SB: Chapter 246 – Fractured Space (Patreon)

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It was the following day and I let Boris know that I wanted to find out where the Abnormal had come from before moving on and we were taking a day off. He just shrugged and began doing physical exercises while I kept up the search.

I had Ozy methodically go over every portion of the wall and ceiling again, marking it as he went along. I checked the floor and marked it as well. After half a day we had gone through the entire chamber and nothing.

At the moment I was standing where the Abnormal had appeared in the chamber, trying to figure things out. Boris kept up his exercises, completely ignoring my antics. The man truly had muscles for brains or was just that focused. I had to give him quite a bit of credit for not even asking me what I was doing or making any kind of comment.

I blocked out all my skills except Spatial Sense. I had a vague impression of the chamber around me. Boris was moving, Ozy was resting off to the side. I kept slowly turning around and tilting my head, trying to spot something, anything.

Even after ten minutes, I didn’t give up. That Abnormal had to come from somewhere. The dungeon might have a lot of rules that were really just guidelines, but it didn’t create monsters in front of people. That Abnormal had to have been already formed. If I was wrong, then that would overturn a substantial bit of dungeon knowledge and history.

As I slowly moved about at the hour mark, I still couldn’t pick up anything out of the ordinary.

It was at the two hour mark, that I finally felt something, my perseverance paying off. There was something off to one side. I slowly approached and circled that position with my eyes closed. There was definitely something there.

“Ozy, come here,” I said out loud and focused on our bond. He flew over and began to look where I had sensed something. Ozy used his Alchemic Bounded Field and agitated the surrounding space where I had sensed something.

Mana began to burn in the air as red flames and then split apart, creating a portal. Ozy hadn’t done that, it was a natural reaction for whatever this was after being poked by Ozy’s skill.

Looking through the flaming portal, there was blackness and moving platforms. It was a legendary sub-dungeon. An insanely hard trial created by the dungeon, with an above average natural treasure for this layer. They were rare and finding one was even harder.

With how well it was hidden, if someone didn’t spend countless hours looking, even a legend would never be able to find this location. Opening it also required a skill to agitate space as well.

I approached the flaming portal and took a better look. There were floating platforms moving about and much higher up in the air was a platform that had a beam of light shining down on it in the dark void. There was probably a chest up there with something good. The portal seemed incredibly stable, but that didn’t mean anything. It could be on a timer, or connected to something else.

The question was, did I risk going after the natural treasure in this sub-dungeon? Whatever decision I had to make, I knew I needed to do it in the next couple of seconds. Waiting would help nothing. If I was going to go, I needed to go. If I wasn’t, then I shouldn’t even consider it.

I could feel Ozy wary of the portal for some reason. Some base instinct he maintained as a monster. Well monsters normally stayed away from natural treasures, so that could be the reason, or it could be something else. I didn’t have enough information.

Hesitation was weakness.

I did what my mother would have done. I raced forward through the burning portal. I crossed it onto a floating platform. My senses began to go haywire and gravity began shifting.

The movement of the platforms changed as I leapt to another one, trying to figure out my route to where the natural treasure was located. There was nothing but inky blackness outside of the platforms. I had no doubt that if I fell off, I would have a horrible death.

I leapt from platform to platform, slowly getting closer. The occasional glance back showed that the portal was still there. After about three minutes, and one really close call as gravity shifted, forcing me to quickly scramble around the edge of the platform, I managed to reach the platform with the beam of light and a chest on it. I felt slightly unsteady on my feet and rejected the Tier 1 skill Coordinated Balance.

While it was tempting to grab up such a skill, that would lead to even more skill bloat. While there were movement skills like Dancing Skills, consolidating them was difficult. Stats were objectively better for moving about or using a spell skill. It was more important to be able to deal damage than run around with skills.

The skill wouldn’t have increased my speed. It would have made me slightly better at dealing with uneven platforms. And one could learn skills, without a system related skill. It was just harder. A skill provided a framework someone could work off of and build up on. But it wasn’t necessary for a lot of things. It was only once a person got to Tier 3 skills that the subtle use of Mana became much more impactful. That Mana use was the most difficult thing to replicate.

Also, I had Dancing Skills maximized at Tier 1. There were movement skills I could get that didn’t have much overlap to eventually combine with that skill. But that was far off at the moment. Improving that to Focused Dancing Skills wouldn’t be worthwhile. There was no known movement super skill like Weapons Mastery or Runic Mastery. Another reason movement skills weren’t as popular.

I didn’t pick up any traps or anything off about the chest as I quickly inspected it. Even if I checked 99 of them safely, I would still check the 100th chest just to be sure. I opened it up, hoping for a soul fruit. Inside the chest was a single large white feather. Hopefully it was something good. I quickly put it in my spatial pouch and began the return journey.

Gravity was mostly oriented the same way as back in the dungeon, at least going up. Now going down, the gravitational shifts became much worse. At least it was like a swing, instead of an immediate sudden change, so as long as I paid attention and moved to the correct side of the platforms, I didn’t disappear into the blackness to my death.

I reached the platform right before the flaming red portal and pulled out my sword. I stabbed it into the platform right in front of the portal. The blade sank into the stone and became an anchor point. I was just too curious to exit immediately.

“Light Orb. Light Orb.”

The spell skills flew into the blackness. Just as they were about to run out of Mana, they hit a liquid like substance, that looked like tar. The Mana was quickly removed and the light orbs winked out of existence. My Danger Sense began to rapidly increase. Time to get out of here. I yanked my sword free and leapt through the portal.

The moment I crossed back through the flaming portal, it snapped shut behind me. I noticed that Boris had glanced over at me, but kept working out, not saying anything. The portal could have triggered by the number of times someone passed through, or it just closed once the natural treasure was removed.

I pulled out the large white feather and began carefully inspecting it. It was about the size of my arm and incredibly stiff. I would have to put some effort into bending it or damaging it anyway.

An uncommon natural treasure that I couldn’t recognize. There was quite a bit of Mana in it, putting it at Tier 3 for sure, possibly Tier 4. But how to use it specifically or its purpose, I would need a professional to take a look at it first. Artifact Analysis was a Tier 3 skill that one could get by combining lore skills at Tier 2.

While my lore skills had made quite a bit of progress, there was still a ways to go. And even with that Tier 3 skill, there was no guarantee I would be immediately able to determine what this natural treasure did. That skill helped a lot more with stuff created by people, not by the dungeon.

Here was another example why people didn’t match up Abnormals with natural treasures. A hidden sub-dungeon that was nearly impossible to find would make a person doubt such a connection existed. Even my mother had never encountered one during her time in the dungeon.

The dungeon might be reacting to me finding the previous natural treasures. While there was no proof the dungeon was alive, I was coming to believe so, since it seemed to counter my actions. Not just the last fight but trying to reduce the value of the knowledge I had gained from the beastkin Whiteclaw.

There had to be a reason that Whiteclaw hadn’t been in the dungeon going after one natural treasure after another. If I hadn’t had other things to deal with, that was what I would be doing. While the white feather was an unknown, I had no doubt it had a lot of value. A natural treasure of the dungeon was always valuable.

As for what the tar like blackness was in the sub-dungeon area, I had no idea. But I had felt my Mana being instantly pulled out of my light orbs. The entire sub-dungeon was probably a pocket space surrounded by such a substance. One mis-step and I truly would have been dead.

But that was the life of an adventurer. If I wasn’t willing to put my life on the line when there were major benefits, I had no reason to be down here. My mother had offered a more peaceful life, but I chose this career path.

Another thing I would have to look up at the College and probably get a handful of coins for. While it wasn’t a lot of money, it was enough to make writing up a report worthwhile. I had no doubt other legends and top adventurers felt the same way. Why turn down free money when I just had to spend ten minutes writing about what I had seen and experienced?

Once I found out what the white feather did, I would add that onto my report. That would be an easy 100 or 300 gold with how rare sub-dungeons were. But then it would raise the question of how I knew where to look. I really didn’t want to give up that piece of information about natural treasures being related to Abnormals or even hint at it. Something I would have to think about.

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