Lloyd awoke in pain, coughing up a viscous liquid that tasted like blood as he gasped for air. The pain made Lloyd all too aware of his situation, sputtering out of his grogginess, he circulated mana to try and figure out what was wrong.

  Mana condensed all throughout his chest, particularly focusing on the area around his heart. It seemed most likely that the source of all his internal breathing was a ruptured artery leaking blood into his lungs, not something you got from running to hard.

  How he got the injury? He no idea, he couldn’t remember what he had been doing or where he was for that matter. Where was he? His vision was hazy at best, and the ache in the front of his head told him he had most likely gotten concussed at some point.

  Scanning the multicoloured haze around him, Lloyd tried to decipher his surroundings but all he could see was different shades of black and grey. Maybe it was nighttime and he was hidden in a tree cavity or something, but the ground was cold and hard like stone.

  Was he in cave? He’d found a few caves before, but he couldn’t remember coming here, only reassuring the possibility of a concussion. Hopefully he would be able to see once the sun came u-—

  Lloyds train of thought froze as a sudden movement amongst the dark haze caught his attention. Something was moving, something big, he wanted to run, but knew he couldn’t his body was frozen still, his muscles were tight and a cold sweat ran down his spine.

  He tried to close his eyes and play dead, but his body was too wracked with fear for him to dare close his eyes in this being’s presence. He was in dire straits, stuck in the dark, alone, weak, and defenceless, he stood no chance if this thing found him.

  As if hearing his thoughts, the shape pacing through the darkness slowly turned to face him, tilting its head to regard the strange creature on the ground. All number of horrific fates ran through his mind as he imagined what the creature would do to him, yet somehow, what happened next was more horrifying than anything his mind could have conjured.

  “You’re finally awake”

  It spoke.

  How could it speak? Lloyd had been told by the system itself that there would be no one else in his tutorial, so who was this? Could it be an alien species the system decided to put in his tutorial, no that would still count as a second person in his tutorial.

  Who, or what, was this thing, from what he could make out it stood over ten feet tall, and its silhouette was nothing like that of a human. Even in the darkness he was surrounded by, the being in front of him was a pitch-black stain in the shadows.

  Maybe if he was still enough it would leave him alone long enough for him to plan an escape, but with how badly injured he was, that could take a while. All he could do was wait for the creature to leave and then he coul—

  “It’s rude not to respond you know”

  Lloyds mouth opened in hesitation, he realised he couldn’t play dead here, so he did his best to sound confident as he answered.

  “Who are you?” Lloyd said in a shaky voice, trying not to lose his composure.

  “So he really doesn’t remember.” The shadowy figure said to themselves in a bemused voice “No matter”

  Suddenly the dark silhouette broke form, a thin spiny appendage reached towards him, at an uncomfortably relaxed pace. Lloyd strained his body in an effort to move, but he was still frozen, unable to combat the fear his body was stricken by.

  Without warning, the shadowy appendage grabbed his head, breaking into four scaly claws that began channelling mana into his head. He tried to put up a defence with his own mana, but found himself overwhelmed by sheer volume, the invading mana seemingly limitless in capacity.

  Thinking he was being executed by the monster in front of him, Lloyd tried to scream in protest, but could barely muster a whisper from his scarred throat. He felt a small remnant of his strength return, allowing him to move his arms once again, but he hardly had the strength he did before the integration, nothing that could injure the creature holding him hostage.

  After what felt like hours, Lloyd was finally let go hid body slick with sweat from the stress of being forcefully infused with mana. His eyes were jammed shut trying to focus on the pain it his body so as to hide the fear that was making his body shake like a paper bag in the wind.

  Feeling slightly more at ease now that the crow had let him go, Lloyd slowly opened one eye, before violently blinking both in surprise at what he saw. His vision had inexplicably become crystal clear, giving him a perfect view of his surroundings.

  He was in a dark cave, grey and black rock permeating the walls, but none of this mattered to Lloyd, at the moment he was entirely preoccupied by the giraffe sized corvid in front of him. He stared up at the bird with a mix of fear and shock, struggling to understand what was happening.

  “Y-you can talk?” Lloyd stammered as he gazed up at the gigantic bird in terror.

  “Yes? Of course I can talk, crows have always been able to talk, we just couldn’t understand you before.” The crow said seemingly annoyed by his ignorance.

  Lloyd looked up at the crow sceptically, usure if he was hearing it right, or if any of this was real, surely, he was asleep and none of this was real. As much as he wanted this to be the case, the splitting pain in his legs confirmed he really was listening to a giant crow scold him for his insolence.

  Still unsure of his safety in this situation, Lloyd just sat in silence, letting the crow complain about how little credit people gave them for being able to talk whilst he tried to keep a straight face.

  Once the crow was done ranting, Lloyd cautiously asked a question that had been gnawing at his mind ever since he woke up.

  “Where are we?”

  “Southern mountain as I call it, I moved you here while you were unconscious.”

  “Wait, how come, and for how long was I unconscious, because the last thing I remember I was fighting a quoll or something, but after that I’m at a blank.”

  Lloyd slowly acclimated himself, asking questions which the crow -who called himself Hugmun- answered to the best of his ability, though he didn’t have all the answers. His main line of questioning followed what had happened to him before he woke up, but the crow didn’t seem to know anything about it.

  What he had learnt was that he had been out of it for at least a week, as that was how long ago Hugmun had found him. This meant he hadn’t just been concussed, but he had gone full on comatose for an unknown reason.

  Lloyd was very confused as to the reason for him going into a coma, as aside from the internal bleeding, his body hadn’t taken much physical damage. Hugmun was just as interested, as he wasn’t sure what would have done that to him and not bothered killing him.

  To assist him in regaining his memory, Hugmun was working on a potion that would help him regain lost memories. Lloyd questioned him on how he knew how to make this Hugmun said he had been given a broad understanding of alchemy by the system when he consumed a valuable treasure.

  It turned out that monsters could consume rare items called ‘natural treasures’ which would allow them to level up faster and gain unique race variants. This was how the system evened the playing field, something to give the monsters and edge over the humans with their unique classes and professions.

  A powerful natural treasure like the one Hugmun found was likely the source of power for some of the monsters he’d encountered previously. The main suspect was the iguana titan from the miscus village, if not the miscus chieftain himself, both were far larger and much stronger than the other members of their species.

  Something like the giant crocodiles that terrorized the swamp were less likely to have consumed natural treasures, most probably the just had the blessing of a supremely powerful race. Some of them may have found minor natural treasures, but none of them stood out enough to have found a high tier one like Hugmun had.

  The natural treasure Hugmun had gotten was unique, even for a high tier one, as instead of locking you into a path, it had embraced and empowered the path Hugmun had set out for himself. This path was the pursuit of knowledge, and it gave him experience not only for killing, but for learning something new, the more important the better.

  Alchemical theory was a perfect fit for someone like this, as the craft was all about combining different elements to discover new information, so the system granting him general knowledge on the topic seemed logical. Lloyd was nowhere near competent enough to understand what Hugmun was doing with the different ingredients but couldn’t help but be intrigued when this could bring back his memory.

  Hugmun was combining a mix of mushrooms, herbs, and a certain type of ant venom into a viscous purple paste that looked about as appetising as dirt. Lloyd really didn’t want to eat this putrid mush, but armed with the knowledge of what he had on the line here he felt compelled to.

  Lloyd gripped the small stone bowl as he apprehensively raised it to his mouth, he sniffed the liquid hoping to change his mind on the substance, but it smelled just as bad as it looked. It smelled of fermented fruits, and was extremely unappetising, though Hugmun didn’t seem to share the sentiment and told him to stop being pedantic.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Reluctantly, Lloyd started drinking the liquid, gagging as it entered his throat, the taste most resembled charcoal and citric acid, while he could only describe it as feeling like drinking wet chalk. Overlooking his disgust, Lloyd kept drinking and gulping down the foul liquid trying not to think about the taste.

  Lloyd’s brain was on fire, like he hadn’t drank water in days -which to be fair, he hadn’t- and every memory regained was like a kick to the forehead. What little information he was regaining was far overshadowed by the excruciating pain it to regain them in the first place.

  As hard as he tried, Lloyd couldn’t focus on his reborn memories for anymore than a second or two as the pain was too strong. He would have to wait the effects of the alchemical paste out before he could go over what had happened, because if he kept trying to decipher the memories with the ongoing headache he was going to pass out again.

  Pain ravaged his brain, making him writhe on the floor as Hugmun looked down at him in bemusement not caring for the pain he had caused Lloyd and only for the result. He looked down at Lloyd inquisitively, staring at his movements and facial expressions with a scholarly gaze.

  “Did it work? How do you feel?” Hugmun asked with a gleam in his eyes.

  “Not now.” Lloyd said through gritted teeth, trying not to swear at the crow who was obviously just trying to help.

  Lloyd lay flat on the ground, staring up at the ceiling with a grimace as he tried to control his spasms to no avail. He tried to get back up, but sudden jolts of pain from his forehead knocked him off his feet continuously.

  His feeling of annoyance only grew deeper as he heard the crow mumbling something about forgetting an anaesthetic herb.

  “So… how’d it go?

  “Fuckin, gimme a minute, will ya? I can’t even get up right now, just let me get my bearings before you interrogate me.” Lloyd snapped in annoyance.

  Hugmun turned around clearly irritated, but didn’t push for more answers, leaving Lloyd to writhe on the ground in peace. after a half hour of struggle, Lloyd finally managed to wrest back control of his mind, pushing out the foreign energies carried by the putrid liquid.

  With his mind back in a functional state, Lloyd focused on retracing his path from the fight with the quoll to when he passed out. The memories he regained were blurry and indistinct, but he could understand enough to comprehend what had happened.

  He could recall the fear and devastation he’d felt as the giant parrot had chased after him, his inability to get away as his torn tendons failed him. He was completely entranced in the memories he’d lost, but before he could see the result of the chase everything faded into black.

  Was that it? Had he passed out mid chase? Maybe the bird had lost him in the ferns, no that made no sense it was right on his tail, it wouldn’t have lost him. The point at which the memory faded into black was unnatural, at that point he could remember being fully alert, there was no way his body would have shut down at a time like that, something was off.

  Lloyd wracked his brain for a solution, but before he could think of something the memory changed. The pure darkness the memory had faded into was interrupted, something appeared, shimmering in the dark.

  The deep purple shone like a beacon of hope in the dark of the abyss, but the longer he looked at it the more malevolent it seemed. Unable to understand what was happening, Lloyd could only watch as his past self desperately ran away from the floating sigil, overexerting himself just to move a couple feet.

  He felt the pure unadulterated fear that drove him away from the evil rune, but he couldn’t understand what was happening, he just knew that he was in danger. As the despair in his memory grew Lloyd could barely compose himself, hardly stopping the desperation to run from seeping over to him in the present.

  As Lloyd fought with his mind to control the impulse to run, something changed. The rune lit up, fully releasing its malicious power outwards, malignant energy rocketed towards him in a large tendril, burrowing into his skull and awakening him.

  Lloyd collapsed on the cold, hard stone as he writhed in uncontrollable agony, the hazy memories were made crystal clear as it all came rushing back to him at once. The giant parrot, the field of shadows, and… him.

  Fear gripped Lloyd like a vice as he slowly turned his head to the monster behind him, backing up against the cave wall as he starred at Hugmun with horror.

  “Y-you tried to kill me.” Lloyd said with a shaky voice as he pointed accusingly at Hugmun.

  “Stop overreacting, I get that the memory tonic was painful, but I did not try to kill you with it.” Hugmun replied clearly not understanding the weight of what Lloyd was saying.

  “No, in the forest, you tried to kill me. I barely escaped with my life, then as I passed out in the cave you hunted me down.”

  “No I didn’t, I found you in that cave already unconscious, I never tried to kill you.”

  “Yes, you fucking did, you chained me up along with everything else in that field of shadows, then when I escaped you followed me.”

  Hugmun seemed to be at a loss for words, opening and closing his beak as a bewildered stare glazed over his face. It took a few seconds for him to figure out what to say, but when he did say something, he seemed certain it its definitiveness.

  “That’s not possible, I’ve used that attack on monsters twice your level, and none of them managed to escape. You would have had to sacrifice levels if not lifeforce to escape from my shadow domain.”

  “Bullshit, I just needed to infuse those chains with some mana and they let me go.”

  “There is no way normal mana could have achieved such a thing, our level disparity is just too large.” Hugmun remarked confident Lloyd was mistaken.

  “Well it wasn’t normal mana, I had to use a skill to do it, and that required me to bypass the systems warnings, but I still just infused them with mana.”

  “YOU BYPASSED THE SYSTEM’S WARNINGS?” Hugmun yelled clearly shocked “how? That shouldn’t be possible, I’ve tried to bypass them so many times, but the system just won’t allow me to proceed. What did you do?”

  “I don’t know, I just ignored them.” Lloyd replied casually.

  Lloyd watched as Hugmun paced back and forth in utter disbelief, clearly the crow hadn’t meant him any real harm, only catching him in the crossfire by accident. Now that he had figured this out, his only real question was why bypassing the warnings was so confusing.

  All Lloyd had done was refused the systems conditions and activated the skill by force, the process hadn’t been overly technical and Lloyd struggled to see why it was so hard to grasp the idea of him doing so

  “So that’s what made you go comatose. You must have overexerted yourself when you bypassed the system and seriously injured yourself.” Hugmun seemed exited at this revelation, clearly having gained experience from discovering something new.

  Lloyd looked down at his hands, thinking about how different things could have been if Hugmun had felt less benevolent when he found him. Thanks to his good fortune, Lloyd was now safe—

  “Wait where did you say this place was again?”

  “The southern most mountain on the island from what I know of.” Hugmun said looking at Lloyd curiously “why?”

  “Why did you bring me here?” Lloyd asked, clearly surprising Hugmun as the crow was momentarily lost for words.

  “Well, I-uh wanted to see what would concuss you like that and not bother killing you for exp, so I brought you here to keep you safe while you were unconscious.” Hugmun replied not sounding too confident in his response.

  “But why here? I saw how you slaughtered that parrot, I know for a fact that nothing in that part of the forest would dare me with you nearby, so why bring me all the way here?”

  “I told you I just wanted to make sure you were safe until you recovered so that I could find out what did this to you, but that turned out to be different than expected.”

  Lloyd opened his mouth to argue, but knew it wasn’t worth it, Hugmun was clearly trying to avoid stating his real reason. Running through things in his mind, Lloyd sat down and said ate some of his leftover smoked eel.

  Hugmun was seemingly uncomforted by Lloyd seeing through his story so easily, and left the cave, saying he was going hunting. before he went, Hugmun went out of his way to warn Lloyd not to venture deeper into the cave, for there were likely still powerful enemies within.

  Lloyd didn’t believe Hugmun for a second, he had witnessed his power firsthand, and there was no way anything in this cave was dumb enough or strong enough to stay with him around. As he watched Hugmun fly away into the distance, Lloyd contemplated what he should do.

  Hugmun was clearly hiding something, but Lloyd could not for the life of him figure out what. The mystery of what had happened between Lloyd and the creature that concussed him had turned out to be a big misunderstanding, so according to Hugmun’s reasoning, he had no reason not to kick Lloyd out already.

  There was obviously a deeper reason for Hugmun to keep him here, but Lloyd was having trouble figuring out what it could be. What Lloyd was sure of was that whatever Hugmun was hiding had something to do with what was deeper in the cave.

  Lloyd waited for a few more minutes, and since Hugmun hadn’t returned yet he decided it was safe to venture deeper. With only the crackling electricity jumping between his fingers to light the way, Lloyd headed deeper into the mountain.

  He clambered over unnaturally smooth boulders and followed the bank of a trickling underground river that carved its way through the shale lining the walls. The cold, grey stone slithered along the walls like rising waves, guiding him toward the heart of the mountain.

  As the river spiralled deeper, Lloyd’s mind focused on nothing but the serpentine patterns marring the shale, so much so that he didn’t notice when the cave came to an end. The cavernous expanse that he had awaken in had slowly shrunk down to a corridor sized passageway chiselled by the grinding lull of the river.

  The river which inexplicably ended, a small pool barely the size of a hot tub swallowed the endless trickle of water. The dark emptiness of the eerie tunnels had proven one thing, and that was that Hugmun had been lying, but not what he was lying for.

  Hugmun clearly hadn’t wanted Lloyd to see whatever was hidden down here, and he had a feeling Hugmun wasn’t worried about him seeing an underground pond. There had to be something more to it, but wherever he looked Lloyd couldn’t find anything else just a dark, gloomy cavern.

  As he scanned the cavern for something more to this place his eyes came to rest upon the one reasonable conclusion he could come to. The lake went deeper, it had to, its abyssal darkness seemed to stretch on forever into the depths, and that was where his answers laid.

  Confident he would be able to reach whatever was hidden within the murky abyss Lloyd took a deep breath and jumped in. he kicked deeper into the water feeling his way through the labyrinthine tunnels that led to the heart of the mountain.

  With all the changes his body had undergone as he levelled up, Lloyd could now hold his breath for upwards of half an hour, but he had his limits, and as the tunnels stretched on he was nearing them.

  The maze-like expanse seemed to have no end, but as the floor of the tunnel started sloping upwards, Lloyd felt he was getting close. As the last of his air supply was whittled away little by little Lloyd sped up as he finally saw a sign of hope after so long in doubt.

  In the distance, Lloyd could see a soft blue glow shimmering on the waters surface, a literal light at the end of the tunnel. The last of the air in his lungs trickled between his lips as Lloyd kicked forward one final time, pushing himself past the water’s surface.

  Lloyd tread in the water, gliding across the still surface of the pond, entranced by the beauty of the cave he found himself in. the lights he had seen shimmering above the waters surface from deep within the tunnel had been the last thing he had expected.

  Lloyd had been ready for a small cave exposed to the surface through a narrow crack, or even glowing crystals, but this was more magical than either. The vast expanse of the cave roof was filled with an endless tapestry of glowworms and bioluminescent moss, giving the cavern an alien glow.

  The magical tendrils swayed in an unseen wind, the sight truly otherworldly. This was unlike anything he had ever seen before in his life, but he was yet to see anything that he felt Hugmun wouldn’t want him to see, but right now, he didn’t care.

  Just the experience of seeing something of such alien beauty was reward enough for the trouble he went through to get here. Lloyd sat in the shallow water, his hair dripping water down his back as he stared upwards like a small child, but the feeling of euphoria was soon overtaken by a chilling fear as four words burned into his mind like a hot iron.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”