"Wait-"
....
Everything went black once again. Opening my eyes I saw the roof of a cave. Water dripped onto my face causing me to get up and move out of its path.
There were no light sources and yet I could see in the dark. I felt weak and frail. "Where am I?" I wondered.
As though to answer my question a small crimson red box appeared in front of me.
[System Booting]
[10% 30% 40% 60% 90% 100%]
The small box turned into a larger one after reaching 100%. At the top was my name and beside it was the level '8'. Beside, that was the was the time of 20:34. Finally at the very left edge at the top was my location, 'Twin moon dungeon, floor 12/15 (dungeon difficultly easy)'
"What is happening" I wondered. "This seems like a status menu or something from a game," I thought to myself.
Choosing to experiment with it I looked at the layout. The screen remained in a black and crimson red colour scheme. It had the aforementioned top row of basic information. Beneath this row were four boxes. They each had a name such as status, information, inventory and bloodline.
Firstly I accessed the inventory tab. The tab brought me to a new box which took up the whole screen. It had the same colours, five rows and ten columns of boxes. They added up to a total of 50 boxes. On the left side of the screen was what seemed to be item tabs used for easy access. Currently, there was nothing in my inventory.
I exited the inventory and selected the bloodline tab. A notification appeared on the screen.
[Reach a higher level to access this tab]
"Stange, it seems I can level up then. I wonder what that tab is, however," I thought while scratching my head.
Next, I accessed the status tab and immediately I was met with an avatar of my current body with stats written beneath it. My body was skinny, tall and as white as snow. I had a skinny face with shrunken in eyes and cheeks. My hair was white and long.
"Wait that's me?" I said out loud, looking down at my body at the same time. Seeing my current body It seemed that it actually was.
Next were the stats
[Status]
Level: 8 (4 stat points per level + 3 points for race + 3 points for reincarnation)
Name: Rin
Race: Vampire
Subrace: Twilight Vampire
Vitality: 13
Strength: 7
defence: 7
Agility: 30
Magic: 15
[Skills Passive]
Dance of the Devil: With each level, your agility naturally raises by one without the use of skill points
Blade Proficiency: learn to use bladed weapons quickly
User of the Devils Art: learn dark magic quickly. Dark magic is more powerful
Blood Magician: learn blood magic quickly. Blood magic is more powerful
Fire Gods blessing: Learn fire magic quickly. Fire magic is more powerful.
Blessing of a powerful God: Affinity for all magic (able to learn any magic)
Vampiric race: fast regeneration and healing, extreme resistance to any attacks of enemies with less than 50% of ones own level, increased magic affinity
Reincarnator: leveling up is faster
[Skills Active]
Blood Lust: With each kill, you become a little more aggressive (increase stats for each kill by 1 for two minutes)
Quick feet: you are quick on your feet (40% agility boost for one minute)
Sneak: you become harder to see and hear (effectiveness is determined by level differences)
Claws: grow claws (damage determined by strength stat)
Vampiric drain: have the chance to acquire extra stat points or skills from enemies of a higher power than yourself by sucking their blood or draining their core (monster core)
Twin cast: cast two spells at once
[Spells]
Dark arrow: shoots arrow of darkness (tier 2/11)
fireball: shoots a small ball of fire (tier 2/11)
heal: heals target (tier 1/11)
blood slash: form three cutting slashes using sharpened blood (tier 2/11)
blood spear: spear made from blood is thrown at target (tier 2/11)
....
From the status table, I could tell, while my level was low, my stats were decent. But I wouldn't know for sure until I tried them out on something.
I looked around the cave which I woke up in. In the distance, I saw what seemed to be a skeleton in a robe.
"This will do," I said to myself as I approached it.
When I got close some basic combat statistics appeared at the bottom of my view. It looked like a health magic bar from movies. Aside from this, the same thing appeared above the skeleton. It also had the name skeletal fire mage LVL 11.
[New quest: reach floor 15 (12/15). Time left: 5 days]
Ignoring the notification I held up my hand and simply said "fireball." With this, a small ball of fire appeared and shot out from my hand towards the skeletal mage.
The mage's body burst into flames. The spell was a little more powerful than I had expected. However, looking at the health bar showed that it had barely been hurt.
From out of the flames walked the mage. It held up its hand and made a strange crackling sound. With this, out from its hand shot three small balls of fire. each one the size of a small pebble.
I wasn't dumb enough to let them hit me, however. With my high level of agility, I easily dodged the attack and moved towards the skeleton.
When the flames hit the cave wall behind me they exploded with great force causing the wall to crumble and reveal a secret room.
"Dark arrow" I yelled and out flew a black arrow. The arrow hit the skeleton and a miniature explosion of dark energy flew out from the area where the spell had hit.
"This did a lot more damage," I said internally. The spell which I had just cast had lowered the skeletal mage's health to about a half.
Once again the skeleton crackled and out flew three more small fireballs.
I dodged them all and then returned with two more spells, "blood slash, blood spear!"
Three blood slashes flew out followed by a spear made from blood.
The blood slash spell completely decimated the skeleton's body causing the bones to be cut in halves. The blood spear which followed finished it off by causing a small explosion of blood.
"That was rather easy," I thought as I walked up to the corpse. The skeleton was definitely dead as its health bar was now empty.
"Hmm, I think there is a skill for this right," I thought as I looked through my status page once again. After searching I found the skill vampiric drain. It states that there is a chance to gain a skill or extra stat points by draining a monsters core.
"But where is its core?" I wondered. In the end, the only logical place for it to be however was its skull.
Crushing the skull with my foot, a red orb rolled out from beneath. This looked to be the core. I picked the core up in one hand and activated the skill.
[Vampiric Drain Activated]
After 10 seconds the red hue which the core gave off disappeared leaving a grey husk behind.
[Gained skill: strong bones (increases strength by 10 for two minutes)]
"wow that's pretty good... right? I still have no clue about power levels in this world" I thought to myself.
Picking up the robes which the skeletal mage wore I noticed they were lightweight yet surprisingly durable. "Maybe they have a fire resistance and that's why my fire spell didn't do much damage," I said while putting it on my naked body.
As though to answer my question a notification popped up.
[Fire mages robes: 15% resistance to fire magic. Fire magic has an increase in damage by 9%]
The robe was a simple grey robe with a hood and a few patterns. Inside the rob was a small storage area which held nothing within.
There was no way that this robe had cause the powerful fireball spell to become ineffective. Instead it was the dead beings high proficiency with fire magic.
I turned around and faced the hole in the wall which the skeletal mage had created. Behind that wall was a secret room. I began walking over to the room and soon noticed it had a large chest.
If I had any luck there might be a sword or something inside. Opening the chest my wish had been fulfilled. There was a plain iron sword with its scabbard and belt and a grey skull mask within. I picked up the skull mask and put it on my face. I then put the sword on my waist. As I did this two notifications appeared.
[iron sword: just a normal blade]
[Mask of the mind: protects from low tier (1-2) mind control and negative status effects related to the mind]
"Maybe I'm wrong, but this mask seems to be pretty valuable," I stated as I closed the chest.
Turning around I walked out from the secret room and headed in the direction of the dead skeletal mage.
After passing the corpse I kept walking for another 30 seconds until I was met with the sight of five skeletons with swords.
"This might be too many," I thought to myself. Nevertheless, if I didn't try I would never know.
The best plan of action is to attack by surprise using a magic spell and then continue with magic until they were close enough to use a sword.
Observing the five, I noticed that they were all level 9 skeleton swordsmen.
"Fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball," I said as four balls of fire shot out from my hand smashing into the skeletons before exploding into a massive ball of fire.
Once the fire died down a little, two of the five skeletons had died. The remaining three charged at me, swords drawn.
"Dark arrow, dark arrow, blood spear" I yelled again causing multiple spells to be shot out. The result was an explosion of blood and dark energy.
Only two remained. They continued their charge, mindlessly swinging their swords.
Before they could reach me I let out one more spell, "blood slash". The skeleton swordsman at the front was cut into pieces.
Seeing his brotheran killed so easily didn't phase the remaining skeleton. He continued his path towards me preparing to swing his sword.
Seeing this I prepared myself, taking my sword from my side and getting into stance.
Once in front of me, he swung his sword straight down at my shoulder.
Using my agility I dodged to the side and then swung my own sword at his neck. Its head went flying while its body collapsed to the floor.
All of the skeleton swordsmen had been killed and only their corpses remained.
"Damn that was tiresome," I sighed out aloud.
I walked over to the swords and picked them all up, placing them into my inventory. Simply willing them to be placed into my inventory was enough to do so. Five notifications popped up, however, they all turned out to be regular iron swords.
Now for the cores. I crushed the skulls of each skeleton and drained the cores.
[Gained stat points: 2]
[Gained skill: explosive trap (tier 2/11)]
"Even if that's all I got from this, it's also good.
When I thought everything was done, one more notification came through.
[level up: LVL 9 (+10 stat points)]
"I guess I should assign these new points," I thought to myself as I opened the status screen."
I allocated the total of 12 points evenly between agility, magic and strength.
Continuing to my venture through the cave I came across six more groups of skeleton swordsmen with at least five enemies each. I had also come two skeletal mages. Finally, I made it to a large double door.
"It appears this is the floor boss," I said while checking my status screen. I had levelled up one more time and was now level 10. Once again I had split the points between agility, strength and magic.
I approached the door and sat down beside it. I was exhausted so I decided it was best to rest for a while.