Level One God

I blinked and saw Lyria leaning over me, her red hair dangling in front of my face. “Brynn?” she asked.

I was surprised to find I was completely refreshed. Every shred of the dark mana lingering in my body was gone. The only thing convincing me I hadn’t imagined it was the sensation around my corestones. I could still feel it tainting their walls, lurking within and ready to be unleashed.

A sudden pinch on my arm made me look down. A bed bug was biting me.

Oh, shit. I was sleeping on the cursed bedroll.

“What?” I asked, sitting up and looking down.

“Yeah…” Lyria said. “I got worried about you and figured you could be pissed if you wanted.” She looked over her shoulder at the others, who were obviously waiting to come speak to me now that I was awake. From the looks of it, they had all been waiting around while I slept in the dungeon heart chamber. “I told them it’s a weird item you have, and it heals you. I also warned them it would kill them if they tried to use it, so I’m pretty sure nobody is planning to steal it. I’m also pretty sure the whole bed bugs thing will prevent theft, anyway.”

“Did you see him?” I asked, looking side to side, expecting to see the burned man in the black robes. My heart was still pounding from the encounter.

“The Eclipsed?” she asked. “He’s dead. Very dead, actually. How come you didn’t think about caging in your explosions earlier? That could’ve worked wonders in the tunnels.”

“I wasn’t sure the shields would hold until we collapsed the grommet tunnel, and I tested it,” I said, still distracted as I looked around.

Had that only been a dream?

“You smell terrible,” Lyria said, sniffing my shirt. “What the hell is that? Sulfur? And did you burn yourself during the fight, or something?”

Not a dream, then.

I saw the chunks of wood and gore still burning and giving off steam behind her. Thorn, Sylara, Zahra, and Ramzi had crowded behind Lyria, sharing her concerned expression as they watched me get to my feet and stash the Cursed Bedroll in my slip space.

I rubbed the back of my neck. My thoughts were swirling with a thousand questions, but seeing the others made me suddenly remember the fight. I gave a weak, but honest explanation about the whole, caging my allies in with deadly magical spiked walls, thing. I did my best to convince them it was accidental without quite letting on just how much the dark mana had been exerting its influence on me and my abilities. I didn’t want them to know how close I had come to losing control. I wasn’t going to let it get that far again.

“It was very impressive, Ramzi said, smiling and giving my shoulder a squeeze. “The walls of mana said, you are safe. The spikes said… do not dare try to escape and help me, for I am able to handle this on my own. Quite the show of confidence.”

I grinned. “Not exactly what I was thinking.” I checked everybody for injuries but found we were all healed and healthy.

“Are you okay?” Lyria asked. “What was all that?”

“He had been holding back on us,” Thorn said. “Saving the big swords for the moment of desperation, eh? You really would do great in the arena, you know. The crowds would love the showmanship. A flaming greatsword and armor, too? Very flashy.”

I shook my head slowly. “I’m still trying to figure out what that was.” I didn’t want to admit what I suspected, not even to Lyria. I replayed the way things happened, running through my best understanding of it all.

The dark mana was contained in the walls of my cores again. With the help of my cursed bedroll, I had been cleansed of every bit of lingering trace it left in my body, too. And…

[Hunger, 0%]

I smiled to myself at that. So I could release dark mana from my corestone and then feed the remaining taint to my cursed bedroll each night, effectively freeing me from the need to keep farming dungeons to feed it. Assuming, of course, the dark mana inside my core didn’t run out without some kind of outside charging mechanism. I couldn’t be sure about that one.

But maybe I could learn to meditate and draw dark mana into my cores, just like I did with pure mana. At the very least, I suspected my corestones could hold enough dark mana to keep my bedroll fed for very long periods. I would just need to figure out how to replenish the resource, one way or another.

With my cursed bedroll to cleanse me, I could possibly figure out a safe amount of dark mana to use each day. My brief experience during the fight made me relatively certain I could learn to control it better, too. Right now, it was untamed and wild. But maybe I could start practicing before bed each night, relying on my cursed bedroll to cleanse me of any dangerous amounts of trace mana left in my system.

When I was confident I could control the amount I used, I could start weaving it into my fights, using only safe amounts to amplify spells at the right time.

If it wasn’t for the whole… burned man thing? I’d say this was a huge win. His parting words about only needing to reach for his help made me hope his real goal was for me to relinquish control to him. Maybe he thought I would eventually give him too much control and allow him to pilot my body like some kind of avatar. If he wasn’t stuck inside my body, could he plan to collect all of the prestige gods, one by one?

I knew one thing. Without my cursed bedroll, I would have already been screwed. If I couldn’t cleanse the dark mana from my body, the burned man would already have me in his grasp, and I doubted I could do anything to fight it. The thought was sobering, to say the least. It made me desperately hope none of the other gods found themselves in a similar position. I didn’t trust that man’s intentions, and I didn’t want to think about him gaining influence over other fledgling gods.

I was only half-listening as the others talked. They were trying to decide what the smartest course of action was. Mostly, they wanted to avoid running into Rake and his two Iron friends again.

I suspected that wasn’t going to be an option.

No. There would be one final confrontation before we could get out of here for good. One last test.

Thankfully, I was fairly sure Rake wouldn’t like how the rematch went.

“What’s that?” I asked suddenly, noticing the huge bone tree had a section in its center that had pulled back to reveal a circle-shaped opening. The hole was a little larger than a corestone and empty.

Had somebody already taken the loot here?

“Yeah,” Lyria said. “We noticed that, too. We’re pretty sure it’s a corestone upgrade altar. But… the tree looks like it’s touched with dark mana.”

“In other words,” Thorn said. “Use that, and we’re pretty sure you’ll taint your corestone with dark mana. Worst case, it gets stuck and you can’t unbind, buying yourself a one-way ticket to becoming Eclipsed. Best case, you can take it off, sell it to some collector, and start over with a new class.”

“None of us were interested in the risk,” Sylara said simply.

I nodded, eyes lingering on the space there. They were right. For them, it was arguably an inexcusable risk. For me, though? My corestones were already reshaped by dark mana. I didn’t believe they could become any more infused with the stuff, meaning I could likely use the upgrade altar without risk. Only I didn’t want to advertise that the dark mana was still inside me. None of them had asked about it, but I felt a certain unspoken tension all the same.

They had all seen me taken over by it and watched me wield it. None of them were asking me directly about it, but I knew they worried. They should worry. Without my cursed bedroll, I probably would’ve already been well on my way to becoming a complete Eclipsed.

The thought of the Eclipsed made me wonder again about the burned man. Was the burned man “piloting” the Eclipsed? Had it reached inside a man named Krete and turned him into that? If so, it meant he could inhabit at least two people at once. He had used me to tell Krete he was no longer needed, after all. But why discard Krete when he found me if he could inhabit multiple hosts?

Frustratingly, I didn’t see any way to answer the questions for now.

We were all still looking at the opening in the tree when Sylara folded her arms, shivering. “I need to get out of this fucking room,” she said, walking off at a quick pace.

Thorn jogged after her.

“You coming?” Lyria said, touching my arm.

“Uh, just a minute…”

Her eyes shifted toward the hole in the tree. Something unspoken passed between us. She knew about my cursed bedroll. She knew me well enough to know what I was thinking, and I hoped she understood I believed it was safe.

After a quiet moment, she gave the slightest nod. “You’re sure?” She mouthed.

“Mostly,” I whispered.

Lyria hesitated, swallowed hard, and then left the room behind Sylara.

Zahra began to head for the exit, but noticed Ramzi was standing still. “You wish to linger?” she asked, amusement touching her voice. “In this place?”

“I will gather a little more of the ichor,” Ramzi said, approaching the dead infant-like dungeon guardian. “The coin will bring me closer to our goal.”

Zahra gave the thing an uneasy look, nodded, and left with the others.

Ramzi saw me still standing there and shrugged. “One of my duties as a slave was harvesting beast parts for the crafters. This ichor makes strong potions.”

He wandered toward the dead infant thing, producing a large flask and carefully filling it with the yellow, draining goop. “I spent the time while you rested gathering what I could. But it keeps leaking more and more. Each vial of this should be worth nearly 50 silver,” He said, holding up a glass tube the size of a thick finger.

Despite everything battling for attention in my head, I suddenly felt very interested in the ichor. “50 silver for a vial that size?” I asked, approaching.

“Yes,” Ramzi said. “It makes a potion that can be used to produce a kind of corrosive acid. The kiergard often fight with bone weapons because it does not melt from the acid made with this type of ichor. One touch on metal armor, and it will eat away at the material like hungry fish. Many powerful creatures leak this same substance. Strange, no?”

I pursed my lips and summoned several flasks of various potions I had prepared. I didn’t dump Bombroot for obvious safety reasons, but I emptied about half my stores of extra potions to make room for empty flasks. There was more than enough ichor for Ramzi and I to fill as much as we could hold.

I planned to sell whatever I didn’t need. By my guess, I had enough containers to hold five, maybe six gold worth of the stuff if he was right about that vial of his being 50 silver’s worth. With that much gold, I could get some amazing potions back in Thrask.

Assuming we survived the trip out of here, of course.

If I could use my bag of duplication to double the vials, it would be even better. But I wasn’t sure if it would work for a liquid and wanted to wait until I was alone to check.

“So this was what they had you do?” I asked carefully after we were both out of space in our various vials and flasks.

“Yes,” Ramzi said.

“Would there be anything else worth gathering from this thing?”

“With the proper tools and knowledge? Perhaps.” He stood up and dusted his hands. “I suspect the accomplishments we will have earned for fighting by your side will be more than enough reward, though. And we would be just as likely to damage what we tried to collect. I have also been warned to be careful with creatures touched by dark mana. It is possible to find yourself infected if you cut into the wrong area.”

I stood, too. “Can you let them know I’ll catch up in a little while? I just need to meditate for a second. I want to top off my mana before we get moving, just to be safe. It’ll go faster if I’m alone, though.”

His mention of accomplishments reminded me I still hadn’t looked to see what I gained from killing the Eclipsed.

“Of course,” Ramzi said, walking out of the chamber through the large entrance doorway.

But there were more than accomplishments tugging for my attention. There was a distinct feeling deep inside my body. My intuition told me it had to do with pushing myself to advance to Iron, but that would have to wait for at least a few minutes.

As soon as Ramzi was gone, my gaze shifted toward the tree and the empty hole.