Chapter 57

The dungeon had mentioned a companion as a reward for clearing the second floor’s quest, long ago. Michael had long thought Drullkrin was going to be it, a loyal followed he had earned through hard work, but it seemed that it was not to be. Drullkrin was dead now.

Instead, the dungeon had transported Michael to what was clearly supposed to be a reward room. Here he had found the legendary skill stone that now rested in his pocket like a lead weight, begging to be used. And here Michael also found a woman trapped in amber. Was she going to be the loyal companion the dungeon talked about?

It was disappointing. He did not know her. He had not earned her trust in any way, nor did she earn his. She was just a fixture, placed there by another power, and in light of the conversation Michael had with Theobond, his own stance on power he did not earn was even stronger than before.

Should she want to follow him, it would be due to the dungeon’s influence and not his hard work. Not to mention her own free will. Was she even a real person, like Theobond had once been, long ago? Or was she a creation of the dungeon itself?

He could not accept it.

This did not mean he would leave her here to suffer, though. He planned to free her from the amber, and then offer her a life of freedom in the world. The how of the matter could be worked out, he was sure. He could ask her to swear an oath, perhaps. He had helpers. He had a budding support network. He had plans for the future and was sure could find an accommodation for her away from society, at least until she learned how to live among people without giving herself away.

Melting the amber was an excruciatingly slow process. Michael could see that the woman was aware and awake, even though her head was trapped in the amber, probably due to some magic he could not detect keeping her in that state. It was a novel form of torture, dangling freedom in front of her face but not giving it to her yet, but it would be even worse to just approach her with blazing hands to melt the amber without a care for her safety. He could heal any wounds his heat would cause, but he did not want to torture the poor soul. She had already suffered enough.

Thus, extremely slow progress. First he had to test how much the heat would spread through the amber, and how quickly he could melt it. He did these experiments as far from the woman’s body as he could: the block of amber was an irregularly cut box block, and one of its edges was far enough away that he deemed it safe to test.

Sorry if I’m taking so long. You must hold on.

Michael could only imagine what the woman was feeling. She had been trapped in here for who knows how long, and now that he was here… he was wasting time. She must be impatient to be saved. But he wanted to do things right, and only began making way into the amber towards her heads once he knew he had a handle on his ability.

This desire to not hurt her also made him reflect on his [Candle Light] skill. Of all his skills, it was the odd one out, starting out as a simple flame and evolving into raging hands of fire. It was uncommon-rarity despite its straightforward uses, and its flavour text hinted at something more profound.

He pulled up its description as he worked.

He was clearly not using the skill to its full potential. This was not something called fire hands, or flickering flame, or anything of the sorts. It was called candle light for a reason, he thought, and what he needed to do was figure out what the reason was. What the system was hinting at. And indeed, he felt as if the fractal that made up the skill in his Sanctum somehow resonated more with his careful use of the skill to free the imprisoned woman than it had ever resonated with his use of the skill to kill monsters.

Sure, the skill could be used that way. It did not hinder him as he did so. He wasn’t even sure whether a skill could do that. The only other person he knew who had access to magic was Travis, and his magic system was based around cards and not skills like Michael’s own. For all he knew, every magic system the dungeon granted to people could be unique to the individual. Maybe it wasn’t even created by the dungeon, but simply activated by it. He did not know.

But in light of his conversation with Theobond, and his desire not to harm the woman who had already suffered in her prison of amber, Michael sought to understand his own skill better.

What really was [Candle Light]? His current understanding of the skill was clearly not the whole picture. It felt like a shallow pool compared to the ocean. Truth be told, all of his skills felt like this. Like they were pale shadows on the wall, thin and simple representations of something more profound. The system had hinted as such when Michael had gained [Okinawan Mastery]. But never had he felt the calling of something deeper more strongly than now.

He did not want his hands to just burn. He wanted them to burn away the amber, leaving the woman underneath unharmed. In fact, he wanted the flames to be fires that soothed and healed rather than fires that just burned. Much like a campfire turned wood to ash, destruction, while providing warmth and comfort, creation.

He delved deeper, vaguely aware that his body was still freeing the woman as if on autopilot. Flames that could heal. He knew how to heal: he had a skill for it. He knew that he had to weave Qi into his magic if he wanted to heal people. His [Healing Aura] did it automatically for him, but he had been consciously controlling the process more and more as he learned about magic, making the skill better and more efficient.

Yet, these flames generated by the uncommon skill lacked such Qi. Was he missing something?

Gingerly, he reached out towards his dantian and let a thin trickle of Qi through. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but [Mana Manipulation] was at level 5 and allowed him to control Qi rather well at its level. Plus, lately he had felt that his dantian was growing alongside his mana pool, and he had more Qi available to use. Maybe one day he should try to meditate, to see if cultivation was a thing.

His first attempts at weaving Qi into [Candle Light] resulted in nothing at all. But he kept going, following the hunch. He could not be expected to touch upon a greater truth of a skill after barely a few minutes of reflection and tries, could he? Even though he was heading into esoteric territory, his core tenet held true: hard work of the smart sort was always rewarded.

He knew that he was making headway when the skill began to flicker. He felt his awareness spread out from the flames themselves, reaching deeper. He felt them touch the woman trapped below. He felt her heartbeat, fast and uneven. He felt her rising panic, her fear. She was in a situation she could not control. She did not know who he was. Was he rescuing her, or was she about to exchange a prison for another prison?

Michael took it all in. Some of her pain, he knew very well. The feeling of being trapped, unable to escape. It had been him before the dungeon, a metaphorical prison of amber that was his old life. Some of her fears were alien to him. But he sought to understand them.

And soothe them.

His Skill Sanctum quaked. The mists surrounding his skills swirled and churned, fuelling the transformation. For once, the level-up message was succinct.

He pulled up the new skill description, and was almost shocked to see just how much it had changed.

Destroying the rest of the amber took mere minutes with his new upgraded skill. The fire destroyed the amber utterly, no longer just melting it into a growing puddle on the floor, but at the same time it did not harm the woman at all. She simply stared in silence as the process unfolded, and Michael could feel that the flames were doing more than just freeing her from the amber. They were soothing her mind, healing the trauma of being trapped here alone for who knows how long.

They spoke to her about the nature of the man who was her saviour.

Even with the soothing fire, however, it was clear that she was shaken. She took a while to utter even a word, and when she did she looked like remembered something very important, and very frightening. Eyes going wide, her gaze swept the room, looking at the ceiling in fear for a long moment before she took a deep breath and dropped to her knees, her head on the floor.

“You… you saved me. Thank you, my Lord. I shall repay this debt, for you saved my life from eternal torment,” she spoke, and it felt like a rehearsed speech, barely remembered after so long. “I shall be your servant, until such debt is paid. Eons I spent in this cage, and so eons I will serve you, to consider the debt repaid.”

Michael immediately tried to get her up from the floor.

“Please,” she begged, cried, scared like a wild animal in a corner. “I will do anything. Do not dismiss me, I beg you. I wish you would rather kill me than for me to return to that prison. Anything, even serve you with my body…”

Seeing his face as he could not hide his reaction to her words, she grimaced.

“N-no,” she pleaded, “I now see the folly of my way of thinking. Please, forgive me. I can see you are not a man given to lust. You have to understand, I was desperate… no, you are a man who seeks power. I can help you. Teach you of the true way to use magic.”

“There’s no need for that,” he finally said through her barrage of desperate words. “I did not save you so that you could serve me, I am not that kind of man. You are free to do as you—”

Her eyes were wide, and a trace of anger made its way into her face. “Free? What is free in this world? If you truly respect freedom, allow me to serve you.”

There was fire in her words. But beneath it, he could see her fear. She was hanging on this fire because, he knew, without it she would fall into a hole she would never crawl out of. Just what had the dungeon done to her?

Could he even refuse her? Of course not.

“You said you know the true way of magic?” he asked her. He had a hunch that he had to make her feel useful immediately, lest she revert to a state of panic where she wasn’t sure whether he would keep her or not.

Remember one of Old Dave’s teachings, he twisted it a little bit: he made sure she would feel like she had something to offer that he wanted. It was made easier by the fact that he really was interested in hearing about magic.

“Yes! I do know that I am weak, after spending an eternity in that gilded cage. But even though I didn’t touch them myself, my eyes have glimpsed upon the heights of magic. I can teach you what I know, share what I learned, and together we shall discover more of the hidden world, until all that rests beneath the sun is ours to know.”