For the second time, I woke up alive when I thought that I wasn’t going to wake up. It had been months since I fought the dogs atop the waterfall and almost died. This time I was sure that I would be dead. However, once again, I somehow pulled through.

My debuffs were mostly gone. I had two severe limps but no other ones. The only sound that I could hear was my own ragged breathing. I was still pinned between the now-dead undead zombie rat hell spawn monster.

I shoved myself out from between the wall and the beast when I got slammed in my brain by Blink screaming. “Daddy! What happened?”

I grunted as I fell onto the stone floor and looked down at my missing feet. I thought back to her with as much peace as I could. “The fight was a little harder than I thought. How are you doing?”

Blink sent her vision through the bond to me. Irwin was sitting up. His wound looked like it wasn’t bleeding any more. Kasidy had a small bowl with something in it. Then Blink’s eyes moved down to a bowl in her cage with water.

She thought to me. “Not as thirsty. Need out of cage soon.”

I nodded to myself and thought. “How long ago did we last talk.”

Blink thought back to going to sleep when I told her I was going to fight and then waking up to me screaming in her mind about thirty minutes ago.

I thought back to her. “I’m going to be a while. I got kind of beat up in the fight, and I need to figure out how to get to you. I am going to seed a dungeon and go in for a while. I am coming for you!”

Blink sent me a feeling I didn’t think I had ever felt from her before. She sent me the idea that she loved me and trusted me, and knew that I would be there. “I wait, Daddy.”

My eyes were filled with tears. Blink was trusting me, but I was without my feet. I wasn’t sure how anything would work to get me out of my situation, but I knew I needed time to figure it out.

I looked around for my standard and saw it was about where I wanted it. Just a few feet away from me. The passive healing from it was likely why I was still alive. Once again saved by crafting.

I rolled over to my knees and breathed out a series of swear words in languages I wasn’t sure I knew. Then I started to crawl to my standard. Each motion sent pain up my raw nubs at the end of my legs. Each shot of pain was enough to make me yelp, but other than me, there was no noise in the stone hallway.

When I wrapped my hand around my standard, I smiled. I had work to do, and my plans were changing. I had wanted to get Renfry as he was still alive and bring him into the dungeon with me. But that had changed. I needed to figure out how to walk again before I tried that.

I fished out the dungeon seed from my side pouch and triggered it.

Unable to seed dungeon

Level of Building (Castle Westiral, 27) exceeds Dungeon seed (1) differential (+/- 10).

I had forgotten that if there was light, I was still in the castle. I slammed my head on the floor and then growled. I would get this taken care of. I just had to crawl another fifty feet, and then I would be out of the castle.

The pain was real. Not as much pain as Sam put me through but real. That stuff was all in my mind, but this was true pain. Pain that I was causing myself with each push forward.

I might not have a debuff that said I was sore, but I was. My knees hurt, and not just from the stone floor. I had bent armor that rubbed funny on my right knee. If I shifted too far to my left, part of my breastplate cut into my side. It caused one point of damage. Then there were the raw spots on my hands. All the calluses I had built up were eaten away by that foul acid.

My left leg didn’t bend all the way because the greave fused to the sabaton that should have been over the foot but was just fused. The tasset was also bent in, cutting and rubbing from each move. The monster had almost crushed me in my armor.

It wasn’t soon, but once I got to the darkness, I moved in a little further before I tested the seed again.

Warning!

Ultra-Low mana zone

Must move to Low Mana before planting dungeon.

Low mana will provide stunted growth.

I yelled loud and long. I wasn’t sure if I was saying anything with yelling as the pain from the feet was still there. I was so tired. Too much had happened, and I was dealing with too much. If I could get through this, I would find whoever brought me to this place and hurt them.

After I finished yelling, I got to crawling again. I tried three more times before I reached the tunnel cave-in. I found it when my right hand pushed down on a small rock. It wasn’t bigger than a six-sided die, but it was sharp enough to make me drop to the side again.

As I fell forward, my head slammed into a rock, and I muttered. “I’m going to kill that lich a dozen times for this. A thousand for hurting Kasidy and Blink.”

Dark thoughts walked through my mind as I got my knees back under me. What had been painful before turned out to be the easy part. With the rubble, I had to use my nubs. I needed to push, and my left sabaton kept catching and digging in.

After I pulled myself another few feet forward, I saw a dark reddish light. I could only see it with my head on the ground where I was resting. I knew there was a hole in front of me because I had felt it out with my hands. When I pulled myself up to crawl, the light went away. Which meant that if I wanted to find out what the light was, I would have to go into the hole.

I didn’t know if it was something that I needed to reach. So I pulled out my dungeon seed and checked again.

Warning!

Within five yards of mana siphon

Move no less than ten yards away or deactivate siphon

I wanted to stop to give up. I kept trying to find a place I could be that would let me plant the dungeon, but I kept finding things that wouldn’t let me. Yet, when I thought about stopping and giving up, I quickly thought about Kasidy being thrown in a cage.

I growled and started to pull myself through the small tunnel in the rocks. I had to leave my standard behind as it wasn’t going to make the bends. I didn’t know if the rocks would shift and come down on me or if I could make it through. All I knew was I had to try.

My arms were both in front of me as I used them to pull myself forward on my belly. My left sabaton finally broke off as I snaked my way up into the rubble. Every few inches, I heard things shift and fall as I pulled and pushed with my whole body. Each movement sent pain up my body.

I was most of the way through when I saw what was causing the red light. There was a door like I had never seen before. It appeared like it was made from a dark red glowing crystal. In the middle of the door was what could only be called a coat of arms.

The symbol looked like it had been branded on the door as it was black. From my angle, I could see that the symbol was just on the surface. As I pulled myself out of the hole, I could make out the whole symbol. It was a skeletal arm and fist through a simple crown.

Just as I shifted my body around to sit in the hole, the rocks shifted. I yelled and tried to move but was too slow. My right leg snagged on a rock just long enough that a large stone fell on it.

My interface showed me that my leg was crushed. My tibia and fibula were both marked as being pulverized. Which made perfect sense as the rocks that fell felt heavier than the giant rat did. It had happened so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to truly react.

I also was showing that I now had the debuff of shock. So my mind being calm as I thought through what I needed to do also made sense. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this was all just in my mind. Pain was something that I was used to now. It was part of who I was, so I just needed to let it wash over me.

The red glow let me know that there was no way I was getting my leg out. However, it wasn’t bright enough to see the details—only rough outlines of everything around me.

I reached my fingers forward and down my right leg. If I could, I wanted to just slide my leg out of the mess, but I didn’t know if I would be able to. I needed something in the hole that could give me just a little support so it wouldn’t press down.

I laughed. It wasn’t the happy laugh. No, I was down to only dumb ideas. I didn’t even have a pocket knife on me. My blades were out on the battlefield, so I didn’t have a way to cut my own leg off.

But I did have my belt, which would push things away. It might not be enough, but if I shoved back when I activated it, I might be able to pull out. But first, I would turn on my stone skin from the same belt.

I was grinning as I saw a bleed debuff. I must have lost enough that I was loopy. I knew I was in shock already, but I got my best ideas at the worst times. I just knew that this would work.

I placed my left nub on the stone crushing my right leg, and started shoving with all my might. As I pushed and screamed, I fired off Room to Draw from the belt. It shoved a wave of stone air out from in front of my belt. I felt the stone air slide down the outside of my leg and peel my armor up and off as my mangled leg tried to move.

The stone shifted, and even more of my leg was crushed. I screamed and slumped back on the ground. Tears were flowing freely from my eyes as I reminded myself it was just pain. Finally, my mind cleared up long enough to get my healing potion out of my shield and drink it.

The bleeding debuffs stopped, and I took a deep breath. It didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Worse yet, the rocks shifted down more onto my leg. Where it had just been my lower leg, now my knee was stuck. It wasn’t showing up on my interface, but I felt the weight as my knee slowly compressed.

I aimed my stone sphere at the rock in front of me and fired off a round. It hit the stone in front of me and exploded. I didn’t know which shattered at the time, but I took a piece of rock into my left eye, giving me a half-blind debuff, and I picked up a dozen minor bleeds.

I took a breath as deep as I could. I needed to think and not just react. Now was the time to think and not fear. If I kept reacting, then I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere. I needed to be free of the stones.

I let a ragged breath out and asked. “How am I getting out of this one?”

* * *