Chapter Six - Home Is Where Your Heart Is

The system of caves that made up “home” was vast.

There was an instinctual understanding of the snaking tunnels, of which chokes I could fit through and which blockages would lead to claustrophobic death. Thank you, lizard brain, I gratefully thought after the third small gap which my senses aimed me away from. The caves must be fairly sparse, I had walked for at least ten minutes seeing another soul.

With a start, I realised I could smell the home cavern. It was getting fainter, now. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a scent in the air. It smelled of power and, if I hadn’t already grown used to it, danger. That made sense. Any creature with a functioning brain would know to keep their distance from Byzametiya. The beetle must not have any sense of that danger. For which I felt, with pride, it paid the price.

After another five minutes of travel, the smell of my starting point had faded. I felt exposed, all of a sudden, and my pace slowed. I shouldn’t need help, right? I had to think about that. Sure, I had defeated a mighty beetle that was minding its own business, but how would I fare against something with more fight in it?

Figuring that answer could only really come with experience, I didn’t let it stop me. I did keep to corners and shadow wherever possible. Corners were few and far between, but the shadows were plentiful. Without the pockets of magma popping up in places, there was little to no light. My eyes seemed fine with that fact, a strange grey-scale, tinted purple, outlined everything. My depth perception wasn’t perfect, but everything was visible in some way or another.

Visible and dull.

For a starting area, there were some quality of life changes that I would have made, but such is life now, I supposed. No starting quest giver? Even a lack of basic monsters to practice new skills on. Definitely a lot to be desired.

Yet, I wasn’t one for complaining, so I shifted from that thought process quickly. It was hard to focus on anything anymore, with every fourth step punctuated by a growl of rebellion from my stomach.

With a start, I realised that I had lost track of the time. That wasn’t the only thing I lost track of though. With a growing panic, I realised that I truly had no clue which way home was. I had been making my way without much direction other than away, and now I was kicking myself. I tried to backtrack, but the tunnels suddenly looked unfamiliar and dangerous. The smells were different, unrecognised and pungent.

Then I triggered the trap.

The hall had opened, most of the floor in this room fell away. The pit below wasn’t terribly deep, but I preferred the look of the bridge of rock before me. Naïve and foolish, I assumed safety in the silence.

Click-thwuff.

The invisible thread was taut enough that I felt it go, but I didn’t have any context for the strange tug on my claw or the sound that followed. I didn’t need context for the next part, the wind knocked out of me and the room sent spinning as I careened through the air. I caromed away from the wall I struck, all direction and understanding ripped from my mind.

The floor I hit was rocky and jagged, causing further damage. The fall was about ten feet, but as far as controlled descents go, it left something to be desired. As I tried to stand, my entire body screamed.

I growled, falling onto my back. Above me, a large rock was swinging in the air above the bridge. A part of my brain that felt disconnected thought that it was lucky I am so light, or the stone would have broken me in two. The main section of my brain told that chunk to piss off, as it dealt with the pain. I was discombobulated, not thinking straight. I needed to figure out my stats and-

Name: Izaark

Race: Kobold

Species: Gem Dragon

Level: 01

Class: Warlock

Debuffed

HP:04

Strength

Tier 0

MP:43

Body

Tier 0

Magic

Tier 3

Will

Tier 1

I blinked, remembering where I was and who I was. I was still debuffed from before? That didn’t make any sense.

Debuff

Stunned

Until the debuff ends, cognitive and physical ability is impaired.

Oh right. Well, obviously I know that. It was interesting that the System was so specific about things, but it was further from my mind than the scraping bones in my right arm, so I ignored it.

More importantly was my HP. My health points had dropped to 4 from a total of 22, and I was feeling every inch of it. An unsung reason behind enjoying video games is the fact that you don’t feel the punishment yourself. The cracked bones and laboured, shuddering breathing that I was currently feeling force a whole new form of clarity onto me.

This isn’t a game, despite my abilities. This is life now, and it can hurt. There’s no promise of a respawn, no difficulty sliders and no crafted starting area. I had thought I was over my own mortality, but confronted with the possibility of death and pain, rather than simply being there, was a new anxiety.

Debuff Resisted

You have resisted choking poison.

Uh… good? Fighting past the screaming muscles, I used them to sit up. I closed my eyes tight and wished for the first time since waking up that I couldn’t see in the dark.

The floor was not rocky, but covered in bones. Sniffing, though my ribs protested, I could smell an ammonia-like cloying in the air. Dion’s buff of Strong Constitution means I can’t be poisoned or diseased, but that was pure chance. Luck once again was giving me a chance where my own actions haven’t.

Not again. I needed to stop being so casual about this second chance I’d been given. Which was a fine thing to realise at the bottom of a murder pit, but you hardly choose when to receive an epiphany.

A trap meant enemies. It meant intent, and this collection of gnawed and stripped bones was enough proof of that. There was no visible miasma in the air, but the poison’s effect was resisted again and again. As each jingle of the bells told me I had resisted the effects repeatedly, I got angrier and angrier.

Ting. They. Ting. Nearly. Ting. Killed Ting. Me .Ting.

I roared. It was a draconic, ancient, primal thing and it felt fantastic. As though some ancestor I had happened into upon my reincarnation was letting their own pride be known. It seemed to echo for minutes, bouncing back through the tunnels and out again.

A quick look at my profile showed me that I had shaken off the debuff, and the minute or so of regaining my composure had also given me two health points back. The numbers weren’t important to me right now, though.

The echoes hadn’t stopped, but instead had increased. Replacing my regal sounding shout were a growing cacophony of voices. From all around.

Good. Challenge me, whatever you are. A dragon welcomes the fire.

The walls of this cave, tall and large, were pockmarked with holes, small off-shoots to different parts of the cave system. Deciding a bottleneck would be better than getting swarmed, I climbed into one of the closest holes. The sounds weren’t coming from this direction. There was no sense in getting overwhelmed, but woe betide any who would chase me.

I pushed myself, groaning limbs and muscles complaining and ignored, and tore through the small tunnel. A scent of fresher air told me I’d made a good decision, the tightening rocks before me leading to some wider room. I continued, the walls starting to press on me. I could make it though, my body able to fit through spaces that would have been absurd to try as a human.

The tunnel curved down, and a hole in the ground before me opened. This was not exactly what I’d had in mind. Testing, I lowered myself through slightly, headfirst. I planted my legs on either side of the hole as I instantly needed to see more.

Before me was absolute madness. A sprawling mass of slums, ramshackle buildings of strange shape and formation extended as far as I could see. Thousands of lights blanketed the underground metropolis of filth below me. Amongst the lights, shadows moved, their owners impossible to make out from this distance. It must be at least a mile down.

Focusing on the distance caused a heavy bout of vertigo and I nearly slipped. Launching myself backwards, heart in the throat, I tried to catch my breath. Cursing myself for getting distracted by something shiny, yet again, I listened out for the telltale signs that my attackers were closing in.

Aside from a low thrum of noise from far below, all was quiet. That seemed… surprising. Though, I reasoned, the entrance to this tunnel was covered in poison I guess. Thanking my instincts and luck, I cautiously made my way back to the room with the log trap. The undercity was interesting, but I had no way down there except a leap of faith, of which I had very little at the moment.

Another few minutes had passed, bringing my health into the double digits again, barely. It was strange, I could feel the regeneration, like a dull itch. I wondered if that was a special perk of my video game-like abilities or a facet of life in this magical world, though I decided it didn’t matter if I just killed everything in my path.

My own rage startled me a little, but it was pleasant to sit in that red haze and plan my moves around the idea of laying waste to whoever trapped my caves. My caves. Yes, that felt right.

Whatever it was that was sneaking around, planning ambushes and cowardly tactics like this needed to be routed out. These were my caves now, and I would walk them freely. Stepping out of the crack, scratching the outside rock to mark it, I took a deep breath of the poisonous air defiantly.

Above me, chittering at my return, were an assortment of small, leathery-skinned creatures. Some held flimsy weapons, shards of metal with a piece of wood for a handle, others did not. All of them turned their focus to me, as they should.

“When someone as important as myself enters the room,” I snarled, happy to finally have a release for my anger, “you bow.”

A greenskinned, chubby thing with a piggish nose and tiny ears, it shouted something in a language that I didn’t bother trying to understand. I raised my hand, a heavy ball of mana already gathered. Aiming it at the creature that was yelling, partly because it was clearly a leader of some kind, and partly because it had the gall to address me, I loosed the lethal blast. It felt, and looked impressive. One moment the creature was standing on the rock bridge and brandishing a makeshift sword, the next it was tumbling off the edge, a smouldering corpse that never got to beg for forgiveness.

Enemy Defeated

You have slain a Goblin Warrior (level 3).

Receive: +3 EP

I pictured myself from the appearance of the goblins above. Some strange creature appeared from a sliver of space in the wall of a poisonous pit that they use to dispose of dangers. Instead of choking on the fumes, it then barked something in draconic, which for all I know sounded like gibberish to them, and then decapitated the most aggressive member of the group with a flick of it’s wrist.

It explained their sudden and immediate retreat. A shame, I mused as I stepped over to the downed goblin warrior, but I’ll come find the rest of you soon. Picking up the “sword”, my identification skill didn’t even register it as a real item. I used it to slice away a piece of the green flesh before happily throwing it into my mouth.

I had finally found something to hunt.