Chương 11: In The Dark

Ch. 11: In The Dark My smile faded as Lee disappeared into the darkness. I dropped the flares in the middle of the street and booked it toward the tarpit. Not thinking. Not strategizing. Lord knows if I was strategizing I would have taken those flares with me.

"Wait!" Said Kayla, "You need the flares!" I dove into the hellmouth. There was a way higher drop than I was expecting. I careened into the darkness with no sense of when to tuck and roll. The floor found me. I slammed against the stone and rolled as best I could. The only peek of light was the hellmouth above. Maybe I shouldn't have left Spiros at home, I thought. Spiros was busy running around the apartment trying to escape Boba and the two dogs.

I could have brought him, but having a tiny version of the god you killed might have drawn attention to me. Still, he had taught me the basics. I opened my screen. I had something just for this. Of the three options under abilities. They read: Cloud Forming Blessings Fire Breath"Remember," Said Spiros, as I got in my pajamas,"The titans and I already built out the architecture of the Kirin type in 'the lobby.' You have three essential elements. Fire manipulation, cloud manipulation, and good fortune.

This is the triumvirate of my power. This was built through defeating monsters in the last place. I wanted to watch my favorite anime on my phone but he couldn't see it so I rested it against the desk while I watched from my bed. My phone was small though so we both couldn't see it.

"Every level gets an ability point. Every ten levels you can choose an ability mod. Every fifty levels increases your capacity for a follower. We can go into creating your follower system later. An ability point can be placed into one of the five stats: Strength, Mana, Perception, Dexterity, and Constitution. The reason you inherited a lot of my strength and constitution is because your body already had an exceptional amount for your limitations."

"I was buff as hell. Go on."

"But… What didn't you have?"

"Friends. Money. Uhh… health insurance?"

"Mana. As you weren't a champion, you never got to grow your mana. Before I continue, do you have any fresh strawberries?" I chose Fire Breath and a little ticker on the top right of my vision showed 100% Mana overlaid on a healthy, fully blue, bar. What's this doofus talking about? Says I have 100 Mana right there! Heat formed in the depths of my belly. It geysered up through my chest, into my throat and a single burst expelled from my mouth before I reached my hand to cover it.

My hand lit orange as it did its best to cover the fire. I opened my mouth again but the stream was too powerful. The heat shot from my face and streamed into the air of the cave like a flame thrower. Cancel fire, cancel fire! I thought to myself. The fire quelled in my belly.

"Drake!" I heard from up top. It was Kayla, calling down from the mouth.

"What was that!? Are you okay? We saw fire!" She cracked open her flare and dropped it into the cave. She counted the seconds before it landed. Around three. I dove behind a rock as the flare lit the cold cave.

"30 feet down. God, Drake, are you hurt? Make some noise!" I didn't. I needed to move fast to get to the core and save Lee. I still needed to hide my identity, especially while I figured out how to use my powers. What if I had activated my firebreath in front of Kayla or the other champs? I would have burned them to a crisp. No, I would go at it alone. Kayla called out to me again. I used the light from the flare and saw that there were three tunnels I could go down.

But it was the one closest to me where I saw a faint glow around the other end. It looked small but the core looked to be a kind of pinkish red tentacle. As Kayla dropped and landed on the floor, I snuck myself into the cave. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. I walked into the cave. I had to crouch as to not hit my head. I tried to ignore my senses because when I didn't, I could hear the scuttering. I could hear hissing.

I would occasionally step on something and feel a squish. I did not know what was in the darkness with me and i was too scared to use my fire breath to find out. My eyes caught my mana progress bar: 70%. That little fire breath was 30% of my mana? Spiros and I never finished our conversation. I found him the next morning sleeping in the strawberry container. He'd locked himself in and fell asleep. Ate all my strawberries and I went out of my way to buy the organic ones. Even crouched, my head bumped into the wall.

I crouched lower. I found myself bumping into the walls more and more to the point where after another twenty minutes, it became easier to crawl. But that only bought me so much comfort. Eventually the walls closed on me too. I could feel the boundaries bump at my back and my side. I reduced myself to a prone position and continued the crawl. Everytime I wondered if this was worth it, I'd see some wisp of a glow around the corner.

My understanding of caving was that sometimes these tiny tendrils would eventually open up to a bigger space, but the alternative was that it would get so small I wouldn't have the space to turn around or crawl backward. That option probably would have scared me into not doing it, if I had paid it any mind. But catching up to the glow in the cave was the only thing I cared about.

The space was vastly smaller now, I kept grabbing at the rocks in front of me and pulling myself forward, not even having the space to shimmy my hips. The glow, while faint, was persistent now. It illuminated a sharp right turn. I worked my body into the sharp turn. When I finally saw it, my face dropped.

"Fuck. Fuck, how could I be so stupid!?" I was staring at a bright wisp of light brushing against the wall of a deadend. It was a tiny organism from the pits, commonly found in the waters of a cave biome. It harmlessly brushed against the cave's end, likely looking for a way to get back to water. I cursed myself again, attempting to pull back. There was no space to move my arms. There was no not enough space to shift my legs. I was surrounded by rock. I rested my face against the rocks, feeling defeated.

It could have been hellbats, the leading killers in cave biomes. Devils that dove with claws on the tips of their wings to slice you open. It could have been the core. At LEAST let me die by the core. There was dignity in that. But no, it was a tiny, misplaced wisp that did me in. The floating light bonked its head against the wall, searching for something so fruitlessly but coming up against a wall.

"Me and you both, buddy," I whispered to it. It was cold there. Very cold. I wondered if the hypothermia could effect a god. I wondered if I would ever die naturally, or just doomed to stay stuck here. I wondered which was a worse fate. I let my hand wander to the only space it could. The wall. It was cold to the touch. Much colder than the air around me. When I felt around more, I felt something more than rock. I felt the slick wetness of moisture on the other side.

"Wait a minute," I said to myself, "Wait, just a minute." My hand continued to explore the wall until my ring finger felt a whole droplet. The vibrations of the rock revealed a secret. There was rushing water on the other side of this wall. I contracted my hand and punched the wall. A crack formed. I leaned it back and punched it again. Then again. A depression formed next, as well as more cracks. On the third punch, the cracks started to weep.

I punched and punched until the water broke from the wall and began to envelope me. I let out a happy laugh as I took a deep inhale. The wisp was taken by the stream and then as the pressure mounted, so was I. I was pushed backward by the rushing water, into the cavern. Soon the cave vine I found myself turned into a whole river. I was being washed down the path I had just climbed, and although I could not see anything, I laughed that I had been saved by the wisp.

The torrent continued, I had no clue where I was but I saw the exit below me because of the flare the team had left behind, casting light on the cave hole. I reached out to grab it but missed it, and continued down the tunnel.

"Fuck." I attempted to swim, but the river was so tumultuous it did not allow me to right myself. I tried to grab a hold, but the stone was too wet. I worried that the endless dark would send me into another dead end. I reached up and felt nothing. At least I probably have enough space to stand. I opened my screen and looked through abilities. I saw a subdocument that read 'Type Abilities' Gentle Hooves A Kirin may stand on water as if it is ground That special attribute made me realize something.

I didn't ask Spiros enough questions. My bad. I placed the soles of my feet at the top of the water and I imagined it as ground. I suddenly felt the stop of something solid under my feet. I then pulled my torso up using the forward motion of the water. I slowly stood up, unable to see anything. There was enough height for me to stand. I was still unable to see anything. I took a trepidatious step.

It was weird, I could feel the water moving under my feet but somehow, defying all logic, I was standing on a moving river. I took another step forward. The current still made my balance uneasy, but I kept myself upright at least. I did not know where solid ground was. I had no clue how how big the cavern was. Not even a little knowledge of what direction to go in. What's worse is I could hear squeaking above me. And to top it off, something dropped on my shoulder.

Out of instinct I reached out and brushed it off, thinking it might be some insect. It was slimy. Whatever it was stuck to my hand. That was it, I needed more info to what was going on. Even if it cost me a heavy amount of mana, I decided to use my fire breath to provide a quick light so I could see what was happening in this very room. I chose my fire breath and once again the feeling of warmth swell from my belly to my mouth. I opened my mouth and immediately closed it with my hand.

That little burst of light provided me with an abundance of information. The thing that fell on my shoulder was guano. More commonly known as bat dung. And when my fire lit up the cave, I learned where the squeaking was coming from. Unfortunately for me, on every square inch of the ceiling hellbats hung from their legs. And my firebreath had just woken all of them.