Once he made it into the tunnel, Erin hosed himself off with the blessed water from his storage space. When it began to run out, Erin replaced it with newly created water. What started as a pleasant stream soon turned into a cutting force as he desperately tried to scrub every speck of blood from his body. It wasn’t until he reached half HP that he realized the reason he couldn’t seem to get clean was that he had created a dozen small gashes all over his body that were replacing the goblin blood with his own. That realization caused him to slow the water pressure enough that his healing finally managed to catch up.

When he was clean again, Erin spent several points of divinity to mend the tears his impromptu shower had made in his clothing. With a sigh, Erin slumped against the wall of the dungeon.

“Ok, what the fuck is wrong with me?” He muttered, staring at the clean lines of his hand; which a moment before had been covered in small nicks, and scratches created as what amounted to self-inflicted wounds. The hand began to shake again, and he clenched it.

“Fuck this. If I don’t get it together, I’m not going to survive this dungeon, not to mention whatever heroes come for me.” Erin channeled the fear into rage; similar to how he had before, but less intense. He found that as long as he maintained the right balance, he was able to maintain his self-control. Erin unclenched his fist, and began staring at it. It trembled again. Erin clenched it, and punched the wall hard enough to cause several points of damage to himself. Once the wounds had healed, Erin unclenched his fist. His hand shook.

“Fine. I don’t need my hand to cast magic anyway.” Erin muttered to himself, and pushed off the wall. He stalked toward the next room. The setup was similar this time, though where before the birds had all been a dull brown color, this time there was one with a bright green plume that extended forward from its head like a horn. The goblins were more numerous this time.

“Maybe twenty?” Erin guessed, doing his best to count the quickly moving forms. Checking his HP, Erin found that he was back to two-thirds full.

“Should be fine, I think.” Erin crouched, and thought about how best to take on the goblins. His approach before had certainly worked, but Erin was nervous about tanking so many hits at once. Glancing at his stat page, he smacked his forehead soundlessly again. He still had ample stat points banked from his previous dungeon dive, in addition to the twelve he had received fighting the goblins. Erin noted that he had also gained a point of earth magic skill from his fight.

“More toughness I guess.” He muttered. The stat distribution still felt wrong to him as he purchased four more points of toughness. The fact that even his meager seventeen points had kept him alive against such concentrated fire was more than enough to make the decision for him. Erin prayed that having twenty-one toughness would be enough to make him essentially immune.

Erin stood, and shook out his hand. He had been clenching it the entire time, and it was starting to ache. Erin glanced down at the uncooperative limb. It was shaking. Erin sighed, and shook his head. Gritting his teeth, Erin raised his shaking hand, and began magically flinging stones.

The goblins squawked, scuttling into a crude formation, and firing air shots. The attacks did noticeably less damage than they had before. Erin thought that where before they would have been nasty red bruises, now they would be dull purple bruises. For his part, Erin found that there was a point in between the fear and the rage where the two seemed to cancel each other out. It took conscious effort to avoid slipping one direction or the other, but existing in that space created a kind of cool detachment. Erin clung desperately to that nirvana-like coldness as he burst the goblin’s bodies with stones that pierced them like bullets. His attention solely on the goblins, Erin was caught off guard when a blade of wind scored his arm.

“Gah!” He cried, his grasp on the detachment faltering as his fear spiked. Looking for what had struck him, Erin found the green-crested bird hovering in midair; seemingly glaring down at him disdainfully. Erin caught a flash of light from the bird’s feathers, and a moment later, another shallow cut opened on his leg.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, and fighting the urge to run, Erin fired a chunk of stone at the creature. Gracefully, it pulled in a wing, causing itself to drop several feet. The stone missed; clattering harmlessly against the ceiling. Erin latched onto the same stone again, and fired it. During the travel time, Erin was struck by another wind blade. This one didn’t heal immediately, and Erin realized that the goblins had managed to cut into his HP severely despite failing to cause tangible damage. The rock almost impacted the bird this time, taking several feathers with it, but not causing significant damage.

Erin growled, and tried something new. Mana flared out from him in a torrent, sixty points consumed in an instant. The high expenditure produced results though; creating a small tornado of dust, and debris that shredded the goblins. Not all of them died immediately, speaking to the inefficiency of using large AOE spells at his current level of skill, but it was enough to keep his HP from bottoming out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Erin saw the telltale flash of green, and threw himself to the side. A plume of dust signified the impact. Pulling himself up, Erin checked his stats. He had Forty-two MP left, and twenty-five HP. Desperate, Erin gambled with another untested spell. Lifting multiple stones slowly into the air took incredible concentration. A wind blade sliced his chest. Erin grunted, but maintained focus. A second attack impacted his hip, and he felt his HP finally reach zero as it failed to heal the wound. Finally, the stones reached their assigned positions.

With a flare of mana that left him gasping, Erin shoved at the stones. The bird tried to dodge, but there was nowhere to go. The stones were coming from every direction. The creature reached the edge of his stone sphere before four different impacts pulped it; leaving a bloody mass of feathers that fell to the ground with a thud. Erin collapsed to the ground, utterly spent. Vision blurred with exhaustion, he opened his stat page. Two MP, and zero HP. Erin groaned in misery, and pushed away several notifications about stat increases.

As he was beginning to drift into sleep, he heard a clattering sound. Turning his head slowly, Erin saw a single goblin pull itself from the wreckage caused by his dust tornado. It made a pained chittering sound as it pulled a stone dagger from its loincloth, and limped toward Erin. Erin struggled to push himself to his feet, but found he didn’t have the energy. Next he launched a stone, but the rock bounced harmlessly off the goblin’s head. It stopped, and shook its head, seeming slightly dazed, but soon continued its slow journey. Meanwhile, Erin was dealing with the backlash of reaching zero mana. Only the knowledge that he was about to die kept him from falling into unconsciousness.

Erin channeled his divinity as a weapon, seeking to stab at it with the glowing white energy. The goblin hesitated when a glowing white spear manifested for a fraction of a second, but the chaotic nature of the energy worked against him. The spear of light quickly escaped his control; the energy dissipating harmlessly into the nearby stone. Erin screamed incoherently as the small goblin resumed its inexorable advance. Mustering the last of his strength, Erin began dragging himself mindlessly away from the goblin. As he struggled to gain distance on the encroaching death, Erin’s mantra flashed through his mind.

“No safety net this time. Stay calm, stay focused. Panic gets you killed.” He said to himself, the fog of panic making the words nearly incoherent. The fog cleared slightly, and he repeated his mantra again. Erin regained enough control over himself to exercise critical thinking. “There must be something I can use.” Erin thought. Opening his stat page, Erin saw salvation.

Purchasing an increase to his mana, followed by an increase to his HP brought him down to a single skill point, but it brought instant relief. He could think and move again. Erin heard a scratching sound on the stone of the floor behind him. Erin turned his head, and saw the point of the dagger dropping toward his heart. In a single moment of clarity, He saw everything moving in slow motion. That fraction of a second of extra time proved to be enough to save his life.

Seeing that the dagger was made of stone, Erin made the connection in his head, and turned his mana against it. Not having had time for proper mana regulation, Erin’s entire mana pool flashed out of him, and into the dagger. He watched, consciousness already fading as the dagger ripped itself out of the goblin’s grasp; several fingers bending at painful angles due to the extreme force. Like a rocket, the dagger shot upward, passing through the goblin’s head in a bloody explosion to embed itself in the red stone of the ceiling.

“Must be sandstone.” Erin thought as he finally fell into the warmth of unconsciousness.