Neil

I slowly made my way down the stairs listening for anything moving below me. All I could hear at the moment were my own footsteps and heartbeat. When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs I saw that I was standing on a landing that overlooked a large room. On my left and right side were two sets of stairs that wrapped around the edges of the room and led to the floor below me. In between the stairs on the main floor was a large doorway with an impressive looking wooden door in it. The doors were slightly ajar but at the angle I was at I couldn’t see anything outside the building.

This floor was roughly twice the size of the floor I had just come from. It was a rectangle and the walls behind and in front of me were at least twice the size of the walls on the side of the room. Turning away from the lower level I looked at the at the wall behind me and counted six doors. Looking left and right I saw two doors on each of the smaller walls.

Choosing a direction at random I walked to my left I decided to work from the left side of the room to the right side of the room searching all of the different rooms before moving down stairs.

The landing that I was on looked like it had once been richly decorated, there were half rotted tables against the wall with mostly destroyed paintings and even a few decorative vases littering the ground.

Most of the vases were smashed but a few of them were mostly intact and might be useful if I decided I really needed something to hold water, or potions.

Approaching the far wall I saw two doors in front of my choosing the left one I cracked the door open and peeked inside.

Inside the room were several long tables made of stone. Walking inside I made a circuit around the outside of the room looking for anything useful. There had been a set of shelves on the far wall, but it had collapsed decades ago depositing its contents on the ground. Taking a look I spotted some cracked stone bowls that I identified as mortars and their pestles as well as some smashed glassware.

Continuing on I found a faucet and sink on the wall in front of me. Turing the spigots I disappointed to see that nothing came out of them and they probably ran out of water a long time ago. Even if they had water I probably shouldn’t have been drinking it anyways.

Leaving the room I walked next door and opened the door looking in. Unlike the other rooms and hallways I had all seen the walls of this room were lined with sconces that looked like they should have been holding candles, as opposed to the crystals that lined the walls in the main hallway and the workshops in the floors above me. The floor of the room was lined with shallow channels that made different shapes on the ground. Some were circular, others square and all of them intersecting each other at strange angles. I was no archeologist, but if I had to guess these channels were meant to be filled with liquid, and blood was the liquid that immediately came to my mind.

The overall impression of the room was extremely occult and more than a little foreboding, leaving me with a pit in my stomach.

Walking through the room I realized quickly that it wasn’t the room itself that was giving me that feeling, although the room was pretty damn creepy, it was my Mana Sense.

I’d had this feeling all during the fight with the mutated Lamia, and possible even against other monsters. I just didn’t have enough experience with the feeling to recognize it right away.

Closing the door behind me I made sure I was alone in the room, then I closed my eyes and tried to identify the how my Mana was feeling different.

Now that I was focusing on the feeling I was able to get a little more than just a vague sense from it. It was similar to how it felt when I had managed to use magic for the first time, but stronger. Well if the channels on the floor were anything to go by then this room was likely used for magic practice, or possibly sacrifices. With any luck though, just practicing with magic.

The more I focused the more I was able to make out in my feelings. The Mana was behaving kind of strangely here. Outside the room Mana moved more chaotically, moving as if caught in a wind that I couldn’t sense. Because Mana had always behaved like that I never thought anything of it, but here in this room the Mana was incredibly still, like something was preventing it from moving naturally. The mana also felt cleaner here, maybe it had been refined somehow?

DING

Through meditation, concentration, and experimentation you have increased your Mana Sense! Continue to practice or find a teacher to improve!

A Mana Concentration Room huh? Well I had no idea what the hell that was, still it was apparently a specialized room for Mana so I might as well see what I could learn here.

Sitting down in the middle of the room I took my bag off and placed it and my spear in front of me then I tried to feel for my own Mana again. Coming a little easier this time than the first time I directed its flow from my stomach to my hands feeling the Mana pool there. Not wanting to get wet again I purposefully stopped myself from adding a water affinity to the Mana, instead I just let the Mana gather in my hands. Gather wasn’t the correct word but that was the best way of describing it that I could think of.

I half expected to see a glow coming from my hands, but they were the same as they had always been.

DING

“Fuck.” I said losing concentration for a moment, the Mana began to escape my hands and dissipate into the air. I managed to get it back under control after a few moments and back in my hands before all of it disappeared however.

Looking at the windows I smiled.

Through practice you have improved your Mana Control. Keep practicing or find a teacher to improve!

Closing the intrusive message I focused more Mana in my hands before thinking about water similar to how I had done earlier. Frowning at the lack of anything happening I focused on the Mana a little more and pushed the thought of water at it.

Very suddenly the Mana began turning into water, renewing my focus I tried to keep the water in my hands as a ball rather than just letting it splash all over the ground like it had last time.

For the most part it was a failure, most of the water splashed all over the ground in front of me. But some of the water was still hovering in a shaky ball over my hands, drops constantly falling off of it like condensation, to landed on the ground or on my legs.

Focusing on it as strongly as I could I added more Mana to the ball that I didn’t change to water, I tried to use that as a glue to hold the water together. The extra Mana seemed to help and before long the surface of the water ball smoothed out and started to hold together more and more until the drips had stopped completely. The ball was far smaller than it had been, about the size of a golf ball compared to the grape fruit I had started with, but it felt stronger, more solid.

Slowly changing the Mana to water I experimented with different ratios of water to Mana looking for the most water I could control without spilling any. I managed to get it to the size of a baseball before I started to lose control over the water again.

DING

Through practice you have increased your Water Affinity! Continue to learn practice with or learn about Water to improve!

And just like that it became a little easier. Not a lot of course, but the ball of water became a little more solid and easier to control.

With a thought I tried to launch the ball forwards at the wall. I was hoping for something as fast as a bullet. What I got was something that would be embarrassed by a water gun, the ball lurched forwards awkwardly, rapidly falling apart.

DING

Through practice and exercise your Mana Attunement has increased!

Awesome! I had no idea what Mana Attunement was but I was pretty happy it increased.

As much as I loved having water magic I wasn’t sure how many combat applications there would be in this. Maybe in time I could figure out how to launch a ball of water at things hard enough to damage them but something like fire could potentially be more damaging at a lower level.

Jax had said it wasn’t really possible for people to improve their affinities, but I had done so several times so that didn’t seem to apply to me. Maybe later tonight I could figure out how to gain a fire affinity, every type of affinity could prove to be useful if I could learn them.

Standing up I stretched my legs, I had wanted to try again from scratch but when I got up I realized that I was tired. There wasn’t a specific muscle that was tired and I wasn’t sleepy, it was more like a weariness inside of me.

In my excitement at using magic I had been ignoring it but my breathing had been steadily increasing, and my body felt like I had just gone for a run rather than sitting down doing nothing. Even my Mana itself felt different, like I had just drank a glass of unrefined waste Mana. An instinct I was pretty sure I didn’t have this morning was telling me that if I used too much more mana today, I would be risking giving myself Mana Shock. I’d have to be careful with potions for the next little while.

If I couldn’t have any more potions then exploration just became a lot more dangerous, the healing potions were the only thing I had that would really allow me to get back up if something managed to scratch or bite me, and with no armor everything could be a potential threat to me.

Still, I had a limited supply of potions ingredients and as soon as I ran out of them that would be it, unless I could manage to find more down here. After I had accepted the quest Hallice had told me they would be leaving guards at the summit of the mountain. So while I could likely escape from the top of the mountain if I used a potion and ran like hell I wouldn’t be able to wander through the garden to refill my potions ingredients so what I had now was probably going to be it and I couldn’t waste them.

Since healing potions and night eye potions used some of the same ingredients, I would need to be at least a little aggressive with my exploration or I would soon need to decide which potion I was going to make.

“This is stupid, but hopefully less stupid than wasting another 4 hours of night eye potion.”

My mind made up I got my bag back on and started through the hallways again. I still had a lot of ground to cover.

I opened the door and walked to the next closest room. Most of the doors were on the longest wall that was now on my left so unless I found something interesting it shouldn’t take too long for me to search all of the rooms.

Opening the door I looked inside and walked in when I confirmed that there were no monsters waiting inside for me. There were several flat surfaces on the left wall, a dilapidated table that took up most of the center of the room and on the right I saw a large counter top that gave me a view into the room next door. Taking a closer look at the flat surfaces on my right I saw that they looked like stove tops. In fact there were even what looked like ovens on the back wall. When I looked into the next room it was clearly a very large cafeteria with tables set up in rows in the long room. The back wall had a few doors in it that a quick peek inside revealed to be some kind of storage room. Although everything inside had turned to dust years ago.

Leaving the room I skipped the next door which would just lead to the cafeteria and opened the next door. The contents of this room were slightly better preserved than all of the others and I actually managed to guess what it had been easily. The room wasn’t very large but around the outside of it were dozens of rusted metal tools, or at least pieces of tools. Most of the wooden handles were rotted and crumbled to dust at my touch but the heads of the tools were still partially intact, if rusted. There looked to be pick axes, shovels and other things that I couldn’t even hope to identify normally, and didn’t care enough about to use magic to identify on them.

Leaving the room I looked at the last door on this floor and stopped short. It was open, not slightly ajar, but wide open. Looking down I even saw small chips were taken out of the floor. Touching the gauges I guuessed that the Lamia I had just killed likely came from this direction.

Taking a deep breath I made sure that I was ready, hefted my spear and walked into the door. The room was tiny and cramped and the air inside of it was rank with the stench of something dead and rotting. There was a spiral staircase carved into the stone descending straight down and to the right of that was the elevator shaft that I had spotted on the floor above. Down there was definitely the source of the Taint. Leaving the room I closed the door behind me and looked for something that I could block the door with. Seeing nothing I left the room and walked to the last two doors on this floor.

Each of these rooms looked like they may have been some kind of barracks or bunk room. There were extremely long bunk beds carved into the walls out of stone and what looked like the remains of tables in the center of the room. There were even simple bathrooms and shower rooms off to the side of the rooms. What really caught my eyes however were the bunk beds, specifically the second level of them. Instead of a simple ladder or stairs there was a channel carved in the wall. It was kind of awkward for anyone with feet to use, but a Lamia would probably find it easier to use than a ladder.

Leaving the rooms I looked back to the main room and the stairs that would lead me back up or the other stairs that would go down to the main room. Walking down the stairs I saw a statue in between the stairs and slightly underneath the landing. Getting a closer look I saw that it was a statue, a male Human standing above a female Lamia with the Lamia looking up at the Human grasping towards them with open hands.

“That is the ugliest statue I have ever seen in my life.”

Turning my back on the statue I approached the double doors and pushed them open. Looking at what lay beyond my breath caught in my throat.

In front of me was small street leading into the distance and lining it were dozens of three and four-story buildings cramed on the street side by side and I was pretty sure I saw a small square in the distance where two streets intersected.

There must be a limit to my night eye potion because I couldn’t see further than a few hundred meters but what I did see looked like a small densely packed city.

“Holy shit.” I gasped out. “I really hope I don’t have to search all that.”