ABH - CH 30 - Alone and Lonely

A/N: UPDATED ENDING PLEASE REREAD LAST 200 WORDS AS OF 5/20/25 4:50 PM EST

Chapter Thirty

Alone and Lonely

Rise of Winter, Week 5, Day 4

Feeling the cold blade across her skin, Freddie refused to flinch. Instead, she decided [Quick Fight] was worth the mana cost. Activating the Skill, Freddie felt the blade sank into the flesh of her neck and she realized something very important. 

She was an idiot. 

Freddie has a boon perfect for darkness. Perfect for breaking through a dungeon's power. It was given by Druigr, after all. A God. A Sovereign. One of the Ancients. A Divine that had maintained their Domain for longer than Maeve had been a Queendom. 

[Sparkler]

Closing her eyes, brilliant light cut through the magical darkness and seared her attacker’s retinas—causing a scream to resound through the hall. It was a gurgled monstrous thing, and Freddie popped her eyes open and whipped around, swiping her leg out. 

As the creature fell, Freddie saw its sickly yellow skin and fired off an [Inspect].

[Yellow Goblin, Tier 1, Level 4]

[An uncommonly found goblin of a new breed created by Dungeom M283. Novice understanding of mana. Adept with simple weapons. Adept with simple strategy.]

“Ugh, another [Uncommon]?” She said, exasperatedly stomping her heel into its skull—cracking bone and sending black blood across the floor. She grimaced as her shoe was coated in the tacky liquid. 

Also, why aren’t my Skills leveling? Freddie frowned, then another System notice tried to get her attention. She was about to wave it away—it wasn’t like she’d level from such weak monsters so quickly. But then—

“Crap! The Combat Report!” Freddie groaned, whacking herself in the forehead. “It combines the notices together.”

[Combat Report]

[Aggregate]

[Skills Used in Combat:

Inspect Lv. 5

Sparkler Lv. 5

Quick Fight Lv. 5

Fire Step Lv. 5

Otherworldly Lv. 1

Fire Conjuration Lv. 5

Fire Manipulation Lv. 5

Imbue Flame Lv. 5

Regenerate Lv. 6]

[Hostiles Defeated:

2 Level 2 Red Goblin - Killed

1 Level 3 Red Goblin - Killed

2 Level 4 Red Goblin - Killed

1 Level 5 Red Goblin - Killed

1 Level 6 Red Goblin - Killed

1 Level 5 Vanda Vine - Killed

1 Level 4 Yellow Goblin - Killed

1 Level 6 Yellow Goblin - Killed]

[Contribution: 100%]

[Level Discrepancy: Various]

[Overall Experience Modifier Adjusted for:

100% Contribution against Hostiles

Level Above Hostiles]

[Achievements:

Defeated 5+ Hostiles at once. Extra experience applied.

Fought in Magical Darkness for the first time. Extra experience applied.

Shattered a Mage Barrier in combat. Extra experience applied.]

[Post-Combat Results:

Skill Experience Applied to: Inspect, Sparkler, Quick Fight, Fire Step, Otherworldly, Fire Conjuration, Fire Manipulation, Imbue Flame, Regenerate. 

Skill Level Up! Inspect is now Level 6!

Skill Level Up! Otherworldly is now Level 2!

Skill Level Up! Fire Conjuration is now Level 6!

Skill Level Up! Fire Conjuration is now Level 7!

Skill Level Up! Fire Manipulation is now Level 6!

Skill Level Up! Fire Manipulation is now Level 7!

Skill Level Up! Imbue Flame is now Level 6!

Skill Level Up! Imbue Flame is now Level 7!

Skill Level Up! Imbue Flame is now Level 8!

Skill Level Up! Regenerate is now Level 7!

Class Experience Applied.]

She was right about not leveling—she was sure it’d take another dozen goblins before that happened. It wouldn’t be until the second floor that she would face monsters nearer to her actual status. Freddie’s Rare [Class] let her dominate above her level thanks to her attributes, and the System cared not about the difference in skill between her and her prey. 

All the System knew was numbers. It knew levels and Skills. It knew not of rarities and soft skills. Or, maybe it did. But it surely didn’t count the rarities against Freddie. So, Freddie could work with that. 

For now, she would have to accept the meager experience the goblins offered if she wanted her Skills to grow as well. 

[Regenerate]

The cut across her neck stitched itself together, closing swiftly. As Freddie looked down at the corpse of the Yellow Goblin, she summoned her fire and wrapped her hand closely. At the death of the goblin, the magical darkness had faded and left behind the same grey stone walls as the rest of the dungeon. 

Holding her breath, Freddie began digging around for the Mana Pearl in the monster. She was sure, in some way, its corpse could be useful, but Freddie wasn’t like her family—she didn’t know anything about Alchemy. That was typically something taught after Awakening to the appropriate Class. And Freddie had only been offered such a thing nominally. [Young Lady of Flame] was a noble Class only by the purest of definitions—it was truly an elementalist Class. 

Her Slumber had been tailored to the simple [Young Lady of Nemo]. It was Uncommon at its base, but had been shoved out by her other traits post-Awakening. 

Freddie had no regrets about not learning Alchemy, not truly. Not even when it meant she had to fish around for Mana Pearls and leave reagents behind.

Gripping the small marble in the goblin’s chest, Freddie ramped up the heat of her flames and pulled her hand out of the corpse. Cleansing herself with fire was much easier than wasting one of the potions in her bag, so she did just that until the grime and blood evaporated off her skin. 

All that was left was a yellow and black marble. 

Freddie took a breath, slipping the mana pearl into her satchel, and looked around. She didn’t hear any other noises, not where the whirr had come from or anything else, so she went down the rest of the hall. 

Peeking around the corner, she saw a tiny alcove much like the last hall with a Yellow Goblin. This one also had a small wooden chest. Freddie stared at it for a second before stepping out fully from behind the wall. 

Squatting down, she popped open the chest without bothering to [Inspect] it. Inside, she found a ring—this time with amber colored metal and azure gemstones embedded into it. Gingerly, she lifted the jewelry up before snatching the truly precious item below: the blue silk pillow the bracelet had been resting on. 

“Two pillows!” Freddie spoke with reverence she reserved for life's greatest gift—breaking her enemy's nose.

Sliding both the pillow and the bracelet into her satchel, she looked down at the wooden chest. Swiping that as well, she went back down the hall, leaving the Yellow Goblin where it was. Then, once she was back in the main chamber, Freddie grabbed her second wooden chest. 

Glancing at the other offshoot hallway, Freddie twitched her nose. 

“I’m… going down the other hall,” she huffed to herself and went back down the hall that had the first Yellow Goblin. Settling into the back alcove, Freddie set down both chests and pulled off her satchel. 

Opening her bag, she pulled out all the Mana Pearls she’d collected so far—sixteen. Two Vanda Vines, eleven Red Goblins, two Yellow Goblins, and a Purple Goblin. She placed those in the first chest. Next, she pulled out both pieces of jewelry—they were stylized as opposites of each other. 

Freddie put them in the second box. 

Then, she conjured the hottest flame she could and narrowed it, smaller and smaller until it was the size of her fingernail. Then she moved the flame to roll over the top of each wooden chest. 

Deftly, she singed two symbols foreign to this world—Roman numerals she hadn’t seen since Awakening. 

She labelled them as well, slowly etching ‘жемчуг’ onto one and ‘другой’ onto the second. Was it necessary to do both? No. But it gave Freddie something to do. Something that reminded her of elsewhere. One of her few hobbies carrying over—having immunity to fire made things such as wood engraving and glassworks simple, less dangerous. And so she had dabbled in her fleeting free time. 

Leaning up against the wall to her back, Freddie pulled out one of the pillows and slid it behind her neck. 

“Agh,” she grumbled to herself and to the flame that still hovered above the wooden chests, “being alone is boring.”

As Freddie let her eyes close, she huddled her knees to her chest. Letting go of her control over [Fire Conjuration] and [Fire Manipulation], the coolness of her mana veins made her feel empty. 

“[Nemoan Protectorate]” She tried one last time before letting a strained sleep take her. 

Before she let dreams of wildfire and ifrits consume her. Before memories of friends and fights plagued her. Before waking sporadically to the warmth that hovered just outside of her perception—but that was short, easily forgotten events. She never bothered to look for that warmth. Never bothered to question why, when she was in a dungeon, it existed at all. 

Freddie also never bothered to ask why it felt similar to the magma of her own mana.

She simply slept and hoped that, when she awoke, enough time had passed for her grandfather to have been called. That she would no longer be alone, in an unfamiliar room. That she would be one night closer to getting back to the people she loved. 

Because for all that it had been a few short months, Freddie did love the people here. 

Her mother and father, her brothers, her grandfather. Tiltham, Marasha, and her aunts and uncles. Her cousins. The other noble children she’d met—the ones willing to put up with her rough attitude. 

The life here, in Gargantua, was easy. Until the dungeon, it hadn’t been a constant fight to survive—not like in elsewhere. It had taken her time to accept, to trust, to enjoy. But in the end, she’d forgotten what it was like to be left to her own devices. 

And it was too much. Freddie wanted desperately for her life back. Not the life in elsewhere, but the one she had made here. 

Freddie didn’t care about her old soul runes, didn’t care about her deadbeat father or her coach, didn’t wish to return to her old world. No. She wanted Aster to brush her hair, she wanted Bridian to wrap her in a hug, she wanted her grandfather to chastise her for getting too close to the Gods. 

She wanted it all. 

And so, she slept her yearning away. Perhaps, when she awoke, it would have dulled. Perhaps, when she opened her eyes, the dungeon would no longer be sealed. Perhaps, she would be free once more. 

That was not to be. 

Instead, when Freddie opened her eyes, there was a flickering light darting around the opening to the alcove she was curled up in. It bounced between the walls, hitting stones up and down and leaving glowing stone in its wake. 

Popping up frantically, Freddie pushed back into the wall, only to find, between one blink and the next, there was nothing there. Cooling embers flaked off the stone where Freddie was sure she’d seen the ball of light, and the stone itself remained a deep red. 

“What the—” Freddie started, before cutting herself off. 

The dungeon may not be lethal, not yet, but that did not mean it couldn’t become so. Freddie had been lucky so far—she’d come across no poison or stone monsters. She also hadn’t been faced with the puzzles that greater dungeons were known for, which Freddie was certain she’d simply have to brute-force her way through upon finding one.

Dungeon shenanigans, she decided. 

Unfortunately, Freddie had bigger problems. Like having to use the bathroom. 

With a sigh, she pulled out the swirling lavender colored potion that was labeled ‘Quick Clean.’ Popping the seal, Freddie took a small sip. No more than a teaspoon. 

As the floral taste brushed her tongue and a shiver went through her, Fredie grumbled, “I hate that feeling.”

Nature no longer called.