Inside the pit of spikes that reaches half of an average human’s heights, there was no sound to be heard beside the breathing of the lonely human. After sitting on the floor with his eyes closed for an hour and a half, his HP and MP were fully recovered. Litz breathes in for the last time before he got up.
He looked around to see nothing but darkness.
“Vibration sense.” He activated his equip skill allowing to see his surrounding with his mind’s eye. He got the layout of his surrounding once again, and could grasped how deep was this pit with a clearer mind. The wall around it was mostly compact rocks and dirt as he could feel the unevenness with his hands.
He placed his finger tips of his right hand next to the wall and felt the cold moist from it.
“Thorn nails.” He said as two inches of purple thorns quickly popped out from each of his fingertips and palms. He could feel that it was possible to embed the wall. The next step was to test was to see that if it was possible that these thorns could hold his weight.
Bending his knees ever so slightly, he jumped a couple inches higher from the ground as his left and right hands reach out as high as possible embedding his thorn into the wall. He was able to hang on the wall without the thorn breaking off, but due to the strain on his arms from holding just from his palms, he had to let go.
Litz sat down to think about what to do next and to find the reason to keep pushing on. His thorn was still on his palms and was not sure of the time duration of it before it disappeared. When he does get out, he had to face it, the monster in the dark. He remembered its red eyes as it nearly killed him. Honestly, he could stay here, but dying without anybody knowing where he was frightening him. “I need to get out of here and found out what is happening… There have to be others who are in the same predicament as me.” He felt pain unlike before in the game like it was all real. Furthermore, he was alone by himself in an unfamiliar territory was beginning to be put stress on him. He noticed that he would talk to himself just to hear something. Even the hunger was slowly settling in.
“Calm down.” He told himself. “This is not the time to think about it.” Litz got back up after resting a bit.
He activated his skill once again, but this time he concentrated on his feet as purple thorns grew out of his bare feet. Litz climbed the wall slowly as his muscle were beginning to feel the fatigue. If he had his original stats, this wall wouldn’t be such a problem. After five minutes of climbing, he reached the top. He slowly crawled out while panting hard to get as much air in. Litz’s thorn was wearing off by the time he reached the top until it fell on the ground.
The aches and tiredness feeling of his body were ensuring that this was more than a game. Although he had to the ability to recover with his life breathing technique, he notices before that it did not recover fatigue completely, but mostly the wounds on his body were healed. Since he was back on top to the tunnel, he did not have time to sit down and rest. He was afraid that the monster would turn back here.
“I can’t use my skill carelessly anymore. If it sneaks up on me I don’t think I would be lucky this time.” Litz’s body was producing sweat from every corner from the physical effort he had just gone through, but he continued to advance slowly through the darkness as he listens carefully for any strange movement. His MP was down to 79 as each time he activated ‘thorn nails’, it would cost 7 each for 2 minutes. He could not recklessly use vibration sense unless he was sure that something was ahead. He needed to have enough to activate his thorn nails if he was to engage in something. He walked carefully to avoid any trap as he placed his right hand against the wall.
He had lost his way, and there was no way of heading back to the tomb, and therefore, he walked aimlessly in the shroud of darkness. The more he wanders alone in the dark, the stronger the fear welled up inside of him. The things stopping him from giving up was that monster with the red eyes would catch up to him, and the fear of dying alone in the dungeon.
Litz pressed forward as he occasionally activates his vibration sense to get the bearing of his location throughout the tunnels.
Up ahead, he heard something breathing hard as it was struggling for air.
“Vibration sense.” He whispered. Soon after, it created a blurry image in his mind’s eye of a deer-like creature lying on the ground like it was fatally wounded. Litz did not want to advance further if in any case, it could still move. He patiently waited while paying attention to his surrounding and using life breathing near the fork tunnel that shaped like a Y. He sat at the center of it just in case he had to get away for any reason. The reason he wanted to wait because there was a chance to eat something, even if it a monster. Even more, if he let this chance get away, he would die from hunger.
Seconds became minutes, minutes became an hour, until Litz heard it breathe its last breath. While still sitting legged-cross, he used his vibration sense to be sure that there wasn’t a single twitch of movement.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
He went close enough with careful pacing. Litz wanted to vomit as the stench of blood was greatly emitting from it. He felt his stomach dropped with disgust after smelling blood on it.
Litz reached out to touch it know more about it in greater detail. What he felt was the wetness of the cold blood covering the slightly warm corpse. He felt some of its flesh worn torn and bitten. The darkness was too great that he can’t tell what does it look like, but he could make the outline of it. It had a similar body structure that of a deer.
“Am I really going to eat this…,” He second guessed himself. He had been here for hours, and this was the only thing to come close to edible. “I have too. I can’t die here, thorn nails!” Without a thought of it anymore, Litz used his thorn to carefully cut a small flesh and place it in his mouth. It was slimy and warm with a gross taste that makes him want to spit it out but he forces himself to continue. He tried chewing it, but it was hard to tear so instead he swallow it quickly.
[5 experience gained]
Litz saw the message appeared and was astounded by the unexpected development of it. In that moment, he pushed himself to eat more. The bigger the size of the meat, the more experience he would get.
[5 experience gained]
[7 experience gained]
…
Since the life force of the creatures had been mostly depleted, the experience he gained from eating such a high-level monster was less than 10% of what he would have if it ate it before it stopped breathing, but Litz had no way of knowing this yet. Nonetheless, as a level 1, the experience he received was plenty for him.
Litz’s mouth was covered in blood like a zombie after a meal. He stopped after he was full and no more experience were given to him. There was still a large portion left, but he decided to leave the rest of it here.
“Open Character Stats!”
-----------------------
Name : Litz
Level : 3
Status
Class: False Immortal
HP: 100 MP: 100
STR: 1 INT: 1
DEX: 1 LUK: 10
+6 stats point
Attributes
Body of Life essence (Lvl. MAX)
- Inability to gain experience from killing. Gained the ability to absorb life essence from living organism to grow
Skill
Life breathing (Lvl. 1)
- Slowly recover HP and MP.
Equip skill (Cloak of Sha’ir)
D - Vibration sense (MAX)
- Able to detect the surrounding beneath your feet up to 70 meters.
D - Thorn nails (Lvl. 3)
- Able to grow thorns on some parts of the body.
o Can grow on more area of the body
o Poison tip
-----------------------
“I gained 2 levels… so each level for I gained 3 stat points. Not bad since normally I usually get 2 with my previous class.” he was elated that he could gain one more stat points than normal standard.
“Not sure what is viable to place my stats on. I should increase my MP so I don’t have to worry much about using my skills, and dex for speed just in case I need to run away.” He tapped a few time on the screen until all his stat points were spent.
“Done. That should be good enough for now.” His MP went from 100 to 115, and his DEX went from 1 to 4.
-----------------------
Name : Litz
Level : 3
Status
Class: False Immortal
HP: 100 MP: 115
STR: 1 INT: 1
DEX: 4 LUK: 10
Attributes
Body of Life essence (Lvl. MAX)
- Inability to gain experience from killing. Gained the ability to absorb life essence from living organism to grow
Skill
Life breathing (Lvl. 1)
- Slowly recover HP and MP.
Equip skill (Cloak of Sha’ir)
D - Vibration sense (MAX)
- Able to detect the surrounding beneath your feet up to 70 meters.
D - Thorn nails (Lvl. 3)
- Able to grow thorns on some parts of the body.
o Can grow on more area of the body
o Poison tip
-----------------------