by David Gunter
Suddenly, Tommy heard a voice full of whispers speak his name from the shadows and startled out of his concentrated study; he sprung like a cat that had landed in a puddle of cold water and pressed his body against the cave wall to blend into the darkness.
In whispers that echoed from the walls, the voice chuckled and once more spoke his name.
“Oh, he he he. Tommy.” - Whispers
The voice laughed and said.
“You’re a sly one aren’t you and so sure footed too. Tell you what, since you’re a friend to the dark and clearly no friend of the light. I’m going to hold on to you for a while. How does that sound?” - Whispers
Tommy felt the same tiny hands from the shadows which he’d observed with the stone a moment ago reach out to him and tug on his clothing. He wanted to run and hide, but the tiny hands seemed to wrap him in the shadows. Surprisingly, this had the opposite effect on him than what he was expecting. He felt a sense of calm come over him.
The voice continued.
“Ahhhh, you are of the dark and of the shadows. I will reward your affinity with a trial quest. How would you like that? I bet you would like that very much, wouldn’t you now? Yessss I am sure you would. So hears the dealio little dark one.” - Whispers
The voice continued to whisper.
“If you make it from this cave to the crossroads at the bottom of this mountain without putting a single foot on the moonlight tainted stone I will let you keep the dark touched buff, you currently have, during the day and if you can make it to the city of the dead without letting a moonlight touched object touch you I will mark you with the rune of shadows permanently. How does that sound little dark one?” - Whispers
You have been talking to Whispers the dark god of darkness… and who eats too much dark chocolate. - Narrator
“Wait who said that!…” - Whispers
Tommy realized that this moment was a fork in the road for him. He had entered this world in order to make some quick money. He would help this VR company perform their tests, and for it, he would be paid two hundred thousand euros. But, if he was honest with himself, he knew this VR world was a far better escape to his problems than the euros.
He was committed to N’Pab’s requirements but only as much as he needed to be. According to the N’Pab’s protocol for these tests, he needed to get to the nearest town and then find the temple of the city deity. Once in the temple, he needed to find a natural stone, and underneath the stone, he would find a note with his objective. However, apart from all this, he could do as he pleased, he had been told.
Tommy thought about the ‘dark touched’ buff he had been given, and the details about the buff simply became understanding to him.
Dark Touched (trial)
Moonlight disables this effect (Buff)
----------------------------------
Remain invisible if touching a shadow
Dark Touched (Debuff)
-----------------------------------
‘Rune of Shadows’ level = 1
Applies Dark Touched. Rune of Shadows awarded on entering the City of the Dead. (Buff)
----------------------------------
Light Decay: Sunlight easily causes sun burns and damage over time effects (Debuff)
He saw immediately that the buff would keep him invisible while touching the shadows. He knew that it would cause him to get sunburns if he touched the daylight or worse if the buff remained on his person for a long period of time. He also knew that touching moonlight-affected items would remove the buff, but this he also understood when the voice in the darkness had informed him of the quest objectives. One more thing he also just knew, however, was that the longer the buff remained on him before he got to the City of the Dead, the stronger its permanent effect, the ‘Rune of Shadows,’ would become. How this knowledge was simply known to him was surprising, but he understood enough to simply take it as a fact and one that could be more carefully pondered at some other time.
This last piece of information was most interesting to him. He wondered how long he could keep this buff without entering this place called ‘The City of the Dead.’ Where and how far the city was to him was something else he wanted to know. But this information didn’t simply become known to him, so he knew there were limits.
Tommy felt he could simply wait it out in the cave until daylight but looking at his clothing; he also knew that coming out of the cave during the day would be a pretty sure way to get burned by the sun with the debuff he had received. He decided that there simply wasn’t enough information to go on in order to walk out of the cave and begin this challenge he’d been presented with, and he would have to know more.
Tommy looked around the cave and let his eyes get accustomed to the caves darkness. He looked back to where he had landed and saw that the cave went back much further than where he had started.
Tommy walked towards the back of the cave while carefully avoiding sharp stones and odd-looking mushrooms and bugs and noticed that on the right rear wall of the cave, there was an entrance to a deeper part of the cave. So while his eyes were still trying to adjust to the darker part of the cave, he carefully stepped through the entrance to the deeper part of the cave.
After taking two steps, however, he felt his foot touch something small and furry on the floor. Tommy quickly retracted his foot with the same reflexes he had employed earlier at the entrance of the cave.
“What have I just stepped on?” He said out loud. He then thought about this for a bit and realized that if it was anything he had seen before, it very well could have been the same odd-looking mushrooms he had spotted nearer to the entrance of the cave.
Tommy decided that if he was going to walk through this darker part of the cave, he should be fully aware of the dangers whenever possible, so he walked back to the place he had spotted the mushrooms earlier and decided that with the aid of better visibility he could test the viability of walking on the mushrooms.
Carefully, but also quickly, he placed a foot on one of the mushrooms and just as quickly retracted his foot.
Almost as soon as his foot had retracted, tiny needle-like spines projected from the mushroom’s top and then retracted slowly back into the mushroom. He realized he had a problem. If a mushroom in this world had spines that resembled needles, then they must no doubt have poison as well. An entire cave floor covered in mushrooms with poisonous spines wasn’t something easily overlooked.
He wondered. Could it be possible to sprint through a cave in utter darkness when the floor could be covered with poisonous mushrooms? He doubted it.
No, the only way this would work is if this darker part of the cave was not, in fact, covered in these mushrooms. There really wasn’t much he could do, and he could either risk walking right out into the night sky and make his way down from the cave to the nearest town, or he could instead investigate the cave further and see where it might go.
“You have been infected with poison from the Bitter Sweet Bite mushroom. Its poison prevents you from seeing your true stats and any other debuffs you may have. Be warned you could be in critical condition… or you could be completely fine. Either way you feel pretty good about yourself.” - System message
Tommy woke up. He was in a cold dark place, and he didn’t know how he had gotten there. Well, it took him a moment, but then he remembered waking up in a cave and having a few odd experiences which had led him to the stupid decision of running through the dark cave and then falling in the dark. But there was something more bothering him. It was a nagging thought like something was out of place and terribly wrong.
He tried to look around, but he realized that there was too much darkness in this place to make that possible. Maybe he had survived stepping on all those mushrooms with a final turn for the better, he hoped.
He remembered running through the cave while feeling countless needles pricking his feet and watching the fumes from
the squashed mushrooms rising above his head so that he could no longer breathe. He also remembered landing on a cold stone and feeling his mind finally succumb to the dizziness and delirium surely caused by the poisonous shrooms.
He remembered letting go and accepting his death too. But no, that clearly had not been what had happened. He was alive. He was sitting in a dark cave with his back too sore for words, and he still couldn’t feel his feet, but he was clearly alive.
But how long had he been passed out on the dirt floor?
He checked in his stats and saw that he still had the “Dark Touched” buff. He felt relieved by this but then realized that if anything, he had probably made it impossible to reach civilization before morning.
Then he felt a pang of hunger like none he had felt before and realized that what had finally brought him out of his deep sleep had been hunger. Then he knew he had been in this dark cave for more than just a few hours and probably something closer to days. But how long, exactly?
He knew if he didn’t retrieve his orders soon, he would get pulled out of the VR world, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. He had never failed a mission and wouldn’t let the promise of a vague and unsubstantiated in-game reward deter him from doing that. Whatever else this VR world was, it was simply a game in the end.
Thoughts of staying in this VR world indefinitely would have to be put aside until he had completed his primary objective; getting paid in the real world.
He summoned energy from deep within, and though he still could not feel his feet, he pushed himself up to full standing position, ignoring aches in his bones and another pang of hunger.
Tommy squinted with his eyes attempting to catch a glimmer of light from his surroundings, but nothing came into focus. Then he carefully waved his hands around but felt nothing nearby. He also moved his feet ahead of him and felt the earth beneath his feet, and noticed that there were small stones as well.
He held his hands in front of him and carefully walked forward, feeling the floor in front of him as he took every step. Then his foot hit something that wasn’t a rock and felt more like a twig. But when his foot hit it, the feeling that there was something connected to it had also been clear. He kicked forward gently and once again touched the item. Next, he bent low and reached out to pick it up and grabbing it in his hand he realized instantly what he was holding.
It was a leg bone of someone who, like he had been walking barefooted in the cave. Right after picking up the bone, he felt the rest of the body connected to the bone shift and fall to the floor. Then Tommy heard another sound.
This new sound was the sound of some kind of insect; he was almost sure.
It sounded like pincers opening and closing quickly and the sound of something scurrying around on the dirt.
Then he was sure it was an insect when its sharp pincers clamped down on this ankle, and his lower body went numb. Reflexively he stomped on the insect, realizing as well that it was much larger than an insect should be.
Fortunately, the act had saved him from any real damage, and a moment later, he was holding an insect that must have been as long as his entire arm. He then flung the creature in the darkness and heard it hit a far wall and thump to the floor.
Sadly, however, he also heard the sound of more of its comrades scurrying from the same direction, and he knew he would have to make haste to find a way out of the darkness.
He turned and took one step in the other direction and then froze. His normal cheerful disposition fell away completely, and despair crept up from the very deepest darkest part of his soul when he realized painfully what that feeling earlier had been. There was something very wrong with his anatomy. The movement he had made to turn had shown him a terrifying fact.
There was something living attached to his back.
Loudly and with no apparent desire to keep its presence a secret anymore, the creature on his back emitted a loud screech.
Tommy shuddered, and he felt this sound pierce his very soul. The creature on his back had loudly and in no uncertain terms declared this body taken with this clear and pronounced screech. Tommy heard as the other insects reacted to this creature’s screech by scurrying away. Fighting this unknown thing on his back would mean becoming a meal to others of its kind, he understood. While in the dark, with no way out, there really wasn’t much he could do.
The creature on his back seemed to know the predicament Tommy was in because it adjusted slightly and pressed its body closer by tightening its grip on Tommy’s spine.
“No… oh my…” Tommy said through gasps as he felt that something not quite tangible had been drawn from him.
His legs caved in from the pain that accompanied this feeling, and he fell to his knees. He wasn’t ready to die, and he wasn’t typically one to accept the hand he was dealt, but the overwhelming odds against him making it out of the cave were too much at that moment, and he knew there was no delaying the inevitable.
The creature attached to his spine had no misgivings about making a meal out of him, and Tommy was in no position to oppose its intentions. But if he’d been passed out for days, why hadn’t the creature simply made a carcass out of him like the other poor devil he’d encountered a moment before? With hardly a thought, information about his current status appeared, and he thought he saw the reason why he might still be alive.
Character Sheet:
Name: Tommy Cruise Level: 1
HP: 14/15 Stamina: 3/15
MP: 15 Soul: 13/15
Race: HumanAlignment: Dark Aligned
Status: Soul Eater Host (level 1): Your soul is being eaten by a soul eating demon. Despair!
--------------------------------------
Epic Buff: Dark Touched: You are able to become almost invisible in the shadows.
“Creatures of the light beware!”|
--------------------------------------
Epic Debuff: Light Decay: You have had the ‘Dark Touched’ buff more than ten minutes.If you touch the light you will begin to lose 1% from life, mana, stamina, and will lose this amount every second
--------------------------------------
Soul Eater Host (level 1) Effects: Demon says,
“This mine, you go!”
Eats. 05 Soul an hour
Gives other creatures fear and gives your flesh a bitter flavor.
“You’re not tasty”, it tells them.
He had received a status indication called ‘Soul Eater Host’, and though one of its effects was to feel despair, and he could feel hope leave him, the primary effect was that he would periodically feed the creature his soul. Knowing this seemed to cause in Tommy another wave of despair, but a moment later, it was gone. Tommy knew that all was not lost even though a moment before that had been all he’d felt. Maybe it would take much longer for his entire soul to be consumed. There could still be some hope.
He would have to find a way to combat the sense of despair the creature was causing in him. After all, a moment ago, the creature had made all of the other creatures in the cave scurry away. So it couldn’t be all bad.
Tommy reexamined his status and found more information.
Apparently, besides giving him waves of despair, the creature also would defend him from other creatures through intimidation, and few other creatures were immune to its effects, so he would naturally be unmolested by other creatures while this thing was attached to his person.
Tommy then looked ahead at all the other things this creature would provide him as its hold of him progressed, and even though the negatives were alarming, the benefits were also enticing. At level two of the creatures effect it would devour more of his soul an hour, but in exchange, the host would receive the ability to fly in short bursts so that covering short distances without touching the ground would be possible. At level three of its effect, it would see through his eyes, but he would be able to see in absolute darkness. He noticed
, of course, that at level three, he would no longer be able to see in the daylight, and both daylight and looking directly at moonlit things would sting or burn his eyes. Moonlight seemed to have the greatest effect on him now he noticed. Between the dark touched buff and this new ‘condition’, he saw a definite pattern of aversion to moonlight, but he filed this oddity away with a number of other strange things which he would, he knew, figure out in the days to come.
Continuing his examination of the creature’s progression, he noticed as well that with each new step in the creature’s domination of his body that his body became more the creatures but at least to level three, the creature’s abilities would be of value to him. The first benefit of leveling up at least once or twice was that the annoying waves of despair he now felt would stop, and if he embraced the creature more, that might only help to rebalance the odds in his favor, he thought. It was decided.
He willed the creature to take half of his soul and then nearly passed out on the floor from the pain. A few long moments later, and after having writhed and screamed his little Gurkha head off, he regained his breathing and stood up to examine what had changed.
The first thing Tommy noticed was that he could clearly see everything in the cave now, and this put a smile back on his face. The creature had happily accepted Tommy’s new disposition and had given him some pretty valuable boons. With his new sight, Tommy also saw that the creature had grown small insectile wings that were not too dissimilar to that of a firefly’s except much larger.
In a strange way, the wings made Tommy appear more like a fairy than a ‘Soul Eater’s’ host. At least he hoped that’s what others would see when they saw the wings. But that wasn’t all.
Tommy also noticed that where the creature had once only been attached to his spine, now the creature’s grasp also included attaching itself to his chest, shoulders, and neck. Seeing sharp insect teeth going into his chest gave him a little wave of nausea, but quickly following this, it also gave him a clear sight into his own determination and resolve. He felt a sense of purpose renewed.