NOVEL NEXT Chapter 3 - At the Crossroads
After I got all the emotions out of my system I dropped the staff onto what was left of the skeleton and fell back on the floor. I think it was at that moment the reality of my situation fully hit me. I was no longer at home. I would never be back. I have just almost died. There was no guarantee I would survive the next room, or the one after that. I felt tears filling up my eyes again but I fought them. This was no time for a breakdown.
‘I have to move,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Yes.’
Now that adrenaline was slowly leaving my system all the injuries were slowly starting to hurt me. I summoned up the paper doll. Several large deep pink circles were covering the places where I got struck by the staff. There were also a bunch of light pink spots where I assumed I had some scrapes I didn't notice.
That thing is really neat for a quick medical check.
I briefly considered whether I should check if some of these required dressing, not that I had any bandages, but then I remembered I couldn't bleed and was immune to disease.
My new body is really coming in handy.
Out of sheer curiosity, I lifted my tunic, which I then realised felt really damp on my side and checked the spot where the bony bastard hit me. My skin was definitely damaged there, but it looked… weird. My side had this vivid blueish-black discoloration that appeared to be semi-solid. There was also an already congealed streak of black liquid coming out of it.
I quickly covered it back with the tunic.
Nope, I shuddered, my inhumanness really apparent to me for the first time. Alas, dealing with that trauma also had to wait.
‘On the bright side, maybe I’ll die before I have to worry about that,’ I muttered to myself and chuckled.
I saw my notification button blinking like crazy so I figured I might as well check it out.
The following attributes have progressed:
Strength: +70% (70% total progress to level 9)
Dexterity: +10% (10% total progress to level 13)
Agility: +30% (30% total progress to level 8)
Endurance: +50% (50% total progress to level 8)
Vitality: +90% (90% total progress to level 7)
Intelligence +2% (17% total progress to level 17)
Resilience: +5% (5% total progress to level 7)
The following skills have progressed:
Insight: +5% (15% total progress to level 18)
Bastard Sword - Two-handed: +30% (30% total progress to level 2)
Those are quite substantial gains for such a short fight. I wonder - is this because of me fighting a monster of much higher level, or is some other factor at play here?
I rested a bit more, and once I felt ready I gathered myself off the floor, picked my sword up from where I dropped it before the concussive therapy session, resheathed it and started heading towards the exit. I had a slight limp due to my injuries and each step sent a jolt of pain through the left side of my body. Yeah. This would definitely suck.
I carefully opened the door and saw a bored-out tunnel with a stone tile-covered floor. There were more of these funky sconces on the walls lighting my path, but I could see these would only take me so far, as the chamber at the end of the corridor was dark. I tried to remove one of the torches from a sconce but it wouldn't budge. So, I slowly advanced watching my every step. I wasn’t particularly worried about mechanical traps - anything that was actually within the realm of technical possibility would be visible from far away, even in the dim torch light. After all, you can’t hide a wooden beam or a loaded crossbow in a cramped tunnel, even in this shitty light. No, what I was concerned about were magical traps. A trigger plate that causes something to fire a magic bolt straight at your face wouldn’t need much, if any, space I surmised.
I finally got to the end of the corridor. By then I was quite far away from the last torch and something weird happened. Instead of being blind, I was able to see everything quite clearly, albeit in a greyish-blue hue. It was like looking through night vision goggles but in a less annoying colour.
Oh right. I have darksight.
Without exiting it yet, I peered outside. The passage opened into a spacious chamber that looked to be another natural cavern. While the floor was tiled, the rest appeared to have been adapted from a natural structure. Parts of the wall to the left have been dug out, turning it into some sort of a monstrous half-collapsed stair-looking-three-tiered construction, each “step” roughly two metres high. I could climb them in a pinch, between the collapsed bits and the fact that the sides of the steps rather than fully vertical were at a steep incline and had foot and handholds dug into them. I wasn’t looking forward to that though as I knew next to nothing about climbing.
It was really hard to tell from my vantage point but I thought I could see a tunnel entrance on the highest tier. The best I could tell whatever-it-was was abandoned mid-project and then deteriorated over time. For one, I couldn’t see any of the finishing touches, for instance, the stone still looked very rough. There were also no fixtures of any kind on it. In contrast, the remaining walls and the ceiling were smoothed out and some of the walls had those sconces I kept seeing on them. There was also a massive probably white crystal hanging from the ceiling, but like with everything else I could not even begin to guess what the hell it was for.
The room was a crossroads of some kind, as there were corridor entrances in the opposite wall and the one to the right of me. I could see a crack in the wall next to the entrance in front of me, a small trickle of water coming out of it and forming a small pool of water in the corner of that wall and the one with the staircase. There must have been drainage of some sort in the floor there, as from what I could see, the level of water seemed to be stable. This finding had me very concerned, as it meant there probably was either an aquifer or an underground river slowly leaking into this chamber. God only knew how much damage the water already did to the whole complex, especially if parts of it were wholly man-made. The exit to the right lacked any obvious dangers, so I decided I would check it out next.
But first I had to deal with a certain elephant in the room, or rather with ten skeletons lying on the floor. Like anything I’ve seen here so far, there was not even a speck of dust on any of them, but most of them were quite heavily damaged. Some were missing parts of their limbs, and/or had cracked ribs or skulls. There were all sorts of dented and rusty weapons lying by each skeleton and I could see remnants of tattered clothes and armour on most of them. One skeleton was notably different from the rest though. It was short, stocky, naked and, most importantly, undamaged. The skeleton was holding a rusty short sword in its bony hand.
A dwarf? I wondered and unsheathed my sword.
Slowly, I walked into the chamber. Predictably, the dwarven skeleton started to get up the moment I entered. Deciding not to entertain any of its bullshit, and against the protests of my wounded leg I charged it and kneed it in the ribcage the moment the skeleton was up. Its brittle bones shattered and the monster fell back to the ground. As the undead tried to gather itself from the ground I stomped on its head shattering it.
Level 0 Ancient Dwarven Skeleton has been slain
You have earned 50 experience points (450/500 total experience points progress to level 1)
Level 0? That’s an odd enemy spread. “We never expected you to survive the first room, so we didn't bother with setting up this one”?
I shrugged. I would take an easy win. I looked around. None of the other skeletons seemed inclined to come and say hello, so I figured that I might rummage around a bit, and see if anything useful was left.
My search proved mostly fruitless. Initially, I approached each skeleton carefully and poked them with a sword from a safe distance, but after a few failed to react, I resheathed my sword and walked around freely. Sadly, the skeletons were either picked free of useful items or never had any to begin with. I was just about to give up when I saw a small glass bottle filled with some liquid hidden under one of the bodies. I picked it up and examined it.
Item: Lesser Health Potion
Type: Alchemical
Rarity: Specialist - Common
Effect: Restores a small amount of health
I wanted to quaff it immediately, but after a brief consideration decided to save it for later.
I might have worse wounds to deal with later. Gotta be strategic with my… two resources. Well… three if you count the canteen.
I put the bottle inside my backpack and headed inside the right-side tunnel. Like with the previous one the walls and ceiling were smooth stone, and the floor was covered in tiles. Thanks to my darksight I could see clearly what was in front of me, best I could tell the ability had a range of about twenty metres, so I walked at my normal pace. My leg almost didn’t hurt anymore, so I wasn’t hindered by that either. The tunnel was fairly long - it took me maybe three minutes to cross it. The only interesting feature of it was a burned-out spot on the floor, roughly halfway through. It seemed like someone splattered acid there. I stepped over it and moved on. Eventually, I saw the exit of the tunnel, but to my dismay, I discovered that the chamber it led to was partially collapsed. I wanted to turn around, but then I spotted a closed wooden chest to the left of the pile of rocks that likely blocked another tunnel.
Suspicious, I thought, as the chances of there being anything useful in that chest were astronomically low.
Come to think of it… it must have been the luckiest chest in existence given how all the rocks have just missed it. Still… I wasn’t in a position to be picky. I could always take the “poke with my sword” approach and leg it if it turns out to be a mimic. So, with minor trepidation, I entered the chamber. I made a few steps towards the chest when something hit me from the right side, like a belated visit from Truck-kun.
First, there was a brief sensation of flight, and then I bounced a few times off the floor. Finally, my back hit the wall. I wanted to both scream and vomit from pain, but that would waste precious seconds I likely did not have.
‘Oh, you absolute motherfucker…’ I said through gritted teeth and somehow dragged myself to my feet. I looked at the monster. It was a tall, muscular man wearing what I recognized to be the olive drab uniform of the US Army. His skin was pale and waxy and his hate-filled eyes shone with light. This was no mindless monster like the skeletons. It started lumbering towards me.