Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 34
🕑 Added 2023-05-11 13:00:05 +0000 UTCInterestingly to Felix, as he flew, he noticed that the gravity in the world event was slightly stronger than he was used to. He didn’t notice the effects on his body but as he flew, his mana drain was higher than he was used to. He also realized this was just in relation to Trenus, not Earth as he had no way of measuring the and quantifying the gravity to properly compare them. Coming out of the tutorial, his body was much stronger and more resilient too so he couldn’t just qualitatively compare his feeling of the gravity now with his memory. If he had some way to accurately measure distance, he could probably remember the math from high-school physics to figure it out, but it didn’t really matter to him right now.
As Felix flew around the world event area, he noticed that the entire area was mostly a single biome. Everywhere he looked he saw fields of green grass covered rolling hills. The only place where that differed, at least so far, was right around the city. The city itself, as well as a large circle around it, was perfectly flat with not a single hill or divot in sight. In fact it was so flat, it made the area around the city look like a lawn or backyard where the city itself was the house.
The grass around the city was overgrown and there were weeds and clovers thrown into the mix as well but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Felix would have expected. He was starting to think this place was either recreated, held in stasis, or cared for. Given the amount of time The System suggested this city had existed for, Felix realistically didn’t expect there to be anything left. Though honestly, he didn’t know how long D grade materials would last when left unattended, so it was possible this was normal.
As Felix flew, he began to practice spell formation, mostly out of boredom as the landscape was both void of creatures and completely uniform. The practice became slightly mindless though so he pulled out a random E grade dagger he had kicking around in his inventory and began to make it float alongside him. After flying with Amani earlier, he wanted to get used to floating things alongside him so he didn’t need the rope at all. Luckily, that only took a couple spells of concentration so he could use one to fly, along with the inscriptions in his armor, two to practice spell formation, two for the dagger and still have one left over just in case.
He could probably concentrate and simultaneously cast seven or more spells if the spells were simple, but he was already really happy with just six. He knew some day he would get to many more than that but he wasn’t sure what he would ever do with 20 simultaneous spells. The only advantage he could foresee was that he knew spells would get more complicated, so even if he could cast 20 Fire Bolts at once, he would probably only be able to cast a couple teleports, for example.
He had a system in mind for categorizing the spells where he classified the spells by complexity, then he would be able to measure the limits to his concentration in spell levels. If he could cast 10 total levels now and Fire Bolt was level 1 or used one slot, he could simultaneous cast 10 of them. If Fire Bolt was level 2, he could cast 5. That would mean he had 10 slots or levels. It would make it much easier to measure real progress too instead of feeling like he stagnated or degraded because he was casting much higher complexity spells. Unfortunately, he didn’t think the numbers would be as clean as that and he would need to experiment quite a bit to nail them down. Unfortunately, he didn’t really have time to do so now or before the world event as it wasn’t going to make him significantly stronger.
Finally, the majority of a day into his travel, Felix saw the landscape differ. The grass started to grow thinner and gave way to rocks and stones that peeked out of the ground. As he continued to fly, he stowed the dagger so he could focus on his surroundings. He wasn’t sure at first if he was just imagining things but he realized that the city was actually the lowest point in the entire area so far. All of the ground around it gradually rose. Here, on the west end of the world event, it was most pronounced with the gradient increasing steadily. Once Felix had reached almost the western most point of the area, the ground broke off on the edge of a cliff. Felix already knew what was at the bottom of the cliff before he saw it as he heard the waves rhythmically crashing against the rock.
Felix flew right to the edge and looked down at the water below. The cliff stretched into the distance varying between a half a dozen to a dozen meters high. Felix jumped off the edge of the cliff and slowed his descent until he could touch the water. Judging from smell alone, the water likely wasn’t salt water but he was hesitant to confirm by tasting it. Realistically it should be fine, but it was somewhat risky given this was a new planet from an entirely different universe.
Mostly for a change of scenery, Felix flew along the cliff face, right above the water, taking in the sounds and smell. He admired how the water was either simulated or let through the barrier on the edge of the world event as waves passed through it as if it didn’t exist at all. Right when he was at the edge of the cliff face and would have to ascend to ground level again, Felix heard the rhythmic lapping he had gotten so used to, shift just slightly.
It now had a slight echo to it and the tone shifted ever slightly. He wasn’t sure if he would have noticed it at all if he hadn’t gotten so accustomed to the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff by now. He closed his eyes to focus in on the sound and slowly glided towards it. He ended up dipping his feet underwater as he did so but continued onwards anyways. Eventually, the sound got strong enough that he opened his eyes and flew forwards finding himself standing face to face with a small cave entrance. The cave peeked just a few meters above the water level, less if the waves were particularly big and realistically, it was more like a gap between two stones than it was a large cave entrance.
The cave was almost a meter wide so Felix felt somewhat comforted that he wouldn’t get stuck as he glided inside. There was a large vertical wall of stone to both his left and right as he flew, as though the cave was really just a large crack in the otherwise solid stone. The cave narrowed and shortened gradually but he managed to travel dozens of kilometers without it getting too cramped. If he had to press himself between two stones at any point, he would turn back but luckily, that wasn’t necessary at all.
The cave finally widened and transitioned from a slight crack in a massive stone to a wide cavern. Felix flew into a cave lined in porous and weathered rock with pillars of stone stretching from floor to ceiling. It was completely dark at first but Felix cast a couple of simple light spells to illuminate the area. Shining the light downwards, it seemed the floor of the cave was somewhere deep below and wasn’t visible even though the waves had died down and the water was relatively calm this far in.
Felix continued to fly into the cave as it gradually grew wider and more expansive. He had to increase the illumination of his light spells a few times, also moving them further above him, to make sure everything was visible and keep himself from being blinded. After winding through the cavern and having it finally open up into being almost a kilometer wide, the stone that made up the cavern shifted.
Up until this point it had been a dark stone that was clearly weathered by the water below. That dark stone that Felix was so used to by now completely receded over the course of a few hundred meters and transitioned into a light grey, almost white stone. It made it so his light was much more effective too as it was slightly more reflective than the porous and weathered stone was. The water that had covered the entirety of the cave floor up until this point was now a small stream, contained to a groove in the stone just a few meters wide.
Felix traveled further into the cave and quickly began to see obviously unnatural markings all over the walls. There were small holes from picks, stone ripped out of the wall and scattered about along with large chunks of the wall simply missing. They became gradually more obvious as he traveled deeper into the cave until eventually Felix saw mining tools strewn about along with the odd sight of mining carts without wheels. They were more akin to a palanquin or a stretcher with two large poles to carry them. The oddest part though, was that they existed at all.
Why not just use your inventory?
Felix continued through the cavern and noticed that the pillars of stone were intentionally laid out all around the cavern to keep the cave stable and prevent a collapse. The stone was either very solid and it didn’t matter, or it was strategically mined so that the pillars were structurally sound enough to keep the cave from collapsing. As he traveled further inwards, the mine continued to grow and the tools left lying around became increasingly more common. Small caves that extended off the main mine started to appear though they most often didn’t travel very far.
At this point, the cave had stopped winding and twisting entirely and was almost perfectly consistent in width at a hundred or so meters across. There were also pillars of stone right in the middle of the cave every couple hundred meters to keep the cave from collapsing. The stream ran along the right side of the pillars, just a meter across but with no sign of how deep it may be. Felix checked his map and noticed he was about fairly close to the city at this point, about 80% of the way there from the west edge of the world event area.
He continued onwards and when he was about a quarter of the way there, right under where the wall would be, the cave opened up into a massive cavern. The cave he had traveled down to get here appeared to be the main branch that connected to this massive mine. There were others, all equally as consistent in width and perfectly straight, but this one was the only one with a stream of water. In the room, the stream opened up into more of a long and narrow lake and continued off in the direction of the city.
There was mining equipment all over the place in this cave that appeared completely trashed from use more than from decay. There were picks with broken handles and others with dulled tips. There were carts with broken poles and shovels, crowbars, chisels, hammers and cables all strewn about in various states of being broken and overused.
Felix continued following the river and heading towards the center of the city. He had even passed through the wall judging from his map. The mine eventually puckered up into a cavern entrance just a few meters wide taken up almost entirely by the river that flowed through.
Standing on the edge of the cavern that led to the mine, though Felix’s light only extended a few hundred meters, it was just enough for Felix to see the outline of a few buildings. He cautiously stepped forwards and his light extended through the edge of a very run down town or city. The buildings were made mostly of wood with a little stone here and there and looked like they were constructed in the middle ages. The buildings were almost exclusively stores, each one with a worn out sign either hanging by a single remaining chain link or on the ground, just below where they had once hung. Some of the signs were mounted above the doorway, but they were all illegible and in various states of decay.
Between the buildings, Felix saw the first sign of any form of creature he had seen in the entire world event, and it was horrific. Between two of the buildings, stood what looked like a human in poor light, but turned out to be something else. It had the shape of a person, with legs, arms and a head but it’s skin was entirely black and shriveled. As if all the fat in it’s body had been sucked out, the skin held tight to it’s bones and muscles, but there were no outlines of veins. It’s finger’s were slightly longer than normal and it’s nails had extended out into sharp claws. The most horrific part though, was that the creature had no nose, no ears and no mouth. There were holes for the nose, ears, and mouth was completely sealed, as if it had never been there. Felix was also pretty sure it didn’t have eyelids, as it’s eyes were wider than he had ever seen on any human, but he didn’t get any closer to verify. It also had no hair and wore no clothes. The creature simply stood there, occasionally taking a few steps in a random direction, groaning then waiting for a few moments before repeating the process.
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[D] Devoured (Lvl 273) .________________________________________________________________________________________
What the hell is that thing?
It kind of reminds me of something… Try looking at it with your soul sight, if I’m right, you can probably walk pretty close to it without it noticing you, be careful though.
I mean worst case, I have Nova, speaking of which…
Felix reached both arms over his head and gently pulled his sleeping familiar out of his hood. At first he was worried they might fall out as he flew around the world event, but Nova seemed to be perfectly capable of keeping themselves in the hood. Felix woke Nova with a gentle mental nudge and placed them on the ground then communicated to Nova that he wanted them to stay with him for a bit, just in case. Nova mentally meowed in confirmation then silently shifted into their massive metal panther form. Together, they walked as stealthily as they could towards the Devoured and Felix tuned into his soul sight. As he did so, he noticed the emotions roiling out of Nova, though these were intentionally shared. Nova thought about eating the creature, since they were rather hungry, but immediately felt disgust at the idea then annoyance. Felix chuckled to himself and couldn’t help but agree, the creature, whatever it was, was rather disgusting.
Comments
Eramith
Whoops, fixed. Thank you.
Thomas
Links of the post are for last chapter.
