Chương 66: 1-65 Navigating the unknown

"Anyone there?" Josef tried once more, though it proved futile. There was no one who could answer him in the dark, or at least nothing that would. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was movement all around him, though. Well, if the walls were alive, then the most likely explanation was that something had swallowed them up as they entered the boss floor. Fortunately, he had a practiced response to such acts of predation. If they eat you, eat them right back.

Sending his mana out in several directions, forming draining streams all around him, he quickly scaled the spell up to his current maximum number of lines he could keep up at once. With both of his hands and full concentration, a full dozen of them formed and fed him back the surrounding energy. His plan of draining whatever creature this was from within hit an immediate snag.

While there was a decent amount of mana flowing back to him, it was barely more than he spent, meaning there was very little in the path of the spell. Even the ones going straight through the wall by his side were no exception to that. If that fleshy mass had its own mana, then it wasn't any more than the ambient one he could get from the air. Either this creature had a natural defense against this type of magic, or it was something else entirely.

Finally, with his brute-force solution denied, Josef had no other choice but to fall back on a very old spell he had barely used before it became obsolete.

"Light!" He even called it out loud, just to remind himself it was still there. The first spell he had created on his own, mocked by the system for its simplicity. It held the lowest rank of all his spells, at only a single star. He had used it as his nightlight and abandoned it altogether after gaining the ability to see in the dark. However, as common sense dictated, there had to be at least some light for his eyes to see. But with absolutely no light source around? This one would have to do.

Except that the system was right, and the spell turned out to be utterly useless. It had exactly one reason to exist, and even that went unfulfilled, as the darkness refused to part for his magic light.

"Oh, come on, you can't be serious." He felt like the protagonist of a horror movie, fumbling with a lighter in the middle of the forest, as some unsavory character crept up on him. Which might very well turn out to be the case, because if the walls weren't it, then the boss had to be somewhere. Redoubling his efforts, he retracted some of his mana streams and focused more strongly on the light.

This one should be a cinch to advance, because one of the many things humanity had mastered without a doubt was light pollution. There were countless images he could pull from when it came to illuminating the dark. From burning magnesium to floodlights, neon signs lighting up a city and the first rays of dawn slicing through the night. Pulling from the mana he was reeling in as well as his own reserves, Josef closed his eyes in preparation as he dialed the spell up to full force.

He definitely didn't want to blind himself by accident when he unleashed this magical flashbang. And flash it did, strong enough to be painful even with his eyes closed. On second thought, that one wasn't entirely on the brightness of the light, as he could feel his skin prickle all over. Maybe he shouldn't have thought about the sun when he went for this? Those rays weren't exactly harmless.

Either way, the magic had snapped into place, and the chime of a notification made sure to tell him explicitly that he had improved. Giving his eyes an added moment of recovery, he acknowledged it. Funnily enough, as much as he had always labeled the action as reading, it was more of a mental tally. Like trying to remember the contents of a textbook page during a test, but these actually came up crystal clear when needed. ☆ Light (Moderate) -> ☆☆☆ Flash (Moderate) Banisher of the dark, vanquisher of the night.

You burn away the dark with incandescent light. The emphasis really was on burn, wasn't it? Notably, he hadn't received a feat for jumping across ranks this time around, though maybe this line of magic just wasn't special enough to warrant it. After all, it didn't even appear to be aligned with any of his own affinities. Maybe that was a requirement for it to count? As the light died down enough not to be immediately blinding, Josef waved around the orb of light in his hand as he took stock of his surroundings.

He didn't even have to dim the light by much on his own, as his surroundings sucked up most of the light he emitted. Seeing how much his magic struggled to not get snuffed out even now, it was no surprise that it hadn't worked before. His expectations of the walls being flesh turned out to be pretty spot on. Only, it wasn't the classical red meat one would see at a butcher, nor any of its alternatives. This one looked much more similar to what they had seen on the floors above.

To be precise, he had seen this stuff on the skittering Rachse, which had limbs with a similar coloration. This stuff was much softer and more malleable, though, unlike the hard and spikey legs he had fought against before. Still, it was not only more solid than the wriggling parasites themselves but also more resistant to his drain, as he had learned. Josef also realized that everything around him was constantly shifting, as if reacting to his every move.

Trying to head in one direction quickly confirmed that the walls indeed moved around to make space for him, forming a corridor while the ground shifted ever so slightly to adjust his path.. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Without his light, he could have just wandered through the dark forever, without ever getting anywhere. However, he had a hard time imagining that this was the only danger he would have to deal with in this encounter.

After all, he had just demonstrated how easy it is to see through that trickery. Hopefully, the others would also find a way to deal with this in their own way. He was especially worried about Bezzo, as he couldn't remember anything the reptile could do to navigate in the dark, unlike his living torch of a brother.

As for the two elves, he wagered they could cast some sort of light spell themselves, considering its description had made it sound like some sort of baseline spell, and those two obviously had a structured upbringing. Then again, knowing was only half the battle, and he still had to find a way to break out of this strange entrapment himself. How likely was he to come across a change in scenery if he simply kept wandering without aim? Not very, but he had a way to cheat the odds.

Unlike everyone else, he wasn't truly alone in this mess, as he still had his familiars. Pretzel herself got split up from him, as she unfortunately wasn't hitching a ride on him at the time of their descent. Dusty, though, managed to stick to his side as usual, his little black form revealed under the light of his magic. Josef could have sworn his familiar wasn't there a second ago, but surprise appearances were always his thing.

The rabbit was clearly unamused and was blinking away at the assault on his eyes, as if doing so was the most natural thing in the world. For anyone else it might be, but not for this bunny and his usual unmoving stare. As if sensing his thoughts, Dusty immediately stopped, though his indignant stare remained.

"I'm sorry, alright? I'll try to warn you next time." All he got in response was a snort that sounded much too bassy to come from an animal that small.

"Let's see if we can get back to Pretzel, alright? The link feels muted, but I can roughly feel her." Her link wasn't the only one affected, but Dusty's always felt strange, so it was hard to feel the difference. Though he couldn't shake the feeling the bunny was trying to tell him something.

There wasn't an actual need to say all of that out loud, considering his familiar could likely follow along well enough with his intention, but there was something soothing about using the rabbit like a rubber ducky while feeling stressed. Maybe he could summon an actual duck as his next familiar? No, the real ones were even creepier than Dusty at night. Also, he shouldn't lose his focus like this.

Concentrating on the direction he could feel Pretzel in, Josef and his summoned companion headed towards the best they could. Which wasn't as easy as it sounded, because even though the walls made way for them, the ground always shifted to throw them off course. It was like walking against an escalator, but one that could shift around in every direction. Fortunately, he figured out a practical use for his draining magic, as he observed a particular response to using it while walking around.

Wherever he leeched energy from the walls, they ended up moving much slower, causing issues with the artificial corridor correcting itself in the face of his exploration. Apparently, he was stealing from the power grid that moved things around. It wasn't enough to fully freeze his fleshy surroundings in one place, but that would have been detrimental anyway. He required the walls to move to create a path forward, and only the course correction needed to get slowed down.

Even so, enforcing their own path was still an arduous task, forcing Josef to work his legs to keep pace with the ever-shifting layout. However, his efforts bore fruit as he could feel Pretzel's distance to him shrink significantly. Soon, what had felt like miles had shrunk down to a handful of meters, as their link grew more precise the closer he got to her. He suspected that something in this place was even interfering with his link, trying to clamp down on all methods of orientation.

Then a nagging thought hit him. Not from the serpent in front of him, who was actually rather glad for his effort to reunite with her. It was a thought that came from himself, as if a part of his brain had decided to argue with the rest of his grey matter. It was telling him that the links he shared with his familiars were based on his own mind and filled with his own emotions. Messing with that should be pretty difficult from the outside, which begged the question of how it had happened.

Dusty suddenly opened his mouth and created a noise that shouldn't exist in the physical realm. One that Josef was very familiar with, but that had only ever rung inside his own head. The chime of a notification. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the bunny wanted to signal with that sound, and he went to check for anything he had missed. Missing something that happened in your head was a pretty strange thought, but he had ignored the sound on some occasions, whenever it happened in the middle of a fight.

This time, however, he was pretty sure that there should be no new upgrades. He was wrong about that, and his scalp tingled as he read it. ☆☆☆ Mental Resistance (Moderate) -> (Exceptional) His mind was being tricked all along? How much of what he can see is even real? Where was he really? And where were the others? Josef tried to focus on himself, disregarding his untrustworthy surroundings as he focused inwards.

His link had been a weak point in this mental attack, as it was unable to completely suppress their connection. If the sense he got from it was imprecise, then that was likely because something was trying to feed him wrong information, messing up what was really there. As he concentrated on intensifying their link, filling it with his own emotions, he almost missed another notification. No, whatever this was had tried to distract him. It was still messing with his perception.

☆☆☆ Mental Resistance (Exceptional) -> (Pinnacle) Better, but still not good enough. At least he could tell that something was seriously wrong with his surroundings, as parts became blurry and unfocused. Eventually, even the ground stopped shifting, and he found himself stuck in one place. Of course he was stuck, since he relied on these walls to actually get out of his way. But was that thought his own, or another misdirection? Why did he depend on those changing surroundings? Why not make his own path?

Because he was actually stuck in place, having moved not a single inch during his perceived wanderings. He never got closer to Pretzel, and he only cleared up their connection as he focused on reaching her. She was always in the same sport, just like him. Only Dusty appeared free from this trap, staying faithfully by his side, in both body and mind. He could tell that as he looked down on the bunny, who nodded back at him, even as he felt the furry critter's weight on his shoulders.

☆☆☆ Mental Resistance (Pinnacle) -> ☆☆☆☆ Mental Resistance (Moderate) Then, he opened his eyes to reality, only to find himself surrounded by darkness and flesh once more.