The New World

I awoke the next morning with dried snot all over my face. That, and in a thick, black bile from the bear"s corpse melting. Agony had disintegrated the corpse. All the insides had spread out until I laid in them. I lifted myself with a nice, quick snap up. The crusty black gunk made it difficult.

After rinsing off in a pink pool, I found the leftover skin of the bear. Instead of melting, it remained pristine despite agony. After a few seconds of observing it, I figured out why.

This would do nicely if I could cut it. Maybe I can learn how to before I try doing it myself. The bear skin"s reflective qualities would help quite a bit, especially with my current out-tank them build.

I carry the skin across my shoulders as I go on towards the next area. No point in staying here much longer. Pa.s.sing further into the cavern, bats continue fighting me as I travel from these disparate pools. I smash them down now. My new fighting style helps quite a bit.

Before, I dodged without really fighting back, at least until agony incapacitated them. Now I can land blows that deal meh damage during the initial stages of fights. I dodge and duck before swinging in another heavy hit. If I had more strength and const.i.tution, I might be able to do some real damage. For now, agony served as my primary dps source.

As I approach another pool, I gain a very unexpected skill,

Skill Gain! Travel(lvl 1)

Travel(lvl 1) - The world is vast. You know this now. +1% to self travel speed. Not effective during combat.

Welp, always helpful having extra skills. Even if they level super slow and don"t do much. Far off in the distance, I spot the next source of light pools. They"re like little stars at first, before growing into whole rooms full whatever light the pools have.

This pool"s color ebbs like crimson, a darker red than the pink of before. In the distance, I spot a pile of insects writhing beside the pool. A bat swoops down for water, but the insects reach out, dozen"s biting it before it touches the pool. They swarm over the bat as it howls before covering it completely.

A second later, a dripping, b.l.o.o.d.y skeleton falls from the giant pile of insects. The bones fall into the pool with a plop, right as I gulp. This thing"s a monstrosity. As I sneak closer, the schema identifies it for me.

I want nothing to do with this thing, so I turn and begin skulking away when a deep, ancient voice says,

"Cease your steps, little one."

I freeze in place as it continues, "Good. You own words. You will be useful for more than just food here."

I turn as the insects form a vicious mouth, with centipedes for teeth. It speaks,

"How did you wander into my den then, little one."

I frowned before saying, "I"m trying to get out of here. This place really doesn"t want me to though, so now I"m lost."

"Hah, hah, hah. You"ve lost your way like a little lamb then? I can help you, little lamb, but for a price paid in blood and flesh."

I frowned as I said, "I"d rather keep my flesh, thank you."

"Not your flesh. You are soft and delicate, but small. I require something more...substantial to feed my growth. I can see you"ve met a bear here. They"re skin is very difficult for me to deal with. You see, the spines tear my children apart. You have slain them, and eaten them. A part of its flesh is still in you. I can smell it."

I shiver as it continues, "Bring me the flesh of these bears. If you do so, I will consume them instead of you. What do you say, soft, little lamb?"

Without even thinking about it, I click yes. I barely killed the bear, and this thing was an unknown level with a backstory to boot. It killed the bat in seconds, and from what I could tell, the bats had 700 hp or so. They also had a bit of Damage Resistance as well. Baldag-Ruhl chewed through that much hp in moments, and his % based damage countered my high health pool. Fighting him was suicide.

Baldag-Ruhl said, "You are a wise one for such a foreign creature. I will give you seven cycles to collect enough bears to make me full. Fail me, and I will find you wherever you hide. You will scream for centuries and all will be torment."

I nodded before turning around. Baldag-Ruhl said, "Stop. Past me are far more of the bearkin. This way."

A tentacle of insect bodies points past him, so I hug the wall as I pa.s.s him. I lower agony"s range until it wouldn"t touch him, keeping him ignorant of the ability. Better off he didn"t know.

As I started towards the bears, the hivemind said, "You should fear me. Use that fear for power."

I nodded as I gained a skill

Skill Gained! (Fear lvl 1)

[(Fear lvl 1) - Your terror makes you faster and stronger. +1% strength and dexterity, +3% to stamina consumption while afraid.)

Normally the skill would be awful, but with my limitless stamina, it was a nice little bonus. I wouldn"t be using it for long though. Agony"s area of effect would wreck all his little bugs, giving me a ma.s.sive edge versus him. He"d be the bane of mages with that elemental resistance, but agony"s damage wasn"t elemental. It liquified your body at a basic, primal level. The pain tears your mind apart. The aura eats away at what keeps your bones and blood together. It was like...hatred given a physical form.

I doubted the monster resisted the damage, so I"d strengthen myself versus the bears before killing it. That was the plan at least. As I set out for the pools, no bats came out to stop me. Baldag-Ruhl"s aura must be keeping them at bay. 

Once I pa.s.sed a few minutes from him, the bats returned, but with a slight difference in build. The black skin on their wings extended towards their belly. The inside of their mouths were black instead of red. If they dove from above, the only way to sense them was hearing them or seeing their teeth. It made them far more challenging to fight against.

Of course, agony still beat them down in a few minutes. Whenever I killed one, a new notification rang out.

As one dove for me, I ducked below the teeth before pushing off my heels. My torso rotates, my hand building force before slamming into the bat"s stomach. Like hitting a pillow of organs, the bat belches blood. Collapsing on the ground beside me, the bat squirms around. I don"t bother killing it. Agony will do the job for me.

Another swoops down, then another. I miss the second bat. When the third one neared me, I charged towards its teeth. Tucking my fist against my side, I turned my body. My feet pressed against the ground hard when my fist smashed into the bat"s open mouth.

The bat"s teeth sliced into my arm, but my whole forearm was lodged in its throat. I grip its insides before smashing it into the ground, over and over. A thin sheen of bat"s blood coats me before I toss the corpse aside. Two notifications greet me.

While nowhere near the bear"s exp levels, the boost in exp was appreciated. I"d have to kill over 50 of the other bats to gain a level before. Now it would still take 20ish bats, but it wasn"t quite the same level of grinding. After two hours more of beating bats to death, I leveled up to 41. After placing the attribute point into const.i.tution, I reached another pool of pink water. A bear much like the one I faced was there, slumbering next to the water.

I hit my forehead with my knuckles a few times to psyche myself up. A part of me still feared the bear, even though I already killed one. I got slightly stronger since then, but this bear would still be a challenge. I heaved out a breath like a madman before sprinting towards the sleeping bear.

Agony"s range hit the bear before I did, causing it to stir. It rubbed its eyes with razor sharp, black claws before my fist crushed into its nose. My fist felt harder than before while the bear"s nose was softer. The damage resistance showed its stuff since the last fight.

The bear reeled back, more out of pain than damage. I followed up with several strikes to its sides. They did minimal damage, but every bit added up over time. The bear smashed the earth with its hind foot, pushing me back with the force of his stomp. 

I flipped backwards, rolling on the ground. The red, spined bear roared as it charged me, but I got up in time to plant my feet. I was a dreadnought brute, not a cursing shaman. 

The bear slung its weight into its right paw, but I leaned towards the attack in a lunge. My fist followed behind me, building in force. As the paw skimmed by the top of my head, my knuckles clashed into his cheek. The bones in my arms shook and creaked under the strain, but they held. My shoulders and arms screamed at the incoming force, but they did not relent. They obeyed my iron will, withstanding the force of the hit.

The force of my hit slid me backwards a few feet before I torqued another hook into the bear"s face, then another. The hit"s were like hitting a sandbag full of lead, but I kept hitting. The bear gnawed and slashed and cut and bit and clawed and roared. I pushed forward, dodging his slow, lumbering blows and returning with my own.

Over an hour pa.s.sed, my mental endurance waning. The bear had slipped in several slits into my skin. A set of four deep claw marks ebbed in my chest. Several of my knuckles lacked skin. Blood dripped from my mouth from when the bear had back handed my gut, sending me flying. 

The bear was even worse off. No nose, eyes or ears, the beast lashed out with wild, desperate attacks. I circled it, slipping in free hooks when I could. Welts had formed in its sides from the continuous bruising. I kept my distance for a while, keeping agony down as I regenerated my wounds. Agony gave the bear no idea where I was, so I just sat by the pool, cooling off as it died.

Once I was healed, I went forward again with a renewed charge. The bear stumbled and fell like a giant sack of flour. I dove on top of the beast and beat it further. My hands slowly but surely turned him to a thick soup of blood. A notification appeared.

Woo. That was a hard fought two levels, but not like the four of before. It took time, effort, and focus to kill this bear. It took every ounce of myself to beat the other one. The extra bonuses from the determinator tree were paying off. 

Thinking of which, I wondered how many tree points I had at this point. I checked it out, finding 27 already built up in my various skills. I even had new ones,

[(Countering(lvl 4) - You use your enemy"s power against them. +4% damage to counter attacks.]

[(Challenger(lvl 4) - You don"t run from a good fight. You charge forward against stronger foes. +4% weight and strength when fighting stronger foes.]

[(Savagery(lvl 3) - You crush your enemy"s body before crushing their spirit. + 3% damage when being brutal.]

I couldn"t help but frown at the last skill. I"d imagine every beast I"d fought so far had the skill too. I just smashed them because it was that or die. And I wasn"t the biggest fan of death.

I put all the points into the determinator tree, leaving 337/500. I had quite a few left to go before completing it. What also interested me, however, was the new trees I unlocked.

[ II Vicious(Beat an enemy 40 levels higher than you in combat lasting over an hour, Death"s Dance, Scorn, and Desperation over level 25)(0/50) III Fighter(Kill an enemy 40 levels over you) ]

Both trees looked solid, though I"d probably go with the fighter tree first. The extra Damage Resistance and damage would be huge at this point, especially with the const.i.tution I"m stacking. 

With that in mind, I put both my attribute points into const.i.tution before scratching my head. If I tried dragging the corpse, agony would melt it. If I tried dragging it without agony, the bats would eat the corpse and me. Even then, this was a big a.s.s bear. Carrying it was nigh impossible.

I stuff my lungs with a deep breath before shouting, "Baldag-Ruhl. I need your help."

I cut off agony as I wait. Ten minutes later, a pile of ten bugs reaches me and says in his voice, 

"I ordered you to bring me the bears. Not beg for help everytime...Ah."

I pointed at the bear"s corpse as I said, "I"ve already killed one. The thing is, I can"t carry them. I am far too small and weak for that s.h.i.t. Can you, I don"t know...drag it or something?"

The insect"s crawled over towards the bear"s corpse. They opened the bear"s mouth before crawling down its throat. The bear"s skin swelled, bulbous and deformed before deflating in seconds. Over twice as many insects poured out of the corpse"s mouth. I almost threw up at the sight.

Baldag-Ruhl said, "Excellent, little lamb. You"ve given me more children so soon. You"re more capable than I imagined. How did you kill it?"

I pulled up my b.l.o.o.d.y fists as I said, "I beat it to death."

"Haha. Excellent. Give me the bear skin on your back."

I grimaced as I handed it over. Baldag-Ruhl took the other skin and after a few minutes of disgusting writhing, the insects reached out towards me. At the tip of the tentacle was a pair of gauntlets. The schema recognized them, 

I grabbed them from the filthy, disgusting a.s.s tentacle as I said, "Thank you. This will help tremendously with killing the bears."

"Good. I will reward you more once I"m sated. Now go. I"m still ravenous."

I nodded before the ball of insects returned towards his direction. I equipped the gauntlets, the material warm on my hands. The spines of the skin lined up with my knuckles and fingers nicely, fitting like...well...a glove.

Terrible a.n.a.logies aside, I banged my gauntleted hands against the rock floor. They made a noticeable difference from being barehanded. With a quick couple hooks, I already adjusted to the added weight and heft of them. Almost like a second skin, they didn"t chafe or jiggle around as I punched. They hugged my hands like a lover would. Firm and gentle at the same time.

With the gift received, I trekked out further into cave. The new, higher level bats swooped down more frequently than before, but a few gloved punches dispatched of them with agony"s help. After another hour of killing them, I found another pool.

This one was like the pool I started at, a bright cyan. Unlike the other pink pools, there was no bears or monster guarding the water. It all clicked at that moment. The pink pools meant monsters, the cyan pools meant no monsters. Baldag-Ruhl"s crimson pool meant that he was the boss monster of BloodHollow dungeon. Maybe, just maybe, if I killed him I could escape.

The thought gave me some extra resolve, so I went pa.s.sed the blue pool, fighting stupid bats for another hour or so. Between fights, I"d practice my school subjects mentally. Every skillpoint counted after all. The next pool I reached was unlike the others.

First off, it was surrounded by a cliff face leading down to an enormous set of blue armor guarding a set of glowing doors. An aura of deep blue ebbed from him, thick as water. His armor covered him in thick plates with a faceless mask. In his right hand was a spear ending in a blade of violet.

I reached the edge of the cliff face leading to him, and the schema recognized him, 

Already I got a bit of knowledge from the thing. Baldag-Ruhl"s level indicator had 3 question marks while this one had four. By my educated guesstimations, that meant this guy was at least level 1000. In other words, a G.o.d.

I turned away before the little outcrop I was standing over crumbled beneath me. I tumbled like a ragdoll, rolling and rolling as I hit rocks. After a few seconds of being bruised by the rocks, I landed on my a.s.s fifty feet from the guard.

The aura around the guard turned from blue to violet as it turned to me. Sparks of energy rippled near it as the air around it grew heavy, almost choking me from being near it. Arcs of violet thunder shot from its metal plates as it gripped both sides of its spear. Oh f.u.c.k. I hadn"t turned off agony.

The sentinel said in a booming, artificial voice,

"Preparing for combat. Protective protocol initiated."