déjà vu at the secret cavern of Amadi

The lanky, red-headed man sat for thirty more minutes in silence, his mind devoid of thoughts. He became bored and looked at the clock. 2:00 a.m. He sighed impatiently and rubbed his face with his hands. Lack of sleep and anxiety contributed mostly to his impatience.

He got up and walked to the backpack. He took out a bottle that contained the map that was folded into a roll. He returned the bottle before returning to his seat. Miraculously, he didn't need extra light to read the content of the map; the penetrating, radiant moonlight was enough.

Niklas glanced through the marked directions to the cave, which were on the upper one-third of the paper. On the mid-third was the marked location of the legacy in the cave. He didn't bother himself looking at the final third of the paper because it was just 'meaningless' text that was written here. Using his experience of the cave and the markings on the map, he tried to discern where the lightning blade could be. He got frustrated after spending just two minutes looking at the map. He returned the map into the bottle and into the back pack.

'I can't continue like this. If I do, I won't be in a good shape to make the journey.' Niklas sat near the widow. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, forcing his mind to rest, but sleep eluded him. With his eyes closed, his mind was at peace, and it felt just as good as sleeping, but his mind was ready for action. Like this, three hours and thirty-nine minutes passed.

Niklas stood up and stretched his limbs, taking note of the time. 5:39 a.m. He smelled his armpits, and they stank. He got a bucket and fetched water from the drum behind the house.

'Another day to bathe in nature." Niklas had stripped down to his underpants and was now with his bath soap and towel in addition to his bucket filled with water. He made his way into the familiar protection of a cluster of trees and had his bath here.

It was 6 a.m. on the dot when Niklas redressed. His attire was unchanged from yesterday. Luckily, his shirt didn't stink. His mother and brother were still asleep. He hung the backpack over his shoulders and walked outside the house. He locked the door with a pad lock and kicked off another journey.

Niklas traversed the forest, moving west, and an hour later he was on the western forest edge. The cave was three kilometres away from the western forest edge. He arrived at the mouth of the cave forty minutes later. Emotions of familiarity and grief haunted him as he peered into the darkness of the cave. He walked into the cave, the darkness enveloping him. After walking for a few minutes, he could see the path ahead was well lit. He soon stepped across the boundary between the dark and lit areas. He stopped and looked at the darkness, familiarity shimmering in his eyes. He knew that when he would be leaving, the dark area would not be dark but well lit like the bright area.

'What's even the use of this dark portion? Is it meant to scare people?' Niklas walked deeper into the cave, towards the place where Alita, one of his deceased friends, found the legacy statue. He remembered the bright smile of accomplishment the young lady had on her face. Her raven black hair, which extended down to her shoulders, dazzled in the cave's white light. Niklas flicked away a teardrop that formed at the corner of his left eye.

He walked into another area and paused to glare at the number of rotting corpses. The corpses belonged to the hired killers who killed his friends. His glare was filled with hate. He felt like bringing every corpse back to life and strangling each one of them back to the afterlife. The hate was so strong that he unintentionally connected to the ubiquitous mystic powers of nature, and his entire body sparked in lightning. He unleashed the fury of the generated electricity on the corpses, decimating them to ashes. The lightning on his body was gone; his breath was heavy, but he wasn't satisfied. Unfortunately, there was nothing to take out his anger on, and he couldn't take out his anger on the walls of the cave for fear of collapsing the cave on himself.

'If I were a bit braver or smarter, I could have absorbed the legacy and used it to save my friends.' Niklas yelled in regret and angrily kicked a skull into the wall. The wall broke to pieces on contact with the wall. He squatted and rolled his hands over his face, preventing his eyes from shedding tears. He looked to his left and saw a '3' boldly written on the wall. Niklas sighed and said,

"Phiona."

Phiona had marked the walls of the cave to aid the crew when they would leave for the cave. Niklas could still see her marking the wall. She was 5 feet tall, the same height as Alita. She had short hair that was dyed blue and was dark-skinned. Niklas didn't know when he lost control and began shedding tears.

"I'm very sorry that I failed you guys. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Another memory floated in his head:

"Let's go, Phiona," Alex, a red-haired man who was the same height as Alita, urged. At this point, Niklas and Phiona were the only members of the crew that were in this part of the cave. Alex walked into this area, revealing that he was a man with a jacked physique.

"Niklas, you are here. Both of you, let's go," Alex said.

Niklas couldn't help but scream and pound his arms on the ground in pain. The memory went away, and he wept. He gathered himself moments later and continued walking deeper into the cave.

A wide but shallow pit greeted Niklas. This was the end of the cave. This was where the legacy was found. Niklas jumped into the pit. The pit was not just a pit; it seemed like it used to be someone's dwelling place. The presence of a rotting wooden table, a rotting chest drawer made of bamboo, and a rotting bamboo bed stand, which were positioned at a corner of the pit adjacent to the entrance, indicated this. Niklas and his friends had no instruments to gauge the age of this furniture or know how recently the pit was last occupied.

The red-haired boy looked at the odd, dark wall behind the stand. The wall of the cave was earth brown, but a patch of the wall in the pit, which happened to be behind the bed stand, was coloured black. He and his friends had discovered that this was a route that led into the area of the cave where Phiona had marked its wall with a bold blue '3'.

The discovery was made after Emeka came back here, bleeding, crying, and screaming. He alerted the crew about the killers who were hot on his heels. It was unknown who exactly found out what the dark patch of the wall was, but all of them exited the pit before a small number of killers arrived in the pit.

The group walked through the dark patch of wall in the pit, into a dark tunnel, and to the exit point. They thought that they had evaded the killers, not knowing that they had walked into the hands of the rest of the killers who had waited at the exit point. To the eyes of the killers, Niklas' friends appeared from thin air. Niklas didn't follow his friends out. Diallo's intuition had felt the danger ahead, and he told Niklas not to leave the tunnel.

Emeka was the first to leave the tunnel, and he was the first to die. Niklas heard him scream as he was slain. The rest fought to their deaths.

Niklas had his eyes closed as he remembered what transpired in the pit. He remembered that Diallo was the last person to leave the dark tunnel. Diallo's last words to him were,

"You are a lucky lad. They don't have guns. If they overwhelm us, I will make sure that you are the only one that leaves this cave alive."

"Thank you, Diallo," Niklas whispered through tears.

He brought up his gaze from the floor and saw his friend standing before him through his memory. Diallo was as tall as him; he was dark-skinned, wore a full-stop earring on each of his ears, had a ripped muscular physique, and had a buzz cut. The image of Diallo dissipated like dust blown by the wind.

Niklas pulled up his system interface.

[NAME: Agu Niklas Vox.

AGE: 20 years old.

HEIGHT: 6'2 feet.

WEIGHT: 58 KG.

CLASS: Lightning-mancer.

RACE: Human/Demigod

PHYSICAL QUALITIES;

STRENGTH: 5+10

SPEED: 5+10

AGILITY: 5+10

STAMINA: 5+10

PERCEPTION: 1+10

****

MANA AFFINITY: 1+10

MANA VOLUME: 0+1000 MP

****

MISSION: Go to the secret cavern of Amadi and find the weapon—the lightning blade.

MISSION TYPE: timed quest. Timer: 12 hours. Time left: 05:12:05.

PUNISHMENT: You instantly lose the blessings from Amadi's legacy.

User activates the punishment when the user does not complete the quest within the stipulated time.]