63 (63) Experiments

Death was a familiar feeling for Kraton, it was like a best friend he hadn't met in a while. The cold embrace of death clung to him, the white void surrounded his unmoving consciousness.

A tug pulled his drifting mind to the side, there was a rift in the bright room, its colour was non-existent, but Kraton could feel it. Whatever form Kraton was in, the rift felt like a magnet, or maybe it was a hole in which he would be sucked into.

Yet, the sensation felt warm, homely, without ill-will. It helped soothe the coldness that clung to him, the nearer he was, the warmer it felt. Voices could be heard through the open breach, not quite audible from the outside.

Curiosity got the better of him, he passed through the rift with ease and entered a space of darkness. A silky voice rang out, penetrating the darkness. After the voice trailed away, a cloudy light filled his vision.

"There are three that have yet to fully awaken." A voice reverberated through Kraton's soul, the clouds that fogged his mind flared a dark lilac for a second. The power behind the voice unrivalled to what Kraton had encountered, it was as if even his consciousness would crumble if the voice commanded it to do so.

After the voice spoke there was silence, Kraton attempted to move forward through the cloudiness, but he couldn't tell if he was making it anywhere.

"They will wake as we did. Be patient Eláttoma." A Melodic, or pitch accent broke through the silence, the fog flickered cyan as he spoke. In the corner of Kraton's sight, a silhouette had briefly appeared but disappeared the same moment the voice did.

"I have met one, he is on his journey." The silky voice rang out again, causing a shiver down Kraton's back. The cloudy light had flashed into darkness or at least a very dark accent of purple.

Kraton had glimpsed another silhouette just before all of the darkness faded away. It was further than the previous shadow, but it looked slimmer and more elegant. The outline and its voice jolted a strange feeling into his mind, but he couldn't place his finger of what it was.

"How is the Experiment?" The powerful voice resounded once again, the dark lilac accompanied it. After suppressing his fear, Kraton glanced around, trying to locate if this voice had a silhouette as well.

There was no sign of one in front of him, but the back of his consciousness trembled. He turned around slowly and his vision was blocked by a dark object. If he had knees right now, they would definitely have buckled over. Tracing the dark shape upwards, Kraton discovered that it towered far beyond his sight.

Being so close to the shadow was strange, the details were still murky as if it was still a long distance from where he was. Yet it was very clearly right in front of him. The large silhouette faded away and the colour returned to its cloudy white.

"It is going well f̴̙̜̤͋́.̶̧͍̬̱͇͗̂,̴̛̟̻͎̍̃̏̈́̋̏̇̾͝.̵̞̖͇͠¦.̶̧͍̬̱͇̜̠͗̂,̴̛̟̻͎̍̃̏̈́̋̏̇̾͝.̵̞͠r̶͖͚̭͂͜." The disarray of voices chanted together, causing Kraton's mind to explode in agony.

A sudden gush of wind cut through the cloudiness, the pain in Kraton's mind subsided away. A clear tunnel had been formed in the dense murkiness, a glowing dot of light at the very end, approaching where Kraton was.

"They came sooner than expected." The clouds glowed lilac, but in the clear tunnel, a vibrant purple burst out, flashing brightly, almost blinding Kraton's vision. "Work harder, they may soon find you..."

The voice trailed off and an eruption blasted Kraton's drifting consciousness away.

"Pant..." Kraton gasped out loudly, a stream of sweet, stale air wafted into his mouth. His breathing stayed heavy as he greedily breathed in more, it felt like he hadn't breathed for an eternity."

A warm glow settled onto his eyes as he focused on his surroundings. A stone floor, a hollowed cave. Ah, yes, he remembered. This was his dungeon, his home.

"Are you alright?" A cold, yet gentle voice chimed out beside him. He jumped in shock before calming himself.

"Yes, I'm fine." Although he said it, it was more to reassure himself, his voice trembled as he spoke and the words felt foreign to him.

Kraton slowly recovered from his vision, he tried to recall the details about it, but the more he did - the more muddled his memory became. Only three things stuck out from his memory; the cacophony of voices, the massive, looming shadow, and its voice. The powerful sound which reverberated through his mind, shivers trembled down his spine as he recalled the pressure it gave.

"I'm alright..." His voice drifted off until a sharp pain erupted by his shoulder, "Ow!"

The pain snapped him out of his trance, and the silence around him caught his attention. Looking up, he found Lysine peering at him with a worried expression, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a moving, colourful crystal.

As he turned around, he found the cause of the pain; Barren had its arm extended in the lingering motion of a punch. Since Kraton had caught him in the act, the crystal arm slowly retracted and Barren scratched its head awkwardly.

"You've been like that for ten minutes," Lysine's concerned tone betrayed her emotions, her usual cold, yet energetic self was replaced by her worry.

"Ah, I've been punching you for 5 minutes now." Barren spoke with a hint of gleefulness. Now that it had been mentioned, Kraton felt his entire left arm grow numb and sore, he glanced at his arm and swore that it had bruised over to double the size of what it was.

"What happened to that blonde kid?" He quickly changed the subject to take the focus off from himself. Lysine wasn't fooled and maintained her concerned expression.

"Oh! We lost." Barren, on the other hand, remained as blunt as the crystals which formed it.

"Sigh, even you lost to him, we couldn't even bully him and break his armour like we did to the other guy."

"Oh!" Barren exclaimed, he sounded even more gleeful than before. "I broke one of his relic usages! It must have cost him a fortune."

"Really?" Kraton raised his eyebrows, but it looked like all the hair on his head just moved backward. With that good news, he didn't feel as morose anymore. It was always a good time for monsters when they destroy something precious like armour or relics.

"Bet you he won't dare to fight us again any time soon." Kraton let out a hearty laugh, trying to dissipate any leftover worry from his previous trance-like state.

His enthusiasm didn't fool anybody, but the other two left it alone as Kraton seemed to not want to talk about it.

...

Soon the time passed the active hours of the human raiders and the dungeon descended into the quiet clamour of the monster's night-time activity.

Loud wailing and cursing resounded through each floor of the dungeon, each of the monsters venting their anger towards the human bullies. Even though Monsters got the better deal when it came to death compared to players, it was still an uncomfortable experience. Fighting and dying repetitively would drain their energy and motivation, why did humans have so little honour?

Due to this, Lysine guessed that the Nagas wouldn't want any training for the next two weeks, instead, she planned some entertainment and stories to ease the atmosphere.

Kraton and Barren stayed in Floor Five for most of the two weeks. Since there was hardly anybody entering the Boss Room due to Lloyd Irrigance and his lackeys invading all the floors, the limited amount of players with no relation to this family only came after they left.

The dungeon monsters were still thriving, a good amount of them had adapted to the soldiers and were also grinding the players. Killing and grinding worked both ways, but it was more satisfying when the humans died and respawned; they would curse, shout, and rage, rebelling against orders and making it easier for the monsters to kill them.

Meanwhile, Barren looked as if he were cultivating another crystal, Kraton hadn't given any instructions to do so as he was still waiting for Lunia to send the first gem back. Barren hadn't told either of the two other bosses what he was doing, but it was purely by his own free will.

Kraton had continued tinkering around - his prototype test was half-successful, however, the whole device imploded on itself as the energy consumption coupled with the recoil was far too strong; even the stone block that the tubes were cast in had shattered under the power.

Lysine had also moved onto the process of experimenting, the large volumes of data had already been read twice over and the Harpy's notes had completely been memorised. Under the help from the notes, Lysine was able to follow through the experiments with ease, analysing the results, and altering the notes to fit her own physique.

The technique she was now experimenting was an evasion technique, it involved twisting her wings slightly and pressing it against her body in order to maintain high velocities whilst being able to swerve through attacks.

However, this movement was difficult to control as her body would also spin rapidly. To change direction and avoid attacks, the movement of her wings would have to be constant and in sync with her orientation, otherwise, she would just be merely spinning and moving in a straight line.

Removing the spinning aspect would remove many of its practical uses. This included reducing the speed and its deflective capabilities against projectiles and spells. This was especially useful for Lysine as her scaled wings were already quite strong to defend with.

This technique had caught her attention the most due to the Typhoon Harpy's extensive notes and hypotheses regarding how different wing types would affect the control, speed, defence and other factors. Like her, Lysine was very intrigued about how much further the technique could be improved for each species.

After practising for a while, Lysine found the whole technique harder than she thought. It wasn't as simple as compressing her wings and spinning but was much more advanced than that, therefore she split her training into four sections: Movement, Exiting, Turning and Adjusting.

Movement was the simplest of the stages, it was the motion of getting into the technique, even if she couldn't control her speed or mobility. The Exiting stage was what Lysine was stuck on at the current moment. Exiting the spinning motion required her to be orientationally aware, as well as the motion of unfolding her wings.

If she unfolded her wings at the wrong time, or the wings were slanted too much, exiting the movement wouldn't be smooth and she might even lose quite a lot of speed from recovering. Half the times, Lysine had calculated her orientation completely wrong, leading to her crashing against the hard, stone floor.

It wasn't long until her experiment log started overflowing, the latest record read:

"Test 520: Wings clipped airflow at the wrong angle. Solution: Rotate wings faster."

This was on the third day since she started experimenting; the fourth day after Lloyd had appeared in the Dungeon.

It was finally on the Fifth day of experimenting that Lysine had broken through. The experiment log for that attempt displayed her results:

"Test 886: Successful exiting, awareness of orientation, speed and external airflow is needed to be calculated each time."

After finally becoming successful in exiting the movement, Lysine let out a deep sigh. Both her mind and her muscles were aching in tiredness and fatigue, but after looking up she found she wasn't the only one who was stuck with a few problems.

*Boom* A column of smoke erupted out from the corner of the room.

"S#@&!"