Day 101, 11:30 AM

  There’s a lot of magic I was passively training during the decades-long loop. My internal clock is now precise down to seconds, and the information constantly trickles into my mind, letting me know the exact time.

  Combined with the constantly active scanner and having to sing spells to cast them leaves precious little focus for me. With slight unwillingness, I spend three attribute points on wisdom. My wisdom is thirty-three, the pressure has disappeared, and I have mere five attribute points remaining to spend in the case of emergency.

  Suddenly, I feel like cursing again. I should have sank all eight into physique during one of the loops to check the next level up condition. Well, there’s little room for regret now, and I’m not killing myself or risking my sanity just to get that bit of information.

  I enter the dungeon, and with scanner covering thirty yards, I can sense three lobsters immediately. I sing of lightning covering the sky and a nail hammered into a wooden board. Lightning arc explodes from my palm towards the unseen lobster, the spell drains a third of my mana and fries the scuttling creature where it stood. The other two sense the commotion and scuttle towards their fallen fellow dungeon-dweller.

  My mind races, and I start singing again. In two seconds, they will form a line before me. I stretch my hand and a bolt of purple light hammers into the foliage, heading towards the further crustacean. Lightning strikes the closer one, burning it, and its direction shifts, missing the further lobster by half a foot.

  The monster freezes and examines its surroundings, probably in panic, but I can’t read lobster. It scuttles towards the other one and starts feasting on cooked meat. I can taste and smell its meal with scanner. It’s not the most attractive lunch ever, but the smell is decent. Magical lightning cooked it in a flash.

  My mana will take some ten minutes to recover, and I decide to practice another combat style. I close my eyes, and relying entirely on scanner, I head for the lobster.

  The creature twitches, then rushes towards me. It’s slow and weak, and with a whack from Batsy II it’s no more.

  I clear the first floor manually, casting only one more lightning, before heading to the second. They are pretty much the same, a stroll with occasional bolts of lightning. Twenty-two hours later, I’ve cleared the first thirty-six floors.

  I don’t bother to set up a proper camp. I sit on the floor and dine on dried fruit, recalling the first attempts to move without my eyes, relying entirely on scanner. It was a drunken walk at first, with lots of tilting, much more difficult than just walking with your eyes closed, but as minutes passed, I got used to it, and in less than an hour I could move comfortably, almost as well as I could with my eyes open.

  With the food done, I rinse my mouth with water and go to sleep.

  The first thing I consider after awakening is checking my magical clock and feed it mana. I’ve slept for seven hours. Probably not much by regular standards, but my body is slowly getting used to magical abuse, and if not for that burden, I could have done with three to four hours’ sleep.

  The day passes much the same as the previous one. My mana capacity is slightly larger, but the change makes little difference. I can safely cast two lightning bolts before I’m forced to stop, lest I overtax myself and faint in the middle of the hostile dungeon.

  One might wonder why I insist on mastering an obviously inferior spell, the answer is simple. Once minor abominations start appearing, and floors have one monster only, even if it doesn’t kill them outright, the lightning will fry their nervous systems, and make them easy pickings.

  That’s the plan at least.

  I head down. The guide awards me another attribute point before I reach the fiftieth floor, and I pause to collect my thoughts. It’s eight-thirty in the evening of the one hundred and second day since I possessed Fyoor’s dead body. Should I die, I will awaken in bed back at Hadriuse’s Abode.

  That’s fine, I could get an attribute point down there, and the risk is worth it. I almost smile. The thought is so forced, I’m almost certain someone or something has implanted it in my mind. Annoying; my mind is cluttered enough with BSD injecting information as it sees fit, and Blunt just yapping my gums like it owns them.

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  I head down and enter the fifty-first floor. There’s no movement, and I scan the jungle pushing to fifty yards, sixty, seventy. There, I sense the basher. It’s much smaller than the other one Edna and I killed with a landmine. The carapace feels much softer, and I’m certain I can smash the abomination to death with Batsy, but that’s not the point of the experiment. I wish I had mana overflow, so I could pour all my mana into the spell, but I guess attacking an abomination without it will also do for a test. I can only hope my experiment succeeds.

  I approach slowly, and the basher senses me from fifty yards away. The abomination, two times smaller than its predecessor, scuttles towards me. Its thick legs carry its bulk, and I can perceive each intricate movement.

  Scanner can’t peer into the creature’s body. The observation would have confused me once, since I have sensed the regular lobsters’ innards, but after scouring the library I know the phenomenon is magic resistance at work.

  Even with Initial Overpower Resistance, an inoffensive spell can’t penetrate an abomination’s defenses. A table filled with numbers surfaces in my memory. Mages have explored the topic in depth, but even with all their observation, the conclusions boiled down to educated guesses. If only life offered instruction manuals.

  The abomination approaches, and at thirty yards, I start singing of lightning and nails. The basher moves around the trees, too weak to knock them down. The obstacles between us disappear and purple lightning jumps. I channel all the mana the spell will receive, but I sense the small amount of excess dispersing even as it feeds the lightning.

  The arm-thick bolt smashes into the basher’s head, the monster stops, thrashing and twisting its tentacles. A blink later, the lightning is gone, but the room remains as bright as it was. The basher still lives.

  I run towards the immobile creature and realize I should have struck it with another lightning arc, but it’s too late now. I sweep Batsy down at its head. The singed shell explodes, and the lights go out.

  Well, that was interesting, and I learned a few things. A lightning arc can kill an average minor abomination, but bashers are too tough. And, as I suspected, even if I don’t kill the abomination, the electricity will scramble its nerves and muscles, effectively paralyzing or at least dazing the creature.

  All in all, the experiment was a success, and, just like when I delved with Edna, abomination floors are faster than the upper ones, where we had to hunt all the monsters hiding in the various corners of the cavernous floor.

  I head down, taking ten minutes on average per floor, to allow my mana to regenerate, and four hours later, I’m down at the seventy-fifth.

  The seventy-sixth beckons, promising attribute points, but I ignore the suicidal suggestion. I can manage minor abominations without breaking a sweat, but until I can handle abominations with equal ease, I’m not going down there. And even if I visit, it won’t happen unless Redo is available.

  The journey back is tedious, walking up the stairs for hours, blasting trees and wasting mana as much as possible to stretch my reserve. Empty, refill, repeat. The cycle continues for hours, and I stop for the night on the seventh floor.

  I sleep concealed under a tree unlikely to eat me and dream of electrocuting plants and animals with magic. With a yawn, I open my eyes and dispel the Edison reenactment dreams.

  I snack on two handfuls of dried fruit and head out. I reach the indestructible obelisk and search for some hidden content. Any clue regarding Hadriuse’s grimoires. Nothing to be found, unfortunately. I’m about to turn down the concealed path when a shout echoes through the jungle.

  “There he is, get him!”

  I turn towards the road and see a gang of men wearing the red robes of the inquisitors.

  There are thirty of them, and none of them register on scanner. A disquieting sensation, but I realize something even more disquieting.

  There are minor abominations about them. A dozen of them, and they are scuttling, hopping, and crawling towards me, while the inquisitors stay back, out of their way.

  Wait, did he command the abominations? How?

  Suddenly, my paranoid thoughts about wormlords backing the inquisition no longer seem as paranoid. There’s no time for thinking. The monsters are nearly upon me, and I sing of lightning and nails.

  Lightning arcs from my hand, smashing into a giant praying mantis. It fries the creature, jumping at a moth-cricket, exploding the fragile thing, spraying the wing dust all over the place, but the lightning is not done. Half-spent, it slams into a severed third of the urchin monstrosity I had battled several weeks prior.

  The electrical surge overloads its nervous system, and the thing bounces to the side, its array of harpoons shooting randomly and burying themselves into the backs of the charging monsters.

  The scene is one of utter chaos. An excellent effect for the tiny amount of mana I spent. It’s most unfortunate I lack the time to fire another spell at them, otherwise, I might have defeated them all on my own.