Standing near the entrance of the final room as he watched a maelstrom of wind and water tear the great number of skeletons apart within the large space before him, a faint smile gradually crept up onto Valyr's lips as he opened up his notification screen, making a final tally of the number of Skill Keys he had obtained.
'In total, I've gained 44 Common grade Skill Keys and 9 Uncommon grade Skill Keys from this run,' thought Valyr to himself as he made his way to the only door that could be found on the walls of the final room. 'Compared to the results I've gotten grinding the Common Caves in the past, this run is surprisingly one of the luckier ones.'
"In any case, time to head to the Uncommon Depths." With the thought lingering in his mind, Valyr stood in front of the door that would lead him out of the dungeon. Compared to the other doors he had gone through, which were just dark gray barriers in the shape of a door, the door before him looked just like any other door he had passed through, though it bore the greatest resemblance with the doors he had opened during his time at the Astarto Goblin Den.
With that, he gripped the handle of the door and twisted it, only to stop all of a sudden once he felt something beckoning for his attention. Turning his head to look at the now empty final room, Valyr pushed his senses to their utmost limits to find out where the feeling was coming from, wondering whether what he had sensed was real or not.
Unexpectedly, after a minute of looking around, Valyr eventually found the thing that was beckoning for his attention, staring at what seemed to be a slightly tattered piece of parchment on the floor. At first, Valyr pondered to himself as to what was so special about the parchment for it to catch his attention, picking it up to get a closer look at it.
Of course, the answer to his question was swiftly obtained once he took a look at the other side.
Bang!
At the very moment he had gotten a glance of what was on the other side, a strong wave of pain assaulted his mind, causing him to tumble a couple of steps back as he tried to stabilize himself, confused as to what was going on. Clutching his head as he felt that the thing he had seen on the parchment was the root cause of this pain, Valyr tried to gaze it once more, only for another wave of pain to assault his mind.
"Nngh!" As the first wave of pain had not fully subsided yet, the young man was forced to grit his teeth, allowing him to ignore the mental anguish he felt as he focused on the pain he felt from tight gritting. After that, he allowed the mental pain he felt to subside, taking in a few deep breaths as he pondered over the current situation.
'So, I've gotten my hands on a piece of parchment that inflicts great mental pain whenever I look at the side that has something on it,' muttered Valyr inwardly. 'Should I just leave the parchment here and continue with what I should be doing… or should I try and figure out what's on the parchment?'
Allowing these questions to linger in his mind for a bit as he weighed the pros and cons of each decision, Valyr eventually came to the conclusion that he was going to do the latter, looking at the parchment with something on it once more without hesitation.
Bang!
"With high risk comes high reward." Feeling the wave of pain from looking at the parchment wash over his mind once more, Valyr gritted his teeth in preparation for the same level of pain he had felt from the two waves earlier, only to find out that the pain he felt this time around was considerably less than what it was before.
Realizing this, Valyr sucked in a breath of cold air as a thought quickly surfaced in his mind, a thought that he instantly deemed incredibly idiotic. 'This is going to fucking hurt for sure.'
"Aaaaaggghhhh!!!" Steeling his mind in preparation for what he was going to experience, Valyr directly stared at the side of the parchment with something on it, allowing his mind to be constantly bombarded by the waves of pain he had gone through earlier.
At first, he felt that the pain he experienced from constantly looking at the parchment was in no way worse than the pain he had gone through while he was learning the skill books he had bought en masse, only for him to fuse a great portion of those skill books en masse as well.
Fortunately, after a minute or so, this pain started to gradually died down, giving Valyr more and more breathing room the more time passed. Eventually, by the time he had endured thirty minutes of constant mental anguish, the pain he felt from looking at the parchment now seemed to be a thing of the past, with Valyr finally becoming able to look at the parchment directly.
"Runes?" Once Valyr was finally able to look at the occupied side of the parchment in its entirety, the first thing the young man noticed was the great number of runes etched on it, all of which were at a size that only seemed possible for a Rank 4 mage to etch at the very least.
Though, with the energy he could sense from the runes, all of them containing a faint hint of terrifying intent to it, he was somewhat certain that the being who had etched these runes was possibly a Legend, perhaps even a Myth.
'Is this forming a magic circle of sorts?' Looking at the placement of the runes for a bit longer, Valyr noticed that the runes were arranged in a way where they seemed to make up a part of a larger magic circle, prompting him to think that the parchment seemed to have a part of an incredibly strong magic spell. However, just as he was about to rummage through his memories to see what kind of spell it might be…
Ding!
[You have received a new quest: The Runic Parchments.]
