Chapter 171: 3-53 Forsaken Hall I

Her stomach growled loudly and the vast room bounced the unruly noise around. Aside from the cries of her empty belly, only her ragged breaths filled the cold and deathly silence. The blood from her wounds had turned stiff and solid from the extreme chill of the air. She was pouring her whole weight onto her sword which she had stabbed into the snow, the only reason she remained on her feet. Before her lay the carcass of the strange apparition creatures she had slain. The pale freezing blood of her fallen foes laced her cracked blade. The cold had made her sword brittle but it was also her foes’ freezing blood that was keeping her blade whole. She snorted and laughed weakly at the irony, the mistress of fate. She observed her level progression;

Level: 38

Level Progression: 90%

Remaining Skill Points: 8

Remaining Ability Points: 8

She had gained a level from the countless queer foes she slew. They yielded not a measly amount of experience and Erin felt deserving of it. She had braved a peril and slew them all at her weakest. Her foes were queer but that was all the advantage they had. Once they were no longer queer and unfamiliar to Erin, she made quick work of them. At the end of the day, they were mindless monsters. They lacked the craftiness of sapients. If her opponent had been humans, they would not have fought her but instead ran around until she exhausted herself. Only then would they come and finish her off.

One of the merits of the cold was that her wounds bled only briefly before the blood turned into ice and essentially sealed her wounds. It was not ideal but she wasn’t fond of searing her wounds shut with Lightning Magic.

She didn’t enjoy taking a rest in the cold even though rest was what she needed. She also needed to move to keep herself warm. It was a dilemma and she decided on taking a rest for now until she recovered enough to limp. Her limbs were no longer as heavy as they had but that wasn’t a good thing. His limbs were light but in the sense that he started feeling less and less of them. She flexed her fingers and toes even as she sat and rested. The fur on her tails had also begun submitting to the cold. No longer were the fur fuzzy and warm but stiff and cold. She moved her tails like banners dancing in the breeze. She let her eyes close but not her mind. She kept her mind awake. The sounds of other creatures lurked near. As the tunnels and caves were cast and empty for the most part, it was hard to tell where the sounds and noises came from.

The cold still air touched her skin. Gradually, patches of ice formed on the parts of her body that were bare to the freezing cold. She melted those ice with Lightning Magic. A waste of Mana but with Mana Harvest, she was never short on it though it was still a finite endeavour. As she rested, she once again called upon the Spirits of this place but once again, they shunned her calling. Frustrated and cold, she gave up invoking the foreign Spirits that refused to even humour her. To take her mind off the numbing and chilly pain spreading across her body, she busied herself with the points she had accumulated. Eight in total for two both skill and ability points.

Without a moment’s contemplation, she allocated all of her skill points into her newly acquired Spatial Magic. She had seen Aedan’s proficiency with Spatial Magic. Much of his strength was suppressed but he could still do so much with it. Joy swept over her as she thought about the prospects of her Spatial Magic. However, her joy dwindled when she realized four points were consumed and Spatial Magic increased only by a single level. She halted herself from investing any more points into it.

She was startled by the hefty cost but she wasn’t bemused. It was only reasonable that one of the strongest and most versatile magic wouldn’t be so easily acquired or mastered. As if to agree with Erin’s assumption, a single piece of knowledge surged into her head and she winced. It had felt like a boulder being smashed into her brain when the knowledge came. Her head had never ached as it did before whenever she increased her Arcane Arts’ levels. This was the first and it left her in wonder. She acquired a new piece of knowledge but even so, she could hardly comprehend it. She understood only the name, Spatial Sense but she could grasp its purpose.

A skill that allows the user to grasp one’s surrounding with precision.

Such was the explanation given by Appraisal but it was much too vague. It read like an ability that belonged to the Innate Skills category but it wasn’t. It was a spell under Spatial Magic and it consumed Mana upon activation. As she activated the spell, her vision whirled and she almost fell if she didn’t have her sword to keep her balance. She immediately dispelled Spatial Sense.

“Too much…” she muttered. Her breaths quickened just as they started to slow. She did indeed grasp her surroundings with precision but the explanation neglected how precise it would be. It was more precise than even her tempered mind could handle. If it was a mind of some common folk, surely they would have died from the influx of details flooding into their brain. The copious details clumped in her brain just from a mere second of Spatial Sense. In response to her bulging mind, her wounds began throbbing harder than before.

[Cold Resistance Lv. 1 - Acquired]

Her eyes widened at the new Innate Skill she obtained. A godsend, to say the least, though she never believed in any of the gods, not even her own. She didn’t know if she should feel grateful or wary. It all seemed too convenient but then again, she grasped her surroundings, she grasped her situation. “Could this be a result of using Spatial Sense?” she asked herself but she didn’t know how to answer. She could use Spatial Sense again but she decided against it. In her feeble state, she doubted her mind and body could handle any more strain. And she was in no state to argue what was presented before her. She poured all of her remaining skill points into Cold Resistance and instantly, she felt warmth returning to her. Her tails became soft and fluffy as they should be. Her lungs loosened their pipes to growing warmth. She could breathe normally again. Although the cold was still extreme, at least she could move without creaking her joints like cogwheels left unoiled for years.

She allocated five points into Arcane and three points into Finesse. There was no reason for that decision. It just felt right to do so, or she simply couldn’t be bothered any longer as warmth was returning and she wanted to bath in it without her mind being troubled.

Erin allowed herself a quarter of an hour of rest and no more. She stood and readied herself when a quarter of an hour passed. The cold was still inhospitable but she could move with full function, she assuaged her despair with such reasoning. As the air was still and silent, her ears and nose couldn’t serve her directions. She could only roll the dice of fate and pick a path at random. She decided upon a tunnel that seemed to lead upwards and surprisingly, steps were built into the slope, though she would still need to be cautious as the steps were ice and ice was slippery. The tunnel was narrow but she fancied the tightness. She stabbed her tails into the walls as an extra grip in assisting her ascent up the cold and slippery steps.

“Bloody hell,” she cursed as she climbed the steps that began to spiral some way through. Her breaths broke and she began gasping. Now it wasn’t the cold that was the issue but her health. Her wounds pulsed with agony with every step. She was even drawing a drip of sweat down her temple. Her body burned with exhaustion and the cold wasn’t helping. The respite was only a respite. Her strength was already declining halfway through the climb. She veered her thoughts from her exhaustion and wounds to the two most important people in her life, Lyra and Siv. She reminisced of their nights together. She recalled how warm and soft their touches were. She wrapped her arms around her shoulder and imagined it was them she was wrapping her arms around. She squeezed her upper arms as if to make Siv squeal. The Wolf-kin was daring but she was just as meek if the position was flipped. Lyra was the opposite. She loved being the dominant one but she was destined to be bottom. Whenever she tried to reign the bed, Erin flipped her over as easily as flipping pancakes, not that she had flipped pancakes before. She could almost hear their laughter but her lapse of concentration caused her to slip. Fortunately, she merely dangled in the air as her tails prevented her from hitting the ground. She slapped herself on the cheeks as a light reproach.

The spiral steps went on forever or at least it felt like it. Erin had no way of telling how far or long she had climbed. The walls and steps looked the same no matter where she trod to, a pale blue amidst white hue. Her body felt hot and cold at the same time. The heat came from her exhaustion and the cold came from the place she got herself lost in. She didn’t where she was. All she knew was this was a mountain piled under inches of snow. Her greatest fear at the moment would be never finding the way out. She was high above lands but the inside of the mountain was like a dungeon. Every turn and corner led to nowhere. She would freak if these steps took her to a dead end. She imagined herself punching the wall until her fists bled and her body extorted of her last strength.

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As she contemplated giving up and dug her way through the sides, the steps came to an end. The spiral steps brought her to a hall. It was no cavern but a hall, a set of artificial structures carved out of the naturally formed ice and rocks. Pillars of stone laced with ice stood tall and proud despite the corrosion brought by time and weather. The carpet that stretched throughout the hallway was buried deep in snow and stones. The walls were of the mountain itself but dug and carved to frame the hall that it presently was. But none of these grandeurs was the reason Erin held her breath abruptly.

There was a battle, or battles, Erin couldn’t tell the specific but a huge battle was fought here. That, she was certain of. The evidence was the corpses and carcasses strewn about the hallway but like everything in the womb of the mountain, it was frozen. Everything was swallowed by the cold. As a seasoned participant in battles, not even she could comprehend what kind of battle had taken place. The fallen soldiers still had their banners up and there were four different sigils in total, four sides to this battle. Monsters were part of the deaths. Erin didn’t know if the beasts were merely caught in the crossing of sides or were they employed by these people.

Dread overwhelmed her as she stumbled further in and her Sixth Sense tolled in her head. She couldn’t see where or what the threat was but it was there. She half-expected the corpses and carcass to come back to life but nothing terrible as that happened.

“Another plunderer of Lady Sephrodia’s treasures?” a hollow voice resounded in the hall.

Shivers crawled across her skin and down her spine. Erin shuddered and went into her battle stance, brandishing her blade against an unseen enemy. “Wait… Sephrodia?” Erin mused to herself but she pondered only for a brief moment as her worries were set on the unseen foes.

“Greed is their bane…” said another voice, just as hollow. “Their bane will be our honour and duty.”

“Honour and duty…” It was another hollow voice.

“Honour and duty, always,” came another hollow voice but this one had a deeper tone.

“I am no plunderer,” Erin said out loud. “I’m just trying to find my way out of here.”

One of the voices chuckled. “Same words, same promises. Empty meaning, all of them.”

“My words are true,” Erin asserted. “I know nothing of this treasure you spoke of.”

“They all made the same promise but they brought their armies back.”

“Every time,” a voice affirmed.

“Every time.”

“Always.”

“Plunderers and liars. Mercy shall not be given.”

“No mercy,” the voice said in unison.

Erin sighed. “They never listen. They never do.” Erin resigned herself to another battle and gripped her hilt tightly.

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