The Fool's Freedom

The tunnels stretched further than Alan had thought. He returned to the valley after witnessing the jadari settlement in all its glory and tried to follow the path back to the spider’s cave. The damage from [Hateful Mist Cut] would have made returning through the original path difficult, but Alan was sure he could eventually figure it out.

He was done with this. Rushing off so soon after returning to the Sanctuary now felt like a hollow escape from facing humanity and its true nature. And himself. He didn’t care to return to society as it once had been, but seeing Jay and his companions, and witnessing the jadari living in the dungeon, he felt conflicted.

Perhaps helping his Sanctuary a bit more, giving them an edge in the apocalypse, and repaying kindness, would do good for him.

The other option was retreating into the spirit domain he had created and spending some time working on his skills outside of combat.

No. That was another escape. He needed Ashlyn. He needed to spend some more time with Emerson and make sure his friend was fine. Maybe help Rosalyn out, and check the surroundings of the Sanctuary some more to make sure all was well. He could power-level some people? It was still a selfish motivation driving him, but at least it would benefit others. He needed those things for himself.

Alan didn’t feel inhuman at all, despite what his status said. In those moments, during his wandering through the caves and trying to figure out his path back, he felt more like his old self than ever. Not the arrogant cynic always fighting the impulses to tell the world to go fuck itself. Not the sarcastic man whose only strength was his tongue. He seemed to have lost that recently. Talking was… pointless.

Alan skirted yet another turn and found himself frowning. He had avoided the collapsed tunnels and somehow, his path had strayed. There were no signs of the kobolds mining the place. Nor was there anything remotely familiar around him.

Even the ever-present soft glow of the jaderin ore was gone.

I didn’t notice the darkness… He felt at home in it. The whispers in his mind did too. They seemed divided now, with a previously silent part of them now rising from the depths, coming closer to the forefront. They were like a different shape of incoherent thoughts. What he got from them were hints of emotion, traces of advice that could be anything depending on his mental state. A confusion cacophony that was as unhelpful as it was difficult to comprehend.

Even the voices in my head are divided into camps… Ah, damn it. Talk about mental stability.

There was no hesitation as he charged down yet another dark path. It was leading further down for a while, then rose sharply. The lack of jadarin ore was worrying, but it had calmed him down a bit. He could sense the flow of mana better now. The ore and its smelted variations were like jammers, or perhaps simply too foreign for him to adapt to.

It was something to work on. He could create a small room filled with the ore considering how much he had, and try to work through it all. It would certainly increase his ability to sense mana and possibly manipulate it to a great extent.

That was another thing to consider in the future. I should make a list, he thought. The Dungeon had brought him a lot of inspiration, but it had also made him less sure of himself. Just the same as before, when he had first trodden down the path of the patronless [warlock].

A lost soul.

This time, however, he was supposed to be the leader of… whatever it was that followed him. The Shepherd.

The darkness surrounding him was finally broken by a thin ray of light and Alan stopped. Something about the scenery made him pause and contemplate things. Memories of words he had heard what seemed like an eternity ago, but was barely a few months old passed through his mind. Then it all went away.

The light ahead didn’t come from ore, glowing plants, or anything of the sort. Rather, it was a tiny hole high up on the tunnel ceiling. He walked until he was directly beneath it. His eyes adapted quickly. The hole was a perfectly round thing that seemed to lead straight up and allow whatever Sun existed in this pocket world to reach the depths he was exploring.

At least that was a good sign, right?

He kept going after a moment, trying to sense everything that was around him. Slowing down allowed him to empty his mind of worthless thoughts and constant worries, and even mute the voices that whispered a litany of nonsense.

Slowly, his mind reached for a place of peace. A place of nothingness that didn’t exclude the world or his actions, but seemed to exist parallel to them. His eyes slackened. His lips curled into a soft smile.

Emptiness was different from the void.

The void was a tool. A weapon. A specific type of mana which existed in places inhabited by things one could easily perceive as evil or foreign.

Emptiness was more of a state of being. Void was a type of destructive emptiness, but emptiness was different than the void present in his skills. It was like comparing a sea to an ocean. Two fundamentally similar things, that differed in scale and being.

And emptiness came to him. Focus that transcended the numerical value of his attributes. It was akin to the first time he had sensed the mana of the forest and the different beings roaming it and the Sanctuary. His sense of the flow of mana spread through the tunnels like an airborne disease, finding crevices, and noting discrepancies and concentrations. Mana was in all things, so it was like seeing the world broken down into minuscule sub-atomic particles. A constant buzz of shifting and dancing energy that was at the core of it all.

Void, shadows, fire, water, death… all came from the original mana. The fundamental building block of it all. And Alan embraced it.

At times it was like he hit a wall, and he had to pull away. Dark patches that were not empty, but he couldn’t see them. He couldn’t comprehend them. It felt like getting close to jaderin ore which was deeply buried in the rock body of the dungeon. It didn’t shatter his attempt, but it impeded it.

Further and further it went until nothing else mattered. Tunnel after tunnel, multiple at times, spreading like tendrils of curiosity. It was difficult to see the shapes of the tunnels or where they led, but if there was life, he would find it.

And finally, as Alan seemed to reach the limits of what his mind could bear, he did. It was a mass of mana – concentrated and quite large. To see its shape was difficult, but it was akin to the monsters on top. The strong ones that he had met during his excursion throughout the forest. Perhaps stronger.

It was at the edge of his new perception.

His initial plan was to fight another boss. He didn’t feel ready, but the levels were nevertheless attractive. If he could reach 125, he would be given yet another skill. Perhaps. He didn’t know how things worked in tier two, but he hoped.

Last time there had been a free advancement at level 20, but that was a pipe dream now. It felt more like a tutorial gift – a boost to help the uninitiated mortals survive a bit longer. Like steroids given to a mouse before letting it fend off wolves.

Alan returned to himself and took a deep breath. The experience of spreading his mind like this was refreshing and helped him center himself. It helped him calm down and focus on his immediate needs and purposes, rather than obsess over all the strange happenings in his mind and body.

He stepped forward confidently. There was no point in wasting time. He would’ve sensed if there were patrols around, but the tunnels were devoid of life other than the creature at the end of his path.

The cavern he reached was not unlike the one where he had fought the spiders. There were marks of long-lost civilization. Carts half buried in the ground and even ancient pickaxes that had lost their wooden handles. Light fell like spears from the holes in the ceiling. Perfectly round and artificial. It did little.

There was no ore. Mana flowed freely, and Alan quickly found the living being holding so much of it. It was yet another spider-like creature, at least in part. It hid in the darkness, away from the stray rays of light. At least they proved the cavern was close to the surface.

It was large and frozen, like a statue. A dark and twisted humanoid torso sat upon a spider’s body. Eight dark legs spread around it wide and unmoving. The face couldn’t be seen. It was covered in a twisted chitinous helm that looked almost natural. Plates of the same chitin covered the arms and the chest, leaving the midsection where the two forms connected bare.

It held a spear. A dark thing that meshed with the darkness. Alan was surprised at the detail his eyes could make out, but it seemed that they had become better yet again.

This enemy looked stronger than the spider and the giant jadari chieftain, but the lack of jaderin ore made Alan hopeful. The spider had been resistant to his skills, and so had the chieftain. It was almost like their environment and consumption of the ore had made them stronger.

Jay had easily crippled the giant, while [Hateful Mist Cut] – a skill that while utilizing mana seemed to take more of its power from hatred and pure skill – had decimated the spider.

Alan cursed at himself. He knew that the decision was made the moment he had seen the creature’s mana signature.

One last fight, then I’m going back and doing my duty for humanity’s sake. We could do a lot now that we know there are other Sanctuaries nearby. I should upgrade my movement skills too… Fuck, I should work on everything.

He stopped the pointless thoughts. All that mattered was the fight. Just for peace of mind he called upon the Tome of Spirit Skills and received no response. For some reason that made him glad.

He had nothing to rely on but himself. No teammates. Not even Xil.

Alan conjured his staff in one hand, and [True Edge] in the other. He still had one curse mark left. No stored vitality remained under his mana pool. The only source was the weak trickle that was Cole’s life force. It was barely enough for a few attacks. It seemed to have grown weaker during the time Alan had not paid attention.

He felt a tinge of guilt but shook it away. Feeling bad for Cole was silly.

Stealing lifeforce to make himself stronger felt odd too. It was his skills, but they were stealing from another to empower him. Maybe fighting like before would be good for him. Let’s see how this goes.

Alan took a deep breath and the [Shepherd’s Shroud] burst around him – a cloak of shadows. Even in the dark abandoned cavern, it could be made out billowing around him. His will churned, creating a presence around him. A sphere of influence stronger than ever. The less he hesitated and worried, the stronger his will seemed.

[Void Pierce] came first and Alan didn’t wait for the creature’s reaction before he swung the staff and sent a charged shadow slash at it too.

It reacted quickly as the first spell hit it. There was no sound as it moved. No groan. No hiss. No yell of pain.

It just started clattering toward Alan with no hesitation, no threatening postures, no warning. [Void Pierce] left a wound on the human stomach, but it was shallow. The dark flesh was tough, then.

The shadow slash was broken by a swing of the spear and Alan now saw another piece of chitin shaped like a weapon. The monster’s legs clattered toward him, the only thing breaking the silence of darkness.

It was fast, but not too fast. Alan fled to the side, then quickly used [Void Step] to dodge the spear that had been thrown at him. It was a sudden attack, but he sensed it quickly due to the circle of will covering him like a bubble. He couldn’t hold that long as it strained his mind, but it was too useful to drop.

The spear hit the rock wall and shattered in pieces, few of which found the shadows covering Alan. The shrapnel was too weak to go through, but it was still a surprising attack.

The human-spider hybrid didn’t pause. It just kept walking toward him. Slowly another spear formed in its hand.

Alan grinned as he copied the creature. His staff was gone in his inventory, but a spear of pure shadows took its place. Let’s see what you can teach me.