Chương 67: (B2 Chapter 18)

The cavern was littered with bones of different shapes and sizes. Some looked old, clean, and brittle, while others were bloody or had bits and pieces of rotten flesh on them. A few of the bones even had rusted and bent armour covering them. It looked like a burial ground for a variety of species, none of which looked human or even humanoid. The ground was coarse sand, unlike the hard rock that had been prevalent throughout the dungeon so far.

Apart from the creepy bones, there was nothing else as far as the eye could see. Omar also confirmed that he couldn't see anything else with mana sense. We were all huddled together as our sudden appearance here had shocked us all. However, seconds passed by with nothing untoward happening, just the oppressive silence pressing down on us all. I looked behind us, but couldn't spot the hallway we were walking through. Did we walk into a teleportation trap of some kind?

Or did we just complete the hallway and the dungeon naturally transitioned to this cavern? More importantly, since there doesn't seem to be a way to go back, does this mean we no longer have a place to regenerate our mana? I looked up at the ceiling, which was not visible except for the tiny pinpricks of glowing crystals high, high above us. I wasn't sure our spells could reach that high, and even if they could, would we even be able to make a large enough area devoid of those crystals? I highly doubt it.

"We need to be much more careful of mana from here," Marcus whispered, arriving to the same conclusion as I did. Lucas nodded in agreement.

"Thanks for pointing that out, but what do we do here?" Everyone continued looking around, having no response to his question.

"I could go ahead and scout," I suggested.

"No, you need to conserve your mana, and without your skill hiding you, you could be killed in one shot by anything lurking here," declined Lucas with a shake of his head.

"How about we just slowly move forward as a group? There's clearly something here based on all these bones, so we would be safer as a team," he suggested instead.

"Okay, but let's stick close to the walls for now instead of moving towards the center," I said. Everyone agreed, and we started moving forward in a tight circle, with the physical class holders on the outside and Omar, Madelline, and Marcus within the circle. We were circling about fifteen feet away from the wall, so that we would have ample warning if something attacked us from within the walls.

Based on the buried bones and the theme of the dungeon so far, I was pretty sure we would be attacked by something that could move through the earth, or something that could fly. Or perhaps both. About a minute later, I came to find out that I had been too limited in my thinking. Similar to how we had just appeared inside this cavern, something suddenly appeared in front of us.

As planned, we had been moving close to the walls, keeping an eye out in all directions including both above and below us, when suddenly a pure black shadow spawned directly in front of us. We immediately stopped, as the featureless shadow twisted and swirled constantly, but otherwise remained still. The thing was floating a few inches off the ground. It was about six feet tall and was about half that wide in the center, but it narrowed on either end before the shadow swirled and drifted on both ends of its mass.

Everyone was transfixed by its appearance, watching it in a daze with tightly clutched weapons. However, my experience from the tutorial had trained a newly forming instinct within me to never lose track of my surroundings. I therefore took a quick glance around, and saw in horror that six other shadows had appeared in different directions, surrounding us all. I gulped as I realized there was one for each of us.

"There's more of them, keep track of your surroundings," I said in a low voice. Everyone startled at my words and looked around, gasping in surprise and horror at being surrounded. The shadows stayed in place for a few heartbeats, before a wide, grinning mouth lined with short, sharp teeth materialized on all of them. I gripped my dagger hard and readied a wind bolt, while behind me I could sense Omar and Madelline preparing their spells as well. Without preamble, the shadows launched towards us.

Three spells launched from our side, all three of them hitting the targeted shadows and dissolving them on impact immediately. However, the rest of the shadows continued on, reaching our group in no time. Lucas and Sam swung their swords, while me and Hannah struck with our daggers. My dagger sliced through the shadow with ease, feeling no different from swinging through air. The shadow parted where my dagger passed through, but did nothing else as the shadow went straight through me.

For a split second, everything went still, before I felt something being taken from me. I felt an immense chill throughout my whole body and a sudden bout of weakness hit me as I fell to one knee, grunts of pain and shouts of alarm sounding all around me as well. I looked around warily as I stood back up, my movements felt sluggish as my body trembled all over with the intense chill it was still feeling.

Everyone else seemed to be in a similar boat, and we were still surrounded by four sinisterly grinning shadows, with one key difference. Each of them looked a bit larger now. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Physical attacks don't work on them! And when they passed through me, all three of my resources went down!" shouted Marcus from somewhere behind me. I opened my status and quickly confirmed what he had said. My health, stamina, and mana had all dropped down by twelve each, and it was almost certainly a result of this shadow that passed through me. However, I also remembered how three of them had vanished the moment our spells hit them.

I immediately sheathed my dagger and started forming two wind bolts – one on each hand.

"Madelline, Omar, throw spells at each of them. Let's take out all of them in one go!" I shouted, trying to rally them. However, I was still feeling extremely cold, and I could feel the wind bolt spell forming marginally slower than it normally formed. Nevertheless, the two spells formed and I quickly launched them, aiming at the two in front of me. As soon as the spell touched them, the two shadows dissolved, disappearing as if they had never existed.

I turned around and saw Madelline and Omar had also successfully launched their spells, finally putting an end to the shadows. We frantically looked around to see if there were more, but thankfully we didn't find anything else that was planning on killing us.

"These shades are dangerous!" Omar exclaimed, sitting on the ground and breathing heavily. Shades… that's a much better name than shadows… I absentmindedly thought, as I joined Omar on the ground as well.

"Did you guys also have some trouble making your spells after they had passed through us?" asked Madelline. Omar and I nodded in agreement immediately.

"I noticed my movements slowed down as well," said Hannah, with Lucas and Sam agreeing with her. So, they take down our resources with each pass, and at the same time make it harder to do anything after due to the chill slowing us down.

"If there are more of them, which there probably will be, we are in major trouble," I said.

"They can only be taken out by spells and we can't regenerate mana."

"Not to mention the decrease in health with each pass, we can't regenerate health either," pointed out Marcus. I nodded to show my agreement, but internally I was confused. Why didn't I think of the health problem? It was simple enough, more so when I was already thinking about mana… Does the coldness affect our mental capabilities as well…? A shiver went down my spine, and this time it wasn't due to the still lingering chill I was feeling.

Since I was younger, I had always hated anything that inhibited my mental capacity in any manner. It was mainly the reason why I didn't drink much, if at all. I just could never fathom how someone would be willing to make themselves dumber on purpose. I shook my head to clear it. I was probably jumping to conclusions, and had fixated on mana as that was the only way the shades could be dealt with, leading me to miss about health.

At least, I hope that was the case, as the other possibility was much, much worse in my opinion.

"We need to get out of this place as soon as possible. Hopefully find another safe area. More of those shades could come at any time, and we have no idea of how to discover them before they appear," said Lucas. I nodded enthusiastically, getting up. I wouldn't admit it, but perhaps for the first time since the tutorial started, I was actually creeped out. And I was sure the reason was the possibility of the shades affecting my mental capacity in any way.

Decision made, we all got up and started making our way forward once more. This time, Lucas, Sam, Hannah, and Marcus were in the middle, while the three of us who could use magic were a couple steps away from them. We had no idea if Marcus's heal spell would also kill off the shades, but as his mana was too valuable, we decided to make do with the three of us for now. We continued moving beside the wall, sometimes kicking away the littered bones on the ground while getting attacked by more shades periodically.

They always appeared in groups of seven, matching our number each time. With every attack, six of the shades were immediately blasted apart, but the seventh sometimes managed to pass through one of us before another spell hit it and managed to make it disappear. Our mana kept disappearing, and each of us had already taken two mana potions to keep up. Despite our protests, Lucas repeatedly used his taunt skill, forcing the final remaining shade to pass through him instead of anyone else.

Marcus had been forced to heal him, and he was now deliriously walking, being held up by Sam and Hannah. His eyes were unfocused, and he was clearly out of it, making my worst fear become true and encouraging me even more to get out of this cavern as soon as possible. Sometime later, we had figured out a strategy that worked. I would target two shades furthest away from me, leaving the one right in front of me unharmed. The shades were quick, but I was much faster than them even without the use of quick step.

Thus, I was able to dodge when it approached me, and either Madelline or Omar would then kill it. After the umpteenth shade group had appeared and subsequently been defeated, something finally changed. I spotted an opening in the wall, and we excitedly approached it, eager to get away from this murderous cavern. We soon reached the opening and I stepped through it first, or at least I attempted to. Instead, I bounced off an invisible barrier.

Instantly, the environment in the cavern shifted and it immediately became much, much colder. A slight wind started flowing from nowhere, swirling the sand in the ground. In the center of the cavern, something started appearing. We stood staring dumbly as the being came into existence in front of us, with a single thought running through my mind. So that's why there were so many bones on the ground…