Unbound

Chapter Twenty Three - 023

For a minute, Felix just laid on the ground.

He was so damn tired. And thirsty.

Waaghk. So so thirsty.

Status: Dehydrated (Major)

Yeah, that makes sense.

In the corner of his vision, a tiny exclamation point icon blinked furiously at him.

Acid Resistance is level 15!

...

Acid Resistance is level 20!

Heat Resistance is level 8!

...

Heat Resistance is level 11!

Tides of Vellus is level 19!

...

Tides of Vellus is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Tides of Vellus!

You Gain The Following:

+10 WIL, INT

Rarity of the Skill has upgraded!

Tides of Vellus (Rare) has become Reign of Vellus (Epic)!

Reign of Vellus (Epic), level 25!

As if descended from Vellus itself, you command a greater portion of its true power. Greatly increased power, control, and precision with Skill Level, moderately increased distance with Skill Level.

Skill Level is retained.

Felix's eyes widened, though he still laid uncomfortably against the ground. A crescendo of nearly there music swelled in the distance, like a phantom orchestra a dozen rooms away. A flood of joy rushed through his veins, the mental stats spiking a sense of delight in his brain.

That made him pause.

Are these stats changing my brain? I do--

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You Have Gained A Level!

You Are Now Level 18!

+3 to WIL! +2 to INT! +4 to DEX! +1 to END! +2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to AGL!

You Have 10 Unused Stat Points!

+13 STR

+10 END

+4 VIT

+1 PER

+5 INT

+13 WIL

+6 REI

New Title Gained!

Hero (Epic)!

Face adversity again and again, fighting against impossible odds! Must have Unconquered and Bulwark of the Innocent Titles and have raised all stats at 70 before level 25. +5% All Stats

Felix's body spasmed as he was flooded with power again, the music rising; a stereo blaring in the dark. His limbs felt like vibrating strings and his head like a gong, ringing and clashing and never quite stopping. Thoughts burned through his mind, ideas too fast to recognize or hold onto even as he felt a sudden increasing mastery over them.

"Oh whoa." Felix viewed his new Title with wide eyes. "Hero?" He groaned as he sat up, looking around him again. The remains of the wurms was everywhere. Purple blood and off-white offal covered most of the uneven stone ground, and it sizzled where it had begun to eat into the rock.

"Huh, didn't even notice it burning. Acid Resistance is getting up there."

Purple blood coated his arms, chest, and legs. It had eaten through much of his clothing, leaving him once again nearly naked, but it barely harmed his skin.

Is that because of resistance, or because of my increased stats? His Vitality and Endurance were...wait a sec. He pulled up his stats.

Health:

122/370

Stamina:

102/405

Mana:

318/723

STR:

74.117

PER:

97.647

VIT:

74.117

END:

76.684

INT:

100

WIL:

134.736

AGL:

74.736

DEX:

74.736

Felix blinked.

This...this is incredible. My stats are skyrocketing past my expectations. He regarded his bare fists, which were already healed from his bare knuckle fist fight. It's like I'm not even human anymore.

Felix grimaced. Right. I'm not. I'm...Nym...an. Nymian? Nymean? Whatever. I seem human, and as far as I can tell the Nym weren't too different physically. Human-ish.

Felix stood up carefully, expecting further soreness from his fight. But the sudden stat gain had scoured his body, and he felt remarkably good, if uncomfortably sticky. The purple gore was everywhere, and it was all he could do not to get it in his mouth. When he tried before it burned right through him...but with his higher resistance maybe....No. Even if it worked, the last thing Felix wanted to do was pass out in a monster lair, even if he might gain a cool new Skill.

Felix hesitated again, but shook his head.

Too risky. Don't be dumb.

He stepped carefully over to the row of cages, some still swinging from the aftermath of the battle. Only a half dozen of them were filled, most Rockstrikes within burned to a crisp by an errant fire breath, while the rest rustled weakly. Thankfully, Pit's cage was uncharred, though the little tenku looked awful. His wings were bent at painful angles, and his forelimb was covered in blood. Felix felt a hot wave of rage flow over him, and he heard sudden creaking tear and felt a hot flash of pain in his hands. Alarmed, Felix looked down: his grip had split the skin on his knuckles again. Grimacing at the pain, he looked back at his Companion.

"Pit! You ok, buddy?" The cage was at about eye level so Felix reached his less injured hand through the bars, skritching his friend's neck. Pit cooed in relief, his eyes closing for a moment. "Don't worry, I'll get you out."

Felix cast around for some way to lower the cages, but soon realized that nothing was holding these cages up. The thick black iron chains at their tops were suspended nearly twenty feet up by...nothing. He had thought it a trick of the light, or the heat haze, but this was clearly magic.

Felix looked at his hands, slender but growing tougher with calluses on his palms, still bloody but healing as he watched. He could use a Corrosive Strike on the cage, but while it might break the bars, he had no way to prevent it from hitting Pit. That was a nonstarter.

I could just...try to bend the bars.

Heat Resistance is level 12!

Am I strong enough to bend iron bars? Felix felt his heartbeat speed up, and a giddy sense of anticipation built in his gut. He shook his hands to loosen them up but hesitated before putting his hands on the cage. Felix pulled up his stats and invested his 10 free points. Five into STR, five into VIT.

Feeling sudden strength and vibrant energy rush through him, he gripped the bars of the black iron cage and pulled. His skin, dry and already wounded, split open further and dribbled blood down his arms. But slowly and with a loud screech the bars bent until they broke open in his hands. He kept bending them until he had an opening big enough to let Pit escape.

Releasing the bars, Felix reached carefully through the opening and helped Pit pull his wings out of the too small cage. Pit trilled weakly, his wings twitching and his paw held close to his body as he clung to Felix's shoulder. He could feel the tenku's heart rapidly beating against his arm, and felt a faint trembling in his haunches. Felix clenched his eyes tight and softly stroked Pit's back.

"It's ok, little man. It's ok."

Felix looked around the area, for the first time noticing that there were a number of empty archways lining this level. Then he spotted a single door in the nearest archway and headed toward it. The door was made of the same black iron as the chains and cages, and as he approached Felix noticed that no other archway even had a door. It shook something loose in his brain that had been preoccupied with surviving up until now.

"How'd a bunch of wurms get you into a cage, Pit?" Wurms didn't have hands. Why'd they even have cages?

Pit trilled again, softly but insistently. A damaged wing shuddered and pointed toward the iron door they were approaching, almost as if to say, 'let's find out in there.'

Companion Pact is level 10!

The door had a simple latch, just a single lever that released a bar, but even that much invention made Felix worried. The wurms weren't the original inhabitants of this place, that was certain. No matter how faded, the artistry of the walls and flooring were amazing, nearly equal to the Waterfall Temple. The place was ancient, its creators probably long dead. But the wurms couldn't use floating chains and cages, and with that tunneling Skill the wurms definitely didn't need doors.

The question was: who did?

Felix crouched low as he tested the door. It was metal and this place was crazy hot, but the black iron was cool to the touch. So was the cage, now that he thought about it. What did that mean? He shook off the stray thought and concentrated on easing open the latch as quietly as possible.

The latch groaned slightly, but pivoted on mostly greased pieces. With seemingly infinite slowness, Felix pushed the door inward and peered through the small opening. He could see no movement inside, and his Manasight only noted flows of earth, shadow, and...blood? Felix opened the door the rest of the way.

Exploration is level 13!

The room beyond looked like a small antechamber to somewhere more important, maybe twenty by thirty feet in size, windowless but with two large doors on the right and far walls. Felix stepped through the door, watching his step as he took in the details of the chamber, simultaneously noting that it was considerably cooler in here. The walls were less warped than elsewhere too, and the splendor of the original carvings were better preserved. Geometric lines and blocky design was belied by delicate fluting on faux columns and small figures etched into nearly all surfaces. The floor was a series of five sided tiles, only slightly disrupted and cracked along the edges. It was amazingly designed, and put him in mind of the Nym Temple again. It wasn't exactly the same, but similarities were definitely there.

By contrast, two oversized tables were set up in the center of the room, each made of rough cut wooden boards. They were crude and stuck out against the nicer surroundings, ruined though they were. The tables were tall, nearly five feet high and were covered in misshapen plates of iron while bits of bars and half-assembled iron cages were stacked to one side. Odd, jagged metal tools sat next to them, a set on either table; they looked like blunt scalpels, a cylinder of silver metal with a tapered tip. An equally rough pair of stools were next to the tables, one tipped over onto the ground.

Someone had been here, someone humanoid enough to use a stool, and they had left in a hurry.

Did they hear me fighting? He frowned. Of course they did. That was loud as hell.

"Is this where you were taken, before?" Pit bobbed his head in confirmation.

So someone captured us, put me in a stone hole and Pit in a cage. Why?

Felix scrutinized the tables and floor, noticing heavy scratches all over the soft wood and lightly covering the harder stone tiles. Suddenly, faint glowing boot-prints appeared, one set large the other significantly smaller. The tracks moved all over the room, appearing to pace in some instances, before they both disappeared through the door in the back. Despite the proliferation of the tracks, Felix could tell that only two figures had been in here.

Tracking is level 13!

Pit sniffed delicately at the air before huffing out a sneeze.

"I agree with you there," Felix said, his own nose wrinkling in disgust. "Something smells spoiled in here."

Felix padded over to the table despite the persistent stink, and looked at the scraps of iron. Crude shapes were scratched into the metal, the steel styluses nearby likely used to mark the hard surface. Felix spun a piece around. There was something familiar about the shapes. Then it clicked: these were the same as the script in the Temple. Just...far cruder. He set Pit down on top of the table as he looked closer.

He ran his fingers over a symbol that had been repeated at least a dozen times. It was shaped in arcing loops around a central boxy formation; like a cube on fire. Felix recalled this same symbol along the walls of the Temple, situated fairly evenly. But it wasn't fire. Something about it was off, like the maker didn't know quite how to draw it. Felix picked up a stylus and scratched the design from memory, adding a small swooping slash across the top. It was crude and rough, only barely scratched into the metal plate.

Yes, that's it. He picked up the metallic strip. It wasn't fire.

It was light.

Abruptly he felt a tug on his Mana, as if something was pulling it rapidly out of his core and into the scrap metal. The shape before him began to glow with a golden radiance, like a piece of the summer sun.

Felix jolted in surprise, dropping the metal with a loud clang. The light cut off.

New Skill Learned!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn (Epic), level 1!

You've learned to read the language of the ancients, a sorcerous script made of magic. Proficiency increases with Skill Level.

New Skill Learned!

Invocation (Rare), Level 1!

You can invoke the power of sigils, pulling Mana through them to activate their power. Efficiency and channeling capacity increases with Skill Level.

Pit crooned in interest, dipping his beak toward the inert piece of metal. Felix pushed him gently away.

What in the world? Felix picked up the iron scrap again, half expecting it to light up once more. It didn't, the carving unlit and slightly charred around the edges. What caused this charring? The magic?

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 2!

Felix shook his head, bemused. This felt...terribly familiar, though the only time he'd seen script like this was in the Temple. Moreover, what exactly were these people trying to do? He looked around. What was this place for?

His gaze landed on the two doors. One was made of that same black metal and led off to the right, and the other was made of a pale wood. That was where the footsteps led.

As Felix walked closer to the metal door, he noticed a row of cubbies in the wall. Tall closets without doors were built into the stone walls, five on either side of the room. In the closest one, he saw a pile of black iron pieces, obviously more material for whatever practice was going on here. The next few were the same, but the last one was great news.

"My stuff!" Felix knelt down and snatched up his leather satchel and sword. The leather was scuffed in placed but remarkably fine, and the bronze blade was similarly unscathed. More importantly, Felix flipped open the bag and rooted around until he found an oblong leather waterskin, then proceeded to chug half of it. The other half he gave to Pit, who lapped it up just as quickly. After that, the two of them tore into the remaining fruit he had stashed away, all in all reducing the weight of the satchel by a considerable amount.

As they ate and drank, Felix kept an eye on both doors, watching and listening for the approach of their jailers. He knew they weren't out, not by a long shot, but it was a much needed respite. In fact, Pit seemed to be recovering swiftly. His wounds had healed for the most part and he was able to move around on all his legs. Felix wasn't sure how, but it seemed Pit had benefited from the recent battle as well. He seemed taller, his legs more gangly.

Then, as he was finishing the last bekta berry, he heard the unmistakable sound of voices coming from beyond the metal door.

They both froze, and Pit's head swiveled toward the sounds. The voices grew in volume slowly, as if they were walking steadily toward the door. Felix shoved the waterskin back into his satchel and grabbed his sword. Pit skulked over to the wooden door, Felix right behind him.

The voices rose to a louder pitch, and Felix sensed a strengthened waft of the rotting stink. It was coming from beyond the metal door and moving closer. It smelled like death and blood. It smelled like the Seven Legged Orit.

Heart pounding, Felix opened the wooden door and slipped through just as he heard the metal one unlatch.

Stealth is level 18!

They made it. With a soft breath of relief, Felix turned and saw that he was somehow, inexplicably in a wild garden.

And the rotten blood smell was even stronger here.