The party looks at one another nervously. Arisah gulps audibly, only heightening the tension.
“AH!” Gabi shouts as something touches her side. Jumping forward and pulling her axe from her back Gabi whips around. From the wall she was standing next to a small box is sliding out.
Pointing at the box Gabi says. “I swear that wasn’t there a moment ago.”
“Ohhh!” Alli makes a high-pitched noise of excitement. Dashing forward she opens the box like she is in a bank vault. “Huh.” Stepping back, Alli makes room for the rest of her party to look.
“Yeah. Huh alright.” Gabi says as she holds up the item that was hidden in the vault. In her hand is a worn and frayed glove. It is meant for the left hand and the stitching over the knuckles looks just about ready to tear. Its color is a light brown, and it has no embellishes or protection. It is just an old glove made from some kind of smooth fabric. “What does it do?” Gabi asks.
Helo steps up and examines the dangling glove. Gabi is holding it between two fingers so the glove danlges down from her grip. Reaching out mentally Helo casts ‘Dark Hand’. As his mental energy surrounds the glove in a dark wave, Gabi yelps and jumps back. Clutching her hand that was momentarily surrounded by the dark attuned energy she glares at Helo.
Examining the inside of the glove Helo can see a few stitched runes, but they are ones that he isn’t familiar with. Casting his ‘Appraisal’ Helo reads out what the skill says.
Impenetrable Palm (Uncommon/Damaged)
This glove was once worn by a skilled fighter. It can block any blow within tier 2. But due to poor care and damage, the glove will only work once.
- Catch a single blow on the wearer’s palm.
- A single use.
“Wow!” Arisah says with a smile. Jumping up she exclaims. “That’s amazing!” She is the only person to think that in the group initially. This goes to show the care she has for her party. Even if the glove can only be used once, it can easily save one of their lives.
Alli’s disappointed face quickly turns into a smile. “Arisah is right. This glove is great. I think she should have it.” Alli snatches the glove from Helo’s mental grasp and hands it to the Dryad.
Nobody argues as the cute and cheerful woman puts on the frayed glove. Gabi is a little surprised at how good the glove looks on her. Arisah’s skin tone is one of the darkest in the party. She also wears lots of green and brown, so the glove fits right in.
Over the course of the next two hours the party goes through twenty rooms and ends up finding three more artifacts. In the last room Alli even manages to make her clairvoyant powers work to help them find their last artifact. The first two are simple jewelry that can be worn with small charms on them. One helps someone stay unnoticed, the other has a cleaning enchantment.
The Bracelet of Reduced Detection Alli put away to give to Aiko. Having an enchantment to help her be noticed less will be a great boon for the party healer. The Cleaning Ring went to Carl. He wears the most armor in the party and is usually in the center of any fight. The ring can be used once a day and washes his body. As soon as he put the ring on, he tried the spell and the ring washed his body clean and even got most of the grime off his armor.
The final item was one of the best they found. It is almost one that they never would have gotten if it wasn’t for Alli’s clairvoyance kicking in.
Stable Scribing Necklace (Uncommon)
A necklace crafted for a powerful scribe. Can be used to reinforce and stabilize a crafted rune.
- Reinforce a rune to allow for more energy.
- Stabilize mana in a rune.
- Doubles the cost of any rune that is enhanced.
At first the necklace didn’t seem like much. Alli almost gave it to Helo to help with his enchanting. But Luna had the idea of trying the necklace with her constructs. The effect increased the amount of mana she should channel into a rune by almost double. This allows Alli to double the strength of an attack, but it requires four times the mana.
Even with the mana loss, it can be used with great effect to finish off an enemy. With their time almost coming to an end, Alli pushed forward into the next room to test out the necklace.
Within the room they find a collection of mummified zombies all crawling from their coffins that are arrayed haphazardly throughout the room. Holding out her arm to stop her party, Alli says. “Leave this to me.”
Over the school year Alli hasn’t been idle with her skills. Creating a circular construct Alli covers the blue mana shell in runes that will cause an explosion. Then using her newest skill ‘Channeled Implosion’ Alli fills the center of her constrict with condensed ball of unstable mana.
As her necklace glows with power, she starts filling the runes with twice as much energy. The entire ball turns into a conflagration of unstable mana. It is ready to blow and only being held back by Alli’s will, mana control, and her new necklace.
Grinning with a touch of madness Alli launches the ball forward and into the center of the room. As soon as it leaves her mental control her eyes go wide. She can feel the entire thing already unraveling. Slowly the realization dons on her face about what she made. It is a bomb, inside a bomb that is filled with double the mana.
Turning around with some worry in her expression, Alli yells. “GO!” Creating a second construct to fill the entry way, Alli burns through the rest of her mana pool to double the strength of the defensive runes on the construct.
“BOOOOOM!” The explosion of blue energy rocks the room that the party just left. The shockwave from the blast spreads out in all directions and shakes the area. Carl steps forward to block the blast. But just as the defensive construct is about to shatter, the explosion is sucked inward.
The entire party stares with a small bit of awe as the mass of mana condenses into itself. Then as quickly as the explosion came, it was gone. “Well shit.” Alli says collapsing to the ground.
Helo lunges forward and catches the heiress in a princess carry. Looking up from her exhausted expression, Helo watches as bits and pieces of the cracked wall fall into the room. All the enemies, coffins, and random objects within the room are completely gone.
Helo expects that if the wall wasn’t made from dungeon material that it would be gone as well.
“Fuck!” Gabi shouts as she looks around the completely empty and destroyed room.
“Ahem. Without the vulgar expression. I concur.” Carl says while gripping his shield tightly.
Stepping in front of the group with the heiress in his arms Helo leads the way out of the dungeon. By the time the party exits into the midday Egyptian sun, Alli is comfortable asleep.
“I’m going to bring her to her bed.” Helo says to the group.
“We will wait for the others.” Carl says with a nod as Helo walks away.
That night Helo slowly wakes up. Blinking his eyes and looking around he can’t quite place why he is awake. Pulling out his phone Helo checks the time to see that it is just past two in the morning.
Leaning back down to go to sleep, Helo tries to go to bed only to feel slightly frustrated. What woke me up. Sitting up in his bed Helo looks around the room. With his Dark Vision it is easy for his perceptive eyes to pierce through the room. He can see the other males in his party all sleeping peacefully around him.
Rurgrim and Carl are competing to see who can snore the loudest. But Helo has unfortunately gotten used to it. That’s not it. Finally reaching out with his aura Helo tries to feel through the room and those surrounding it.
He is surprised to not find a single thing that is wrong to his senses. Then just as he is about to toss himself back into bed with a frustrated huff, Helo feels something. Looking up and to the right, Helo can feel a massive vitality signature. Peering at the wall like he can see through it, he starts to wonder. What is that? It isn’t a person.
He has felt what tier 3 people feel like. They might have just as much vitality as whatever the beacon is throwing it off, but they also have other energies that mess with what you feel.
Slowly getting out of bed Helo tosses on a dark pair of pants and sweatshirt. Then covering himself in his aura, Helo slowly creeps from the room. The creaky door is easily silenced by extending his aura, and then he is slipping from the room with nobody knowing anything.
Carefully moving through the halls Helo reaches a wall on the first floor that is at the easternmost side of the pyramid that they are in. It must be outside.
It doesn’t take him long to reach the exit and then Helo slowly makes his way through the sandy ground. From what I remember there is some kind of temple here.
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Helo thinks as he comes across a stone wall of an old ruin. Sliding along the wall, Helo reaches the corner and peers around. Not seeing anything, the only thing in the area is a doorway that leads into whatever wall Helo is peering around.
Helo slowly makes his way to the doorway. He wants to use his aura, but whatever the vitality signature is, it isn’t tier 1. Slowly sticking his head around the corner Helo almost drops his aura covering as he spots a man standing in the middle of to ruin with a red cloak.
I have seen that cloak before. From the attack on Mount Fuji. Helo’s mind starts to race as he tries to figure out what they are doing.
“Is it ready yet?” One of the cloaked men asks.
The person closest to the exit answers him. “Shut up. Do you want to attract any more attention.” With his head the man gestures to three dead Egyptian guards that have been tossed into the corner of the room.
“I don’t even know why were doing this.” The man holds up the orbs that are filled with a golden gas. “All this for one kid.”
Another one of the men that is carefully placing the orbs around the room scoffs. He looks up and Helo ducks back. I really hope he didn’t see me.
“You know why. He is too much of an enigma. His power doesn’t match anyone else that has been recorded on earth, and his growth is far to quick.” The man looks back down to his work. “Plus, the masters want his blood.”
Helo slides down near the doorway as the men continue to talk. An enigma, too strong, fast growth. Are they talking about me? Helo looks around with some fear in his eyes, but thankfully he doesn’t spot anyone. Did I just walk into my own trap.
From in the room, he can hear the leader speak up again. “Silence! They expect him to wake up soon. The amount of vitality is enough that anybody with his level of attunement would be able to feel it.”
Fuck. Helo thinks. They are here for me. I have to get out of here. Thinking rapidly, Helo wants to flee. His aura isn’t spread out, but he can feel that some of the people in the room are well into tier 2. Just as he is about to leave, he stops. This is a great opportunity to stop some of the people that tried to attack Hinata.
Finding his resolve, instead of fighting Helo pulls out his tablet. Helo sends his first message to Akira. He is the closest person Helo has to a father figure. The second message is to his party’s group chat. Then the third is the Micah. Now the smart move would be to leave. Helo thinks as he peeks back around the corner.
Unfortunately, he is just too curious. He starts to wonder how they are expecting him to feel the vitality without the tier 3’s feeling it, or Arisah and Hinata. He might have the strongest vitality attunement that he knows about. But Hinata and Arisah can feel it as well. Not to mention his tier 3 professor can, and the Egyptian tier 3’s.
Just as he is about to pull his head back, Helo hears a voice he did not expect to hear. “Hahah! When is that bastard going to show. I can’t wait to beat him to a pulp. Then rub his face on the stone floor!” Kennath says with a smirk.
Looking back into the temple ruin, Helo finds Kenneth standing in the center of the room. He has Isla’s other male party member with him, then three people Helo doesn’t know.
The rest of the people, the ones that set up the ritual and are wearing the red cloaks, start to leave.
Helo pauses for a second as his brain starts to understand what is happening. The vitality draws him in, Kenneth is his bait, and he isn’t supposed to know about the ritual they set up. Fuck that, I’m not going in there! Helo shouts in his head as he pulls away from the doorway.
Helo checks his tablet, hoping to see some kind of response but nobody has answered yet. Walking as fast as he is comfortable, Helo starts to make his way back around the entryway and to the pyramid he was staying in with his party.
“Boo.” A man blandly says as Helo rounds the corner. Jumping back Helo summons his knives into hand.
The man in front of him looks Egyptian in heritage with dark skin, hair and eyes, a defined nose, high cheekbones and wearing white linen with gold and silver jewelry. As Helo looks up into the man’s face, for a second he thinks that he knows him from somewhere.
“I don’t have time for this; I can’t be seen here.” The man says in a deep voice. Dashing forward faster than Helo can react to, he grabs him by the face. The next thing Helo can see is the wall of a ruin coming directly for his face.
Luckily the man’s toss has Helo spinning, he lands left shoulder first with a loud “CRACK!”
“Aghhh!” Helo yells out as his shoulder and arm break in multiple places.
“Well, look who came to play.” A familiar voice says over Helo’s body as he struggles to push himself up. Before he can even look, a massive slab of metal slams into Helo’s broken shoulder.
The blow sends his bone shards splintering through his body, some even popping out through pierced skin. Helo flies head over heels through the air and hits the ground in a tumble of limbs. He tried to fix his flight like he has many times before, but he missed completely.
Pushing himself up again, Helo is unsteady on his feet. Through blurred vision Helo can see a large shield flying through the air. Falling back, he tries to roll away, but a dagger is lodged into his kidney.
How. It is all the time Helo has to think before a large boot swings past his face and crashes into his rib. Spitting up blood Helo goes flying again.
“Haha! Why do we even need the ritual when we can just beat he ass.” A familiar voice that Helo can’t place says.
As Helo tries to push himself up straight, the voice gets a response. “You would know why if you were listening.”
Helo tries to piece together what is happening, but his mind just won’t function properly. He can’t even remember where that voice is from. The beating lasts for another twenty seconds. In that time Helo’s ribs are fractured, one of his legs is broken, and his arm is pretty much completely destroyed.
The effort that Kenneth and the people with him put into destroying Helo’s arm, lessens the time that they are breaking his skull. His enhanced regeneration slows each time he gains another major wound. But in the twenty seconds that they toss him around; his mind finally gains the slightest bits of clarity back.
“Fuck!” Helo yells into the bloody stone floor.
“Oh. He can speak; I thought we made him a cripple. Hahah!” Kenneth laughs.
Isla’s other male fighter is the first to realize the issue. “He’s regenerating!” He shouts. All at once everyone attacking Helo attempts to hit him in the head, but they’re too late.
As his mental faculties come back, the first thing Helo does is realize that he has a major concussion. The second is to cuss into the blood pooled ground. The third is to flood his core area with as much mental energy as he can at once. Then forcefully turn all of it into vitality to flood his body.
His bloodline eagerly drinks the vitality like a starving animal. His leg straightens out, his ribs cracks back into place, the cuts and bruises all over his body mend themselves, and his mind clears. The only injury that persists is his mangled arm.
Helo never had the balls to cut off a finger and see if it would regrow. But while pushing himself up Helo, the only arm helping push up his weight is his right one. His left arm is unresponsive.
From the corner of his eye Helo can see his shoulder and arm slowly repairing. He doesn’t have the time to look, but he can feel that it just isn’t enough. The blood, cuts and bruises might mend, but the bone that was shattered and is now spread out all over the ground won’t. The vitality he created is rapidly drained as his arm refuses to completely mend.
Helo can hear and feel as Kenneth and the four others all try to hit him at the same time. His eyes harden, his aura explodes out, his veins glow with a copper light, and a dark purple shadow wraps his body.
Exploding sideways to the right Helo somehow unconsciously nullifies the kinetic explosion that his rapid movement has on the stone floor. Instead of cracking, the floor holds firm, increasing Helo’s speed.
Helo launches himself to the side in a swirl of dark purple. Then the next second he twists in the air and is digging his claw into the ground. Using all three available limbs Helo launches himself forward, tackling the person on the right most side.
“AHHH!” Comes a high-pitched scream.
Female then. Helo thinks as his right shoulder breaks the woman’s ribs due to the force he slams her into a nearby wall. He doesn’t have time to fully explore the room, but he takes it in at a glance.
Pushing off the woman. Helo jumps over her head and digs his claws into the pillar above his head. Rolling to his right, he faces downward and toward the rest of the group that are attacking him. To his left an arrow splits the stone where his neck just was.
The room has two layers. The outer layer is about seven feet up and runs around the ruin, the inner layer is below with a staircase leading down to the floor. Between the two there is a seven-foot wall, and multiple pillars running up to the ceiling.
Looking down at the fighters Helo grins a fang filled smile. Then pushing off with his feet he jumps to the side and up onto the upper layer. Where did all the crafters go? The ritual? Helo thinks as he places his back on the pillar. Having a second to himself Helo grimaces as he feels his mostly drained energy reserves.
He can hear people running to his left and right as they all jump up onto the outer layer after him. Lastly, Helo looks toward the exit. His instincts are screaming at him to tear Kenneth apart. But at the same time, there were multiple high-level people here just moment ago.
A teleporter? Helo wonders as he starts to move. He knows far too little and he is too much of a small fish to stick around. Dashing toward the exit Helo kicks off the pillar, over the outer layer and onto the wall.
Below him he can see Kenneth sneering. Growling back, Helo dives off the wall and flips to land feet first on Kenneth. Like Helo wanted, Kenneth raises his shield. A wave of weakness is launched from Helo, using the last of his energy reserves.
Everyone is caught in the wave. It causes them all to flinch just like it did to Vallory. Due to his exhaustion his tired mind wanders, Helo wonders. What happened to her. Then he jumps from Kenneth’s shield and down to the lower inner layer. Dashing toward the stairs up to the outer later and the exit, Helo moves as fast as he can.
“DO IT!” Someone shouts behind him.
He has no idea what ‘it’ is, but he doesn’t want any part. Just as he is about to reach the staircase that will lead him up and to the exit. A barrier appears all around him. Helo hits the barrier face first and rebounds off. Flying back Helo hits the ground back first and slides a few feet.
Rubbing his forehead, Helo looks up and around.
“HAAHA! That was great!” Kenneth yells, while laughing he starts to leer at the injured woman that has her breastplate pulled up to check on her broken ribs.
Looking around himself, Helo is on the lower inner layer. The seven-foot walls are filled with runes. They create a barrier that covers the walls, ground, the space between layers, the pillars and the ceiling.
Instead of getting up Helo just falls back onto the ground. What he needs is to recover some energy and to wait for backup.
Ignoring Kenneth’s laughter one of the fighters steps up. The man is wearing a set of well crafter gear and has a bow strapped to his back. “Don’t look so content Helo.” The man speaks in a deep voice. “They call me Hang.” He says while looking down at Helo.
Helo can’t see his face due to a blank white mask. In fact, three of the five are wearing the same masks. Helo only answers with a glare. Then Helo shrugs. “Why are you so confident?”
Hang points behind him. The walls around the first layer are covered in runes in the same way that the second layer is. Only they are different types. “The walls stopped the sounds and energy of our fight, well also blocking aura.” Hang shrugs. “It’s the reason that there are only low tier 2 and tier 1 people here. Anyone stronger and some curious tier 3 might be able to feel the fight.”
Helo nods slowly as his energy starts to refill. His vitality is a leaking boat with his arm still hanging limply, but his mental reserves are filling, and that is what he needs to break free. The questions he had earlier make sense, the reason why only he felt the vitality and why they were making the ritual. But still Helo got a message off with his tablet, and it isn’t so easily stopped.
Standing to his feet Helo pretends to curiously walk forward. He needs as much time as he can get to pierce the barrier with his bloodline enhanced dagger.
“Ha.” Hang scoffs. “Do you think we are stupid, we did our research. Someone got quite the reward when they learned about your… lack of control.”
Before Helo can reach the barrier, the vitality that he felt from earlier starts to get pumped into his containment. Helo’s shoulder slumps as he can feel his control over the darkness in his bloodline slipping.
He can still use his skills. But he can’t break free without the help that his bloodline gives. With his cultivation, he is slowly becoming less dependent… or his bloodline is becoming more of him. But that doesn’t mean that he will have the same piercing strength when his dark affinity is sealed.
His body greedily absorbs the vitality, overpowering the darkness in his bloodline and refilling his physical energy, then with nothing better to do Helo sends the vitality to his core and refills his drained mental energy.
No matter how much energy he wastes, more just keeps on coming. For a second, Helo considers cultivating. But as an ever-increasing amount golden vitality floods the second lower layer of the ruin, Helo knows that it would take him weeks to cultivate all this energy. Plus, his body isn’t even letting him cultivate right now. It’s been stuck for the past month.