Evolution of a Healer

Before attempting to activate the diadem, Cyn checked on her resources.

Health Points: 40/40

Mana Points: 72/100

Stamina Points: 40/40

While asleep all of her resources had fully regenerated, but she had used Restoration to fill Hex’s health points after he got smacked upside the head. Scott had underestimated his own strength, and failed to consider that the Rogue may have a small health pool. Apparently that one strike had taken nearly a third of Hex’s max life. Based on the excessive amount of mana it took to top him off compared to other uses of Restoration, Cyn suspected he may have had a concussion or another internal injury, not just health point damage. The Guardian apologized at that point, and promised to be more mindful of friendly fire. He did not promise he would not end up smacking one of them again, just that he would be more mindful of the damage he caused.

Closing her menu Cyn reached up to press the fingers on one hand to the diadem. She could probably do this without her hands, since she was literally wearing it, but for the first time she thought it might be easier this way. Using the others advice on how the waterskins and Dana’s quiver worked, she focused on the idea of infusing mana into it.

The result was immediate. While Cyn had expected just the gem to glow, functioning like a headlamp and creating a cone of light forward, instead everything in a full, perfect circle approximately 40 feet in diameter around her was now clearly visible. The entire area was awash in a pale blue light, but it did not appear to have a directional source. This completely eliminated all shadows within the diadem's aura. Outside the aura however, was totally unaffected. Light is expected to fade as you get further from the source, but this sourceless light cut off sharply at the edges of its radius instead.

Cyn barely registered all of this before quickly bringing up her menu to check her mana. While it did not feel like it was draining continuously like Restoration did, the up front cost of the spell had made her feel almost dizzy.

Mana Points: 36/100

Exactly half of her remaining mana. That number was far too specific to be a coincidence. Closing her menu again Cyn turned to see what her party thought of it.

They all were looking around, appearing a bit awed. Sam spoke first, “You look like you are wearing a crown of blue glow sticks.” Cyn had actually assumed the diadem itself wasn’t giving off light, since any significant glow should have been noticeable that close to her eyes.

“I would have compared it to a halo, but glow sticks work too.” The Warrior looked sheepish as Dana spoke, but Cyn quickly moved the subject off of how she looked.

“Half my mana to infuse it. I am not sure how long it will last, but it's not draining more mana to keep up.”

“Does that mean you are low on mana now?” Hex clearly had his priorities straight, and how she looked was not even on the radar. Could they continue as planned?

Cyn shrugged at his question. “Lower than I was, but I have about as much as when we arrived here. We should take a look at the tunnels you saw movement in after the others, just to give me a bit of time to regenerate. I think it should take less than ten minutes to get it all back.”

“Great. At the very least, that light should make it harder to ambush us and make it easier to avoid stepping on sharp rocks.” He was clearly relieved. Being able to more easily pick safe steps was more important than ever, since now only Scott had shoes. Dana couldn’t keep wearing heels without causing her feet to bleed, and the rough terrain increased her risk of falling with them on.

“It’ll also announce our presence to anything in here that isn’t blind, but I suspect we will be announcing ourselves with noise and vibration long before they can see us.” Scott spoke as he moved to take the lead. “You should walk third, Cyn. That light doesn’t seem to care about line of sight.”

“Yes, sir.” She gave a mock salute to the Guardian, who snorted and just shook his head before starting their jaunt towards the furthest tunnel, the closest ones having had movement detected in them. They had previously discussed her walking directly behind the Guardian, assuming they would be working with a frontal cone of light, but she was not going to complain about being relocated to the center of the conga line.

Scott would take the lead, focusing on taking an easy path and kicking debris out of the way for the bare feet behind him. With Cyn now holding the metaphorical torch in third position, Hex had been moved forward to second. His role remained the same, since even with her previously going to be walking ahead of him, the Rogue was tall enough to watch over the Guardian’s shoulder into the darkness outside the aura of light for possible threats ahead. Dana and Sam took the rear, with the Warrior being in the last position. Sam had proven himself most likely to be able to handle being ambushed from behind, and apparently his cloak was actually fairly durable so he did not mind the threat of being attacked at that angle too much. Both of them, and Cyn, planned to keep an eye out for threats to the sides as they walked.

The walk back to the center of the chamber where they first arrived was still slow and nerve wrecking. They could not go in a straight line, having to take a very convoluted path around the cavern due to the web coating being too big to step over in places. The light helped immeasurably, but once the party was away from the wall, the ceiling rose, and it was made clear that the diedems aura wasn’t a cylinder, but a dome or sphere. It no longer reached the roof of the cavern.

They were not quite back to the center when the diadem's aura washed over the first arachnid corpse. It was not directly in their path, but off to the side and near the edges of the light. Based on its crushed underside, this was probably the one that Sam had kicked. Cyn tried to use Inspect on the corpse from a distance, wondering if it would even work.

Illuminant Harvester - Level 2

Not exactly helpful. She already knew what they were called and their level from her notifications, and there was no other information there. It’s possible knowing a creature's level beforehand could help tell her if they were outmatched, but she assumed using Inspect on anything living would give the same reaction Hex had when they first met. If the creature knew Inspect was being used on it, the party could not take advantage of knowing its level to retreat instead of engage.

On a whim, she also tried Inspect on one of the thick ropes of web stretching up to the ceiling nearby.

Illuminant Web Mass - Multiple Illuminant Threads twisted together to form a thick rope.

Illuminant Threads have lost adhesiveness in the creation process.

Has medicinal properties.

Has toxic properties.

Created by Illuminant Harvester

Cyn was so startled by the unexpected influx of information she stopped walking, causing Dana to bump into her from behind.

“Wha…”

Cyn did not give the Archer a chance to finish asking her what was wrong. “Guys, use Inspect on the big web!” The rest of the party stopped, Scott only glancing back at her briefly before joining the rest in following Cyns advice.

After a few moments Hex spoke up. “The threads are the small strands everywhere. I checked them out while we were stopped, and it showed basically the same thing. Except it said it was highly adhesive. I figured the big ones would have been the same.”

Scott leveled the Rogue with a look and Hex was quick to preemptively defend himself. “I didn’t think it was important enough to share! We already knew it was sticky, and the properties don’t really matter if it is both medicinal and toxic.”

The Guardian sighed and rubbed his face, and when he spoke he sounded a little exasperated. “You are partly right. But we have to consider that we all came from very different lives, and all think a little differently. Just ‘cause it's not important to you, doesn’t mean one of us can’t make use of it.”

Hex threw up his hands and did not argue more. Dana then started to step away from the line while speaking. “I want to check if that means some or all of the adhesiveness. If it's all, we might be able to cut it down to use later.”

Sam quickly stepped after her. “I’ll go too. Just in case.” Cyn was thankful Sam immediately stepped in to go with the Archer. She really did not want to remind Dana what happened last time she separated herself.

As it turned out, the Illuminant Web Mass had lost all adhesiveness. It took a while to get down though, and after some discussion Dana shot multiple arrows upward in order to sever it partly from the ceiling. Her archery seemed to improve with each shot though, and Cyn chose to count that as a blessing instead of focusing on the time being spent. The Archer admitted earlier that she had never shot a bow before coming here, but her class gave her the most basic of knowledge. The others had similar passives for melee weapons. However, practice was needed to really be able to use them effectively.

After a handful of shots the mass was frail enough for Sam to snap with a sharp tug. With the height of the cavern they ended up with a lot of rope. For now, the Warrior wrapped it around his torso to carry before they continued on to check out the first of the five possible exits. While waiting for them to gather the rope, the light of Cyns diadem suddenly went out with no warning. A few startled shouts, and one mana infusion later, she hypothesized it would stay lit for one minute per mana consumed. No one had a way to tell the passing time exactly, but it had felt like a little more than half an hour. If it stayed lit close to an hour this time, since she had put half of her full pool in, Cyn would consider the hypothesis proven.

The first tunnel was pretty disappointing, having been blocked by a cave-in a short distance from their current cavern. They quickly moved on to the next option, only to find a similar situation. Caved in. Hex said he had a passive skill that made him think there was something treasure-like on the other side of the cave-in here, but the party agreed it probably was not worth pursuing.

The third tunnel had one of the Illuminant Harvesters right at the entrance, clinging to the wall in complete stillness. It did not seem to be able to sense the light from Cyns diadem and was waiting to presumably ambush whomever walked near it first. Without the extra light it would have been close to impossible to see until it was too late. Dana managed to hit it with an arrow to start, and Scott quickly finished it off with his mace as it jumped from the wall straight towards them. Without an ambush advantage a single Harvester would not be dangerous to anyone but Cyn. Even Dana could probably just use her arrows as melee weapons if she thought about it. Cyn really needed to test Mana Ball to get some idea of what it did, but she still felt like doing so in a cavern would be stupid except as a last resort. The third tunnel seemed to continue on without blockage, but everyone wanted to at least take a look at the final two before making a decision.

The fourth tunnel seemed much the same, sans Harvester. The final tunnel, though, was much different. This was one of the tunnels Hex had seen movement in, and now they knew why. It was narrower than the previous four tunnels, but absolutely infested. And not just with Harvesters, either.

The party had chosen not to get close enough for their light to reach, making details impossible, but there was definitely at least one other kind of arachnid hanging out over there. They could only tell because it was smaller than the Harvesters the party had fought thus far. Cyn was pretty sure they were baby harvesters. She could just barely make out rounded shapes made of the glowing web further down the tunnel, but no one else seemed to be able to see them. Dana suggested her high mind stat might be affecting her ability to see, and that it would explain why Archers gained mind on level up. Cyn had also been the first to see the spiders during the ambush, so the theory made sense.

And now the party had to decide what tunnel to take, which was not as simple as most of them expected.

“I think we have to go down the infested tunnel.” Hex was the first to speak, and predictably the entire party, except for Cyn, looked at him like he had lost his mind.

“Excuse me?”

“You blind, boy?”

Sam was just vehemently shaking his head.

Cyn quickly spoke up, attempting to put forth a middle ground and make the trio of dissenters understand why the Rogue was right. “I agree with you Hex, but I think we should at least try the other options first. To get experience, if nothing else.” She locked eyes with Scott, who Cyn believed was most likely to understand her reasoning, before continuing. “Don’t forget, this is a dungeon. The system, or whatever the hell you want to call the phenomenon that put us here, literally called it the first floor of a dungeon. Dungeons have bosses that need to be beaten, and that tunnel screams ‘this way to danger’ for me.”

She watched Scott's face shift as she spoke. He understood, like she expected, but he was not happy about it. Hex spoke again to drive the point home for all of them. “None of us chose to be a part of this. We were placed here, together, with no way to go back to our lives. There is no fucking way we are just going to stumble across an exit to wander out of. The way out is through.”

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