Checking over the body of the hobgoblin I just killed, I lay all of his belongings out, deciding what is worth taking. He has a small handaxe, a pouch full of teeth, and his armor. I take the axe and cut the metal plates off the armor, saving both for when I run into Daniel, and leave the dead goblin his bag of teeth. I drag the corpse into one corner and then lie down in the opposite corner, trying my best to ignore the smell of the stinking corpse in this small room. After a few minutes of shifting my position to get comfortable, I finally manage to get some sleep.
Five hours later, I wake up mostly refreshed and with enough mana that I feel confident in continuing. After getting up and seeing the hobgoblin is still dead, I move to exit the room. This time, I stand to the side of the door before I open it, out of the door's path. With my sword in one hand, the other reaches for the doorhandle.
[Do you wish to exit? Y/N]
After confirming, the door clicks open, and I push my spatial perception out of the room and into the hall. The hall is empty, devoid of any more goblins waiting in ambush. The door closes itself and locks behind me after I leave, and putting my hand on the doorhandle just asks me if I want to enter again.
I turn around and head back to the first intersection, stopping once I get there. I should try to map this place out. There’s no way I can remember all of the twists and turns I’ll make. With no paper and pencil to make a map with, my only option is engraving it into one of the crystals I have. I take out one of the shitty clear crystals and mark the two paths I have already explored, adding a note for the trial room and how I beat it.
As I walk further into the labyrinth, I continue to engrave the map into the crystal each time my senses come across another branching path or intersection. The stone bricks that make up the walls, floor, and ceiling never change as I continue travelling, always the exact same rough-faced rectangular brickwork, like every single brick is a perfect copy of the one before it. The way there is hardly a gap between them and how they are all perfectly cut makes me think that this place wasn’t created by people. It’s too uniform; not even the undead city is this flawless.
I walk for a while, mapping out each new tunnel as I come across it, often having to backtrack as I come upon a dead end or a path that loops back to a part of the labyrinth I already explored. Eventually, after a whole lot of nothing, I start to get a little bored. How big is this place? It’s got a minimum level of fifteen. How many trials could there be? And why do they have to space them out so far? Most of these hallways are needlessly long, like long enough to contain my entire spatial perception, and then some. I swear, one hallway was close to a quarter mile long. I thought that it would lead to some loot room, or maybe a boss, but nope, it was a dead end.
I don’t know what cosmic trickster designed this dungeon, but they must be looking down on me with pity after that, because I find a trial door shortly after. I mark its location on my map and unlock the door, my senses slipping inside shortly after.
The room looks small, and after another second of observation, I see why. The black fog, which blocks my spatial perception, has solidified and is forming three walls and a ceiling around the door, creating a small cube. This room is weird, and the solid fog walls make me a little nervous, but when in Rome. I step into the room, and nothing changes until I close the door. Hmm, it seems like closing the door is how you start these.
A few seconds later the solid walls start to turn back into fog, which starts to dissipate as soon as it turns into a gas. After about a minute, the process is done, and my spatial perception is blocked no more. The room I’m in is massive, far bigger than I can see. I’m not even sure I’m in a room anymore, as I can see the open sky and a forest that stretches out further than I can see, far further.
Is this some kind of illusion, or is all of this real? Matter of fact, where even is the dungeon? The door that I just came through is gone, and I didn’t even notice it disappear until I turned back around. This whole planet is too fucky. Best not to think about that kind of stuff.
I take a look around me, getting a bearing on my current situation. I am in some kind of forest, or maybe a jungle. I don’t really know the difference, but this seems more like a jungle to me. It’s pretty dense and has vines growing everywhere, and I will need to cut a path if I want to travel anywhere. I think it’s around midday, based on the sun's location, and pretty warm. It roughly lines up with the time outside the dungeon, which just adds more questions I don’t have the answers to.
I expand my senses out in a sphere, covering everywhere around me, even underground and the sky. My senses reach the canopy of most trees, but some of the taller ones still lie outside my reach, and down underground, into what looks like a massive ant colony that stretches further down than I can see. I see massive ants, probably the size of big dogs, marching in a line throughout the tunnels, most carrying some kind of plant matter or dead animal. I can see dozens of them down there, and I’m sure that I only see a small part of their colony.
I quickly scan the rest of the wildlife that I can see, mostly birds, frogs, lizards, and giant bugs. None of them seem openly hostile or like much of a threat, so I pick a direction and start cutting a path with my sword. The vegetation is thick, and the vines seem to resist being cut somehow.
After examining the vines, I notice a steady flow of mana strengthening the vine much like how mana boosting does to my body. Checking a few trees and other plants, I confirm that pretty much everything is using mana. Even the saplings and flowers have a little bit. Hmm, I guess it’s not that weird. Plants evolve too, after all.
After around thirty minutes of arm-tiring, backbreaking work clearing out vegetation, and I haven’t even travelled a quarter mile yet. I did notice something pretty interesting, however, causing me to work slower as I watched, trying not to tire myself out too much.
A large cat of some kind is stalking me and has been for the last fifteen minutes. It entered my perception range on the jungle floor. It probably heard me grunting and chopping away, thinking I would be an easy meal. After it slowly creeps up, hiding behind bushes and trees to cover its advance, it climbs into a tree with a decent vantage over me. It silently jumps from tree to tree when it loses sight of me, slowly following me as I cut my own path forward.
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The cat stalks me for the next forty minutes, and I try my best to look like a clueless fool while I keep a close watch on it. I am done underestimating the wildlife of this planet. After finding a decent spot that will let me move around with a little more freedom, I decide it’s time to fight. I stand still and work in the same spot, hoping it will take the opportunity to strike.
After a few more minutes it moves, repositioning to a tree with a better angle of attack on me. If it weren’t for my spatial perception, I never would have known it was there. It moves that silently. Just after it gets itself positioned in the tree, two bursts of mana launch from it at the same time, one behind it and one in front.
One of the bursts of mana seemingly helps the cat launch forward, while the other one flies in front of the cat, aiming to hit me right before it lands. Boosting my legs with mana I had prepared, I am able to dodge both the attack and the cat with a swift leap sideways. The magic attack slams into the ground first, cutting a footlong gash into the jungle floor. The cat lands gracefully, which is to be expected, and turns to face me.
I expect to see anger or maybe hunger in the beast's eyes, but curiosity is the only thing there as it tilts its head, examining me. It looks like a leopard but is probably fifty percent bigger and has green fur, which makes for a pretty decent camouflage. Both of us stand and stare at each other for a few tense moments before it makes a move.
Another burst of mana launches out from the cat, heading straight for my chest. I quickly use another mana boost to dodge and escape, hiding behind a tree to block any more shots coming my way. The cat retreats deeper into the jungle, climbing back up into the tree canopies once it gets far enough away. I watch it hop from tree to tree, slowly circling my position, probably looking for another good vantage point to attack.
I continuously circle around the tree, keeping it between me and the cat while I think of a plan. I open a rift above it once it stops moving for a second, hoping to plunge my blade into its back, but as soon as I start to form the rift, it reacts to it and flees, somehow sensing the attack. Well, it looks like the tried and true won’t work. It must have some kind of mana sense or something. I could make another one of those spatial blades, but I’d prefer not to use that much mana if I can help it. I go through all my options and gear in my head and come upon one plan that might work, especially with how patient this cat is.
I continue keeping the cat within my perception range without letting it get a direct line of sight on me while I work on engraving the mana crystal in my hand, creating a new weapon to help me win this fight. The crystal is just one of the clear ones, and the enchantment is a simple one. It's the same as the enchantment on the light stones, just with the mana flow and brightness limiters gone. After about ten minutes of hide-and-seek with the cat later, my improvised mana flashbang is done.
After a little while longer, I notice the cat likes to jump to the same spots in trees, probably because I keep circling around the same tree. After figuring out where its next jump will be, I start creating a rift, hoping the cat leaps further than its mana senses can detect my magic. After the rift stabilizes, I see no change in the cat, hopefully meaning it can't detect it, and move so the cat jumps where I want it to. Once I see the cat ready itself for a leap, I start pushing mana into the flashbang, getting ready for the moment it leaps.
As soon as the cat leaves the tree, I flood the crystal with a huge burst of mana and throw it through the rift right before it pops. The cat and the crystal almost reach each other midair, but about two feet before they touch, my flashbang explodes, creating both a bright flash of light and a huge burst of mana in the same area, hopefully overwhelming two of its senses.
My flashbang must have worked, because the cat misses the branch it was aiming for and crashes into the tree trunk headfirst, falling almost sixty feet to the jungle floor below with a painful-sounding thud. The cat quickly gets back up, limping now from what looks like a broken hind leg and injured spine, and slowly starts to retreat. I follow, hoping to finish it off quickly with a rift, but each time I try to create one near it, it still manages to dodge in time. Deciding to end this sooner rather than let it drag on, I move to confront the beast.
The cat and I face each other again, but this time the curiosity is gone from its eyes, replaced with an animalistic intelligence, that of a great predator. I approach slowly, making sure I have enough space to dodge any more ranged attacks it might throw at me. A few steps in, it starts launching them, one right after another, forcing me to dodge rapidly to avoid being hit. After a few more missed attacks, the speed and power of them start to wane, and the time in between becomes longer and longer.
Eventually, I reach the cat, and when I do, I don't find a scared cat cowering from death but a proud beast ready to make its final stand. The cat uses another burst of mana behind it to launch itself at me, and instead of dodging, I charge into my foe, meeting it with the same resolve it’s showing me.
My blade plunges into its chest as its jaws clamp around my shoulder and claws dig into my chest. I boost my entire body with mana, twisting my sword blade as my knife stabs into the creature's side again and again, drawing a river of blood. I manage to stay on my feet, despite the weight of the beast and the pain it’s causing me, and throw the cat off of me.
It crashes to the ground, taking my sword with it. The cat is as good as dead, with barely enough energy to breathe anymore as its blood starts pooling under it. I walk up and kneel next to its head, petting it with one hand as my knife stabs into its neck with the other, only relaxing when its shallow breaths stop.
[You have slain a creature]
[level 28 Wind Leopard]
[You have leveled up to level 18]
“Good fight, Wind Leopard. You messed me up pretty bad.”
My right shoulder has been chewed up pretty bad, bad enough that the arm is definitely out of commission, but thankfully that is the worst of it. My chest got clawed pretty badly. Three long gashes start just above my collarbone and end just above my belly button on my left side. Thankfully my coat seemed to protect me better there, as the gashes aren't very deep.
As the adrenaline of battle starts to wear off, the pain of my wounds replaces it. A constant stinging and throbbing can be felt from them, but I push through it and retrieve my weapons, having a little trouble with only one good arm.
Soon after sitting down to rest and bandaging my shoulder as best as I can with what I have, the black fog starts encroaching on my spatial perception, slowly shrinking in on me. It takes a few minutes for it to reach me, but when it does, it doesn't stop until I am fully within it, encased in darkness.
A few seconds later it recedes a little bit and solidifies, forming three walls and a ceiling around a familiar door. At my feet is the dead cat, which I suppose is my reward for clearing this trial. I don’t really know how to skin animals, but I’m not in a position to waste good materials, so I try my best to skin it with very little knowledge and one good hand.