Part 1

The potion doesn’t work like the video games wanted us to believe it. At least this one doesn’t work like that. It simply made the darkness more like a very dark dusk. Still hard to see, but it is somewhat better. Now for comparison, I activate the night vision artefact I have. Now everything is a lot better. I can barely see clearly, but it is a major improvement to the potion. Like a bright night. colours are still out of the picture for obvious reasons.

Continuing to walk through the slimy, wet and barely visible hallway, I do spot minute amounts of movements. Most move way to fast to catch anything, but I would say that they were insects. Nothing too worrying until now.

The deeper I go into the ruin, the less marks and signs I encounter. After walking around for 2 hours, there were no signs left anymore. The only reason most people don’t just get lost and die of hunger or starvation is the floor and the moss on the wall. They are eatable as written on the booklet and contain plenty of water for the human need. Except for guys with similar affinities to fire or light. They burn up more calories and water than normal ones do. The pathways leading to the exit are used so often, that the longer you walk around, the more noticeable it is. You can even find the exit this way. Is the stone more polished on the tunnel to the left than the rest? Then you most likely found one of the tunnels connecting to the exit. Those signs stayed here for millennia or more.

Earlier, I still met some people, but now I barely encounter time in 20 or 30 minutes of walking. Perfect for testing whether this was part of that order I got my soul magic from.

The method is about shaping my soul tendrils into a specific form and seeing whether I feel anything at all. The book didn’t really describe what is supposed to happen or what I should feel.

The form I had to do is ridiculously hard, even for someone like me with a very good affinity for the soul. It took me three days to flawlessly execute it for the first time. How did I know it was flawless? Easy, once you have it flawlessly, then the form is in a strange equilibrium, it holds itself in shape without needing to bother with it too much, like a very complicated compass you first have to assemble before it works. The construct is still somewhat fragile, so fighting is not recommended, or you would have to redo it again. Something which costs me 29 minutes to do.

Back to topic. After having the compass, I don’t feel a lot. There is the tiny feeling of going into a direction, but nothing more. It is like a gut feeling. Most likely, gut feeling and the soul have some connections.

Not really knowing what to do, I continue to sneak my way around the ruins. Sometimes finding abandoned places. There were a lot of dorms around here.

After arriving at the beginning of the dorms, I begin to search for anything valuable. The whole thing was made like a normal college dormitory, just underground. Very few had stone doors, in most cases, those doors were lying in the form of a ruble somewhere in the corridor of the building. Looking inside one, I got to know how it looked.

It had a stone bed, also known as a slab of stone wide enough to lie on it. I really hope that they got at least a matrice. Next is a broken desk. It simply comes out of the wall. Most of it has already crumbled, so nothing much to know about that. The last piece in the stone collection was a stone shelve, in a surprisingly good shape. Nothing of value yet, just some rotten remains of something organic and a lot of stone rubble. The only traces inside were of time. No marks from swords or craters from spells. It gives me the impression that they retreated rather hastily, but not completely unorganized. The rest of the rooms are also broken and empty. There are 5 doors which are still intact, to two os those rooms were made accessible by someone. Their method was to blast into it from the room next to it. The other three had extremely damaged doors, but still standing ones. These might have been the rooms of someone important maybe? I find that rather unlikely. But who knows? For all I know about this architecture style, it could very well be a warehouse or kitchen.

Leaving the dorms area behind, I move now into a direction I have no idea about.

Walking around, I hear a very silent *click*. Not a millisecond too late, I dodge backwards, not having time to use any scrolls, I just hope that my defence artefact can hold.

A wave of pain shoots through me. Spasming on the ground, I try to take back control of my muscle with very minor results. For the next 2 minutes, I continue to spasm. Then slowly I regain control over my body. The compass has been long dissolve at this point. Drinking half a potion of recovery potion, I inspect the place I just got nearly killed. It really isn’t that much different from the rest, just a tiny change in the colour of the tile is noticeable if you look very closely at the tile. Most likely, the trap can reset itself, or most of the traps wouldn’t have survived that long.

This time, my soul tendrils do disappoint unfortunately, they are unable to give any support with the trap(s). I suppose that they weren’t arrogant enough to think that they were the only ones capable of nurturing soul mages. I still don’t exactly know why I haven’t heard of the soul path. It is an extremely strong path on its own, and in synergy with mage training is already making me stronger than most of my peers. Even without a very big stash of artefacts.

PART 2

I think whether I should stop the exploration and go back into the camp. I already familiarized myself a bit with the ruin and found out that it has some connection at least to the mysterious order. Not having used much of my supplies yet, I decide to continue my exploration. I build up the compass again and continue my way in the ruin.

I am forced to use light in this area, the traps are very hard to spot without it. I also take out the Booklet and go through the types of traps. Most were dodgeable, like the one I just triggered, some were totally undetectable and you simply have to look out for other signs. Those are the ones most likely attacking the soul. Something I should be able to avoid with my soul magic.

Continuing my way, I encounter some other traps after some time, I catch sight of another light. We both turn of our light at the same time, I activate the artefact again. The potion has already run out. The effects were worse, that’s for sure, but I don’t need to use one the whole time. I am not made of money you know.

Slowly walking forward, I spot a group of people. Luckily, they were wearing the same robes as I do, and not the easily identifiable light swallowing robes of the enemy. Still, to be sure, I followed the advice given in the booklet and took out my ID badge. After infusing some mana, it began to glow in a blackish light. The only thing I could compare it to was when the sun was blocked by the moon on earth. This is a very safe way to identify friends from foe.

The other side could of course don our robe, but they could never use our badge. After we die, they are in a locked state, they were a type of one use trinket, after the wearer dies, it destroys its inner component. They fear that some people might copy it. The same reason why I haven’t tried to take it apart yet. Explaining that it got broken without me having anything to do with it would a hard conversation to have.

In response, all of them take out their respective badges and light them up too.

“Hey, brother, what is in that direction” The leader of the group asks.

Still on guard, I answer “The dormitories and some traps.”

He seems to be somewhat disappointed by my answer. I don’t know whether he believed it or not and I don’t really care. I cast a soul shield before going past time. Luckily, they didn’t attack me for whatever reason. Maybe they are very cautious against solo people exploring. People like that shouldn’t be people casually annoyed. Not noticing that one member of their team split with them.

The last part of my way was rather carefree. I lit again my light and continued to follow my compass. Walking through corridors with increasing amounts of traps, I encounter my first soul trap. They made themselves noticeable to my soul through the compass. It felt like the gut feeling split and it simoultanasly told me how to disable the trap for the next 5 minutes. What I did. On the outside, none of this interaction could be seen. The trap didn’t give off any signs that it had been disabled, or that there was a trap in the first place.

After some time, I encounter a hole in the wall it was the hight of a very big man, 2,20 metres or so, and it was also had the same width. This whole was a strange sight in the otherwise orderly tunnels. It felt like someone ripped off a piece of the stone, but I can’t be sure.

While contemplating what I should do, I notice someone behind me. Having no time to think of anything, I activate the barrier and hope for the best. The person just wanted to ‘help’ me over my inner reluctance to jump into the whole. After having done his deed, the shadow tries to retreat, but to his horror, he gets to get dragged down the hole too.

My bad reaction caused him to fall in me too. Noticing this, I turn off the barrier and push him away from me and reactivate the barrier. Not a second too early, as we make our way to the bottom.

*platch**platch*

He falls on the ground hard, I can hear some of his bones break and dislocate themselves. I in comparison had a lot more luck. The description from the barrier didn’t write that it can save you ass in a fall, but I won’t complain about it. All of my bones are without any damage, but I still feel like everything is hurting inside me. The barrier helped to damp some of the force and put less force at one point and disperse it over my body. Very helpful, but also very painful. Standing up with some difficulties, I make my way towards the guy, who ‘helped’ my descent into this cave. He is barely alive at this point, a lot of his bones were broken, he isn’t able to use any potions, because those potions shattered after he landed, so a part of my loot was unfortunately destroyed. Careful not to touch any of the glass shards, I put away any other valuables he had.

Then I looked around the cave. It was big, with a lot of skeletons lying around, also a lot of damage on the walls, some tried to escape with magic, some seem to have succeeded, but most don’t. Not a lot of apprentices have ways to climb a 90-degree wall. And what lay on the other end of the cave looked even more impossible to get out from.