Healing Dungeon

 

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*Chime*

It sounded in Avan's head for the umpteenth time.

Mentally tired and exhausted, despite his physical integrity, he dropped backwards onto the grassy ground and closed his eyes for a moment.

He had stopped counting and lost track of how many times he had been respawned and how many attempts he had made to pass this test.

No matter what Avan had tried, unpredictable situations had always arisen that he simply could not have anticipated.

Once, a widow had gone crazy when the crow had managed to exploit a hole in the back wall of a house and break into the dark part of the house to brutally kill her son. At the scream and then sight of her once living child, she had plunged a kitchen knife into Avan's heart just as he was focused on locating the monster.

At other moments, Avan had tried to trap the crow, creating a variety of maneuvers and situations with the villagers to flood the monster with light at just the right moment. Always the same thing had happened; the crow had been furious and beside itself at being so exposed to the light, and in a wild and senseless frenzy had killed everyone in its vicinity, even if it could finally be hurt itself.

The best attempt so far had happened during his current and last round, when Avan had come up with the idea of wrapping spears with an oil-soaked cloth around the front, leaving only the tip of the spear exposed. With this tactic, they had been able to harm the crow with four men outside the torchlight and from a safe distance. The light of the spears burning in front had been enough to make the invulnerability of the monster invalid at the right moment and to injure it.

With the first two spear thrusts, which hit successfully, a dark and slimy black mass had emerged from the wounds, and as Avan was about to triumph, the crow had grabbed the other two spears in a flash and pulled the unfortunate bearers out of the safe light with a jerk.

The shrill screams and the fact that the monster's wounds had slowly closed again in the darkness had also been a failure here. Especially when one of the lumberjacks and sturdily built men had tried to save his brother, jostling Avan from behind and pushing him into the darkness.

During his execution in the last round, however, something had happened that had never happened before, and had probably resulted from the wound inflicted.

The crow had, after it had cut off Avan's arms, still shortly before Avan's death said something in a croaking tone, which had sounded damn like "Got you".

How many attempts was that now? I had stopped counting at fifty or more... And only now had we been able to hurt it... To the cursed abyss once again! he cursed inwardly, and allowed his head to fill with mental emptiness from sheer exhaustion.

Avan had now seen other people die in so many different ways, and had himself experienced death many times in his own body, that he was simply exhausted inside and had to make every effort not to sink into helplessness.

With his head on the soft grass and his arms stretched out from his body, he slowly opened his tired eyes and stared thoughtlessly into the slightly cloudy sky.

No matter what I try, torchlight seems to either send it into a raging frenzy, and it just kills everything and everyone in an attempt to escape back into the darkness, or we hurt it just slightly and do too little damage...

Even trying to set a trap and burn it somehow didn't help, except that it raged and set fire to the wooden huts on its way out, only to return a few minutes later completely healed but as angry as never before.

There must be a simple way to make a weapon out of light... I mean, I'm talking about a magical world here...

Why the hell have I never thought of magic before? And don't I have the celestial element myself, which seems to glow somehow? I damn donkey have tried it so far with human and to me only from the earth known ideas!

Still exhausted, but with a glimmer of hope on the mental horizon, he went through his skills and possible options.

When I think about it like this, only Akkalon's sphere actually shines. Will that be enough? And hadn't I experimented with an almost night-black variant in the dungeon just before Eve and her group went looking for Yue? he continued his train of thought, now more and more enthusiastic and forming a vague idea in his head.

"However, even when the spheres glow, the beast is just too fast, I think.... But if I can change the properties of the glow, maybe I can create a different shape?" He muttered to himself with newfound entuiasm, and immediately began conjuring both of his spheres with open palms while stil lying down, going over the ideas in his head that he wanted to try out.

Light, Celestial energy seems to be modeled after the sky. Starry sky, so somehow there must be a luminous daytime version, right? And shapes. Can I make the sphere... make it bigger? Hollow it out? Can I make it more pointed somehow? Or is it bound to the shape of a round geometric shape? Can I... Create a hollowed out sphere and somehow trap the crow inside?

Now jittery and with many ideas in his head that wanted to be tried out, Avan sat up. He had no fear for the village, because with all these thoughts one thing had become clear to him; the crow creature was after him, and had always attacked him at every opportunity. If he had not misheard, then the croaking in the last run was actually the confirmation for Avan that it was only after him and would leave the village in peace. Or so he hoped.

Much more content than before, and without the tight feeling in his chest, Avan sat down in a meditative pose, holding his two palms upward on either side as the Akkalons spheres slowly formed above.

Following a first attempt, he concentrated mentally and with a picture on the desired result in his right hand and tried to convey an intention to his mana.

Despite his closed eyes, he noticed that the statement was also true here, that his mana and the world system partly originated from himself, since the sphere in his right hand was fluctuating and something was happening to it.

Through his sphere of influence as a dungeon, Avan could accurately feel the sphere deforming like plasticine, changing from elongated to flat and other various shapes, always trying to meet his intention of a larger sphere.

While the sphere above his left hand had already assumed its final form and hovered there in the usual manner above his palm, the other sphere could not assume a fixed form and constantly changed its malleable mass of celestial mana.

With a small sigh, Avan realized his mistake.

Larger would NATURALLY mean that it would require more mana! But the ability still limits the mana used to two thousand mana per sphere... He thought with a frown. Following another train of thought, he gently and very carefully tried to let more mana flow into the billowing mass, always careful to stop immediately, as the exploding Akkalon's spheres were still vivid in his mind.

The mass of mana above his right palm seemed to become more unstable by the second, and the shapes changed faster and faster.

Quickly, before anything could happen, Avan shot the celestial energy to the right with a wave of his will into the forest, where not a second later a deafening explosion took place.

Okaaaaay... That almost feels like plastic explosives! At least what I have seen from the TV or videos. This could be quite interesting in the future. So in the right situations.

With a quick glance at his mana pool of one thousand two hundred, which was already two-thirds full again, he began another incantation of a sphere while ordering the sphere hovering above his left hand to hover two meters above his head.

Less than two minutes later, a malleable mass of celestial mana had once again formed over his right hand, and this time he attempted to impart a different form to the mana.

Avan wanted to form it into a spear or other type of weapon, if possible, since the sphere was extremely hard and resilient in its final state, as he knew from his previous battles and use of the ability.

So he sat there, a completed sphere floating motionless in the air a little above him, constantly trying to imbue his ability with a new form. At twenty failures, he stopped counting and simply kept summoning the moving, billowing, clay-like mass of mana. Bit by bit, and without even realizing it at first, he was able to draw mana from his surroundings into his own soul core and convert it into usable mana faster and faster. Likewise, the summoning went quicker each time, and instead of almost four minutes at the beginning, he needed almost only one and a half minutes for the sphere.

The right part of the forest also looked more and more like a war zone than an idyllic place, which he had found here at the beginning. Craters and trees shattered by explosions and what was left of them splintered littered the land as he looked, shaking his head, at another failed attempt that had just exploded.

Again he summoned the mass of celestial energy.

I feel it... I am on the verge! he reminded himself inside, knowing he was on the verge of a breakthrough, as the mana was forming faster and better with each attempt. As if it had slowly understood what Avan wanted to achieve.

In the present attempt, Avan finally succeeded in generating a reasonably stable elongated shape, and when he opened his eyes and blinked several times against the rays of the sun beaming into his face, he saw an elongated and glittering mass of celestial energy floating before him. The mass was still not sharp-edged or pointed, but it was the first stable breakthrough since he had started.

With a whoop, he clenched both hands joyfully into fists and let out a cry of joy as he let both fists clench against each other.

Immediately realizing his mistake, Avan cried out and pushed himself off the ground, darting in the opposite direction and pushing the thirty-centimeter elongated form away from him with all his willpower as fast as he could towards the badly damaged forest.

With his hands clasped together, he threw himself onto the grass, and after an ear-shattering explosion and a white-grey light, he heard nothing more.

Groaning, Avan struggled to his feet while a warm liquid ran from both ears down the side of his neck and he felt as if something had run over him.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..." He moaned as he carefully grabbed his ears and held his bloody hands in front of his face. A quick appraisal of himself with the help of his sphere of influence and clenched teeth later, he knew exactly what had happened to him.

The shock wave had burst his eardrum, once again, and a little to the right, where he had just been standing, a five-meter crater had appeared, where his last experiment had literally imploded due to his lack of concentration.

Groaning and with aching limbs and head, because small stones hidden in the earth had been shot in all directions, he sat down on his butt and shook his head gently at his stupidity. Even with reduced pain, and he estimated it to be a good thirty percent pain reduction with his current level of Pain Resistance, he had a terrible migraine coupled with the feeling of knives in his ears, plus bruises all over his back, arms and legs.

Next time, I'd rather wait until it's really a hundred percent certain...

He put himself into meditation again and healed his wounds over the next twenty minutes until he was sure he had healed everything.

Still angry with himself, he resolved to learn from this mistake and make the best of it. Avan now knew, at least with the greatest certainty, that the unstable form was highly explosive, resulting in a deadly explosion in a five-meter radius, and that he first had to reach the stable final form, like his perfectly round sphere, which was still floating in the air above him.

Following an intuition, he changed not only the shape in the next attempt, but also the light intensity of the mass, as he had already considered.

He had already managed a midnight black sphere before, so it should also be possible for him to manipulate the celestial properties of the mana in the opposite direction.

Less than two minutes later, another elongated football floated in front of him, this time as bright as a thirty-watt light bulb.

Still not bright enough for my taste... and this long drawn football part doesn't bring me much more than my round ball so far! It needs to be more pointy, and sharp edged! He remarked resignedly, but partially satisfied with the result so far.

This time, instead of exploding the shape again, he tried to suck the mana out of the unfinished shape.

This experiment also worked, but Avan suddenly found himself exposed to a flood of two thousand mana, which he was only able to dissipate and channel through his body as quickly as possible thanks to his meditation.

As the massive amount of mana left his body through his pores and skin, a shimmering blue mist of pure mana briefly floated around Avan, containing a hint of glittering stars that lit up everywhere until the mist cleared.

This was surprisingly beautiful... Wow. Celestial mana is simply breathtaking. He finished his amazement and closed his open mouth again with an audible click.

On we go!

Hours went by, and when the sun was about to disappear behind the first treetops, Avan finally held a finished version of a simple spear in his hand. The surface of the celestial mana in his hand felt perfectly smooth.

The spear was less than three centimeters thick and only one meter long, but it shone in such a bright light that a quick glance at it caused stars to dance before one's eyes and blinded one for a short time. Through his sphere of influence, however, he could still make out the black dots that housed the entire form. The midnight version, despite its blackness, had small glowing stars in its mana, while the sun version, as Avan mentally called it, had black light-swallowing stars in it. The spearhead, if Avan could call it that, was also brightly glowing, but pointed enough to carve into a piece of wood, which was definitely enough for his purpose.

Not only could he hold the spear firmly in his hand, but he could still command it with his thoughts within his sphere of influence and make it fly around or attack.

Satisfied with his ideas, and slowly facing the impending night, he called up the skill description again, which had surprisingly changed completely during one of his last attempts. He could, despite this circle of rebirth and death, apparently also improve and level up his skills here. And hopefully kept this even after a respawn.

 

Active Skill: Akkalon's Form

By proving that you are incapable of preventing interference that is none of your business, you now gain even more opportunities to intervene. You can now summon up to any form of celestial mana that you can freely control in your sphere of influence with your will.

You can now also assign to your form the properties of the sky by day or night, be it the color, the glow, or other properties of the celestial vault.

[Bronze] The capacity of the summoned forms is increased by one. You can add twice the amount of mana to your creations.

 

Satisfied with himself, with a glowing sphere hovering five meters above his head and a slightly dimmed glowing spear in his right hand, Avan stood on the left half of the hill and mentally prepared himself to face the crow creature one more and hopefully last time.

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