Dungeons can be found buried and hidden everywhere across our world of Iskaera, from the unfathomable mountains of the Undyed Peaks to the unplumbed Sea of Clouds. Containing ancient relics, great riches, and the promise of fame, exploring and publishing information on dungeons is one of the main jobs of the Adventurers’ Guild.
If dungeons are hailed as the kings of Iskaera’s subterranean underworld, then the Abyss is the king of dungeons. Located in the northern peninsula of the Aswal continent, covered by the second-largest mountain range in the world, and boasting an estimated depth of thirty thousand meters with an average diameter of well over three kilometers, it is truly worthy of the name ‘Abyss’. The underground city Arkress was established on its rim as a colony by the floating city Arkranas, and to this day, serves as a base for adventurers to harvest rare natural resources and monster materials.
Many freshly registered adventurers find themselves relocating to Arkress, expecting easy and immediate success. They hear talk of the Abyss’s infinitely regenerating, bordering on nigh inexhaustible, mineral deposits, generated and restored by its dense environmental mana. They covet the high prices of the hides, horns, and hearts reaped from monsters of the Abyss. They see it and believe they too can gather such wealth simply by venturing into the Abyss a few times. And so they rush headlong into the depths, inexperienced and ill-prepared for the dangers, ignoring the singular piece of advice that all veteran adventurers of Arkress give. “No matter what, do not be complacent.”
They underestimate the Abyss and think they are the hunters. But the Abyss will make certain they know they are the hunted.
* Excerpt from “The Greatest Hidden Realm of Iskaera”, by Silvar Aari Vohra
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…When Ciel awoke, lying down sideways, she was treated to the simultaneously surprising and horrifying realization that she wasn’t quite dead yet, somehow. Surprising because she had fallen an extremely long way after all; she wasn’t exactly sure how far, but given that she could no longer make out any sort of light from above, it felt like at least a few hundred meters.
Horrifying because her entire body was bathing in an expansive puddle of a liquid she could only assume to be her blood, though she was certain blood wasn’t supposed to be light blue or glowing. She couldn’t even sit up to get a better look; by swiveling her eyes in their sockets, she could see that every single one of her limbs was utterly destroyed. They were deformed and battered, the remaining flesh torn and abrased, mottled with dark purple bruises. The bones themselves were broken as well, in some areas a clean fracture, others a stomach-turning sight of fibers still connected even when two halves were bent in the opposite direction.
Her breaths started coming in heaving, choked gasps. Each inhale and subsequent expansion of her lungs left sharp daggers lodged within her shattered ribcage. Tears welled up, stinging her eyes and blurring her vision as her throat burned. Frantic signals of agony began throbbing as the rest of her body realized she was awake.
I shouldn’t be alive right now. How am I alive?
Through the mind-numbing pain, a suspicion leaped unbidden to the forefront of her mind.
[Unique Skill Created: Mana-Body Regeneration!]
Regeneration. Ciel had no idea how to use the skill she’d received, since thinking the name didn’t do anything new, but she thought it didn’t matter. While she stared, her injuries were slowly, slowly healing. Bones reaffixed themselves, melding with a click that sent another spike of pain jabbing into her arms and legs. Tissue re-knit and torn skin regrew, covering ivory white with tender flesh. Her breathing became less panicked and more relaxed as her skill did its work.
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It wasn’t fast by any means; the process was barely visible to the naked eye. There was no way for her to tell time down here, but she felt as though it took hours for her wounds to recover. Finally, she stood, and a series of sudden pops and jolts ran down her spine as she stretched. Then she fell backward and lay spread-eagled in the viscous, teal puddle that was sluggishly melting away into the air as luminous particles. She felt a certain indescribable emptiness or ‘hunger’ as if the regeneration had taken something from her in exchange. It wasn’t a physical status but clouded her mind, whispering of mental exhaustion and encouraging her to sleep.
It was odd, just how clear the memory was. Even now, Ciel could hear the detached, aloof mechanical voice and recall the words it had spoken, like an echo resounding at the moment between sleep and wakefulness. Of course, she was no stranger to what the notifications meant.
After years of hoping, praying, and wishing, she finally gained a Class and leveled. And it seemed like an excellent Class, at that. She often overheard children around her age, excitedly chattering to their parents at the market that they’d leveled in [Apprentice Tinkerer] or [Trader] and so on. She didn’t hear them talking about being a [Seeker of Abyss and Sky, Shaper of Mana and Magic]. The name of her Class had a heft to it when it was spoken. Part of it might have been the length that lent it a certain gravitas, but she could feel a quality that went beyond mere words to express, an invisible sense of power and weight.
Her other skill [Mana is All I Need] most likely meant she didn’t require food or water; she couldn’t see any hidden facets to it, but considering her current location it was almost perfect. For the {Experience} notification, she could take a stab in the dark that if a ‘regular’ experience multiplier was 1, a multiplier of 0.3 implied from now on she’d be leveling more than three times slower than the normal rate. Lastly, she knew next to nothing about mana, so the two [Restrictions] meant nothing to her.
Having thought things through as best she could, Ciel looked around at the sheer cliff before her. Her jutting pillar, only a little wider than she was tall, was just one of many blunt protrusions sprouting from the sides of the kilometer-wide chasm. The walls had so many entrances to receding paths and caves that trailed alongside the open air, making them appear like scratched-up cutting boards.
Ciel might have been thousands of meters underground within the Abyss, but she hadn’t given up on seeing the surface world. To do that, she had to make it back to Arkress. She chose a path that led upwards at random and set off immediately.
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It had been so long. The Abyss was excited. After many months, a new victim had arrived from the overworld. There were, of course, others, but those weaklings chose to remain at the highest levels, where the Abyss exerted the least influence. They took and wrought, but their spirits were not true.
Of the four people who had ever made it this deep, three were currently alive. The first was gone; the human only stayed periodically before ascending. The Abyss had tried many, many times to slay him and feast, but he was too powerful. Most recently, it had even incited one of the Old Ones to rise and hunt him, but the man had already moved beyond the boundaries of the Abyss, into the detestable city of bronze that stank of foulness. Well, it had destroyed the territory of the one that toyed with mana, so the Abyss was satisfied.
The second was a coward that never moved, weak of heart and weak of mind. Her sole aspect deserving of praise was her quantity of mana. When the Abyss sent monsters to hunt this one, she did not fight but instead fled. It knew she was strong; the few times its spawn had located her, she dispatched them with relative ease. But she smelled of fear and dread, like weaklings at the edge of death, only her scent was pervasive and never left no matter how much time passed, even if she was in no danger. The Abyss did not understand, it did not try to understand, it could never have understood. This one was hard to kill; that was what mattered.
The third and last was the one that had fallen from above. The Abyss was not intelligent enough to determine why and how; it could not see the cause and effect that had led to this point. It only saw weak prey that had conveniently delivered itself to an area that the Abyss held sway over, and it only knew that prey could not be allowed to escape the Abyss. So, instinctually, it weaved mana and stirred it into an invisible whirling mass that coalesced.
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Several hours after Ciel had left behind the pillar she had fallen atop, a creature growled and sniffed at the nearly vanished pool of fading blue light. Its rough tongue slobbered onto the ground, tasting the clear, condensed mana. It was hardly even sentient, but the voice in its head was constantly whispering to it.
Kill. Kill. Kill.