Defiance of the Fall

The kills in the second cave gave Zac another level up , bringing him to level 33 . He put in 1 point in Strength and two points into Endurance , bringing the attributes to 171 and 99 respectively .

Zac soon trudged on , continuously looking through the seemingly endless tunnel system . He found a few more imp camps on the way . Not all the camps were sleeping though , and he skipped the ones who were awake for now . He was forced to eat four fireballs earlier which hurt quite bad , and didn’t want to imagine how getting bombarded by twenty of those infernal balls would feel .

After traveling for an hour he felt that he should be below sea level by how much he had descended . Of course , it was hard to get an exact feeling when everything felt the same . But it opened up a new avenue of escape for him . He had been pondering whether he should build a raft to leave the island if the demon quest didn’t pan out .

But the thought of being stuck at sea on a crudely built raft and no knowledge of how far he was from land soon quenched that idea . Besides , who knew what kind of monstrous things lurked in the depths after the integration into the multi-verse .

The caves felt like a safer option . Even if he found no way out , he could always back-track to the island . The only downside was the claustrophobic feeling of these tunnels . The tunnels were quite beautiful right where he was , but he guessed it was due to the high amount of cosmic energy in the surroundings . If he left this area the tunnels would likely be far more dour and oppressive .

As he continued his exploration he started to smell a very acrid odor , differing greatly from the earthy scent of the vegetation or the putrid stench of the imp camps . Intrigued he decided to find the source and started to slowly follow the smell .

After a few twists and turns , he finally managed to find the right direction . It seemed that none of the stats really improved his senses overly much , so his plethora of titles hadn’t given him eagle eyes or a super sniffer . He , therefore , made some wrong turns before being able to tell what direction the smell came from .

As the smell got stronger and stronger he saw that the tunnel was starting to change . There were signs of mining activity in the area , with holes in the walls peppered about . Most of the greenery had also been ripped out , leaving only some of the luminescent moss for some lightning . It looked like the source of the smell was man-made rather than something natural .

He started to take greater care for any potential enemy or trap cropping up , but still decided to continue toward the source of the smell . As he peeked around a corner he saw a few imps milling about near the mouth of a large cave . He couldn’t properly see what was going on inside the cave due to the distance , but it was well lit up and he could see a purplish smoke wafting about inside .

It would be impossible to approach without alerting whoever was in the cave , so Zac retreated to find another entrance . After twenty minutes of looking around , following his nose , he found another cave mouth , but this one was guarded as well .

He turned toward the last path he found that had a stronger smell compared to the others and tried his luck one last time . This time he was lead to a dead end , the path simply stopping after a while . The acidic smell was extremely strong though , almost to the point of making Zac lightheaded . After looking around for a while he found a small crack in the wall behind some luminescent moss .

He ripped down the moss and another light shone from the wall , but this time it was light bleeding through a small crack . It appeared he was right next to the cave , but with a thin layer of rock in between .

He tried to look through the crack but it was too small for him to see anything , so he brought out one of his thin throwing knives from his pouch and started to carefully carve out the crack . It was a slow process as he didn’t want the sounds to alert anyone inside , and it took almost half an hour until the hole was large enough for him to be able to see through .

He eagerly glanced inside , and what met his eye made his heartbeat speed up . The cave was one of the largest ones he had seen so far , being a full 30 meters across . The first thing he noticed was the large cauldron in the middle of the room , and it was the source of the smell and the purple smoke he had seen . It was almost as tall as Zac was , and held in the air by a crude rock and lumber contraption .

The source of the fire confused Zac , as it didn’t produce any smoke . He only saw a handful of the raw Nexus Crystals placed seemingly haphazardly on the ground , and above them a blue-white flame was steadily emitted , heating the bottom of the cauldron . Zac made a mental note , because if he could burn crystals without creating smoke he would be able to provide warmth and cook food without having to worry about demons finding out .