I finally reached an opening in a stone brick wall. I felt like my luck in this dungeon was finally turning around. I placed my left hand on the wall and began following it. This was not a terribly difficult process. It should have been simple.
Unfortunately, luck was not on my side today. The stone reached out and grabbed my wrist and I was pulled inside of the wall itself. Where was I? Darkness flooded my vision. Cool air swept across my face and the only sound I could make out was a dripping noise.
It felt strange to have my eyesight so suddenly stripped from me. I reached out with my hand but the wall that was there before was gone. The sensation of hitting nothing but air made me feel dizzy and disorientated. I stumbled a bit before falling to my knees.
The cool breeze made me shiver and hug my arms against my chest. The ground felt like stone, but it was slightly damp. It almost felt like I was in a cave. Part of me wanted to lay my claw marked arms on the cool stone floor, but I knew that would be dangerous. The cuts were swollen and painful, and hot to the touch.
I felt miserable, but I still needed to find the way out of this dungeon. I had not gotten this far to die in some unknown dungeon again. I was going to survive no matter what and I was going to improve my life until I had no complaints. A second chance was not worth it otherwise.
I calmed my breathing and pushed through the pain in my arms. I tried to reach for my backpack but realized it had fallen somewhere. Pursing my lips I felt around frantically for it. There was a flashlight in my bag, if I could just find it then I could at least look around.
My imagination conjured up pictures of imaginary enemies waiting to pounce on me in the darkness. The fact was, I was very vulnerable right now. I really needed to obtain some useful skills. Basic Recovery and my other skills were not useful in this situation at all.
If this was a trap I would have probably been dead by now, which means I had entered a safe zone, treasure room, or I somehow miraculously did not spring the trap on my way in. Either way I would need light to restore my sight and figure out how the hell to get out of here.
Since I was not able to orientate myself I was not sure what direction my bag could be in. Again I wanted to scold myself for not having a flashlight on my belt just in case. Why did I always think of these things after I needed to use them?
I could probably find my way out by following the direction the breeze was coming from, but my items and equipment were in that bag. Not to mention I had infinite storage. I did not know anyone who would willingly give that up.
Even though I was a complete novice in my past life I knew the kind of value that held. I also highly doubted the system would give me another overpowered item like that. Redoing my life and getting better stats this time around probably used up all the good luck I had in this life.
I needed to be more responsible and start thinking about myself more even if that made me more noticeable. Suddenly my hand brushed against the familiar leather bag and I heaved a sigh of relief. I found it. I pulled the bag to me and rummaged around until I found the trusty flashlight.
The light from the flashlight made the darkness seem even more prevalent as I looked around me. It seemed I was in some kind of room surrounded by seamless stone walls. It looked like water was seeping through the stone in some places and patches of moss were clearly infiltrating the room from the opposite corner of the room.
Frowning, I pulled out a sheet of paper from my backpack and a pencil. Map making was a basic skill one could use to level up in the system. It was an important skill in the early times, but gradually fell out of use later on. A basic picture of the route I took to get here was drawn out on the paper.
This room was probably a hidden safe room. Meaning it was probably the only safe area on the entire floor. I only remember rumors of such places in the past. Meaning this room was a rare find. I needed time to heal my wounds anyway.
It would be rough to survive on just my dry rations and water supply, but I had survived worse in my past life. I rested my back against the wall and pulled my knees up to my chest. Somehow my knife had disappeared in my transfer to this room.
I had a spare, but it was concerning how depleted my weapons had become in only a few trips to the dungeon. I had no trade skills in my past life either. Most people kept a closed lid on how they obtained skills. You usually obtained a recovery skill based on the attacks you received from an enemy.
Healers often received their skills based on rewards from the tutorial dungeon and little was known about how they obtained their skill. Often they could only be used on others and not themself. Some of the skills were intuitive.
If someone used a bow and arrows, they would receive the Archery skill, but I had never tried to obtain such skills. It was all I could do to get through a D rank dungeon in my past life. I suddenly felt like I had been too naive about my new life.
I thought I had trained up my body to be better able to handle the dungeons, but I forgot to even try the different weapons in the dungeons in order to acquire skills. It did me no good to have all that knowledge and not unlock skills.
It would probably have been better for someone more knowledgeable than myself to come back in time. The map sitting beside me was made of special paper that resisted water damage and various other protections. That was the only way one could take fragile paper into the dungeon and not have it immediately destroyed.
Someone had already figured out how to make this paper and it was practically given away. How am I in comparison? Weak, forgetful, and overconfident. The only thing I have going for me was sheer dumb luck. I mean I didn't really defeat that crab, it committed suicide.
The leopard from earlier basically offed itself on my outstretched knife. Do I even have any achievements at all? Well I guess unlocking more of the system could be considered an accomplishment…
I rubbed my head as all the thoughts swirled violently, giving me a headache. First things first, I needed to recover to a point that I could leave this dungeon. After that, I would upgrade my weapons and armor and only then would I continue going into dungeons.
Feeling renewed by my newfound plans I slowly drifted off to sleep.