I was already pleased with what had happened in this dungeon so far, with me gaining some initial understanding of the soul. I was looking forward to anything else that this place may have in store. I opened the door which was now unlocked and stepped back into the hallway/room. As luck would have it I noticed another door opening at the same time to my right. It was Kevin! Probably?? "Hey Kevin!" I half shouted. He looked over "Winter! I'm glad you found me!" he yelled back from across the room. "You are looking kind of goblinesque" I said. "Well I know I have the claws, did anything else change? And were you always this tall?" he asked. "What did you do?!" "Well, I used a shapeshifting skill… I can change back, just saying," Kevin said, following up with "is it really that bad?" "No, you just are shorter, have claws, super long ears, sharp teeth, longer mouth, flatter head, smaller nose, and bigger eyes," I said. A "Hmm" came from Kevin whilst nodding in agreement. "What does it do… also how do you use skills?" I asked. Kevin gave me a slight side eye, which was not very slight given the immense size of his eyes.
"It just boosts my stats by a bit, and I thought that all that ink stuff was you using skills," I shook my head. "Ah well, you just say the name of the skill I think, oh yeah look at this!" Kevin exclaimed. He then proceeded to show me his right hand where a symbol lay. "What is it?" I asked. "It's called the rune of ruin, and it lets me do some cool stuff like shooting a big laser," he said with excitement. "Can you show me?!" I asked with a little bit of anticipation. "Well about that, it needs to be charged because I just used it, but I can show you the aftermath," he said. We walked over to one of the doors and he opened it showing me an empty room. The one caveat was the dent in the wall opposite to us. I was unsure how much time had passed but the cracks were still glowing purple. "Wow" I said 'I probably could have done something like that when I was 8, but that is still very impressive,' I thought. "Is this rune how you defeated whatever was out there, or were the dents you testing it?" I asked "No, there was some undead monstrosity, it kind of killed itself mainly, but I sped up the process a bit" he said. "I got the rune from the thing, and this orb and that dagger over there."
He showed me a small red orb and described what it did before showing me a dagger and explained that it was 'a little hard to swing.' "You should try it," he said. So I did and fell. "Pfft," a slight laugh escaped Kevin, he looked very proud of himself. I ignored him and after getting up I remembered something, "Oh yeah, I wanted to try using a skill," I said. "Mana pull v" Nothing happened, I tried again "mana pull?" Nothing once again. "Maybe try saying mana pull five" Kevin said, "Why five?" "Just try it," and so I did. "Mana pull five!" What happened next was honestly unsurprising. Just like when I was 'hijacking' the dungeon wall the world turned blue and everything light in the environment started to levitate. "Stop," I said. "Wow," Kevin muttered, clearly amazed. "Wait, is that what that flash of blue was earlier too?!" He asked, "If you saw one then probably," I muttered. "But do not worry, this has no practical value on its own so I will not really use it again," I said, warping the truth slightly. On one hand it was pretty much useless by itself, but if used with literally any other magic skill paired with Mana Control, It would boost their capabilities to unimaginably unfun levels. You know, because I could end every conflict instantly at this level. It is basically adding liquid air to fire, but like a lot of it. A bit of a tangent but one time I had to freeze an area REALLY REALLY cold, so cold that the air condensed which I had no idea was possible. Then the situation changed and I made the area catch fire and instead of doing that it just exploded and almost wiped the mountain I was on off the map. Anyway, funny little story.
"I feel like i'm forgetting something" Kevin said, "Oh, look at this, it's a combination of the things I found in the three doors I went into." He showed me a monocle with a woven exterior and nice chain to connect it to a shirt. "Did you get anything from the last room?" He then asked. I showed him the aether. "Doesn't look like that fits into this" he said. I smiled slightly " Not physically, however I am pretty sure that thing is a magic device and this should power it," I uncapped the aether. "Dip the end of the chain into this," I said. And so he did. As soon as he did, the aether started to decrease and a faint blue line traced itself around the edges of the monocle. When half the aether was gone it stopped draining. "Do you have any idea what it does?" Kevin asked. "Nope" "i'm gonna ask the system then," "has it been working?" "recently, yes" and in a few seconds Kevin said, "It's called an enhanced barrier monocle, and it lets you see barriers, see through some illusions, and it can deactivate one barrier that is within its gaze," "cool" after a second Kevin came to a realization "lets go get the key with this!" he said excitedly. 'I had forgotten about that already' I thought, "let us," I agreed.
The hole that I made to come in here now had bright blue sparks shooting from it. "Did you break in here?" Kevin asked, "Yes, I had no Idea how else to do it and I did not know if you were alive, so…" "huh, well were there wires or something," "No? What are wires?" "it's nothing, why is the hole sparking then," "that happens when a big spell is overloaded for not being able to complete its function," "what does that even mean," "do not worry about it, let us go," "are the sparks harmless," "probably," "are you sure," "not at all… I will go first, I guess" I walked up to the hole and touched a spark. It felt like my soul got thrust from my body for a second. It was something that I was well aware of, 'mana shock' I thought. When you absorbed too much mana at once or were around too much of it for your body to handle then you would experience this. Luckily it was very temporary this time. If I had my old mana the spark wouldn't have affected me but this body had little to none. "On second thought, try not to touch the sparks," I said and stepped through, with Kevin swiftly following. I finally let go of my control over the wall and it closed.
We came quickly to the room that had the key and Kevin put on the monocle. "I can see the barrier now! Also, the path doesn't end where we thought it did, it continues up to the platform where the key dropped." It was a little strange walking on 'air' but I have flown too much for it to bother me. "I disabled the barrier," Kevin said. I picked up the key, which was pretty basic. It was silver and was the length of my hand. After glancing at the key for a couple of seconds I walked to the door. The keyhole was much too big for the key so I just inserted the key and hoped for the best. As soon as most of the key was in the hole, both the key and the lock vanished. Kevin was already behind me by this point so I opened the door and we both went through. We were met with two paths to take. Turns out it was a maze. There was not much in it, lots of dead ends and un-deads but there were not even any traps. The one thing we did find that was useful before exiting the maze was another key. After what felt like forever we found a door with a lock, to which both Kevin and I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing. We opened it quickly and entered a wide circular room. This room was slightly different from all the other ones in two main aspects. One was the fact that the walls were no longer stone bricks, just stone. And the other bit was the pile of massive bones in the center.
Name: Winter
Age: 22
Level : 19
EXP: 7,900/10,000
Beginner Artist
Stat Points: 20
Stats:
Vitality : 10
Mind : 15
Endurance : 10
Strength : 10
Intelligence : 11
Soul : 28
Instinct : 5
Tinkering : 5
Luck : 0
Skill Points: 14
Skills:
Language
nibhudnMansincelaas(lvasdh11111)
abbksamnacntrlhujk(adlv29678)
Mana Pull V
Elementary flame magic (level 4)
Elementary ground magic(level 4)
Elementary light magic(level 2)
Elementary water magic(level 3)
Soul Awareness I (level 3)
Beginner artist (level 5)
Sleep Status Resistance (level 1)