Second Floor
With myself now recovered, we could continue the dungeon crawl...
Right after I was interrogated for my method of purging the rot from my body.
And after finding out how, they dropped the topic faster than an eagle diving.
When we were done, I was taken to inspect the loot that had dropped from the boss monster.
They explained that there was an unusual number of drops for a boss monster. Maybe it was because of the fact that it became more powerful by being turned undead, or something along those line.
Plus, since I was the one who basically dealt with the whole thing, I was allowed to take whatever I wanted first. And looking at the small pile, I realised that there was indeed an overabundance of loot.
"Oh, one thing that I felt might benefit you the most would be this." Denosin said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small blue orb.
It reminded me of that second entity next to Nachash, and I felt this inexplicable attraction towards this orb.
The next thing I know was that I had enveloped his entire hand.
"!!!" *SHLRP* *POP*
He pulled his hand out of my mouth and shouted, "What the fuck!?! What the hell was that for?! You could have just taken it, why did you do that!?!"
Before I could respond, I felt something within me awakening.
And then both my vision and my mind turned white.
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(Cythistia POV)
As Denosin pulled out an orb from his pocket, I saw something in Traytora's eyes change, and the next thing I knew, she had swallowed his whole fist. He quickly pulled his hand out, without the orb, and began shouting furiously at Traytora.
I could see her preparing to respond but before she could, she suddenly started glowing before a concentration of some weird blue energy shot out from her eyes as she started floating upwards. She was nearly half a meter off the ground before the glowing and the energy beams stopped and she fell right back down.
Everyone was too stunned to do anything, not understanding what in the seven hells just happened. Nobody was moving, not us, not the rest of the team, not even Traytora herself.
And then she just shook her head, and looked around as if she'd just woken up.
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(Traytora POV)
My mind turned white before it faded away and I was floating in space, looking at the stars.
I don't like this place, it brings back bad memories.
'I don't want to go back there. I don't want to relive that. I don't want to feel that again.'
Then the space shifted, and I was greeted with a massive nebula made from purple and blue coloured starlight, I think. The nebula looked like a living constellation as it weaved through the endless night sky, before stopping, and presumably turning to look at me.
I then felt it getting closer, no... I was getting closer to it.
But I didn't get far before it exploded and a wave of power came crashing over me. Part of it entered my body, and became my own.
After that, my vision turned white again, and my mind blanked out.
When I came to, I was back in the boss room and everyone was looking at me weirdly. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. I looked around and wondered what was wrong when a notification popped up right in my face.
[Ding!]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the [Space] Affinity and can now perform [Astromancy]!]
'Huh? S-Space magic? W-What?'
I was so incredibly stupefied by the message in front of me that I didn't pay attention to anything else until a hand landed on my shoulder, scaring me and making me jump away in fright.
It was only Cythistia who seemed worried about me. She asked if anything was wrong but I told her that I was fine, which I was.
Denosin then shook his head and asked once again, "You still haven't answered my question. What was with you earlier, swallowing my hand?"
I shrank back sheepishly when I was confronted with that question and responded with, 'I don't know, I just felt like it was a piece of me and that I wouldn't be complete without it. Plus, it probably came from one of my skills that potentially allows me to unlock more of my inner potential.'
"Hahh... So it came from a unique skill of yours? And did you even gain anything out of it" He sighed.
I nodded.
"Well... I guess you can choose something that actually came from the boss then, considering that it was yours in the first place."
Looking back at the pile I could see mostly bones, but also a few trinkets here and there, as well as a couple of weapons made from the monster's hide.
I searched through the pile but found nothing of interest so I relinquished my right to an item and let everyone else take what they wanted from the loot pile. As for whatever wasn't used, it would end up being sold back in the city.
Once everyone had their share of the loot, we headed through the doors and down to the second floor.
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After descending another set of steps that scraped at my scales like sandpaper on metal. It wasn't all that effective, but it sure was annoying.
Regardless, we made it to the second floor and what greeted us was more stone. Except this time, it was darker and seemed to be carved out into shapes, mainly square and rectangular.
It also seemed that this floor suppressed light to an extent. The flames were not as bright as they should have been, despite being the same size as they were earlier.
With everyone bunched up together, even with the torches on the very edge of our formation, we could barely see the edge of the room, which was two times smaller than the first room of the first floor.
Still, it was enough space for us to set up a camp that would serve as our base of operations until we had fully explored this new area.
We then finished off the day with a meal and went to bed.
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The next few days were the same as before, explore the tunnels, kill any monsters that we encountered and be cautious of the undead.
During this time, we found that the deeper we went into the tunnels, the less effective the torches were. Another thing that we noticed is that the stone got darker the deeper we went.
This most certainly wasn't a coincidence.
At some point, my platoon came across another deposit of water, and just like last time, I scanned it with my new [Mana Detection].
What I found was that in the lake, there were less fish than the previous one. There was also a hole that led somewhere else all the way at the bottom.
There was also something off about the water itself, but I couldn't quite tell what it was. I then reported all of this to Denosin and he came to the conclusion that these "lakes" were on each floor and were connected with one another.
We returned to exploring the tunnels shortly after and not a lot happened after that. We killed monsters and undead, which actually seemed bigger in number compared to before, which was somewhat worrying, but otherwise we finished searching this floor in another couple of days and took another day to bring everyone here.
When we were all gathered in front of the boss room, we all prepared ourselves for probably another fight against an undead creature.
Prepared and ready for any surprises we might find, we opened the doors and entered the room.