Rotting Under-Underbelly

Wandering without direction is not the most solid of plans, but it's the only plan I've got. The tall, filthy walls and ever present rush of fetid water made the whole thing a disorienting mess and within what I estimated to be five minutes I was sure I wouldn't be able to find my way back to my former abode; not that I had any intention of going back.

Actually, that wasn't quite true. After ten minutes of aimless wandering through crumbling grey halls I acquired a skill called “Tunnel Sense” that helpfully helped me orient myself while in tunnels. Had I any desire, I'm relatively sure I could find my way back.

Not that I had any reason to attempt such; my temporary lair held little of interest and nothing of value at this point. The relative and mostly illusory safety provided by my impromptu shelter was not going to lead to the true safety that only real power can grant. If I want to ensure my survival I’m going to have to, somewhat counterintuitively, put my life at risk.

As much as the distant, unfathomably hungry howls of the ever-dark void raged in the back of my mind at the mere thought of dying, I have no choice. Between cowering in some wretched pit until something inevitably comes to murder me or sticking out to do the murdering, the choice is obvious.

I don't know how long I wandered in the dark, nothing but filth, uneven grey stones, the ever present trickle or roar of fetid water, and distant noises of distressed creatures that should not be hidden in places the sun never saw for what may have been miles. At times, my night vision was useless in a darkness that moonlight had ever touched, but as it rapidly improved the darkness gave way to my paranoid eyes. Seven levels later and I came across something new.

Night Vision +1

Night Vision max level exceeded

Night Vision evolved into Dark Vision

Skill Gained: Dark Vision

This came at a lovely time where I had been stumbling blindly through pure darkness (scrubbing myself repeatedly despite the skill already being in effect, the two levels gained validating my paranoia to my possibly addled (sharp as a fucking obsidian razor!) mind. With my night vision as high as it could be I could see with even the faintest of light as if it were under the full light of the star I'm not entirely certain this planet revolves around, but as soon as that light failed to extend it was like a solid wall of black appeared; Dark Vision, even as low leveled as it is, allowed me to slightly see without any light at all. Evolving a skill even gave me a single point, which I promptly placed in Endurance to even the top three out.

The fact that I had yet to find anything alive after multiple hours had only spiked my paranoia to greater and greater levels, forcing myself to move slowly and cling to the walls(I was mildly surprised that when I started literally crawling along the side of the wall I didn't get a skill for it; though I suppose not everything is a skill. It would get rather annoying otherwise) and glancing blindly into the dark.

It was the revaluation that even with my ability to see vaguely in pitch darkness that told me something was very, very wrong. A large portion of the hall I was in wasn't the hazy dark grey of my new sight but the same pure black of my previous blindness. It didn't take long for me to realise the shifting tendrils of pure black were not mere darkness. There was a very good reason why I had not so much as heard another living creature nearby in what may have been hours; by the grace of sheer blind luck I had managed to crawl through utter blindness whilst avoiding the whatever silent monster this creature was that lurked within it.

Had I pants, I would have shat them. Instead, I kept crawling at a slightly faster pace, noting that these tendrils nearly covered the floor (looks like my paranoia was vindicated once more!) and were spreading up the wall slowly the farther down the tunnel they got, I slanted my trajectory to keep me above the writhing tide of darkness.

I have no idea what this creature was (nor if it even really was a creature at all), but my instincts screamed that I should in no way shape or form allow it to touch me. Yet those same instincts compelled me to keep going forward and not turn back. While I was suspicious of even my own instincts (who knows what kind of mind bending fuckery this world may contain), I decided to cautiously follow this urge to continue.

Mostly because a glance backwards told me beyond me was nearly any better than forward; how the Hell I got through that without once running into these seeming tentacles when I couldn't even see them, I have no idea.

Dark Vision +1

My slightly improved vision served mostly to make the writhing horror even more disturbing in its seeming lack of true presence; where everything else became vaguely clearer, the dark tendrils remained simple voids of texture and whatever not-light I saw by. Still, this lack of clarity made them that much more distinctive by their opacity.

Fear and greed, the motivators that had driven me thus far, proved just as effective here when sprinkled with indignant hate; how dare this creature fight me!? How dare it attempt to bar my path!? Such sentiments are madness of course, but rage is so much more useful an emotion than fear, even in the decreased level I'm capable of feeling; fear makes me want to freeze whilst rage makes me want to move. A simple trick from my childhood, still useful in this second life.

The fact that my raging paranoia was the only emotion I felt in full was… almost comforting, in a slightly disturbing way. Though, even the fact that I felt it in full at all had me slightly suspicious that something may be heightening the feeling.

Trait Gained: Paranoid.

Skill Gained: Paranoia

Well that's… telling.