Chapter 28
Riven woke up on the floor of the room, next to the hole he’d fallen through, to see the large pool of blood beneath him was almost entirely drained. It left a long drop down, hundreds of feet, into a chasm where the body of the creature that’d attacked him was half submerged in what little of the blood remained. Where that blood had gone, Riven had no clue, but it’d simply vanished to reveal nothing but a holding pit for the monster without any real areas of interest otherwise. Perhaps he’d drained it in his sleep?
That in itself brought a lot of questions. He’d grown fangs, regenerated over and over again at extreme rates—albeit using the blood pool to do so—and had lost his mind numerous times. He’d been told he was “underfed” and required the blood of mortals, yet this blood pool had seemed to satiate that hunger and calm his mind. The implications of all this were less than good.
He groaned, being utterly exhausted, and pushed himself up while blinking rapidly to clear his head. Curiously enough, his clothes and belongings were all right beside him…undamaged. His wounds were all long gone, having mysteriously healed without any flaw or imperfection. He lifted the hand that’d been stripped of flesh and flexed it, feeling it out to make sure there wasn’t any lingering damage. He felt his knee where his lower leg had been severed cleanly and felt around his abdomen, where his guts had been ripped out. He was satisfied with the results.
He felt slightly different, but not by much. More than anything, he could feel that his soul structure had changed. It was similar to the way his pillars had attached themselves to the soul core, but now as he looked inward, he was able to tell his soul had a dual core on top of the original. The one he was familiar with, that ball of brilliant white light with his Unholy Foundational Pillar and Blood subpillar attached to it. Then there was…another, partial orb. This one was pitch-black instead of white, was slightly smaller, and orbited Riven’s original core at a slow, monotonous pace. It wasn’t entirely solid, though, and pulsed in between a ghostly ethereal black to a more solid void black—no doubt because it was still under construction. He could feel a gnawing sensation of hunger from the core. The same one that’d supercharged his body when he’d seen the visage of a maw.
Thinking about it, Riven curiously extended a tendril of mana toward the unfinished core of original sin. It immediately and thoroughly rebuked his attempt, letting him know that he wouldn’t be able to utilize this newfound power until whatever it was doing was completed.
Hopefully that’d be sooner rather than later, judging by the monstrosity this untapped power had utterly demolished.
Riven shakily started putting his clothes back on. He packed up his things—well, what was left that hadn’t been tossed away in the battle—and was thankful that the majority was still present. Glancing up toward the hole in the ceiling, he scratched his head and frowned.
Allowing himself some time to breathe, he continued to let the light of the fiery sky eyeball warm him from beyond the large clear glass window making up most of one wall. Then, reorienting himself to his surroundings again, he picked out the details of the room he’d so briefly encountered before.
The comfortable-looking bed with moth-eaten pillows and velvet covers looked quite nice given his current state. An oddly shaped bell-curve lantern sat on a short nightstand nearby, alongside two thick books, and a rectangular wooden chest was at the foot of the bed. Huffing and getting up off the ground, he started back at square one.
He walked over to the chest and flipped the clasp, then began to pry it open. It held fast at first, but he managed to grunt and heave enough that it gave way…when there was an audible click from inside.
He immediately dodged left and dropped the lid as a bolt shot past his ear—missing him by half an inch and landing to embed itself in the wall behind him.
His eyes went wide, though he wasn’t necessarily surprised. Riven cleared his throat and adjusted his robe before turning back to the box. He’d been half expecting it to have mechanisms like this after what’d already happened to him. Still, it had been a close call. This time, a little more carefully, he lifted the lid again and revealed the contents inside.
A spring-loaded redwood crossbow had been rigged to fire and was set on a stand in the middle of the large box. Now that it’d been released, it lay dormant and unthreatening—but it looked to be in good condition. On the right-hand side was a belt attached to a quiver with over twenty steel bolts, and a sheath on the opposite side of the belt held a knife. On the left-hand side was an empty backpack, a leather vest, and three thick scrolls, each about the size of his hand and made from aging yellowed paper…but they each let off a very low glow of various colors.
He scratched his head, confused. “That’s definitely strange…”
He hesitantly picked the scrolls up, becoming more confident as they didn’t burn or shock him like the wooden ring from the embalmer’s room had done, and set each of them on the bed. However, he did note how warm they were to the touch…and the way that warmth spread up his hand and forearm while holding them.
He unfurled each of these scrolls, smiling when numerous runic symbols lit up along the paper. They failed to furl back up and each stayed as straight as a board. One scroll was written in red lettering, a projectile of some kind depicted on the front that read “Blood Lance” in bold letters at the top. Another was written in dark gray and had a foot with wings on it and was called “Quickstep,” and the last one was written in a light gray with an arrow on the front that read “Calculated Shot.”
[Spell Scroll: Blood Lance (Blood) (Tier 2)—Channel power into your arm and unleash it at your enemies with a chance to pierce through. Very long range, medium casting time, medium cooldown.]
[Martial Art Scroll: Quickstep (Chi)—Envision the path you want to take in a straight line from where you stand, and blur ahead at great speed. May be used in any direction. Instant cast, high cooldown.]
[Martial Art Scroll: Calculated Shot (Chi)—Highlight vulnerable areas on your selected target, speed your reflexes, and slow time to perfect your aim as you fire. Must have a bow or gun in hand to use. Instant cast, medium cooldown.]
His eyebrows raised. Really, now? A Tier 2 spell? And they were scrolls as well, being far more valuable than tomes in the aspect that you could immediately learn the spell, but less valuable in the aspect that you couldn’t repeatedly learn from it, and it would disappear after use.
According to Athela, anyways.
From what he’d read, Tier 2 spells required hand gestures alongside the image, intent, and all that other jazz he’d need for basic Tier 1 spells. Huh. And he’d been here less than a day before he’d found some ability scrolls already. Lucky him? Maybe, but it was yet to be seen whether or not he’d even survive this area. After all this was a higher-stakes, higher-rewards tutorial dungeon…and it was yet to be seen whether or not it’d pay off or get him killed.
Or get Athela killed.
He shook his head to clear his head of that last thought. He was lucky to stumble across something like this. The idea of having found additional magic so soon, and knowing these things were likely very valuable to sell even if he couldn’t use them… It was a huge boon.
The key factor here was that these were actually ability scrolls—what Athela had said were incredibly expensive and very hard to make. They could imbue him with knowledge far faster than needing to learn out of a tome himself, but they were almost impossible to come by for those who didn’t pay a hefty price, from what the spider had told him. Not only that, but he’d gotten incredibly lucky that one of them was usable with a subpillar he already had—Blood. He couldn’t use the two Chi-type abilities, but he could definitely save them for later and give them to someone else if he ever got out of here, and if he didn’t end up selling them.
He set the other two scrolls down to pick up the one that applied to his class. The scroll sparkled in his grip, and the warming sensation he got while holding the other two magnified with the touch of the scroll for Blood Lance.
He could safely say he just hit the jackpot.
Shutting the door and peering out into the ballroom through where the doorknob had been one more time, he didn’t even bother inspecting the other stuff yet and got to work mentally willing the first of the scrolls he’d picked up to activate.
[You have the proper pillar orientation to utilize this scroll. This is a one-time-use item and will be destroyed upon use. Do you wish to use the spell scroll: Blood Lance? Yes? No?]
He nodded. “Yes.”
[Are you sure? Yes? No?]
Again, he selected Yes.
[You have learned the Tier 2 spell Blood Lance.]
Not a second later, the spell scroll in his hand began to shimmer along the red lettering—and his mind immediately went haywire. Knowledge began to burn its way into his brain as his eyes lit up white—and he began to scream.
It was not nearly as pleasant as the first time acquiring abilities, when he’d learned them the hard way, that was a certain fact.