Chương 65: (B2 Chapter 16)

We were all sitting on the floor of the safe area, pondering on how to go forward without making a sound. Marcus had just finished healing Omar, while the rest of us had chosen to wait for our health regenerations as we weren't as badly injured. Unfortunately, it looked like there was something wrong with our assumption.

"Umm… guys, my health isn't going up…" Sam said, looking around at the rest of us in confusion. What…? I opened my status screen to see what he was talking about. First thing I noticed was that I had almost reached level 16, only needing 30 more exp to get the next level. What I noticed next; however, was extremely alarming. My health was fine at 172/180. I had barely been grazed by one of the larger crawlers. However, my mana was sitting at 27/195, and it wasn't moving back up.

I also realized that the slight headache I had noticed earlier was still there, I had just learned to ignore it.

"Neither is my mana," confirmed Marcus. The others also murmured their agreements, and I realized we had just understood why it was called the 'Hollowed Maw'. I mentally catalogued the things we knew about this dungeon so far. It suppresses and detests sounds, the monsters appear to be hidden, and it doesn't allow regenerations to work. I looked back at my status, and corrected myself. It allows stamina regeneration for some reason, but doesn't allow mana and health.

"Can one of you try and shoot down a few of those crystals in the ceiling? I want to check something…" spoke up Marcus, staring at the ceiling intently. I followed his gaze and looked at the glowing crystals. Before I could do much thinking about a way to get them down without using mana, Omar obliged with Marcus's wish, shooting a few small mana bolts in rapid succession at the ceiling. The bolts crashed into the ceiling, sending a shower of dirt, rocks, and crystals over all of us.

Everyone turned to stare at Omar in a déjà vu moment, and Lucas jumped in immediately.

"Remember guys, we need to stay silent…" Marcus, being the nearest to Omar, lightly smacked him on the backside of his head on behalf of all of us, before getting up and collecting the crystals that had fallen. He held a bunch of crystals in his hand for a few seconds, before he spoke up.

"I was right, these crystals are siphoning mana from the surroundings. Probably why we can't regenerate it," he said.

"What do you mean?" I immediately asked.

"I thought the crystals looked like mana from Omar's bolts or those potions you handed out. I thought either these crystals emit mana, or they absorb it. Turns out they absorb it… holding them is draining my mana," he held out the crystals as if to prove his point.

"I think there is no atmospheric mana in here as it has probably been absorbed by these things, which is why we can't regenerate it. Though I have no clue about the health regeneration problem," he finished, tossing the crystals to the ground, where they continued to glow. That… actually makes sense… I thought the crystals were mana crystals as well, in the sense that they were the crystalized form of mana. It didn't cross my mind that they would absorb mana instead. I looked at Marcus, impressed by his insight.

Lucas had always spoken how Marcus stayed behind the group and called out the shots when I wasn't around, but I hadn't ever seen him like this till now. Another thing crossed my mind, and I turned my head to Omar.

"Can you use Mana Sense to confirm what Marcus said?" Omar had the largest mana pool of us all, so he probably had a lot more mana left than anyone else. Which is why he didn't protest, instead just nodded and immediately started looking around, presumably having activated the skill already. Just a couple seconds later he confirmed that he couldn't see any mana anywhere. The group delved into discussions, while my mind wandered.

I really wanted to see with my own skill, but my mana was low and I wasn't sure if using it would trigger another debilitating headache because of arcane comprehension. Wait… The fight earlier had a lot of magic attacks flying around. Omar and Madelline were throwing off their spells, Marcus had been healing, and I had also been using wind bullets liberally. However, arcane comprehension hadn't pinged me even once with its dissection of mana since we had entered this dungeon.

Was that because the skill couldn't work when mana wasn't present? Or was it because the mana from the skills wasn't reaching me due to the mana suppression from the crystals, making the skill not be able to work? But surely my own spell should have been able to be dissected by the skill if that were the case… Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I could just try and use mana sense to look within myself, and see if arcane comprehension works…

However, I really didn't want to experience that immense backlash from using both skills at the same time again. And… there was a much simpler thing we could try, wasn't there… I opened my inventory and took out the mana potion. I swirled it for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and draining it all in one go before I could start second guessing myself. It tasted… like nothing.

Absolutely nothing, not even like water, because it was at that moment I realized that water also had a taste, I just never noticed it. Drinking the potion felt like nothing else I had ever experienced. I could sense that there was liquid inside my mouth, but that was it. No taste, or smell, or texture. It was among the weirdest feelings I had ever felt. I swallowed and opened my status, waiting for something to happen. A few seconds later, my headache started decreasing and my mana started increasing.

Over the next minute, my mana steadily increased before it stopped at 127/195. 100 mana per potion, not bad… I wanted to test whether drinking another potion would give me mana as well, or if it had some kind of cool down. Or even if the potions had diminishing returns when consumed rapidly. However, the potions were too limited to start experimenting, especially if we needed to manage our resources throughout this dungeon. I got up and looked at Omar.

"Omar, want to smash things apart with your spells?" I asked.

"Always!" he instantly answered. I gestured to Omar to get up and warned everyone to back away, and once they were beside the back wall, the two of us started blasting the roof with our spells, aiming for the crystals. I wanted to see if decreasing the crystals would make it possible for us to regenerate our mana here, which I thought was a good enough use of our limited mana. If we could use this place to regenerate, it would make the entire dungeon much easier. Well…

at least it will make this part of the dungeon easier… Our constant smashing of the roof didn't cause the dungeon to spawn any holes, and I was thankful that my assumption of this being an absolute safe area was still holding true. My wind bolt was extremely cost efficient – using only eight mana per spell. However, it was nothing compared to Omar's efficiency.

His class offered him the flexibility of changing his spells, so he just made his mana bolt spells very small; just enough to shake off the crystals from the ceiling. It probably cost him just two or three mana per spell, and he was spamming them while grinning like a madman. We kept blasting away at the crystals, but didn't notice any changes in our mana regeneration for some time. I had to drink another mana potion and keep going, and even Omar took his first potion after some time.

Just a short while later, we had managed to successfully clear a large section of the roof. The middle of the entire room was now devoid of mana crystals, and was much darker as well. The ones who had physical classes and didn't use mana were responsible for picking up the dropped crystals and placing them within their inventories. It was probably paranoid of us, but we didn't want to take the chance of the crystals somehow affecting our mana usage even through the inventory.

The good news was that Marcus and Madelline, who had both kept their status screens open, were able to confirm that their mana had started going up, although slowly. We had stopped so that we could regenerate our mana, which was going up by only two mana per minute. However, it was a start, at least. As soon as our mana was reasonably full, Omar and I started blasting away at the ceiling again, clearing a larger area and making our regenerations increase.

By the time the only mana crystals still left glowing were beside the entrance to the hallway, our mana regeneration had shot up to nine per minute, and Omar confirmed he could now see a lot more mana in the surroundings through mana sense. None of us were bothered by the now severely darkened room, as most of us had enough perception to see just fine. Health regeneration stayed at zero though, and none of us could come up with a reason why that was the case.

We concluded it was probably due to a rule within this dungeon, but I made a mental note to pay attention to our surroundings to see if we could figure something about what was affecting it. For now, Marcus had gone around and healed everyone up, and we had waited till he was back at full mana before getting up. We were a few steps into the hallway now, and making as much noise as possible by banging our weapons on the walls and the floor.

None of us were using any skill, as the plan was to fight without using mana for as long as possible. Our noise soon got the attention of the dungeon, as a large hole spawned on the roof, out of which one of the larger crawlers appeared. With a snarl that wasn't heard by any of us, it launched from the roof, intent on putting an end to us. Before it could hit the ground though, it had already been pierced by my dagger as well as Hannah's, and stabbed with swords by Lucas, and Sam.

Needless to say, the skewered monster was already dead by the time it hit the floor, and the corpse was mercilessly kicked aside to make room for the next one about to drop from the roof. We settled into a routine, killing them swiftly but silently. Omar paced around inside the safe room, agitated at not being able to contribute. However, his spells would just make too much noise. Once the hole closed up, we made loud noises till the time another hole appeared, and then we started killing again.

It took multiple cycles and position changes to avoid the dead bodies before the dungeon stopped sending out new monsters no matter how much noise we made. Even Omar releasing his pent-up frustration by an amazingly large spell that blasted apart the ceiling didn't get a reaction out of the dungeon. It looked like we had completed this first hallway, as even when we went further away, almost till the point where the hall expanded suddenly, and made noise there, the dungeon didn't send any more monsters.

One thing we did discover was that the dead bodies disappeared after some time, just like in the tutorial. These crawlers, even the larger variety, didn't have much in the form of useable loot; however, it was good that we discovered this now, so we may be able to harvest any monster that looked like it had something useful before the dungeon swallowed it up. We trudged back to the safe area, wanting to rest a bit and have some food, before we tackled the larger hallway.

Once we entered the safe area, I stopped in my tracks as I looked up at the brightly glowing crystals that had somehow returned to the roof while we were out fighting against the monsters. I sighed. Give me a break…