Darkness.
Total and complete darkness.
A darkness so dense and cloying that it felt like Brent was suffocating, despite his best efforts at slowing his breathing–a technique his therapist had taught him several years ago. Of course, that technique was supposed to be used to help him cope with the stress of his day job more than coping with the stress of being trapped in an abyssal cave–he hadn’t known then just how scary being buried alive could be or else he probably would have talked with the therapist about it. It was impossible for him to know how long he simply sat there and breathed. It could have been an hour or it could have been a day. He felt no passage of time. All he felt was panic.
After that indeterminate amount of time, his survival instincts must have kicked in, because he began to feel again. The first sensation was the way his unshaven face pressed against his knees, causing his face to itch. It was an innocuous feeling, one that had become normal for him ever since his facial hair had come in about 10 years ago, and it brought him comfort. The next thing he felt was the painful, prickling sensation all through his legs, which had been clenched tightly and were suffering from reduced blood flow. As the pain abated, so too did his initial panic, and he received a notification:
[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Mental Fortitude.
+2 to Intelligence
You have faced your demons and emerged stronger for it]
The text caused him to mentally snort in derision. Not only was Intelligence a worthless stat, but the pain he had endured was worth far more than increasing any stat by only 2 points.
Still something is better than… He began thinking
*Shriek*
*Squeal*
He was unsure if the sounds that interrupted his thoughts had been ongoing since the zone barrier fell or if he hadn’t noticed them until that instant, but either way, they caused his terror to return in full force, and he started his breathing exercises again. After several minutes when the sounds got no closer to his location, he was able to calm himself down again.
[Congratulations! You have leveled up your skill Mental Fortitude, now level 2.
+2 to Intelligence
Outside stimuli that would normally render you useless are now reduced by 15%.]
Well, maybe the Intelligence would be good for something if he kept leveling it up like this. Perhaps he could become a mage of some kind and simply annihilate any of the other adventurers who were hunting him under the System’s direction.
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It was almost a day after his skill had upgraded when the hunger became unbearable. It had slowly been building, but until that moment, his fear of what lay out of sight had exceeded the clawing of his stomach. On hands and knees, he began crawling forward. Having explored his prison before the Zone Barrier collapsed, he knew for a fact that no food lay in what had once been the Noob Zone. Luckily, he was fairly certain that he knew which way would take him into the Ranker Zone, and hopefully, towards food.
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At first his crawl was slow and tentative, as each hand was deliberately placed in front of him and probed about to make sure he wouldn’t bump into anything. Over the span of a couple of minutes, however, he got into a rhythm and began exploring with more gusto, which is how he managed to smack his head roughly against a jagged stone in front of him. Pain exploded from the center of his forehead and he flopped onto his back, cursing and writhing in a vain attempt to dull it–a not atypical action in response to extreme pain. By the time the agony subsided and his thrashing ceased, he had completely lost track of which direction he was currently facing in the cavern.
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For an entire day, all Brent did was crawl around on the floor, his only company was the demanding voice of his stomach which periodically screamed into the darkness. Unsure of which direction he should be going, he had chosen to go towards the shrieking sounds which he had heard earlier. Sound meant monsters, and even a monster sounded good enough to eat in that moment.
He thought he was hallucinating when he spotted the first mote of light. A small speck high above his head that glowed like the afterimage of the sun after it had been looked at for too long–although it remained stationary despite him looking away from it. By the time the tenth mote appeared, his fear that he was beginning to go crazy actually diminished, and hope bloomed that he was getting closer to something.
He had seen hundreds of the moats from a distance before he found one on the ground only a few feet from his face. Overcome with an irrational bout of hunger, his head lunged forward, tongue extended, and licked up the moat of light. No satiation was gained from the small morsel, but only moments later, he received a notification:
[Congratulations! Level 4 reached!
+3 Stat Points by Assignment]
The thought hadn’t even occurred to him that the moats of darkness could possibly be monsters. He hadn’t even been completely sure they weren’t all in his head until he got the notification. He was slightly concerned that eating one had gained him an entire Level however. That had only ever happened before when he had managed to land the killing blow on a bear several levels above himself. The thought prompted him to analyze the speck of light nearest him:
Monster Type: Abyssal Moss of the Depths
Level: 11
Without an advanced version of the Analyze ability, he was only able to see the most basic of information about a monster, but the information he did see didn’t inspire confidence. First there was the name, which was either melodramatic or hinted at the nasty side effects he would endure for eating it. Second was the monster's Level. Had the one he had eaten been that high? It would explain the instant Level Up, but it didn’t explain why it was easier to kill than a hobgoblin baby.
*Grrrrr*
The interruption reminded Brent that he was too hungry to care, and he began crawling towards his next morsel.
Worst case scenario, I can always just respawn. He thought to himself, as he made his way through the darkness towards another bit of moss that was on the ground.
As he got close to its position, the fact that it was many levels above his own came to mind, causing him to shrink back and think logically.
It’s probably better if I kill it before I eat it. After all, I never eat chicken alive.
That decided, he lunged forward, swatting the moss as hard as he could with his hand, but he received no Level Up notification. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. The moss continued to glow, and nothing had changed about it when he Analyzed it again–that was until he felt a sharp pain on his hand and he felt as the moss began to dig inside of him. In a panic, he dug his teeth around the intruder, ripping it out despite the pain and swallowing it whole.
[Congratulations! Level 5 reached!
+3 Stat Points by Assignment]
While pleasant, the notification did little to dull his throbbing hand, and he found his anger towards Mike returning. Brent had done the Boss a favor by warning him of Bart’s plans, it was the least Mike could do to not keep him trapped in this cave any longer.