It goes without saying that, I don’t fully understand the limits of my ‘Undying’ trait. Naturally, not being able to die is quite the boon. I’m pretty sure it’s the single most wanted superpower in all of existence. I often feel like I cheated creation or something. I mean, I hardly earnt my immortality. However, lying in this dark, claustrophobic hole in the ground, I have come to realise that I would rather die in some situations.

One would think, ‘oh, that Murphy guy, yeah I heard of him, totally got an awesome deal on life. He only feels a portion of the pain he should and even when he does it get converted into pleasure.’ Well, I hate to say that there comes a point when your body is trying to die due to asphyxiation and your being crushed under the weight of Sage knows how many tonnes of metal trees that you realise, even those magical traits can only go so far.

I’ve come to discover that I didn’t just adapt to the lack of oxygen as I’d previously predicted. I mean, my traits allowed me to alleviate the natural panic and mental responses to the act of dying from asphyxiation, but it’s actually more accurate to only say that they’ve reduced the symptoms. Even my abnormal ability to recover can’t quite keep up when all the cells in my body start decomposing.

On top of that, the pain I feel from my lungs burning and muscles falling to pieces ... well, even my class traits can’t hold something like that at bay. Mind you, my Pain Mastery is steadily climbing so at the moment it’s more a race between my Pain Mastery and the rapid deterioration of every cell in my body as my internal organs start shutting down.

I’m actually quite surprised I’ve maintained clear thought for as long as I have considering I’m pretty sure my grey matter is busily turning into a nasty slurry and is moments from breaching its cosy little membrane and escaping out my ear. I’ve probably been trapped down here for a few hours now, and I’m starting to lose focus from the pain that has well and truly overwhelmed my Hurts So Goods ability to convert it into pleasure.

With nothing much to do at the moment apart from suffering silently, I let my mind fall into my status space and began to review my status.

Well, it’s been a while since I just looked at all my totals like this. Usually, I only focus on the particulars. In fact, I can’t remember properly viewing my whole status since way back before I started my crusade on Eden. Feels like forever ago.

Well, my endurance remains up through the roof. That’s always good. I imagine I may even level it again at this rate, though I have a feeling I’ll have to try and escape first, or I might actually die. That would certainly be embarrassing. Hmm, well I’ve certainly made some progress during my time in Eden. Unfortunately, I focused quite a bit of my time and energy on stats instead of skills.

I should probably focus my time in the dungeon this time on levelling my skills, though some of them hopefully will remain stagnant and I’ll have no reason to want to use them here. Specifically, certain magic types. It’s taken me a great deal of fortitude to avoid abusing sinister magic in particular.

Hmm, my luck has dropped a bit again. I had my Luck Spawn go on an absolute rampage through Six Star earlier just so I’d be prepared to come in here. Keeping my luck in the positive is honestly the most aggravating battle. Stupid fucking class and it’s stupid fucking luck penalties. This is why we can’t have nice things, or more specifically, why ‘I‘ can’t have nice things.

Let’s see. Oh, my mana has gone up quite a bit. It’s certainly nothing to scoff at, but in comparison to some of the spellcaster specialities in my domain they spend that much mana just getting up in the morning. Apparently, they spend hours at a time levelling things like meditation and inner peace and other crap like that. All their mystic mumbo jumbo is lost on me. Mostly because I blindly suck up mana, now and then resulting in my soul completely ripping itself apart and then putting itself back together just a little bit more robust and able to hold just a bit more mana.

On the note of things that the mage class people have that I lack a great deal of. Intelligence. It’s one of the most difficult stats to level, taking an unhealthy amount of reading, memorisation and procrastination ... err I mean brooding ... nope, Seelie would hit me for both of those. What does she call it again ... brainstorming.

Well, whatever. Again, not something I’ve invested much time in, especially considering I don’t have the time or patience to sit in a musty old tower all day and try to learn obscure ancient languages or build my own spell models. Though if I could build a spell model that could completely obliterate certain suspect spells from my spellbook without adverse ramifications, I’d be more than happy to create it.

In fact, I’ve decided that will be my focus of study when Seelie eventually manages to force me to sit at a desk behind a mountain of books and study magic again.

Speaking of magic...

I’m sure it’s no shock that my spell casting has somewhat fallen by the wayside recently. Even during the rescue and looting on Eden, I avoided using too much magic. Somehow, Can’t Stop the Music has become one of my most highly levelled spells, despite only having used it a handful of times.

Seelie is of the belief it has something to do with the spell always having to overcome some kind of insurmountable defect in my personality. I yet to see any obvious signs of this, so I’m sure she’s just making things up, and I’m definitely not ignoring anything obvious that it could be.

Additionally, the sheep. I mean ... the description makes them seem completely harmless, but I’ve seen what those things look like shaved. There is no way in hell I’ll believe those things are ‘just’ sheep. I’ve been too afraid to investigate them more though. I’m afraid if one of my spawn catch sight of them there’ll be an uprising until I summon more.

My traits and titles haven’t changed at all for a while. This most likely corresponds with Seelie’s theory about traits and that sort of thing piling up while you’re a rookie and levelling out. Although she also said some nonsense about it reflecting a person’s history and nature, which is obviously wrong, otherwise I’d have traits like detect evil or heroic aura or some other such thing...

Whew ... whelp, definitely time to leave. My bodies now at the point it’s convinced I’m entirely dead and venting the plumbing.

Gorby watched on with glee as the life slowly ebbed out of Murphy’s body. Even still, he was steadily piling on more trees to ensure the growing metal mountain would sufficiently keep him contained until that inevitable final rush of experience points when he dies.

Unfortunately, no such thing happened. He instead watched on horrified as a grotesque book of surely evil magic appeared in a crevice near his body. Shortly after, his entire body melted into the shadows and moments later reappeared at the very edge of his iron tombstone.

The moment he reappeared, Murphy collapsed face first into the serrated metal grass and dropped two trees from his inventory. Gorby didn’t even wait to see what happened next as he immediately began piling trees on the somehow still living corpse of Murphy. Not quickly enough though, as the corpse managed enough motor control to gasp in a lungful of oxygen, after which it rapidly started regaining life.

It was then a matter of seconds, as the area directly around Murphy began to darken in response to his shadow domain and he began flitting away through the forest like a dark wraith in the night. When he was only a few hundred meters from the floating platform with the portal, Gorby managed an intercepting tackle with a metal tree that would leave anyone else half crippled.

More lumbering trees then showed the sprite footwork of Olympic sprinters as they began another pile on. Like trying to hold jelly in your fist, Murphy squeezed back out. He then spent a few minutes running around in circle dodging tackles from spiked trees until another small mountain of them had grown under the platform.

With quick steps, he pushed his agility and strength to the maximum as he raced up the piled trees and jumping over their flailing branches until he reached the top. A well timed jump later, and he was flying through the air towards the platform, only 40 odd meters from reaching the portal to the next level.

He spun his body in mid-air and pulled out a set of common looking daggers, just in time to put his deflect skill into use and bounce off a huge spike launched from the trees below. Taking advantage of the oncoming assault, Murphy fired up his deflect and mass computation skill in concert. With this oppressive duo of skills, he was able to reposition his body in mid-air using the force of the spikes, just in time to receive a spike in the chest. Although it didn’t manage to dig very deep, it had enough force behind it to launch his body through the portal and into the second level of Gorby’s dungeon.

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting this. I mean, I know that I let everyone in here to help Gorby out, but I wasn’t expecting them making this place their home ... or in this case, super magic forge.

Instead of a level filled with crazed monsters and traps, I instead found myself standing on a stone bridge leading through a series of huge smelters that look as if they were operated by giants. The heat in this place was so stifling that I could feel my already punished lungs burning up again.

A single breath left me with a parched throat and forced me to inhale any number of toxic fumes from the smelting process.

Scattered along the distant walls were various clockwork apparatus operating everything, from feeding ore into the fires and pouring magma ore into huge plates filled with grooves so they can set into workable bars. In the distance, I could see the bridge ended at a huge circular platform with a huge forge so filled to the brim with magic it was causing small mana storms to erupt around it.

Banging away on a crystal anvil was a madly laughing Alton, every swing of the hammer spraying mana and sparks around like fireworks.

As I strolled forwards, the banging suddenly stopped and Alton’s head cocked to the side. He then spun around and locked his bloodshot eyes on me while his hammer remained raised mid swing. The entire forge began to tremor and spark in the background, and the light seemed to be sucked out from the rest of the level, causing Alton’s crazed face to be cast in shadow as flames and magical energy poured out behind him. His eye’s glowed with madness, and his grip on the hammer tightened.

I almost wanted to take a step back at the level of crazy this scene was giving off.

“‘Bout time, boy! Now get over here. I need you to start sucking up all the loose mana.”

“What?” I was confused. I’d thought he was about to attack me. I actually had no idea what the hell was going on right now.

“You deaf boy? Get over here and start depriving the space of this excess mana. It’s fucking up my forging!”

“Err, I...”

‘CLANG!’

Alton then completely ignored me and turned back to his forge. His anvil ringing out in protest as the hammer in his hand struck down like lightning. Not sure what else I was meant to be doing here, I just shrugged and wandered over near the glowing forge. I let some of my deprive mana flow out of my body. Instantly, a huge influx of mana rushed in.

This was very dangerous. I’d barely even let out a tiny bit, and already I’d pushed my soul to the limits of its endurance. Deciding it probably wasn’t a good idea to blow my soul apart and go into mana flux right next to the forge, I stopped. This led to the mana in the surroundings quickly building up again and me getting a hammer strike to the face.

“What the hell ya’ doin’ boy?! Don’t stop!”

“But my mana is...”

“Then fuckin use it for somethin’, you moron!”

Well ... I guess I can probably do that. I’d need something that used a shit tonne of mana to be able to burn away all this excess quickly enough to keep up with the amount the forge was spewing out. My highest cost spell was actually the completely useless, Enchanted Sleep of Forever: Troll Version. Even just the standard casting cost me 300 Mana. If I poured more into it, I could probably empty my soul of mana in a single cast.

Actually, it’s got quite a long cast time. I can just pour every bit of mana I suck up into the spell while I’m casting it, that way the mana will be stockpiled in the spell model instead. Genius.

I looked through my inventory for a nice harmless benign fruit. Then, after some more thought, decided instead to use an instant recovery potion. These were apparently quite rare according to the Domain Store, so some idiot might actually be stupid enough to drink it if I put the curse on it.

With that, I then opened my spell tomb and began the casting. The spell model flickered to life as I started pouring all of my mana into it. Considering that the standard cost of casting was 300 mana, my soul was emptied out in barely a second. The chant would still take at least 15 minutes to finish though, so I started to release a tiny bit of depriving mana into the air around me.

This then started a continuous flow of mana into the spell model as I chanted. Just at a cursory inspection with mana manipulation, I suspected that the ambient mana around the forge was somewhere in the 100,000 range. I wasn’t sure why it was acting so wildly though, causing little mana storms and what not. If I had to guess, it was probably because it’s mostly residue mana from Alton’s forging process.

Since it’s residue, it was filled with all sorts of conflicting properties. Once I’ve drained it all away and polluted it with my sinister mana signature, the universe will then refill the lost mana with neutral mana like it usually does. I’m basically being used to clean the mana in Alton’s forge so it doesn’t keep interrupting his forging.

The moment I came to this realisation, the system pinged.

‘Ping! You have received the recurring quest, ‘Clean my fuckin’ forge!’, from Alton.’

Speaking of the grey dwarf, his hammering speed had shot up to an alarming rate now that the mana fluctuations had calmed down and the ‘dirty’ mana was being sucked into me and processed for the curse. His arm looked like a blur, and the ‘Clang!’ of his hammer had fused into a single endless high pitch hum.

It was perhaps the most boring fifteen minutes of my life. I’d pumped in every bit of mana I could suck in with my deprive mana and the spell model in the tome was now just a blinding light. It almost seemed like it was about to explode.

Alton had finished his hammering at about 13 minutes and was busy inspecting a long thin sword he’d just quenched in what I’m assuming is blood.

“‘ ... and let that stupid hussy sleep forever.’“ I ended the incantation, and all the mana in the tome poured into the vial of instant recovery potion. The usually semi clear green liquid then underwent a fundamental change, becoming crystal clear and filled with shiny flecks of what appeared to be solidified mana.

It looked stunning. Like some kind of super powerful potion that gods would hand out to their champion hero or some other such nonsense. Just looking at it made my already parched throat feel even drier.

‘Ping! Congratulations, you have created a new potion. Cursed Nectar of the Gods.’

“Well ... that’s not ominous at all.”

Storing my new potion away, I returned my focus to Alton. He appeared to be far calmer now, and his appearance wasn’t setting off any alarms. If anything, he looked fresher and younger than ever.

“Good job lad. You may have to stop by every so often to cycle the mana in here again. Even my ruins weren’t able to keep all those mana collisions suppressed while I was working. Anyway, here you go.”

He then handed me the sword he was admiring. I immediately used my identify skill.

‘Ping! Failed to identify.’

By habit, I then unconsciously lifted the sword to my mouth and took a bite out of the edge as I wondered about what sort of properties it had. Alton stared on in horror as I swallowed the bite I took from his past few days of hard work, effort and rare resources.

Sword of the Consumer (Sword Spirit)

This sword was crafted and imbued with the express purpose of being compatible with depriving mana. The level of skill and ingenuity required to develop and craft such a thing is astronomical. Some asshole has taken a bite out of it.

Cannot break.

Cannot be deprived of its properties.

Eats things it touches when filled with depriving mana.

Please stop eating me!

Interesting.

“What in the bloody hell are you doin’!”

Alton appeared to be upset with me, and apparently, my new sword was also somewhat dissatisfied. I wasn’t really sure what I am supposed to say in a situation like this.

“Erm ... the next level?”

Alton stared at me for a few very long seconds, as his face clouded over and his eyebrow started doing that twitching thing Seelie’s often did. Maybe that’s contagious? Well, it doesn’t really matter. Alton simply pointed in at the edge of the platform his magic forge was sitting on and grunted.

After walking over and peering over the edge, I noticed a tiny speck of light deep down at the bottom of the endless black abyss that made up the floor below the platform. Before I had the chance to ask, a foot connected with my back and I was launched into the empty void.