You have entered a dungeon: The Desecrator’s Tomb
Collect the seven soul fragments to gain access to the Desecrators chambers and escape
Fel Nacharis, more commonly known as the Desecrator was a greater lich who terrorized the lands of Aorus around the fifth century. The Desecrator rampaged across the eastern continent with its army of undead pillaging and destroying with little regard for life. Little is known as to who the Desecrator was or what its motivations were, and these mysteries remain as all who could have answered them were entombed with their creator by the Dawn Sentinel in the battle of Klain Auph.
You have entered the Annex
Chilly stared at the glowing blue screen floating in front of him with a deep rooted suspicion. He ducked, bobbed and weaved, but the glowing hologram remained stubbornly floating before him. Chilly poked the screen, and oddly, it overlaid above his arm in a mildly nauseating shift in perspective.
“I sense a disturbance in the force,” Chilly murmured sarcastically.
Chilly looked around, but didn’t manage to determine much new information.
It was dark. Very dark.
Annoyingly the hologram that was very clearly shining brilliantly before him didn’t illuminate the surroundings in the slightest.
The hologram faded away, only to be replaced by another one.
Congratulations! You have leveled up!
You are now Level 1
Will your status screen open to allocate your points.
Chilly shivered, realizing with a start that he was utterly naked. Suddenly feeling very vulnerable, Chilly felt around himself until he bumped his elbow into a craggy rock wall then slowly crouched down, both to preserve warmth and to give himself a modicum of security.
Based on the cool dusty stone, he was in a cave, or underground at the very least. Regardless, this wasn’t anyplace he was familiar with.
“I’ve...read about this before.” Chilly murmured, recalling some of the stories from back home. “Holographic status screens. And randomly appearing somewhere strange with no clue as to how I got here. This is some...RPG, I suppose. So, if I say stat-”
A blue box materialized before him.
You have not chosen a specialization!
Choose from one of the following paths to proceed:
Physical
Fire
Cold
Lightning
Chaos
“Specialization?” Chilly muttered, giving the pervasive darkness around himself a distrustful look before rubbing his goosebump ridden shoulder and selecting Fire. Chaos sounded hella cool, but he was cold. And it was really dark. Also wasn’t fire man’s best friend? Or was that dogs. He could never remember.
You have an open skill slot!
Choose from one of the following skills:
Fireball
Launches a ball of flame at 16 m/s that explodes upon collision or dissipates after 20m.
29-43 Fire damage
1m radius
1.2s cast time
Incinerate
Unleash a beam of fire that burns enemies that it touches. The beam dissipates after 5m.
Deals 30 Fire damage per second
Channeling
Firestorm
Summon a storm of ash and ember that burns everything in its area.
Deals 23 Fire damage per second
2.6m radius
3.5s cast time
6s duration
“Fireball? Ha! That’s epic.”Chilly grinned brightly, before his mood was tempered by the oppressive darkness. “Wouldn’t make a good light source though, would it. Or...maybe it would. If the flames persisted. Who am I kidding. It would probably explode and bring down this...cave on top of me.”
“Ahh, damn,” Chilly muttered quietly to himself. “I really hope that I will be able to change this decision later. Incinerate sounds cool and would probably work as a light decently well. Though Firestorm is definitely cooler. But it...if I am reading this correctly, will burn me. Yup, Nope. I veto friendly fire. Incinerate it is.”
His choice made, another larger status screen popped into existence.
Gregory “Chilly” Morhuil
Level: 1
Experience: 0/1
Unspent Skill Points: 1
Specialization: Fire
Life: 100/100
Armor
Fire
Cold
Lightning
Chaos
0
0
0
0
0
Incinerate <0>:
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Chilly pointed his palm forwards and willed his new skill to life. Immediately a beam of glowing orange and yellow flames erupted out of his hand, as a stiffness descended over all of his limbs. It was surprisingly intuitive.
The magical fire illuminated the room. A rather dull grey oblong stone cavern with rough walls. It extended forwards and eventually narrowed into a craggy tunnel that disappeared into the darkness.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
More of a cavelet really. It wasn’t large enough to merit the honor of cavern.
“Damn that’s cool!” Chilly declared, waving the beam of fire around the now illuminated stone cavelet.
As the beam passed over the ceiling of the cavern it passed through some nearly lifeless lichen that was clinging tenaciously to the ceiling. The lichen caught fire near instantly and dislodged from the ceiling falling directly towards Chilly.
Chilly widened his eyes comically as the fiery flora fell directly towards his face. He raised an arm and tried to move out of the way but his muscles didn’t respond properly and all he managed to do was sort of flop to the side, not moving nearly far enough to avoid the falling cinder.
The lichen landing onto his exposed stomach with a sizzle.
“Gah!” Chilly swiped away the offending plant and desperately grabbed at his junk. “Phew, safe!”
He stared suspiciously at the smoldering ceiling and crawled a little ways to the side. Then with a start of trepidation, he resummoned Incinerate. The cavern was still empty.
After a minute or two of waiting and watching, nothing seemed to have been attracted to the noise he made. Feeling more safe, Chilly brought up his character sheet and began hunting through the menu until he reached the description for Incinerate. More specifically the description for channeling.
Channeling
Skill tag
Skills have continuous effects but prevents movement while skill is active.
“Ahh,” Chilly muttered, “Also, why is there no mana? I guess skills are free?”
Chilly briefly searched for a mana bar or quantity but stopped when he noticed his health.
Life: 99/100
Chilly narrowed his eyes at his new health total and willed it to go up. It tacitly refused. Either health regeneration in this game world was like in the normal world, as in slow. Or it was some kind of hardcore game where there are limited ways to regenerate health.
“I really hope that...” Chilly trailed off as he spotted movement at the other end of the cavelet.
“Who's there?” Chilly called out fearfully, swinging the beam of Incinerate over the entrance.
Tippy taptap tippy taptap
The light illuminated the far tunnel and the creature that waddled out.
...
A penguin.
More specifically, a short blue penguin with a white underbelly. It held a tiny wooden sword with a cute little crossguard in its right flipper that swayed comically as the penguin waddled forwards. Most strangely, there was glowing blue letters floating above the penguins head.
The penguin continued waddling towards Chilly, who was sitting at the back corner of the cavelet in shock. The penguin paused a fair distance away and seemed to study Chilly with keen interest. Almost like a craftsman inspecting his wares for quality.
“Uhm,” distinctly uncomfortable, Chilly broke the strange penguins gaze, and studied the status window that popped up in the intervening space.
Flamebeard
Royal Penguin
Level: 11
Ephemeral
Flamebeard the royal penguin nodded his head, apparently satisfied and turned around, waddling back the way they came.
“Wait! Do you...” Chilly called after Flamebeard the royal penguin, stumbling to his feet but promptly tripped as Channeling prevented his body from moving properly. He caught himself and looked up at the penguin only to catch it aiming the toy sword directly at his throat.
Chilly went a little cross eyed staring at the wooden sword.
Realm Walker
Unique
One handed sword
iLevel: 30
Grants Astral Projection <1>
100% reduced level requirement
Mirrored
Created by Kalandra the Mirror Priestess, Realm Walker is perhaps the most common unique tier artifact among the seven realms. As one of the few singular pieces of equipment capable of transferring the consciousness of individuals across the Astral Membrane and into the Astral Sea between worlds, Realm Walker is prized by all institutions of learning for its capacity to acquire, share and distribute knowledge. Specifically because of this, Realm Walker has the dubious distinction of being the most commonly mirrored artifact across the seven realms.
Despite being of almost incomprehensible power, Realm Walker’s effects often cause a time delay between sending and receiving of information. A testament to the vast difficulty of traversing the Astral Sea.
By the time he had finished reading the description the penguin was gone.
Chilly shivered on the stone floor, holding the flame of Incinerate close, not entirely sure what he had just witnessed. Dark cave, penguins, and legendary swords that looked like a childrens toy. Not to mention the status screen that just screamed RPG world. It was just a little bit much.
Chilly slapped his cheeks twice.
“None of that. So many questions, which we’re not gonna get answers to. At least not immediately. Let’s just assume we’ve been isekai’d. It doesn’t look like a happy and friendly isekai either. Let’s get up, go down that tunnel, and see if we can’t find ourselves a pair of pants to wear. Yeah! I like this plan. Go...me.”
Despite the forced enthusiasm, it took a good couple of minutes for Chilly the muster up the courage to go down the tunnel. The trip was...frustrating but manageable. Incinerate forced him to stop for light, and moving in the dark risked a chance encounter with a lego-wannabe. This meant that the journey to the far side of the cavelet was filled with stops and starts.
Chilly entered the tunnel cautiously. The tunnel was bare rock, more a fissure in the wall than a proper pathway, and curved slightly.
After a couple hesitant steps, he stopped, spotting a figure cast in shadows standing in the center of the tunnel up ahead.
Skeleton Warrior
Level: 1
Chilly gulped quietly. The faint light cast by Incinerate made it difficult to see, but the figure before him was indeed a standing skeleton. Stick thin arms and legs. Perfectly still, but wearing just enough armor to give it the silhouette of a living person in the very dark environment.
Luckily, it was facing the other way.
“Well, nothing for it,” Chilly grinned savagely, then trained the column of fire on the unsuspecting skeleton.
Light bloomed around the rusted sabaton of the undead and rushed up through its helmet giving it a hellish appearance. The now visible bones immediately began to char and blacken, hairline fractures developing all across their surface despite no physical force being applied.
Then the skeleton moved.
In one smooth - almost mechanical - motion the skeleton swiveled its upper body around its hips with a nasty grinding sound and sprinted towards Chilly. A manic rictus froze onto Chilly’s face as he trained Incinerate on the charging skeleton. The bones continued to char as the skeleton smashed against the bend in the tunnel and ricocheted off the side, gaining even more ground.
Now barely a couple of meters away, Chilly’s nerve broke and he cancelled Incinerate to rush back to the spawn chamber using the rapidly fading light of the burning skeleton to see.
Chilly bounced off the craggy stone wall-
-and stumbled, barely catching himself. Behind him he heard the enraged skeleton crash once more into the stone, its armor no doubt helping tremendously in that regard.
Barely a second later, the tunnel descended into darkness and Chilly forced himself in a panic to turn around and unleash Incinerate.
Light bloomed. The skeleton was way too close. It raised its sword - Oh yeah, it had a sword - and swung madly, sparks flying as the blade scraped against the walls of the narrow tunnel.
Chilly yelped, canceling Incinerate and falling back onto his ass-
-staring transfixed as the blade swished barely an inch above his head. Chilly screamed in fear and desperation as he summoned Incinerate once more on the horrifying undead.
The skeleton’s blade smashed into the wall causing a chip of stone to fly off into the darkness. It recovered from its wild slash, and straightened. Its bones were completely soot stained by now. Charred to the point that it glistened darkly under the harsh flame of Incinerate. The hairline fractures had grown. Becoming full-on cracks that glowed with an inner heat.
A brief moment of timelessness passed as the skeleton stood with its sword raised, the flames passing over and through it.
Then the moment was over and the blade descended.
Chlily yelped again, canceling Incinerate, and rolling to the side. His back scraped painfully against the rough stone floor.
Sparks flew as the blade slammed releasing a pure tone of sound as it bounced off the chipped stone.
Chilly completed his roll awkwardly, now wedged against the side of the narrow tunnel, and brought to bear his hand, Incinerate blooming to life around the skeleton.
The flames caressed the skeleton almost lovingly as it turned once more to face Chilly.
Suddenly, the glowing cracks spread quickly across the skeleton’s bones. With a grinding pop, the bones fell to ash. The tattered and rusty body armor, helmet and sword clattered noisily to the ground, settling around the small pile of black ash that was rapidly dispersing in the non-existent wind.
You have slain a Level 1 Skeleton Warrior (Sword)!
You receive 1 experience
Congratulations! You have leveled up!
You are now Level 2
Will your status screen open to allocate your points.
Chilly whimpered softly, as he hyperventilated in the corner.
clapclapclapclapclap!
Chilly snapped his gaze to the side. The penguin stood there, clapping its flippers happily. It made a honking, trilling, chirp, that somehow conveyed amusement. Then it turned and rushed back down the tunnel before Chilly could form a cohesive thought.
Chilly blinked twice, then leaned his head back on the rough stone wall. The stone was cold against his bare skin. He placed his hand onto his heart. It felt like it was beating a mile a minute.
“Stupid penguin. Stupid world. Stupid skeleton. It’s fast,” Chilly panted. “It’s not supposed to be fast.”
Gregory “Chilly” Morhuil
Level: 2
Experience: 0/2
Unspent Skill Points: 2
Specialization: Fire
Life: 96/116
Armor
Fire
Cold
Lightning
Chaos
0
0
0
0
0
Incinerate <0>:
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