Okay so that’s… a lot. First things first, what were the important points. I only have one affinity, and it’s Void. Shocking revelation there. Moving on, I guess I'm 2,025 years old? That age seems really specific, but knowing Iva they could just be trying to fuck with me. I feel Valin pulse with amusement at that. “Oh you think me getting fucked with is amusing huh” I say with fake anger.

Valin pulses with confirmation, and I just sigh, feigning hurt. Then feeling hurt cause OW OW OW OW. I grit my teeth and fall to the ground in pain. Panicking, I ask Valin to clear my mind so I can look inwards, and… oh shit that’s not good. “Status” I say through my violently clenched jaw.

*Ding* Congratulations you leveled up! I’m pretty sure I just told you to avoid that.

Name: Sylen

Affinities: Void

–Champion Rank– Novice, 4

Stage:Novice/pseudogod

Level: Soul 1 Body 3 → 4

Health: 110 → 130

Health Regen: 14.4hp/h

Stamina: 100 → 120

Stamina Regen: 76.2sp/m → 90.6

Void: 300

Void Regen: 2.2 → 2.5mp/s

-Vitality 11 → 13

-Endurance 10 → 12

-Strength 13 → 15

-Dexterity 14 → 16

-Intelligence ∞/30

-Wisdom ∞ /21→29

-Mastery 15

-Perception 16

-Charm 11(-50%) 4 → 5

Skills

Darksight (Legendary) (Passive)

Climbing (Basic) (Passive)

Swordsmanship (Basic) (Passive)

Void Manipulation (Basic) (Active)

Void Reinforcement (Basic) (Active)(Passive)

Cleaned up some extra unnecessary information. If you want your full status with your stricken affinities, just say ‘Full Status’. If you want just your mana or something just say ‘partial status’ while thinking of what you want. Goodbye for now, I’ve got more important shit to do with my time than fuck with your status.

Well good news first, yay better stats, yay better status menu. Now for the bad news. It appears that Valin can’t stop the passive Void Reinforcement. Before dropping to the ground in pain, that was the third important thing I wanted to cover, and it appears that my situation has just gotten much worse. My heart starts racing, and I feel numbness start to creep in from the tips of my fingers, and oddly enough, my nose as well. Oh shit, this is a bad one. "Valin, can you please help me out!” I shout.

I immediately start to come down from the adrenaline. Oh man, that power might make giving up on two sovereign affinities worth it by itself. Ok so game plan time, I’m on a time limit until I hit level 10, and if I believe what Iva says, that is a very very bad thing. So what do I need to do? Simple, I just need to go find a dungeon, or monster somewhere, kill it by myself with my mediocre training, and feed on its soul if I parsed what Iva said correctly. Easy. Oh man, thank god I have Valin, or I would be catatonic right now. Fuck medication, just abandon everything you know and love, go into stasis for a couple millennia, and gain a metaphysical heart that’s also a black hole to control your anxiety for you. Easy.

Well first things first, I had to get moving. At this junction, even with Valin boosting me beyond my terrible brain’s means I might just get hit with my dreaded Anxiety Paralysis. Straight ahead through and through is what I had to do. I was still in the room with the pillow and orb, and after the customary rumbling another passage opened. Ignoring the, at this point quite extreme, pain and discomfort from my imbalanced body and soul I moved on my way. At the end of the passage, there was one final sign next to a pedestal.

‘I have given you more of a headstart than I originally intended, I guess you have my sympathetic side to thank. Nah just kidding, I wasn’t sure about all this void shit so I had to test if you’d actually be able to survive out there! Good news, you might maybe possibly survive, if you get lucky! Though do try not to die at least, those weapons were pretty expensive even for me. Damn, I wish you had kept Fire and Gravity, they're so much cheaper. Anyway on that pedestal over there is the core of the dungeon, I know it doesn’t look like much, but you don’t look like much either so don’t judge a book by its cover. I mean in this specific case you should, because you're both pathetic, or pitiful in this case as that is the dungeons rank, but ya know generally don’t judge. Ah, I’m rambling again oops. Having a consciousness spanning galaxies and dimensions is pretty distracting so I tend to get lost in convers– oops doing it again. Just grab the shard and you’ll get teleported out, and the dungeon will be destroyed. Good luck, and don’t die, or at least die interestingly. I don’t want to get bored. -Iva

Big sign. You know at this point I’m not sure if Iva can be concise. It’s kinda amazing how good they are at rambling. I shook my head ruefully and grabbed the core, which looks more like a shard of obsidian. I can see why this dungeon was ranked pitiful if this is the core. It was small, only about an inch long, and about as thick as a coin. It looked wickedly sharp on its edges, but when I picked it up it felt dull. Of course, I only noticed that for about half a second before I was teleported back to where I originally entered from. Back on the surface I instantly noticed an attraction towards the core, and almost instinctively I absorbed it through the node in my right palm.

*Ding* Congratulations, You have leveled your soul, about time.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Name: Sylen Affinities: Void Champion Rank: Novice, 4

Stage: Novice/Pseudogod

Level: Soul 1 → 4 Body 4

Resources:

Health: 130 → 170

Health Regen: 16.8hp/h → 21.6hp/h

Stamina: 120 → 160

Stamina Regen: 90.6sp/m → 120sp/m

Void: 300

Void Regen: 2.5mp/s → 3.3mp/s

Attributes:

-Vitality 13 → 17

-Endurance 12 → 16

-Strength 15 → 19

-Dexterity 16 → 21

-Intelligence ∞/30

-Wisdom ∞/25 → 33

-Mastery 15

-Perception 16

-Charm 15(-50%) 5 → 7

A cascade of relief washed through me as the constant pain diminished down to nothing. Whew, I was acting confident, or at least as confident as I could be, but I was not entirely certain I had the courage to actually try and kill monsters while being in that much pain. Speaking of which, with the pain disappearing I began to actually feel pretty good. I looked down, and noticed that in spite of my slightly malnourished body I was beginning to look pretty fit. Of course, I looked more wiry than bulky, but that’s still better than how I used to… be? Is it? Nope, I was not doing this again. I decided I was just going to try to trust my subconscious and not think about it. Repression is always the way to go, therapists be damned. If it’s not good for you, then why does it work so well, huh? Oh shit, I was getting distracted again. Thankfully, I pulled myself out of my fugue without Valin this time. It was starting to get embarrassing how often I relied on him.

Game time. The clock was still ticking, and I didn’t want to feel like I was getting drop kicked in the chest every 3 seconds. I checked all my gear, my weapons? Check. Clothes? Well they were rags but still check. Shoes? None. Well that was as good as it was going to get. Time to find a dungeon. I began to look around the area of the small hill I first arrived in. Nothing. ‘Alright this is fine, I just need to look somewhere dungeon-y I guess.’ I thought.

Looking for somewhere dungeon-y did not work. After about three hours of slowly increasing the radius I searched around the hill I gave up. I mean it’s a glowing fucking forest, everywhere is bright all the time. Nowhere is dungeon-y. I tried thinking back to how the area looked when I first found Iva’s dungeon. Oh! The whole area was darker than the surrounding forest, which I didn’t think much of to be honest, you know on account of there being a fucking black hole in front of me, but that shouldn’t have been possible. The glowing canopy above me lit up the forest like a bright summer day, and even the smaller trees glowed pretty brightly.

I looked around me to compare the forest to the area around the dungeon in my memory. It looked as if it was twilight near the dungeon, but as I looked around my current surroundings I picked up on the obvious fact that the darkest it got in the surrounding forest was some shadowed alcoves in some of the giant trees.

I guessed caves were probably my best bet then. Unfortunately, besides the cave I emerged from, it was flat for as far as I could see, or at least as flat as a forest floor can be. I’d never tripped over so many roots in my life. Probably. You’d think with what feels like superhuman dexterity I wouldn’t be so clumsy, well you’d be wrong. At that moment I thought back to one of the gifts Iva gave me. Better comprehension huh? I don't need my subconcious to tell that I struggled with that in the past. I guess I did get skills pretty fast in the training dungeon. Maybe there was one for hiking through a magic forest? Well it was worth a shot so I gave my complete focus to avoiding roots, stepping over branches, and dodging hanging limbs.

After who knows how long of traveling in a straight line through the forest, or as straight as I could manage I bumped into a white and black structure. It looked like a ruin from ages past, shattered flagstones and crushed debris were scattered everywhere. Truly large columns of engraved stone formed a circular perimeter about one hundred feet away from a church. The church itself was made of marble streaked with black ash, and with a collapsed roof of charred black bricks that looked as if it once was a beautiful dome. I guess whatever charred the bricks melted them together so well they kept their shape. How hot does a fire have to be to melt stone? I moved away from the pillar I stumbled into, and took in the scale of the ruin in front of me, easily three hundred feet wide and half again as long. It was about one hundred feet tall, and the pillars themselves stretched into the skies at least 200 feet.

At first, I thought the pillars and the church-like structure were part of the same ruin, but it seems that the pillars were placed here after the church burned down. They had no burn marks, and besides being at slightly awkward angles with some light moss covering them, they were completely pristine. Moving over to the pillar once more; I was fascinated by the runic looking writing over them. I traced a finger over one of the runes and felt a sudden excruciating pain along the channel in my right arm that I touched the pillar with. I grunted and fell to the ground clutching my hand, looking at the pillar once more, the rune I touched darkened to pitch black, and the darkness started tracing all the runic pathways. Oh shit. Partial Status!

Champion Rank: Novice, 4– Resources:

Health: 60/170

Health Regen: 21.6hp/h

Stamina: 160/160

Stamina Regen: 120sp/m

Void: -1100/300

Void Regen: 3.3mp/s

My void channel feels like it’s on fire, and the darkness is spreading from the first pillar to the second. Great. I try to get up and fall back to one knee. FUCK this hurts. Nothing for it, I grit my teeth and stand. The tears are blurring my vision, but it looks like my power has spread to a third pillar. I try counting how many there are through the static in my brain. It’s somewhere between ten and thirteen, not that it matters because it seems the rate of transfer is speeding up. Yay for me. I start trying to back away but trip over one of the many big ass roots in the forest.

*Ding* Congratulations, You have gained a new skill. ‘Forest Walking’. When in a forest you move with grace and skill. Enjoy a 10% boost to dexterity when in the untamed wild. 20% less likely to trip over rocks and plant matter. Wow I was starting to feel bad for you. Leave it to you to need a skill to walk correctly. A druid you certainly are not. By the way, what did I say about using too much Void? Told youuuu.

It's not the time for this shit Iva. Oh who am I kidding, I could be gutted like a fish, and their first response would be to give me a sashimi skill to make me taste better. I get up as quickly as I can and try to run away. I hate to admit it, but this skill kicks ass. It’s like I have a sixth sense of where tripping hazards are. I turn and look over my shoulder. That was a mistake. I looked right as the void reached the twelfth pillar. With a bright flashing light the church is gone as if it never existed. In its stead is a giant pit in the ground. Valin pulses at me to go check it out. Goddamnit Valin, I'm trying to be a coward and run away.

Well, it looked like the danger had passed, and besides my eyes and my pride, I’d have said I was pretty ok. My arm still hurt like a motherfucker, but there was nothing for it. ‘Well I’ve got nothing better to do

Valin pulsed at the thought in excitement. The little bastard seems like he’s a glutton for MY punishment. I’d like to see you go rushing into dungeons when it’s your body. I felt a pulse of amusement. Oh yeah, it is also his body.

When I arrived at the edge of the giant pit in the ground it made me doubt the validity of my decision-making skills to an extreme degree. It was a five-hundred-foot-wide wound on the earth. The inside was pitch black, well for normal people at least. After about half a second my vision had already adjusted. I almost wish it hadn’t. This pit was at least five thousand feet deep. Directly below me, there was a tiny spot of darkness my eyes couldn’t pierce. ‘Hmm, must be a dungeon’.

It would’ve taken me a long time to get there. There was a ramp, but it was built into the side of the pit; shallowly winding around the circumference until reaching the bottom. ‘Nah, I can’t go down there. I don’t have enough food or water, and it would take me at least a day to reach the bottom, probably longer.’ I thought while looking down over the edge.

“Sorry Valin, looks like we’ll have to find something else. Besides that light probably drew some attention, and I don’t want to be the only suspect on the scene. I don’t know if this ruin was important to anybody, but I’m not gonna risk it.”

I felt Valin pulse with petulant anger, like a child who didn’t get their way. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He flooded our bodies with Void.

AH FUCK.

I fell.

*Ding* Congratulations, you have lev-