Chapter 38: Alone

  Alex woke up dizzy, sore, and without a clue what was going on. It was something that happened enough times that Alex was beginning to worry it was becoming a habit of sorts. He got knocked unconscious as often as he got normal sleep since the day he arrived in this world. He very much did not think the former was an acceptable substitute for the latter.

  "Fucking hell," Alex groaned and rolled onto his back.

  He looked around, finding that he was alone. The stone altar he had been kneeling on during Doudra's little ritual was broken into many pieces on the ground next to him. The surrounding glyphs looked burnt out and destroyed. His eyes searched the cages along the wall, and even in the low light of the torches around the cavern, he could see that they were empty.

  All of them. All of his friends were now gone.

  He looked at where Doudra had been standing. There was no body, but a pool of partially dried blood was left behind. It was smeared to one side, so Alex assumed the other kobolds hauled her away, the same way he assumed they had hauled away his friends.

  What happened?

  He tried getting up, but found his head still pounded and had to sit back down. It felt like Doudra still had a grip inside of him and was squeezing on his mind. There was no one he could ask what happened, but there was still a way he could learn a general idea.

  Alex brought up his most recent system notifications and began to read. He started from his last skill progress notification and went from there.

  This was when he realized how to break the glyph circle while he was having his core drained from within. This one wasn't a surprise at all to Alex. He seemed to keep making progress in his skill as he studied and learned more about other glyphs. The next notification did surprise him.

  Holy hell, Alex looked at the screen with shock. He didn't think he would have actually killed the kobold, only knocked her out. He also couldn't believe that her death had earned him so much experience. He did remember that the other kobolds had given him more than the badgers even if they were weaker in his opinion.

  Maybe it's due to the fact they were sapient, not just beasts? He ignored these factors for now. There was more to read.

  This was a big fucking problem.

  Alex knew this was a cataclysmic rift in his plan to get out of this world and back home. He needed magic, he needed to get as powerful as possible, but if his mage core was destroyed that meant all of that plan would be thrown out the window. From what he learned from Celeste, no mage core meant no magic in this world.

  No! No! Fuck!

  Alex punched at the ground. The rocks cracked, broke, and split his skin open. His knuckles began to bleed out onto the floor. He sat there, bleeding and staring at the glyphs, wondering where everything went wrong.

  He was a smart and capable guy. He was a good student in school, athletic, and charming when he needed to be. He was serving his country and doing the right thing. How did he end up here? He was a good soldier, he did his best for his team on every mission. So why was this happening to him?

  "Damn it! God dammit!" Alex yelled into the empty cavern.

  He picked up a piece of the stone altar and threw it at the wall. The stone shattered against the wall on impact, shards flew at high speed in every direction. He threw another one and another one. Then a few more.

  "Fuck!" Alex kept yelling with every piece of stone he picked up and threw. He wanted to destroy every bit of it. To pour his frustration into the thing that sealed his fate and made sure he was trapped, never to return home.

  He picked up another rock and was about the throw it as well when he abruptly stopped. No, Alex thought. His hand dropped to his side. No. It's not over. And of course, it happened to me.

  Alex sat down and gripped the rock in his hand tightly. Just because he was a "good guy" didn't mean bad things couldn't happen to him. Bad things just happened, even to good people. The universe didn't owe him anything, he knew that. It wasn't fair, but life just wasn't fair. He was acting like a child, a petulant child and he had to get himself together.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  An angry baby throwing a tantrum, way to go Alex. Adam wouldn't act like this, he scolded himself.

  He lay back down on the hard ground and stared up at the ceiling. There could be things out there that could repair a mage core, surely. The system said it was irreparable, but the system was a dick, who knew if that was really true. There was still hope, he just had to hold on to it.

  Alex pulled up his system screen and continued to look at his notifications. The very next one reassured that feeling of hope.

  Well, that was certainly interesting. The very same process that destroyed Alex's mage core also gave him these abilities. The first was the most intriguing for Alex as it appeared it had massively enhanced his body and stats. He was quite the capable warrior now, if he leveraged his stats correctly.

  There’s always the others too. Just because my mage core is gone, doesn’t mean none of the others won’t manage to upgrade theirs, and learn the magic we need. Alex sighed as he reassured himself. I can keep increasing my stats, fighting monsters, and keep everyone alive in meantime.

  "That's a very promising perspective to take.” Alex suddenly heard a voice. “ Though I don’t know how effective that plan would be."

  The voice Alex heard was not his own. He sat up and looked about quickly, his eyes strained to pierce the dark around him. There was no one there, Alex was alone.

  "Not alone, I'm right here. Look down." Alex heard the same voice.

  He frowned and looked down. Of course, there was no one there, Alex was just sitting on the stone floor. He must be going crazy, the strain of the day and its aftermath finally getting to him.

  He shook his head and wiped the sweat on his brow with the back of his hand. The hand that still held the rock he had picked up earlier.

  His eyes caught a subtle glow and he blinked rapidly before his mind realized what it was he saw. The stone in his hand had an internal glow that created an aura around its surface. He peered at it, now really looking. The stone seemed a bit familiar to him and it took only a couple of seconds for him to realize why.

  The white surface of this rock was distinct, even if he only now saw the glowing aura from it. Alex just couldn't see the aura at the time he saw it earlier held in Doudra's hand, as she had muttered to herself.

  "Bingo, bango. You nailed it. Ten experience for you… If I could grant experience. I can’t though... Or can I? I can’t." The rock's aura glowed and dimmed very slightly in rhythm with the voice. The voice that Alex finally realized he didn't hear with his ears. It was inside his head.

  "What the hell is going on?" Alex said.

  "Well you activated me after killing Doudra, so I'm all yours now. That's usually how this works, I think. Full disclosure, I'm new to this."

  Alex looked over the rock, finding that some of the blood from the ripped skin on his knuckles had seeped from the shallow wound and indeed gotten on the stone. He had activated the thing by mistake as he held it and lay on the floor.

  "So Doudra's muttering, it wasn't her being crazy, she was talking to you?" Things made so much more sense to Alex now. "Did you teach her about this whole ritual? To have her drain people?"

  "Yes, Yes and yes. Pretty sweet right? It drains aether and then lets you steal a fraction of someone's mental stats. It's really high-class stuff." The rock replied.

  "It's fucking evil! Why would you teach her that?" Alex shouted.

  "I... huh, I didn't think about that, to be honest. Doudra just asked me about what I knew, and one question led to the next. Suddenly we were talking about glyph circles. Damn, did I get corrupted by that scaled mistress in her patchwork rags?"

  "Or, maybe, you corrupted her. I've seen enough movies and read enough books to know that talking inanimate objects are always either cursed or just pure evil, so thanks but no thanks." Alex lifted his arm, ready to throw the rock off into the darkness of the cavern.

  "I know where your friends are!"

  Alex paused. "What?"

  "I know where your friends are. Like I said, Doudra and I talked... a lot. I’m guessing she was pretty lonely to be honest. The other kobolds aren’t exactly sterling conversationalists. Anyway, she told me about her home village. A kobold village to the east tucked far into the forest." The rock certainly had Alex's attention now. He lowered his arm.

  "If your friends are still alive and I'm willing to bet they are -Kobolds hate wasting things- then after Doudra's death her underlings would have brought them there."

  Alex stared down at the rock for a long moment.

  He knew he was being stupid, he should just throw the thing away and be done with it. He was right when he said every movie, book, and video game told him the sentient item was a bad idea.

  He looked at the little rock in his hand, eyebrows furrowed and his lips curled in a snarl. This thing was going to be the biggest piece of trouble in Alex's life, and given the last two weeks, that was saying something. But still, what other choice did he have?

  "Alright then," Alex said. "Let's talk."

  ***