Chapter 11, Climb

The time had finally come to leave our home, training hall, pleasure chamber and tailor station known as the dungeon core room behind. It had been a very long time since I saw the open sky and we’ve now made every preparation possible to survive the journey to the surface.

We are currently on the dungeon's lowest floor, floor 127, and even though Ari had only been able to bring with her vague information about the dungeon layout when melding to our soul it could have been very useful knowledge. What we knew was the approximate location of the stairwell to and from each floor as well as general information on what each floor should contain.

The problem is time. It has been centuries since the dungeon was last active and without the dungeon core infusing every floor with mana the structural integrity might have failed over time and collapsed chambers or even whole floors. That’s not to mention what could have gotten into the dungeon without the mana reinforced walls that normally kept the rest of the world out.

The dungeon might be infested with all kinds of nasty creatures who crawled in from outside. One thing is for certain though. Every piece of information we have about the dungeon might now be worthless. We at least have to assume as such if we’re to survive the climb.

I manifest a small mana structure mimicking the biological structure of the glowing lichen found in the core chamber to make a small glowing ball of azure arcane light. We’ll need it where we are going since it’s most likely going to be pitch black.

Stepping out of the small exit covered by hanging lichen I check our immediate surroundings. The only way forward is a straight corridor to my right, 6 meters in height and 5 in width, going far away into the distance. The strange glowing foliage covers the walls here as well but they seem to dim the further away from the core chamber I look.

“Those plants were like weeds in my dungeon core days. They always showed up near the core chamber, siphoning the increased ambient mana flowing past them.”

[Luminous cave lichen]

I make a grunt of acknowledgement with my actual vocal cords since I have to practice speaking whenever I get the chance. It would be embarrassing to not know how to talk if something sentient in here wanted to have a conversation and not outright kill us.

I start making my way down the corridor, watching as the foliage grows thinner and the light up ahead darker. Even the air seems to grow dryer and completely disappears from my sense of smell. It even seems to taste stale, not that I understand how air tastes like anything. I guess that’s Ari trying to translate the sensory difference between rock and foliage with next to no smell compared to just rock. We really need more data for our senses.

After walking a couple hundred meters every last bit of foliage is gone and I am left in complete darkness with only my small arcane light construct showing the path. The radius of visibility is only about 100 meters but both me and Ari are in agreement that attracting attention with a super bright light is stupid.

It takes what I estimate to be around half a kilometer before the scenery changes. I have made it into an intersection of two crossing paths. Since I have no idea where I am I use the method of following the wall to my right through every intersection going forward. It should let me avoid unnecessary backtracking at the very least.

Taking the right path I continue walking through another corridor which swerves left and right and sometimes slightly up and down. The next intersection only goes left or straight and following my rule of keeping to the right wall I continue moving forwards.

I suddenly come upon a new chamber and moving out of the corridor shows me a 8 meter high ceiling and the walls going left and right. I don’t see the end of the walls or a wall in front of me which would give this chamber a minimum width of 100 meters and minimum length of 200 meters. It could be much larger and may even hide all kinds of creatures in the darkness.

I stand there a long time, listening, waiting and even smelling but there’s no change. Only a deafening silence my rustling clothes would lighten if I only moved. Not having any other choice than standing here forever or getting a move on I continue following the wall to my right.

The room is a lot larger than I could have guessed. I walk along the wall for what must be another half a kilometer before a sudden change has me halting in my tracks. There is something up ahead further away from the wall than I am standing. I don’t know what it is but it’s dark.

Giving my senses and Ari a real workload I strain to make out anything else. Any movement or sound at all. But there is nothing. It’s either dead, inanimate or really stealthy. Or maybe all of them? Some sort of undead assassin statue?

The same principle of getting the fuck moving gives me the courage to continue forwards and inspect whatever I’ve found. And I almost laugh when I get nearer as my mysterious opponent is only a hole in the ground. Though as I get closer and can see the edge on the other side of the hole my momentary amusement is already gone.

The hole is 10 meters in diameter and goes into the ground at a slanted angle beneath my feet. In the chamber roof a little ways off is another opening the exact same size continuing on a slanting path upwards and away from where I’m standing.

“That must have been one big fucking worm.”

Ari gives a slightly nervous chuckle mirroring my own feelings.

“Yeah, do we dare to do it though?”

“Climb this worm tunnel to the next floor? I don’t see any other option. Our biggest hope was finding collapsed paths that lead to higher floors so that we don’t need to find the staircase but this is the same as a collapsed chamber if you ask me. Only much creepier.”

“We need to solve how we’re going to get up there though. We already tried externally manipulating our vessel with arcane manipulation to fly. That was an embarrassment.”

When having learned how to properly move my body I’d suggested we should try using arcane manipulation on our whole vessel to fly. I thought it was a genius idea at the time but it didn’t work at all. There must be some sort of hidden limit to our [Manabody] trait that prevents us from directly moving it. It’s the same for biological creatures but it was still a disappointment to me. Flying would be so cool.

“I was thinking we could test out the limits on what we can do with a body bursting at the seams with celestial blood and a highly controlled execution of overcharged muscle contractions in a specific sequence. Or in other words a mana enhanced jump.”

“You do love making things easy for me don’t you? Well we’ll have to test the limits at some point. Why not now?”

Making my way around the outside of the hole in the ground I walk all the way to the middle of the hole in the ceiling. It looks really daunting from straight beneath but Ari doesn’t give me time to second guess myself.

“We’ll try first with a small enhanced jump to give me more data and practice.”

I can feel Ari opening the proverbial floodgates on my pool of power. Flooding my system with celestial blood to get me into high performance mode. When she’s ready I take a steadying breath and focus my will on making myself jump 2 meters straight into the air.

Ari tries her best to turn my will into action, lowering me in a crouch and flooding the necessary muscle groups with enough power to make them glow in a barely noticeable golden luster. Then I’m in the air.

I go up and up before going a very far way down. It isn’t 2 meters, it’s 6 meters. Hitting the bedrock with a smack and crack I break both my legs in multiple places. The breaks are clean but they are also numerous.

Ari sounds almost cheerful as she gushes over all the data she managed to gather on my mana bones while simultaneously feeding me enough pain stimulus to make me curl into a ball while bawling my eyes out.

The overwhelming pain doesn’t last long. Training to get a high pain tolerance is a noble goal but one we don’t plan on achieving. Instead we plan to calibrate ourselves to feel as much pain as possible without it having an impact on performance.

Pain is good after all. It gives you important information about the state of your body while motivating you to do better at the same time. Ari is sweet in making sure that the next time I break my bones it will only hurt badly enough to slowly drive me insane without immediately incapacitating me with over stimulus. Yay.

It takes Ari about ten seconds to set the bones and move everything back in place. When I stand up I go again with the same height goal and once again a different result, this time only reaching 4 meters. More importantly no broken bones on landing! Ari tells me it was a close call but the mana bones held on, if just barely.

It takes me a few more jumps with me willing myself to make it to different heights and Ari readjusting at lightning speed with more and more data on her hands. Then it’s time to give it a shot at actually reaching the hole in the ceiling after I let my mana regenerate.

Repeating the same processes of Ari flooding my system with power and me making my will known I shoot straight up towards the hole. I go up fast and overshoot my target height of 10 meters by an extra 2 before coming down hard on the sleek slope. I nearly lose my grip on the smooth surface but I manage to barely cling on. My legs feel like they’re on fire but it's not bad enough to make me fall.

“That took a lot out of us, Zel. I know we overshot a little bit but still. It took a massive 1600 mana to make that jump and our mana flesh could only take so much strain. About a fourth of the total mana tissue used was torn apart and our tendons nearly snapped from the forces involved.”

“Ah so that’s why my legs feel like they’re on fire.”

“Yup. Seems like I could turn up the pain a little more than I am currently doing without losing performance but I don’t feel like experimenting with our current unsteady footing and all.”

After the pain is gone, signaling the full repair of my legs I start climbing up the spherical tunnel. I have to do several more mana enhanced jumps on my way up as the tunnel keeps swirling in every direction and sometimes looping back over itself. It’s slow going but good practice and I eventually learn to just start powering up while walking and barely taking a pause before launching myself, landing and continuing walking.

It’s exhilarating to perform such superhuman feats with a body Ari and I created ourselves. Just thinking about all the stuff I could do if I had enough mana is like a dream. As long as I keep making modifications and steadily improve upon my [Manabody], harnessing all of my future power should be possible. There might not be a limit to what I’ll be able to do if I just keep growing.

After two whole days of climbing the steep, ever changing upwards tilting tunnel I have to assume that I’ve long since passed floor 126 and probably even a lot more floors as the giant worm seems to have avoided breaking into the dungeon all this way. It should be able to go straight through like on floor 127 but there hasn’t been a single connecting tunnel so far. I might have avoided something awful on those floors I’ve passed if even the worm didn’t want to tangle with it.

To break up the monotony and to get in a little more practice I choose to practice mana enhanced running, sprinting and dodging on those few occasions that the tunnel pans out horizontally. It slows me down since I need to regenerate more mana between jumps but I don’t even know how long I’ll be in here.

There might come a time tomorrow when knowing mana enhanced running saves my life, giving me enough of a reason to continue my harsh training regimen. I start practicing incorporating mana enhanced running with jumping and every other such combination I can think of. It drains my mana really fast and I can burn through it all in under 15 seconds if I push myself.

The goal however is to reach sufficient control over the mana enhanced movements that I can instinctively strengthen any action at any time when my power has grown to allow for such.

Ding! General skill [Running] has leveled from [16] to [19].

Ding! General skill [Sprinting] has leveled from [10] to [14].

Ding! General skill [Jumping] has leveled from [9] to [17].

Ding! General skill [Dodging] has leveled from [4] to [5].

Ding! Skill [Mana Sense] has leveled from [233] to [240].

Ding! Skill [Passive Power] has leveled from [189] to [193].

Ding! Skill [Arcane Manipulation] has leveled from [315] to [319].

Another 3 days later I come upon an opening but not one leading to a dungeon chamber or corridor. I slowly move towards the opening on the left side of the tunnel and while shifting the arcane lightsource to a better angle I peek over the top of the edge.

There’s some sort of giant cave system ahead of me with a ceiling at least 10 meters in height. There seems to be all sorts of tunnels and chambers in different sizes joined together in a huge chaotic mess. It’s practically filled with stalactites and stalagmites with a few managing to join together in the middle.

The air in here is moist and the stale taste has been replaced by an overpowering smell. It doesn’t really smell much but it smells really bad. It’s hard to put into words what it actually smells like since Ari’s working with too few references. If I had to guess only based on the smell I’d say it's from some sort of rotting flesh.

I could continue following the worm’s path upwards but I’m really curious about this place. It smells terrible, sure, but just thinking I might be the first human to ever walk these caverns gets me all excited and ready to explore it. There might be treasure or enemies in a level range I can actually defeat here.

Crawling over the edge and stepping into the cavern I make my way further in between the forest of stone. I imagine the stalagmites to represent the same concept for whatever lives down here as compared to creatures from the surface.

My small sphere of azure light floating above my right shoulder casts eerie shadows between all the stalactites and stalagmites. The shadows move in ways to suggest creatures hiding just out of view and the sound of dripping water from the hundreds of stalactites play a rhythmic and ever changing song of the deep and unknown.

I reason that any combat taking place at this place will be in melee range. Using [Arcane Daggers] to manifest a dagger in each hand raises my confidence tremendously. Even the moving shadows are cowed with another two light sources to smooth out their form.

After I make my way through a small forest’s worth of stone I hear it. It’s a soft scuffeling and grunting noise coming from something between the stalagmites up ahead. Moving as quietly as possible I slowly creep forwards until the creature suddenly moves out from behind a stalagmite 4 meters in front of me.

I stop dead. Not even breathing since that action is voluntary. I make a quick study of the creature before me as it sniffs the air. It looks kind of like a hunched, bipedal mole without eyes. There are dozens of wriggling feelers sprouting from its head where eyes should be. The feelers move and stretch in all directions, reaching about a 2 meter radius away from its head.

The creature itself is about 1.5 meters in height and has a thin but muscular build. It almost looks starved. Everything except the hands, feet and head is covered in a grimy black fur. Its wrinkled skin is both scarred and scabbed in many areas. Yellow pus leaking from sores and weird looking holes arranged in tightfitting patterns like honeycombes on the back of its head.

It seems unsure as to what it’s smelling. Now that I think about it I don’t even know what I would smell like to other humans, no less to whatever this is. Seemingly picking up a clue the creature scurries up the nearest stalagmite to get a better reach with its bulbous nose. The behavior could have been called cute on another creature but whatever this is took it in the direction of unnerving bordering on terrifying.

It swivels its wrinkled, pus covered face back and forward showing its wickedly sharp fangs in a snarl. Using its strange feelers to sense something in the air it suddenly snaps its head straight towards me. Whatever I failed to hide was enough to pinpoint my location. As I’ve already been discovered I try [Identify] to see what I’m up against.

[Infected Stonebiter Weremole - Level ?]

I have no time to register anything more than the level of whatever a Weremole is and I’m so relieved I almost miss the Weremole’s next move.

Gripping the stalagmite it clings to near the top with its almost human looking hands, it kicks off with its feet and by not letting go off the stalagmite, swings around in a half circle with the stalagmite as a pivot. I thought it was running away from me when it didn’t directly come straight at me and my inexperience is showing.

Faster than I can follow with my eyes the Weremole swings between the stalagmites in a confusing pattern moving faster and faster, almost in a blur, until it comes at me from a blind spot. I have no idea how it knows which direction I’m facing but somehow it goes straight for my neck from behind my back.

Ari barely manages to get us running in high performance mode before it comes for us. Not managing to react in time to the unexpected attack angle the Weremole manages to clamp its jaws on my neck as I begin to turn around, tearing my throat out with its wicked fangs and spraying golden blood with red specks across a stalagmite. It swallows the torn flesh and before I can catch it with my daggers jump off of me, starting the confusing dance between the stone forest once more.

Nothing of great importance is severed or lost even without a large piece of my throat and Ari starts regenerating the damage before the Weremole comes for us once more. This time from above.

It must have swung up towards the stalactites on its journey before dropping down on us as I have no idea of how it managed it this fast otherwise. Looking up towards the descending monster I ready my daggers to counter the swiping clawed strike I think it is going for.

It was a feint.

The Weremole surprise me once again as it uses the strange tactic of wrapping the feelers sprouting from its eyes around my head and opening its jaws wide enough to encompass my whole face. It then pulls itself towards me using its feelers with enough force to lift me off my feet and I meet it airborne mid way as it snaps its jaws shut.

I scream as it tears my face off and scrapes jagged lines into my eyeballs with teeth not getting enough grip to rip them straight out. Lashing out in a desperate attempt to score a hit, my right dagger shears through its taught feelers stretching out from its face and my left plunges into the Weremole’s right shoulder as we land where I’d prepared for a counter strike before the surprise ensnarement.

An eerie gurgling howl leaves the creature and I can hear it scrambling back among the stalagmites but I have no way of accurately locating it just yet. I try using my hearing but it’s difficult to make anything out except a general direction of fingernails scraping against stone and heavy footfalls absorbing collisions.

Silently urging Ari to fix my eyes and face as fast as possible I spin on my feet, trying to keep my daggers up in front of me in the direction of the enemy. It’s lucky that I do as my eyeballs regenerate in the slightly longer silence just in time to lash out at the Weremole who has once again gone for a sneaky drop attack.

I pierce it in almost the same spot as before with my left dagger before tearing open its stomach with my right dagger that I reversed my grip on mid strike. Its two jagged teeth dig deep and tear the flesh making the sickly entrails follow along, as if hooked on the teeth, in a wide arc.

The Weremole is able to snag my left arm with its own before biting it cleanly off while I am busy pulling out its entrails. That hurts almost as badly as when I fell and broke my legs before Ari had adjusted the pain. This time though I don’t lose my focus but only get more pissed off. It fucking hurt and I will hurt this creature back for it.

Using my stump, still spraying celestial blood everywhere, I slam what’s left of it down upon the Weremol’s head with enhanced strength while meeting it from beneath with a right knee to the face. I must have gotten it right in whatever’s left of its feelers as it lets out another even higher pitched gurgling howl.

Knowing the fucker is already a dead thing walking I up my pace with my right dagger trying to inflict as much pain as possible before it expires. I manage to slash its arm, throat and chest before finishing it with a tearing backslash to its ‘eyes’. The sound of its suffering before it expires is music to my ears.

Ding! You have slain [Infected Stonebiter Weremole - Level 54]. Bonus experience awarded.

Ding! [Mana Machine] has leveled from [37] to [39]. +[10 AP]

Ding! General skill [Arcane Daggers] has leveled from [12] to [16].

Ding! General skill [Small Blades] has leveled from [21] to [23].

Ding! General skill [Dual Wielding] has leveled from [15] to [19].

Ding! Skill [Arcane Manipulation] has leveled from [319] to [320].

I collapse on my knees. Keeping my eyes on my arm as the flesh finishes regenerating on the tips of my new fingers. I feel both mentally and physically drained.

Mana: [103 / 2460]

“We came dangerously close to running out of power during this fight, Zel. You used your will to increase our power fairly sparingly only doing so thrice when gutting the Weremole and slamming it with your stump then kneeing it in the face. It was still almost too much for our reserves while keeping our daggers out.”

“Yeah, give me a minute to process the fight.”

I flick the gunk off my daggers and sit still as stinking yellow pus and sickness mixed with entrails flow past me. Staring into space I think back on the fight while flexing my new left hand on the handle.

“We could have done a lot better and a lot worse since we’re still alive but spent. We could have prepared one use of [Arcane Missle] when using [Identify] to launch at the moment we knew we’d have a shot at taking it down. It might not have worked with its speed though.

That’s another thing we forgot. When it did its crazy fast swinging movement technique we should have sparingly used [Mana Sense] to be able to keep track of its movements and not spin around like an idiot. It would have forced the Weremole to attack from a predetermined angle if it wanted to take us by surprise.”

“That’s true. And I should have gotten us into high performance mode the moment we heard something, not at the last moment. Consider the lessons learned.”

Pain is indeed a good motivator.

With our battle analysis done I check the corpse of the Weremole. It both smells and looks disgusting and there doesn’t seem to be anything of value on it. The only thing of note is a clue to its infected status from pulling out the rest of the stomach's contents. Its heart is terribly swollen and covered in a hive of pus filled holes squelching and ejecting its contents with the slightest push from my dagger side. It gives me the worst kind of trypophobia and looks like the most infected part of the corpse.

It might be some sort of blood infection. Whatever is causing it and what side effects it has is currently a mystery. A mystery I might solve if I continue down this cavern system. Should I? I kind of want to. This sort of thing is exactly the kind of exploration and adventuring I want to do.

“We could always come back.”

There it is. Ari, the voice of reason in our duo. Well I can’t argue with her logic and the infection is frankly quite disgusting. Might as well spend my time solving a more pleasant mystery once I make it out of here. As I walk back towards the worm tunnel I get an unwelcome notification.

Ding! Resistance [Disease resistance] has increased from [2] to [3].

“How could we have gotten infected? We’re not even biological.”

“It’s feeding on our mana somehow, multiplying itself. Please make a few small cuts so that I can expel the pus.”

I make small cuts on my face, throat and regenerated arm, watching in disgust as a yellow fluid seeps out before the wounds close back up. Having focused on my body once more I also notice the filth I’m covered in. My own mana blood always disperses into ambient mana with time but the pus and guts from our kills will not.

“Hey Ari, we’ll need some way to clean ourselves without water. Got any ideas?”

“Hmm. Tricky, we could always shed a layer of ourselves and disperse our filth covered hair before regenerating the damage but that seems like a very monstrous thing to do. Creating some sort of arcane fluid to mimic water might work but that will be power intensive and feels like a waste. How about a dense mist?”

I try different things and eventually come up with a mana structure I’m satisfied with. Using a few hundred points of mana I manifest a dark gray, slightly azure tinted cloud that acts like a dense mist of soft particles. Dispersing my clothes and hair tie I run the misty substance over my body, scrubbing away filth and gunk. It’s even quite effective at suffusing my scalp before running down the hair and getting all the nastiness out.

It feels really strange against my skin though. Slightly chilly and ticklish but not unpleasant. My nipples grow hard from the slight cold and I let Ari take over scrubbing me down. Grabbing each firm peak in a squeezing grip that threatens to draw a moan out from me I enjoy myself with fondling my breasts for a little while. I had almost forgotten that I used to be nude all the time not long ago and it feels good to fill my hands with the reassuring softness.

Once I’m clean I manifest my clothes and tie up my hair in the same style before dispersing the arcane daggers and starting the climb once again.

I climb for another day, doing different kinds of enhanced movements to pass the time, before reaching what looks to be the end of my worm tunnel journey. The tunnel is slowly leveling out before becoming horizontal for a few hundred meters.

I start to worry that there’s no connection to another floor from this tunnel when I start traveling downwards on an ever steeper slope. I almost start thinking I’ll have to turn back before finally seeing a small hole further ahead on the right side of the tunnel. It's shaped like a cut corner of a rectangle and continuing forwards I see the unmistakable signs of a dungeon chamber. Lying strewn across the chamber floor is both a warning and sign of challenge.

Ding! General skill [Running] has leveled from [19] to [21].

Ding! General skill [Sprinting] has leveled from [14] to [15].

Ding! General skill [Jumping] has leveled from [17] to [20].

Ding! Skill [Mana Sense] has leveled from [240] to [242].

Ding! Skill [Passive Power] has leveled from [193] to [195].