Looking into the radiant abyss, Lloyd marvelled at the cosmic scene for far longer than he had spent on the evolution itself. His mind was simply ensconced in the sheer immensity of it all trying to comprehend the beauty of what he was seeing.

  But as Lloyd enjoyed the scene laid out before him, a mental nudge told him it was time to go, and he looked down to see himself blowing away in the cosmic wind. Once again, Lloyds body was overrun by the feeling of nothingness as he was fully consumed by the void, torn away from existence as he dissipated throughout the abyss.

  A visceral discomfort brought Lloyd back to reality, the feeling of warm blood running across his face was enough to wake him from his stupor. Lloyd hastily opened his status menu to make sure everything he’d just went through was real, and it was, but there was something else.

  E-Grade evolution complete

  Skill adjustments complete:

  [Supercharge (Uncommon)] —> [Supercharge (Common)]

  [Smite (Uncommon)] —> [Smite (Common)]

  [Plasma beam (Uncommon)] —> [Plasma beam (Common)]

  [Plasma bolt (Common)] —> [plasma bolt (Inferior)]

  [Plasma mines (Common)] —> [plasma mines (Inferior)]

  [Ambush (Inferior)] —> [-----]

  [Model replica (Uncommon)] —> [Model replica (Common)]

  [Adaptable affinities (Uncommon)] —> [Adaptable affinities (Common)]

  [Advanced cultivation (Uncommon)] —> [Advanced cultivation (Common)]

  [Energetic inscriptions (Common)] —> [Energetic inscriptions (Inferior)]

  [String saw (Common)] —> [string saw (Inferior)]

  The jubilant smile that had adorned Lloyd’s face quickly morphed into a look of shock, then one of horror as he tried to grasp what was happening. His ‘evolution’ had suddenly decided it was done evolving and turned right back around, devolving his skills by one tier of rarity each.

  As Lloyd looked at the screen in horror, he noticed something different. Ambush, a shitty skill he had picked way back in the first week or so on the island, before he even entered the village. It had seen little to no real use, and it looked like it would stay that way, seeing as it was gone from his status screen entirely.

  How was that fair? You pick an inferior skill and just lose it? Or, more likely, Lloyd had once more overstepped the timeframes his new reality was running on. Thinking about it further, he was probably supposed to upgrade his skills like he had with electrify becoming supercharge.

  It probably would have taken months if not a year to upgrade all his skills like that, as it would have needed him to gain a deeper understanding of them that he just didn’t have. Truth be told Lloyd still wasn’t entirely sure what had been the cause of the skill upgrade, seeing it as more a child of desperation than anything intentional.

  Lloyd had only managed to upgrade it in the desperation that had overwhelmed him when faced with a small sea of crocodiles. Would he have to go through similarly emotional situations to upgrade his other skills? Hopefully not, or he would end up with a lot less high rarity skills soon enough.

  Back on the topic of ambush, Lloyd was disappointed yes, but it wasn’t a tragedy by any stretch of the imagination. The skill had been a hopeful prospect back when he was almost solely dependent on killing his opponents in a few opening attacks rather than the intense battles, he was now capable of.

  Looking into his other skills, and testing a few of them out just to be safe, none of them had changed from a qualitative perspective, nor in description. This was a relief, as Lloyd had been worried, he would be significantly weakened by this change, but it seemed it was more of a warning for what could happen in the future than a punishment.

  All in all, excluding the loss of ambush, Lloyd had come out effectively unscathed, better even. After the sudden downgrade of all his skills, Lloyd was now aware of the need to upgrade them and would keep it in mind for the future.

  Getting up from the ground and wiping the blood from his face, Lloyd grimaced upon feeling the gunk down the front of his chestplate. Speaking of which, looking at his armour, it still fit perfectly despite how much he had grown during his evolution, which was impossible based on the old measurements.

  The only explanation was that the system had expanded them for him, which made sense as it wouldn’t want to go around crushing people because their armour was too small. Still feeling irritated by the blood staining his armour, and noticing that it was night out, Lloyd decided to have a proper wash in who knows how long.

  Going to a secluded pond that he discovered whilst out hunting a few days prior, Lloyd made sure that there weren’t any nocturnal monsters and went for a swim. Sending his armour and clothing into his spatial ring, Lloyd looked down and looked at how much more defined his musculature was before jumping in.

  As the icy cold washed over him, Lloyd felt infinitely better immediately, it was like he was being pressure washed the way the water cleansed him. It felt like his body was being purified by the chilly liquid, its crystal clear depths removing all the gunk and toxin from his skin.

  Floating on his back between the tall stone walls, Lloyd gazed into the canopy, peeking glimpses of the moonlight through the leaves. As he lay there, unprotected and unworried, Lloyd wondered what was next, obviously he would start hunting again, but to what end?

  As Lloyd considered what kinds of monsters he would be facing with stat pools similar to his, he came to a realisation. He knew what was next, and he had been told of this moment a long time ago now. He was strong enough.

  After enjoying the water for a while longer, Lloyd swum to the edge, drying himself off and re-equipping his armour feeling thoroughly refreshed. Before he could set out, he had to do something, and it wouldn’t be easy.

  Lloyd walked through the lunar rays shinning down on him, enjoying the moons beauty, but realising just how pathetic it was in comparison to the nebulas of the void he had been sent to. The shining white of the moon just couldn’t compare the ethereal glow of the heavenly expanse he had visited.

  Shaking his head and dispelling the visons of the cosmos from his head, Lloyd pushed his way through the door of his workshop. Lloyd looked across the room with a heavy heart and a deep sigh, this place had been his home for so long now, the closest he’d had to a place to stay this whole time.

  Knowing that he had to leave, and with no idea when or if he would return, Lloyd had no choice but to pick everything up and go. Walking around the cavern, Lloyd put everything away into his spatial ring, leaving only the cured hides to weak to bother with.

  One after another, Lloyd stowed away every single barrel of bonding agent, every one of the assorted bones, and even the blood stained table in the caverns centre. Soon enough, all that was left of his hard work were a few low grade beast hides and some blood stains on the ground.

  It was a painful feeling seeing everything he’d worked so hard for uprooted like this, but it was the better alternative to letting it rot in the forest while he was far away. In all honesty, Lloyd didn’t even know what his actions were going to entail, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t be seeing this place again for a long time.

  With two months of his life packed away in a corner of his ring, Lloyd stepped outside, taking a seat atop a branch as he stared across the forest’s green expanse. As a deep breath escaped from his lips, Lloyd summoned something from his ring, holding the glistening tablet in the morning sun.

  The magical lustre of the obsidian seemed to add more to the rune that inscriptions never could, which is why it felt so bad to break it. The glossy stone shattered like glass between his hands, the black dust invading his body before disappearing in the breeze.

  Lloyd looked around for a response, trying to figure out what was happening, but just as quickly as he had broken the tablet Lloyd was whisked away. Black mist swirled around him as Lloyd caught glimpses of the world flashing by at breakneck speeds.

  Soon the flashes of the outside disappeared into the fog as Lloyd came ended up somewhere familiar. The glistening roof of glow worms was just as alien as the first time he’d seen it, and Lloyd couldn’t help but stare around the cavern to reacquaint himself with it.

  As he looked around in wonder, Lloyd briefly forgot what he had come here to do, a memory which was quickly restored when he saw the imposing figure shrouded in darkness a few metres away. Lloyd coughed as he found the air getting caught in his throat, trying and failing to acknowledge the being across from him.

  “Hugmun...” Lloyd said trying to sound excited but finding himself overly nervous for some unknow reason.

  What if he had come too early? What if he wasn’t ready yet? What was going to happen to him? As Lloyd began to reconsider his actions his train of thought was interrupted by the much more confident sounding Hugmun.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “So, you really did it? You passed the threshold in just a few months! Didn’t lose any skills, did you?”

  “Um, yeah, just one, but it wasn’t that important.” Lloyd replied starting to ease himself back into a normal state of mind.

  Lloyd and Hugmun had a quick chat about what had happened, before they got to the reason Lloyd was here in the first place.

  “Come.” Hugmun said, turning to the blank wall in the distance.

  A quick walk across the cavern only took a few seconds, at which point Lloyd was faced with the dark shale wall that had held him back all that time ago. As Hugmun looked on from the shadows, Lloyd pressed his hands against the stone, beginning to channel his mana into the black rock.

  Slowly, the wall lit up with energy illuminating the puddles on the ground and spreading its glow across the stone. Lloyd’s mana pool drained at a steady pace, and as it just continued to disappear, Lloyd wondered if he really was ready for this.

  With less than a fifth of his mana remaining, Lloyd began considering if he should give up, grind out a few more levels and come back with more mana. These thoughts kept growing louder and louder, and as he dropped below a sixth of his mana he moved to give up but was too slow.

  Just as he dipped below two hundred and fifty mana, Lloyd felt his mana stop flowing, unable to go into the wall anymore. Taking a step back, Lloyd was incredibly glad that he hadn’t stopped earlier, as it seemed he had finally succeeded in a task he’d inadvertently been working toward for over a month.

  Immediately after he stepped back, Lloyd noticed something about how much mana it had used. One thousand two hundred and fifty, it was five sixths of his mana, which held no real meaning, but what did matter was what the amount represented.

  It was a number representing the barrier of F-Grade, something that couldn’t be passed. Even if you got five points in intelligence from both you class and profession, and invested every single free point into the stat you would only end up a bit shy of nine-hundred points.

  To get past the barrier the wall required would need you to have a stat multiplier of over forty percent, something he didn’t believe possible in the F- grade, especially considering he only amassed a fifteen percent stat multiplier. Getting past the meaning represented in the number, Lloyd brought his attention back to reality as he watched the wall dissolve before him.

  It looked like the stone was melting in a forge the way it dissipated, where it flowed? Nowhere apparently, as the liquid just disappeared into the ground upon contact with it. When about a foot of solid rock had turned into a dark-black sludge, Lloyd noticed it stop.

  The stone came to an abrupt end as it was replaced by a translucent mana barrier, one which seemed to have nothing behind it. Looking back and forth between the barrier and Hugmun, the crow nodded solemnly as it stared at the hole in the wall.

  With shaky breath, Lloyd walked forward into the barrier, his outstretched hand passing through like it was water. Pushing through to the other side, Lloyd didn’t know what to think. A towering cavern greeted him, its walls filled with more markings than he could count.

  Illuminating the walls with a spark in his hand, Lloyd walked around the room with his fingers gliding across the carvings. The engravings depicted all manner of things from certain roots to the hunting habits of different monsters found on the island.

  The imagery was accompanied by a runic text that was foreign to him, but at the same time he could understand it perfectly. Lloyd went around the room like an archaeologist, trying to find out as much as possible, but it seemed there was no way he would be able to learn it all.

  Engravings covered every corner of the caverns stretching from the base of the walls all the way up to the glow worm covered ceiling over a hundred metres above. Lloyd suspected he would be able to ready his whole library five times over before covering a fraction of the secrets stored here.

  Lloyd knew that the pursuit of knowledge was bound to end in failure, but he didn’t care to attempt to discover everything, as he was beginning to notice something. Different parts of the cave seemed to contain text mentioning the same phrases over and over, and he felt it meant something.

  Looking around, Lloyd could spot at least four different terms appearing repeatedly, and he spotted something else to help distinguish these sections. In the middle of the patches mentioning the terms repeatedly there was always a dense red rune that he couldn’t interpret.

  The rune was a circle encompassing a small skull of varying shapes, which Lloyd found seemed to resemble different creatures. Looking up further, Lloyd could see what appeared to be more of these markings, but he would have to go closer to be sure.

  Climbing up the side of the cavern along the many ledges and outcroppings, Lloyd began counting the red markings. As he rose, he counted more and more, until he reached the eighth seal at the top of the cavern.

  Lloyd clung onto the edge of the cave, trying to put the pieces together as he looked up and down at the eight runes spread throughout the cave. As he pondered on what he was meant to do with this knowledge, Lloyd spotted something amongst the mass of glowworms.

  It looked to be a small stone cube, no bigger than his fist but covered in extremely dense scripts he couldn’t read even with all his perception. Curious to what it was, Lloyd extended a mana rope, pulling it from within the luminous swarm atop the cave and looking it up and down.

  Even with it right in front of him, Lloyd still couldn’t read what the script said, but he wasn’t sure that was the point. Infusing it with a tiny amount of mana, Lloyd didn’t get a screen to pop up but rather a visual impartment within his conscious. And in that impartment was a single line of text.

  Imbue the seals, unlock the key.

  Lloyd wasn’t sure why he was seeing this exactly or what the purpose was, but it did seem pretty straightforward. Clambering across the rockface to the nearest of the seals, Lloyd pressed the cube against the blood-red stone and infused it with mana.

  A shimmering glow spread across the section of the wall this stone commandeered before quickly fading to black once more. Although nothing changed in the mental visual, it was clear by the glow alone that something had happened, and Lloyd could only see one thing to do.

  Moving back down the cliff face, Lloyd leapt across the room to the next seal, repeating the process. One by one Lloyd made his way back down, imbuing the seals along the way, seeing a slightly different reaction each time.

  As he neared the final rune, Lloyd approached with a mix of caution and eagerness as he went to complete the task laid out for him in the stone. The eighth seal lit up with a shiny green lustre, spreading across the cave wall before dissipating into the stone.

  Excited to see what he had unlocked, Lloyd infused the stone with mana to open the mental impartment once more. His face was marred with anticipation and Lloyd was practically drooling to figure out what this was about, but when he opened it.

  Nothing.

  There were no changes, none at all, it was still just the single line of text. Lloyd looked around his eyes turning to the ceiling, the cube had been up there after all, so why not another rune? Quickly scaling the wall, Lloyd brushed the glow worms aside, but as he had initially thought, nothing.

  Feeling numb from disappointment, Lloyd didn’t even bother climbing back down, just falling backwards and letting his toughness deal with the damage. Lloyd slammed into the ground like a brick, splashing water and mud everywhere as he collided with the earth.

  Getting to his feet, Lloyd stared blankly at his reflection in the puddle, but amongst the dazzling light of the glowworms, he spotted something. Was it up there on the roof, had he missed it? No, no it wasn’t up there, so then…

  Realisation struck Lloyd like a bullet as he fell to his knees, scraping away the mud and dust as he reached for the bottom of the puddle. Right there, directly in the centre of the room, was the final seal, waiting for him like an impatient teacher.

  Lloyd hastily scraped away the mud and gravel, revealing the final seal on the bottom of the cave. As he pressed the stone cube against it, Lloyd felt his hand shaking but it wasn’t enough to stop him from infusing it with mana.

  An ethereal glow bloomed across the seal, turning the mud and water to ash that disintegrated into air as the blue glow illuminated it. The entire ten-metre-wide cavern floor was cleared of debris in just a few seconds, and Lloyd stared in marvel at what was revealed.

  A grand tapestry of engravements adorned with pictures of beasts surrounded by inscrutable texts too damaged by time for him to decipher. That was not the extent of the revelation however, the true magic was happening within his mind.

  The activation of the final seal had led to him to unlock an additional four lines of text within the cube.

  Imbue the seals, unlock the key,

  Confront the lords of earth, sky, and sea,

  Will lead to your doom or root of all dreams,

  Defeat the nine guards and it shall be.

  Beware the shadow in the deep.

  Lloyds eyes glid across the text over and over, trying to decipher the meaning from the riddle. As hard as he tried, Lloyd just couldn’t make sense of it, eventually turning to the carvings on the floor in search of answers.

  The inscriptions detailed three powerful beasts Lloyd couldn’t quite make out because of the eroded stone, each of them in the centre of an additional three symbols similar to the seals in appearance. Some quick thinking clearly told him that the three larger symbols represented the three lords, and the smaller ones the nine guards, but what that meant he wasn’t sure.

  Going off of their visual similarities with the seals, Lloyd pressed the cube against the symbols representing the guards and imbued it with energy. At first nothing, but Lloyd didn’t give up just yet, going to the other eight engravings and repeating the process.

  On the ninth guard symbol, Lloyd felt a change, and his eyes lit up when another poem was added to the visual impartment.

  Scales of iron, teeth of steel

  Drags you down, no chance to squeal

  Dwells within the murky abyss

  Not to know is to know bliss

  Lloyd stared at the poem with a mix of confusion and an attempt at comprehension. It seemed to Lloyd that it was talking about a creature, or more aptly monster based on the description, but what creature he didn’t know.

  It was purposefully vague, clearly trying not to give away too much information unnecessarily. Lloyd scratched his chin as he tried to figure out what this was all about but couldn’t come up with anything that made sense to him.

  With no solutions to the riddle, Lloyd did the only thing that he could think of, and asked Hugmun. Giving the towering walls of inscriptions one last look, Lloyd walked back through the barrier, and turned to the crow who seemingly hadn’t moved an inch since he went in.

  The crow was shrouded in shadows despite the field of glow worms above him, seemingly using some sort of skill whilst deep in thought. Lloyd wasn’t about to interrupt him and went to go back into the cavern to ponder on the riddle before he was interrupted.

  Hugmun’s eyes suddenly shot open as he turned to face Lloyd directly.

  “So?”

  Lloyd gave him a quick run down of what he saw in the cave whilst Hugmun slowly nodded along, seemingly not too surprised by what he was hearing. It was only when Lloyd asked about the second riddle that the crow paused.

  His beak opened and closed a few times, a small grunt escaping before he flinched in pain, blood pooling in his mouth momentarily before he spat it out. Hugmun sighed in disappointment, went to speak then froze, as if considering what would happen if he tried to speak again.

  After a few moments’ deliberation, Hugmun finally spoke, an uneasy stiffness in his voice all the while.

  “I’m afraid I help you there, you’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”

  As he spoke a shroud of darkness began to swirl around him in a way that Lloyd found all too familiar.

  “Wait!” Lloyd yelled, not ready to be teleported away like last time. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  His voice swelled with anger as he questioned the crow, in dire need of answers to his many questions and not willing to be sent away so soon. At the very least he wanted another tablet so that he could return again, but Hugmun just wouldn’t respond.

  The crow only responded with a sorrowful shake of his head before Lloyd was enveloped by shadows. The last thing he saw through the black haze was Hugmun shaking, his body spasming as he coughed up blood.

  Wispy blackness enshrouded him, pulling him from his feet and dragging him through space without following the rules reality operated on. Lloyd felt as if he were attached to the back of a rocket as he shot through the blackness, but soon it was over.

  Just as quickly as he had gotten there, Lloyd was gone, in little more than an hour, Lloyd was already back in the wilderness. Leaves stretched around him in all directions, roots spread out below his feet, and Lloyd opened his eyes in realisation when he recognised where he was.

  He had been here before, this specific spot in particular, and he was beginning to put the pieces together as he looked down from his perch. Lloyd was starting to feel more and more grateful for the crow as he realised what he had done for him clearly at significant physical cost.

  Everything was falling into place.