Chapter 718 (2/2)

It sloshed around him, almost disgruntled when he moved it to the side as he sloshed his way through it. But even though the sensation there as an omnipresent liquid, there was only silence around Randidly. The darkness was thick and all-encompassing.

While swinging, Randidly had little to do but think about his situation. After a bit more reflection, it truly seemed unlikely that the Creature was involved in this room, for all that it seemed to possess mystical properties. There was no sense of pressure in the room. Randidly didn’t feel in danger. The room was clearly designed to keep Randidly here, but little else. It felt like this truly was a jail.

The strange abilities of the room were only to keep Randidly in check, not to truly threaten him. Although he would be a pretty easy target if someone else could strike at him while he was in here…

His thoughts wandered to the words of Darke before Randidly’s unconsciousness. They wanted something from Randidly, some information. However, Darke had mentioned that he had sent away his inquisitor associate for other business, assuming Randidly would be busy for several more weeks with the tournament.

Which meant, if Randidly were to escape, it would likely need to be during that time frame. Of course, at the moment, he had no idea what he needed to think about in terms of escaping from this situation. For now, getting out of this damn hammock-

There was a moment where the hammock ties went slack because it had sung so far upwards that gravity began to overcome centripetal force. At that point, Randidly twisted his body sideways. It consumed the tiny chunk of Stamina that he had, but the force of the twist put him outside of the gentle cupping of the hammock.

With a dull grunt, Randidly’s face met the solid rock of the ground. Notwithstanding the pain, he was mostly stunned by the strange sense of motion sickness he felt as the constant swaying was brought to an abrupt halt. Several grains of tinier minerals rubbed against his face as Randidly shifted. Immediately, his Stamina was gone and all power left his limbs.

But the real realization that came with hitting the ground was that Sulfur was gone. And as Randidly checked, his expression grew increasingly grim. Not only Sulfur, but Acri was also gone. Perhaps most importantly, his interspatial ring was gone. To add insult to injury, the small leather necklace that held the strange grain seeds had been left to him. Perhaps it was deemed useless? His only tools to escape were seeds he could barely grow without being destroyed by his image. Still, with his Grasp of the World Seed, perhaps that would end up being enough…

Randidly let those thoughts go as he gathered more Stamina to shift out of his face down position. The cold of the stone underneath him did a lot to clear his mind of all the nagging worries. For all that this room was a pain in the ass, it was somewhat genius. It didn’t weigh down on the person, it multiplied their expenditures.

For Randidly, the sort of weighted room would be a hassle, but he could overcome it. In fact, that extra weight would be pressure to gain quite a few Skill Levels. But based upon their ability to remove the overlay portion of the System, Randidly suspected that this particular way of operating was purposeful. Perhaps the underlying System didn’t consider the change in expenditures to be a true challenge that he was facing, and therefore it would do little to change his ability to gain Skill Levels.

Randidly also sensed that Aether was restricted in the room, but that was worthless against him. Much more annoying was the drastic reduction in capability. Relatively speaking, Aether Deprivation and lack of outside resources to grow were the exact problems that Randidly had skipped over to get where he was today.

After what seemed like an eternity, Randidly moved his face marginally so his nose was no longer smashed against a rather large pebble. He let out a light breath. His Stamina was once more depleted, but he could make contact with the ground in a more healthy manner. Instantly, Randidly could feel golden roots spiraling downward from himself into the depths of Tellus. The strange repression around the room limited Randidly’s Aether Perception, but with the roots, he got a rough sense of the larger area.

It seemed that he was in an underground complex. Which was progress in a way, but hardly helpful to realize. Even if he strained his senses, the feedback that came from the amorphous roots was slight. In addition, Randidly had no real way of controlling them. He could only draw deeper from them, slowly gathering his strength.

It did, however, confirm that it was possible to use Skills within the room. That was somewhat of a relief. If the room could somehow completely get rid of all Skills… well, Randidly was confident in his physical fitness, but not when he couldn’t even stand…

It took about a minute of stillness in the room to gather enough Stamina to move around. So slowly, Randidly began crawling at the speed of an ancient turtle to explore the strange prison in which he found himself. The darkness around him seemed brooding, silently circling him in slow ripples as Randidly dragged himself through it.

Honestly, pulling himself along the ground was an extremely inefficient method of moving. But it would probably impossible to get up onto his feet at this rate, and therefore there was no helping it.

Time was extremely strange in the inky darkness, so much so that Randidly was reminded of his brief stay in the Patron of Ashes world. At that time, the Patron had kept him waiting to test his patience and returned him to a mortal body. It was a strange day that Randidly felt a pang of regret that he wasn’t once more being tortured by the Patron of Ash.

But that thought made Randidly smile bitterly. After all, wasn’t the Ashen Image continuing to torture him…?