As we walk towards the exit and loot room, I start to circulate my mana around my wounds, slightly speeding up my body’s healing and dulling some of the pain. After we get to the room, each of us stands in front of one of the identical chests. I try to peek inside with my spatial perception, but each box is shielded against it, completely blocking my senses.
The chest is fairly small, about one foot wide and eight inches deep, made of a plain brown wood with iron bands and hinges. It’s about six inches tall, and the top is flat, with an engraving of a labyrinth on it. I unlatch the clasp on the front and open it, taking a look inside.
Inside, the box is filled with silver and gold coins, dozens of them, all stamped with a picture of a labyrinth on one side and an anthill on the other. I pick up one of each coin and run my mana through it, confirming they’re just base metals before I move on to the other item, a small white dagger.
After picking up the blade and examining it with my mana, I quickly realize it’s not made from metal but from bone. It’s been carved from one solid piece of bone, and the whole thing is about a foot long from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle. The edge is sharper than any metal blade I’ve ever seen, likely due to the enchantments running through it, which cause the edge to sharpen when mana is run through them.
I put the knife back in the box and close it, noting that it doesn’t block my perception anymore. I look over to Daniel, who also got the same coins as I did, but his item is different. He got a black cloak, made out of what seems to be a thin and light material.
“What’s that?” I ask him as I send my chest into my storage core, feeling the orb get a bit heavier on my waist.
“An enchanted cloak, but I can’t figure out what it does.” Daniel says as he hands it to me. “Maybe you can figure it out.”
I take the cloak into my hands and start examining it. I can’t figure out what it does just by following the mana pathways, but based on the pathways themselves, it requires a low amount of mana almost constantly to function. After almost a minute of feeding mana into it, I feel my hands start to warm up, and after balling the whole cloak around my hands, I figure out its purpose.
“It’s a heated cloak. Feed mana into it, and it warms you up.” I tell Daniel as I hand him back the cloak.
“Oh, that’s cool. What did you get?” He asks me while he throws the cloak over his shoulders.
“Silver and gold, and this knife made of bone.” I take the knife out of my storage and hand it to him.
“Interesting. What does the enchantment do?”
“It sharpens the blade when you run mana through it. But it grinds down the edge to do it, so it’s not really a combat enchantment.”
“Still pretty badass, and that bone is pretty mana conductive. It could be from a strong beast.” He hands the knife back to me, motioning to Corvax next.
One of Corvax's hands has a shimmering orange barrier around it, like a glove made from his mana. The barrier covers his entire hand, stopping just past the wrist. It seems to be emanating from a new ring on his finger. After a few seconds the barrier flickers and recedes into the ring, and a smiling Corvax turns to us.
“Look at this! It makes a shield around my hand!” He activates the ring again, and his orange mana flows out from the ring and over his hand.
I wonder how strong that barrier is and if it’s more effective against physical or magical attacks. Once we get somewhere safe, I’ll ask Corvax if he wants to do some testing. Maybe he’ll let me examine it as well. Some kind of defensive item would be nice, especially since I keep getting injured the most.
After we all look over each other's items, we each store our boxes, and I turn my attention to the last reward of this dungeon, my awaiting notifications.
[You have slain multiple creatures]
[Level 17 Support Ant]
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[Level 13 Defender Ant]
[Level 15 Defender Ant]
…
[Level 30 Royal Sentinel ant]
[Level 30 Royal Sentinel ant]
[You have leveled up to level 20]
[You have leveled up a skill]
[Space Control] lvl 15
Royal sentinel ants, huh? I was expecting to have to fight a queen or something, but maybe this dungeon isn’t a high enough level for that? Or maybe we didn’t have enough people with us for the boss fight. This dungeon does have a maximum of ten occupants.
“Well, I’m leaving.” Daniel says, to which Corvax enthusiastically nods.
We all reach down and touch the magical array in the middle of the floor, getting a [System] message when we do.
[You have found a dungeon exit]
[Do you wish to exit?]
I mentally accept, and soon I feel mana rise up from the floor and envelop me, just like it did when we entered. Once the mana forms a full barrier around me and my gear, space starts warping, and just a few moments later, all three of us are back in the small room we entered from.
The black fog is still on the stairs, blocking my perception, so Daniel goes up first, then Corvax, then me. We all traverse the black fog without issue and soon stand in the small wooden shack built over the dungeon entrance array.
My spatial perception washes over the camp, and the only things I see are dead goblins and the charred remains of the goblin camp. The only structures still standing are the walls and the central building we are standing in.
“Well, the camp’s clear.” I say.
“Good. I was worried they might resettle this camp if we took too long.” Daniel responds, immediately leaving the shack.
I follow behind Corvax, and as soon as we step out into the sunlight, he starts glowing. Lines of light start to appear all across his skin, like little veins carrying sunlight itself throughout his body. They get brighter and brighter as time goes on, and I lean in close to get a better look.
It’s not mana. Of that I am certain. My [Mana Sense] has absolutely no reaction to it, even though I can tell there is some kind of energy flowing there.
“What is that? Is this what you meant by the Sun’s Blessing?” I ask, mesmerized by the patterns the light makes across his skin. It looks like a moving tattoo that also glows.
Corvax lets out a big laugh and starts giving us an explanation as we leave the camp and start heading back to the city, back to our tower. “I have what’s called the Sun’s Blessing, yes. It is something that a small number of my people are born with, and it is part of the reason we were kept underground for most of our lives. The Blessing allows me to absorb and store sunlight within my own body as long as I can come into contact with it.”
“What can you do with the light?” I ask, my eyes still following the flowing lines on his body.
“Sunlight has two main qualities. A nourishing light that heals and a scorching light that destroys. I am much more in tune with the former, however. The destructive power of sunlight has always been difficult for me to grasp.”
After a little while of walking, I notice that his small wounds seem to have healed a little bit, but one of his arms still hangs limply at his side. His healing is not quite as strong as Stella’s healing skill, but it also doesn’t take mana. It takes sunlight, which he basically has an unlimited amount of as long as it’s daytime.
The rest of the walk back to the city is as uneventful as it is interesting, with Corvax showing off his sunlight powers after he sees how curious I am. He isn’t able to use it externally very well, which he says is where its destructive powers lie. He looks embarrassed when I ask him if he can heal others, saying that it can be done, but he doesn’t have the control required. By the time we make it back to the desert around the city, it’s almost nighttime, meaning we walked back for most of the day, as we left the former goblin camp just a few hours after sunrise.
Daniel grabs some wood from the forest for a fire after we fill up our waterskins, saying he plans on cooking some of the royal sentinel ant meat he grabbed. We try to hurry across the desert, but with all of our injuries, it’s a pretty leisurely pace. We arrive at the wall without issue and start walking along the tunnels and up the stairs, eventually reaching the top of the wall and the tower we have been calling home.
After getting inside and locking the door, we all let out some of the tension and stress that has kept us moving these past few days and slump down to the floor, exhausted. Daniel builds a small campfire on the roof of our tower a few minutes later and invites us up for a meal of fresh-cooked ant meat.
I’m far too hungry to refuse even ant meat, and Corvax looks excited at the prospect of eating it, so I join the others on the roof, looking out over the city as the meat cooks. Once the first steak is done, Daniel cuts it into three pieces, and we all eat around the warmth of the fire.
The ant meat is good, really good. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t eaten proper food in days, or if ant meat is just that good, but the three of us finish all the meat that Daniel collected and go to sleep with bellies full of warm food.