Finding information on the history of the Arena Spiral or even the Spiral incorporation itself was nearly impossible. I went to the sections the librarians sent , but they warned there wouldn’t be much. There were laws that restricted what information about the Arena was allowed in worlds without current representation within it, and the Archives of Gortrin had never bothered with it as a whole. All I really learned was that the Arena was made up of an unspecified number of floors, and active challengers fought through them for any number of reasons, from glory to poverty.
The little I was able to learn about the Arena may as well have been a mountain of information when it was compared to the totality of what I managed to gleam about the history of the Spiral. There was nothing about its creation, how the System tied into it, or anything at all, really. I found so historical breakdown of multiversal federations, and factions, but even that was several hundred years old. How much information had already been lost to people like the Triox?
Now I did find a reasonable history of the Archives of Gortrin themselves. Scholars had found this universe entirely devoid of life and mana two hundred years ago. They decided to build a repository of knowledge free and independent of the many regis out there. It had been a political hot button since the mont the doors opened. Elody, it seed, was not the first master librarian to resign.
After what felt like a giant waste of my first day trying to learn anything, I decided to pay l a visit and pick his brain, assuming he had one. How did his body work? Did his mana channels just fluctuate the sa as his cloud form? It probably wasn’t considered okay to just demand soone explain the inner workings of their body so I decided against that in favor of my original questions once our usual greetings were over with.
“So what brings ya down here today? I thought ya’d spend yer whole ti healing with the books,” l asked.
“I had as well, honestly, but after my search for information about the history of the Arena or the Spiral in general, even just generalized knowledge about the Arena turned up nothing, I figured I’d co poke your brain and see what you had to say on the topic,” I explained. It certainly wasn’t because I missed a friendly face in my daily studies now that Elody was gone.
“Ah, yeah, ya wouldn’t know about that, would ya? So, just ta cut off any questions ya might be thinking before you interrupt , I also can’t tell ya anything about the Arena or Spiral for the most part. I do know plenty; I’ve fought in it and even managed teams, but that was a lifeti ago. No, close yer mouth. I see ya opening it!” l stopped his reminiscence to yell at , and he was right. I had, in fact, been about to ask a question despite his earlier wish. “In order to enter the Arena and beco a combatant, ya have ta declare a soul oath. That seals all the stuff you’ll learn throughout yer ti there. Ya can only talk about it with those who share the oath.”
“What happens if you try, anyway?” I asked. This was the first I had heard about soul oaths. Were they binding in so fashion or just a matter of respecting a tradition?
“Nothing, well, at first at least. The harder ya try, the worse the pain will get. No matter what you do, ya won’t succeed, but you might accidentally kill yerself in the process. It’s happened before, and it’ll probably happen again,” l answered. I felt a bit guilty about having tried to press him on the topic. Was this conversation enough to hurt him?
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it worked like that. Did talking about it like this hurt you?” I said, my voice full of worry.
“No, I know where the line is, and I ain’t gonna cross it. Most learn that pretty quickly.” Relief washed over at l’s answer.
“Well I really don’t think the Arena is in my future, so I guess that’s a topic I’m done with for today. You wouldn’t happen to know how the Dungeon Simulation skill works, would you? I wanted to test it out, but I think I might still be too broken for that,” I said. There hadn’t been any real information on that skill in the archives either.
“Never heard of it. Yer gonna get a lot of weird skills tied to the way ya think, that may be entirely unique to ya or rare enough that they may as well be. Yer a strange guy, Dave, and fer whatever reason, the System seems to be pushing ya sowhere. Ya need to be real careful with that. Just because the System wants ya to do sothing doesn’t an it’ll protect you.” l gave a stern look alongside this warning.
“Yeah, I’ve started to figure that first part out a bit. It seems with the advancents that were made on my world to compensate for our total lack of magic, the way I think about things and processes is a lot different from the way most people here do. But shouldn’t there be others like ? Every ti a new universe is conquered without any native mana, shouldn’t they also enter the Spiral at a similar technological level?” I asked. This part had been confusing since I first considered the idea of why branches of technology had seed to stall here in favor of magic.
“My best guess there is that the vast majority of worlds don’t get the chance to grow like yers did. Ya had a prisoner that made it off limits until soone screwed sothing up, and now yer here, and the System wants ya to upend a lot of things, and I bet that yer core layout is just the start,” l’s said. His explanation made so sense. Since there was no real history of the Spiral here, I had no way of seeing when worlds were generally invaded.
“Well, thanks for everything you could tell ,” I said, intending to head back to my room and try out the Dungeon Simulation skill.
“Hey, ya can’t just tell about so wacky nad skill like that without giving so more details. What’s it do?” l asked.
“Supposedly, it lets recreate any dungeon I’ve been in and tweak the difficulty. No idea if that ans I get experience or anything like that, though,” I answered.
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“Oh, it most likely does. Well, I ain’t ever heard of that exact one. I know of so very powerful skills that let people recreate events and places. It’s a very useful way ta train. Between yer core and that skill, ya may have hit the motherlode, Dave. Let know how it goes. I wanna know how far ya can alter them,” l explained.
“I can do that, l. Thanks again. Now I really want to check this thing out,” I said. l returned my words with one of his standard nods, and I took my leave, back to my room, to the full System interface, ready to give this skill a whirl.
I had a total of two dungeons on the list that I could choose from: Slimy Slithering Depths and Basents of Shadow. Basents of Shadow was still a terrible na for the dungeon at the bottom of the archives. Well, Elody had done most of the clearing, but the brothers and I had been there too.
I selected the first dungeon, and the next screen just said modifiers, with nothing listed other than a next button. I selected that and felt my perception beco, for lack of a better word, fuzzy. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes, unsure how that would help with a System interface, but I tried nonetheless. When I opened them I was no longer in my room, but instead, I was back in that first dungeon, where the core had almost taken my body, only this ti I was entirely alone.
I could easily see the four slugs down the pathway this ti. Had I grown that much since this dungeon already? I took a step and realized my body was whole. The simulation apparently also removed my injuries. That was handy. In theory, that ant any ti I had to spend in recovery. I could instead run through these dungeons for more experience.
As I walked towards the slugs, it occurred to I was still unard, and this ti, there was no hoe to borrow from Cecile. I stopped to lean down and gather enough rocks to fill my pockets, took a few steps closer to where I thought I could aim perfectly, and started whipping the rocks at the slugs as fast as I could. With the changes to my attributes, I was able to take down three of them with no real effort. The last one began firing its electric blasts at just like it had before.
One hit , and it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I had been expecting. While I tossed several more rocks at it, I felt sharp needles on my ankle. I had forgotten about the bitey worm swarm. With nothing else I could think of to do to them, I just started stomping my feet over and over until the biting stopped. I looked back to the last slug just in ti to take another lightning blast, this ti to the face. It hurt marginally more than the last.
I had an idea. I knew where the rock snail boss was hiding, and I waited for the snail to charge another shot. Just as it did, I leaped behind the camouflaged snail and let the energy find a new ho in its body. The snail roared to life, and instead of giving it any ti to attack , I grabbed its neck in both of my hands and ripped as hard as I could, pulling it free from the shell in a sickening, squelching sound.
Throwing the head to the ground, I walked back to where the last slug was and finished it off before it could recharge for another shot. A pop-up similar to the first ti I was here swam into my vision.
Monsters Defeated
Giant Slug x3
5 Experience
Giant Slug, Electric x1
20 Experience
Bitey Worm Swarm x1
10 Experience
Rock Snail x1
30 Experience
Experience Gained
75 Points
Multipliers Applied
No Armor
x1.1
No Weapon
x1.1
No Magic
x1.1
I Stand Alone
x1.5
All At Once
x1.5
Total Experience Gained
225 Points
I was sent back to the Dungeon Simulation starting screen as soon as the box disappeared, and the good news was that the experience was real. I had leveled up to forty-three and had three new skill points. I put them all into my Dungeon Simulator skill to see what had changed. I was going to have a very productive day after all.
Environntal replication skills are so of the most sought-after skills. They can give anyone who can access them an easy leg up, sotis even bridging the gap between soone with access to the greater resources elite factions have to soone born in poverty. Given the right comrce world and suitably trained transmogrifier, enough wealth has been known to change hands to buy an entire faction before…
Rare Skills & Their Value by Kongus Kingly
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