The hours passed peacefully. If anything had occurred, then she had been fortunate to sleep through it. Her hand and body ached from the results of her harsh journey to this hidden outpost. She wished she could take the time to repair the missing sand on her palms, but the loss of feeling had been the only thing allowing her to fight as she had. It is just pain, she told herself forcibly. Pain was not new to her and she was in little danger of permanent injury. Golems were notoriously difficult to kill if they escape since they can regenerate with time and resources. She may lack the knowledge of how to fully restore her sand, yet she could experiment and learn if needed. For now, she had all her hand sand sitting inside the satchel strapped to her chest and vowed to apply it when she found a safe spot. It would only be viable for so long, and she did not want to be permanently without feeling in such sensory body parts.

The hideout was connected to two tunnels she could see and she chose to exit from the one she had yet to travel down. The rush of adrenalin and the trauma to her body had her confused as to where she was in relation to the maps she had studied, so it was with cautious steps that she proceeded. The tunnel was narrower than what she had been used to, and it almost zero light for her to see. This brought up the curious question, where has the light been coming from? She had lived with light being a normal fixture and had never thought to think on it beyond the typical expectation of it being from the dungeon. However, this dungeon was dead or maybe inactive? Either way, it did not have the same power her home city had at its disposal which begged the question of how it was all working. The orcs had chosen to maintain their hold on this area and she had never thought about it beyond that.

The question was artistically answered for her when she found remains of mine tracks, carts, and rubble. They were strewn about the tunnel and connecting pathways; she would not have noticed them if not for her own clumsiness. All it took was one partially buried metal track to send her sprawling into more. She had discovered remnants that became more obvious and visible as she moved inward. This made her realize she must be traveling towards the heart of their dungeon which was not the goal. She began to hear the clanging of metal hitting stone. This caused her to backtrack to another path to try again, and again. She kept running into busy areas but was slowly working her way through by being careful and retreating. With her injuries, it was not wise to risk a fight. Life did not seem eager to accommodate her wishes, and she was not overly surprised to run into a trio of workers while bypassing a populated section.

They were startled by her being there, and she had been caught momentarily unaware as well but recovered quickly. Her armory contained three knives now, one of which soared through the air towards the lead orc, a male wearing a grey shirt and ripped pants. His companions reacted to the projectile by maneuvering away and rushing her. Her throw poised little threat, yet served the purpose of distracting them. It gave her just enough time to duck under the quickest orc’s swing and score a clean hit to his unarmoured side. His friends were ready to take their turn and she knew there was little chance of survival if she faced all at once, so instead, she kept next to the orc she had stabbed. Like in her previous fight, the close range gave her the advantage and kept the others at bay.

It was not an easy fight, but she was able to prevail in the end with few new wounds due to them having non-combat classes and little protective clothing to block her knife. Two of them were knocked out and had been moved to the side out of sight from the junction, but the third had required her to cave in over half his face before he stopped trying to raise the alarm. No matter what she had tried, the man refused to be knocked out. It must have been from a skill.

Twice more, she was forced to fight that day. Both times she kept from killing anyone, instead, she had left them to be saved or eaten by whatever was attracted to the noise. This kept her from leveling but did not prevent her from gaining any skills, yet until she reached a safe place to check, she had only a vague idea of her gains from the day. She hummed to herself in expectation as she limped down a rough side tunnel off from where her last battle had taken place. Finally, she had found a small offshoot that contained what had once been a mining tunnel. It had enough crevices for her to shelter in, and she could finally let her guard down.

Encounter Complete: Minimal life energy gathered

+2% to level

Encounter Complete: Minimal life energy gathered

+1% to level

Knife Proficiency Increase: Level 1 → 2

The more she damaged the opponent and was in close contact with them, the higher the life energy gained from them. If she had killed them, then the value would have been more significant, yet it was already going to add up as it was. She was currently a third of the way to level eight and while the actions from the past few days may grant her new options, it would not be enough. Repeated deviations from her normal pattern and an established routine would be needed to get a suitable class. Being a warrior, scout, or one of the service classes would not be enough to free her people. I need to become a champion or some other rare class.

This was all theory on her part as her clan had their own ancestral classes as did most groups of people, so she knew there might be dozens of useful classes out there. The ones she knew of getting that were golem specific: the boulder, mountain, or earth molder classes would also fail to provide the necessary potential. Nevertheless, she had heard rumors working for her Master’s family; sometimes, people did amazing things or were lucky in an encounter and received recognition from the gods. This recognition gave them increased odds of being blessed with better classes or powers. Years ago when she was only a child and heard of this, she had vowed to get one of these so called achievements to prove her worth. Now that she was safe from human trackers and had months to spare, she would use it trying to coax the universe, or gods, into noticing her. The first step was to increase her skills and strive to use them in creative ways. She took a look at her status to see where she was at.

Name:

Verity Stonefist

Stats:

Skills:

Level:

7 (37.5%)

Strength:

11

Name:

Level:

Affect:

Age:

15

Dexterity:

12

Cleaning

10 (11%)

Grime Repulsion, Minor void

Race:

Golem-Human Hybrid

Agility:

9

Caregiving

7 (34%)

Sense Needs

Class:

--------------

Will:

8

Unarmed Combat

6 (15%)

Reinforced Fists

Weaknesses:

Humidity, blunt objects

Cooking

3 (10%)

Acting

2 (16%)

Knife Proficiency

2 (20%)

The next morning she rested. The small divot in the crudely mined walls was hardly comfortable, yet she found herself laying languidly along the bumpy flour. Her hands lay cradled against her chest as she molded the lost sand back into the rough shape of a normal hand. It was difficult to do by herself, but she found that she enjoyed having the power to shape her own image even if it looked awful. The pinkish-white sand was crumbly and tough, much stranger to the touch than it had been just a day before. Once she had finished, she noticed that the sensation from running her palms across her brown tunic or against the pommel of her acquired knife was muted. It was like she was wearing gloves and feeling second hand. It was worth it! She tried to justify the likely permanent loss of further feeling with the knowledge that it had secured her escape.

It was distressing to tarnish the function of her life-sand that was nearly identical to flesh in terms of sensitivity and dexterity, especially since she had so little pure sand left. Only her hands, face, and feet had any substantial amount remaining, and now her hands barely qualified. The rest of her body contained borrowed material from others that functioned fine, but would never be truly her own. It was probably for the best, she considered since it had already served to block arrows from piercing her and had aided her victory in the fights the day before.

She was reluctant to get back to traveling aimlessly through the dungeon as her sense of direction had her wondering where she was, so instead, she began to draw a map based on what she recalled from the house she worked in. A stray bit of parchment and charcoal in her bag proved a useful addition and she was thankful at her previous self for squirreling them away.

Once done with the rough idea, she filled in where she had been to find out roughly where she was now. This allowed her to extrapolate a path forward. A lot of what she had included in her map was theoretical based on the human maps she had seen and the placement of the centuries, but she knew that she had skirted around approximately three orc settlements. Their dungeon was not like hers where it was a safe zone dedicated to a city. Their territory was in the dead husk of an old dungeon that no longer functioned. Her master had not known why, and she had heard many hushed conversations that made her think humans were lucky the orcs had failed to dominate this particular dungeon. Instead, they hid in fortified tunnels and caverns to protect from invading humans or monsters from other nearby dungeons. It is strange though… I was always told that orcs were the first Dungeon Lords, Verity wondered at how such an invasive race had lost such a crucial foothold. They would certainly have overcome the human city if they hadn’t. She continued to think and fill in details, only finishing when she got to the less known areas near her currency location and refrained from filling in the next dungeon. She was fairly certain it was nearby, yet the region she was headed to was an atypical dungeon: a labyrinth. Few traveled through it due to the dangers and the maps she had seen never had any information on it other than that the Minotaurs ran it and were impossible to root out at this time. She put the last scribble on her wrinkled parchment, blowing gently to remove stray bits of charcoal, to reveal her finished image. It was rough but readable.

New Skill, Cartography: Level 0 → 1

She was fairly sure of her placement and figured the labyrinth was only a day or less away. She settled in to think and rest up for the adventure she had ahead of her. Labyrinths were notorious for their trials and challenges. Verity found herself dozing off with images of terrifying traps and golden treasure.