*Thud*
"That was a fire story"
"..."
The sound of a book closing followed by a ridiculous declaration, echoed in the room multiple times, a bit lower every time it was repeated, making Felix remember how empty the room he was occupying actually was. There were only a mattress, a wooden chair, and a table with a few torn books resting atop it.
He was reading an old copy of [The book of Omnia] that he found in this very room to distract himself, but mere distraction such as reading could only keep his attention for a little while. Felix was a man of the modern era, where short attention span was the rule, not the exception.
"I hate this place"
Genuine thoughts, Felix has been a week in this place and it has not been a good week, if he had to compare it to the time in the wilderness he would definitely say that nature was more forgiving than the living hell he was currently going through. Felix simply looked vacantly into the hole in the wall where the door to the room should be, from there the faint sound of running water that made him shudder was the same.
His stomach grumbled, He immediately clenched his body and hugged himself, pain, the pain of hunger made him tremble to his very core, a pain he knew in his childhood, the absolute pain that resembled his own stomach acids going off without a purpose melting his flesh slowly from the inside.
The sound of rising bubbles was heard in his left ear as if his blood was boiling, it was amplified by the complete silence that he made, his contracting intestine almost wriggling made him stagger even though he was 'fine'. Logically he knew wouldn't die of starvation any time soon, but the protest and pain generated from a week straight of not eating made him hallucinate daily.
Why is Felix in this situation in the first place?
A week ago, Felix finally reached Nerodia, the capital of the famous kingdom of water.
' A bit more impressive in real life '
He said nonchalantly, he was surprised at the sheer scale of the whole castle and surrounding buildings, they were in disrepair and it was obvious that nature runs its course. It was not overtaken yet but the aura of abandonment irradiated strongly from every nook and cranny of the whole building.
He was standing still in front of what could only be described as a castle wall, it was at the very least 16 meters tall, the grey bricks were covered in moss and were visible indented and broken as if something slammed against the wall over the course of decades.
' I could climb the wall, but it's not a good idea... I think? '
Felix wasn't sure if he should climb the wall, obviously, it would be better since he already had to walk uphill for 4 days straight after leaving the river to reach the said wall. There were other ways to enter this city but it would require going around a good chunk of the perimeter of the entire city before seeing any type of door. even if climbing is not his forte he could do it with enough elbow grease.
' But that's not the problem now is it?'
The problem with climbing that specific wall was because he would be led to the [Fountain sanctuary], generally speaking, it is a good place, there is no conflict and it is treated as a hub or resting point in the game ' Left Rain ' so the chances of it being true here were quite high. But the problem surged with who is in there.
' I don't think I have what it takes to talk to Randall right now? '
Randall is an NPC that the player met and resided in the Fountain Sanctuary, technically speaking he was not a problem of any kind since he is the first sign of conversation that you found in the game, his nihilistic personality wasn't even a problem for Felix since he actually quite liked the character even if he was such a pessimistic dickhead.
The problem radiated that Randal speaker of the [Chosen Soul], a supposed existence that came from a fairytale where the chosen hero possessed a soul and determination above all others to keep the water from disappearing from the kingdom. Randall simply told the player that they were not the first to try the task of filling all the fountains in the city and how a lot of the previous heroes are now insane and roaming the premises that we are supposed to explore.
Felix as a fan of the game understood the history of the game and its driving point. What he didn't know was if he could even talk to him in English, most likely he would not know the language, [Otherworlder] would help him in learning the language that Randall would talk but he needed a starting point so he simply shrugged and moved to the side.
He started looking for a place similar to the Fountain Sanctuary, eventually, he found another wall, this one was 27 meters in height, a remarkable difference that would prove troubling but Felix steeled himself and started climbing.
' A 1000 m marathon starts with the first step right? '
Felix sighed and steeled himself to climb the rundown wall, the crevices that were indented in the wall were helpful but from time to time he would get stuck and had to travel horizontally to find another way up, his muscles were tense as sweat dripped from his forehead, utilizing maximum concentration.
When the voice of the system said 〈 Gained skill [Climbing LV1] through constant usage 〉 he almost let go of the wall, his entire body jerked in complete reflex and started the wall with only his fingertips, after a few minutes he simply continued and put odd the new skill since the name did describe it well.
After an hour he finished his climb, he grabbed from the railings of the wall and promptly fell onto the floor, he tried to move his arms and fingers, but they were firmly stuck in place and tensed. he laid in the sun for about an hour before his nerves finally subsided and he took a peek at where he was, after seeing the familiar place he felt relief in the confirmed knowledge of his surroundings.
He was currently in the Tomb Compound, it was the starting zone of the game and one of the most pacifistic ones that the game had to offer, Felix was a bit ahead from where the game actually started since in the game, the player rose from a desecrated tomb and currently, he was in the building next to that place.
"Technically the same area"
He murmured, the game gave no fucks about the fact that there were clearly different buildings with different purposes it simply labeled the entire place Tomb Compound because it was close enough. Felix smiled a bit for the first time and started to walk towards the little clear space between the mausoleum and the building he was currently residing in since there was the thing that could bring him a complete advantage.
"There it is!"
Felix exclaimed as he approached the little fountain, if someone were to look at it it was barely 1.7 m tall, it was not a great fountain but one almost too small to serve any purpose any other than to drink from it, it was made from with marble and was cracked, but it could still hold up water if there was any.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"How the fuck do I activate this?"
Felix said while looking at the fountain, that in the game these fountains served a variety of purposes but they were mainly checkpoints where one could rest up and refilled their resources and flasks. But currently, he was stumped since the game did not tell you how the player made water sprout from them.
"It was by pressing the X button, what the fuck is equivalent here?"
Felix did the equivalent of pressing all the buttons in the human body, nothing really happened at all, he started thinking, he REALLY needed this to work and he was determined enough to risk a lot of things for the fountain to work. So he simply decides to do something with magic.
It did not work since he knew nothing about magic.
The next thing he did was tried to search the fountain, he found nothing important with the exception of a small bowl at the top of the fountain, it was made of marble and was fixed in place since technically was part of the fountain, there was a little hole at the bottom that looked like a really tiny funnel.
"I guess I could try that"
There was nothing to lose, so he made a small wound on his wrist and poured a bit of his blood on the funnel and the fountain reacted to it by letting an extremely insignificant amount of water trickle in. Felix had to make the wound bigger and stand for 5 minutes to have enough blood to activate the fountain to its full capacity.
The fountain filled but did not overflow, it was constantly flowing as if someone had turned the tap on. Felix simply sat down and took a big sip out of the water that poured from the fountain, and immediately felt better, the water tasted great, he, of course, knew that water was supposed to be tasteless but it felt like the ' slightly cold water at 3 AM'.
His wound slowly closed up, he grinned at himself and simply decided to concentrate on what was important at the moment, the fountain itself.
The fountain had many functions inside the game, the most important feature was the level-up system that was completely fixed on the fountains, the player had the ability to raise his stats and even acquire skills while inside the Fountain menu. Right now there was no menu on his vision so he simply called the Status menu.
Name: Felix Balch [Otherworlder] | LV: 22 | Age: 22 | Race: Human (%95) | [Skill Menu (22 SP)]
|Resources|
HP: 330/330 (0.33/min) | MP: 280/280 (0.33/min) | STA: 280/280 (3.8/min)
|Stats|
Strength: 31 | Dexterity: 37
Luck: 15 | Intelligence: 92
Speed: 28 | Endurance: 23 [230/hr]
Vitality: 33 | Regeneration: 20 [20/hr ]
Arcane: 28 | Attunement: 20 [20/hr ]
|Skills|
[Mental Fortitude LV2], [Meditation LV2], [Pain Resistance LV 5], [Conjecture LVMAX (↑)], [Spear Novice LV4], [Fishing Novice LV3], [Swimming LV 6], [Faith LV2], [Training LV3], [Climbing LV1]
|Equpiment|
[Guest Cloak (%98)], [Guest Pants (%99)], [Guest Shirt (%99)], [Guest Boots (%97)], [Guest Ring of Feather Falling (%0)]
|Titles Earned|
[Otherworlder], [Arcane Survivor], [Forcibly Summoned Individual], [Spear User], [Believer]
The status menu appeared on his vision, as always it was only a vision that seemed to manifest not on floating in the world but it simply appeared inside of his eyes, so no matter how he looked he could only stare at the menu straight on.
He stopped wondering about the menu itself and looked at it to confirm a few things, he did earn [Climbing] as a skill and a few other skills also got some level-ups, but there were w important things to denote in the menu.
First, the [Human] part of his status was now only at [95%] instead of the usual 100%, this is something Felix expected since the fountains in the game did something similar to this. When one made a fountain functional they needed to give a percentage of their own soul to it, that was the lore behind these artifacts.
Mechanically, the percentage of your soul function like an EXP Buff or Debuff, you got a 50% bonus when you had 100% of your soul, but you also had a -50% EXP gain when you were at 0%of your soul, so the base EXP gained was at 50% soul, So he looked at his stats and current title.
' Right now I have 145% EXP bonus from all sources, and on language-related skills, it should be 645%... pretty good I think'
In the game, the player started with 65% of their soul, so Felix had an advantage from not being a person of this world, or maybe it was because he did not raise himself from a tomb but that was secondary at the moment.
The second important thing was the [Skill Menu], it was an important part of the game that allowed players to gain skills and evolve them into better ones.
"Don't disappoint me"
Felix was trying hard to suppress his excitement for the new feature.
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If someone's wondering, The game 'Left Rain' is supposed to be souls-like. hence Felix's despair in knowing what dwells in Tempestad.