Maybe if I left it alone, the fire would go out? Fire had to burn something, right? It couldn't be going like that with no fuel. Not even if it was a magical black fire left behind by a bloody dragon.

I turned my back on it and fled a short distance up the corridor. The fire was every bit as wrong as the dragon had been. Looking at it felt like my eyeballs were being gently sucked from my head. Closing my eyes helped, but I could still feel it there. Was this what the tolerance skill meant about the strain on my body? And if so, it also mentioned some risk to my sanity.

Maybe the fact I'd already lost it offered more protection than the tolerance skill. I couldn't lose something twice, after all. Not without finding it again in between, and I'm sure I would have noticed. It wasn't as if I was going to discover my sanity hidden beneath a rock.

While the fire would be handy for training my new tolerance, I wanted to get the shrines repaired first. Fashioning myself a silk blindfold so that I could only see the floor in front of me, and not the otherworldly pillar of flame, I made my way to the first village. There were no longer any vines trailing the floor, nor were there the bowls or fruits. I didn't spot a single corpse. Perceive presence remained silent. Sense mana, on the other hand...

Evolution conditions met: Sense mana ranks up to perceive mana

Mana is ubiquitous throughout the world, present in the air, seas, earth, and all things, living or otherwise. Nevertheless, there are differences, and someone skilled in mana detection can tell much about someone from the mana they possess. You have felt the incredibly powerful mana of an ancient dragon, earning you this upgrade from sense to perception. This skill permits you to sense the presence and type of mana with moderate range and fidelity.

The pillar of flame was far out of my detection range, but that didn't matter. The mana it was outputting easily reached this distance. Even with the upgrade, I couldn't see anything through the glare.

It wasn't only the vines that were missing. Once I arrived at the site of the first village, if not for my map telling me I was in the correct location, I would never have known anything had ever been there. The ground was scoured stone, with no sign of debris. Thank goodness I'd looted the place already.

New side quest: Make an offering to the destroyed shrine

You have entered a sacred place, but the shrine that should be present here has been utterly annihilated by those who would contend the will of the Goddess. Make an offering to recreate the shrine and restore her blessing to this land.

Clear conditions: Sacrifice mana crystals worth a minimum of 200 mana to the destroyed shrine.

Reward: Restore the biome of the fourth floor of arx sanctus.

I peered at the quest description. It wasn't the level up that I'd been expecting, but it did make sense; this place was in even worse condition than the first floor had been. The question was what would be restored. Would it bring back the megalomaniacal tree that the dragon had destroyed? The carnes multiformis? If it brought back the guidance, I'd be better off ignoring the quest. Even if it did, with the black fire still burning, would it immediately die again?

Which would I prefer to have guarding the staircase down? A mind controlling, rapist tree, or a pillar of flame that I couldn't even look at for more than a few seconds at a time? Was there a third option? Maybe there was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be even worse than the first two.

Crossing my fingers, I pulled out a mana crystal that I guessed was worth somewhere over five hundred and offered it up.

Side quest complete: Make an offering to the destroyed shrine

For making an offering worth more than 500 mana, additional reward granted: The corruption of the Void is purged from the area.

I was standing in the middle of a bustling village. No, village was inaccurate. The shrine was still at the centre of a triangular plaza, but the buildings that lined its edges were larger and grander than before. There was more noise and stronger scents. Perceive presence picked up countless signatures. This was easily big enough to be called a town. Through my olfactory perception, I could see members of all four genders rolling around, and no-one was trying to kidnap, enslave, rape or murder each other.

I could also smell a lot of the many-limbed blobs staring at me. Or at least, I assumed they were staring at me. It was hard to tell when they had no faces, but the way that they'd all stopped and several of them were pointing in my direction was highly suggestive.

"Hello?" I tried, in the hopes that if they weren't at war with each other, they might refrain from attacking me this time, too. "Anyone around who speaks this language?"

There was no response. That additional quest reward, combined with the uncomfortable heat having vanished, suggested the pillar of flame had gone, so I risked removing my blindfold. My eyes showed nothing that my olfactory perception hadn't, only the translucent, ugly monsters and plain stone buildings. Things were much more colourful through smells.

Which reminded me that to these creatures, I probably looked naked.

The stand-off may not have been violent, and no-one was threatening anyone else, but it couldn't hold up forever. Should I wait here to see if someone who spoke English showed up? Walk out of the village? Fast travel upstairs and walk back down, to approach the entrance from the outside?

It didn't seem fair. I'd been here first, but now it felt like I was intruding on the town. From the reactions of the monsters, they obviously had no idea that they'd sprung into existence literally seconds ago.

"I didn't mean to alarm you," I said, trying to speak loudly and clearly, in the hopes they'd be able to relay my message later. "I will leave, and visit by the proper entrance."

I placed my hand on the shrine and jumped back upstairs.

"Well?" asked my twin the moment I arrived, leaving me to describe what I'd seen.

"I'll try the second village first, in the hopes of getting a level from that shrine, check out where the tree used to be in case anything time sensitive is happening there, then return to the first village and see if I can find anyone who speaks English."

"Just don't let your guard down," my twin responded. "Just because they aren't killing each other anymore, and no-one attacked you on sight, doesn't mean they aren't going to be able to work out what just happened."

With the threat of intruding mind control brains over, the zombie queen could finally return to her throne, so the pair of us wandered through the catacombs.

"If this world really does cease to exist..." she started, before dropping back into silence.

"I'll find a way to bring you with me," I stated flatly.

"You can't! Bring me back, and you bring the blight with me."

"I'll find a safe way to bring you with me."

"Like what? Curing me? The blight is all that keeps me moving, and removing it would just kill me. Sealing me into some sort of hazmat suit? The blight would decay its way through, eventually."

"I'll get a mind mage to transplant your mind into my head if I have to. I don't mind sharing."

"You..."

My twin gave a big sigh, walking in silence for a few more steps before failing to stifle a giggle.

"I was serious!"

"I know, but you have mind magic nullification. For that to work, you would have needed to take the perverted masochist class, so you could turn it off."

"Or find a really powerful mind mage."

"Shame you never made friends with the giant centipede."

"So many things I could have done differently. And apparently, one of my choices has caused me to fail my quest."

"Just ignore that dragon. It was probably engaging in psychological warfare, since it knows it can't kill you."

"I really hope so. What could I have done to fail, anyway? If there was a time limit, it wasn't well advertised."

"Yeah, but we both know the Goddess doesn't know what she's doing. Just look at your health bar. Or don't, since you can't properly."

The zombie was right. There was no point worrying about it. I'd just have to work my way down and confront the dragon again. The dragon that had wiped me and an entire floor from existence with a single spell... I was going to have to get a lot stronger if I wanted to win a fight. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

Parting ways in the throne room, I made my way back to the cavern, intending to make my way to the second village.

Splat.

Okay, so, important bit of information. The biome restoration had caused the slimes to respawn. Oops. On the bright side, I had flame breath this time.

The slime covering my head, trying to worm its way up my nose, was blasted away by a brief burst of fire. There was still more around me, and I could feel it working its way under my helmet, but my mouth and throat were clear. My nose wasn't, causing me to sneeze violently as the still living slime regrouped and made another attempt at my face. Another sneeze showered the wall in dead globs of slime, just before fresh, living liquid once again tried to suffocate me. I blasted it off for a second time, and this time the slime got the message, detaching from me and dropping to the floor, fleeing towards a wall. I didn't let it, blasting it for a third time, and this time incinerating it in its entirety.

If I'd let myself be killed by a slime for a third time, I doubt I'd ever live down the humiliation.

I continued to sneeze and splutter as the second batch was emptied from my nasal cavity.

Corrosion immunity advanced to level 31

I was very glad of the skill evolution, which meant I'd taken very little damage from a living ball of acid flowing into my facial orifices, but it still stung like crazy. I made very sure to vaporise every last one of the nasty blobs as I made my way through the rest of the passage and out into the cavern, where I could do nothing but stare in awe. Or sniff in awe, or whatever it was my new olfactory receptors did.

The cavern was still pitch black, but what had before been a monoculture of vines, with a few many-limbed blobs eking out a living, was now flush with life. Or at least, stuff that was walking, slithering or flying around. I assumed it was alive, but with things like the blight around, it was hard to be certain.

Few things were based on Earthen templates, at least as far as I recognised. I was aware that Earth had some very strange lifeforms adapted to life in dark, sealed cave systems, so it was possible I'd just never heard of them. However, I suspected that if Earth had, to pick a random example, anything even remotely like the spongia cappilus, someone probably would have mentioned it.

It had a central body; ovoid, with a rough surface but no obvious orifices or sense organs. From it sprouted dozens of... very thin tentacles? Strands of hair? Whatever they were, they waved around in the air, drifting upward and side-to-side almost like they were underwater. If one happened to drift upwards and reached its full extension, the body jerked a little off the ground, as if it weighed nothing. It was mesmerising to watch, at least until one of the threads contacted a beetle that had been flying past.

Yes, there were beetles. Of course there were beetles. They had no eyes, with smooth chitin covering their entire face above the mouth, but they were certainly beetles.

As soon as the thread touched the beetle, it stuck, causing the flying beetle to drag the strange creature behind it. Again, it appeared to weigh nothing, and the beetle gave no indication that it knew it had a passenger. All the threads withdrew into the main body, including the one attached to the beetle, with the result it pulled itself up into the air and towards its new vehicle. Once it was almost touching, the other threads extended once more.

Then the beetle noticed, the threads tangling up its wings and sending it crashing to the floor. The threads probed around, finding and intruding into gaps in the chitin, before lumps started flowing up them, the main body shrinking as it pumped itself through them and inside the shell. The beetle convulsed violently as the hairy predator flowed into its body, then fell still.

I flame-throwered the still-feeding creature. Screw nature. That was gross.