Chapter 4: The Grove

**Ding! You have been afflicted by Lesser Cave Spider Venom**

Even as Kaius read the notification, he felt a burning inflamed heat growing from the wound.

“Blasted depths, not now!” he muttered to himself.

Numbness spread through his arm. He had to pick up the pace. A quick look satisfied him that no more spiders were coming to ambush him from the ceiling so he ran forward. Bringing the fight to the remaining handful of spiders.

Without the element of surprise they fared as well as the rest of their brethren. Their sticky ichor coating his boots and the blade of his sword.

Kaius threw his head around, looking all over the walls and ceiling for more of the creatures. Nothing. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, failing to calm even as he leaned onto the soiled cave wall. Pain, thankfully easy to ignore, shot through his arm and back, radiating out from his wound in lockstep with his heartbeat.

HisHealthwas burning by the second, expended to stave off the violent effects of the venom.

“Gotta get back to the entrance room…”The thoughts came slowly, impeded by the thick fog that had begun to cloud his mind. If he could get there he would be safe from attack, would have time forRapid Adaptationto work its magic.

With shaking hands Kaius managed to sheathe his sword, too preoccupied by the pain and weakness coursing through his body to bother dealing with the ichor that still coated its hilt. Leaning on the wall with his good arm he began to stumble towards safety, the venom spreading through his body by the second.

He had to make it back.

He would make it back.

Step after arduous step.

He would make it. He had to.

The walls of the cave swayed precariously like a deep sea galleon under Kaius’s feet. Grasping for the roots that dotted the wall with a steadying hand did nothing to help with his vertigo.

Stumbling slowly, he made his way through the tunnels. Often he had to stop, convinced he was getting turned around even though his hand never left the rightmost edge of the cave. How many steps was it supposed to be? He was sure it wasn’t this far. Wasn’t he supposed to be going left?

It was only the radiating ache on his shoulder that kept him grounded. The writhing tendrils of expendedHealthhad retreated from the surface of the wound. Concentrating around the deep well of venom left behind. Coursing through his veins with every heartbeat.

Insistent. Heightening his pain with every throb. Drawing him back from the fog.

He coughed, chest shuddering. A light splatter, his eyes drawn to the red blood.

Kaius checked his Health. The interface flickered into his eyeline a second later, the heavy weight of the poison slowing his thoughts. He watched its value drip away. It might have been slow, but it was decreasing all the same.

“Just need to survive long enough for Rapid Adaptation to do its thing...”

It was a trickle. Slow enough hemightmake it. As long as there weren't any more spiders - any more venom and his healing wouldn't be able to keep up. The entrance room. That was where he was going. He had to get to the entrance room.

With a groan, Kiaus forced himself to take another step as he leaned heavily on the cave wall.

That's all there was to it. Just one foot after another.

Slumping against the wall of the cavern, he heard a splash. Something soaked through his pants. Was he sitting on the floor?

**Ding! Rapid Adaptation has added a new Resistance: Venom!**

Rapid Adaptationactivated. Energy flooded out from his centre, corralling and encapsulating the venom as it purged it from his system. He gasped. The leaden weight on his mind and body retreated quickly.

**Ding! Rapid Adaptation has reached level 11!**

“Finally.”Kaius thought to himself

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Rapid Adaptation:

Level 11

Heroic

Danger lurks in every corner. Adapt or die.

This skill allows you to develop resistances to all damage types and afflictions. Novel dangers require a period of adaptation to develop a resistance. Certain sources of damage are harder to adapt to, such as physical harm and esoteric mana types.

Each level slightly increases resistances to dangers you have adapted to.

Each level slightly reduces exposure required to adapt.

Resistances: Pain, Fear, Poison, Disease, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void, Aether, Venom

Merged From: Pain Resistance, Fear Resistance, Poison Resistance, Disease Resistance, Fire Resistance, Water Resistance, Earth Resistance, Air Resistance, Void Resistance, Aether Resistance

With a groan Kaius pushed himself out of the puddle he collapsed into. He walked over to where he had secured his pack, retrieving a rag.

“That wasnotfun,” he whispered to himself as he mopped at his slicken face.

He could feel it there still, the waves of nausea and brain fog made sure he wouldn't forget it, but having added Venom to his list of resistances he was in little danger of anything more than discomfort.

He clasped his hands, thanking Ellyntr that he had such a useful skill.

When he was younger he had often complained that it was far less flashy than the stories he had heard villagers tell. Ten-skill merges were supposed to be flashy, weren't they? Like the hero Josan’sAstral Strike. Oh, how he had loved to hear how he could pierce any armour, striking at a monster's very soul.

Father had shaken his head at him. Resistance skills were powerful, he said, but too specific for most to make use of. The ability to grow resistant to anything given a little time and exposure? He would appreciate it when it saved his life.

It was one thing toknowthat Father was probably right. Another entirely to have it proven in his first minutes in the Depths.

Kaius shuddered as he thought back to the nearly two years of discomfort and agony it had taken to level its constituent parts. Each resistance incorporated into the skill had to be done delicately, lest his freshly integrated body give out.

The final two skills he had to raise to their cap before he could mergeRapid Adaptation? Those had been truly hellish. Advanced elemental resistances. Exposure to the effects they defended from was normally enough to easily kill someone many times stronger than him. His father had had to use specialised devices to inflict him with the barest traces of the aspected mana.

Irreplaceable artefacts. Strange bronze cylinders the size of a finger, covered in runic inscriptions denser and smaller than any other enchantment he had seen. Tipped with a fierce needle to be implanted deep into his flesh. First one. Later, dozens.

A single misplacement could have killed him.

Almost did, more than once.

Shaking off the bad memories Kaius finished mopping his face. Taking a deep breath he leaned back, watching the glowing moss pulse. Shift through blues and subtly greens, the asynchronicity warping the shadows.

A short walk through the tunnels brought Kaius back to the remnants of his battle with the spiders. Cracked chitin and sprays of ichor coated the floor of the cave. With a contemptuous sniff, Kaius stepped over the remains of his slain foes and continued on.

Taking his scabbard off his back, Kaius cleared his way through the remaining dense webbing. Wadding itself thick.

A few turns through the tunnels later and he spotted a slow brightening of the light. Emanating from around an upcoming corner. He dropped into a crouch, feeling hisSneakskill guide him into reducing his profile.

Walking into the unknown was a risk that could get him killed. It was also his only option.

Turning the corner, the roots that protruded from the cave wall grew dense and clustered. Leaving him with only a narrow path through a bramble-like mesh. The cave brightened ahead of him, shining through the gaps - though he had yet to see why.

Kaius grunted in dissatisfaction.“Guess I'm moving up.”

With each step he tested his footing with the balls of his feet, unwilling to give himself away by accidentally disturbing the increasing number of loose stones that had been torn free by the roots.

As he moved the roof of the cave slowly rose above him, the tunnel widening in much the same way. He pushed further through the snagging roots. A gap appeared ahead, light blinding him after the dimness of the cave. Rushing forwards Kaius yanked on one leg as a particularly ornery root snagged his pants.

He burst through the opening.

Kaius found himself gazing out over an expansive cavern from a vantage point partway up its wall. Far above, the familiar shifting pulse of glowing moss absolutelycoatedthe ceiling. Providing far more light, though the cavern's edges were hidden by a haze of gloom.

A gentle, if treacherous, slope of scree fell away before him. Levelling out to meet the cavern floor.

Kaius stopped transfixed, his attention drawn away from the space's immense size to the dense blanket of foliage that obscured his view of the ground proper. The stout tree’s leaves glowed a dim green, though with less potency than the moss far above.

A sea of green, stretching out further than he could see. A forgotten forest, potentially hundreds of long-strides beneath the surface. A shadow of its cousin above, drowned in a strange fae light.

Straining his eyes in the half-light, Kaius drank in the sight. Was that..? It was. He could barely make out a dilapidated stone structure in a gap in the trees.Justclose enough that it wasn’t hidden in the gloom.

“I’d bet my sword that is where I will find some undead.”

Kaius narrowed his eyes. In the Depths an underground forest meant hazardous wildlife. There was a small chance that he was off base and the wildlife would be undead, but the distinctly living nature of the swarm of spiderlings suggested otherwise. With how long he was going to be trapped down here, that meant he had a food source.

The undead themselves were probably the true hazard of this biome. They would be the grindstone he needed to push his skills just that little bit further. Delving was a dangerous profession. You either took every opportunity you could to eke out another iota of growth, or you died. He might have started a few years early, but he refused to fall into the second category.

He dashed down the slope, anticipation urging him forward faster than was wise.