It wasn't like I needed a ton of vitality to survive either. I didn't have a single indication for how much I actually needed with my skill-enhanced tier two body and all, but having more than enough couldn't hurt, right? It also barely cost me anything apart from a bit of time and mana lost. The amount of time was barely worth mentioning, and the mana would naturally regenerate as well, which theoretically also made it just cost time.
The only thing limiting me in all of this was now my own natural mana regeneration, which was rather funny, as I barely had a problem with that in the volcanic environment that suited me so well.
With [Thermal Conversion] slightly interfering and no accurate way of measuring time, I unfortunately couldn't make out an hour-based reading like I had when I was still at level one. If I had to guess, it was somewhere between 100 and 200 mana per hour, but again, determining when a supposed hour had passed was basically impossible for me down here.
While it was a lot more than back at level one, it was a glacial pace when compared to before when I had the environment supporting me. At 100 mana per hour, it would take almost 13 hours just to fill my normal reserves and another 95 hours to fully top up my corona as well. Combined, that's almost 5 days of regenerating! As a matter of fact, if I used any mana for anything else during that time, it would be even slower.
I called out my status again to look at the trickle of mana ticking up my mana counter. Luckily, the corona had merged its mana reserve into the main display from the system, which saved me from having to identify [Regalia: Starfire Corona] every time I wanted to know how much mana it currently held.
[Name: Hanah Mayflower
Race: Human
Level: 26 (Tier II)
Mana: 724/1260 | 0/9500
Achievements: [Hero Candidate], [Predator III], [Molten Rebirth], [Slayer of the Leviathan]
Class: Broken Star (Epic+)
Active Skills:
[Celestial Fire Lv. 19]
[Broken Sky Lv. 1]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. 19]
Passive Skills:
[Thermal Conversion]
[Broken Celestial Physiology]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. --]
General Skills:
[Identify]
[Heightened Senses Lv. 7]
[Pain Resistance Lv. 15]
[Fire Resistance Lv. 7]
[Mana Sense Lv. 1]
[Corrosion Resistance Lv. 2]]
All in all, there weren't many changes from the last time I saw it. Except for the mana counter, of course, but that was such a minor change it could easily be disregarded. For some reason [Heightened Senses] was trickling up in level every now and then without me noticing. I had the skill for so long that I couldn't even tell if it did anything or not, but not having it would probably make me miss it in some way.
Wait, I just noticed, didn't I already have the corona skill when I last looked at my status directly after tiering up? If so, why did it not show the merged counter back then? Did it not want to spoil the surprise and waited for me to identify the skill before updating the interface, or was there some other reason?
Eh, while it was a curious thing to think about, I quickly dismissed the thought as unimportant. I had long since given up trying to understand the intricacies of how and why the system did what it did. Not even instructor Wyn, who had extensively lived with and researched the system, knew everything there was to know about it, at least he told us as much. There wasn't a reason to not believe him either. Knowing everything about anything so complex was just straight up impossible for any human being.
With nothing else to think about, I picked a direction in this cave at random and started walking. One good thing about deeper environments like these in comparison to something like the entrance to the Great Labyrinth was that the density of aggressive monsters you'd encounter as you traversed was far lower. I had been at it for what must have been hours already, but I haven't found anything that could be classified as 'alive' yet.
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I chanced upon a few weird rock formations and a couple branching paths, but they all looked basically identical to me, so I picked at random again. I scorched two marks into the stone, one each at the entrance I came from and the branch I picked to continue forward. I didn't know how effective it was going to be down here, but I wanted to try the only maze-solving algorithm that somehow managed to stay in my head.
If I remember his name right, what I was attempting to do here was called Trémaux's algorithm. Its base principle is exceedingly simple. Whenever you pass through an entrance of a passage, whether it is to enter or exit a junction, leave a mark at the entrance as you pass.
When you encounter a junction, you have to decide between three different rules depending on the marks at the junction.
If only the entrance you just came from is marked (happens if you encounter the junction the very first time), pick an arbitrary unmarked entrance, if there are any. Also do this if you're starting in the middle of the maze you're trying to solve and there aren't any marked paths yet.
Second rule: If all entrances are marked, go back through the entrance you just came from, unless it is already marked twice. This also applies if you reach a dead end, not like there are any options except for turning around in that case anyways.
Last rule if neither rule one nor rule two applies: Pick any entrance with the fewest marks.
Just following these simple steps is already enough to guarantee that you find the exit for any arbitrary maze. However, there were a few problems for me in my current situation. While this cave system fulfilled all the necessary criteria for an arbitrary maze, it was probably gigantic. The odds of making use of this algorithm to the full extent and actually finding a way up were exceedingly low if you factored in a time limit. While it was obviously guaranteed to work if done right with infinite time, I didn't have infinite time.
Some other factors to take into consideration were the fact that this cave system wasn't absolutely static like a maze on a piece of paper. If a passage collapses or something ends up digging a new one where there previously was a dead end, the maze changes, which in the latter case would theoretically make me have to start the algorithm all over again. Well, by the nature of this algorithm, I wouldn't ever enter the dead end again after the first time anyways, which would cause me to never notice any changes there to begin with.
Still, all things considered, this was still a lot better than just aimlessly wandering around, even if it was just to prevent me from running in endless circles.
Actually, I wasn't even one hundred percent sure that the algorithm correctly worked for caves. Caves, while maze-like, were three-dimensional and not 2D like a normal maze on paper. However, as far as I knew, the algorithm was based in graph theory and thus theoretically dimensionally independent. Well, I would undoubtedly notice if it ends up not working. If I ever end up with more than two marks at any entrance, something undoubtedly went wrong. Unless that happens, assuming its effectiveness should be okay here.
I continued marching onwards, the hours dragging on as I navigated the convoluted cave system. How does something like this even come into existence? I had seen some 3D models of natural caves existing back on Earth and there wasn't a single one even nearly as complicated as this one. Every tunnel looked like the last one, and only the missing marks at a junction reassured me that I was still finding new paths instead of walking in endless circles.
I didn't mind the loneliness here nearly as much as the pure boredom that came from endless repetitions of doing the same thing over and over again. I tried distracting myself by practicing control over [Celestial Fire] as I walked, but that only really helped for some time before that got a bit boring as well. On top of that, for my practice to even achieve anything, I had to strain it to a degree that it was exhausting to me. If it couldn't even do that, I doubted that I'd make any sort of progress through that.
The practice itself was nothing spectacular. The room I had was limited, so I had to restrain myself in expansion anyways. I had summoned as many balls of sky blue fire as I could handle and tried manipulating them independently of each other. I spun a couple in place, repeatedly increased and decreased the size or the temperature of a few, and moved some arbitrarily in space.
Like trying to play the piano as a beginner, I failed miserably at the beginning. The manipulation came intuitively, but independent control did not. Still, I had to get this down sooner or later. After all, my skills basically laid that out as my main combat style. If I just disregarded my potential in that direction, I'd miss out on a lot of power.
However, as I mentioned before, boredom and exhaustion were not a good combination for exploring caves, especially if you couldn't make a mistake in the exploration algorithm you were using. The rules were very simple and almost intuitive in a way, but I was still a bit afraid of making a mistake. Because of that, I frequently paused to recover some mental energy. I was fine physically, but I felt a bit listless and weary, even after my breaks.
It must have been hours of exploring when I finally stumbled upon something new. In front of me was some kind of creature that looked straight out of some horror movie. I would describe it better, but I couldn't even tell what I was looking at, really. It was almost entirely black, had no eyes as far as I could tell, and had a few limbs of varying sizes strutting out of its amorphous body. [Identify] only gave me [Abhorrent Cave Crawler, Lv. 63], which was spot on for whatever I was looking at but still not very helpful in the grand scheme of things.
The thing was creeping me out, but I couldn't back away here. Time to finally try out my saw blade fighting style then, I guess? I had been itching to try it ever since my failure of a fight with the wolf back in the volcanic hellscape, but I never really got the chance to. After all, my 'fight' with the leviathan was more like a war of attrition than anything else.
The moment I summoned my flames to shape into the aforementioned saw blades, the creature seemingly noticed me and jumped into action. Did this thing have some sort of well-developed mana sense? I was in the middle of a mental break when I chanced upon it, so I didn't have any skill active when I met it. Now, however, the cave crawler was completely different from the passive creature it resembled previously.
Like an abhorrent tornado of fury, it spun through the tunnel straight towards me. I quickly abandoned my saw blade plan as I noticed how quick that thing was. Getting them to properly spin up to an effective speed would take too long. Instead, I hastily shaped it into the semblance of a lance that floated in the middle of the tunnel. I was practically attempting the same thing that John had tried against Leyvin in their first spar against each other.
Back then, John had made spikes of stone in the path of Leyvin, trying to use his own speed against him by making him impale himself on the spike. Unlike Leyvin, who dexterously dodged the attack by disregarding gravity and stepping onto thin air, the creature currently charging at me had nowhere to go in the tight confines of the tunnel.
Without even getting the opportunity to abandon its reckless charge, it met the lance of sky blue fire that filled the cave with an ominous blue light. Like a knife through butter, there was barely any resistance as a hole almost half a meter in size was drilled directly through the center of its body.