Unbound

Chapter Twenty One - 021

"Haah, haah."

His heavy breathing filled the small cave. Felix collapsed on his knees in the center of the chamber, as far from any wall as he could manage. The Wurmlings liked to tunnel out of whatever wall he leaned against, so restricting them to the floor beneath him was the best he could do.

He was exhausted. He'd been fighting the Wurmlings for what felt like hours. They had gotten stronger too. They started at level 14, but the last batch he had killed were level 19. Felix considered his torn knuckles, his Manasight showing him a rich gold aura shot through with flows of blue-white lightning. His aura, apparently?. Manasight had grown by leaps and bounds during the past few hours, as Felix had to rely on it almost exclusively to fight. Now he could make out the space around him, and even something of the textures on the stone.

Well, not the stone itself. What he figured he was seeing was brown earth Mana formed into regulated bits of matter. He was seeing the aura of everything around him, echoed into the physical world. It was a far cry from the cloudy smoke he perceived only that morning.

Yesterday morning? Felix couldn't be sure how long he'd been trapped here. He was getting thirsty though. All the heat put off by the Wurmling's bite attack had made the small cavern into a sauna. Felix wiped sweat from his face, his arms burning and heavy. He scanned the area around him for enemies, but the slight orange specks of the Wurmlings' fire Mana was nowhere to be found. Maybe he'd earned a break.

He laughed. It hurt.

Felix watched his Health, Stamina, and Mana all tick up steadily, healing his wounds and burning the fatigue from his body. It was amazing, frankly. The closer to full he was, the steadier his mind and body became, which almost went without saying; but in practice it was a miracle.

He shook his head. His mind was still muddled after using too much Mana. He had a brief respite, and he had to make use of it.

He checked his notifications.

God damn, there are a lot of these.

Normally, growth like this would have had him agog, but he was entirely too tired for all this bullshit. A few experiments later and he condensed all of it.

New Title Gained!

Blind Pugilist (Rare)!

Even without your sight, you fight till the end. +4 PER, +3 DEX, +3 AGL

New Skill Learned!

Blind Fighting (Rare), level 1!

Youve learned to hone your senses and battle without sight. Chances to hit while impaired increases moderately with Skill Level, chances of critical hits increases moderately with Skill Level.

Fire Resistance is level 11!

Influence of the Wisp is level 18!

Blind Fighting is level 17!

Unarmed Mastery is level 22!

Dodge is level 24!

Acrobatics is level 21!

Manasight is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Manasight!

You Gain The Following:

+10% Perception

+25% Toward Identifying Mana

+5 REI

+1 RES

+2 STR

+1 AGL

+2 DEX

+4 PER

You Have Gained A Level!

You are now Level 17!

+3 to WIL! +2 to INT! +4 to DEX! +1 to END! +2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to AGL!

You Have 5 Unused Stat Points!

Felix grunted in surprise as he heard the almost-there crescendo of music. The rush of stats burned through him, cutting through most of his exhaustion in moments. His bones shifted, creaking as his muscles grew denser and heavier, even as his aching joints suddenly loosened and strengthened. His Manasight clarified immensely, the world becoming a clearer patchwork of ambient Mana, something he could even vaguely feel on his skin. Earth Mana felt like soft, ghostly sand and shadow Mana felt like the cool damp shade beneath a stone.

Taking a deep breath, Felix exhaled sharply. His mind felt clear and his body felt whole. He clenched his fists and stood back up. The Wurmling has been coming at regular intervals, but the last few had been much more spread out. Felix figured they were running out of monsters.

Or maybe they were afraid of him, now.

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, the action all but meaningless in the dark. It helped center him, though. Thankfully, he was running out of distractions; while fighting the Wurmlings had netted him some excellent advantages, he was still trapped in a hole in the ground. He had to get out, and soon. He settled in to focus on his Meditation again.

After fighting the Wurmlings for so long, Felix had watched them burrow into and out of the stone like water. His Manasight had been too simple to determine how they did it, though it was surely a Skill of some kind. He had even tried to eat their blood and learn the Skill, but that had been a bust. Their blood was corrosive and burned a hole right through his tongue.

Acid Resistance is level 14!

That would have been horrifying if not for his regeneration.

He stood there, letting the cool sensations of earth and shadow Mana wash over him, mitigating some of the rising heat. Felix breathed, steady and slow, letting his mind fall into that strange sense of calm he found deep in the Meditation Skill. He drifted, and let his mind flow. Tunneling through stone. The idea floated along his thoughts, aimless. It felt so familiar, though.

That's it!

He had seen a Skill like it before: the Irontooth Ape had done it. He revisited Balfur's Memory, examining it from every angle he could. His sense of his tiny cavern disappeared as he focused entirely on the Memory. He watched the Ape run from the monsters in the fog, then escape into the tunnels above. It sealed the exit and....

Yes. The Mother's Gift, he called it. That's what I need.

Felix honed in on that moment, no more than a second, where Balfur thought and the stone acted. Was there a twinge? A flow of power? He couldn't tell. It felt like...like breathing to Balfur, an extension of himself.

Breathing...just like...

Felix pulled from the Memory, focusing his mind on the flow of Mana through his body. His Fire Within flared, coursing in loops and whorls up and down his torso and limbs, blue lightning in his veins. Felix breathed, twisting his Mana flow, feeling as Fire Within shaped his Mana into strange new forms, altering the density and composition of the Mana itself. It felt like...a spectrum that fanned out into infinity. He wobbled, his concentration drifting as he perceived that expanse, but with an effort steadied himself.

Fire Within is level 20!

Fire Within is level 21!

His channels hummed with power, his Mana flowing like a rushing river through these new, complicated forms. Felix grunted distantly, physical sensations lost amid the powerful torrent of fire across his belly and down his legs. He flexed his pathways, mimicking the casual grace of the Irontooth Ape, letting it all flow from the soles of his feet and into the earth itself. He released it!

Felix stumbled. Knocked from his concentration, he took two tripping steps to his left, his Mana snapping like a rubber band stretched too far. Pain like sharp, targeted explosions went off behind his eyes and sinuses, shivering echoes rattling his teeth and ricocheting down his spine. Felix muffled a scream, biting it back as he wrestled with his Mana. The power within him wobbled, a gyroscope out of balance and threatening to rip him apart from the inside. He knew it, deep in his bones. So he fought back, pushing and shaping the Mana until it was contained completely within his core.

Fire Within is level 22!

...

Fire Within is level 24!

"Haah, haah, oh d...dang," Felix panted, squatting down and resting his head in his hands. "That was the hardest....that...I don't know what that was."

Felix felt like he'd run a marathon while doing calculus and balancing a bowling pin on his head; his mind and body were both sore, in ways he never knew he could be sore. His hippocampus hurt, and he was reasonably sure his brain didn't have nerve endings. His Manasight was acting up, like he had stared into the sun for too long, so he shut it off. He crouched there awhile, just breathing really, because that was all he could do.

After a few minutes Felix leaned forward and put his hands to the ground, shaking off a sudden dizzy spell. Messing with Mana like that was no joke, he...

What?

The stone floor before him had a dip in it. Felix blindly traced his fingers around the area, measuring out a near perfect circle of stone that was just a fraction of an inch lower than the rest of the ground. The ground was uneven, he knew that, and that could be it...except for the two perfect shoe prints in the center of the depression.

Felix's jaw dropped. He had done it.

Now do it again, better.

Felix focused, tracing back the way he had shaped his Mana just minutes ago. His memory was crystal clear, though the effort still sent a spike of pain across his mind, but he managed to hold it in place for a few seconds. He felt the rock beneath his hand...peel away, gathering at the edges of an inch deep hole.

New Skill Learned!

Stone Shaping (Rare), level 1!

Through blood, sweat, and tears, you have wrested control of the earth itself! Increases control and speed with Skill Level.

+1 RES

+5 WIL

+2 INT

New Title Gained!

Exemplary Student (Uncommon)!

Learn Skills from the examples of others! +2 PER, +2 INT, +1 DEX

Due To Rarity Of The Skill Learned, Reward Increased!

+5 PER, +5 INT, +3 DEX!

"Hell yeah!" Felix punched the air, his body flooding with energy as the system pumped him full of stats.

"I'm coming, little buddy."

It took longer than he had hoped, tunneling through the walls.

Felix tracked the next batch of Wurmlings that headed his way, using his tentatively recovered Manasight to peer through the earth around them and watch their orange sparks slither in his direction. He dispatched them quickly, bringing his Unarmed Mastery to 23 and his Blind Fighting to 18. After the Wurmlings were gone, Felix oriented on their origin and started Stone Shaping.

While using the Skill seemed to automate much of the process, it was still a strange sort of magic to perform. Unlike Acid Stream or Influence of the Wisp, this wasn't just a spell he could pour Mana into and have it do what he wanted, at least not at low levels. He had to focus, keeping his thoughts toward the stone in front of him, and utilize the rhythmic Mana shaping he had experienced in Balfur's Memory and his own recent attempts. It was slow going, but within a half hour he had created a tunnel nearly six feet deep.

Stone Shaping is level 2!

...

Stone Shaping is level 8!

He had also used up all of his Mana twice by that point. He had to take breaks, often.

As he used the Skill, the stone he targeted pulled up and around, flowing like water until it settled behind him. The stone accumulated there, filling the tunnel as quickly as he made it, eventually encapsulating him into a bubble of emptiness between the stone. It was unnerving, but as long as Felix didn't dwell on it he could shrug it off, his Willpower no doubt helping him. It grew easier eventually, the effort and concentration required becoming less and less as he leveled the Skill, even though his finesse was sorely lacking. After nearly two hours and many rests between, he broke through a section of stone and ruddy light streamed into the tunnel.

Felix flinched back from the light, overwhelmed. But he felt a giddiness in his chest as he pushed once more with Stone Shaping, creating an uneven hole big enough for his body to squeeze through. Without waiting, he pulled himself out of the tunnel and into the light. He sucked in lungfuls of fresh air, his grip on his anxieties finally relaxing now that he was out of the tunnel.

Stone Shaping is level 13!

He landed on tiled flooring, and was so disoriented from the journey and just attempting to breath that it took him several seconds to recognize something was wrong. He was in a hallway, one carved entirely from the stone around him, but it was sideways.

Exploration is level 12!

Mostly sideways, at least. Felix had tunneled up at the back of the long hallway, and as it moved away from him, it buckled and twisted, as if the earth had turned liquid at some point in the past. Also the air felt hot. Far hotter than his small cavern had been, though obviously larger. Hot and...eggy?

No, sulfur. It smells like brimstone.

The red-orange light seeped from the chamber ahead, illuminating far more than Felix was used to; he even let his Manasight dim back to a low burn. Even now, he could see orange clouds of energy float through the air, buffeting him like waves on a beach. Heat followed those waves, rapidly rising now that he was out of the earth, and a flop sweat quickly gathered on him. Felix stood with a light grunt, and started walking down the hallway, peering into the shadowy recesses all around him.

The walls were carved into columns and alcoves that might have once held fine sculpture or tapestries, but now held nothing more than tinted shadows. Dust and stone powder lined everything, the heat sucking all the moisture out of the air like an oven. It only grew worse as he approached the end of the hallway, the light itself growing brighter and brighter. Felix paused at the edge of the hall, peering cautiously out onto a wide balcony that ran for dozens of yards to the left and right and whose edge was protected by a sturdy stone railing. Everything seemed carved of a single stone, as if someone had used Stone Shaping to sculpt it all into existence. As his eyes grew used to the light, Felix looked up, breath catching as he noticed the ceilings nearly two hundred feet above him. The walls were carved with vaulting buttresses, massive stone archways that supported the distant roof. The walls farther up were lined with even more balconies and railing lined pathways, going up at least two dozen levels.

New Skill Learned!

Heat Resistance (Uncommon), level 1!

Not everything hot burns, but it can still kill you.

The heat ratcheted up another level as he walked out onto the balcony, hot winds blowing up from below him. Squinting against the intense heat, Felix peered downward, noticing at least another level below him before a large courtyard could be seen at the ground floor. Part of the room was lit up with orange and yellow light, shifting slowly across the lower walls. The light came from a small river of lava--actual, honest-to-goodness lava--that coursed along the side of two walls and disappeared into tunnels built into the ground floor. The rest of the floor was filled with black, hanging chains which were affixed somehow in midair and ended in either cruel looking hooks or rough cages.

Exploration is level 13!

Heat Resistance is level 2!

Felix blinked the sweat from his eyes and looked closer. The heat was making everything distorted and wavy, and his eyes were both swimming in sweat and drying from the hot breeze. His throat was started to ache, burning with thirst that he hadn't quenched in at least half a day now. He shook his head, and looked. Below him were dozens of Wurmlings and four huge wurms that were twice the size of their smaller brethren. He quickly Analyzed them as level 20 Yungling Wurms.

"Fuck," he croaked softly. The wurms were smacking a few iron cages around with their tails, a few of them containing the distinct shapes of Rockstrikes that struggled against the metal bars. There were too many to take on, so he'd have to move much more quietly. But just as he was about to pull away from the edge, a sudden ache in his chest drew his eyes down and to the left, to a single iron cage that was being knocked about by one of the Yungling Wurms.

Companion Pact is level 9!

In that cage was Pit.

"No..." Felix's eyes widened despite the drying wind, and his fist clenched so hard he heard creaking from his bones and tendons. Pit had been put in a cage much too small for him, and his wings were awkwardly jammed into the bars. Each time the wurm hit the cage, he'd let out a pitiful whine and cower away from the beast. The ache in his chest magnified ten times, becoming a burning pain that drenched his insides with hot acid and demanded he take action.

"Hey! Let him go!"

And Felix jumped off the balcony.

As he fell two stories, he had only two brief thoughts. The first was something along the lines of, what the fucking fuck aaahhhhhhhh!

The second was to activate Tides of Vellus and to pour nearly a third of his Mana into it.

A brief, powerful blast of blue light and projected force rocketed out below Felix's body, countering his momentum and slowing him down just enough that he landed on the ground hard instead of deadly hard. Small debris, black iron chains, and a few of the smaller Wurmlings were knocked aside and crushed. Several kill notifications spammed across his vision as he stood up from a slight crouch. Felix fixed the Yungling Wurm with a glare and cracked his knuckles.

New Skill Learned!

Make An Entrance (Uncommon), level 1!

All of life is a stage, and you have an uncanny knack for timing.

"Pick on someone your own size."