Chilly arrived at the T-intersection and peeked around the corner.

To the right the hallway continued until it terminated in a small room containing four sarcophagi. They peeked from either side of the doorway leaving just enough room to walk in between them. The sarcophagi were once grand, covered in intricate carvings that presumably pertained to the dead. Unfortunately, the passage of time had taken its toll. Once pristine marble was crumbling and stained with black mold. Several large cracks adorned them and one particular sarcophagus appeared to be missing its lid.

To the left of the intersection the hallway continued beyond the radius of light that Incinerate cast. In the distance, barely illuminated by Incinerate’s eager flames, a single haggard zombie shambled closer. Loose clothing hung limply off its emaciated frame. Its back was hunched, causing its arms to hang loosely before it, giving it the classic brain eating zombie look.

Putrid Ghoul

iLevel: 2

Chilly grinned. A level two undead. He could gain experience off of this one. With his health back up to full and the guarantee that it would heal in between fights he felt much more confident. It also helped immensely that any injury he sustained during the fight would either kill him, or only last at most two minutes. It was hard to dread pain when it was so transient.

In one smooth motion, Chilly pivoted out from his hiding spot and aimed Incinerate at the ghoul. Fire raced down the hallway, igniting what little plant life clung to the walls, and engulfing the dark desiccated dead.

Confident or not, that didn’t make him stupid. Instead of watching to see how the ghoul would react, Chilly hightailed it back towards the Shrine, bursting past the heavy wooden door, and slamming it closed, bracing his back against it to keep it shut.

You have entered the Desecrator’s Shrine.

Not a moment later the ghoul slammed into the other side of the door with a bang. Immediately the ghoul began slaverring and scratching at the door, eliciting an ear piercing sound of tortured wood. Chilly nervously inspected the door.

Chilly watched in fascination as the door, of all things, began regenerating health in between blows from the enraged undead.

Chilly focused up as the ghoul slammed its thin limbs into the door once more. Hastily, he aimed his free hand at the doors' iron bars and unleashed Incinerate.

Yellow flames burst out of his hand, splashing past the iron bars and roaring into the other room.

The ghoul unleashed an otherworldly screech full of hate-

You have been Hindered

-and redoubled its efforts on the door. Claws flashed and pieces of wood went flying only to ignite moments later from Incinerate’s flames and fall to the floor as ash.

Four seconds later, silence descended upon the dungeon.

You have slain a level 2 Putrid Ghoul!

You receive 1 experience

Chilly quickly checked on the ghostly guardian of the shrine, but found it placidly continuing to light the candles. Completely ignoring the minor bit of excitement occurring in its periphery. Reassured, he turned back to the door, and checked its health.

He frowned. It was lower than he was expecting. At most the ghoul had only managed another two or three solid impacts before it had collapsed. Based on the damage the door had taken previously, he would have expected its health to be hovering around the two hundreds at the very least. Three hundred even, counting its considerable regeneration.

Briefly he flickered Incinerate on and aimed it through the bars as he was doing before.

“Ahh, I was hitting the door, even though most of the fire went through the bars. Incinerate does its full damage.” Chilly rationalized quietly as he ran a finger across the blackened iron bars. Strangely they weren’t hot. Before his eyes, the black soot was slowly fading, returning the door to its original condition.

“I wonder...” Chilly said, then pointed at his foot, and summoned Incinerate. The ray of fire engulfed his foot to which he immediately yelped and disabled the spell. His health had dropped from that.

“Guess I should have expected that. Friendly fire is on. Got it.” Chilly murmured. “I’m a genius for not taking Firestorm. Or whatever that other skill was called.”

Chilly levered the door open after checking that there was no movement on the other side. The entire other side of the door was covered in soot, and a strange purple miasma rose from the ground within two meters of where the ghoul had died. A blue box popped up when Chilly focused on the miasma.

Desecrated Ground

Debuff

Ground effect

Take 5% of maximum life per second as chaos damage

Chilly took a step onto the desecrated ground, and with idle curiosity noted his health diminish in tune with the faint feeling of nausea welling up in his stomach. He stepped back off of the deadly ground effect and checked his surroundings again. Still no hostile undead.

Chilly took off his helmet and rubbed his ears. They were smarting from the lack of padding inside the barbute.

It would be bad to get into a protracted fight against several ghouls. Especially if each one cursed the ground after they died. Though now that he thought about it, it was possible that the screech that the ghoul had unleashed had caused the desecration. Speaking of the screech. Chilly navigated his character sheet but found no mention of the Hinder status effect that he had been afflicted with. Regardless, the system seemed to intuit his intention and brought up the description.

Hinder

Debuff

20% slow

Interesting. Probably not the screech that had desecrated the ground then. Though this did explain why he hadn’t felt anything by the debuff. He had already been slowed by 99% by the Channeling aspect of Incinerate. Too bad he wasn’t paying attention. It would be nice to know how long the debuff lasted. It would be relatively nasty being slowed inside of the desecrated ground.

The real problem would be if ground effects or effects in general could stack on top of each other. It would be horrifying to kill ten of these ghouls only to become slowed to the point of being rooted and taking 50% of his maximum health as chaos damage. Every second.

A damage type which he had zero resistance to at the moment.

It did seem unlikely. At least that wasn’t how effects like this worked in games.

Luckily, as Chilly was ruminating, the purple miasma slowly faded, becoming less pronounced until finally it disappeared entirely. By his reckoning it had lasted about thirty seconds.

Chilly stepped forwards once more and double checked his health.

Still full and not degenerating.

He crouched down, ready to sift through the ash for any essences or gear that the ghoul may have dropped. Instead he paused as he spotted a penguin leaning up against the wall several meters down the hallway. Just staring at him. Staring at him as it played with Realm Walker. Twirling the toy sword in idle spirals.

“Hello?” Chilly called out.

The penguin tossed its head disdainfully then turned around, disappearing around the corner of the T-intersection.

“You’re creepy!” Chilly called after the retreating penguin, “You know that?”

“I’m so going to get assassinated by those things the moment I close my eyes.” Chilly muttered darkly as he ran his hand through the dry ash.

The ghoul had not dropped any essences upon death, so Chilly quickly replaced his helmet and returned to the T-intersection. It was blessedly free of roaming undead. Their absence somehow turned the dungeon even more lifeless than it was before. He turned down the right hallway and observed the burial chamber. Three of the sarcophagi were closed and in - let’s say - functional condition. Their lid was intact with few enough cracks that they were capable of hiding the contents within.

The fourth sarcophagus, on the other hand, was practically destroyed. The stone lid was gone, revealing an open space on the inside that looked as if it had served as a garbage bin for the last decade. Rotting woodstuff, clothes, and unidentifiable paraphernalia littered the open coffin. It was also free of dead matter. Bones and the like. Whatever had previously occupied the coffin was clearly long gone.

Chilly scanned the room once more, this time trying to get the system to show extra information. If he was going to be given a broken identify ability, why not abuse it to the max?

Stone Sarcophagus Lid (x3)

Level: 1

Life: 34

Armor

0

Fire Resistance

16

Cold Resistance

3

Lightning Resistance

0

Chaos Resistance

0

Unlit Torch

iLevel 1

Common

12-18 physical damage

Chilly paused in surprise. He hadn’t really expected to gain anything from the examination. But contrary to his expectations he had learned much. Not only had his rough scan brought up an item partially buried in the refuse of the broken sarcophagus, it had informed him that the lids could be damaged. Damaged like the doors he had encountered previously.

Doors could be traversed. They implied that something was waiting on the other side.

He backed up to the maximum range of Incinerate. When he was practically at the T-intersection, he turned pointing towards the first of the unbroken sarcophagi. After a breath to calm his nerves, he unleashed Incinerate.

Fire raced down the hallway. The black mold which covered much of the dry stone glowed bright orange as it shrivelled and flaked off the walls. The fires crashed into the stone lid. Practically immediately it crumbled to ash, revealing an emaciated corpse of another ghoul lying peacefully underneath.

Putrid Ghoul

iLevel: 1

Life: 124

Chilly trained Incinerate at the ghoul, who immediately started thrashing in its resting place. The ghoul clawed its way out of the broken sarcophagus and fell scrambling to the floor. In a second, it turned towards Chilly, revealing sharp teeth hanging grotesquely out of a distended jaw. With a screech-

You have been Hindered

-it began galloping on all fours towards him. Fire raged, sloughing off long dead skin and rushing eagerly into the undeads gaping maw.

Just as the ghoul was about to reach him, Chilly reared back with his common sword. With an ungainly chop, the blade crashed into the ghouls skull. Dry skin parted like old paint, and bones crunched as the ghoul collapsed. Its strings cut. The moment it hit the ground the body disintegrated. A wave of purple miasma erupted out from the body, desecrating the ground in its immediate vicinity.

Chilly staggered back to avoid the rapidly spreading ground effect, plunging him into temporary darkness as Incinerate cut out. Recovering rapidly, Incinerate once more bloomed, and he steadied himself.

“Damn, that’ll never get old. One down.” He murmured to himself with a faint smile as he waited for the desecrated ground to dwindle.

Once the area was safe, he repeated the procedure twice more for each of the two other sarcophagi. Each one contained a level one ghoul. Each of which screeched. And each of which died in an explosion of purple miasma that remained for exactly thirty seconds. Throughout the entire experience he was prepared for another level two ghoul to appear from the coffins, or even from behind him, but none did.

Given the nature of Incinerate. It was theoretically possible for Chilly to take on all three ghouls together since Incinerate damaged everything in a line.

When he was sure that there were no more ghouls prepared to jump scare him, Chilly cautiously approached the kill zone. Kicking the ash to the side, he picked up a single essence of Azurite that glimmered faintly in the firelight. Jamming the essence in between the straps of his plate vest, he carefully stalked down the hallway and looted the unlit torch.

Chilly held the torch up in the path of Incinerate watching the orange flames lick across the dark wood. Embers glowed, but instead of catching, the torch stayed stubbornly dark. Chilly frowned, pulling the torch out and inspecting it. It looked like a torch. A stick in other words. Trying again, Chilly placed the torch in the path of Incinerate, but achieved similar results.

Frowning more deeply, he turned his attention to the other sarcophagi.

“Pants!” Chilly exclaimed happily, his frown vanishing, as he reached in and pulled out a pair of ugly, torn, and grimy woolen pants.

Woolen Pants

Pants

Common

iLevel: 1

6 armor

Without another care in the world, Chilly slipped on the filthy, old pair of woolen pants.

“Safe!” He sighed in contentment. His cold, shrivelled member thanked him profusely for the protection and warmth.

He was actually nearly fully clothed. Discounting underwear and socks. He was practically decent. Not clean, not presentable, but decent. Nothing incriminating hanging out in the breeze. Putting on the pants had also bumped his armor to 29 with 22.48% mitigation. Slowly but steadily approaching the dream of having one hundred percent physical damage mitigation.

Another cursory investigation of the crypt revealed no further goodies. Chilly retreated out of the room ignoring the penguin that had appeared on top of one of the broken sarcophagi. He walked cheerfully down the hallway but paused at the T-intersection. Considering.

He could continue on. See what was around the bend. Or he could head back to the Shrine and craft up his newfound pants with one of his remaining essences. It would also be incredible if he could figure out how to light the torch. Having the room flash to black constantly brought horror movie vibes.

Perhaps the campfire would be able to do it. Or perhaps the ghostly guardian.

Coming to a decision, Chilly turned left, and pushed past the now fully regenerated door of the shrine.

You have entered the Desecrator’s Shrine

Ignoring the popup, Chilly made his way over to the crafting bench and placed the new essence of azurite beside its brethren. Then with a mournful pause, stripped out of his pants and placed them on the crafting table.

Now came a decision. Iron or Azurite. One provided armor, the other provided life. Except that wasn’t totally true. The azurite had given him life regeneration before, so presumably the essence of iron could give fire resistance and the like. Regeneration was...good. Excellent really, but getting half a unit of health per second wasn’t game changing in a fight. Another 10 armor, however, just might. Having no regeneration was bad. Catastrophic because it prevented recovery between fights, but now that he had at least some regeneration, armor would be superior.

Waving a gesticulating penguin away, Chilly combined one of the two remaining essences of iron with the pants. Just as before, the essence liquified then sank smoothly into the fabric.

Woolen Pants

Pants

Magic

iLevel: 1

6 armor

8 life

5 armor

“Well, well well. Would you look at that!” Chilly smiled, holding up the newly crafted pair of pants up to the candle light. It turned out that a single piece of gear could have more than two mods. More importantly, the essences could provide more than one modifier at a time. It just so happened that life and armor were the two best possible modifiers he could have asked for.

Eagerly, he slipped the pants back on and checked out his character sheet.

Gregory “Chilly” Morhuil

Level

Exp

Skill Points

Spec

2

1/2

1

Fire

Life

Life Regen

133/133

0.45

Armor

Fire

Cold

Lightning

Chaos

34

25.37%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

0

0.00%

Incinerate

Helmet:

Iron Barbute

???

Body Armor:

Iron Plate Vest

???

Pants:

Woolen Pants

???

Boots:

Leather boots

???

Gloves:

???

Jewelry:

???

Mainhand:

Iron Sword

???

Offhand:

Unlit Torch

(AN: Trying out a new format for the character sheet. Tell me if it's worse.)

“Now for that pesky torch.” Chilly murmured. He pulled out the torch, and wandered over to the campfire, then unceremoniously shoved the glorified stick into the flames.

Embers glowed.

He pulled out the still unlit torch and frowned thoughtfully at it. Not even a glowing ember remained once he had pulled it out. Though now that he was really looking closer at it he noticed dozens of hairline fractures spread throughout the stick. Ponderously, the cracks thinned, then disappeared in their entirety.

“A hidden health bar? Hmm, and whatever it is I'm doing is damaging it, not lighting it.” Chilly surmised. Interesting perhaps, but not helpful. How do you light something on fire, if you can’t use fire to do the lighting.

A riddle for the ages.

“Might as well try the crafting bench. The torch is technically a piece of equipment...” Chilly shrugged and made his way over to the crafting bench, dodging around a wayward penguin that disappeared a moment later.

“Is it me or are those things getting more numerous?” He muttered darkly to himself as he placed the torch onto the bench. “Bet they think I’m going to fall asleep soon. Then they’ll pounce. Jokes on you. I can go all day. And night. And day. Ahem. Anyway...”

Chilly picked up his two remaining essences and idly considered, while staring at his torch. Then he shrugged and used the essence of iron. Realistically it wouldn’t matter all that much. Any modifiers would be good right now, and he would find more essences soon anyway. They weren’t exactly a rare drop.

As the essence melted into the torch and the faint blue aura covered the item, the end of the torch burst into flame.

Lit Torch

iLevel 1

Magic

12-18 physical damage

2m light radius

1-2 physical damage to attacks

26% increased light radius

“Booyah!” Chilly crowed, holding up the now burning torch. “Woaw, that’s trippy.”

The light coming off of the torch was strange. Unlike the light of Incinerate which behaved normally, the torch provided a very bright light in a perfect sphere around itself. It was bright enough that everything in its radius was clearly visible, but not so bright as to be blinding. Around two and a half meters away there was a very obvious line where everything became significantly darker. Past that line it would have been pitch black if not for the faint illumination of the candles in the Shrine.

Chilly couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing. Physics had offed itself, and game logic enacted a hostile takeover.

But what did he care? He had light now.