Looking at the bright side, me coming here had been a good thing. If it was a dungeon once more, the risk of someone finding me had become almost none.
After stepping inside, I found a quiet neck of the woods and took the opportunity to finally go over all the System alerts that I had been ignoring. Turned out, most of them were unanswered messages from Claudia.
I filtered out all her messages, and I was left with only four alerts left.
Claudia had send the payment for my services; 3 Lup. I'd have to discover how much that was worth. What worried me was the next message up.
[[Corrupted Divinator] has been terminated]
“What?”
I stared at the message for a bit too long, trying to draw my own conclusions of what had happened. It did open a pocket dimension to some other place, which should have been a great feat and not a punishment. Corrupting something that was already corrupted; it was extraordinary, wasn’t it?
Dejected, I went to the next message.
[Corrupted?Divinator]?functionalities?do?not?account?for?the?given?use.
The?System?has?decided?to?terminate?the?contractual?obligations?to?uphold?the?class.
*Error,?class?cannot?be?removed.*
My breath accelerated with my pulse. I knew I still had a second class. I somehow knew it was there, as if it made me complete. I could have spoiled the fun by looking at my status, but I decided to check the last message and find out whatever had happened.
[Corrupted?Class?Book]?readjustment?in?progress.
[Corrupted?Divinator]?->?{The?Third?Eye?of?Corruption}
I couldn't hold anymore from looking at my status and expanding the information I had available.
{The?Third?Eye?of?Corruption}
The?System?is?unable?to?provide?information?about?user-created?classes.
After some initial confusion, I broke into a state of pure ecstasy. I jumped into the air, flipping at wherever Bob was looking from, and I laughed like a madman.
It took me some minutes to regain control over myself, but I eventually managed to do the only next logical step.
“Summon [Corrupted Class Book].”
I browsed through the pages, soon realizing that [Corrupted Divinator] was still there but greyed out and stricken over.
The class was now unavailable. Lost forever. I kept on reading, and it didn't take much longer to find what I needed. The bright gold color of the page was an impossible to miss hint.
{The?Third?Eye?of?Corruption}
Your?attunement?to?corruption?has?breached?the?first?threshold.?You?are?the?embodiment?of?corruption,?and?you?can?spread?and?magnify?it.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Your?third?eye?can?now?sense?sources?of?corruption.
Whether?you?clean?them?or?empower?them?is?a?choice?that?only?you?can?make.
Skills?merged
-?[Advanced?Corrupted?Bloodshaper]?::?[passive]?Enemy?Sense
-?[Corrupted?Divinator]?::?[Area?Divination]
And?upgraded?to:
[Third?Eye]
Corruption,?enemies,?System?information,?environment.?To?you,?all?of?it?is?the?same:?a?manifestation?of?power?and?magic.
Passively?pulses?around?you?every?one?second?to?gather?all?System?and?non-System?information.
Can?willingly?spend?energy?to?increase?frequency?and/or?range.
I brought my hand to my forehead and felt my skin. The sigh of relief when I didn't find any real third eye was immense. Just picturing the abomination I would have become sent a cold sweat all over my body.
A golden page. User-created class. Non-System information.
I was shacking from pure emotion and excitement. I had to try it—all of it. Immediately.
I spent close to 200 energy just for a pulse. The longest I had ever sent. And, by a huge margin, the hardest to both control and analyze. I covered barely enough to reach the main building’s entrance. Everything between me and it flashed in my head. I felt every speckle of corruption eating at the world.
Like bugs, they were gnawing on animals and objects alike. A type of biting and fiddling that could only be described as fascinating. Bob had told me that corruption was a weird adjective that this word attached to this phenomenon. I had dismissed it without even considering it.
But he had a point.
Material, immaterial, live, dead, everything affected by the bugs was being changed. They danced on a fine line between improving and disappearing. Seeing the line was easy; as was observing the consequences. A monster being born or the animal combusting into dust.
But seeing one thing does not mean comprehending it. Turning a living being into a monster was completely out of my reach. Through hard work and training, my future me would; I was sure.
Right after I am done with the [Oracle], when my debt to Yasmin is paid, I will master it.
I saw everything. Including the packs of disarranged wolves studying me from far away.
“I am not the prey here, you are!”
I gave myself impulse with my energy and darted towards the nearest group of five. I knew how they acted and what they did, so I was going to gain the upper hand.
The first howls came as soon as they sensed something wrong. I had disappeared from their sight and now they could smell me. Agitation was clear.
I landed in front of the biggest wolf, an [Ignis Wolf], and sent a thin blade of solid energy crashing down towards its neck.
I was running already to the next one when I heard the thud of its head bouncing on the cold stone.
I ignored the System message as I used [Fusion] to cast a bullet of compressed energy to my left—right were a wolf was sneaking to me.
I crashed into the third wolf with a drill-shaped cone of energy I had prepared while running, tearing it open in an agonizing cry of pain.
The remaining two were pushing forward in a reckless attempt to kill me.
“That won't happen.”
I sent two solid arms of energy right towards them. While they tried to evade, and up to a certain point they did, it didn't stop them from coming crashing down.
I quickly finished them with accurate strikes to their hearts.
Definitely much easier this time around!
The whole point of the exercise was to try out new things. I had come to realize—admittedly a bit late—that my class was supposed to create shapes. Complex shapes.
My crude solid chunks of energy didn't even begin to classify as a shape. I called them arms, but that didn’t make them any more real. I needed finer control. Blades. Drills. Energy weaponized into shapes that could kill.
I went deeper into the dungeon, killing as many wolves as I encountered; which was surprisingly in the hundreds. If it was the same dungeon as before, why was there such an abysmal difference in numbers?
Many unchecked notifications after, I was standing in front of the building. For a while, I had been suspicious that whatever was wrong had to be there. The source had been inside the first time, so it made sense that it still was.
I sent a big pulse; my suspicions quickly confirmed. There was something wrong, besides the fact that the dungeon was back.
And the reason was inside.