As soon as I left the hall, I passed through a narrow doorway and found out, that there was actually a stairway leading downwards to the left and right.

Casually picking the left side by utilizing the theory that one should always pick the left when trying to exit a maze, I descended dozens of steps until I ended up in fog.

The stairs continued downwards, and to be safe I tried to augment my sight magically.

Initially, I attempted to simply probe my surroundings with my power, but somehow the fog felt like cotton, absorbing all signals from the outside.

I tried to feel the surrounding magic and I got the answer - the fog was a magic by itself, tiny particles of ice suspended in the air by being covered with layers of energy.

Feeling frustrated, I switched to heat perception, but everything was uniformly cold, so that did not help either.

Finally I had to resort to seeing a messy variety of sound waves and random radiation particles that obeyed the physics. With that, I was able to form something like a mix of radar, scanner and sonar. That quickfix used up some concentration, and I had to divide my attention between movement, observing my surroundings and keeping up with my surroundings.

---

Feeling that I need to practice my supernatural abilities more, I decided to train my energy manipulation skills while moving.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I could observe another large hall, but that one was full of giant pillars supporting the ceiling far above.

What surprised me was the fact that the pillars did not seem to be evenly spaced or even of equal size. The scenery looked like some sort of fossilized forest with only tree trunks remaining.

As I moved through the pillar forest hall while fiddling with my magic and looking around, I finally noticed some movement from behind some distant pillars.

---

Trouble was, the moving objects had extra thick mist around them, so making out their shape or exact size was difficult even with my multiple-principle perception.

The thickened mist clumps were of the size of a WW beetle, and as they approached, I could hear a most unnerving sound of their steps.

Somehow, the sounds I was getting, indicated that five beings approaching me had close to fifty legs among them.

“Guh” I grunted, as I was a mild arachnophobe, and many legs belonging to an unknown monster reminded me of all those giant spider in the horror movies and RPG dungeons I had come across.

As they approached, I focused my sight behind them, in a hope to check their leg prints on the floor.

However, with the surrounding fog and my rather crude observation method, I could not even make out which depressions in the ice dust were the prints and which were random depressions or old tracks.

In seconds the creatures were just a dozen or so steps away, and they slowly circled around me.

I stopped at a pillar, leaving my back to it, and using my left hand, dropped the excess luggage. I tightly gripped my poleaxe and carefully observed these beings.

When one of them approached, I exhaled, and with a forceful step forward, brought the poleaxe down in a diagonal slash using a spear move I had some knowledge about.

I did not hope to hit, but I made sure not to overdo the slash, stopping the sharp spearlike tip of the poleaxe right in front of me.

I now stood in a solid stance. Legs slightly bent, right leg in front with the foot pointing forward while the left leg was behind, the foot turned approximately 45° outward. My extended right hand gripped the shaft at the center of the balance and the bent left held it steady near my left hip.

My move made the creatures stir, and with a puffing sound, their condensed mist cover abruptly thickened and then started to slowly dissipate as if they had released it all in one go.

Not waiting for their cover to disperse and mix with the surrounding fog, three on my sides, two from left and one from the right, pounced towards me almost at the same time.

“Woha, woha, what about a combat tutorial, preferably using a boar piglet, sick wolf or a retarded goblin to train on?!”- I complained in my heart as I launched myself to the right.

Disregarding the unknown anatomy and abilities of the enemy, I stepped forward with my left foot simultaneously rising the poleaxe. I twirled it around and brought it down upon the creature at the exact moment my foot touched the ground, transferring all the impulse of the hit into the thick beaklike spike on the opposite side from the axeblade.

---

With a whistling sound the fog was scattered around the creature and through the haft into my hands was transmitted the feeling of the spike piercing deep into the flexible but tough hide and the solid body structures being shattered under the force of the blow.

As I yanked my weapon out of its body, preparing to continue the battle, the creature collapsed while emitting loud hiss. Some purplish gas rapidly shot out from the wound like steam from a pierced pressure cooker.

I only had time to note that the creature had five pairs of legs, had a pale hide made of thick spiky fur and had something like a pharyngeal jaw full of thin teeth stretching out from its wide, reptilian mouth, before I turned towards the rest of the attackers.

Well, at least it wasn’t a spider.