[Sera Goldschmidt
Lv 11
Hlth 31/510
Stmn 9/540
Snty 130/180
Mana 29/210
]
Her bleeding was slowly getting problematic, but she needed a rest. A quick look at the remaining statues confirmed that none of them would be coming to life any time soon. Unable to do anything physical for the moment, she decided to again look through the class options. There were a few she was kind of interested in like cook and engraver. The few times she helped Sarah with her work were apparently enough to grant her the latter one. Though she couldn’t see herself using those much or the overlap would be too great even for her.
Scrolling through the rather long list of mostly redundant entries, she soon found a new one.
[Blade Dancer]
[Dancing with death, evading attacks; this is a class for those who wish to stay flexible or strive to master a wide variety of blade weapons, while at the same time forgoing any traditional defenses. Defenses which are useless anyway when one evades dangers. Dexterity focused class, concentrated on evasion and the mastery of a number of weapons with blades. Further attribute gains depend on weapons used.]
Not thinking long about it, she decided to also add that to her already long list of classes. As it seemed more movement focused, it shouldn’t have too much overlap with her other combat classes, not that anyone but her would deem her current class selection acceptable.
[You gained the Blade Dancer class.]
After waiting for a few more minutes to at least get some more stamina back, she set herself up again.
Slowly removing her coat and armor, she stared at the spike in her arm. To proceed further with the first aid, unless she wanted to bandage the arm over her clothing, she would have to extract the projectile, but depending on how bodies were built here that could become an issue. So searching through her spatial bag she fished out a bunch of bandages and a number of flasks she found.
[Health Potion (low grade)
Quality: average
Effects: Increases health recovery drastically and restores 100 health.
Description:
Popular consumable concoction used to treat wounds. Increases in efficiency with a higher health pool due to its reliance on natural recovery.
]
They would be useful later, but as nothing in their descriptions offered help with her shard shaped problem, she put them aside for the moment. The girl then bound two of the shorter bandages tight around her left arm above the shard. Probably not perfect but with only one arm truly functional the best she could do for the moment.
Gripping the rock, she started to pull. Pain rushed through her body and she wanted to scream, yet she held it back. She had come so far, so she wouldn’t surrender to a bit of pain.
Pulling even stronger as the rock didn’t seem to move, blood soon started to flow from her right hand. The sharp edges of the projectile were cutting into her glove, palm and fingers.
Questioning whether the rock had glue on it, as it didn’t seem to budge, she continued with her efforts. Though just before Sera had to search for another method to remove the accursed object, as her blood started to make it quite slippery, it gave in. Not expecting the sudden release, it slipped through her wet fingers and the next thing she heard was the rattling of the shard in the distance.
A quick check on her status showed that her precaution seemed to work, or maybe wasn’t necessary in the first place, as the bleeding hadn’t gotten worse. But before anything could go wrong, the girl quickly downed one of the weird tasting potions and removed the next layer of clothing.
Getting her arm with the wound out of the clothing turned out to be a bit tricky, though she managed it after stopping the blood flow an additional time under her robes.
She was about to start with the bandages, when she noticed that a lot of her shallower wounds were already closing. Not bothering any longer with those, the girl focused instead on the deeper ones on her legs and arms.
Having applied a few layers of bandages over the hole in her arm, she removed the blood flow inhibiting ones, though she was still monitoring her status while putting her clothing and armor back on. Examining those items, she now also noticed that they were in a far better state than initially expected. The blood on them was already dissipating and, looking closer, they seemed to mend themselves. No such effect was recorded in their description, but maybe it was natural here? In her old world one also wouldn’t advertise a pet as living. It was just the natural state.
Happy that she could still use them, the next thing she inspected were her weapons. She hadn’t yet found time or equipment to do maintenance on them, however as it turned out they seemed to have the same self-repair function. Small nicks and dents were already vanishing.
Resting a bit longer and then drinking a second potion, once the last one expired, she got back up and restarted her exploration.
She could have used both potions at the same time, but she had enough near death experiences for the day and didn’t want to risk everything on the misuse of medicine. The fact that she had entered an ominous dark room in a hidden spatial distorted basement with earth magic defenses in a barrier covered mansion without as much as batting an eye or healing herself was ignored.
Searching the room for any loot, the yield was unfortunately meager. The golem was nothing but a pile of rocks and once she tried to grab a piece of the sphere it crumbled to dust. The other statues were just that and even though there were again engravings on the walls, nothing happened even once she got closer to them.
The only thing she found in the end was another door behind the throne, however before she passed through it, she decided to wait for the current potion to finish its work.
With a third potion in her system and her scythe back in its sword form, she carefully opened the door. Not that it had helped her the two times before, but maybe it would save her some day.
The room awaiting her was again lit by the omnipresent light of dungeons. A crystal orb around thirty centimeters in diameter rested on a pedestal, surrounded by multiple smaller ones of various colors stuck in some kind of frame.
Multiple doors lead away from the room, though the girls focus was on the shiny jewelry.
Yet once she tried to prey away one of the smaller crystals it broke and crumbled to dust with a sound similar to breaking glass. Trying to at least figure out what she was currently destroying, she examined them a bit closer.
[Light Mana Crystal (low grade, depleted)
Quality: average
Effects: Allows storage of mana with a certain affinity.
Description:
Crystal found in beings above level 100, which can be used to store mana of the same affinity.
Once depleted they can be recharged by a being with matching affinity.
While normally quite hard, in their depleted state they will crumble easily.
]
The description repeated itself for basically all the smaller ones, the only difference being that about half of them were earth crystals and three were space mana crystals. The latter fortunately didn’t share the depleted state. Though knowing where she was, she decided to grab those before she left. Finally something worth her effort. Yes the exploration had turned out to be quite fun in the end, but she still preferred some reward.
The big one in the center was again different from the smaller crystals.
[Proto-Core
Quality: average
Effects: Automates predefined functions.
Description:
Simple core unit for structures and dungeon like buildings.
Allows automation of predefined functions, as long as mana is provided.
While they are able to learn and adapt to some extent, they are usually just a base, used to create more complex cores.
]
Apparently the reason for her suffering. She would have liked to smash it, but having still rooms to explore, she left it for later.
However what she didn’t leave for later were the remaining crystals. It was time to play with the most expensive and colorful bubblewrap she had seen so far.
The sound of breaking glass soon filled the chamber.
Having finished her very satisfying work and now with the new goal of destroying a high grade mana crystal, she set out to explore the adjacent rooms.
Though, before she could even reach the first one, a message appeared.
[The domain of Hannibal of the First Meadow was revoked.
As no heir used their right to inherit the domain, enter and exit privileges have been reset and the selection of the next owner will commence in 32 hours.
Anyone level 110 and below may now enter and exit the First Meadow.]
With the message Sera was also remembering that she probably should have been at the inn some time ago. Cursing at the security system which had delayed her looting, she quickly got to work.
Unfortunately, or fortunately as she didn’t have much time, the rooms were mostly empty. A few more books here and some tools there, which Sera put into her bag in exchange for a few of her earlier pickups, yet the structure looked mostly abandoned. Whatever had been stored here previously, was most likely gone together with the owner of the mansion.
In the second to last room she at least found three more mana crystals, one of each kind and non depleted.
Getting back to the main room a bit disappointed as she couldn’t manage to find any further loot aside from even more books and papers, she distracted herself by looking into the crystals on the pedestal for a few moments, before remembering that she was still about an hour too late.
Though looking closer at the big orb, she started to question whether she should actually destroy the poor thing? Yes, it has attacked her, but only because someone forced it. She also wouldn’t mind wearing the pelt of a beast which had attacked her. Following that thought, it was only right for the core to belong to her! Disregarding her initial idea of smashing it, she removed it together with the last three space mana crystals from the pedestal. Fortunately this time without anyone of them crumbling.
The crystals stored in her bag, gnashing followed. Vigilant from her earlier encounters the girl nervously looked for any appearing rock shards, yet as nothing happened she quickly walked back to the door she had used to enter the room initially.
It surprisingly didn’t lead back to the boss room but a short distance away from a set of stairs. Stairs which looked very much like those she initially used to enter the cellar.
Not thinking much about it and filing it away as a spatial anomaly through magic, she shrugged and proceeded to exit the pseudo-dungeon and mansion. Another look at her status condition, which was now missing the bleeding and pierced part, furthermore confirmed that everything was back to normal.
Looking back, it was a nice exploration. The loot was unfortunately a bit worse than expected, but with the interesting and unusual fights she wouldn’t mind exploring it again.
