% Unaspected
- Survival Needs Met by Environmental Mana: 60.1%
- Time Until Dehabilitation by Dehydration: Approximately 119 hours, 98 minutes (2.4 days)
- Time Until Dehabilitation by Hunger: Approximately 1919 hours, 67 minutes (38.4 days)
- Time Until Dehabilitation by Suffocation: Approximately 208.3 seconds (4.16 minutes)
- You will understand any language you encounter.
Note: The listed statistic may change as your needs change.
Current Time and Date: 42-07-40 : 22-Abolvin-501
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Vaughn was a bit overwhelmed by numbers. It really was quite a bit, especially for someone who didn't know what all this stuff meant. Right away, he noticed something wrong, though: 119 hours makes almost five days, not just 2.4. And 98 minutes? If my status is going to break time down into hours and minutes, why would it leave more than 60 minutes? Why not just go with 120 hours, 38 minutes? Oh... could my brain have decided that Earth time is no good? I swear, my dream really just wants to make itself painful for me, doesn't it. Fine, brain, I promise I'll get more sleep once I wake up from my coma. Happy?
Shockingly, no voice boomed out, "Oh, yeah sure, Vaughn, you can wake up now" or anything along those lines.
Not expecting otherwise, Vaughn decided he'd make sense of what he could from all this information. The first thing his focus was drawn to was the "time until dehabilitation" counters. He didn't think he was at any risk of danger from suffocation unless the air around him somehow got cut off from the outside world, but considering his whole body had fallen down the shaft in the cave, it seemed unlikely that air wouldn't be able to fit as well. Though, he vaguely recalled being told he was on another world or something like that before his nap, so maybe his air supply was something to be cognizant of.
No, the more immediate concern was food and water, water in particular. He knew people could make it three days without water, and he'd presumably been here for a number of hours already. His status indicated that he had 2.4 days left, which sounded about right, but it also said 119 hours and 98 minutes. So assuming time measurements were different here, he'd have to figure out how that translated to Earth time measurements. First off, if 119 hours is 2.4 days, then that means one day is 50 hours. Okay, but there are 98 minutes left over... so 100 minutes per hour? Then if 208 seconds is 4.16 minutes, each minute must be 50 seconds. Vaughn watched the current date and time at the bottom of his status as it ticked the seconds by one by one for a bit and decided that one dream second was about one Earth second. Okay, that'd make each hour about 5000 seconds, compared to Earth's 3600 seconds, so maybe a bit under an hour and a half there. Wow, days here last forever, then. That's good for me, though, since that would mean I've got about six Earth days or so to find water!
Wait. Six days? Vaughn scanned through the rest of the information searching for why it was about twice what he was expecting, and quickly saw the line indicating about 60% of his needs were being met by mana, which, he had to admit, was pretty sweet. He definitely couldn't normally hold his breath for over 200 seconds or go the equivalent of about 80 Earth days without food, so it seemed to apply to just about everything. He wondered if it applied to sleep too; if so, then he'd only need to sleep once per dream-day. Still, six earth days wasn't too much, so he'd have to get to searching for water soon.
The rest of the statistics here was stuff Vaughn wasn't quite sure what to do with. He saw a lot of coefficients, but he didn't know how they were used. Well, he knew the mana regeneration coefficient probably affected mana regeneration, but he didn't know how, nor was mana regeneration particularly useful at the time. The one thing he did take note of was that the survival needs being met by mana was indented under the environmental mana density, so as the environmental mana density changed, he expected that this percentage may as well.
Lastly, he was particularly grateful for and confused by the ability to understand languages. Where did that come from? His status indicated a few things were different from before his dream started, but each one of them at least had a partial explanation. "The framework granted this" or "this was a side effect from healing" or whatever. But not for this. Not only was this unexplained, it was also of a drastically different scale than anything else. 10 mana? That did basically nothing for him and seemed like a pretty small number. Slightly increased resilience? Maybe he'd notice it eventually. But being able to instantly understand any language? If that one was real, it'd be a life-changing ability. If his dream really did place him in another world, though, there was no way they independently created English, so he'd be completely and totally lost without this ability, even if he did find his way out of the cave and into civilization.
Status fully explored, Vaughn took stock of what he had on him. First and foremost, his phone. Its battery usually lasted about 6 or 7 hours of usage, or if he left it alone, it'd die on its own after an Earth day or so; its battery wasn't in the best condition. He pulled the phone out, turned it on, and looked at it. He had it bring it much closer to his face than he normally would so that its light wouldn't get swallowed up by what he was assuming was the ambient Darkness mana. The screen had shattered during the fall, but thankfully, he could still make out his home screen. It'd had full battery when he began the tour of the caverns, but searching for networks while he'd been unconscious or napping had taken its toll; it was at 62% battery. Vaughn went ahead and turned it all the way off to preserve battery until he needed it.
Next came his headlamp. He honestly had no idea how long it was supposed to last, but he figured that, even in the worst case, the tour guides would probably have picked headlamps that they have to recharge nightly, but a day seemed like a really short lifespan for any sort of flashlight. His tour had been in the morning, so he was guessing he'd at least have another eight Earth hours of light or so, but possibly quite a bit more than that. Ugh, depending on how long I'm gonna stay in this dream, I may need to adjust my thinking to dream time units.
Finally, he'd brought a water bottle with him on his tour, but he'd just been carrying it in one of his hands, and when he awoke earlier, it wasn't on him. Vaughn gave a deep sigh, got up from his position laying down on the ground, turned on his headlamp, got on his hands and knees, and began searching the area around himself for the bottle. He started going in circles around his starting position, increasing the radius with each rotation. In his search, he encountered quite a few loose rocks, and he was struck with the idea to use them to mark where he'd already searched. He only had about two or three feet of vision before the light from the headlamp was swallowed into the darkness, so it was hard to just tell. So as he crawled in his counterclockwise circles, he moved the rocks in his path and the rocks to his left to his right, forming a boundary between where he'd searched and where he still had to go.
After a couple minutes of painstaking crawling, he encountered a side of the cave, perhaps about 10 feet from where he started. A few minutes more, and he encountered another side, which was roughly on the other side of where he started from the first side. Vaughn stopped with his circles and instead just started going wall to wall in one direction, leaving the other direction for later. The floor wasn't sloped much one way or another, and it was uneven enough that even if it was sloped, if his bottle had started rolling, it'd have gotten stuck in a little rut or something. So he just picked a direction and went with it.
As he was searching, he noticed something was off about the cave: there weren't any stalagmites or columns barring his way. That seemed like a somewhat bad sign; if there was water in the cave or had been in the past, surely it would have formed stalactites and stalagmites as it passed through the ceiling and dripped to the floor. Vaughn just sighed again and decided as soon as he found his water bottle, he'd try to get away from this section of the cave without exploring all of its branches.
His search continued for a few more minutes until he noticed that the floor had started to slope upwards at an increasingly steep angle. It got to a point that Vaughn was pretty sure this was the direction from which he'd fallen, and his water bottle had likely bounced past him the other direction. Vaughn abandoned his search in that direction, grabbed up the rocks he'd been moving to form his boundary, and crawled back in the direction he came until he encountered his other rock boundary. From there, he continued his careful search in the other direction. By that point, his hands and knees were getting pretty scraped up, but Vaughn needed that water bottle; it could give him at least another day of life, if not more.
Undeterred by his light injuries, Vaughn continued on in his search. He'd gotten about four or five feet from where he stopped his search in this direction earlier when he saw it. His beautiful, blue-painted metal water bottle. He swiftly reached out and grabbed it, pleased to find that it hadn't broken open in the fall and still felt pretty full. Vaughn would often drink a fair amount of water throughout the day, so he'd gone and splurged for one of those 32oz water bottle a while back. Never before had he been so grateful that he carried around so much water than he was now.
I've still probably got a bit over three cups of water left. I don't know how long I can stretch that, but that's gotta be at least an extra day for me. Still, I don't have a huge margin for error, so I need to get searching for another source of water.
Vaughn stood up off the ground, brushed the stone particles out of his palms and knees, and walked over to the wall. He turned his headlamp off; it might give him two or three feet of visibility, but that wasn't not enough to see what was at his feet, and the wall was hardly interesting. He put his water bottle in his right hand and held his hand against the wall to his right. Then he held his left hand out in front of his face so he didn't slam it into anything and began slowly walking along. He was more than five years old, so he'd long since learned that the trick to solving any maze was just to stick to a wall and go until you reach the end, and that was his exact plan here.
Hours later, Vaughn had lost track of how long he'd been following the wall to his right, when he noticed something... off. It took him a second to realize what it was, but when he did, he felt a sudden spark of hope. Wind! That has to be coming from an entrance to the cave! If I can find my way out, I'd have a much better chance of being able to find water than if I'm stuck in a cave! He still hadn't found any normal cave structures, but that didn't matter in the face of finding a way out.
Vaughn licked a finger and held it up to the air for a second so he could tell where it was coming from, but that didn't seem to work too well. After a bit of turning and adjusting his pose, though, he eventually concluded that it was coming from the direction perpendicular to the wall he was following. Vaughn was reluctant to abandon his "stick to the wall" strategy, but he figured it this ended up not working out, he could just return to that strategy later. He took his hand off the wall, held both hands out in front of him, and began carefully walking in the direction that the wind was coming from.
As he was walking, Vaughn realized why his first time noticing the wind instead just registered as a feeling that something was off. The wind wasn't blowing his hair. He could feel it on his face, on his body, his arms, and his legs, and his hair should have been blowing. But it wasn't. Right as he was distracted thinking about what that meant and reconsidering searching for its origin, though, his foot slipped on a loose rock.
Vaughn fell forward onto the cold hard ground right where it was starting to sharply slope in the direction of the wind, and he started sliding and rolling downwards. He frantically tried to regain control of himself or find a handhold, but it didn't take long for his tumbling to be too fast to stop. The slope of the floor got steeper and steeper, until he started catching air. At that point, the air really was rushing past him, and this time his hair was whipping around as he fell.
He never left the ground for long, falling back just long enough to slam some unfortunate part of his body against the ground, injuring it and tossing him back into the air. After what felt like several very painful minutes later, Vaughn's bounces got smaller and smaller as the ground began evening out. Eventually, the floor returned flat surface, and Vaughn tumbled to a halt as his body crunched against the ground.
Not again, Vaughn thought, and the world faded from his mind as he passed out.