Azarinth Healer: Book One - A LitRPG Adventure, page 3
So the drakes aren’t the only predators here… figures. I’m lost in the forest, they’ll tire me out and kill me. Only one place to go then…
Ilea wasn’t surprised by how calm she was. Compared to the drake, these wolves weren’t as frightening. She had fought plenty of men before, their weight and ability likely quite a bit higher than those of a wolf. They even had a sort of calming normalcy about them, like some of the aggressive street dogs she had encountered before. She had only seen wolves in zoos before coming here, but they still held a familiarity that made her less scared.
Of course, wolves could still kill people, but, on Earth at least, Man was king.
A bit of that previous uneasy feeling welled up inside her at the thought. She knew that in this world, wherever it may be, that might not be the case anymore.
The wolves advanced as she slowly retreated backward to the entrance of the temple. The growling intensified as they began to encircle Ilea. To completely surround her was impossible now, but she had only one way to go. Ducking under a broken pillar, she entered the temple, breaking into a run. The wolves howled and gave chase.
She emerged into a light-filled hallway, the sky partially visible through the many cracks in the ceiling and walls, none large enough for her to fit through. Stone was everywhere, but she couldn’t look closely at the statues or anything else as she ran.
Need a way out of here…
There were several doors in the room, but they seemed sealed shut. One was thankfully cracked with age, and the bottom half was entirely missing. She darted through the gap. Running down a new hallway, she heard the wolves’ paws scraping on the stone behind her.
She entered another room, this one largely empty. Inside, a statue affixed to the back wall depicted a lightly-dressed man in a fighting stance. His arms were held high, poised to attack his adversary. Which it seemed was Ilea. The statue’s eyes held empty sockets. Remnants of a campfire could be seen in the corner of the room.
Searching the room with frantic eyes, Ilea couldn’t make out any way to leave other than how she had entered. There was a hole in the ceiling, perhaps big enough to climb through, yet it was much too high for her to reach.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of claws skittering on stone directly behind her. The first wolf was entering the room.
She turned toward the sound, and any prior feelings of calm melted away. Replaced by a primal dread.
There was no way out.
Backing up to the wall next to the statue, Ilea felt terror beginning to rise. She pushed it away. She was stronger than this. Perhaps she was on some crazy alien planet or in a mad virtual simulation, but she was still herself. She had always faced her problems head-on.
Is this it already? Do I die here? Well, at least I can test if I have more than one life in this crazy place.
Looking at the statue next to her, she smirked and copied his stance. “Not too far from kickboxing, I guess…” she muttered.
Facing down the wolf, she set her feet and put on her best intimidating scowl.
“You’re just a puppy… with sharp teeth…” she said, with more confidence than she felt. A growl was the only response.
Then a streak of fur and fangs shot toward her. The wolf was fast, but not too fast for her to handle. Ilea took a deep breath and focused. Nothing but the wolves mattered.
Her foot caught the wolf’s head on the side with all the weight and force she could muster from her years of training. The powerful kick sent it sprawling to the floor on her left side. Looking up, Ilea saw that two more of the beasts had entered the room while she had been occupied with the first.
Concentrating on the newcomers, Ilea ignored the whimpers from her left and prepared for another charge. The wolves broke into a sprint and jumped at her from two sides. Both animals snarled, flecks of saliva flying from their open mouths. Her foot flew up again and collided with the left-hand wolf. Instinctively, she brought her arm up to block the other creature. But this was no boxing match.
The wolf bit deep. Pain rippled through her senses, but she gritted her teeth and ignored the angry throb of the injury. Several punches to its stomach were needed to make it release her. Then the final wolf entered the room as Ilea nursed her wound.
Regrouping, the four wolves stared at her, now more wary of their supposed prey. Blood dripped down her arm as she prepared herself for the next onslaught.
She felt numb. The pain was a dull feeling in the back of her mind, adrenaline helping her cope with it. She knew she would not last long against four attackers, especially while losing blood.
A sudden loud humming cut through the silence. The shock and volume of it made her lose concentration, and her defensive stance faltered. Luckily the wolves were just as startled and began yipping and whimpering while they scrambled to leave the room and escape the sound.
“Hahahaha, got you, you shitbags!! You overgrown puppies can go to hell!” Ilea yelled. She didn’t care how or why. She had won. She had survived.
Wait… was something glowing?
Ilea felt the world shift violently before her. It tilted and whirled like a carnival ride. Nausea gripped her, and she immediately knelt on the ground, retching up whatever was in her stomach.
When her vision cleared, she was somewhere else entirely.
“What the…” she gasped, wiping her mouth after puking again, “…fuck?”
‘ding’ You have proven Strength and Dexterity beyond your initial assigned values – Recalculating – +2 Strength, +3 Dexterity
“At least I got something for that fight…” she muttered. “Not that I have any idea what any of that actually means. I don’t feel any different.”
Looking around her, she found herself in a long hallway. There were more statues like the one from the wolf room. The only illumination was a faint blue light that came from the moss growing on the walls, all of which – including the ceiling – were carpeted with it.
What exactly had just happened? Was that some sort of magic? Teleportation? This place was getting stranger by the second. Thinking about it only made it worse. She needed to keep moving. For all she knew, the wolves might still be nearby.
Ilea scanned her surroundings. The statues looked the same. Different stances, though. A fountain, entirely made of stone, stood in the center of the hall. It reached about a meter in height, and it was in the shape of an hourglass with an open top. Water dripped from a stone extension that reached out of the side before it curved down toward the basin. She figured she was still in the temple. Maybe one of the closed-off rooms she had seen in the main hall on the way in?
Standing up made her wince.
“Fuck that hurts…”
She cursed a few more times, if only to distract herself.
Her arm was still bleeding. With the adrenaline gone, it quickly became the worst pain Ilea had ever experienced. This is worse than when I broke my leg, for fuck’s sake!
Trying to steady her arm, she focused on the fountain. It looked as ancient as the rest of the temple, but the thing was still functional.
“I’ll have to clean this…” she said, walking up to the fountain. She dipped her arm into the water that pooled around the fountain. It looked fresh and clear despite the dilapidated nature of the rest of the temple. She shrugged. “Seems safe. Can’t be worse than wolf spit, I guess.”
To her surprise, the pain lessened immediately upon contact with the water, the wounds closing faster than anything she’d ever seen, not even leaving scars behind.
“What the hell… Is this the Fountain of Youth or what? This is amazing!”
Elated by her discovery, she bent down and started drinking the water. Fighting for one’s life built up a thirst after all. A feeling of relief washed through her with every gulp.
“Wow, this tastes amazing…” she said. Feeling much better than before, Ilea sat with her back against the wall a few feet from the fountain.
“What a day…” she murmured, focusing on her breathing as all the questions and thoughts she had pushed aside came crashing down.
Not now. I have to check the hallway.
She decided it wasn’t safe to stay in one place for long. Forcing herself to her feet again, she got up and started to walk down one side of the hallway. An open door greeted her, aged wood that barely remained upright. On the other side, it was dark. No moss seemed to be growing inside the room.
Backtracking into the hall, Ilea ripped some moss from the wall and entered again. She was pleased to see that the moss continued to glow. It illuminated what once might have been a bed in the center of the room. All that was left was a sagging wooden frame that looked perhaps marginally more comfortable than the rough stone floor. The space was otherwise empty.
What a weird room. Seems like a cell.
Walking back into the hallway, Ilea inspected the glowing moss in her hand. That alone was pretty weird. But with everything that had happened since she woke up, it now seemed practically mundane. Still, glowing moss was not something she had ever heard of.
I wonder…
She looked at the moss in her hand and used Identify.
[Bluemoon Grass]
“Well, that’s not really helping me, now is it?”
Walking to the other end of the hallway, she checked out the statues on the walls every couple of meters. Both sides of the hallway were adorned with them.
Each statue had a certain stance, which she assumed was some kind of fighting style. The detail was insane. And the eyes… They weren’t empty sockets like the statue in the room she had fought the wolves in. In the sockets was some kind of jewel. A blue gem unlike anything she had seen before. They were in fact quite hard to see because of the blue glowing moss growing all around the statues.
Reaching the other end of the hallway, another open door greeted her. Inside was something far different from just a bed.
“Books…”
A large room littered with hundreds of books stood before her. Barely standing shelves with piles of ancient tomes, some covered in thick layers of dust and others entirely returned to it. All color that had once been present had long since disappeared.
The only light source was the slowly fading Bluemoon Grass in her hands. No other entry or exit could be seen.
“This is weird. Like a study for some sort of hermit or maybe a cult?” Just touching one of the books caused it to instantly crumble to dust. “This place is old… how old does a book need to be before it literally disintegrates?”
Checking out the rest of the pile, she realized that some of the books were in better condition than others. Getting closer, she noticed weird writing on some of the shelves
“Runes, maybe? I’m assuming if there’s magic here, there should be some kind of runes. An enchantment, maybe? That seems in line with most magic I’ve read about. Then again, who knows how things work here…”
Looking back at the shelf from which she had removed the first book, she saw that all the books looked deteriorated in that section. Could magic be used to preserve books? She didn’t see why not.
“Maybe the magical preservation mojo went out or something… these others look fine though.”
Taking out a book from one of the few shelves where the enchantments still seemed to be working, she walked back into the hall to look at it in a better light, only then realizing that there was no way out of the place. She was stuck. In a basement with no stairs or ladders.
She looked up at the ceiling, trying to find an opening somewhere, but nothing stood out to her. Ilea walked backward and hit the wall, sliding down until she was sitting on the floor.
There’s no food here. How much air do I even have?
She felt her chest tighten and quickly tried to steady her breathing. She was annoyed that a part of her wanted to contact her parents.
They’re not here. Nobody is. It’s just me… in a basement. With a bunch of old books.
She was at her limit. She knew the feeling well, but she knew just as well that spiraling down the path she was on would only lead to more issues.
Focus. What can you do? You’re stuck in a hallway. There’s a fucking magical healing fountain and a bunch of books. Water I have. Which means I should be fine for a few days.
She looked down at the cover of the book in her hands. At first, all she saw was a bunch of weird symbols, but after a moment, the meaning seemed to pop into her mind.
Azarinth Advanced Stances Part III.
She sighed. “Oh good fuck, I can read it. Don’t think Part III of some advanced stances manual helps me a lot here though. Maybe there’s something more useful in there.”
Going back inside the library, Ilea grabbed all the books that were still intact. Sadly, not many remained out of the once hundreds of tomes. The one that caught her eye was a thin volume that looked like it could be a journal.
“Gregory Pale – Days of Awakening,” she read aloud. Flipping through it, there seemed to be dates. A diary of some sort, perhaps? She continued reading.
“Day 1 of my Awakening, or shall I call it imprisonment? I question my decision to join the Order, but such thoughts are for naught at this point. To think I was offered access to their elixir and class. I entered the Chamber of Awakening of my own free will and shall either succeed or succumb. I intend to become a warrior of Azarinth, more powerful than any before me…”
Reading the first couple of days’ worth of entries, it seemed that this place belonged to an Order of some sort who called themselves the Azarinth. Mages, fighters, and healers were mentioned.
“I have yet to unlock the required skills, but surely my growth will outpace most mundane healers and mages. War is raging, after all, and opportunities are abundant. I hear the Domains have joined our efforts. We can no longer be stopped.”
War? Domains? Skills? Ilea shook her head. I’m in the Chamber of Awakening myself now, eh? So I’m really stuck here? Expected to become a warrior of Azarinth? Well that’s just great.
She stood up and checked the walls and ceiling one more time, but it all remained just as unrelentingly intact as before. She glanced at the book and sat down again.
Continuing to read, Gregory thankfully described the process of awakening in great detail. Apparently the Order had classes regarding a special form of magic they called Azarinth.
The whole Order is named after the magic… Bunch of nerds…
Grinning to herself, she continued to read. The Bluemoon Grass seemed to be of great importance to that magic and the process of awakening the class and training the related skills.
It could apparently be reached via other means too, with a lot of study and time, meditation, and patience. Most of the people reaching the class in this manner were very old. After what sounded like a horrible testing phase, the Order had discovered a way to speed up the process. Being enclosed in the chamber where they were only able to eat the Bluemoon Grass and drink from the Fountain of Clarity enabled many people to reach the class far faster, not to mention the speed of their skill growth would also increase, whatever that meant.
Fountain of Clarity… holy shit, this is so bad… they should get better writers…
The method had downsides too. For one, around 35% of the initiates would immediately die upon eating the grass. It changed parts of the body and was highly poisonous if not compatible with the initiate’s body.
Magical weeds… that kill one-third of those that eat it. Man, that is messed up…
The fast skill growth would also leave many of the fighters overconfident, able to use the skills but not having trained with them enough. The faster skill growth was mostly dependent on how long a person could stay in the chamber. The grass grew very slowly, so only a limited amount could be used by the Order.
Leveling skills up to their third stage in the chamber was apparently not possible. The grass needed to level up would increase dramatically after the second stage was achieved, such that it showed no discernible effect anymore. Most would only advance to the early second stage because of the limited availability of grass.
The journal also described the hall as only having a few patches of grass remaining. Ilea looked up at the luscious blue glowing walls, entirely covered by the coveted elixir.
Guess it’s been a while.
Gregory speculated that the restrictions to join were eased as what he called the “great war” progressed. He had seen fewer of the Azarinth in the streets, and there were rumors of hundreds dying in single battles.
Gregory had apparently advanced some of his skills up to the later second stages and then left. Ilea didn’t know specifically what that meant. Leaving was apparently only possible by using a particular skill acquired from the Bluemoon Grass.
“Well fuck… means I have to eat it. If there really isn’t an exit anywhere. But based on everything in the journal, I’ll need a class to survive out there anyway. If classes work like they do in RPGs, I’ll still be level 1, since I’ve not killed anything…”
She looked at the glowing moss suspiciously and went through the books with growing unease: Azarinth Basic Stances I, Azarinth Basic Stances II, Azarinth Basic Stances III, Azarinth Advanced Stances III, History of the Order Part IV, History of the Order Part XII, Azarinth Healing, Azarinth Healing Advanced, Mana Conversion and Flow by Magus Izalar… In addition, there were dozens of diaries from members of the Order. Apparently, it was a must to write one when in the chamber to help guide initiates following in their footsteps.
“I’m glad some useful ones remain… it’s a shame that so many of the books were lost.” She scratched her cheek and looked at the moss. Not yet.
Ilea searched through the chamber and rooms again to see if there was any way out or food other than the grass on the walls. After nearly two hours of searching every nook and cranny, she sat back down next to the pile of books by the fountain and sighed. Skimming some of the diaries gave her the same insights. Eating the elixir was a must. The books on stances and other theories were more akin to textbooks, dry explanations aided by illustrations. The few pages she read in the history book read like propaganda.
