[Valerianne Yul]

If this was indeed a hallucination, it was lasting far too long. I settled on the “I was healed wrong” theory for now.

I heard rushing water somewhere nearby. Ah? Maybe I can escape via wherever the water was pouring from. I moved towards the sound, stepping around jaggedy, broken rocks and discovered a waterfall there, pouring out of a newly formed crevasse.

Climbing up the said waterfall had proven to be incredibly difficult, as the current kept slamming me down and washing me away, but I succeeded at it eventually, hanging from a small outcropping of rock, getting splashed in the face. Sputtering and blinking I pulled myself up and squeezed myself into the crack in the wall. The crevice was only slightly bigger than me. My cape caught onto the edges of the rocks as I crawled into it. I pulled. The cape didn’t budge. I pulled harder and heard the sound of ripping fabric. The Order of Virtue would definitely not approve of this.

Getting stuck inside of a crevasse was a big no no. I crawled forward, trying to breathe as little as possible, lest the cape get caught again. Jaggedy rock edges kept stabbing my exposed skin, making me shudder in pleasure. I tried to ignore the sensation, crawling forward as the amulet healed the scratches.

Due to the fact that my family’s farmhouse was hanging about five hundred meters up in the sky, I wasn’t afraid of heights. Dark, spooky, small places however gave me the willies. My claustrophobia and nyctophobia were more unwieldy now, featuring priorly unknowable dimensions. The tightness and darkness of the crevice were producing a mixture of two spine-chilling modulations, the pointy rocks sounding like small twinkling bells above the ever present, foreboding pulse. What the shit was wrong with me? I wasn’t in an opera theater! Why did my anxiety have a color palette and a corpulent flavour attached to it?

It seemed like I was crawling forever in this crevasse. I was about to give up on life, about to succumb to another psychedelic panic attack when the sensation of being crushed ended and I fell onto my face, emerging into another empty cavern. I blinked. This cavern looked man-made. The walls were made of giant, well placed stones with some sort of etchings on them. I was in a dungeon!

I realised that I had nothing but boots and a cape to defend myself or to fight with. Well, crap.

The inextricable, psychotomimetic awareness wasn’t helping things either. I didn’t recall eating mushrooms, there were no plants in the cavern. My understanding, perception of the world around me was too deep, filled with too many senses. Looking at things, thinking about concepts or touching things was now akin to standing in front of an ocean that waited to swallow me whole. The ocean of acuity begged me to step into it, to drown myself in the tapestry of sensations.

Nope, nope, nope. I shook my head, unwinding myself, letting go of the ghostly threads that seemed to permeate and bind everything everywhere.

I focused on the mathematically rational side of things, assessed my limited options. Thanks to the church amulet I could only use one spell - heal. The magic spell for healing was a pretty simple diagram. In fact, the magic circle for "heal" was etched into the gemstone of the amulet. It was a simple cross within two circles, I recalled. Easy to visualise, easy to use. I didn't need to heal myself with it - the amulet was already doing that automatically, but fighting dungeon monsters with "heal" would be tantamount to suicide.

I cautiously stepped forward. It was a good thing that I was so grievously injured or I would have no way to see where I was going. The Divine amulet of healing was my only source of light in this horrible place.

This tunnel was quite well aged. I stared upon the walls and saw that the etchings there formed enormous, interconnected spirals. The spirals didn’t look like the ones used by the church of Virtue. They looked far more arcane, degraded and menacing. The amulet of healing lit up with a brilliant blaze when I tried to touch one.

Shit! I backed away from the rune. Were they sapping the energy they needed to activate from me somehow? Was I bleeding anywhere? I checked my scalp, running my fingers through my wet hair, as I examined what I could see of my body. It was impossible to know for sure because I was still wet from the waterfall. The runes on the walls activated and dull pleasure assaulted me from all over my body. The pleasure rapidly intensified as the very walls illuminated with dark, evil, arcane power. Oh no. Poison. Hallucinogenic toxin!

This entire tunnel was poisoned… or worse... cursed! The runes around me started to glow even brighter. They had to be the cause of this blight, had to be what was messing with my mind and body!

I rushed forward. The menacing spirals weren't ending at all! I saw them in every brick, in every rock that made up this place. The spirals were singing to me. It was an eerie, morbid lullaby, no... a cabalistic chorus of doom.

“Status!” I yelled, staring at my HP. My health was steadily going down, then jumping back up with flashes of the amulet, then decreasing again. Crap. Crap. Crap!

My vast Void mana on the other hand was slowly decreasing and not coming back! These spiral runes were devouring everything! They were dissolution and euthanasia personified.

I ran faster and faster, panting, the anthem of extinction driving me forward, praying that the cursed spirals would end. They did not. They were everywhere! My foot landed on a stone platform and it sank inwards with a click. A trap! I leapt to the side far too late. A volley of arrows flew from barely visible slits within the walls. I screamed as they pincushioned me, my pleasure peaked, and still continued to rise. I slipped and fell into darkness from the ferocity of the unendurable pleasure. My consciousness ended.

[-=Nox=-]

I blinked, returning into being.

I was awake! Hooray! Also, boo, because doing magic of any complexity using Void mana in this incompatible White aura body was a terrible idea in hindsight.

The handy amulet of healing flashed in my neck. There were pointy things sticking out of me.

Ah, these are called arrows. Goddess me, they feel amazing. I'd keep them if they weren't bothering my human organs. I grabbed at the arrows, pulled them out and shook from the resulting pleasure. Spurts of liquid decided to escape from my body via newly formed holes. The liquid was dark purple and glittered with tiny, colorful stars visible in the darkness of the hall.

Wait a minute, this is me leaking away into the environment! No! Damn it! Go back in! This is MY essential mana and power! I grabbed at my cape, ripping strips out of it, tying them over the holes to prevent further loss of valuable essence. Whatever had already escaped, I scraped off my body with my hands, swiftly lapping it back into me with my tongue.

Much better.

I’ll never understand why humans used these arrow things. So inefficient. What a waste of metal. Why use such stabby bits when you can vaporise enemies with Void rays or drop an asteroid on anyone that opposes you?

Right, where was I? I looked down at myself. My torn cape was full of holes now thanks to the arrows.

“This is fine. Mortals will all wear capes with holes, once they see how fashionable I look.” I nodded. I knew how these trends went. Whenever I wore something new the mortals under my rule went berserk over it, trying to replicate it.

“Capes with holes and white boots will be in very soon!” I declared loudly, standing upright. A bunch of small dust rained from the ceiling down onto my head. That’s mildly distracting, I looked up in time for a small falling rock to smack me in the face. Yelling in a decrepit, six thousand year old tunnel wasn’t the best idea.

I rubbed my nose as it ached with pleasure. “Owie.”

I looked around and realised that my human body had decided to wander off on its own while I was resting off the unexpected explosion of my magic.

“Bad human meatsicle! You got yourself arrowed! See, this is what happens when you go off wandering on your own without my wise supervision. See, an incredible goddess like myself would never walk into such an obvious trap.” I chided my body.

Having thoroughly shamed my idiot body, I processed my surroundings.

I noted that this underground tunnel featured spiral runes all over it. These were my runes! Those Archmagi bastards dared to use my own creations against me! This was an outrage. I would murder them all for this offence, had they all not died thousands of years ago from old age. I promised myself that I would find their graves, bring them back to life and then murder them time and again for this blasphemy. This was unacceptable! They drew all of my runes wrong, crooked! Damn humans can’t even copy something properly. See, they totally missed the bit in the center that donated all of the gathered power to me.

Hang on. I squinted at the runes of devouring. These runes were made like this on purpose, turned into a weapon against any living thing that got too close. The stonework basically leeched mana and life out of anything that came past, and then activated the matrix when enough energy had been leeched! Clever bastards made death runes, so I couldn't get out! This was why I started to lose memory and coherence as soon as I escaped from the seal.

Wind howled through the vast tunnel, throwing up my cape. Dust motes flew past me. I could almost see the physical manifestation of the deadly power of the devouring runes as they sucked air into the tunnel from somewhere really far. It was as if the entire labyrinth was a vacuum that siphoned energy out of the air.

The death-tunnel went on for what seemed like forever. Exploding and getting arrowed took a lot out of me. The arrow-holes chafed with pleasure as they healed over. It was a good thing that I had this awesome healing amulet. It was drawing magic from somewhere really far, constantly healing me as the poorly drawn, somewhat decayed runes on the walls tried to suck me dry.

As I kept walking I stuck out my tongue and tried to triangulate my exact position.

I gradually pieced together that the tunnel itself was a gargantuan underground spiral. A spiral meant to kill anyone, to suck the life out of them had they tried to rescue me. Well, this explained why none of my dedicated followers came to my aid. None of them could use self-healing magic like this amulet. Meaning any that tried, failed long before they reached me at the end of the tunnel. I guess I can forgive those worthless fools that at least tried as only a White mage healer could get through this place and live. The damn Archmagi had no shame! None at all!

The glow of the healing amulet lit my way forward. I came across an entire party of corpsified humans ravaged by the sands of time, their disenchanted and rusted armor a testament to the ages that passed since their demise. These morons should have invested in an awesome healing amulet like mine, instead of armor.

“See, dark rune magic goes right through armor.” I educated the corpses. I pondered for a minute about waking them up, but then I remembered how badly I had exploded earlier. I concluded to attempt magic somewhere less underground just to be safe.

I searched through the various corpses, for something to aid me. Brittle armor turned to dust at my touch and scattered to the slight breeze. I found a single intact bag that contained a bunch of gold coins and a roll of faded parchment. I unrolled the parchment. It was a map of this place! It had declared me as “The great treasure.”

I was pretty great, I nodded in agreement with the assessment of the parchment. I attached the small bag to one of my many cape bindings and went on my way, passing by ancient gates that warned people of death. Adorable skulls and bones were etched onto the timeworn arches. Clearly they had failed to deter some people. Parts of the tunnels were quite collapsed and I had to crawl through the thin sections, scraping myself against pointy rocks. Not a fun time.

The death runes drawn all over the place silently continued to drain the life out of me. I considered devouring them, but then my brain told me that humans could not eat rocks very effectively. I settled for angrily cursing the runes as I retreated out of the containment prison. The “great treasure” map drawn by the long dead human adventurers aided my escape as the labyrinth became more complex and deadly, featuring traps.

Some of the traps were not labelled on the map, I realised as I stepped onto a trapped rock and another arrow smacked me in the breast. The rune etched on it had lost a lot of power due to age and decay, the arrowhead too dulled and blunt to penetrate my skin, but my chest still resonated with pleasure from the impact. I whimpered, cursing the humans.

After a break and some more cursing, I progressed onward with greater carefulness, rubbing my left breast. Stupid humans and their stupid dungeons. Why can’t you people build nice prisons? I never made my prisons in this ridiculous manner!

I decided to check if I had made Quest progress and checked my stats.

“What the? 1100 points to go?! Are you freaking kidding me? How did I fail my own quest?! Argh!" I complained.

“Okay. Time to work myself harder and also cheat a lot!” I stuck out my tongue, throwing quest after quest at myself.

Quest: Escape from the dungeon of death! Reward: 1000 points.

Quest: Pick up 10 rocks. Reward: 0 points.

Quest: Look hot. Reward: 0 points.

Quest: Don’t explode again. Reward: 0 points.

Quest: Get healed. Reward: 0 points.

Quest: Be an amazing goddess. Reward: 0 points.

I stopped. The rewards for my fake quests were null. The System knew that I was trying to cheat it. Damn it! Why did I design such a clever rewards System? Oh right, it was because my followers tried to cheat themselves into power without improving themselves or making my Empire of Darkness superior to all others. Now I remember! Argh!

I cancelled the worthless quests, leaving the dungeon escape one. Right. I had to make the Quests more difficult, more of a tangible accomplishment. The System I designed permeated the world, existing on a layer beneath everything. It knew when something was easy to do and didn’t give out nice rewards for such. I readjusted the quests on my human.

Quest: Acquire a deadly weapon. Reward: 100 points.

Quest: Escape from the dungeon of death! Reward: 1000 points.

Quest: Look so hot you impress others into becoming your worshippers. Reward: 100 points per true worshiper.

Quest: Murder a strong unbeliever and drink their essence of life. Reward: 2000 points.

Quest: Open a new temple of the Void. Reward: 10000 points.

Here we go! Goals! Nice rewards! I looked at my task list beaming with pride.

I picked up a pointy rock from the ground.

“Behold! A deadly weapon acquired!” I announced. Nothing happened. The System didn’t seem to agree with me that a rock was a deadly weapon. “Fine, I see how it is! Just you wait. I’ll definitely murder someone with this pointy rock soon, then you’ll see exactly how deadly it is!”

Finding someone to murder in a dungeon full of death runes was hard. Everything and everyone here was already dead. Just when I saw someone and got excited for murder, they turned out to be yet another corpsified skeleton upon closer examination.

“How hard is it to find someone to murder around these parts, damn it!” I swore, swinging my deadly rock back and forth. My human arm was beginning to get tired of holding up the rock. I considered finding a lighter rock. Would the system chide me if I gave up?

It was then that I remembered that there was a somewhat deadly arrow far behind me. Probably good for stabbing things with. I chose not to go back for it, as this blasted place was slowly draining my precious Void mana, getting through the shield of White aura supported by the healing amulet.

“The goddess does not make mistakes!” I growled, cradling my assuredly extremely deadly rock with both of my human hands.