Ellie was woken up by the flapping of bat wings, and the gentle rocking back and forth motion a bat makes when it flies. She looked down and saw she was being carried above an underground ravine of some kind, it looked almost artificial, because of how steep it was. Slowly, the bats brought her to a plateau in the middle of the ravine, where a ramshackle-looking stone building was placed. The rocky building had no roof and looked as if someone had forcefully stacked stone slabs against each other in the rough shape of a room.
The bat that was carrying her let go right as it flew over the building, and Ellie fell straight down
"WHY ME?!" she screamed, blacking out again on impact.
An unknown amount of time later, she opened her eyes and got a proper look at the inside of this building. From what she could see, it looked like some sort of laboratory. She had been dropped into some sort of holding cell, with a few other lizards. Most of the lizards were the same as her, but there were some red ones huddled in a corner together, and some sort of variation of her own species with larger crystals, and a deeper green scale pattern. There was a cloaked figure shuffling around, picking up crystals with one hand, and putting them into different apparatuses. Sometimes the crystals would glow, dim, or just outright shatter. Every time a crystal shattered, it would be accompanied by annoyed shouting, that based on the tone, were swears of some kind.
'I hope he doesn't try and pull the crystals off of me,' Ellie thought, watching as the man threw another shattered crystal over the wall and into the distance, swearing loudly.
The man sat down in a stone rocking chair and buried his face into his hands, not moving for the longest time. Eventually, he got up and made his way over to the cage Ellie was stuck in. The lizards shrunk back to avoid him, but Ellie didn't notice, because she was looking at the man's face. It was pale and mostly human, but two little fangs poked out of the top lip. The man combed his dark hair out of his eyes with one hand and looked into the cage to pick a new experiment subject. His eyes landed on Ellie since she was the only lizard that didn't move backward. He moved to grab her faster than she could even react, his speed was far faster than it should have been, even though the man looked physically weak, and a bit unwell.
The man put Ellie in a smaller cage on the table, about the size of one or two normal-sized lizards. He moved a blue crystal into the cage and placed it in front of her. The man then sat down across the room and watched her while writing observations in a little notebook. The crystal was the same kind that she had eaten before, just a little smaller. After a minute or two, the crystal brightened, and Ellie decided to eat it since it didn't look like she would be getting out anytime soon. The crystal melted in her mouth, and sent streams of warm energy through her body, refreshing and loosening her muscles.
{Upgrade Progress 1/5}
The blue text floated in front of her for a few seconds, then drifted away, fading into nothingness. Ellie looked over at the man, but he just scribbled notes in his notepad, looking unconcerned.
'Good, it looks like only I can see those notifications.' Ellie sat down and watched the man as he wrote all his notes. The man got up, placed another crystal inside the cage, and sat back in his chair. This continued a few more times, and eventually, Ellie got a new notification.
{Level Up}
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Agility: 8
Intelligence: 5
Strength: 2
Mana: 4
Spells: NONE
Talents: Crystal Sense
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Ellie put the 5 unallocated stat points into agility again, bringing it up to 13.
'I guess I was hoping for too much to get another talent,' Ellie said, as she dismissed the level-up menu.
The man picked up a red crystal this time and sat it down next to her. He stood in front of the cage and observed from above with his notebook in hand.
'I don't know if I can eat this kind of crystal.' Ellie looked at the man, trying to figure out from his face what he expected to happen to her if she did. She gave up trying to figure out his intentions and decided to give it a try. The red crystal began to glow, and Ellie reluctantly took a bite. The crystal melted in her mouth and sent a sharp pain through her, making her feel like her muscles were on fire. She squirmed around on the ground as she endured the pain, eventually, after about a minute the pain subsided, and she picked herself up off the floor.
{New Talent Acquired}
Ellie looked at the notification in front of her, and it opened, showing her that she had acquired the Fire Resistance talent. The man laughed a little, then wrote more notes down. He picked Ellie up again, this time moving her to a new cage off to the side of the table, and away from the other lizards. He scratched her on the head a few times and then placed a food bowl with some little mushrooms in it next to her.
'If this keeps up, I don't even know if I want to leave!' Ellie thought.'I should leave as soon as possible though, I don't want to end up dissected later on. I'll eat what I can for now, and then at the first opportunity for escape, ill leave.' Ellie then sat down and tried to get used to her new life for the foreseeable future.