ALEXiThymiA: Chapter 72: Stage Four (1)

<<<<Author's Note: I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you all for reading. Happy Holidays, and I hope you have a great relaxing day today. 

Also, I wanted to say thank you all for taking time from your busy schedules to join me in my telling of this story.

>>>>

Chapter 72

Stage Four (1)

Thursday Night – Friday Morning

Being forced to wait was never one of Alexa’s strong points. While she never felt the impulse need to do things to cause problems, like most children her age did. She did feel a stark need to constantly push herself. This was years of work and dedication spent on getting and earning augmentation crystals coming  back to haunt her. That constant work ethic, that constant drive to improve, for the off chance that it would lead to possible crystals now made up the very core of her being. In fact, she was so overwhelmed by the want to do things, to improve herself that when she was given a forced four hour break from the dungeon, she felt lost.

For the first time in a long time, she felt lost.

For the first time in a long time, Alexa realized she had nothing to do. Nothing pressing to study for as most of her classwork was ridiculously easy for her. Also, there were no augmentation crystals for finishing first, so that wasn’t a motivating factor to improve.

Part of her wanted to take a nap right then and there, using her watch to set a timer to wake her.  She would just rest her back against the dungeon wall, a dungeon that spat her out moments ago and all but barred her from reentering.

Looking at the dungeon entrance Alexa could see that it was slowly powering up its ability to connect to the external system. That would be Alexa’s only use for this dungeon going forward. Of course, this meant she would soon need to expand the scope of what she did and where.

While she waited, she realized a few more facts that came from her previous dungeon run. The first was that the overall prize of the dungeon, for clearing it out properly was what was referred to as a Tier II Skill Crystal. With that, she wondered if all Tier II dungeons offered such rewards. Did Tier III dungeons offer Tier III crystals that were 200+% improvements to skills? If so, that meant going into dungeons and solving them correctly was more important than ever. As the level of understanding she gained from that one Tier II crystal was profound.

At this point, Alexa realized that she could use part of this time to practice her newfound understanding of combat techniques. At the very least, she felt that practicing this would not be a waste of time. Even though she had four hours to kill, she knew that wasting them, or not using this time properly would just create bad habits. Habits that would spiral on if she let them. She was not tired, her nap earlier today meant she could go for another two days, minimum. But that was before she got all of her recent boosts. She realized she would need to push herself here shortly to see how long she could now go without sleep. This was of course dangerous, especially if she did so in this dungeon as the only act she could do here was continue her Trials of Ascension. At that she knew the Trials of Ascension were a double edged sword, as completing them would mean she could unlock a class finally, even before her eighteenth birthday. Completing the trials early also meant that she would never be able to enter this dungeon again.

That last part was a minor concern in the grand scheme of things, but still a concern. Without a ready access to a local dungeon, what was she supposed to do? There were other higher ranked dungeons nearby, but those would be… She trailed off, as she realized that when she received her class, she would be able to enter those dungeons. Dungeons that would offer greater rewards and likely Tier III skill crystals, or something equally comparable. With that thought, Alexa who was still under the influence of the skill crystal she just consumed smiled at the thought.

That was another reason she felt she couldn’t leave this tunnel. She was still under the influence of a crystal, and walking back along campus grounds meant she would be in Mr. Mackie’s lair.

Thus, at least until her crystalline high wore off, she decided to practice. She would split her time. Half her time would go towards using her newfound combat techniques. The rest of her time would go towards improving her new class of Magic.

Remembering how much trouble she had while casting magic while under the influence of emotions earlier in the day, she decided to use now as a time to focus on magic. Magic was not easy to cast when she was emotional, each failure seemed to compound the initial issue of failure. When she lost her emotional state, it was easier to focus on what she was doing wrong and improving. Unfortunately, Alexa knew that life was never that easy, that eventually she would come to a point in time when she needed to be able to cast magic while feeling emotions. During those times, she did not want to falter or hesitate like she was doing now. Which was why she chose now to focus on improving her Creation magic. She already knew she could fight while under the influence of emotions, that much was a given fact. In fact, that was one of the few things that she felt oddly comfortable with. Casting on the other hand was an entirely different animal.

Sitting down, she focused her mind and began trying to form the spell structures in her mind. She had reached Tier II, which she knew meant she could fuse two different elements into one mixture. Part of her wanted to try creating bronze by fusing together tin and copper. She also knew that steel was a possibility now if she fused wrought iron and cast iron, but seeing as she was having a hard time with just creating iron, she chose not to go to such lengths.

Instead, she focused her mind on just creating iron. Then once that became easy, well easier. She turned iron into first a bar. Then began focusing on creating different shapes and designs. Once she made iron form a small statue. She got up, dusted herself off, and began running through workout poses and exercises.  She made sure to work on her exercises for exactly as long as she practiced her magic.

Beep.

With the watch letting her know she had met time. She paused, sat down to drink some water and eat a power bar, making sure to place her wrapper in her trash pocket. Then with her self-maintenance portion done, she gave a quick glance at the time.

12:02 AM

Seeing the time, she had just under two and a half hours left to wait. Making sure to set 2:30 as a timer for her watch. She began going through her practices again. The idea was simple, it was easy to continue when you remembered the processes, or when you were hit by a moment of inspiration. But she knew that true mastery only came when you could get up from a task, only to come back and be able to pick up right where you left off.

Alexa was not there, but she did find it easier to once again start creating iron than before. While she had seemingly lost part of her control on directing the shaping of iron, the creation of iron was still rather easy. Well at least it was easier than it had been. She got to the part where she could once again direct the growth of iron, when she got up to do her stretches again.

2:07 AM

That was a lot longer than she had expected, but she wasn’t overly surprised. Still this was good as it made sure she would be fully stretched out by the time the auxiliary dungeon was reconnected with this dungeon.

Again, part of her marveled at the way these dungeons were created. How they were able to reconnect to moving particles in space. So many different complex equations had to be going on all at once to make such feats possible. Of course these thoughts were little more than minor distractions to keep her mind focused and engaged while she worked through the forms that seemed to be ingrained in her mind. Forms that she found her mind knowing, even if her body didn’t quite get to the right position at first. There were a lot of nuances with the unarmed combat forms she had received. Most involved not just moving a hand to a particular location but focused on the process of how her hand got to that point. The torque, the speed, the angle, everything had to be perfect, a process that Alexa appreciated, even when it meant performing the same strike over and over again until she got it right. She knew just like with magic, the more she used it the easier it would become.

Also, she wondered if there was more, she could do with her other schools of magic. So far she had been rather limited in her approach to the schools of magic. While she knew she could do almost anything with the schools, there was a difference between understanding one’s capabilities and another for performing up to one’s capabilities.

While this might be too soon to start trying to change her process with magic for this stage of her Trials of Ascension, she knew there might be a time when she needed to push herself even further. While she could easily overpower a lot of mages, she knew that Power and Skill were two completely different fields. Right now, Alexa knew she didn’t have the requisite skill needed to use her magic to its fullest. What she was now doing with her Creation magic school was testament to that, as she realized that by forcing her mind through these exercises, she was learning valuable techniques that could be used in her improving her other schools of magic.

Magic as she could understand of it at least was something that was only bound by the creativity of the wielder. Thus, the only thing keeping her back from truly amazing feats was the fact that she wasn’t pushing herself hard enough. As she came to this realization, she felt it was a fair criticism. She had lucked out on being able to use magic at its maximum stage, while never quite understanding the purposes that the lower tiers were meant to instill. These lower stages weren’t meant to be a hinderance to her growth, but rather help her understand how she could work on simple tasks to improve her understanding of the very essence of her school of magic.

Ding.

Her alarm went off, letting her know it was now 2:30.

Stopping herself, she turned to look at the dungeon entrance, only to see that it was now glowing again. Taking a deep breath, she realized that now was the time to go forward. After this, she would be one step closer to unlocking the constraints of not having a class. With that one requirement out of the way, she would be able to go into bigger dungeons. Dungeons that she was only now starting to see the secrets of.

Grabbing her backpack, she once again forced a mouthful of water down, and a second power bar. She didn’t know when the next time she would get a moment to eat would be, so she made sure to eat and drink now.

With her forced physical maintenance out of the way, she again put in her wrapper in its trash pocket and moved forward.

Tingle.

This time she thought she could feel the odd difference in the way the dungeon warped around her. There was a slightly colder aspect to this, almost like she was being sent farther way. While this made sense, she didn’t know if this was actually the case, or if this was just a symptom of her mind trying to identify differences. Now that she knew she was going to go to the fourth stage of her Trials of Ascension, she tried to see if there were ways she could tell the difference between the two.

For her part, she thought she could tell a difference. Going to the regular dungeons felt sort of warm, while going to the trials always left a cold sensation on her skin, not much of a change. The effect was more subtle than she would expect, but it did seem to add a bit of foreboding to the scene.

Also, with her Eyes of the Architect she could see that the color and brightness being displayed were somewhat muted compared to the bright colors of a regular dungeon. Again, something subtle, but something that avid spelunkers would easily identify on a subconscious level. Looking at the dimmed lighting, Alexa found herself wondering if this and the slight decrease in temperature were designed to make the trial taker feel ill at ease. Again, these were just observations, and it could very well be that this dungeon event was solely set up with this in mind, but Alexa wasn’t quite so certain that this was the case.

Still, Alexa had little time to ponder this, as she was instantly met with system messages.

Now Beginning Stage IV of the Trials of Ascension.

Quest: Signs of War: Off in the distance you can see signs that armies from both sides (Orcs and Elves) are marching on the peaceful village of Apocalypsis. You need to head off the invasion, while protecting the inhabitants of the village from the impending war.

Waring: At least one villager must survive the incoming battle to be considered victorious.

Quest Status: 100 / 100 villagers remaining.

Timer: Time remaining until first contact: 5 Hours 59 Minutes...

Well the name of the village was a bit ominous, making Alexa wonder if something truly bad would happen if all 100 villagers did in fact die during this siege. Looking at the village, it was built right in the middle of a mountain pass. From all sides Alexa could see jagged peaks and mountains going off in all directions. Just as before, glowing blue boxes could be seen holding resources that should be harvested if given a chance. Also red monsters tended to be near the blue resource bundles.

From everything she could see, this was a standard siege campaign. She would no doubt run down to the village, get them to join her side. While she opened up one side of the village for her allies to come in, while they served to help reinforce the invading forces.

Of course, there were two parties, one an advanced party and a second larger army that was well off in the distance for both armies. Looking at it logically, there was no way she could manage to fend off both armies at the same time. This entire scenario was meant to make her choose a side in this conflict and work with them to gain a superior advantage. At first she thought this quest would be impossible, especially with her status with both the elves and orcs being hatred. There was no way she could convince either side to help her, let alone not attack her while she attempted to defend both sides of the village.

In fact, the whole thing looked completely hopeless. That was of course until Alexa realized she was looking at this from the wrong perspective. Looking at the quest conditions she realized her mistake almost immediately. She didn’t have to defend the village, not necessarily. Instead, all she needed to do was to protect the villagers from the invading forces.

Alexa had time. Logically the six hours that she had been given was supposed to be long enough to set up defensive structures. But Alexa thought she had a better idea for how to use the time allotted.

But first, before Alexa could move forward with her plan, she had to make a few key observations. First she had to know if the blue substance she identified as being under the ground had anything to do with why the village was randomly stationed between this mountain pass. While this was a great place for a garrison to set up an outpost. The village she was looking at was not a garrison at all, in fact a quick glance showed that there were long pipes used for the smelting of metals. While there were walls in place, they mostly seemed designed to stop the local monsters that were loitering around the area. Nothing large enough to stop a full blown siege that looked like it was set to take place.

There was a lot to do, at least that is what Alexa felt the layer was supposed to tell her at first. At least until she realized that this layer, this dungeon sequence had been hijacked. When she realized that part, the lack of garrison defenses made sense. This was just a border outpost created by people likely trying to make a living by smelting some type of rare mineral. Idly she wondered if the entire village was here just to mine iron, Alexa scoffed at the idea knowing that it would not be that easy. But she did realize that this mission of saving the villagers might be easier than what was being presented to her. Clearly the battle was not supposed to be the original objective of this mission. Instead, shew as likely supposed to come out and harvest resources, or find other rare materials. The war was just a distraction to the true intention of this layer.

Knowing that, Alexa decided to go to the glowing blue material that all but demanded her attention. Of course next to the blue material was a large pack of brightly glowing monsters. Monsters that looked almost like dragons?

ROOARRR!

The first monster roared as it caught Alexa’s scent wafting on the wind.

As she got closer, Alexa saw the monster for what it was. Even from close to a mile away, the monster had sensed her presence and began growling wildly.

With the monster aware of her presence, she could see it shifting off in the distance. Even with just this minor shifting she could see part of its massive head peering over the edge of a ravine. A ravine that Alexa took to be a nest of sorts that the creature had created in order to take care of its young. Young that were still in giant eggs, though they were themselves ready to hatch. Seeing the monster, her Perception skills activated, letting her know what she was looking at.

Extremely Large Level 65 Death Lizard: Status: Enraged. Weaknesses: Life (Major), Nature (Minor).

Seeing the monster and its level, a few things began to make sense to Alexa. Seeing the giant monster, the eggs and the glowing blue resources that were buried under the eggs, Alexa figured that this part right here was likely the true goal of this mission. That somehow defeating this monster would solve the true purpose for why this dungeon was here.

Looking at the Death Lizard, Alexa realized that killing this creature would not be as easy as it appeared. Also, the hatching of the baby lizards was likely the real threat posed to the village, something that would happen after the initial waves of combat were repelled. In a way she had to hand it to the people who hijacked this layer of the dungeon for their deviousness. They certainly went all out in making it so that the survivor of this stage would not only have to choose a side, but would be thankful for having one side or the other fighting for them.

Of course, Alexa had a different plan. Especially when she saw the next message appear.

Quest Activated: Death Lizard Nest: You have identified a mother Death Lizard protecting her nest that appears to be hatching soon. Warn the inhabitants of the nearby village of the impending danger.

With that system message. Alexa let out a deep breath as her true course of action was readily apparent.

“Time to kill a Death Lizard.” Alexa said to herself as she turned her full attention to the looming monster and its nest.