I calmly read the screen before me in an absolutely calm manner.
‘Difficulty: Death is Certain?’
I am calm.
Negative seven as a status ailment?
Did I mention I am calm?
Condition… ‘Tarnished Body’…
I am infinitely cal- okay, that one hurt a bit.
I am no expert at these kinds of things, but it seems that wherever I am is some sort of game world.
Maybe it is a simulation? Perhaps I am dead and this is my personal Hell? I guess I never took this being a dream off of the table just yet.
My feeble mi- wait. I peep at the screen once again and revise my thoughts. My adequately valued mind is swirling with all of the possibilities that could explain my current situation. I feel my breath quicken as my heart feels like it is confined in a tiny cage of bone. Cool sweat trickles down my back and I force myself to close my eyes and hold my breath. My hands bury themselves in Pawl’s soft fur, and I release a shaky breath.
In: 1…2…3…Good.
Out: 1…2…3…Good.
I repeat this process until my mind can overcome the plights of my body.
Panic attacks, crying, screaming, praying- they do nothing. I learned this fact a long time ago.
Cogitation Lvl. 2>
I release my grip on Pawl and open my eyes. My thoughts are smooth and I re-read the screen in front of me, my breath now an even rhythm.
If I am reading the screen correctly, it looks like I have been here for over two days now. The fact I already had a skill at level 2 is surprising, but the fact I am also at Level 3 just proves that I’ve been here for a time. I’m not exactly sure what the ‘Time Left’ line is supposed to mean. Is that my death timer or something?
My attention trails down to my stats. From what I can tell, I have a negative BDY value due to one of my conditions. I try to command the screen to tell me more, but nothing happens. I even try to touch it again, seeing if I can tap the words like a link. Once again, no luck.
This interface is legitimately useless. I mean, how can someone create such a detailed dream, hallucination, game, or whatever this is, but can’t even provide a help desk or anything. For a moment, I think that maybe it is associated with another command word like I used earlier, but if I am being honest, I would rather mess around with my Status blind than begin guessing what command causes the helpdesk to appear, if it even exists at all.
Turning my attention back at the screen, I look at my conditions and hazard a guess that the temporary ‘Tarnished Body’ condition must be what is causing my negative BDY value. My main reason for this logic is the fact it has ‘body’ in the name.
I know. I’m a genius.
Also, I severely hope that the ailment isn’t from ‘Mana Mutation,’ because whatever that is, is permanent. Finally putting it off long enough, I clear my throat.
“Use unallocated points on Body.”
I close my eyes and relax my body, waiting for pain to come. A dull pressure works its way through my body, but it only lasts a few seconds and nothing else happens.
I’m almost disappointed.
When I open my eyes, I am shocked to find that my vision is no longer blurry and poor. Secondarily, due to the discovery of my newfound 20/20 vision, my toes twitch in shock. Focusing my attention on my legs, I watch them do a little jig. I quickly stop though when Pawl’s ear flicks in an annoyed manner. Making sure to pet him with extra care, I look back at the screen to see if anything has changed.
[Status of Sebastian Bet]
Pillar Difficulty: Death is Certain
Floor 1: The Last Tribe
Time Used: 02:11:26:13
Time Left: 2187:12:33:47
Level: 3
Body (BDY): 3
Mind (MND): 6
Agility (AGI): 4
Power (PWR): 3
[Unallocated Points: 0]
Class: Undecided
Form Association: Undecided
Skills:
Emit [Lvl 2]
Polarize [Lvl 1]
Cogitation [Lvl 2]
Condition: Mana Mutation [Permanent]
It actually worked. My sickly body of five years is somehow back to the state of an average person.
Tears threaten to fall from my eyes, but their salty sting pulls me back to reality. The sting of my tears. The continuous itchy feeling on my skin. The cold shackle. The soft fur on my fingers. The hard rock putting pressure on my back.
This is real.
The thought flows through my mind with absolute clarity. I am no longer in a hospital. I am no longer diseased and helpless.
But I am in a strange cave.
Dismissing the screen, I finally look at my surroundings with real purpose. I can clearly see that I am in a very large stone chamber. My new vision also allows me to identify the flickering lights on the wall opposite of me. It seems like a fire is lit somewhere behind me, and its flame is projecting some crude looking shadow figures onto the wall like a puppet show.
Very strange.
I look down at my wrist, finally discovering why the metal of my shackle is so cold. For some reason, there are pieces of frost clinging to the metal. Furthermore, there is a small pool of water next to me: It seems as if the ice has been melting for quite some time.
Strange indeed.
I look at Pawl, wondering how he can stay so peacefully calm in our position. He just slowly blinks back at me with his soft green eyes. Cute.
Suddenly, I remember the blurry figures that sit around me.
My gaze slowly pans around the room, taking in the small, blistered corpses of an unidentified species. Now that I have my senses back, I can smell the thick scent of blood and slightly rotted flesh filling the cave.
This actually reminds me of the hospital a bit.
It looks like the creatures used to have greenish skin and pointed ears. They are quite tiny too, maybe reaching the size of a human toddler. The sight alone confuses me, as I also don’t see any evidence of what killed them.
I continue to search the room with my eyes, but there is no visible weapon or liquid other than the water next to me that could explain what I can only describe as sever chemical or fire burns. It is hard to tell due to the rotting, but I am familiar enough with the process that I can see some purplish skin around the main sections of blisters, meaning that the creatures could have been exposed to radiation or funneled heat for a prolonged period.
With a bout of worry, I check Pawl to see if he has any similar burns, but he seems completely fine, and he does nothing but purrs as I check him from head to toe. I remember something from earlier, and I begin searching my own pasty skin.
I find small blisters on various areas of my body. It seems the itching is possibly due to some sort of agent in the air.
Given the fact I am in an unknown place, with dead creatures that are clearly not human, I guess it isn’t too far of a reach to say that the air of this mysterious place could be toxic. But then again, my breathing is fine, and Pawl doesn’t seem to be struggling in the slightest.
I look down at myself again, and then I look at the bodies. All of them have shackles binding one of their wrist-like appendages as well. I look to my direct left and right. There are various shackles that are open and empty. On first glance, there looks to be tens of these empty shackles, maybe more.
“What happened here?” I ask no one in particular.
I strain my arm to grab one of the nearest empty shackles. As my fingers brush its slick surface, I feel a slight cold seep into my skin. I reach out to another- cold again. Upon closer inspection, I can see small clear spots on the floor of the cave. From what I can tell, it appears that condensation had fallen onto the ground and evaporated, leaving behind slightly indented spots of dirt.
“Were all of the cuffs frozen or something?” I mumble, my confusion becoming more evident.
I stick a finger into my dry mouth and then hold it up in the air. There is no breeze down here, and the saliva doesn’t get colder at all. In fact, the entire room feels pretty warm and cozy besides the corpses and rotting smells.
< Emit Lvl. 2 -> Emit Lvl. 3 >
I blink at the notification. I haven’t been doing anything other than looking around, so why did level? Now that I think about it, I had another skill that also leveled while I wasn’t doing anything. Does that mean they passively go up with time? No, that can’t be true. If it was, then my other skill should have leveled already.
Cogitation is like thinking, right? I have been thinking this whole time. In fact, I remember my thoughts feeling much smoother after I got a notification that says I learned it.
But how did I activate it? Did it just come automatically because I was thinking?
I focus for a moment on stopping the skill. Almost immediately, my mind feels slightly heavier, and my thoughts somewhat sluggish. I turn the skill back on mentally, and like a cool breeze, my thoughts seem to flow faster again.
I find the entire process very interesting.
What is and then?
Similar to how I activated <Cogitation>, I think about activating , and suddenly, my vision grows dim like I just put on a pair of sunglasses. I turn it back off and blink as the light brightens to the level it was before.
I got built in sunglasses as a skill. How wonderfully stupid.
I feel a bit disappointed, but I don’t let it bother me too much as I try and activate . I wait a moment, but I don’t feel like it did anything. I try again, and there is a feeling in my head like a mental block, as if it is already on. Now that I think about it, I felt this the first time I tried as well.
Instead of turning it on, I try to turn it off, and almost instantly, my skin starts to itch more than before. Instinctively, I use again, and leave it on like it was before, making the itching sensation weaken a bit.
A dark thought worms its way into my brain.
I check my status again. is at level 3. When I woke up, it was at level 2. When I tried to use it, it was already activated.
I’ve already been here for over two days.
I woke up at level 3.
There is no experience bar in my status, but I doubt I would just level up for no reason. How do you usually level up in games?
I look around the cave again. My eyes linger on each body sitting around me. They are covered in blisters and burns but I am fine.
…
I killed everyone in the cave.