Even with a hole through its body, the creature showed no signs of stopping. Maybe it was just the momentum it carried, or perhaps it was still alive somehow. The system didn't do stuff like kill notifications, so I couldn't gain insight through that. However, a quick peek at my status revealed the truth. Since I was now at level 28 and no longer level 26 like previously, it had to be dead.
Still, the momentum carried its full force towards me. I don't know what its plan of attack was, but I doubted that it was squashing me to death with the might of its voluminous body. Friction soon got the better of its dead body, and it slumped to the ground close to where I stood. I had jumped back a bit, just in case, but there really wasn't much danger there.
Gaining two levels from such an easy enemy was nice, though. I doubted that my strength with my new epic grade tier two class was that of a normal being at the beginning of tier two, so it wasn't all that unexpected that it fell so easily.
Unlike the corpse of the tier four leviathan that would have probably remained there for months, this one was already slowly starting to disappear. It wasn't at all useful to me, though, so I continued walking the cave system without giving it much thought.
By now I had gotten so used to doing Trémaux's algorithm that it was basically second nature to me. A scorch mark here, a scorch mark there, and I was on my way again. Unlike what I expected, it was actually somewhat useful in the time I spent down here already. It wasn't all that common, but I occasionally stumbled upon junctions I had already visited at some point in time.
Still, there was not even a hint of any sort of exit. Hours upon hours of aimless navigation, and I found nothing. No exit, no monsters, not even any plants, fungi, or similar. I kept up my skill-control practice with the balls of celestial fire, but progress was slow. It did get easier, but at such an excruciatingly slow pace that it was incredibly frustrating.
The worst of it all were the piercing migraines that came when exhausting mental energy to the limit. Not even an invigorating bath in a vitality-granting bath of [Celestial Fire] could do anything against that, vitality sadly just didn't work that way.
I barely even remembered how long I had walked the tunnels for. It was all so similar that any memories of stony tunnels just merged together into one singular mass of blurred boredom.
Had it been days, weeks, or months already? I couldn't tell. I could have technically somewhat kept count of time via the regeneration of mana, but that was too much effort for me to consider doing at length. I didn't have a clear reading of my regeneration speed anyways, so the resulting measurement would be vague at best and completely wrong at worst.
At some point I wondered if I was even fully conscious while navigating the maze of stone holding me captive. From time to time, I would snap out of daydreaming just to end up not even remembering the last time I burned marks into a junction.
Still, I marched onwards towards my eventual freedom. I didn't know when it would happen, but it had to at some point. I met another [Abhorrent Cave Crawler] at some point, but it fell just as easily as the first of its sort did. It had the same attack pattern and just charged at me with no regard for any sort of counterattack or defense. This one was only level 43, though, so I only got a single level up, which took me up to level 29.
In the end, it was nothing more than a well-needed momentary distraction in the abyss of boredom clouding my mind. I stepped past its corpse and was back to walking the seemingly unending extents of the cave system again. After all of this, I could finally understand why mapping out the Great Labyrinth was seen as utterly impossible. Just mapping out the part where I was at right now would probably take years, even if there were skills out there that could potentially help with stuff like that.
While walking, I thought every thought I could think of thinking. I thought about how I ended up in this situation. The sudden transportation from Earth to this world, the lessons from the instructors preparing us to fight actual battles, the first excursion into the Great Labyrinth to the Abyssal Descent, the fight with that behemoth of a spider, the not-so-unexpected betrayal from the not-quite [Hero] Blake, my very first bath in the magma that almost cost me my life, the losing fights I fought against that ashen wolf, my battle of attrition inside of the leviathan that swallowed me up during my sleep, and finally the activation of [Broken Sky], which transported me to an entirely unknown location.
So many things had already happened that Earth already felt more like a distant dream in the past than actual reality. I thought of my mom, who I had unwillingly left behind. Everything else I could forget, but not her. I must not forget her.
Still, no matter what I tried, her face was just a vague blur in my memory. The impression and all of the emotions were still there, but the image was not. It filled me with desperation, but I couldn't change it. The memories of my past were slowly but inevitably withering away in the avalanche of new memories suppressing them. I was never good at remembering faces well, but this was beyond just that.
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What would become of me in the future? Change wasn't inherently bad, but it filled me with fear. While other fears and phobias were bad, nothing could beat the pure existential dread that came with the fear of the unknown and the fear of forgetting everything that made you the person you were.
Would the Hanah that eventually managed to escape the maze holding her captive still be the same Hanah that was so suddenly thrown into it? The answer to that was already now a 'no'. No matter what I secretly wanted to be the truth, I looked reality straight into the face. Just the first bath in the existence-erasing heat of magma had scarred my mind in ways that would never heal. Having [Pain Resistance] was probably normal to some degree. Having it at level 15 was decidedly not.
I had my eyes burned away by magma, rendering me blind for the time they regenerated. I had lost my legs and gotten them back within hours. While I admittedly panicked a bit back then, it wasn't anywhere close to the amount of panic I should have felt in that moment. I barely feared fighting for my life any longer. Losing limbs was just what happened when doing stuff like that. It was just a temporary hindrance, what's the harm of it all?
Thinking like that was not normal, and I knew that. Still, knowing about something did not suddenly make one magically able to change it. The fear was gone, and there was no going back now. Not like I wanted to go back to my old self or anything, but it's still a drastic change.
I was too scared almost my entire life, but not anymore, not after everything I went through. Everything wanted and still wants me dead, but I refuse to die without having achieved anything yet. Blake would pay for his crimes with his life, I was going to make sure of that. Whether that would make me a murderer or not, I didn't care anymore. The next time we met, there would be no talking, no discussions, and no explaining. No, the next time we meet will be the last time we meet, either because he kills me or I kill him.
He had a legendary class and probably a lot more time to level safely, but I didn't think I was powerless against him. No matter how good he was and how strong his class was, I highly doubted that he had slain a tier four creature while still being at tier one. Epic was only one grade below legendary, and I was actually offered a legendary tier two class, even if I didn't take it for various reasons.
While I didn't know whether legendary was the maximum grade a class could be, I doubted that Blake could achieve a better grade than legendary even if it did exist.
I still had a lot of pent-up anger about him, but I couldn't waste away thinking about him. It was at this time that something changed. I wasn't sure of it at first, but the vibe suddenly felt off. Like something was desperately trying to get my attention, I was subconsciously led along one path in particular. I still scorched my marks at every junction, but it no longer felt like I was picking at random.
As the feeling slowly got stronger, my environment slowly changed as well. Instead of the dark grey walls I could normally see in the ghostly light of my sky blue flames, they gained some sort of hue to them that I couldn't really identify. My blue fire emitted light in almost purely the blue spectrum, which made it impossible for color perception to work properly. If there was only blue, the objects could only reflect blue, which in turn made everything a shade of blue.
Luckily, I had a solution for that. [Celestial Fire], just like [Candlelight] had been, was very malleable. That was true not just for temperature or size, but also for its hue. While its default color was now sky blue, it wasn't fixed to that color. Shifting the temperature of the color more towards the warm spectrum made it soon reach the almost entirely white color I had seen before with [Candlelight]. White meant light of every wavelength, which was basically required for accurately seeing colors.
With my now functioning color vision, I could see that the cave walls were now a dull shade of blotchy purple. Wanting to test something, I brought my fire close to the wall. Then, without much resistance, the purplish stuff covering the stone withered away in the place closest to my fire.
There was something disturbing about it, though. The way an almost imperceptible shock travelled through the purple substance at my interference made it somehow feel alive. I reflexively threw [Identify] at it, but it didn't give me anything. While it wasn't unusual when identifying something like the walls of a cave, it was highly unusual when it was anything alive or an otherwise well-defined object.
Feeling a bit disgusted at my surroundings, I flared the temperature of the flame I still held to the maximum. Almost instantly, everything around me withered away. However, unlike what I had secretly feared, the purple stuff that was far enough away to survive didn't really react in any way that would have betrayed some sort of intelligence.
Still, better to be careful now than to regret it later. I didn't have even the slightest clue about what I was facing here, but I wasn't willing to take any chances. It creeped me out, and that was enough for me to eradicate the stuff that grew everywhere along my current path.
The constant implicit pulling force that led me here was still there for me to follow. I knew that it was maybe a bit risky to just follow an unnatural feeling like that, but I was tired of aimlessly marching through the endless stone maze. This was exactly the excitement I needed right now, even if it ends up dangerous. Who knows, maybe this was even the way out of this hell? I certainly wasn't going to complain if that was the case here.
I thought the odds of that to be rather low, but one could still hope, right? If there was anything I wanted right now, it was to finally get out of here for good. No matter how small the chance for that was, I had to grasp every opportunity I got.
