80 Close Call

Galahad woke up shortly after with dark-blue sludge all over his hands. He felt like his brain was hungover and his eyes were looking at everything through the distortion of water.

He was sitting on his knees with a slimy mess spread out across the floor, it took a second before eventually realizing what was in front of him.

It was Sladdus's remains, no longer releasing the black smoke or secretly controlling minds with mana tethers. Galahad couldn't tell an exact reason of death, but he could see certainly a few guesses and one of them had to be right.

It looked like the black orb had fun toying with the demon. All four tentacle legs were cut off and one of his two squid eyes were gashed out. Galahad could only assume that Sladdus died of blood loss somewhere around that stage of the dissection.

'Fuck, it just tortured him . . . but why?' Galahad thought about it as he started reaching towards the body. His mind was groggy and every part of him aches too much to care about getting more gunk on his hands.

In the mess of melting body parts, he found what he was looking for; Sladdus's mana orb.

It wasn't just a mana orb though, something was wrong with it. Within the light-blue glow that normally residing in the little sphere, he saw something else. A little spark of yellow inside, changing intensities to transform the blue hue to a green, then back. A strange phenomenon he'd never seen in a mana orb before.

Upon picking it up, the system showed more details.

[ Mind Flayer (Sladdus) lvl. 42 ] [ Error ]

'What? An error?' Galahad blinked a few times just to make sure his sleepiness wasn't throwing off his vision. The words didn't change and he was still stuck with an error.

"Why can't I consume you?" Galahad asked aloud.

He wiped a bit more of the blood off the orb and stared at it with curiosity and confusion."Is it because your a special piece of shit like that stupid spriggan? - oh? Or maybe it was just this."

Galahad changed his assumption as he saw a huge crack on the side of the orb. He turned it over to find liquid mana orb was slowly secreting from the minuscule opening of its shell.

If he wasn't immune to the deadly effects of monster's mana orbs, he would have thrown his glove off as quickly as he could and doused his hand in whatever he could find. Otherwise his skin would have started corroding into nothing but melted flesh and bone.

He'd seen mana orb burns and scars on adventurers and forgers before; even his father had a long oval shape chunk missing from his calf that was carved out during a surgery to stop a puddle of mana orb from eating away at his whole leg. An old mana pool he had before Galahad was born had sprung a leak and nearly tore a second hole his ass, as that's how he liked telling the story, making Galahad and his brother giggle when they were children.

'Well you're certainly useless for absorbing, but maybe Regin can make heads or tails of what you actually are.' Galahad decided to take the orb with him and at least see what his dwarven boss had to say about the strange orb.

Having told the dwarf about everything except his murders on the road, Galahad knew he could get some theories from the dwarf about the smoking demons, especially now that he had some evidence.

He wrapped the orb up in his pocket rather clumsily, still unable to shake the feeling of disorientation. Just as long as he kept the sphere upright, he would be able to keep the color changing orb from dripping any more of the liquid mana.

Looking back at his hand that was now covered in little bits of mana, Galahad noticed the holes in the fingertips of his gloves. His right hand wasn't covered in the little black talons like before, and the two fingers that were cut off had returned with nothing wrong with them. The finger sleeves that were still separated from the cut showed nothing out of the ordinary, even as he flexed each one.

Galahad decided to stand up and nearly fell over from the head rush. He was facing the wall of the dirt room and put a hand on it to steady himself, once he was ready to turn around and grab whatever gear he left scattered across the ground.

He only glanced over the bodies of the fallen adventurers and mimic corpses, hoping to find something interesting in their pockets and crates before he left. Then he saw an odd corpse in the middle of the room, it caught his eye as he wasn't familiar with killing that one.

He wobbled over to see if it was a human or mimic, he kept blinking to get the fogginess out of his eyes to see more clearly, but nothing was working. Galahad could only stare off and get closer to inspect the body in an efficient manner.

It wasn't until he was right on top of the body that he recognized there was hair on the ripped open scalp that matched the auburn colored hair of his sister. Once he saw that, the last ten minutes came flashing back. Galahad remembered a slideshow of gruesome horror flashing through his mind and occurring by his own hand.

He remember the black orb ripping Keyna apart despite how much he screamed at it to stop, then blacking out to forget the trauma. Galahad dropped to his knees in front of his sister and reached out to touch her shoulder.

It was as lukewarm as a recently dead corpse could be, fresh blood still leaking where her spine was exposed from her back. There was no coming back from that, and He knew it.

Galahad was shaking uncontrollably as he got closer to her mangled body, not sure what else to do but sit there in defeat. He felt a dreadful pain in his chest, one of mourning and pain he was too familiar with. It was the exact same pain that he had on the day he first heard his sister disappeared in the dungeons.

The difference this time was he couldn't feel anything worse than that pain in his chest, he was missing that key factor of pain that made him want to cry and sob like a child. Pretty soon after, it started subsiding.

Instead of the tears, he just sat quietly until the shock on his face changed to a blank stare. Killing his sister was becoming more comfortable in his mind with every second that passed; he knew it was happening and yet all he could do was let it run its course until the pain was almost nothing.

'I can't keep living like this.' Galahad started standing up to leave. 'What else am I supposed to do? I can't keeping telling myself that I can save anyone with an uncontrollable curse or some shit running through my veins.'

Galahad slowly realized the implications of this happening again. 'If I end up acting like this or the orb gets loose again, then I'll not only kill my family, I'll just start killing everyone. I know its wrong but I can't seem to care anymore.'

Galahad stopped walking as felt his foot step on a bowing knife, he picked it up and had another thought. 'Maybe I can just kill myself, save everyone the trouble.'

'Ssstop being so over dramatic.' Interrupted the black orb in the back of his mind.

He should have been terrified to know that the orb was still active, but the emotional suppression was working in overdrive. He was only startled for a second before his face went blank again.

'Oh don't ffffffret. I only came to show you what it means to havvvvvvveeee true strength, the kind that never waverss against an enemy. It's something your pathetic race will never master . . . aannnnd do choose your next class more carefully. I'd hate to see a dog dieeee before getting to break its first rabbit's neck. Farewelllll.' The orb's whisper of a voice disappeared in the little vacuum hidden away in the center of his chest. Galahad felt himself return to his normal state, back to the way he was during the winter, where his emotions were almost all present.

He then dropped the little blade and dove over to his fallen sister to hug her. His emotions bubbling back up and he felt the guilt come up first. He muttered apology after apology to her, wishing he could show her everything that she had missed in the last decade.

Galahad didn't let her go for over a minute, not taking into account anything outside of his apologies and stumbling of words. Only after realizing he had another message pop up against his shut eyes, did he let go.

[ Elder Mimic lvl. 27 ] [ +280 XP ]

"Wha-OH SHIT!" Galahad was no longer gentle with his dead sister and pulled at the skull that was still sitting face down against the body.

He turned it over to see the top row of teeth were a blend of square, human teeth, and long needles of a mimic. Galahad didn't know if he should laugh at himself, or start bashing the dead mimic's body to a paste.

His decision was somewhere in between, he let out a loud string of swears as he start tearing apart the body to find the orb.

The body was somewhat liquidized, providing more proof that it was a monster all along. He found the orb shining in the pit of the mimic's stomach.

Galahad he had been standing there holding his breath since discovering she was fake. When he found the orb and held it out to see it in the light, He let the air go and felt a shiver of relief make his knees grow unsteady.

While leaning against the nearest wall, he tried to compose every that was shaking. It took a while since everything was shaking, including the tunnels.

Galahad looked at the clock in his view and saw the shift was less than a minute away. The half hour he spent in Sladdus's tunnel came and went.

He could only assume killing the magician with earth magic was finally letting the tunnel collapse like the rest. The ground didn't feel as fortified as before and the ceiling was showing huge cracks that would lead to everything collapsing.

Without giving it a second thought, Galahad put a finger on his Karmic Plate, willing it to hurry up.

As the twenty second countdown started, he double-checked his bag and was able to give a small at all the extra weapons he had on his person. It was plenty of money sitting there for him to buy much better gear and books, maybe even a pricy potion or two.

He still have all the armor on that wasn't completely destroyed, and the empty sheath at his hip-

"Fuck!" He blurted it out as his hand glanced over the empty black sheath to find no sword there. His eyes darted across the room, scanning as quickly as possible to find his blue sword.

A blade of that size with multiple abilities would cost more than the credits earned in a month of dungeon hunting. The rarity of such a weapon would cost him at least a half a decades worth of credits. He definitely couldn't leave it to be buried under all the rubble.

Thankfully, it was still sitting on the opposite side of the makeshift room where the three dead humans were. The sword seemed to have recharged as well, the blue gem in the hilt was glowing with a full charge of mana, indicating it was ready for shape shifting or a lightning strike.

Galahad sprinted with as much energy his worn out body could provide, all while still keeping a finger on the Karmic plate. Estimating the last few seconds it would take to fast travel to the surface, he only had one shot to grab his sword, otherwise he was gonna get crushed to death.

When the time hit three seconds, he jumped and grabbed aimlessly at the blade while the light of the Return Spell went off in a blinding flash.

'Oh gods! Did I get it?'