A WAY OUT
After stumbling across a bag of indiscernible wealth, Pain discovered a method of escaping the ruins…
The most valuable and purest forms of magic came in puries. It is the currency valued by all and defines a country's wealth. An ounce of a single diamond puri was the most valuable coin, equaling one hundred million puries. After diamonds came platinum at one million puries. Gold, which sat in front of me, was worth ten thousand puries per coin. Next came silver at one hundred puries and then copper at one puri. Each form also came in ten-ounce tabs which were square-shaped and dense.
Puries were similar to the ruby puri crystal clusters that lined this arachnid's den and this Obsidian Puri Gem +1 I held. But despite pure copper being valued as one puri, it and other traded puries—diamond, plats, gold, silver, and copper—were the only mana-infused metal that could boost all types of magic. They were also simple to transmute and aid all sorts of crafting. On the other hand, this Obsidian Gem +1, from what I have witnessed, probably aided necromancy-type magic and other types of dark magical crafting.
I lack knowledge of how artisans infused this into armor, but when they did, it lost all of its pure mana properties as the mana became that of the infuser. It was incredibly rare—until now, I never thought it was possible—to control pure mana without contaminating it.
Besides the bag of newfound wealth was a tree root-like (Ice Aptitude) Oak Staff, Petty En Ice Casting, and a Spell Book: Ice. I gathered the items and had my Skeleton Warrior hold on to the four (????) Rings for I dared risk accidentally touching them. I assumed it was safe for him, but I decided against having him wear it. I had no idea what it would do to him or if it would affect me.
On my way out of the Arachnid's Lair, I passed up the baby arachnid that I... hmm? Summon Undead Ritual was possible? I carefully laid my items on the ground and took some time to use Summon Undead Ritual. It drained a large portion of my mana to restore this baby arachnid to a lively state. I was able to refuse the mana drain, but I allowed it to bring the arachnid back completely. Once I was done, I noticed she did not look undead at all. The many images of the undead I saw growing up possibly misled me.
With my newfound familiar at my tail, we headed back to my room. I found neat areas for my newly acquired items, sat comfortably, and unsealed the spell book. I yearned for an ice spell so that I would be able to preserve my fish. Without knowing what was happening upstream, the bounty of fish could suddenly cease. I watched calmly as the book floated before me, and I smiled softly—but it suddenly shattered like glass.
PAIN
What?
The book then slowly crumbled and faded into nothing.
PAIN
Did I fail? How did I fail to learn Ice? Damn it!
I groaned in frustration, pounded the ground, and then slightly injured myself, punching the wall. I took a deep breath and took control of my anger—I have been through worse and endured far worse... so there was no need to throw a childish fit over a failed spell book. I lay down and breathed into my hands.
PAIN
I am such an idiot.
I eyed the wooden staff.
PAIN
You may be less useful.
The following day, I decided it was time for me to find a way out of here. Not that I wanted to leave forever rather, I wanted the freedom to come and go whenever I chose. As I got up to eat, I noticed Petty Interference was attempting to activate, and so I activated the skill and noticed a few signals in the form of noises and emotions emitting into my mind from my arachnid. I ordered it into my room and tried deciphering the signals it was trying to convey. I was unable to pour mana into it, and as I stared at it closely, it looked smaller?
PAIN
Hmm, do you need to eat too?
I tossed a fish in front of it and ordered it to consume it. It devoured it whole with the use of some acid—it grew a tad bit, and the signals softened. I allowed it to eat more fish until the signals it was sending me vanished.
Having both an undead familiar and a skeleton familiar, I noticed hidden knowledge. The first thing I recalled was the difference in pace between my Kinan Skeletons and my Undead Arachnid. I was able to order my Arachnid into my room, into the lair, and other places with ease, but the Skeleton Warrior was horrible at following orders as such, and I assumed it may be the lack of actual eyes...
Along with my arachnid's promptness, she telepathically communicated sounds, emotions, and hazy visuals so that I could see what it saw, and I translated them with Petty Interference. Anyone would go insane from the sheer volume of signals she was emitting all the time, but... Recall Memory was truly an incredible skill.
As for my Skeletons, I could only deduce that they could see through a form of mana sense. Since they were covered in my mana, I assumed they were using it to better understand my orders. With some experimenting, I was able to have my skeletons follow my arachnid familiar around with ease and haste. The reason they could pinpoint my arachnid so easily was something I did not know other than my assumption of mana sense.
I returned to the Arachnid Lair and sought a way out but was constantly distracted by the arachnid stench, ruby mana crystals, and blightshrooms. I could not help but stare and inspect the crystals and blightshrooms obsessively. These blightshrooms were massive compared to those I saw in Lao's labs. They might have been useful if I had alchemical knowledge.
The smell of the dead queen annoyed me, and I ordered my arachnid familiar down into the Arachnid Lair to feast upon it. Its first bite into it alone—
Aptitude Increase:
Summon: Undead Cave Arachnid Ritual (5%)
Summon: Undead White Arachnid Ritual (10%)
Summon: Undead Forest Arachnid Ritual (10%)
Summon: Undead Black Arachnid Ritual (15%)
Summon: Undead Arachnida (40%)
I massaged my temple as the aptitude continued. More hidden knowledge, quickly understood though—the undead gave me more rituals by eating its kin while skeletons granted me rituals by performing the correct tasks. I could only guess this queen was an abomination mixture of its race—no... hmm... racial cousins, I believed was the term.
Hmm, whatever—
PAIN
Holy gods!
I stepped back as I turned back on my arachnid familiar—it became massive. Half the size of the arachnid queen and resembled it completely. I had it stop eating—too late, for it would not be able to fit back through the tunnel. I sighed and continued to search the Arachnid Lair for a way out.
Aptitude Increase:
Summon: Undead Cave Arachnid Ritual (55%)
Summon: Undead White Arachnid Ritual (60%)
Summon: Undead Forest Arachnid Ritual (60%)
Summon: Undead Black Arachnid Ritual (65%)
Summon: Undead Arachni Ritual (84%)
After searching the Arachnid Lair and finding no hint of a way out, I worried I might have to get through the debris at the Tower. My body tensed up at the fear of getting buried in the rubble. How long would I be trapped? Centuries? Or however long it took for my body to learn a functional passive to break free...
As I was about to give up, I noticed the unnatural dip into the soil and rocks in front of the arachnid queen's half-eaten corpse.
PAIN
Oh!
An epiphany hit me out of the blue—the queen's acid! I searched for a place to dig out and eyed the hidden room.
I ordered my arachnid familiar to force its way into the room—it raised its deadly limbs and charged through, crashing through the entrance—through metal and stone—completely spacing out the room. I hurried in after it, amazed by its power and strength at its current stage—if the queen had been this fast and powerful, I might not have been so victorious.
Behind the chest, I ordered it to spew acid and exhaled a sigh of relief as the gravel and rocks began to erode away. My arachnid began digging into the softened gravel before repeating the cycle of acid gagging and digging. This would be a slow and daunting task, but I left it to my familiar to dig me a way out of here while I went back to clean out the cave walls and ground, gathering pounds of silk and kinan bones.
For the next day and a half, I focused on separating and cutting the arachnid silk into usable rope. It was an annoying task—most of the silk had dried together, causing large lumps and knots. If I could get some rope, my next challenge would be turning those ropes into a better fishnet.
The next day I decided to move around and practice controlling Fire. Mana control and manipulation were becoming simple, but the heat was still unbearable. I was able to strengthen my Fire Blades and create a crude replica of a sword—a Fire Sword. The shape of my fire represented a sword, but upon swinging the crude creation, the fire would whip around like a rope. I could not solidify the sword any further because the heat became agonizing, and my mana drained too quickly.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Passive Acquired:
Petty En Fire Casting
One night after a training session, I obtained Petty En Fire Casting—quite nice to obtain an ability while still awake. Out into the chamber, I saw the slight difference the passive granted me regarding my casting speed. I shrugged at the growth, it was small, but I was still grateful for any amount of power.
I continued to practice mana control and manipulation the following days. I would also inspect my arachnid's progress and feed it fish, allowing it to keep its size and acidic prowess. It was digging at a decent pace, and as long as there was a way out, I did not mind the wait.
After a mana control and manipulation training session, I returned to my room, wondering how enchantments with mana crystals functioned as I fixed my gaze on the staff. I eyed the black Obsidian Gem +1 sitting next to my books. Other than having an Enchanter pour their magic into an item, I had no other idea. Hmph, I decided to give the staff a try.
Back in the Fire Kingdom, Dean refused to teach us about mediums, telling us he was forbidden to. However, during my servitude to Lao and his botanists, he informed me a little about mediums. He did so as a gift for my promptness and obedience... and that he had always seen me staring at his wand. According to Lao, anything could be used as a medium, but depending on the item, it could either increase my mana output or hinder it. It might also distort my magic or aim if the medium was poorly constructed.
The (Ice Aptitude) Oak Staff, Petty En Ice Casting increased my mana stabilization by making it simple to channel mana. By pointing the tip of the staff into my other hand, I could concentrate a sizable Fireball. The time it took before I began to lose control had doubled, but the fireball's size tripled—but I do not learn, do I?
Losing control, the massive ball of fire blasted off and ripped into the ground before being redirected up, smashing into the wall just above the door leading to the library.
PAIN
Oh no.
The walls crumbled apart; stalagmites fell from the ceiling—
PAIN
No!
—and barricaded the passage to the library.
PAIN
Dammit!
I clenched my jaws, angry at my stupidity. I sighed and ordered my skeletons immediately to begin chipping away at the debris. Calming down, I decided to wait a few hours before ordering my arachnid to dig out from within the library. As it was right now, my arachnid could not fit through the tunnel that led into the library yet.
Aptitude Increase:
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Defender (10%)
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Slasher (10%)
Summon: Skeleton KinanShielder (10%)
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Brawler (5%)
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Miner (3%)
Interesting. If I could receive aptitude like this, it may lift some of the burdens of gaining power. I would rather not wait dozens of years to have the slightest clue how to bring Locness back. I wanted her back now. I wanted to see her smile and hear her giggle.
I heated away the tears in my eyes and pushed the thought out of my head. As I strolled back into my room, my mind wandered somewhere else—the fellow kinans that have been part of my life. Rude... selfish... mean... uncaring—Dean popped into my head, followed by Lao and the few others who have shown kindness towards me. Hmph, Dean? I questioned if my hatred of him was hereditary since children often blame those who raised them.
The next day, I trained with the staff to increase my accuracy. As a suitable medium for casting, the entire staff became part of my mana zone, and whoever enchanted this item had made the top of the staff condensed in mana, allowing mana flow to converge to the top.
The staff also tripled the range of my flames, and with the usage of mana manipulation, I created cones of fire that blanketed the ground before me. Without losing control, my greatest fireballs created spiraling domes of flames on location upon impact—I named it Lesser Sun, for it was a controlled alternative that would not disturb the ceiling.
The downside was the amount of time and concentration it took to gather the mana—an increase in casting time.
So the two important things about the staff's power as a medium were mana control—which allowed me to create excellent forms of fire at the expense of speed. And mana storage—which enabled me to store a quarter of my mana in the staff for later quick use.
Aptitude Increase:
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Slasher (60%)
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Defender (60%)
Summon: Skeleton Kinan Brawler (55%)
Petty Mana Regeneration (90%)
My skeletons finally cleared that path with the help of acid from my trapped arachnid. But as I rushed in, with fish in my hand, my arachnid collapsed and began to decay moments after I reached it.
Active Acquired:
Summon: Undead Arachnid Ritual
Hmm? I was baffled at why I was granted a new spell upon its death, and I had a clue, but I required it to be tested. With the lack of usable corpses that littered the ruins, I used Summon Undead Ritual upon the fish I had in my hand. Immediately afterward, I desummoned it, and its body decayed into a brown and black boil of flesh before vaporizing into magical energy.
Active Acquired:
Summon Undead Saltatrix Ritual
Fascinating!... using Summon Undead Ritual will grant me a spell pertaining to the corpse I had raised—but... they were all rituals. The knowledge given to me by the new spells revealed that no matter the undead ritual type, I required fresh corpses as the offering. So... there may not be a non-ritual Summon Undead Ritual similar to Summon Skeleton Kinan.
Not only did I need corpses to perform Summon Undead Arachnid Ritual, but the corpses also had to be of proportionate size. I sighed and went back to my room and outside the River Door. I caught as much as I could before killing them all. I gathered the dead fish into a tiny pile before me, unsure if they would work.
PAIN
What a waste...
I raised my hand and summoned Undead Arachnid Ritual—the pile of fish exploded, covering my room in blood and fish innards. I shielded my face from the explosion, peaking at the bloody abomination of an arachnid that stood lively before me. It resembled an arachnid, no doubt; covered in blood, its carapace deranged and broken, eight sturdy limbs ending in hairy stubs, and eight bloody beady eyes scattered upon its head.
Some finesse may be required when summoning an undead creature utterly different from the corpses used. The summoned arachnid had also used the surplus number of corpses to gain stages; the growth my undead familiars experienced when consuming meat.
Attempting to know how many distinctive stages my arachnid had, I caught nets full of fish that seemed to flop away from me as if to know they were merely test subjects for my experiments.
I hauled two nets full of fish into the library, down the tunnel, and into the Arachnid Lair. Once inside the Arachnid Lair, the testing began. My arachnid familiar began to consume the fish in a gruesome and sloppy manner. The first few fish alone reduced its bleeding to a complete halt—its carapace began to even out and cover over the bulging innards that stuck out. I noted the freshness of the food it ate made a noticeable impact. But despite the positive impact, my arachnid familiar did not grow as rapidly as before when it feasted on its motherly kin.
After devouring both piles of fish, my arachnid doubled in size but was still smaller than before. I eyed the queen's half-eaten corpse and allowed my new familiar to finish it.
Active Acquired:
Summon: Undead Cave Arachnid Ritual
Summon: Undead White Arachnid Ritual
Summon: Undead Forest Arachnid Ritual
Summon: Undead Black Arachnid Ritual
Summon: Undead Arachni Ritual
After finishing its meal, I noted three distinctive stages—bloody and deranged, decay-looking, and fully grown and lively-looking. Alternatively, I decided to call them the first, second, and third stages.
My arachnid and I approached the hidden room, now visible due to the gaping hole that replaced the upright coffin. My arachnid was now the same size as the queen before it; but resembled an overgrown tarantula spider with its round limbs, poisonous fangs, and foot-long hair that stuck out its limbs.
I had it shuffled through the not-so-hidden room, further expanding the hole's size, and began spewing acid in a thick stream. It had no sharp limbs to dig, and its acid was lackluster compared to the ritual before it.
The tunnel we dug became steep as the metallic ramp enclosing the gears beneath it became visible. Then, a sudden rumble shook the tunnels, and just as I leaped back, dirt and debris came crashing down upon my arachnid.
My arachnid stood, lifting away the debris, showing no signs of injury. But strong signals of pain rang in my head as the sun's light ran across my arachnid's head.
I ordered it back down into the shadows of the lair, clearing dirt and debris along the way. I moved carefully along the tunnel as I got closer. I ignored the acid stings on my palm as I dragged myself out of the tunnel and toward the exit.
As I anxiously ascended, my heart was racing. The grass tickled under my palms as I caught hold of the tunnel's lip. I strutted triumphantly outside and stood against the chilly air, caressing my skin. After smelling my stench, fish, and river water for days, the smell of fresh air was comforting.
I saw that I was looking ahead west from atop a gradual hill that continued on in a series of rolling hills that led to a dense forest.
North, to the right of the forest, I studied the vast plains riddled with mounds of dirt centered in patches of dead foliage. Birds flew above, fiends and animals alike. I heard a snarl at my feet and glanced down at a rabbid poking its head out from within its mound.
PAIN
Did I disturb your home as I sought a way out of mine?
Rabbids were fiends resembling rabbits. Smaller, with sharp claws and fangs, were the only visual difference between the two. But like all fiends, rabbids were able to use skills and magic.
I looked out into the plains and took notice of the vast patches of dead grass—rabbids were rabid eaters, hence their name. They were considered frantic and unpredictable, but the books I read claimed they would only attack larger predators when provoked or hungry.
But life was circular among the plains as I made out wolves lying in wait for a rabbid to poke its head out of its mound just to have its meal snatched away by a speeding hawk. I blinked to my left and mistook a vast herd of giafullos grassing in a standstill to be an overgrown patch of bushes. Sudden shadows flew over in the far distance—a trio of griffins?
The feeling that someone was watching washed over me. My tranquility vanished, and my body tightened. But as quickly as it came, the feeling left.
Could they see me from such a distance? The griffins suddenly turned and headed north towards the range of mountains that reached into the clouds.
I let out a sigh of relief and peered toward the far north—there was a road leading south towards me before turning left into the thicket. The road was coming from a speck of a village just before the foot of a hill behind it. Looking along the ravine I fell into, I could not see the waterfall but could hear it. Nothing about the look of the ravine explained the surplus of fish that populated the river.
I looked west once again, but I saw the collapsed tower to my left. Distracted, I studied the tower from afar and carefully approached it. It was an old limestone watchtower sticking haphazardly out of the ground. It leaned dangerously far to the left, and I could not stop picturing it falling at any moment.
The sun dimmed, and the first details of the moon began to appear. I hastily made my way slightly east of my tunnel entrance, my eyes studying the thin woods that ran along the hillside and continued south.
If I positioned myself upon a hilltop east of the Collapsed Tower, the plains south of me continued to slope downward into the dense parts of the woods. Afterward, the forest dipped out of view, and in the extreme distance was nothing but a rising wall of blue. As I turned to return to my lair, a sudden chill ran down my spine. I turned south once more with a feeling of foreboding danger coming from the obscured dip in the land.