When Aurelia placed a hand on the stone door, she received a new notification.
Congratulations, User [Aurelia]!
For completing the [Cavern of Shadows] solo, you have received an [Iron Chest]!
She was shocked as a new chest appeared on the ground near the door. The extra loot was surprising, but Aurelia guessed getting rewarded for doing the dungeon by yourself was definitely a good thing. She crouched down and opened the small iron chest. Inside, she found three health potions, just like the two she had used in this section of the dungeon. Aurelia gladly accepted the offered loot, knowing the potions would only ever be useful.
Aurelia stood back up and placed her hand on the door, again. This time the door opened and she stepped through.
The sound of a slamming door echoed throughout the new cavern on the other side of the entryway. Aurelia had stepped into a new section of the dungeon, and it was a lot darker on the other side of the door. Instead of the glowing crystals of the previous tunnel, there were shafts of yellow light shining down from the ceiling like spotlights. The light only lit up portions of the cavern, but Aurelia could tell that it was pretty large. She couldn’t see exactly where the light was coming from, she just knew there was light. Pockets of darkness were littered throughout the room, making Aurelia nervous. This dungeon was the sort of place where being scared of the dark was not exclusive to imaginative children, but a place where it was wise to be wary of what might be lurking in the shadows.
Aurelia kept both hands out and to each side of her, her left palm faced outwards and her right hand gripping the wand. She was standing in one of the shafts of light, right in front of the closed entrance to the cavern. As she was about to take a step forwards into the shadows, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She stopped and crouched to the ground, inspecting the ground just beyond the pillar of light.
The darkness… moved. At least it seemed that way. Aurelia watched as the darkened cavern floor seemed to shift around. The whole ground seemed to move about, but Aurelia couldn’t quite make out what it was exactly. Aurelia leaned forwards, trying to make out the shapes in the darkness. She decided to take out one of her glowing crystals and held it out past the shaft of light and into the darkened shadows.
All the color from Aurelia’s face drained away as she saw the mass of slimy, slithering snakes. She couldn’t help herself, Aurelia let out a loud, piercing scream.
The glowing crystal fell from her hand as she leaped back away from the swarm of snakes. The crystal fell on top of the mass of slithering bodies, causing the snakes to move out of the way. The snakes avoided the light, seemingly not wanting to be touched by it. Aurelia could hear hissing coming from the snakes, and she watched as the swarm continued to move away from the crystal until they were all out of sight from the light.
Suddenly, Aurelia felt regret for not grabbing more of the crystals. She also felt the intense desire to be anywhere but surrounded by a bunch of slithering snakes.
She decided to try identifying one of the snakes, and stared into the darkness. To her surprise, it actually worked.
[Cavern Ground Snake] Level 2
Health: 110/110
Mana: 0/0
Stamina: 130/130
The [Cavern Ground Snake] is a common monster usually found underground. The [Cavern Ground Snake] nest together in large groups and will swarm prey that get close. They cannot stand any form of light as it will damage them. [Cavern Ground Snakes] are usually led by a larger and higher level [Cavern Ground Snake] who they will protect with their lives.
“So you bastards don’t like the light, huh?” Aurelia said in a low voice.
Aurelia sat for a moment, trying to figure out how she would get around all these snakes. She guessed that in any place not lit up was covered in the slithering snakes. She tried to identify more of the snakes and observed that all of the ones she could identify were between the levels of one and three. That made her feel a little better, but there were so many of them.
She stood up and decided to try a spell. She made a spatial slash towards the snakes on either side of her and she heard, rather than saw, the aftermath of the attack. The sound of hissing snakes and squelching flesh filled the cave. Aurelia winced at the noises, and watched as a new notification filled her vision.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
[Cavern Ground Snake] Level 1 x5 defeated.
[Cavern Ground Snake] Level 2 x4 defeated.
[Cavern Ground Snake] Level 3 x2 defeated.
543 experience earned!
Would you like to loot [Cavern Ground Snake]?
Aurelia was reading the notification when she heard and felt a thud, as something rammed into her shield. She glanced down at herself to see a snake laying down in front of her, hissing in her direction. Then, just in time, she saw five of the snakes slither into the light, coil themselves, and leap at her!
She screamed and took a step back, reflexively sending a mana bolt out at the group of snakes. Two of the snakes exploded, and three attacked her shield. The snakes didn’t seem to cause a lot of damage to the shield, but she could feel that it would only take a couple more strikes before it faded. She did NOT want to discover the wrong way whether these snakes were poisonous or not.
Aurelia quickly killed the remaining snakes with mana bolts, and looted all of the corpses. As the bodies faded away, she waited attentively to see if any more snakes would attack. After a tense moment of silence, she relaxed slightly then recast her shield spell.
Checking her loot notification from all of the killed snakes, she saw that she had received some scale leather, poison glands, snake fangs, and snake meat.
“Well I guess that answers if the snakes are poisonous or not…” Aurelia muttered to herself.
Aurelia didn’t want to try attacking the shadowed snakes, as she was worried more would retaliate. She was considering her next course of action when she remembered one crucial detail she had forgotten, even through the entire crystal hallway.
“I have the teleportation skill! What am I doing?” Aurelia berated herself for forgetting. In her defense, she still wasn’t used to the fact that she could use actual magic.
“I probably could have avoided more injury in the last area if I had just teleported away from the cave moles…” Aurelia sighed, and resolved to not forget about the skill again. She was partially glad that she didn’t start with a lot more skills. It would be difficult to get a handle on too many skills at once.
Aurelia glanced around the cavern, looking at all of the places illuminated with the pillars of light. They were scattered all over, but Aurelia couldn’t find another door that might mark the exit out of the cavern. She decided to try scouting around, and teleported to the closest pillar of light. It was about fifteen feet away from her current position, the light illuminating about a six-foot radius of floor in a circle.
The teleport caused a slight disorientation as she reappeared in the new shaft of light. She glanced around her, trying to gauge where she should go next. That’s when she noticed that she could no longer see the door. Turning around in a circle, she saw that the pillar of light that had previously illuminated the stone door entrance had disappeared. She could still see the glowing crystal she had dropped earlier. The crystal had only dropped about a foot away from where the pillar of light had previously shone. The crystal now sat alone, with her being fifteen feet away and in the closest pillar of light to it.
Aurelia looked around her, and while she didn’t remember exactly where all the lights had been before she had teleported, they definitely were not in the same place as before.
She took another look around the room, looking to see if anything new was illuminated that had not been before. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see anything new. No monsters illuminated by light and no door to mark the exit. Aurelia decided she needed to keep going.
She looked around at the closest pillars of light to her. There were four lights in her range of teleportation, with the closest a little less than twenty feet to her right. The other three lights were arrayed in front of her, ranging from twenty to thirty feet away. She decided to go with the closest light and teleported.
This time, Aurelia took better care to keep an eye on her surroundings after she teleported. This time, she actually heard the hissing of snakes and watched snakes slither away from new pillars of light. The light she had come from was also missing. “So every time I get to a new light, the rest of the lights change positions.” Aurelia muttered to herself.
That’s when she noticed one of the new lights illuminating a section of the cavern wall. Aurelia squinted, partially making out what looked to be carvings on the wall. It was about twenty-five feet to her right, just in her range of teleportation.
After not seeing anything else in the cavern of note, Aurelia decided to head to the carvings, to get a better view of them. A second later, Aurelia was standing in front of the wall.
She stared at the cavern wall, entranced by what she saw. Carved into the rock was an image of a large serpent. The head of the snake was six inches wide carved at eye level to her, the full length of the snake probably seven feet long with its tail coiled near the floor of the cavern. The face of the snake stared back at her, mouth agape and fangs out. She could see each individual scale had been carved onto the snake and she was amazed by how lifelike it looked. Next to the body of the snake were carved words. She reached out a finger and traced the letters. The characters were not of the roman alphabet, instead looking like a bunch of triangles, lines and dots. To her surprise, however, she found that she could actually understand what it was saying.
“Under the rock, earthly sound echoes; The serpent of stone, lays hidden by shadows. Guardian of darkness, dispeller of light; Bringer of depths, harbinger of night. Strike one of the nest, through force or might; prepare for the rest, to finish the fight.” Aurelia paused after reading the inscription. It seemed to be some kind of warning, or maybe just a clue for what would await her in this section of the dungeon.
“I don’t really understand the whole meaning, but I now get why the snakes attacked after I killed a few of them. They were retaliating because I attacked them first. Interesting, I wonder why they wouldn’t just attack me anyways like the moles did.” She also wondered what it meant by the serpent of stone. From what it was describing, it made it sound like the poem was talking about a singular snake, rather than more than one.
Aurelia took a better look at the snake carving in front of her, admiring the artwork. That’s when Aurelia noticed the stone snake slowly tilt its head, its mouth opening wider.
“Holy-”