One With The Abyss

"The first... Gate?" I asked the mouth that had grown on my hand.

"The first gate of the abyss." Again the hand said far too little for me to understand what it was talking about. 

"Sorry." It said, again reading my thoughts, "Like I said before you are the abyss, but you are not ready to take everything in. So, the power within you is locked behind 7 gates that have specific requirements to unlock."

"And the first gate is?"

"You simply have to use your powers to completion." 

"So, that feeling I got from the slime awakened you or something." I asked, thinking I had finally grasped everything.

"No." The simple and blunt response completely threw me off, "It takes a full twenty four hours for a gate to open, it was the other use that unlocked it."

I thought for a moment and remembered when I had one of my classmates hands in mine and felt the same pull I had when I killed the slime. But then I compared the difference in times between the human and the slime.

"It doesn't work that way." I reminded the mouth that I didn't want it reading my mind but let it continue, "It's based on strength, you had almost identical strength to your classmate so it took less time. Though that slime is not the best example of this."

The last part of what was said came out mumbled but I still heard it clearly.

"Just explain everything to me quickly." I told the mouth.

"Okay, but we will need to be quick. This cave is merely a stopgap to hide from the blood ogres temporarily." It responded, then began to explain information about the abyss and what my talent could do.

Firstly was the explanation of the talent's purpose. The mouth told me there were things I couldn't be told for the time being but that at the time the only thing [One With The Abyss] could do was copy other talents. At first I believed this would make me entirely unstoppable, but apparently that wasn't entirely true. It was certainly a powerful ability, but there were restrictions for copying the ability: Firstly, to copy the ability I must maintain physical contact with the target; Secondly, the time taken to copy is based on relative strengths - copying my classmate took so little time because we had such similar strength but the slime took longer since it was so much stronger than me. The slime apparently got weaker as I copied the ability as my talent temporarily disables the target's talent. Most of the time this does nothing as most talents (though not always) are passive, in this slime however it's presented body was created by its talent. It was using its talent to create the slime body I saw while it's real body was the rocky core, the slime being more like mucus. Most times a slime's mucus is fixed and can only be changed slightly due to their typical talent, the one I copied was supposedly abnormal and apparently much more useful.

[Shapeshifting (0/9)]

[Freely change and alter the properties of your body]

"That sounds... amazingly useful." I said as this was being explained to me.

"Yeah. You're really lucky to have gotten that." The mouth spoke as I looked over my status, "That slime would have likely become an overlord of this forest had it not met you."

The other talent I had was also apparently useful too.

[Soul Weapon (0/9)]

[Create a weapon from deep within your soul. Gain increased mastery over any weapon of the same type]

This was the 2nd of 3 level 9 potential talents that appeared, along with Miss Adelade. If I remember correctly it went to a small girl called Ashley, she was a quiet girl who I remembered little about, not that it would save her when it came time for my revenge; now I knew I had power I would soon rise and make good on my promises. And now not only was I one of the people with a level 9 talent, but I had 2. Logically one could say that gave me a level 18 talent but I won't go into the finer details of the equations.

"With these talents you have a pretty good starting point." The hand said, "But you'll have to train them, not to mention awakening your soul weapon; and that's  it's own set of trials."

"Okay, cool. Now continue explaining." I told it.

What happened next was it answering my questions. Firstly, I asked how it knew so much about this world, like the name of the 'blood ogres' that were hunting me. The explanation was that it was all things I knew, my subconscious was simply suppressing them due to my mind being weak. Next was the gates; the next set of answers were things I wasn't allowed to know, like the conditions of opening the gates. My talent generated a technique in my mind to gather 'abyss' which I could use to empower myself, therefore the more gates I had open, the more power I could gather. This then powered the talents I could use.

"Now what?" I asked, according to what I was being told, the ogres would be hunting me.

"We need to leave their territory or find somewhere they can't reach. After that you can begin getting new talents and gathering new ones." It explained.

"Okay, but how long do we have?" I asked, standing back up from where I had sat when listening to the mouth's lecture.

"Okay, firstly can we do something about 'The Mouth' please, it feels demeaning." The mou-, I mean the speaker said. I was still annoyed that it was reading my thoughts but decided to just ignore it for the time being.

"Fine. But we find safety first." I said, "Deal?"

"Yes, that'd be for the best." It responded, "We should be safe until the next morning if we head deeper into the cave."

And so we did, I walked through the damp tunnels to find a nice place to sleep and rest for a while. My ribs were likely broken and I had just lost an arm so it would be an understatement to say I was tired. All the while I was trying to come up with a name for the thing that had taken residence on the back of my hand.

"Abyss. Mouth. Hand..." I kept repeating what I knew about it to try and come up with a name, "How about Handy?"

"Be serious." Even though the voice had very little emotion naturally I could somehow tell it was not amused.

"Haha, fine. Abyss, Abess. Aby..." I eventually came to find something that I liked, "What about... Abby, for Abyss."

It was silent for a moment, like it was thinking it over. While this happened I was thinking about how abnormally deep this cave was.

"Yeah. Abby." It finally spoke, the voice becoming softer and distinctly more feminine, "I like that. Abby, let's go with that."

"Why do you sound like a woman now?" The change in it's voice came as a shock to me.

"Well, the only reason I'm here like this is thanks to shapeshifting anyway." Again, Abby said so much in so few words that I couldn't possibly understand what she meant.

"What are you talking about? You always do this." I moaned, half because of how annoying she was, half because my body was aching.

"I used your shapeshifting talent to make this mouth to talk to you, therefore I can change how I sound."

When I asked her further about this I learnt a few things, primarily Abby has some control over my talents. It is so inconsequential that no energy is drained but she can still use it, had I not gotten shapeshifting then Abby would have merely been a small guiding voice in the back of my head - like my survival instincts but even stronger, more specific about how to act. But that never came to be, instead she can talk to me directly. With this all of the information she claims to have can be more easily expressed.

"What the hell is this?" I said, standing stunned at the sight of a bright white room in front of me.

It was so distinctly artificial, with a fountain spewing water in the centre of the room and pure white panels - all covered in such thick layers of dust I couldn't help but cough. The amount of space was enough to store at least 5 elephants side by side along the lengths of the room.

"Haha! This is perfect, just what we needed." Abby began shouting out, her joy clear, "A dungeon is the perfect place to gather talents, and hide.  Though you'd need to go deeper for that."

"A dungeon, like a place full of respawning monsters and rewards and stuff." I asked, beginning to feel Abby's excitement spreading to me.

"That's right on the mark Tia!" Abby responded.

With that I stepped into the room and quickly made my way over to the water, I was desperately hungry and thirsty and now I was halfway done with sating those desires.

"Okay, here's how we do this." Abby began speaking a minute after I had sat down again, "What we need now is for you to get onto the second floor, that way the ogres won't be able to follow you."

"Can't they just get onto the second floor with me?" I asked Abby.

"Nah, they might but it will take them an unbelievably long time to do so. They're just not smart enough to figure out doors, haha. I'm serious though, everything will be fine."

"Okay, great plan." I said, chuckling at her joke, "But how do I fight, I'm weaker than the average human, and I've lost an arm and have multiple cracked ribs."

"We're going to do it with grit!" Abby called out, I was silent, completely shocked by what she said. Luckily she continued, "For the time being we will focus on shapeshifting as your main attacking ability, while doing this we kill monsters and copy talents. Hey did you ever check what those titles did?"

Realising I had been too focused on how my talent wasn't worthless I had forgotten my titles. I quickly checked them and saw:

[David]

[Proof of having defeated a foe at least 10 levels higher than you. Increases damage against enemies with a higher level than you]

[Goliath]

[Proof of having defeated a foe at least 100 levels higher than you. Increases defence against enemies with a higher level than you]

"Isn't that just perfect for me? Everything is a higher level than me." I laughed, it seemed being unable to level would actually bring me some benefits. Then a thought came to mind, so I asked Abby; "Should I spend some time trying that technique to increase my strength first or go straight into the dungeon."

She was silent for a moment, thinking, before giving a very pragmatic reply to my question.

"I think we should see what we're dealing with before we decide anything." What she had said made sense so I got back up and headed down the opposite tunnels, "While we do some recon, practice your shifting. What you want to do is change the small stuff first -"

Like that we walked until we found the opening, practising how to shapeshift was very weird. Watching as my finger increased in length was honestly surreal, Abby said that changing should feel natural and easy, then at that point I would be able to use it in combat. Eventually, we came to an opening; a bright light shone through the exit of the tunnel, right as I was trying and failing to grow another finger - that seemed to be too much for the time being.

What was revealed to me continued to shatter my shard-like expectations. In front of me was an open field with long grass to obscure my sight, the shone sat right at it's apex above me, all while I was inside a cave. It was honestly baffling how the rules of this world worked, magic and monsters and suns in caves; yet this was all normal here. Another abnormality being that the grass was a fancy blue colour, like cyan.

"Now comes the challenge." Abby said, after remaining quiet during my practice, "Diving into the dungeon."