Aurelia stared at the two daggers held firmly in her hands. The flame dagger in her left hand and the ice dagger in her right. She still sat hidden among bushes and rocks, but knew that she would eventually need to leave and find the bears. Her original plan, before finding out she couldn’t use magic against the gold bear, had been to kill all of the bears before moving on to the next part of the dungeon. Unfortunately for her, her skill set wasn’t the most efficient in killing a monster that was an antithesis to magic.
At the moment, Aurelia had an overwhelming feeling of wanting to just be done with this dungeon, and be able to rest in peace again. If she had been in a group, it might be different. Other people would have different classes, and with a variety of skills, such situations like the one she was in wouldn’t be as much of a problem. She only had the one magic class, and didn’t have the experience to level up and get a skill that might help better in her current situation. Aurelia paused and glanced at her stat sheet. She focused on the line about experience and she realized that if she were to take out the three remaining white bears, she might have just enough to gain a new level. That new level would allow her to choose a new skill, perhaps just what she needed to kill the golden bear, even without her magical skills.
Not having another bright idea, Aurelia decided that she should just go for it. Before she did, though, Aurelia pulled out one item she had not yet used. She reached into her storage and grabbed the Earth Manipulation skill book. Aurelia had held off before in using the book, but felt that she needed all the help she could get now.
She placed the large book in her lap and examined the cover. It looked old, with a dark brown leather cover and golden lettering. The letters were not English, but somehow Aurelia could get a vague understanding of what the words meant. Something about earth, which Aurelia could have guessed anyways from the description of the item. Aurelia opened up to the first page and was surprised when a prompt opened up in her vision.
Would you like to learn [Earth Manipulation]?
Item [Earth Manipulation] skill book: rare will be consumed upon action.
Warning:
User [Aurelia] does not have the required [Earth] affinity to use this item.
Aurelia paused as she read the notification. She gave the glowing blue screen an affronted look as she read the last line. “I lack the affinity? What does that even mean!?”
A heartbeat later, a new blue message appeared in her vision.
Affinity is the measurement a User has to a certain skill. Higher affinity allows a User access to certain classes and skills. A lower affinity will cause certain skills to be unlearnable.
The description made some sense to her, though Aurelia felt chafed at the idea that she would be unable to learn certain things. Especially now, as she was locked in a dungeon where she was currently unable to use her magic. Aurelia signed discontentedly and decided to just put the book back into her inventory. She could risk destroying the skill book, but she didn’t like the idea of losing something potentially very valuable for a slim chance at learning the skill.
Now that plan A was no longer viable, she moved on. Aurelia stood up from her place on the ground and looked around. The forest was silent around her. No chattering squirrels, twittering birds, or other sounds were heard. The eerie silence of the trees and the lack of other creatures reminded her that she was indeed nowhere normal. It may look like any normal forest around her, with sunlight above, but Aurelia knew she was nowhere on the surface of Eldria. This was a dungeon, probably underground or perhaps it was its own little pocket universe, closed off from everywhere else.
Aurelia began walking back to the bear cave, careful to be as quiet as possible. She scanned the trees and ground around her, but didn’t see any strings of mana, indicating a bear nearby. This allowed her to relax slightly, but she tried to stay alert. No bear may have passed where she walked, but that didn’t mean none was nearby.
A minute later, Aurelia spotted a string of white mana and she stopped in her tracks. She crouched low to the ground and examined the strand a bit more closely. The strand glowed in a way that meant this bear was quite alive. As she focused on it, Aurelia somehow knew which way the bear had gone and which way it had come from. Aurelia looked in the direction it had come from and realized it had come from the direction of the bear cave. She paused for a moment, then decided that she would follow the bear.
More alert, Aurelia followed the white claw bear. It wasn’t long before she spotted the offending monster. Aurelia watched the large white bear trek through the forest on all four paws. Leaves crunched and branches snapped as it walked, as its large head swept side to side. She watched as the bear suddenly stopped and its head tilted to the side. It sniffed the air and Aurelia paused in sudden apprehension. She palmed her wand and kept it at the ready. When the bear started turning in her direction, she decided there was no reason to wait any longer.
Aurelia aimed her wand at the bear and a second later, a large spacial slash was making its way towards the unsuspecting bear. The white claw bear roared in pain as it suddenly found itself without a leg. It spun towards Aurelia on its three remaining legs, just in time to receive two quick mana bolts to the face. Aurelia jumped forwards, just in range to give a lightning chain to the face, then scrambled back again. The white claw bear swung a large paw at Aurelia, but its eyes were closed as the lightning chain impacted its face.
The white claw bear became stunned as the lightning coursed through its body and Aurelia took the opportunity to attack the bear a few more times. She only stopped when a kill notification entered her vision. She breathed a sigh of relief and briefly scanned the text. The white claw bear had been level 18, three levels higher than the last white claw bear she had fought. If that was the guard, she wondered what the golden bear’s level was. Aurelia accepted the loot prompt and looked at what she had received.
[White Claw Bear] meat x 6 received!
[White Claw Bear] pelt x 1 received!
[Ice Wall] skill book: rare received!
[Monster Core] level 18 x 1 received!
14 Copper coins received!
6 Silver coins received!
All loot deposited in [Spatial Storage].
A spark of excitement went through Aurelia, another spellbook! She took a second to look at her surroundings before settling down near the spot the bear had disappeared from after being looted. She pulled the new spellbook from her inventory, admiring the white leather cover and silver lettering. It was again written not in English, but she could still discern that the title was talking about ice. Aurelia paused, hopeful and excited, then opened the cover to the first page. A new prompt entered her vision.
Would you like to learn [Ice Wall]?
Item [Ice Wall] skill book: rare will be consumed upon action.
Aurelia was only a bit apprehensive, but mostly hopeful that this time she would get lucky. She confirmed the prompt, when the book in front of her suddenly shone with a bright white light. Aurelia quickly closed her eyes at the sight, when she felt the mana within her stir. A wave of cold air drifted around her and the weight of the book in her hand disappeared. Aurelia opened her eyes to see that the skill book was gone, but she had a new prompt in her vision.
Congratulations! You have learned [1] new skill.
Ice Wall: skill level 1
Ice Wall:
Spell allows the User to create walls of ice. Created walls will not naturally melt. The User may customize the walls dimensions with higher skill levels allowing for larger walls to be built. Walls will withstand damage relative to the thickness of the wall and level of the skill. At a lower cost per second, the User can alter or destroy ice walls. Cost: 20 mana per second. Cooldown: none.
She grinned in excitement as she read the prompt. A new spell! Aurelia eyed the last line of the spell description, and it gave her an idea. All she needed was a bit of time.
Aurelia carefully made her way back to the bear cave, using the dull white strand of the dead white claw bear so as not to get lost. She would like to have said that she sneaked her way back to the cave, but the amount of noise that she made would make it clear to anyone with ears that she was making her way forwards. Aurelia kept her eyes out for any signs of the last three bears. One white claw bear had been hiding past the wall of white ice in the side tunnel of the cave. The golden bear and the other white claw bear had been together in the room leading to the exit.
Aurelia reached a bunch of trees she knew marked the entrance to the cave. She saw the three white and one gold strand leading into the cave she had used to find the bear cave in the first place. One of those strands was now dull, with the same strand leading back out of the cave in the direction she had come from. Aurelia realized no other bear had left, so she continued forwards.
Before entering the cave, Aurelia made sure that her mana shield was reset. Then, she pulled a glow crystal from her spatial storage and walked into the cave. When she made her way marking a familiar intersection, she didn’t go towards the golden bear. A couple minutes later, Aurelia was standing before a cold, thick ice wall. Her flame dagger and spells hadn’t been enough before to break or even crack the wall of ice. This time, she had a new skill.
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Aurelia crouched low to the ground and pointed her wand at where the ice wall met the ground. She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly.
“Okay, I got this.”
She activated her new ice wall skill, not to make a wall of her own, but to alter the ice wall in front of her. At first nothing happened, but as Aurelia concentrated, a hole began to appear in the wall of ice. First the size of a marble, then a ping-pong ball, and then the size of a baseball. The mana drain per second to use the skill didn’t seem to be too high, probably thanks to her wand, but it added up as the seconds passed. The hole grew in size until Aurelia could finally see the other side of the wall. She held the glowing crystal closer to the hole and was surprised to see that the wall was a foot thick.
A few more seconds ticked by and Aurelia grimaced at the mana drain. She guessed the mana drain per second to alter the ice wall was about 8 mana per second. A minute into her spell, almost half of her mana had been spent up, revealing a hole in the ice about two feet in diameter. Aurelia stopped the spell and sighed in relief. She still had plenty of mana, but constant drain had become very uncomfortable for her. Deciding that the hole was big enough for her to comfortably crawl through, she went through the wall of ice.
She stood up on the other side and held her glowing crystal out in front of her. To her surprise, she found herself faced with another intersection in the corridor. A glowing strand of mana marked the rightmost tunnel, so Aurelia decided it was time to find another bear. Ignoring the left tunnel, Aurelia followed the strand of light. After a minute of walking she found that the tunnel was opening up into a larger room.
Aurelia slowed her pace and walked hesitantly towards the new room. That’s when she noticed that there was light coming from the cave in front of her. As she reached the entrance, Aurelia looked up to the ceiling of the cave where sunlight streamed from an opening. Green mossy vines hung down from the large hole in the ceiling, the opening probably as large as she was. The bright light shone down onto the floor of the cave, where Aurelia spotted a large white bear. To her sudden apprehension, she found two large eyes staring back at her. Saliva dripped from an open fanged mouth as the white claw bear let out a deep growl.
She started and then moved, but not before the white claw bear had clawed the air in her direction and a sharp icicle was flying through the air in her direction. Quicker than an olympic athlete, Aurelia dodged to the side and ice shattered on the wall where she had just been. The white bear roared in anger and started to run on all fours in her direction. She twisted around and sent a spatial slash at the bear, before teleporting into the room away from the charging bear. The bear got a spell to the face, blood spraying across the earthy ground.
The bear came to a stop when it realized Aurelia had disappeared from her original location. It turned its head to find a second spatial slash hit the bear in the neck. The white bear roared in pain and began moving at Aurelia again. So she teleported right behind the bear and gave it a lighting chain to the spine.
Aurelia continued to aim her spells at the white claw bear, teleporting behind it when it charged. Until she messed up. The bear wasn’t completely stupid and Aurelia gave it a consistent pattern to figure out. So when Aurelia teleported behind the white bear a seventh time, the monster was ready. The first strike destroyed her mana shield in one hit, while the second attack hit her directly. It wasn’t until the pain registered that Aurelia saw the huge paw buried in her stomach. Shock and adrenaline coursed through her, enough that she was able to put a final mana bolt into the open maw of the bear before it could harm her any further.
She stepped away from the bear and it collapsed at her feet, dead. Nausea filled her as she saw the damage in her belly, the wound looking more horrible than anything Aurelia had seen in real life or on TV. Thankfully she had enough sense to pull a healing potion from her storage and gulp it down before her weak knees caused her to collapse to the ground next to the white bear.
Darkness overcame Aurelia and she fainted.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she woke up again. The sun still shone into the large cave and was bright against her closed eyelids. Aurelia groaned as she sat up and she looked around in confusion. She saw the mound of white fur beside her and squeaked in alarm, but remembered what had happened and calmed down. A bit. She decided to accept the loot notification before the corpse caused her any more grief.
A second worry made Aurelia glance down at herself. Blood stained her shirt, corset, and pants, but there was no noticeable wound. Frowning in confusion, Aurelia pulled up her shirt to see blood, but no hole, no scar, nothing. Aurelia pulled out her water flask from her storage and opened it. She eyed it for a second before dumping the water over her midsection. Stained water poured off her, but the never ending stream of water allowed Aurelia to wash some of the blood away. She again looked at her stomach, but found no noticeable mark that she had previously been gored by a large bear with massive claws.
“Healing potions for the win, I guess.” Aurelia remarked to herself.
Deciding the water couldn’t help much more, she stopped pouring the water out of the flask. After gulping some to quench her thirst, she put the flask back in her storage. Aurelia pulled her shirt and corset back down, but sighed when large holes in the stomach area left a lot of skin exposed. Now sure she was no longer in danger of bleeding out, Aurelia turned her attention to the new loot notification waiting for her.
The level 20 white claw bear had been the most dangerous monster she had yet killed. She hadn’t received any special items like a weapon or skill book, but decided to examine the level 20 monster core. It looked like a clear gem the size of a quarter with golden light shining out from it. She held it between her thumb and first two fingers of her left hand, slowly turning it about. It looked strange and beautiful, and Aurelia wondered what they could be used for.
She was disappointed about the lack of other cool weapons or skills, but was happy she had one more monster defeated. Aurelia looked around the cave, and found something that caught her eye. Before she had entered the room, the white claw bear had been laying down, off to the side of the center of the room. Looking now, she could see the faint mana strand the bear had created with its own movement. She could see where the bear had been moving back and forth as it chased her, but it was something else that had made her stop.
On the far end of the cave, the mana strand criss crossed back and forth around a specific spot. Aurelia walked closer as she observed the spot closely. It seemed that the bear had walked around, then paced back and forth in front of what looked like a boulder placed on the ground. The cave was full of stalagmites, stalactites, rocks and boulders, but for some reason, the bear had been interested in this specific spot. Aurelia crouched down and scanned the area around the boulder. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but Aurelia’s curiosity was peaked. She decided to try moving the boulder to see if she could see anything underneath.
The rock was heavy, Aurelia wasn’t the best judge on how heavy it might be, but she was stronger than she had been even a few hours ago. The boulder shifted an inch, but she couldn’t quite get the leverage that she needed to move it fully. Aurelia glanced down at her wand and had an idea. She pulled the wand back out of her belt then pressed the gemstone on the side of the wand, keeping it an arms length away. It still surprised her when the wand changed into a staff longer than she was tall. She smiled, then put one end of the staff underneath the boulder, prying it up from the ground. This allowed her to shift the rock a few inches more. Then after getting into a better position, Aurelia put the staff down and using her arms, shifted the boulder to the side. After the rock settled, she looked back to where it had been and gasped in surprise.
A hole in the ground approximately the size of a basketball sat where the boulder had previously hidden. She peered inside to find a small silver chest. Aurelia grinned in excitement and opened the silver treasure chest. It opened to reveal a shining ring inside. It was a plain silver band with a large pale purple gemstone set in the center. Her head tilted to the side and she wondered what it was used for.
Aurelia plucked the ring out, setting the small chest on the ground. She walked over to where the sunlight was the brightest and looked at the light glinting off the gemstone. Aurelia smiled and decided to just put the ring on. She slid the ring onto the middle finger of her left hand and waited to see if anything happened. Nothing did. She glanced at her stat page, but none of her stats, mana, or health had changed.
She frowned and then remembered her magical daggers. The flame dagger and ice dagger hadn’t activated until she had directed her own personal mana into the items. Aurelia tried to direct some of her mana into the purple ring. That’s when Aurelia could no longer see the ring. Or her hand. Or her arm. Or the rest of her body!
Aurelia was now invisible to even her own eyes. She tried walking forwards and found it was extremely trippy to walk around not even knowing for sure where she was stepping. Aurelia looked back to where she had dropped her staff and went to pick it up. As she did so, she noticed that the silver chest had already disappeared.
Not knowing how long the ring would last for, Aurelia directed mana into the ring again, ending whatever enchantment was on the ring. She became visible again. Aurelia took her staff and changed it back into its wand shape with the push of a gemstone.
She took another look around the cave, before deciding it was time to move on. Aurelia retraced her steps back to the outside of the room and to the second intersection. After going through the ice wall she had taken the right tunnel to find the level 20 ice claw bear. Now she would take the left tunnel.
As she walked down the new tunnel, Aurelia realized that she was actually moving up in elevation. Before, everything in the bear cave had been mostly level. A couple minutes later, Aurelia was faced with another ice wall. She groaned in annoyance and looked at her current mana supply. It had only been minutes since she had fought the white claw bear and a few minutes before that she had spent half her mana getting past the first ice wall. At this point, she was too impatient to wait for her mana to fully recharge.
Aurelia took out a large blue mana potion and drank half of it. She eyed her mana pool as it went up 300 points in the first couple seconds. Aurelia waited until she saw it went all the way to almost 80 percent of her mana pool. She decided that was good enough for now and proceeded to make an opening in the ice wall.
When there was a hole big enough for her to squeeze through, she tossed a glowing mana crystal to the other side and peaked through the sizable hole. Aurelia didn’t see any movement and decided it was safe enough for her to join the mana crystal on the other side.
Aurelia brushed the dirt off her knees as she stood and picked her glow crystal up. She began forwards again, careful to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. She didn’t see any strands of mana, which meant no monster had been down this path. Aurelia continued as the pathway looped around and sloped up further in height. Her glow stone was the only source of light, until it suddenly wasn’t.
Aurelia started as she saw the glowing golden light in the distance. A familiar golden light. She gulped, but decided to move forwards just the same. As she came closer, she noticed that the glow did not come from ahead in the tunnel, or even from above like the daylight cave, but instead from below. Aurelia crept forwards until she found the opening in the tunnel ground, and below was a familiar cavern. It was filled with glowing orbs of golden light, as well as two large bears, one white and one with golden fur. Beyond the two bears was a stone door which marked the end of this part of the dungeon.
Curious, Aurelia decided to test a few things out. She first grabbed a mana potion and drank until her mana pool was full. Aurelia then tried to activate her invisibility ring. It worked! Then, she tried creating a wall of ice at the edge of the hole that worked as well to her relief. She frowned, wondering what had nullified her magic before. Aurelia eyed the golden bear and the glowing orbs. Either the orbs or the bear itself created this field of nullification. She would be able to use physical weapons, but not magic. In this tunnel above the cavern, she could use her magic though.
Aurelia turned her wand back into a staff and observed the two bears. They were both lying on the ground, seemingly asleep just as before. This time she would be fooled, though. The bears were dangerous. Aurelia decided to try another skill, and identified the two bears.
[White Claw Bear] Level 21
Health: 1453/1453
Mana: 720/720
Stamina: 560/560
The [White Claw Bear] is a monster found in mountain and glacier regions of Eldria. The [White Claw Bear] has high vitality and strength, using its long claws to decimate their foes. Can use ice and snow related spells for both offense and defense.
[Golden Grand Claw Bear] Level 24
Health: 1967/1967
Mana: 1254/1254
Stamina: 890/890
The [Golden Grand Claw Bear] is a monster found in mountain regions of Eldria. The [Golden Grand Claw Bear] has high vitality and intelligence, using its long claws to decimate their foes. Can use magical nullification skills and other spells for both offense and defense.
The information made her grimace, but she continued to prepare for her attack on the bears. Aurelia finished creating an ice wall around the perimeter of the hole. Creating a wall from scratch used more mana, but it could be created quickly. The wall was thick but not very tall, maybe a foot and a half. Aurelia hopped to stay at her high ground position for as long as possible. The ice wall was there for cover and she could lay down and be completely covered from the bears below. She also made sure her mana shield was in place once again, another line of defense.
Then, all there was to do was attack the bears. Aurelia took a deep breath and aimed her staff downwards. She shot a mana bolt from the sapphire gem at the tip of her staff. The spell appeared, it flew and hit one of the orbs of light. The orb shattered, and the bears awoke.
As the two bears roared at the intruder reappearing in their cave, Aurelia continued to send spells their way. The orbs of light continued to shatter one by one, and the light began to fade. Aurelia had a determined look as her last fight with the bears began.