Chapter 15 - Deeper Into The Darkness

  First I set my backpack down on the tracks in front of me. I sipped some more water, draining the rest of my first bottle, and put it away. Then I fished in all my pockets, emptying them of every crystal I’d gathered up.

  Even before that last wave, I knew I’d gathered up a ton of stones. There’d been seven grey ones and ten clear crystals. But that final fight added so many more! I stared down at the mound on my backpack, trying to count them all up under the chem light. It wasn’t easy—even telling the grey ones apart from the clear ones wasn’t simple without a better light. I made do, getting the job done as best I could.

  I’d picked up another forty-nine crystals in the final battle, bringing my tally to sixty-six of the things!

  “Holy crap, that’s a lot.” These were all tier one stones, each the size of a pinky nail or so, but all together they made a big pile.

  I ‘knew’ from the memories the stones gave me that there was something special about getting something to tier five. There weren’t a lot of details, but I knew I wanted whatever that special bonus was, and I only needed eight stones to rank Natural Armor to tier five. I’d already had seven grey stones. If they were all Natural Armor, then I only needed one more, so I quickly piled all the grey stones together.

  There were eighteen of the things. I didn’t know which were Natural Armor and which were something else, so I just scooped them all up into a palm. It was tough holding them all, there were so many, but they didn’t sit still long. Instantly, the stones flowed into one another, merging and connecting, and then sank into my hand.

  Eight of them vanished over the course of just a few seconds, and then the surge of power hit me.

  It was like an electric shock racing over my skin, while a deep, powerful ache attacked my bones. I knew this was the result of the magic modifying my body to make it more impervious to harm, but it wasn’t a comfortable process! I ground my teeth together. It wasn’t high-level pain, but it was more than a little uncomfortable.

  My mind opened up with a rush of new information.

  I’d not only raised Natural Armor to tier five, but when I’d done so, instantly, the fifth Point opened up, unlocking another slot for a stone. But even more interesting, a second ring of Points appeared in my mind’s eye, surrounding the inner ring. Only one Point was unlocked, the one just outside the tier five Natural Armor. I’d opened up a new ring of socket Points, each one connected with one of the inner Points. A flood of additional memories and knowledge rushed into my mind at the same time.

  With a start, I realized that I now understood how all of this fit together.

  As each inner Point hit tier five, it would unlock a Point on the outer ring. Those, in turn, would open a Point on a third ring once ranked up to tier five, and if I ranked up a third ring Point to tier five, that would open up a fourth ring. I wasn’t sure if there was a limit or not. It was possible I could eventually slot hundreds of crystals, gaining hundreds of powers.

  There were limitations, though. Each outer ring crystal needed to be the same color as the associated inner crystal. Because my tier five stone was grey, the outer ring Point I’d opened up also needed to be filled with a grey crystal. When I opened up a third ring, the ones beyond that would need to be grey as well. I could slot multiples of the same spell, and double up, if I wanted—so adding another Natural Armor would boost my resistance to damage even more. But whichever color crystal was slotted into the inner circle determined which color the outer Points all had to be.

  That wasn’t all the information I was given, though. Reaching tier five opened some other new doors as well.

  When I looked down at the rest of the crystals, they all looked different to me. Where before they’d all appeared identical, now I could easily tell them apart! The remaining grey stones turned out to all be for more Natural Armor. In fact, that was the only grey stone I’d seen, so far. Maybe it was the only sort of grey stone there was? I couldn’t be sure of that, but it would be a pain in the neck, if it was true. Ideally I figured you’d want to stack multiple powers in each of the five channels.

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  For the time being, I decided to slot more Natural Armor stones into the outer Point. Since I didn’t have any other grey stones to use, it made sense not to waste the slot! I merged eight more of the grey crystals and absorbed them into the outer point, giving me a tier four Natural Armor on top of the tier five Natural Armor I already had.

  I could tell all the clear crystals apart now, as well. There were forty-eight clear stones on my bag. Twenty-two were for Strength, nineteen for Stamina, and seven were Agility.

  Being able to tell the stones apart was a massive perk, and I got pretty excited about the possibilities that represented. Now that I could see which stones were which, it would be that much easier to collect the ones I needed most. People could swap them, too, and know what they were getting. It was all-around a good deal.

  And it was time for me to seriously level up.

  I took it one step at a time, not wanting to take another big hit from multiple tier-ups at the same time. Since Agility was pretty easy, I started there. I picked up four Agility crystals and they quickly ranked me up to tier four.

  Then it was time to look at the twenty-two Strength stones. I needed eight of them to rank it up to tier five, which I did right away, scooping eight of the stones into my hand. Now that I could tell them all apart, that was easy enough. I only had fourteen left and needed sixteen to get to tier six, so I set the others aside and turned to my Stamina stones.

  There were nineteen of those, so again I used eight to boost the stone I had slotted up to tier five. That left eleven more, again not quite the sixteen I’d need to rank it further.

  I realized that I could move around the slotted stones, though. Now that I had Stamina and Strength to tier five, I could shift their position. I did so, moving the Stamina stone from where it had rested into the outer ring Point One. That opened my second Point up, and a third ring on the first Point as well.

  After that I just kept tossing crystals into slots until I couldn’t load any more of them in. I’d figure out a better, more carefully planned out setup later, when I had time to rest and think. For the moment, more power was better, so I filled every slot I could.

  By the time I was done, I could barely believe the changes that pile of stones had wrought in me.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Strength

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Stamina

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Strength

  +

  Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Stamina

  +

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 5) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Outer Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 4) - Natural Armor

  +

  Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Agility

  +

  Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Strength

  Spare Stones

  Agility x3, Natural Armor x2, Stamina x3, Strength x2

  Thanks to those crystals, I was stronger and had more endurance than any human—at least, any human before all this happened. The Natural Armor wasn’t invulnerability. I knew that from the memories the crystals gave me. Between the tier five and tier four stones, I had a ton of protection now, though. My skin would be tough to pierce and my bones hard to break.

  All that meant I could take serious hits and dish them out just as well.

  There weren’t too many crystals left, just a few of each type that I’d found. I scooped them all up and stuffed them back into a pocket. Each of those was a precious thing, maybe even the most valuable commodity in the world. People would need these things, would fight to get more of them.

  I’d played enough RPG computer games for all of this to feel at least a little familiar, which made me wonder if this weird shit had happened before at some point in history. Maybe humans experienced something like this event in ages past, and we’d kept just enough stories around that bits of the real thing made it into our entertainment? It was an interesting hypothesis.

  There was too much I didn’t know about what was happening out there in the world to make guesses. “Better to stay focused on what I do know,” I muttered to myself.

  I stood, picked up my backpack and settled it on my shoulders, then grabbed my crude spear. I glanced back at the tarp. It was still there, undisturbed, lying next to the tracks. I’d done what I could to wrap the bodies up well. With luck, any pill bugs left in their lair ought to be too scared to come out for a while. I had a little time to delve deeper into this place and recover Amanda. It was time to take action.

  “Let’s do this,” I said. I tied the second chem light I’d cracked while fighting the bugs to the other end of my spear, so now I had lights on both tips. Then I started down the tunnel, proceeding deeper into the darkness.