Chapter 46: Master of Stealth

One could be forgiven for thinking that practicing stealth and invisibility skills would be a relaxing affair. After all, as long as they were working, you had nothing to worry about. Even surrounded by the fiercest of enemies, you could treat the entire experience as a nice walk through the park.

Traps could be a bit tougher on that front, but if you were truly stealthy enough, they were also a non-issue. If you had the proper skills to mask your weight and the force of your footsteps, for instance, it wasn’t like you’d set off a pressure plate. Your average trap needed to sense you in some way before it went off.

And perhaps all of that was true, for some people -- perhaps there was some grand, level 100 rogue who took naps in dragons’ dens and snuck about without a care in the world.

That would have been nice. Cal would have loved that right about now.

But alas. Some things just weren’t meant to be.

I’M SO FUCKING DONE WITH THIS PLACE!

Cal sprinted her legs off trying to escape the eye-covered blob that threatened to crush her to a pulp.

Come on, what even is that thing? Hex, do you need therapy? Because that’s not the kind of thing a healthy mind makes! It’s just not!

Unfortunately, the beast didn’t seem to care that it was an affront to the gods -- or rather, considering a god had created it, that likely wasn’t true, but it didn’t seem to care that it was an affront to Cal.

And so, Cal ran.

Gah. Crap. Why do I never invest any points in Endurance? Even as her prodigious Dexterity allowed her to shoot forward, her measly stamina left her huffing and puffing in short order.

Let’s be honest. Not like running is the answer anyway.

As best she could tell, it had been months since Hex had created this hellish place for her and trapped her inside, all in the name of “training.” Sure, she was able to hide from anything she found most of the time, but that was only most of the time.

And there were a lot of beasts.

The unfortunately non-zero number of times she’d been spotted by some sort of creature, they’d all been long-distance hunters like wolves. Not too fast, but willing to track her down for however long it took until she tired.

All that to say, there was no escaping by running.

No, if she wanted to survive, Cal had to rely on exactly what she’d been sent here to train.

Okay beastie. Looks like you have a bunch of eyes and maybe some sort of nose or ear holes? Here goes nothing, then.

Eliminate Odor. Mask Scent. Orb of Silence. Silent Shadow.

She activated a host of skills and spells, some her own, some which she’d gotten from Hex. When she was certain that the creature couldn’t smell or hear her anymore, she dealt with the final piece of the puzzle.

Infiltrator’s Cloak.

She disappeared from view, and thanks to a recent class skill she’d picked up, teleported a short distance to the side as well.

With that, she froze.

And much to her pleasure, so did the beast.

Stealth has reached level 59!

She would have cheered at any other time. It was a ridiculous level for her age, but somehow, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to celebrate right now.

Confused by the sudden disappearance of its prey, the creature ground to a halt, its body motionless save for its many eyes. Considering that many of those eyes were staring directly at her uncomprehendingly, however, Cal was feeling pretty safe. Any moment now, it would realize it had lost her for good and-

A single eye opened, one of the two from the long stalks sprouting from its back.

It swiveled this way. Then that.

And at last,

It jerked directly towards her.

Crap crap crap crap crap. I’m not here. Look away!

Alas, the beast did not look away. Lacking any sort of mouth, the beast could not shout in rage or triumph, but this hardly deterred it from renewing its charge.

Once again, Cal began to run. Her Infiltrator’s Cloak, not able to handle any rapid movements, fell, only making it easier for the shadow beast to track her.

After a very brief swear session, Cal’s mind started to race through her options.

All right! The weird eye on top has some sort of extra sense. Just have to figure out what it is. Simple ones first.

Heat vision was the most common, so she started with Thermal Barrier. After that, some beasts had senses that could detect even the slightest of tremors or vibrations. Lightened Steps and Featherfoot would fix that. Having the energy for one more major skill, she layered on Feign Death in case it had some sort of life sight.

Her mind spun as it was forced to keep so many skills and spells active at the same time, and both her stamina and mana began to plummet. Even so, Cal finally used one more, teleporting off to the side as she reactivated her Infiltrator’s Cloak.

Just as she had before, Cal froze.

Come on, come on, come on…

Uncaring of all the skills that Cal was using to hide herself, the beast’s eye snapped directly towards her.

Reorienting itself, it continued its charge.

Wait! Time out! Time out! Still low on stamina, Cal’s heart nearly beat out of her chest as she was forced to start running again.

The scene only repeated itself from there. She activated another three skills, turned invisible, and… it did nothing. Another three skills, another three skills, another three skills, nothing, nothing, nothing.

By then, she was well past the point where she was able to keep everything active at once, and she’d dropped the bulk of her spells and skills after confirming they weren’t working. Even so, things were looking grim.

Stamina: 13/130

You think Hex would save me if I was actually about to die, or no? The optimist in her wanted to say yes, but somehow she didn’t think her skills would have skyrocketed upwards so fast if the danger she was in wasn’t real. At the very least, it wasn’t something she felt great leaving her fate to.

Okay. Spells only. Pretty sure I’m already dead if I need to rely on a stamina skill at this point.

Faster than she knew her mind could work, she ran through her spells, only one real option left.

And had she the breath to spare, Cal would have groaned.

Does it really have to be- You know what, fine. Here we go.

Mana roiled within her core, thousands of stands ripping themselves off to form a dizzying array that pushed itself from her skin, out and out and out until-

Pop.

Immediately, Cal wanted to vomit.

And perhaps she would have, had she still had a stomach.

Soma of the Sylph. By all rights, an incredible spell, one which she could have never gotten her hands on, even as a princess. When Hex had given it to her, Cal had been elated.

Who wouldn’t be? With a single spell, she could leave the limits of her physical body behind, dissipating into gas and traveling about freely.

Unfortunately, Cal had sorely underestimated just how unpleasant it was to have your body rip itself into motes of air with all the usual signals from your nerves and organs just suddenly gone.

By the time she adapted to the odd form of sight the spell granted her (now that her eyeballs were gone), several seconds had passed.

Several rather important seconds considering what she was in the middle of. Frantically, she focused on the form of the beast, expecting to find it nearly on top of her.

Except, it wasn’t.

Just as far from her as it had been before she cast her spell, the creature was firmly frozen.

Air displacement! It can sense air displacement!

For a split second, she thanked the gods, only her lack of body keeping her from collapsing in relief.

A moment later, however, she began to curse.

This means I’m stuck! She could move about in her gaseous state, but anything that could sense air displacement would also sense it if a blob of gas started zooming around and forming wind currents.

Still, it’s not all bad. The spell is a mana hog, but at least I can relax and get some stamina back like this. Plus, maybe it will just wander off?

But alas, of course she couldn’t be that lucky.

For a good half a minute, the beast scanned its surroundings, failing to find anything of note. At last accepting that its prey had vanished, it closed the eye atop its long eye stalk.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t done. Just as it closed one of its two strange eyes, the other snapped open.

It looked about. It took in the area.

And at last.

It spun directly towards Cal.

Once more, the beast charged.

GODS- Hex, if you’re listening, I’m going to kick your ass somehow! Exactly how she would manage that, she could figure out if she lived. Once again, Cal was forced to flee.

Great. So this eye is different. She’d be forced to undergo the same trials as she just had. Not wanting to waste her mana, Cal deactivated her spell, dropping back into Stealth the very moment her body reformed.

Expecting to have to run, it was no small shock when the eye seemed to lose its focus immediately. Of course, all of the creature’s regular eyes had no such difficulty now that she wasn’t invisible anymore, but the eye that had previously spotted her had somehow lost her.

Wait, is it mana?

Cal spent a pittance of her mana pool on a casting of Featherfoot, and the eye snapped right back to her.

She should have been happy to figure it out so quickly, she knew, but nonetheless, she swore.

Great. So spells are a no-go now. She did have a mana-obfuscation skill, but it was painfully draining.

Instead, she leaned heavily on her slightly recovered stamina, dipping further and further into her Stealth until not even the normal eyes could spot her. This time, the beast didn’t stop completely -- with her spells dropped, she couldn’t fully block her scent -- but it charged off to the side and paused frequently, letting her pull ahead.

Of course, realizing that it was failing in its hunt, the beast did the obvious thing.

It switched eyes.

Not constantly looking back as she ran, Cal missed the exact moment it did so, swearing when she realized her mistake. In truth, though, it was a lucky break. While her mana pool had slowly risen during her run, her stamina was once more about to bottom out.

Completely arresting her momentum, Cal cast Soma of the Sylph once again. Losing her, the beast stopped once more.

Can’t say I’m a huge fan of this game, but at least I know what to do now.

And so her game of cat and mouse continued.

When it opened the one eye, she ran, turning off all of her spells and dipping into her stamina as much as she could. When it opened the other, she became one with the air, her mana pool sinking lower and lower as her stamina worked its way back up.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

At some point, she lost track, the entire chase blending into one never-ending blur.

If there was one small mercy, it was that the beast seemed to be just as constrained in resources as she was. Not from a stamina front -- it ran ceaselessly as long as she was in sight -- but mana-wise, it couldn’t use both of its eyes at the same time for long.

When it did, she was left dropping all of her stealth skills just to book it. Thankfully, that never lasted for too long.

It would have almost been relaxing at that point -- like a morning jog -- if not for two important facts.

First, the eye beast was not the only thing she had to worry about. Even as she ran, Cal was constantly scanning for traps, weaving around them, over them, and rarely, straight through them. She’d tried to spring some on her pursuer, but so far, it barged through everything that was thrown at it. The other beasts of the realm also would have been an issue, but she’d only spotted two so far, both of which had seemed content to leave her to her current hunter. Whether they were afraid of it or they had some sort of non-intervention pact, she wasn’t sure.

Second, and more importantly, her resources weren’t holding out.

Yes, when she turned to gas, her stamina refilled. Slowly.

Yes, when she ran, her mana refilled. Slowly.

And yet.

It wasn’t enough.

Each new rotation, the numbers crept lower. And lower. And lower. Almost at an infinitesimally slow pace, she watched as she approached her impending death.

Stamina: 7/130

Mana: 50/300

Another rotation.

Stamina: 20/130

Mana: 5/300

And once again.

Stamina: 6/130

Mana: 49/300

Think. Think! What can I even do here?

And yet, nothing presented itself. Or that wasn’t quite right. There was one option, at least.

With only enough mana to cast her spell one last time, Cal disappeared into thin air right as the beast opened its air-displacement eye once more. She froze in that position until it switched, but rather than run once again, she squeezed a few more points of mana into Mana Obfuscation, another gift from Hex.

As hoped, the creature opened both of its eyes to look for her, but this time it found nothing.

Mana: 4/300

Her last lifeline ticked down.

Mana: 3/300

She would run when it hit zero, but she had slim hopes at this point.

Mana: 2/300

Kind of a shitty way to die, truth be told. At least I could have died before I had to spend all this time training, right?

Mana: 1/300

And then, at last.

Stealth has reached level 60!

Wait, that’s not what I was expecting to see.

Congratulations! You have reached- reached- reached-

The notification stopped and sputtered, repeating itself over and over again until the window disappeared entirely.

And then, right before her mana zeroed out and signaled her death, everything went black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Cal’s vision returned, the sight that greeted her was both familiar and unexpected.

Dark wooden walls surrounded her, intricately patterned panels laid side by side inlaid with gems and precious metals. Rich carpeting lay beneath her, and black marble doors stood tall, one on each wall.

It could have passed for a normal, if luxurious, room if not for one detail: the ceiling. Gray fog shifted and spun about with no end in sight.

My class space? But why?

Well, it certainly beat immediately dying outside.

So, break down and have a panic attack about my impending death, or walk through the mansion?

After a moment of thought, Cal decided the latter option sounded more fun. Choosing one of the doors at random, she began strolling through her class space. It would have been nice if one of the rooms had a giant sign saying “Here’s a new skill that will save you!” but alas, nothing jumped out to her.

Of course, she hadn’t expected it to. That was the nature of Cal’s class space, after all. Everything but the very weakest of skills was hidden behind various secret entrances, trap doors, trick compartments, or illusions. What kind of Infiltrator would she be if her skills were just handed to her?

If we assume that me leaving the class space results in my immediate and grisly death, let’s maybe look for something new, yeah?

And so, Cal swept through the mansion, going about her usual secret-finding routine. She tapped on each floor tile in the bathrooms. She slow-danced in the ballroom. Removed every book from the shelves in the library. Drank a bottle of wine in the cellar.

Of course, that last one did nothing, but-

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait. That wasn’t there before.

On the stone floor of the cellar, a single speck of darkness marred the stone floor. Had this been the real world, she would have ignored it out of hand, but this wasn’t the real world. She’d memorized every tiny facet of her class space, and that wasn’t supposed to be there.

She poked at it. Pushed on it. When nothing she could think of worked, she retreated to the bathroom and fetched a pair of tweezers, returning as fast as she could.

She dipped the tweezer heads towards the speck, only to find that they sank into it. Not a stain, but a hole. Not finding any bottom, she changed tactics, grabbing onto the side of the hole with her tweezers and pulling.

Ever so slightly, the hole expanded.

Her heart raced.

For what seemed like an eternity, she pulled and pulled on the hole until she could fit an entire hand in. Abandoning the tweezers, she pulled even harder. Harder, harder, HARDER until the tiny speck was a full-on pit.

And then, without pause, she jumped in.

She fell and fell and fell, the light above her slowly disappearing until she was left in complete darkness, and even then, she continued to fall.

Huh. Maybe that wasn’t what I was supposed to do? But there has to be something in here, right?

Not wishing to return to the monster about to kill her, she stayed in free fall for far longer than she normally would have. She swam through it as she fell, trying to push herself anywhere but where she was, only finding darkness, darkness, darkness, until-

Oh?

Still darkness, but one spot somehow felt even darker than the rest. Not just an absence of light, but its antithesis. She drew herself forward, diving through the inky blackness until she reached her goal. The very moment she arrived, her downward descent began to slow.

A minute. Then two. Her long fall petered out, bit by bit, until the tiniest of dots appeared beneath her. It slowly grew until at last resolving into a singular seated figure.

The hells? Is someone in my class space? That’d be new.

By the time Cal’s descent was at last complete, she berated herself for not guessing the figure’s identity sooner.

For who else would it be?

“Cal! Hi! You actually found me pretty fast. I was expecting it would take at least another month. Good job!”

Lounging in a black pool chair, sipping on some sort of purple drink, was the grand and deific goddess of darkness, Hexauraerevailavai’laora.

“What are you doing in my class space? Actually how are you even in my class space? Is that something gods can even do? Wait. Backtrack. Do you know how shitty of a few hours I’ve just had? Because fuck y-”

“No need to thank me, disciple! All in a day’s work. As for why I’m here, you finally hit the Master rank! The system was about to give you some crappy augment and combine some of your skills, but that would waste so much of the work we’ve put into you, you know? Come here, come here.”

That caught Cal’s attention. And presumably if Hex is here and I’m getting a new skill, that means I’m not about to die?

Sometimes, it was the little things.

And thus, reluctantly, Cal approached Hex without cursing her out.

“Lovely! Awesome! Fantastic! So. A little warning here. Mortals at your level don’t usually have a strong enough mind, body, or soul for me to do this next part. Lucky for you, you’re a bit of a special case! You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Cal scowled. So she knows about that, huh? But then again, of course she did. She was a mind reader.

“No comment. That means I do have a strong enough mind, body, and soul, though?”

Her question was met with a giant grin and two thumbs down.

“Nope! Not at all! It just means you’re not going to die when I fix that for you! Aren’t you so lucky? After this, we can finally combine all those skills of yours and your training can be over! Won’t even make you go back to the chase you were in -- just tell me where you want me to drop you off afterwards, and you’ll be good to go!” Hex snatched Cal’s hands in her own, and right where she touched, black veins started to creep over the princess’s skin.

Relief flooded her at the thought of having escaped her hunter for good, but it was short lived.

Damn. That stings a little. Wait, more than a little.

“Oh! And by the way.” Hex hit her with the most disarmingly innocent smile, squeezing her hands reassuringly.

Sadly, her next words were anything but.

“This is going to hurt. A lot.”

Only moments later, the screams began.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Laying on a soft mattress in her perfectly shaded tent, Hartha noshed on a few foreign desserts before indulging in a drink. Absentmindedly, she crumbled up a piece of cake and threw it to the floor. A flock of pigeons descended on it, their coos serving to keep her company. Souls floated through the air, all of them directed by Hartha who had long since learned to move them about from afar.

At that very moment, after months’ of absence, a being popped into existence at the foot of her bed. The iridescent valkyrie grinned at her disciple.

“I have returned, child. I hope you have been well. Now. Show me what you have learned.”

Though caught off guard, Hartha was more than eager to do just that. Her training in the last few months had been brutal, with her having spent more than half her time molding the souls around her. Had she not taken breaks and napped when needed, she would have burnt out ages ago. Instead, as tough as she found the actual learning, her time as of late had been… relaxing, almost.

And so, Hartha ran through everything she’d learned. She started with the basics that Aarris had taught her directly. Then she moved on to everything she’d figured out on her own in the past few months, some of which Aarris had told her to learn and a few things besides. She was quite pleased with her progress, truth be told.

And as it turned out, so was Aarris.

“You have learned well, child. Far better than I expected, in truth. There are a few brief techniques I wish to leave you with, but ultimately, I believe your training is coming to its end.”

At this, Hartha perked up immediately.

She liked her tent. Her pigeons. The host of souls that moved to her tune. More than anything else, they’d all kept her sane.

Still, Hartha was ready to return to her tribe. To her friends. To Elphaea.

She bowed deeply.

“I am ready to receive your final wisdom, honored goddess.”

And then, at last, back home.

She could only hope that Cal was finishing up too. And hopefully, her training had been just as relaxing as Hartha’s had been.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In an endless expanse of darkness, in the depths of her own class space, one mischievous rogue screamed at the figure seated before her.

“FUUUUUCK YOUUU!!!!”

~~~~~~

At that very same moment, and just as far away, five figures stood before a portal. A brawler. A researcher. An alchemist. A firebrand. And a woman who was still figuring out exactly what she was.

As one, they stepped into the portal, each of them receiving the same notification.

You have entered the Sylum Metal Dungeon. Note, your student training mode has been disabled.

Good luck!