LIGHTNOVELONLINE C16 The Descent
It was within the darkness that he felt safest. No matter the eerie sounds that crept from the darkness below and beyond him. The darkness of the caverns swept across him as a thick blanket keeping him safe. He regretted the idea of having to create a light again, to show his shameful face to the world around him.
Instead, he experimented with his eldritch eyes. They had already begun to allow him to see within the ordinary darkness of night. There was a problem though, the night was not true darkness, this was. Within the night a thousand lights shone. The moon being quite bright, not to mention that great star filled sky that always escorted it along its journey each and every night.
Here, there were no stars, not a single one, and no moon to shine brightly. Here, there was nothing. Nothing but Ren and whatever made sounds from the depths below.
Channeling mana into his eyes, he gave the willful intent for them to see. When nothing changed, he sighed. Again, he tried infusing mana into his own eyes, this time activating eldritch eyes. Forcing an overage of mana into eldritch eyes forced them to begin bleeding like the first time he had empowered them. Just with the illusion of the shapeshifter way-back-when, his eyes started to burn terribly. As if being remade in his face they morphed. Infusing more and more mana, trying to force his vital energies to heal his eyes, the pain suddenly stopped.
Two voids sat in his face, they sapped at his mana as they traced the essence of the world around him. The eyes of the void saw into all things. Within the void, there was no light. Instead, these “eyes” devoured a small trace of the ambient mana and essences surrounding him. Half lidded, his black eyes pulled in only a small amount. As his eyes widened, he felt at the nature of all things around him. His senses overwhelmed; he kept his eyes at a tight squint. Even at this level he could read the room around him.
With newfound vision he saw in essence the trace of the world around him. A black sheet laid across the world, though the outline of it all was traced in colors his eyes had never known before. His body, a black pool of oil, surrounded by a tracing of something like red, but was not quite red. The walls, gray and brown tracing that showed the basic contours of its shape.
With new sight, he stepped forwards into the darkness that blanketed him. The cavern opened further to allow him to finally stand straight. As he walked, he activated stealth and felt his own red trace diminish. It was still there, the small outline of himself, but now the darkness around himself and oily blackness that he perceived as his own body was blurred.
The slope began to inch further and further downwards until it seemed nearly vertical. Peering down he saw the outline of a dark insectoid being. Eight legged and with massive pincers, was building a tunnel in the side of the wall. Sticky resin bound the top rim of the tunnel as if it was preparing to attach something to the entrance. Is it building an ambush hole?
Ren pulled out his revolver while looking down nearly three-hundred feet at the bug. He prepared a sneak attack while studying the bug. It was nothing he could remember, if remembering was something he was truly capable of.
Repeating his activation of analysis combined with eldritch eyes he was able to read the power of the insect.
Assassin Arachnid Lvl 6 Tier 01
Tier 01? Like me, an ascendant, though were the ax beak runners, or the great bear? The great bear had to have been if I remember right what Hollwin said, nearly to its second I believe.
Activating his sneak attack, he fired a blow into the bug. Unlike the accuracy of a revolver from a non-magical world, this one hit true despite the distance. His very will empowered the shots, his mana infused into it with sneak attack. Even if the amount was miniscule, it affected the bullet, making it fly true.
With his increased levels, the arachnid was blown apart. Split at its thorax, its limbs falling apart by the sheer amount of power behind his attack. He would have to kill a lot of little bugs like this so even notice much strain, let alone gain any levels.
He continued down the cavern; its slope would have been impossible for him to climb down in the past. Now, his dexterity and increased strength made him able to flow down it like water.
Reaching further into the depths he stopped to listen for anything within the darkness. No shouts from above calling for his death, and nothing scratching its way through the darkness below him.
With his new sight he caught a glimpse of the faint trace of another small ambush tunnel built into the wall. As an experiment, he wanted to try using his first firebolt.
The segmented bolt shortly formed floating above his hand. With a mental command it fired forth, silently, yet deadly. It slammed home into the hidden entrance of the assassin arachnid’s lair.
The bug busted out of its small home. Large pinchers and sharp front legs slammed open the sealed burrow. Jumping, it was burned slightly by the blaze that burst on its front door.
Assassin Arachnid Lvl 7
Ren fired a sneak attack as the creature was distracted, the shot blasted through the insectoid face of the arachnid. It fell to the ground twitching before the bug ceased its struggling.
Ren smirked, well that worked, happy with himself he continued his descent further into the darkness. This cloak and stealth ability made him nearly invisible to even himself. Though he did not understand how it might affect the senses of creatures adapted to the depths of such a place.
If a creature detected by movement in the air with fine feelers, would he still be stealthed? What if the animal read heat signatures, was that masked? Or even by smell, would a giant bloodhound be able to find him? Wait, what is a bloodhound? Shit, I can’t remember.
He let himself fall a short distance down the heavy slope. His intensified grip grabbed at a rock and stopped him from falling into the darkness. Man, this is ridiculous, how strong was that paladin guy anyways?
When he gazed into the paladin using his analysis combined with eldritch eyes, he had seen what looked like an insurmountable mountain weight down upon him. The power ascension brought, the ‘tiers’ he gained, or should eventually gain so long as he survived what would likely be a national manhunt, could bring infinite growth. One could become a God or even an ancient eldritch being that could devour even such great ones as them.
Well, Ren didn’t know if a person could become an eldritch God, something so vast and ancient it could send someone like him to be the key to devouring universes. It was better not to consider the fate of becoming such as them.