Chapter 7: Under Falst

First thing in the morning, in the pre-dawn light, Crimson was using the empty nature of the streets as the background for his morning run. Since the day he’d missed after he’d arrived in Falst, he hadn’t missed a single run. Score one for diligence.

Not only was he taking care of his morning run, but Crimson was also getting to know the streets of Falst. It also allowed him to practice jumping as he hopped over the occasional drunkard passed out in a gutter. He’d been meaning to practice jumping for a while, but had only had brief opportunities to do so. The drunkards made excellent practice since they put pressure on him not to mess up with the promise of needing to visit Emma for a healing spell if he did. It was effective.

After a good hour of running, he ended his route in the courtyard with the moving statue. He glanced around and, seeing no one, approached it to press the button on the toe then twist the horse’s head. As the statue quietly slowly ground aside Crimson stepped onto the platform and slid mana down his legs to activate the device. As it lowered him into the ground he cast a [Magic Light] and had it float just behind and above his head. He used the “rope” to affix it to that position and stepped off the platform as it came to a stop. After a few second of him being off it, it went back up to its original position and the statue slid back into place with a loud grinding.

Looking around, he saw a switch on the wall and when he pressed it the stones floated back down and the statue slid out of the way – good. He had a way out.

Crimson glanced down the two curved hallways leading to either side of him and tried to figure out which way he should go. They were both exactly the same in appearance, with the same dark stone as everywhere else in Falst making up the walls and ceiling. There were grey and tan stones making a pathway on the ground and there were glowing stones dug into the wall that were set too infrequently to provide proper lighting.

The [Magic Light] had been a good idea.

Lacking any apparent direction Crimson was about to say “forget this” and just randomly choose a path, but the idea occurred to him to try feeling for mana.

Crimson knelt and pressed his hand on the ground and felt small tendrils of mana flowing through the brick. Walking in a crouch he followed them over to the wall and began tracing them down the hallway for quite a distance. As he followed it he found another switch in the wall and pressed it.

From the ceiling, another platform lowered to the ground and a low grinding informed him that yet another statue was moving out of the way.

Crimson hopped on and let himself be raised up to street level. When it stopped he found his back against the dead end of alley. Stepping forward, he walked to the entrance of the alley to see where he was. It was…Phase 6? The first statue he’d found was in Phase 7, so it appeared that the tunnel went in a great loop. Well, he couldn’t be certain without checking, but that seemed to be the trend.

Crimson headed back into the alley and went to the statue that now rested where his entrance was. The whole piece “appeared” to be built into the wall, and was of a crying female mage. One of her hands was extended forward, and the other was partially covering her face.

Crimson gently reached out and touched the extended hand to see how the mana flowed to find the switch. The first, was actually in the hand he was touching. More specifically, it was in the wrist. The mana flow changed and Crimson lowered the other hand away from the statue’s face and tilted the head to face eye level instead of look down. Three switches then?

The statue slid away quietly, far more quietly than it had sounded like in the tunnel. With a raised eye brow, Crimson stepped onto the lift and slid a bit of mana into it through his leg.

As it started to lower him into the ground he felt the pressure of eyes on the back of his head and he looked behind himself to see a boy staring at him with a dropped jaw.

Whoops, he’d let himself be seen. That could be an issue depending on the general knowledge of the tunnels. IF they were forbidden, he’d be in big trouble. If people didn’t know about them he would have just revealed a big secret. Well, he’d have to see what happened in the future. Not much he could do for the moment…maybe there was a memory erasing spell? He didn’t know it…probably wouldn’t even have enough mana to use it anyway.

With a sigh Crimson tabled the issue for later, recast his [Magic Light], and once more began to trace the mana in the wall, followed it around the curved tunnel, passing switch after switch, and checked where each one let out until all the mana gathered in a single place the wall – right after the switch that let out in Phase 23. The mana was a tangled web the same size and shape as a door, albeit an oversized door, but a door nonetheless. As an interesting aside: there was nothing other than the mana to indicate any form of entrance there.

Crimson ran his hands over it trying to find a way to open it, but there wasn’t any clear way, till he found a small hole in the center. Staring at it for a long moment, he selected his most useless finger – the little one on his right hand – and slid it into the hole.

The second it entered the hole he could feel prickling on all sides of his finger. Not a physical prickling, but a prickling of mana. It was an unpleasant sensation, almost like his finger was surrounded by needles. Checking, he pulled his finger out and looked at it, but there was nothing wrong with it. Ignoring the prickling and roiling in his gut that told him not to, he stuck his finger back in the hole and slid his mana down his arm to it finger. Gently, slightly prepared for something to go horribly wrong, he began to touch the mana with his.

It was interesting, almost like…a key hole. He could move each of the needles of mana, but the second he let go, they would slide back into place. He pinched his forehead and closed his eyes in concentration as he reached out with little pieces of his mana to grab as many needles of “lock” mana as he could, but he couldn’t even handle half of them.

He withdrew his finger, wiped sweat from his forehead, and blood from his nose. The effort had also left him with a massive headache. Even his [Magic Light] had been put out as he galvanized his mana for the task.

With a sigh, he sat down, leaned up against the wall, and started to meditate. He was trying to figure out a way to open the lock and was waiting for his almost empty [Magic Pool] to refill. As he sat in thought he reached a rather stupid decision: he wouldn’t leave until he figured out how to open the door.

Two hours and another headache later – along with the decision to learn a healing spell – Crimson had finally come up with a decent sounding solution – it was just a matter of testing to see if he could get it to work. He had gotten the idea from the fact that it felt like his finger was surrounded by PINS. So he had thought, why not form his mana to be like a pin cushion? Instead of trying to manipulate each individual pin, he’d just allow them to catch on a blob of his mana and move the whole bunch at the same time.

He stood and recast [Magic Light], having sat in the dim light from the glowing stones in the tunnel, then slid his finger back into the unpleasant sensation of pins. Just as he’d practiced after the idea, he moved a large amount of his mana in the form of a blob and had it seep around each and every one of the needles, before holding it in place relative to his finger. Rotating his hand, he was able to move every single one a quarter turn before a deep thrum was heard in the wall and he jerked his hand back as the door slid into the ground.

The next tunnel was definitely a different beast. There was absolutely no lighting stones, the tunnel twisted and turned jaggedly and there were branching paths instead of the seamless single tunnel.

Stepping though the entrance, Crimson moved further in just a few steps before the door slid back into place. Checking quickly, he found the same hole on the other side of the door. Good, he was still able to get out.

Crimson turned to face the new space once more and decided to look for more mana since it had worked in the last tunnel. Kneeling, he was able to feel a single strand leading down the second of the five branching tunnels. He stood, and began to follow it. As he walked down the new tunnel he found switches on either side that would grant him a way out, but he decided to check them later, he’d go deeper first, then wider later.

He passed through a few more junctions that looked so precisely the same that Crimson would have thought he was going in circles if it weren’t for the mana trail.

Eventually, he reached a reverse junction. Instead of paths branching from a single point, a bunch of paths joined together to a single point. Crimson could feel strings of mana leading from each one to the tunnel on the opposite end of the room. This tunnel was clearly different from the others: it was twice as high and wide, lined with standing torches glowing with white flames, and the stones on the walls were snow white with a blue path leading down the center.

Crimson felt a grin cross his face as his heart began to race in excitement. He could even feel a cool breeze, both of mana and of air, brushing against his face from down the tunnel.

Eagerly, he began to move down it and after twenty or so minutes of walking he reached a great door. Well, great would be an exaggeration. It was actually a small door that was unusually wide, but only a foot taller than Crimson. There was an exquisitely designed lock in the center of the piece that had multiple troughs for a very complex key. It wasn’t something that Crimson’s little finger could solve, but if he used all ten of his fingers and twisted them like so? No dice. The only fingers he could get in were his little ones and he almost broke the other ones in the process.

There was no way he’d be able to get into the room with his current skills, he’d need to gain greater control of his mana and be able to affect it from further away if he wanted to get in…or find the key. Neither of which would be happening any time soon.

With a sigh, Crimson headed back to the place where all the tunnels fused together and decided to trace another one of the mana strings. He hated giving up so easily, but this was clearly out of his current ability.

Facing the five tunnels, he identified the one on the far left as the one he’d entered from, and selected the center one as the one to follow this time around, but he had no particular reason for his choice.

Crimson followed it to the end, doing his best to ignore the switches he came across along the way. He’d come check them later.

The tunnel he was in curved down for a while, then curved back up, and flattened out. He continued to follow the mana ignoring all the branching paths and eventually reached the end. At the end was another door like the first one he’d found, but the lock was on the right side of the stone door frame instead of the center of the door. Bracing himself slightly, he stuck his little finger in the lock and ignored the unpleasant feeling of all the needles around his finger as he used his mana blob technique to rotate them all. He had to spend quite a bit of mana on that.

As the door opened he stepped through and found himself…in the mostly unused storage closet in the guild? They just stuck some records back here that wouldn’t be accessed for years and didn’t come here too often. The most recent presence in the room had actually been Crimson himself as he’d needed to place some files in the room during his employment period with the guild.

The door closed behind him and he turned to crack it, but all that greeted him though the crack was the guild. Raising an eyebrow, he inspected the door and found a little hole, the right shape and size for the mana lock, on the right side of the stone door frame.

Interestedly, he placed his left palm on the wooden door and inspected it closely, but he couldn’t feel any mana in it. He kept his palm on the door as he inserted his little finger into the hole and activated the lock. As he did so, he felt mana rush through the door frame, but not the door itself. He opened the door and the sight that greeted him was the tunnels instead of the guild.

“Cool,” he muttered and reentered the tunnels.

He closed the door and sat down next to it to wait for his [Magic Pool] to refill.

Once it was full, Crimson methodically checked each of the mana trails and was interested in what he found every single time. Using the tunnel in the junction he first used as “1” and the one leading to the guild as “3” he checked “4” next.

“4” let out in the dead center of Falst in the middle of the central fountain. The central fountain was a big building that had statues and sconces shooting water all over the place with little waterfalls at the cardinal directions, and the place the tunnel let out was in the center of that building. If Crimson had wanted to step out anywhere in the streets he would have been forced to pass through one of the waterfalls. It had been rather fascinating to see people pass by through the water, but he wasn’t one to waste time and so he returned to the center of the cross shaped room to the dais to place his finger into a stand on it.

That one explored, Crimson went to “2” next to check that one out. Fascinatingly, it let him out in the Graveyard in Phase 17. When he activated the mana lock stairs had dropped step by step to form a path for him to reach ground level. It let him out in a crypt on the edge of the Graveyard – close to the wall. He took a quick glance around to remember where it was, then headed back into the crypt to find the mana lock on this side.

It took a bit of looking, but he eventually found it in the throat of the manticore statue in the back of the crypt – right over the main coffin. Crimson would have felt bad standing on it, but the mana running through it had drove his curiosity to make him look inside – empty.

All his reservations about standing on the coffin vanished and he happily activated the switch to allow him back into the tunnels.

This led him to his current break where he’d used the “1” tunnel to lead himself back into the main passage. He followed it around to reach Phase 3 where he grabbed lunch at a cheap restaurant near the Adventurer’s Guild for 3 Royals, then went back into the tunnels to see where “5” would lead him.

Crimson followed the mana string for the fifth tunnel for an extremely long distance – longer than the others, and was eventually led to a wide spiral staircase.

He looked at it for a long moment and was happy that he’d already practiced using stairs. He’d have a long time to practice even further if the staircase led where he thought it did, and if it led where his suspicions dictated so…then going up these stairs was a really, really bad idea, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he started to ascend them - curiosity really was rather dangerous.

It took a while, a long while, for him to reach the top. His legs had even started burning so much that he’d been forced to stop after just forty little minutes of climbing the stairs to rest. All told, it took him an hour or so to reach the top. After he reached the top of the spiral staircase he was greeted by an arching bridge with slats cut into the floor on the sides of the path to allow him to see the ground far, far below.

Yep, he was about to enter the castle – just like he’d suspected. He was currently in one of the arches that supported it in the air. Crimson weighed his options for a moment then decided he’d just take a peek then book it – no need to explore the castle dungeons as well, but he wanted to see where the passage let out.

Crimson headed along the bridge to the other side the found himself met by a door. It was one similar to the others he’d seen, but different in its own way: the mana lock was where a keyhole would be and it had an actual door handle.

“Interesting.”

Crimson unlocked it while ignoring the unpleasant needle feeling and put out his [Magic Light] as he slowly cracked the door to look inside. He was greeted by a wall of dark colored wood, so he pulled open the door fully to see what was on the other side.

It was an impressive wall of wood – completely kept him out.

Well, he wouldn’t let it stop him, there would have to be some way for him to get through. He pressed his hand up against the door and easily found a button on the left side at waist height of the wood “wall.” Pressing it, a previously unseen seem was opened and the two halves slid away from each other to match the width of the door frame.

Throwing caution to the wind – and leaving the door open – Crimson stepped into… a library. Well, that wasn’t good. He’d been planning to leave sometime soon.

He still had half the day left, so if there wasn’t any danger he’d spend as much time as he could perusing the shelves. Unfortunately, that was counting his chickens before they hatched; he needed to see if the area was safe before he could browse.

Crimson stayed close to the shelves as he crouched low and moved as quietly as he could. Because of how the library was designed, it was like a great tumbler with three floors of shelves running around the edge of the cylindrical room with a balustrade preventing one from tumbling down from the third floor to the first. Standing by the railing, it was a nice view of the rows and rows of bookshelves on the first floor. Looking up, there was a great stain-glass roof at the top of the whole piece that allowed resplendent colors to light the space, with glowing stones set into the walls providing shimmering light to compliment the stained light.

Crimson was awed with the space, and loved the peace and serenity he felt there. It was definitely a place to come back to if he could do so safely. If he couldn’t come back in secret, maybe he could find a way to come back legally… Food for thought, but rather unlikely.

Searching, he found the staircase leading from the third floor he was currently on to the second, and the staircase leading from the second to the first floor was on the opposite side of the space, requiring him to go around the entirety of the library. It took quite a bit of willpower for him to not inspect the spines of the books he was passing to see if there was anything he wanted/needed, but he was able to do it – barely…with just a few small exceptions.

Moving carefully, Crimson silently crossed the space afforded by the first floor while carefully using shelves to hide himself. He even made sure to peek through the gaps in the books before crossing any open spaces, but his caution was in vain – there was nobody there. The whole space was empty of life – Crimson aside.

He had found the “main” door though. It was a great piece that looked like a boss door from that one game where the main character turns into a wolf. What was its name? Twilight something…he hadn’t played it for years.

Refocusing, he absorbed every detail: there were chains sealing the door that all connected at the lock in the center, but the lock lacked anything in the form of a keyhole or any discernible way to unlock it. Pressing his hand up against it, Crimson could feel that the mana flowed to the OTHER SIDE of the door. There was no way for him to open it from his side, and it was apparent from the feel of the mana that the door had never been opened.

Crimson stepped back and folded his arms in deep thought to process what he’d just learned… he was home free? There was no way things could be that easy.

Could it?

No!

Best not to assume, but maybe?

Well, regardless it appeared he’d found a secret library. That meant that here was something worth hiding here, maybe it was the passage, maybe it was something else, but he lacked enough information to be certain.

Crimson sighed. For now, he’d just find a few books, grab them, and bring them back later. It was the safest thing to get what he wanted. He quickly looked through the books and found an interesting looking one on affinities and another one that taught a katana style called: [Twin Steps]. It looked nice. He’d call it good with these two plus the three he had back at his inn room.

Crimson headed back up to the third floor – his wondrous tomes of knowledge in tow – and when he tried to enter the passage he walked smack dab into a wall of mana. He almost dropped his books and had to check his nose to see if it was broken – fortunately not – before starting at the space before him.

Aside from the mana forming a barrier there was nothing to indicate that he shouldn’t be able to leave. Was the library preventing him from taking the books? To test his theory he set them down on a nearby table and walked into the passage with no issue. Thinking for a moment, he decided against using any of the Common Tongue’s swear words, and translating Earth swear words weren’t satisfying at all. Well, he’d never been one for profanity anyway – the threats from his mother ensured that.

With a sigh, he closed the passage behind him with a silent promise to come back for the hidden trove of knowledge. He’d need to devote a significant amount of time to his next visit considering how long the trip to reach it took. It should be safe enough to return. It was unfortunate that his own perusal took all the time he thought he had.

With a sigh, Crimson began the long trek down the spiral staircase and recast [Magic Light] using his full to bursting [MP].

——

Back at his room, Crimson got to work on Chapter 6 of [Magic Light] which was a fairly simple chapter for him, but it did take a long time for him to figure it out.

It was simple because he didn’t have any issues in achieving what the chapter was supposed to teach – it took a while because Chapter 6 actually taught multiple concepts.

Chapter 6 taught him how to vary the strength of the [Magic Light]. Up to this point, the light had been the same brightness, no matter how much or how little mana he put into it when he used it as a “battery.” The mana he’d put into it had just determined how long it would last, and when he’d used the “rope” it took a fixed amount of mana to maintain – one that was just slightly more than his regeneration rate so he was able to maintain the spell at practically no cost.

Now, the chapter taught him how to change the brightness by changing the “density” of the spell. By using the exterior of the spell he could compress down the mana inside to make it more dense, and thereby more bright. By pulling the shell away from it the mana inside would become less dense, and as a result it would be dimmer. The interesting thing, was that even though he changed the density of the mana the actual size of the [Magic Light] remained unchanged. It was an interesting phenomenon.

Crimson turned his attention to Chapter 7 while purposely ignoring the time – sleep could wait.

Chapter 7 had to do with changing the actual size of the [Magic Light] and taught Crimson a lot about the nature of mana weaving. Essentially, if he created the light too big and he hadn’t weaved the mana tightly enough the spell would collapse from not being strong enough to sustain the new size. If the weave wasn’t adjusted and he made the [Magic Light] smaller then the weave would actually overpower the element in it and would collapse as well. Interestingly, it was easier to make a bigger [Magic Light] than a smaller one, so of course Crimson spent his time making them smaller to better benefit from his time practicing.

After a bit of time he felt confidant in his ability to adjust the weave to match the needed strength to maintain the integrity of the spell.

Crimson noted with some amusement - once he’d gotten it right by tying it to one of his bed posts - that it was his first time getting mana in an object to do something. In the past it had just dispersed the second he’d let go, but Chapter 8 had finally allowed him to resolve the issue.

With some level of determination he took a look at Chapter 9, before waving the white flag. He’d definitely need more time to work on this one. From the imagery alone he could tell that this chapter focused on learning how to form [Magic Light]s at a distance from the caster. His current record was creating one a foot away from himself, and he was able to move it up to five feet away with his strings. If he made it with a battery then he could move it to eight feet away, but that was his absolute limit – any further and the spell would unravel unless he used the trick he’d just learned in chapter 8, but it wasn’t the same thing.

He’d work on Chapter 9 tomorrow night – it was midnight and he needed sleep.

——

Crimson used his new knowledge of the tunnels to reach the guild during his morning run. He’d even found the entrance to the main tunnel in Phase 9 where he stayed to shorten the time spent traveling even further. It had been hidden under a statue of an Archer.

Since it was still too early for the guild to be open Crimson took the long way and headed into the deeper tunnels and ran to the locked door without needing to check the mana paths. His memory for where he’d been was coming out in full force.

When he reached it he was about to head down the “3” tunnel, but decided against it – just appearing in the guild seemed like a bad idea – it wasn’t even open yet.

So, retracing his steps, Crimson went back the way he came and reentered the main tunnel and ran back, past the entrance to Phase 2, to Phase 3 where he exited from a statue of a Barbarian. It was about time for the guild to open, so he jogged to it and glanced around when he reached it. He saw Emma approaching from a little ways off and waved to her. She was always the first employee to show up.

“Good morning!” she happily greeted him as she approached, and with her smile unfaltering she covered her nose. “You’re going to wash up the second I unlock this door, right?”

Crimson laughed, “Yeah, I’ll wash up. Good morning to you as well.”

“Good, you reek!”

“Do I really smell that bad?”

“Maybe not to other people, but I have a high [Perception] stat and a few skills related to smells and smelling.”

They both entered the guild after she unlocked it.

“How do you stand to work at the Adventurer’s Guild then? Some of those guys are pretty foul smelling.”

“I learned to tolerate it to some extent, I just don’t bother around you! I need to teach you right.”

Crimson chuckled, “Sure, sure. I’ll be back in a while.”

He went out back and didn’t wash up, but grabbed the dull metal training katana and pulled his [Dancing Autumn Leaf] book out to double check the basic forms for the style.

After a quick review and stretch he got to work practicing the basic stances and breathing patterns. Out of concern that he would absolutely mess something up by building a bad habit: he focused on the stuff that didn’t seem like it required too much precision. The breathing stuff especially. He had learned already that the way he breathed affected his running, so why not start there with the katana?

After a bit of time working with the breathing techniques he tried holding different stances with his katana – not to practice fighting, but to strengthen the related muscles. It didn’t take long before his arms were uncontrollably trembling and he was forced to stop because they wouldn’t listen to him.

How annoying.

Crimson sighed and forced himself to exert a modicum of patience as he knew that he would actually be able to seriously begin on the next day, but waiting wasn’t pleasant.

As per Emma’s request, he went and washed up before returning to greet her once more.

As he walked up she greeted him in amusement, “Hello Crimson, you took quite a while washing up.”

He shrugged, “I wanted to try some stuff out. I finally figured out which weapon I want to try training with.”

“Which one?”

“A katana.”

Emma looked concerned, “Are you sure? Katana aren’t commonly used and they’re a bit more expensive than almost any other type of sword. They’re also hard to use properly.”

Crimson looked at her in amusement, “Well, I’ll be sticking with it for a while. It just felt right in my hands. As far as expensive, well, I think you can help me with that today.”

“What do you mean?”

Crimson grinned, “What requests are there that a [Brass] rank can take?”