The darkness swallowed them as Syrna pulled the party into the gaping hole created by Rydr and the enormous ball that burst from the wall. 

Rydr nearly balked when she pulled them into the dark, but the nervous swirl of energy in his stomach abated a bit when he remembered that he wasn't alone in there. 

"Everyone in one piece?" Rydr heard Urginok ask his question from just a few feet to his left side, but when he turned to look, he couldn't even make out the shape of Urginok. It was like the abyss opened up to start questioning his well-being. 

Rydr absently reached up to rub his sore shoulder where the giant ball brushed against him and knocked out half his health points, "A little worse for wear, actually. Are the goblins still coming?" 

Now that he noticed, Rydr realized that he couldn't hear the sound of the rabid green creatures clamoring for their blood. In the upper left corner of his vision, the giant saw his health bar, which had been depleted by nearly half when the boulder crushed him, start to refill. 

The HUD was the only thing the giant saw in the darkness. He willed a few menu options in and out of existence to be sure he still could; their comforting green glow failed to provide any light, which interested Rydr.

"You already said that when you were face down on the ground, bro." The tank went quiet for a few moments, and Rydr was about to ask his question again when Urginok said, "You should check your notifications, man. The goblins are dead." 

Rydr blinked, surprised and pleased to learn that the immediate danger had passed. He could faintly hear Syrna, or who he hoped was Syrna, rustling around in the dark. 

A moment later, Rydr heard the sound of rock and metal striking together, and another torch lightly flared into life, illuminating the space around them. 

Rydr's eyes watered from the light of the torch, and he shielded his eyes against its glare. When his eyes adjusted to the new light, Rydr moved his hand and found Syrna crouched on the ground, the flint and steel in her grasp fading away into tiny lights as she stored them in her inventory. 

The beautiful blonde archer stood up and held her torch high, illuminating the space around them. A great, rocky wall seemed to stretch on forever until it disappeared into total darkness beyond the torch's light. 

Rydr chest tightened up with fear as he stared at the craggy face of the wall. The rough surface dyed the wall in a cast of amber fire and inky shadow. The shadows seemed to Rydr as if they housed every manner of ant-like tunnels. Where goblins would soon come pouring down like a waterfall of green death. 

Arctic talons gripped Rydr's chest, and he gasped, unable to breathe. His vision swam, but Rydr couldn't tear his eyes away from the shadows. They screamed at him, pressing against his senses, and every instinct in his body begged him to run. 

A drug-like stupor came as his mind started to slip into the shadows when they suddenly shifted, and the spot he'd been staring at turned to yellow fire-light. 

Syrna walked briskly to the craggy wall that quickly transfixed Rydr and sat on a low stone outcrop. The interruption lets Rydr rip his eyes away from the wall and take several deep breaths to steady himself.

At least one of us was a little prepared. Rydr was grateful that Syrna was a more methodical person than he or Urginok. They would have been left high and dry in pitch darkness without the clever blonde. 

Darkness is one thing...shadows, though...Rydr shuddered and suppressed the morbid urge to look back at the wall. He forced himself to find a distraction rather than follow that train of thought.

Rydr breathed out slowly, centering himself, and opened his notification menu with a thought. 

*You Leveled Up...*

*Killed Level 9 Goblin Scout (Common)...x6*

*Killed Level 10 Hobgoblin Enforcer (Uncommon)...x2*

*4,294 Exp Gained...*

The experience gained now and from the previous fight with Guile put Rydr over halfway to level five.

Rydr was thrilled and pumped his fist in excitement, the tight feeling in his chest pushed aside by the butterflies in his stomach. From beginning to end, he never expected the goblin party to die from the boulder, nor did he think that they would be rewarded the experience for their deaths. 

Rydr glanced up at the others and locked eyes with Urginok. The tank's expression flickered with something Rydr couldn't read, and Urginok grinned from ear to ear.

 Urginok held up four fingers, waggling them at the enormous warrior. When Rydr turned to look at Syrna, she held an arrow in her hands, the fletching and arrowhead already removed from the shaft. The blonde looked up for just a moment to nod at Rydr.

They all gained a level from squashing the dangerous, green-skinned gremlins. 

Before Rydr turned away from the tinkering blonde, she tilted her head and nodded significantly behind him. 

Rydr frowned, confused, and turned to look in the direction of her nod. In front of him was a lumpy, mostly round surface to the cave wall. 

Unlike the one to his back, this wall was almost smooth in comparison. Rydr followed it with his eyes, looking up and up until he craned his neck to see where the seam of the wall was.

Rydr failed to find a seam. He walked to the left a few feet and then to the right side. Eventually, it dawned on him. He wasn't looking at a wall at all. 

In the cave, which already vacated one enormous death-ball, stood an even larger death-ball.

Rydr's memories of the first ball were a little fuzzy, having been half crushed by it, but the second boulder was easily double the size of the first one.

As it stood, there was no way to get it out of the cave in the first place. The hole he made in the wall barely fit the first boulder through. Rydr reached out his hand to touch the boulder's surface and - 

"Don't touch that!" Syrna's shout made Rydr jump back, whereupon he flew across the small cave, and his back painfully met the jagged wall that transfixed him before. 

Rydr flailed wildly as he tried to rub his back to ease the soreness. At least it didn't knock my breath out. I hate feeling like I can't breathe. He took a few stumbling steps away from the wall. I really need to figure out this Springform passive. 

"What was that, dude?" Urginok's slow drawl came from Rydr's right side, where the tank sat on the floor, his arms supported by his knees as he relaxed against the wall. The tank may have found the only semi-smooth part on the entire wall.

"What was what?" So much had happened in the last few minutes that Rydr felt Urginok really needed to be more specific. 

Idly, the giant continued to try to rub his back before he gave up and admitted that his arms were too large to let him reach that spot anymore.

"What was that huge jump? She scares you that bad?" The tank sat with his back against the rough wall; his hammer rested across his knees. 

Rydr considered insulting his ancestors but shrugged it away and explained his [Springform] passive to Urginok and Syrna. 

"That's...interesting? It looks like it's going to be a problem here, though. You've been throwing yourself around since you stood up." Syrna twirled a second arrow between her fingers before she started to dismantle it as well, her fingers deftly removing the fletching. "These caves aren't small, but it would be the death of us if you trip yourself up in the middle of a fight." 

"Well, how would you suggest I control it?" Ryde huffed at her.

The blonde stopped her work on the arrow and tilted her head, "Don't jump?"

"That is not helpful, and you know it. I can't just never use it, and it feels like it considered any step with too much force a 'jump,'" Rydr scratched at his head as he puzzled over how he was supposed to move. 

"Can it affect your kicks and stuff?" Urginok questioned from where he sat. 

Rydr paced a little bit as he thought about it, "Probably not...I think because the game can basically read our minds. It won't let me use it like that."

"Hmmm, I think it will. You said any step with too much force is a 'jump,' right?" Rydr nodded at Urginok. 

"Then it wouldn't happen if it worked your way. Think about it," Urginok leaned forward and set his hammer to the side, "the game doesn't acknowledge running and jumping as different things. Otherwise, it would just let you run without it being affected."

Rydr nodded his head slowly as he thought about Urginok's logic. Theoretically, that would mean that his kicks were 50% stronger as well. 

Would it translate to damage too? It might just influence my 'acting force' on stuff, like a stronger knockback effect.

The giant couldn't decide which was more likely but seriously doubted that he was just given a free 50% damage buff to anything. 

"Then just relearn how to move. Instead of viewing it as a negative, imagine how fast you could move. Maybe just get used to moving fast, dude." Urginok drawled out his idea, and Rydr found that he liked his advice more than Syrna's 'don't jump' solution. 

Rydr thought about it for a while longer before he turned to his team and asked, "Do you guys think it's safe to leave this cave? I want to do some experimenting." 

Syrna shrugged and said, "Can't know without trying. You first."

Rydr snorted and turned to Urginok. 

"Can't hurt to check. I feel like it's a matter of when, not if, we die. Might as well explore some for when we come back." Rydr felt that the tank...wasn't wrong. 

Based on the goblin party's level alone, they would get crushed if they drew too much attention. 

Rydr borrowed a torch from Syrna and stepped cautiously into the sloped death trap they had fallen into with everyone on the same page. The tunnel was quiet, and the boulder from before was nowhere to be seen. 

Rydr stretched the torch over his head and noted the damage the boulder did to the floor. The groove in the center, which Rydr suspected was like a runner for the trap, was more defined, like it might accept something bigger. 

After a brief pause, Rydr ducked back into the smaller cave and asked Syrna, "Why did you yell at me not to touch the giant rock?" He watched as the tall archer gathered her things and the dismantled arrows faded into her inventory. 

"Because it will activate the trap." 

"Okayyy, how did you know that? What trap?" Urginok questioned as he dusted off his trousers. 

"Because it's written on the wall," Syrna fussed over her bow and didn't look at either of them.

Rydr stuck his head back into the tunnel and shined his torch on the wall Syrna obsessed over before. "You mean this wall?" He could see the chicken scratch all over it, with the runes underneath.

"Yes, that wall." Ryder and Urginok stared at her as she started to flush red. Syrna refused to make eye contact with either of them. She shouldered Rydr to the side and stepped into the tunnel. With a turn, she immediately crouched next to the wall and ran her hand over it. 

Syrna sighed, hung her head, and asked, "You guys aren't going to let this go?"

"Not likely, unless you really don't want us to know." Urginok followed her into the tunnel, and Rydr brought up the rear. They both stood a bit behind her as she studied the wall for a while longer. 

She sighed again and started to say, "Have you guys ever heard of Kenneth Locke Hale?"

"Negative, chief." Rydr mirrored Urginok's opinion and shook his head, even though Syrna couldn't see it.

"He was a polyglot - someone who can learn languages incredibly quickly. Known to speak over fifty languages, he was famous for being able to become conversationally fluent in a language after listening to two native speakers for fifteen minutes." 

Syrna finally turned to face them, her face tense as she continued to talk.

"Have either of you heard of the Rosetta Stone?" 

Urginok nodded at her, "Yeah, but wasn't it destroyed over a hundred years ago? Back during the Gene Wars?" Rydr nodded in agreement with the tank while frowning at Syrna.

The blonde crossed her arms over her green tunic, nodding at the tank, and said, "These walls are like the Rosetta Stone. What looks like chicken scratch to you is actually two written languages on top of each other. While one is mostly chicken scratch, and I suspect it's the Goblin tongue, the other is some sort of runic language." 

She turned back to the wall and placed her hand on its rough surface, tracing the scratches. "By themselves, either one would be useless, but it looks like the Goblin language is a direct translation of the runic one, just written over it like a messy child."

Her head snapped back around to them, and she admitted, "I can get a piss-poor translation off it because I am a polyglot. Some have specialties, as one picks up written language better while others learn phonetics better, I pick up on both easily. I can learn most languages just by listening to native speakers for a few minutes. In the real world, I work as a linguist." 

Urginok held his hands up, "Woah, easy. No one is attacking you. You can read the wall, that's cool. Is it normal for polyglots to learn languages in fifteen minutes?" The gesture placated the ruffled blonde, and she shook her head before she lapsed into silent brooding. 

Urginok glanced at Rydr, made a face, and shrugged. Rydr thought it best to leave Syrna alone for a while. With a tap on Urginok's shoulder, he stepped away and started towards the sloped end of the tunnel.

While worries and new information alike floated around in his mind and begged for attention, Rydr forced himself to focus on his experiments. Once he was about fifty meters away from the others, he turned to face them again. 

Rydr bent his knees and leaned forward to run. With a deep breath, he kicked down with his foot and tried to predict how his passive would change things. A deep crack resounded as Rydr leaped forward, his head thrown back by the sudden acceleration. 

He tried to get his other leg up to take another step, but his initial move brought him against the slope in the tunnel. Rydr moved so far with one step there wasn't enough room to get his other leg around, and his toes caught the floor. The giant flew end over end as he rolled to a dizzying stop. 

Damage notifications floated before his eyes, but his health was over two-thirds full, so he waved them away. Rydr found that his single-step launched him almost ten meters from his starting position when he sat up. 

Rydr got to his feet gingerly, careful not to send himself flying again. Shocked at the distance he covered, Rydr admitted that he needed to be aware of his space even more than he thought to use the ability. 

Rydr knew how to fix the problem, but it spawned a slew of others to replace it. 

In the real world, he was plagued with synesthesia. Most thought the condition made you think in numbers, and that was one version, to be sure. 

What it really did was link more than one of your senses to each other so they are perceived as the other, like when some could see sounds. 

Another version combined objects, like shapes, letters, and numbers, with another sense like the taste, smell, or color. Rydr fell into the latter category. 

His brain perceived objects, from a pen, chair, or even a building, as a physical pressure on his body. The condition was detrimental under normal circumstances and left Rydr gasping on the ground because he felt crushed. 

Rydr's coping mechanism was to give himself tunnel vision. He let his eyes skate over objects without locking on, nearly never looked up, and tried to paint a white landscape in his mind. It wasn't perfect, but it let him operate like a mostly average person. In the real world, Rydr lived like he had blinders on. 

Years ago, the giant realized that his condition was strange. So long as he never considered himself picking up the pen, he never felt its weight against him. Likewise, if he never looked at a building and saw it falling on him in his head, Rydr could walk by them without collapsing. 

Back at his original position, Rydr examined the floor where he kicked off. It was cracked and cratered where he stepped. The force of his kickoff crushed the stone under his foot. He was a little giddy at the evidence of his physical strength, but he didn't let it ruin his focus. 

Rydr stood just to the side of that spot and readied himself again.

Before he lunged forward like an idiot, he calmed down and let himself start to see. Little by little, Rydr started to pay attention to his peripheral vision. 

With every breath, he opened up his field of view and tensed as he felt every rock, its shape and weight like it was actually pressed against his skin, settle on his body like a set of heavy training clothes. 

To the giant, it was like the tunnel shrank, every edge pressing against his body.

When Rydr closed his eyes, he could still feel their impression on his body and mind. The tunnel in his field of view mapped itself like a 3D model in Rydr's mind. He never dreamed of doing something like this, but needs must when the devil drives, and his initial idea proved to be true. 

Because of his game avatar's absurd strength score, the weight that he experienced through his synesthesia was countered. He didn't think it would work since a person's attachment to their idea of 'self' was pretty intense. His idea of "self" didn't produce Rydr, but instead, he saw his weak, crippled body in the real world.

Despite that, Rydr found that he could shoulder the weight if he didn't let in too much at once. The game gave him a gift that he never expected, and one that would even be useful for him. 

Rydr always found it odd that he managed his synesthesia with mental blinders. From what he knew, the condition wasn't manageable.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 

Thank you all for reading this far! As always, if you see a typo, let me know, and I will fix it ASAP!

I may start posting on Sundays because my graveyard shifts interfere with chapter updates.

Read ahead on P.atreon: Zelthias_FW