I climbed down the ladder slowly, partly because of the high heels that I was wearing which, I must admit, weren’t the wisest choice of all the possible equipment I could’ve asked for, and partly because the dark and slightly humid and chilly environment gave me shivers.
While I wasn’t the helpless young man that was suddenly thrown into an unknown world with unknown dangers and rules that I was when I first arrived, having a few spells at my disposal didn’t make me immune to all the possible dangers that were waiting just around the corner, this time quite literally.
“Ralph?”
“Yes?”
“I was wrong”
“…”
Ralph’s silence somehow conveyed the meaning of “And you just realized it?” without even the smallest hint of Ralph himself sending a message. All the stories from Earth about demons being devilishly eloquent must’ve been true, after all. See what I did there? Devilishly? Because, you know, Ralph, is a… Alright, that was awkward.
“I repent upon all of my wrong choices and implore ye, o wise one, to heed my call and grant me salvation”
I spoke in my mind with the most pious of tones I could muster
“Please, o great and mighty one, grant thy servant a wish, please, grant me new footwear!”
“…”
Ralph’s silence, once again conveyed the meaning he wanted to transmit. It was something along the lines of “Finally, the foolish mortal has learnt his place and shown how insignificant he is in front of my great and endless power, hmph”. The final “hmph” for some reason was shown as a cartoon blond girl with twin tails turning her head away in a haughty fashion, swaying said twin-tails around. Whether it was my imagination or not remained to be seen.
“Good. I shall listen to your request, just this once, hmph”
It wasn’t. A middle-aged man doing the “hmph” thing wasn’t cute at all, no matter how awesome his voice was. I feel that I have deserved the new shoes just for bearing with that part of the telepathic conversation and not parting with my lunch.
…
Having finished with the banter, I had climbed down and picked up the new more comfortable shoes that Ralph had left me.
The place I ended up at was a spacious stone room with three tunnels leading out of it and it was dimly illuminated by the glowing blue crystals that were embedded deeply into the walls. As I was curious about the magical structure of the dungeon I activated Mana Insight at around quarter of its full power and looked around, while turning Mana Perception on and off.
I didn’t see anything special through the Perception skill but my Insight told a vague but different story however. The whole room was enforced in a strange power, no, I can’t really call it power, it would be better to describe it as an authority, or even a natural law or something similar. It was a strange tickling feeling on the back of my head and I couldn’t really describe it properly.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The way it was enforced was more subtle and different in comparison to a more physical approach and I can’t really come up with a good metaphor to describe it. It was like travelling to another country and seeing everything written in a different language and the buildings and transportation and everything else was also different. Or that’s how I felt emotionally.
I felt that the thing I was seeing was far beyond my understanding or even my capability to understand or even know. Before I knew it, I had activated my Insight at full power and continued to blankly stare at my surroundings while ignoring the pain that came with the usage of the skill.
I was only able to come back from that daze after my nose began hurting and then I noticed that my nose had blood running down it and then I was hit with the full strength of the headache that I was ignoring before and my consciousness blanked out for a second.
HP: 10/11
MP: 223/251
ST: 18/24
My stats were more or less fine. Though before I went into the dungeon they were like this:
HP: 11/11
MP: 230/251
ST: 24/24
Yeah, they were much higher. I spent 6 points of stamina which was approximately equivalent to a thirty-minute jog around the woods I lived in. That was a lot. Losing a single point in health was already alarming and those seven points in mana, were negligible but only because of my absurd mana pool. If I had an appropriate for my level mana pool, it would look devastating.
Note to self, no peeking at the dungeon’s inner workings.
“Ralph, does this kinda thing always happen?”
“If you mean a mage with the Mana Insight skill going to a dungeon and trying to understand how it works and then having their mind overwhelmed, then it isn’t a rare occurrence, yes.”
“But what did I see?”
Even if I couldn’t understand it myself I had a perfectly fine encyclopedia of all things magical right inside my head.
“Hmm, I told you that Gods created dungeons in this world, right?”
“I don’t remember. Probably?”
“Cough, anyway, gods have their powers centered around their divinities. Things like God of Light, God of Death and such. So Divinities are basically like working concepts and laws of a universe, something like a spell, only spells distort reality where they’ve been cast and Divinities command reality. Well, from your perspective there’s no difference really. So, they use the powers of their Divinities to make dungeons and that was why the environment in them is different from a metaphysical standpoint. Well, that isn’t the correct explanation but a correct one that would be understandable to a mortal mind doesn’t exist and the closest thing would take up six paragraphs of text, so let’s skip this”
“…Okay.”
My silence wasn’t as amazing as Ralph’s silence and was able to only deliver the general feelings of doubt and bafflement.
…
Going down one of the tunnels, I strained my ears and tried to look for any signs of any living things.
What would I have to fight against? Maybe something like the staple mob monster of the fantasy stories from my home world – the goblin? I would use my stone arrows then. Or fireballs would be more effective for crowd control. I should find some test subjects to see how effective the spells would be against monsters so I hope they’ll be weak so I wouldn’t have to try too hard.
Let’s let the question of the morality behind attacking living beings without even trying to go for a more peaceful resolution and without any good cause slide, okay?
Around the moment when I was fantasizing about burning down a huge settlements of goblins with my Summer spell while laughing maniacally, I heard some kind of noise. It was soft but crisp, like a beating heart.
I naturally followed the sound and soon the source of the sound came into sight.
It was actually a beating heart.
Well, it was a twitching moving rotten corpse of a humanoid being that was dressed in practical clothes made with thick fabric. The fabric had tears on it, revealing the scratched remains of the flesh and a huge tear near its chest area showed the still beating dried out heart that frankly looked disgusting.
The zombie (temp) looked slow and considering how it hadn’t even noticed me yet, it was probably not a tough opponent. I took a few steps back, prepared several spells for offence and defence and aimed.
At first, I fired a stone arrow. It was a relatively weak spell that sent out a stone spike to kill or maim the targets. I doubted that the spell would be effective against a zombie as it was somehow alive and was able to move despite its muscles being seriously damaged, but I wanted to test how tenacious it was.
The arrow struck the head and sent pieces of its skull and skin and organs flying. An eyeball landed near me but it was still moving well and fine if you consider its headless body running around and hitting the air well and fine.
Instead of wasting my supply of the spells I had, I decided to slowly create my own.
Drawing on my mana pool, I activated Magic Visualization and Mana Insight and quickly created a fireball, around ten centimeters in diameter.
It struck the zombie and it went up in flames. It flailed wildly but fell down and stopped moving after half a minute. For the next twelve or so seconds, its heart continued beating, despite being burned and only then did it stop.
For some reason, fire seemed to deal better with the undead than physical damage as I had discovered.
I quickly hid behind a corner and waited for some predator to be attracted by the smell of burning flesh.
No more monsters came for the next two minutes, so I continued walking.
If you’re wondering why I wasn’t afraid of starting a fire in the cave, it was because this world’s rules were different from Earth and the physical and chemical reactions worked differently also. I had already tested some things, like burning a fire inside a cave as it seemed like a good tactic against living beings but it didn’t work. There was smoke but it dissipated on its own and I didn’t know where it went.
I also tried other methods of trying to suffocate my enemies but that’s a story for another time.
For now, I could only go forward and search for more enemies.