Vivid Stars Online

The cave loomed in front of us, the purple light from within just barely visible against the morning sun. Snow had fallen since I was last here, hiding the evidence of my fight with the wyvern.

Only small tracks dotted the area around the cave mouth, suggesting that nothing large had taken up residence. Well, nothing in this part of the cave, at least.

I was still concerned about whatever had injured the wyvern so badly. It would have to be a mighty beast to have done so with the creature at full strength, and I could only hope that our upgraded gear would be sufficient to handle it.

“It certainly looks ominous enough,” Linnea laughed as she spoke next to me. “That light is from the moss you told me about, right?”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “I’m pretty sure it’s carrying the power of the rift throughout the cave. I don’t know if it’s a natural phenomenon or something else, though it certainly reacts to attacks quickly.”

“That’s how we’re going to find the source,” I continued as I began striding inside. “It will take a few more tests to be sure, but I’m pretty confident that the moss will be healed from the direction closest to the power source.”

“Got it,” she nodded from beside me. “So we use that to track our way through the caves. If we do it each time there’s a split, we should be able to navigate toward the source.”

I turned to respond, only to duck out of the way as one of the smaller wyverns flew over my head.

“Helmets on,” I ordered while taking my advice. “We should assume the whole area’s a combat zone down here.”

With our new gear, the four wyverns that came at us were easy pickings. They were entirely unable to make it through my armor and were only able to scour lines into Linnea’s.

It was an easy start to our journey downward, though I was careful not to let it make me complacent.

The map of the cave I’d made last time helped our trip downward, allowing us to ignore several dead-ends or loops that I’d stumbled into last time. Once we were an hour in I tested the moss for the first time.

I would have done it earlier, but I wasn’t confident that the moss would be able to regenerate infinitely. I knew how expensive creating matter was from my own abilities, so I had to imagine that there would be some limit to it.

The last thing I needed was to tap out its ability before we found the rift, leaving us to wander aimlessly while it recovered. To that end, I also experimented with dealing less significant damage than last time.

I found several things during these experiments. First, any damage that didn’t break the connection across an area at least half the size of a wall healed at a much slower rate, taking minutes instead of seconds. It also didn’t seem to be directional, like the first burst of healing I’d seen, making it useless for our needs.

Second, even if you broke enough connections you had to do enough damage to slow the healing down. When I tried cutting a line down the wall with my new Psi sword, the damage healed so quickly that I wasn’t able to discern the direction.

“Big explosion it is then,” I sighed with a shake of my head. “Make sure you stay back,” I continued as I turned to Linnea. She nodded in confirmation, backing away and turning to look for any monsters that might be attracted by the noise.

I was more familiar with the empowered shots from my Psi pistol, so I drew that and focused on channeling energy into it. I wouldn’t need a full-sized blast for what I wanted, so I fired the shot as it reached half the maximum capacity.

The blast flew forward and scorched a ten-foot patch of moss off the world. The reaction was almost immediate, as a surge of energy flowed from our left, regenerating the moss as it went.

“Left it is then,” I said with a grin, happy that my calculations had worked. It was a level of energy expenditure that I could easily maintain with breaks in between, and the strength of the blasts was low enough that I wasn't worried about a cave-in.

We moved off to the left and performed another test fifteen minutes later. It wasn’t quite as often as Linnea had suggested when talking about every split in the road, but I felt that this was a safer bet.

We spent two days moving like this. At first, we traveled through areas that I had already explored, before we moved out into tunnels that branched off from the direction I’d gone.

I wasn’t even in the right area, I thought with a rueful shake of my head. So much for wandering until I found it. I'd still be down there now if I hadn’t returned to the surface.

It was nearing the end of the second day when things changed. I was checking the direction on a curved area of the cave wall and the resulting surge of regrowth came from both directions.

“Huh,” I mused out loud. “I guess that means we’re finally getting close to it. Close enough that both directions here are equally strong.”

“Finally indeed,” Linnea responded with a shake of her head. “I don’t know how you stayed sane down here on your own, it's hard enough with the two of us together.”

“It was pretty rough,” I responded with a shrug. “I’m glad to have you with me this time.”

Without a clear direction, I picked left at random and we began to follow the wall around. It looped around for about ten minutes before coming back to the same place.

“Inside, do you think?” Linnea asked, gesturing toward the wall. “If it’s inside a hidden cave, it would explain why it was undisturbed for so long.”

“That would make sense, yeah,” I said, rubbing my chin as I stared at the wall. “Hopefully there’s some way inside, I would hate to risk trying to blow our way in.”

Given the short distance involved, we decided to loop around again, looking more closely for a way inside. We had nearly returned all the way around again before Linnea pointed something out.

“Does that area of moss look denser to you?” She asked, pointing toward a particularly dark path on the wall.

“It does, yes,” I responded distractedly, as I moved toward the spot. Reaching forward, I found that my hand sunk into the moss before reaching into a gap behind it. I groped around, eventually locating the edges of the tunnel.

It was large enough to squeeze through, but so tight my old self would have run screaming at the very thought of pushing through it. How things have changed, I thought with a snort as I began pushing my way inside.

With a bit of effort, I got my head and shoulders inside, after which the difficulty decreased. Every inch of the tunnel was covered in smooth, slightly damp moss that helped to grease my passage forward.

It was a hard and scary few minutes of pushing and dragging before I emerged into a glittering room. The spherical walls were covered in crystals reflecting purple light across the area in dizzying patterns.

The floor was covered in a thick layer of moss that stretch from one side of the little space to the other. And in the middle sat a pulsing rift, larger than any I’d seen before.

Power radiated off it, enough that I had to partially shut down my senses to cope, and it sent the moss around it rippling with every surge of power.

“We made it,” I called back quietly while moving away from the entrance. “Looks like it was worth all the effort as well.”

Linnea pulled herself out a moment later, only to pause and stare around at the room. “It's beautiful,” she breathed quietly. “A bit eerie, sure, but amazing nonetheless. If you could get tourists down here you’d make a fortune.”

“I think it’s a bit early to be thinking about that,” I responded with a laugh. “Though it’s an idea for the future for sure,” I continued, my tone contemplative. “If we build the area up enough it might become something of an attraction, particularly with an impressive centerpiece like this.”

I would have to look up the exact rules for wild rifts and what I could do with the surrounding area. Now that I was a noble, I felt like there would be more leeway in what I could do, and Linnea was right that this would be amazing for normal people to see.

From what I’d been able to tell, most Psionic-related areas and artifacts were kept well away from the public, with a few exceptions like the portals between cities. A place of natural power like this could be quite the attraction, revealing a hint of what was possible.

That was for the future, however, most likely a long time in the future. What I had to decide on now was which of my two wild rift abilities to upgrade. I had briefly considered getting a new ability entirely, however, I was already hurting for skills.

I would need a new one for Enhance Cognition in less than two weeks, and there was no way I’d be able to get a second skill point available by then. As it was, I would have to cannibalize one of my general skills using all of my upgrade points.

That left me the choice between Ethereal Roots or Skin Hardening. On the one hand, increasing my defensiveness with a more powerful Skin Hardening was nice, while on the other boosting my Ethereal Roots would greatly increase my crowd-control ability.

In the end, my new armor was the deciding factor. It already greatly increased my defensive ability to the point where I was only hurt by the most dangerous beasts we came across. While upgrading my defensive ability might help to hold off those as well, it would do little for my fighting style overall.

Ethereal Roots, however, had become a core component of my style. Whenever we fought multiple enemies I tied two of them up with roots to keep them out of the fight. Against more powerful foes, it often provide a crucial opening before it was ripped apart.

I hoped that increasing the ability would provide stronger roots, and potentially increase the number of enemies I could target as well. Either option would be an amazing upgrade to my skillset.

Nodding, I turned back toward Linnea. “I’m going to start using the rift. I’m not entirely sure what will happen with it being so large, so it may be safer to go back and keep watch on the entrance.”

“Right,” she said, taking a final glance around the little room. “I remember what it was like that time we stayed in the ritual chamber with you. That was unpleasant enough that I wouldn’t want to repeat it.”

“Just stay safe,” she continued, leaning in to rest her helmeted head against my breastplate.

“I will,” I whispered back as I pulled her into an awkward hug. We stayed there for a few moments before she pulled away and began wiggling back into the tunnel.

I gave her a few moments to get out before settling down in front of the rift. It pulsed with so much energy that connecting with it was trivial and I was soon drawing the power into me.

It was a struggle to contain it all, and I had a feeling that this would have been a very bad idea if I’d been weaker or less experienced than I was. With my current strength, I was able to enforce my will, however, focusing it in the direction I wanted.

Upgrade Ethereal roots, I thought as the energy surged through me. Reinforce that pattern and leave everything else alone.

Never before had I felt the chaotic energies of a wild rift so clearly. I could feel how it wanted to tear me apart and put me back together differently, to mutate me just like it mutated the Beasts throughout the cave.

But my Will held strong as we struggled for hours until, eventually, the energy settled around a much-diminished rift. Groaning, I pulled myself up, glancing around at the dimmed cave.

It was still an impressive sight, however, it was clear that I had greatly impacted the rift in the middle of it. Nothing for it though, I thought with a shake of my head as I pulled up my notifications.

To my shock, Ethereal Roots had increased not once, but twice, past Acolyte and all the way to Journeyman. It wasn’t an outcome that I’d expected, but I supposed that it was a logical conclusion to using such a powerful rift.

That’s going to be a big help, I mused with a grin as I turned to regroup with Linnea. Then my face fell as I noticed the moss around me withering away before an enraged screech echoed through the tunnels.

It looked like the rift hadn’t been quite as unused as I’d thought.