Chương 10: Knowledge and More Knowledge!

I had put one hundred and four into Intelligence in total after the allocation. I had never pushed it that high before. In previous runs it had sat in the twenties and thirties, high enough to benefit precision-based builds without becoming a defining characteristic. At one hundred and four it was doing something to the way I processed written information that I did not yet have a complete model for, and I found I did not entirely dislike it.

I glanced to my left and spotted a vase of wate, caked with dust, naturally, yet I took a moment to splash my face clean after such a grueling journey. The coolness was a welcome reprieve, but I dared not squander a single drop. I needed it for something else: the alchemy class. A class advancement was available right now. I set the history down and moved to a section I had located three runs ago and mentally bookmarked: a cluster of shelves near the back-left corner where the spellwork volumes were grouped.

Not organised by any logic I had ever been able to fully decode, but clustered enough that once you found the region you could move through it efficiently. There was an entire cluster of magic books I have entirely skimmed over during my previous runs... I pulled a grimoire, checked the spine annotation, confirmed it was practical rather than theoretical, and opened it. [New Skill Available: Wormhole (Passive Storage, Mana-Linked)] [Mana drain scales with volume and mass of stored objects. Drain is continuous while objects are held.] I read the full entry twice. A spatial storage skill, mana-dependent, with a cost that compounded with use. In my current state, with Mana sitting at two hundred and forty and no regeneration gear, storing large objects for extended periods would chip into my operational reserve at a rate I could not sustain through a fight. But the utility was obvious. I would no longer need to carry anything physically.

Everything I found could go into the wormhole and come out when I needed it, and the drain on a small set of light objects would be manageable. I stored the grimoire itself first, as a test. I felt the mana drop, small and steady, like a slow leak rather than a burst. I thought about what I had actually picked up across floors one and two and began sorting by weight and immediate usefulness. Then I moved to the next section. The alchemy shelf was less clearly marked but I found it by process of elimination.

I had never studied alchemy in any previous run. It had always sat adjacent to the mage and arcanist branches without quite touching either of them, and I had written it off as a support-role investment. Standing in front of its shelf now, with Intelligence at one hundred and four and a skill that let me store everything I found without carrying it, I updated that assessment. The screen appeared before me as the shelve grew much more... brighter.

[Class Advancement Option Available: Alchemist (Branch: Mage / Arcanist)] [Cross-class skill retention active for current run. Skills transfer on class return.] I read the option three times. The system was telling me I could take the Alchemist branch, carry the skills it offered, and return to Mage without losing what I had gained. I was not certain I trusted that framing completely. The system had surprised me before in ways that were not pleasant.

But the offer was there and the floor had a dedicated alchemy section, which meant the resources to use the branch were available right now. I selected it. [Class Updated: Alchemist (Mage Branch)] [New Skills: Concoction (Active), Material Sense (Passive), Mana Infusion (Active)] My mind did not expand but it sharpened.

Material Sense activated immediately and I became aware of the composition of things around me in a way I had not been before: the stone of the shelves, the ink in the books, and two shelves down, a cluster of ingredients that registered as alchemically viable. I checked the labels against what the Alchemist's Codex was telling me I could produce and found I had exactly enough for two mana potions. I tried to make a health potion first. [Proceed?] [[Ingredients: Alchemical Base: 1/1] [Healing Herb: 0/1] [Water: 1/2]] [Need: Witherbloom. Success Rate: Low.] [Cost: 15 Stamina, 20 Mana] I attempted the synthesis. The base liquid in the vial turned brown and then black, from my understanding alchemical base was the thing that drew from your mana pool but it also lowers you concoction success rate, so in a way like experience. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Suddenly, light appeared as a ring in front of it, etched into the ground where I was making it. It was inscribed with intricate runes as well as complex signs that I could not decipher. Then they burned with a bright flash, I smelled something that was scorched in that instant. [Synthesis Failed] [Ingredients Lost: Alchemical Base, Water] [Stamina: 91 / 100] [Mana: 48 / 240] I tired another time.

[Synthesis Failed] [Ingredients Lost: Alchemical Base, Water] [Stamina: 71 / 100] [Mana: 38 / 240] It took slightly fewer resources this time, yet I still felt drained.

"Shit!" I cursed under my breath. If I can't brew any health potions before floor five, then it's all over... I shake my head, forcing myself not to dwell on it. The health potion failed twice at the same point in the preparation, where a plant extract I needed was simply not present in the shelf stock.

'I need Whitherbloom,' I thought, reading the screen flashing Infront of me.

'It grows near the spectral clusters but we are in floor three.' I stored both mana potions that I had found earlier in the wormhole. I moved to the far end of the archives where I had spotted, during my approach, a shelf that sat apart from the others and held a single volume, it was colored black. I had never seen it before, across fifty-two thousand runs that covered this floor multiple times, I had never once stood in front of this shelf.

'That should not be possible,' I thought, and reached for it. I did not open it. Something in the weight of it against my hand suggested I should not open it. I stored it in the wormhole and noted the mana drain increase to a level that was going to matter. The system announced that I had reached the floor exit. I saw a massive gate like always. I did not stop to spend the points, floor four was waiting. [Floor Four. The White Void.] I stood in the chamber and the smell of scorched chitin reached me, sharp and chemical, close to burning hair but denser, with a metallic note underneath it that I associated with the arachnid type specifically. [RESOURCES] [Health: 71 / 100] [Mana: 70 / 240] [Stamina: 65 / 100] I moved through the chamber and into the next corridor.

Floor four had three chamber junctions before the exit, and the first was always the worst because the pairing was designed to force you into a decision about positioning before you had enough information about what was coming. I had made it through the first junction without using the mana vial or the wormhole. That was better than I had expected. The second junction was longer and had more ceiling height, which changed the encounter calculus.

I moved through it steadily, using targeted discharges at joint points rather than full channel investment, and the Mana Pathfinding overlay made each shot more reliable than anything I had managed on previous floors with builds that were theoretically better suited to precision. The third junction was empty. That had happened before and it always made me move slower, not faster, because an empty chamber on floor four meant something had already cleared it, and whatever had done that was somewhere ahead of me.

I found it at the floor exit, and it was not an arachnid, this one was level fourteen, which put it four levels above me, and it was occupying the exit threshold in a way that made it clear the exit was not accessible without going through it. The entity moved first, which told me it had some form of threat assessment and had concluded I was a priority target.

It covered the distance between the exit and my position in less time than I had allocated for it, and the first impact caught me across the left side and put me into the wall. I felt the health drop before the system confirmed it. [Health: 38 / 100] Thirty-three points in one hit. At the vitality I was running, I had a ceiling that was becoming very relevant very quickly.

'Do not go down,' I thought. I pushed off the wall and fed mana into my fists. I held it for two seconds instead of three to reduce the drain, and released it at close range while punching it. It was direct, and the entity registered it differently than the arachnids had, folding backward and inwards on itself. I looked around... and I breathed in. Eleven more times... I saw literal spider legs crawling across the floor at uneven intervals. I settled into a stance. I gained some experience but it was not a lot.

I stood at the exit threshold and waited for the system to process the outcome. My mana was at sixty-eight. My health had not recovered. My stamina was adequate. [Floor Four Cleared.] [Enemies Defeated: 11] [Level Up: Level [10] [Experience Gained: 18, 400 / 22, 000] [Attribute Points Available: 27] [New Skill Unlocked: Channel Investment (Active) Rank 1 I read the skill unlock twice. The system had formalised something I had derived from a book I had found in an archive that was not supposed to contain anything that advanced. That meant the technique existed within the mage class tree. It had just been locked behind conditions that no one running the mage class had apparently met before reaching floor four. I allocated eight points to Vitality, six to Affinity, and left the rest unspent. The class advancement screen was still waiting. I was still not opening it here. Then I stepped through the exit, and floor five opened ahead of me, and I thought about the wormhole cooldown, which had reset, and the architecture problem I had been thinking about since floor three, and I allowed myself, very briefly, the beginning of something that was not quite confidence but was adjacent to it. [Floor Five: Initialising.] I had a spatial traversal skill, a channel investment technique, a Mana Pathfinding overlay that was getting more accurate with each engagement, and sixty-eight mana points standing between me and the floor that had killed me more than any other below ten.' Let us go,' I thought. I knew all this preparation was not for nothing. Considering how much I had struggled on the first floor, a challenge I would never have faced with any other class, I understood clearly what waiting on floor five meant for a build that had not been ready for it across fifty-two thousand previous attempts. Because there was something waiting there. A Titan.