Chapter 123

  A sense of urgency overtook Michael. Seeing that Old Dave was gone, he immediately started to wonder why the man had left in such a hurry without telling him anything, especially with the time dilation of the second floor. Worried, he took out his phone to check for news and the current time dilation factor for the floor, but failed to even see what he was looking at.

  He squinted, but his phone’s screen was completely out of focus. The number was there, but he just couldn’t see it. Looking around, the whole world looked radiant and blinding, and his head was pounding. Shaking his head, Michael tried to get up, only to stumble and almost fall. He propped himself against the icy cold wall of the tunnel, feeling the coolness of the ice against his skin with far too much clarity. It was as if he had ice in his brain, adding to the rising headache. Every movement was amplified a million times, every sound reverberated in his skull, and every sight was too much to process.

  Closing his eyes was a momentary respite that lasted barely a moment, for when he did, his other senses sharpened, and the cacophony of sounds intensified. The tunnel, which he had always thought rather silent, was a mess of noise, louder than a highway. He could hear the ice booming and shifting, the rush of faraway water as if he were inside a waterfall, and the echo of little water droplets that sounded like small explosions in his mind. His senses of touch and smell were also intensified to a monstrous degree. The air smelled of all sorts of strange things, and his skin was so overly stimulated that he thought he was going crazy.

  He felt his sense of balance start to wobble from the rush of sensory information, and he had to sit back down. Except, instead of sitting, he dropped to the cold floor like a sack of flour, and the pain of falling on his butt was so strong that he blacked out for several minutes before regaining his faculties.

  I can’t think like this…

  Even such a simple thought took all of Michael’s concentration. What was happening? His thoughts were slow, his mind clogged by the onslaught of information. He had to think past all the noise, his thoughts congealing in the molasses of sensory data that overwhelmed everything else.

  It’s the Mind Dantian. It all started happening after I opened that fucking dantian, he realized.

  Knowing the cause did not help. There was no way to turn the feature off, and Michael came to that conclusion after trying every way he could think of. Even worse, the sensory information was not decreasing in the slightest, and his brain was not getting used to it at all. He felt his thoughts start to dull, buried under the noise and the mess.

  He didn’t know how he managed to stumble out of the tunnel, nor how long it took him to do so. He only knew that as soon as he left the somewhat protected environment of the tunnel, it all got so much worse. It was as if any progress he had managed to make disappeared, and he was back to square one.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the blinding light of the clear sky. The clouds were evil, so bright they hurt his retinas. He was lying on his back, he realized, having fallen to the ground after losing his balance yet again sometime earlier without even noticing.

  This can’t go on, he thought. He was in no shape to come out of the dungeon.

  Instead, he remained where he was, thankful that the Misty Valley was—even with its many dangers—his safe space, hoping that nothing could hurt him while he was out of commission. His aura flickered like a defective light bulb, flaring and dimming, but he could do nothing about it. Not only would he have to sort through the mess of information before he could even begin to reach his aura with his mind, but the aura itself was interacting with whatever was happening to him, so that whenever it flared, the pain increased as more information was carried to his mind.

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  Somehow, Michael managed to open his status. He watched his Resilience points climb higher and higher by the minute, but not nearly fast enough. Each new point brought solace comparable to a drop of water given to a dying man in the desert. It was heaven, but it was also too little and too late to save the man’s life, a sort of perverse torture of denied relief.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, Michael managed to direct some of his mental energy toward the problem. He couldn’t lie here forever, and already he felt like months had passed with him lying on the gently swaying grass of the hills by the glacier. There were no seasons in the Valley unless he wished for them to be, and no Fae had come to bother him, but it also meant that no Fae had discovered his predicament. He didn’t know if it was for better or for worse, given that he didn’t think he could sustain a conversation, and any attempt to help would make matters several times worse for him.

  At the same time, months or even years spent in the Valley translated to a substantial amount of time passing in the real world because of the weakening time dilation factor.

  He closed his eyes and did his best to access the Skill Sanctum. Even here, deep in his consciousness, he was not safe from the noise of the outside world, but its effect was weakened enough that he could think.

  It all began with him unlocking the Mind Dantian core. Had he known, he would have waited. But he never thought the effect would be this severe. In fact, he suspected that it wasn’t supposed to be this bad, which meant that something about him was causing trouble.

  Soon—though it was hard to quantify how much time had really passed—he managed to narrow down the possible suspects to just one: his Unity skill. Both through its Fate facet giving him access to levels and stats, and its Truth facet enabling him to see the truth of the world, the skill interfered with his senses and enhanced them.

  The Mind Dantian built upon this foundation in a multiplicative way, enhancing his senses so much that what was supposed to be a boon became detrimental. He also felt that the Dantian was enhancing his brain capacity, but its effect was not catching up to the much-higher influx of information. Had it only been the Dantian, it would have been enough, but with all the other things also enhancing his senses… it wasn’t.

  If that was the case, he had to figure out how to dial down the power of the Dantian until he got used to its effects. Having sharp senses was a good thing, but having senses so sharp that every little noise and smell became overwhelming was a handicap.

  After a long time spent experimenting, he found a stopgap measure. His new level in [Magic Manipulation] had increased his proficiency with mana, Qi, and aura to an unparalleled degree. In addition, his discovery of the Dantian cores finally unlocked his ability to project Qi outwards.

  Using these new abilities, he constructed a shell around himself. It was a scaffolding of folded aura, filled to the brim with mana, Qi and Intent in the shape of a cocoon. Normally, such a shell would be used to defend against insanely strong attacks or powerful enemy auras trying to suppress Michael, but in this case, he used the Intent to tune the shell so that it would isolate him from the outside world, muffling all the noise and smells and dulling his sight.

  It was a stopgap measure, requiring concentration, constant expenditure of magic, and it was by no means perfect. Even with it, he could hear his own heartbeat, like a tinfoil bag filled with a slightly viscous oil getting squished over and over again. He could hear the blood flowing through his veins like rapids in a river. He could hear his muscles and tendons shift and move, with wet, disgusting sounds that were as repulsive as they were loud.

  At least, the outside world was bearable now.

  It took Michael a whole day to learn how to walk with his increased proprioception and the booming sound each step caused inside his body. He didn’t even think about experimenting with his new ability to project Qi, nor did he dare to touch his Sanctum, where he could feel the [Unity] skill trembling and calling for his attention.

  Instead, he stumbled to the dungeon floor’s exit and slowly, excruciating step after excruciating step, made it to the outside world. As he stumbled outside, it was already the next day.