Broken Anomaly

Marcus and his group arrived at the generator room without much problem. They had only encountered four barghests during their journey. They had seen more, but those barghests were very keen on advancing forward, toward the safe zone, practically ignoring Marcus’s group.

After they arrived at the generator room, they made more than enough noise as they forced the doors open to draw the attention of any nearby monsters, but none approached.

There wasn’t much inside the room. The generator was in the middle of the room, with various steel cabinets against the walls. Marcus came to the generator room with the small hope of there being some leftover tools, but it appeared that it was also used as a storage room.

The group started to look around the room, searching for tools that could be useful to Marcus. One person kept an eye on the open door. They couldn’t close it because it was the only source of light they had. Everyone in the room had been victim to Marcus’s phone collection.

Marcus and David used a steel pipe to break a lock on a cabinet, finding a toolbox and a backpack with various grease stains stored inside. While Marcus searched them, David headed to the generator.

“Can I ask you a question?” David asked Marcus as he examined the generator.

“Sure,” Marcus answered, not turning his head.

“How come you guys weren’t, like, uhm… afraid?” David began, unsure of how to phrase the question. “While we were hiding, you guys were fighting monsters upstairs. Like…” David made small circles with his hand, searching for how to continue his question. “Like… How…? How did you kill them? Was the first time hard?”

Marcus stopped what he was doing and took a moment to think. “Ahh, no. Pretty simple, actually. Just do it,” he answered, having found no deeper answer within himself.

“Your entire group is just weird. Like I keep telling Alex, you guys, um, you just do whatever you want. I don’t know who’s the weirdest one—”

“Eric. Everything starts with him,” Marcus said, cutting him off.

“Both of you are kinda similar though,” another member of the group commented.

Marcus frowned slightly and pointed at himself. “Socially awkward,” he then pointed in the direction of the cafeteria, as if pointing at Eric. “Doesn’t care.”

The conversation died down after Marcus’s response. Time passed quickly as he directed the others to help him with opening cabinets and moving stuff around.

David joined them after Marcus explained how it was likely that the generator wouldn’t work because the gas line was no longer connected due to the world growing bigger. It didn’t take long for everyone to leave the room, all carrying something.

“Lock?” Marcus said as he extended his open hand. Someone put a lock on his palm, and he locked the door.

It wasn’t that much more protection, but if it could maybe deter a monster or two, convince them it wasn’t worth it, it would have accomplished its purpose. He didn’t have a plan for the generator right now, but something told him that he would in the future. The group then started their walk back toward the gym.

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Eric removed the apron from the top end of the mop and threw it on a counter. He then grabbed the mop and broke off the mop head by stepping on it. With the splintered end pointed forward.

He gently pushed the door open. Luckily for him, it was a swing door, so easily doable with one hand. Glancing inside the storage room, he saw racks to the left and two big metallic freezers to his right. He could no longer hear the whispers that had drawn his attention. But at least he was sure there were no spiders in the room.

Eric walked toward the racks, already sure of what he would find. Sure enough, there they were—four people cowering in between two racks, all huddled together as if trying to make themselves smaller.

There was an older woman, clearly afraid but looking directly at Eric. Beside her were two younger women, both holding each other and being held by the older woman. Finally, there was a man who didn’t even attempt to hide his shaking.

Eric and his friends had roughly defined the conditions for monsters to spawn. It was why he was able to prepare himself shortly before seeing the people that were before him. The conditions were more or less as follows:

They only spawned in closed rooms.

Each room only spawned 5 monsters.

If someone was in the room, monsters didn’t spawn.

The monsters didn’t leave the rooms they spawned in.

Eric had further deepened his belief in these conditions thanks to the gallery spiders. It was shaken by the giant spider that he had fought last, but he considered it an outlier, or perhaps the boss of the dungeon.

Looking at the four people before him, he realized that he recognized one of them. “Hilda?” he asked, extending his hand toward the older woman.

“Eric?! What happened to you, child?!” Hilda exclaimed as she frantically grabbed Eric’s left arm and head, switching rapidly between the two, not knowing what worried her more.

Eric let Hilda do as she wished as he carefully rested the broken mop against a rack. Hilda was practically the owner of the school’s main cafeteria, and she knew Eric’s group very well.

Stella and Alex were always helping in one way or another, whether organizing things or lending a hand when needed. Marcus also helped her if some kitchen equipment wasn’t working right. As for Eric and Anna, they mostly found themselves being dragged along by the others.

Eric gently grabbed both of Hilda’s hands and, while looking at her, pointed at his right eye and said, “Can you help me with this?”

“Of course, my boy, of course. Come with me,” she said as she dragged Eric toward the cafeteria counter and took out some cloth and what looked to be a cookie box full of threads. “I brought it for when I was bored. Now wait a bit, okay?”

They both walked toward the nearest table, followed closely by the other three, who had been silent until now.

Eric had noticed how they would occasionally take a glance at him, specifically at his eye. He didn’t really care, even he was curious about how it looked.

“The door won’t open yet. Just wait here, I’ll be right back,” he said, noticing that Hilda would need more time.

Eric walked back into the storage room and grabbed the mop stick, or at least tried to. He had noticed how off his depth perception was, but this was the first time it actually affected him.

He took a deep and audible breath through his nose, grabbed the mop stick, and headed toward the third floor, the language center.

As Eric climbed the stairs, with Hilda still fresh in his mind, he thought about how some of the others would sometimes call her “mom.” This led him to think about his own mom, then his dad, and then about Stella’s parents.

A vivid memory played out in his head: a young Stella was playing the piano, peeking from the corner of her eye, trying to grasp Jamie’s reaction as everyone else that was in the living room enjoyed the performance.

Jamie was Eric’s older brother, and Stella had a huge crush on him when she was young. What really grabbed Eric’s attention was how Stella looked. “She’d probably kill me if I showed a picture from back then,” he said, laughing lightly.

Eric finished his reminiscing as he approached the entrance to the language center. Like the music room, the language center also had a completely glass entrance. It was plastered with different flyers. Some were about discounts and deals, while others were reminders about upcoming tests and exams.

Learning a new language was compulsory in his school, so he knew what awaited him inside. Unlike the music room, the language center had a large number of windows, completely illuminating it.

Directly in front of the entrance was a desk; beside it, a brick column; and behind that was a small alcove with a couch and a TV, nestled between a glass office and a classroom, where you could watch films and TV shows in various languages.

Eric could clearly see the spiders grouped up near the couch, with only one resting on the brick column. He had brought the broken mop stick instead of the knife because he wasn’t sure how he would fight without his left arm and right eye. His current weapon would allow him to fight from a distance and keep an eye on a wider area.

As he reached for the door handle, he suddenly felt Mana Sense activate. “Huh?” he exclaimed in surprise.

He tried to turn it off, but it refused to do so. That’s when he got the same vague sense that he always got with Mental Focus. It was using Mana Sense for its analysis. He calmed himself down, ignoring the unease he felt due to a skill being able to activate another, and reached for the door one more time.

Eric entered the language center, noticing spider webs around the room, mostly in the TV area. He crept forward, making an effort to minimize any noise. As he stood before the column, he thrust his weapon at the unsuspecting spider. Considering his current condition, he aimed for its abdomen.

He missed his target but was still able to land the strike, merely due to the spider’s size. The attack had nowhere near enough strength to penetrate deeply, but it caused the spider to fall, mostly due to shock. Once it was on the ground, Eric took a step forward and pierced its head.

The other spiders heard the commotion and quickly lunged at him. He backed away while striking at every chance he could. Eventually, he backed away enough that he hit a wall. Whipping his head forward, he was ready to strike at the nearest spider, but that was before he noticed that they weren’t moving anymore.

He took a deep breath and looked around. On the left side of the language center were three small, all glass, study rooms. To the right were seven medium-sized classrooms. He took a good look at each of them.

“Four, huh? Better get to it,” he muttered.

Only one of the glass study rooms and three of the classrooms had their doors closed. He went to each room and only opened the door enough to thrust his spear through.

He used cables and tied them to whatever he could, to ensure that the spiders wouldn’t be able to open the door. The hardest part about what he was doing was the actual tying of the cables, since he only had one usable hand.

He could have asked for help, but he wanted to avoid receiving any. He wanted to guarantee a “solo clear” and he didn’t know the conditions for one.

As the last spider died, multiple windows appeared before him.

Dungeon clear!

First dungeon clear!

Solo dungeon clear!

You have earned the title: First clear.

You have earned the title: Solo delver.

Choose a reward!

Choose a reward!

He sat on a desk and selected both titles.

First clear (C): First dungeon clear in your new world. You earn double the rewards when clearing a dungeon.

Solo delver (F): You have cleared all the monsters in a dungeon by yourself. Your progress in dungeons receives a slight boost. Can be strengthened.

Eric groaned internally. Slightly?! What is this?! He hated it when games used terms like “slightly” or “improved chances” to describe effects. He wanted numbers; numbers would tell him if it was worth it to level it up or not.

Letting go of the annoyance that he felt, he focused on the effects of First clear, which he found to be incredible. “Surprised I’m the first. What is everyone else doing?” he asked himself as he opened the reward windows.

Choose a reward: Skill points/Experience points.

Choose a reward: Skill points/Experience points.

He chose both rewards. He got one skill point and one hundred experience points. One is definitely better than the other, he thought to himself as he noticed another set of windows.

You’re the first to clear this dungeon. +5 free stat points.

You have gained 5 free stat points.

Basically, a free level, wasn’t expecting that. He opened his status and, to his surprise, he noticed that instead of the nine free stat points he should have had, he actually had fourteen.

“Was it affected by first clear?” he asked himself. Without really thinking about it too deeply, he used his free stat points to bring perception, intelligence, and wisdom up to ten, leaving only a single free stat point. “One of them has to help with Mental Focus and Mana Sense.”

Eric got up from the desk and looked around for any bags he could find.

He walked downstairs, his arm full of empty backpacks and handbags, and found everyone more or less where he had last seen them, eating cookies and chips.

As he walked closer, he could see them struggle to not look at his eye. He shifted his head toward Hilda, who was already getting up.

“Here, my boy,” she said as she put a makeshift eyepatch made of gray cloth and the elastic from a hairnet on Eric’s head. “All better. What are the bags for?” she asked, looking at them.

“Thanks,” Eric said as he put the bags on the floor. “We have no food or water. If we’re lucky, we can take what’s here to the outside.”

The other three got up and started to fill the bags with food and water. Up until this point, none of them, including Hilda, had told him what had happened to them, but he really didn’t care. What did interest him, though, was their lack of curiosity about what he was doing upstairs and what was going on outside.

“They’re afraid,” Hilda said softly.

“Hm?”

“They don’t want to know because they’re afraid of the answer.”

“You knew about the giant spiders?” As soon as Eric asked the question, they all stopped doing what they were doing and turned to him.

“Eric… Did you just say giant spiders?” one of the young women asked. She looked to be in her twenties, closer to Eric’s age, while the other woman looked to be in her early thirties.

Eric looked at the woman, not sure if he knew her. Her knowing his name meant nothing, he was aware that most people knew about him. “Yeah, in the gallery, music room and language center,” he said, pointing at each of them. “Outside there are different monsters.”

Eric’s answer didn’t calm anyone, but seeing how casually he answered gave them an odd sense of reassurance. They got back to what they were doing, and after a few minutes, they all left the dungeon.