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>>41413133
You smile a little wider, shuffling a little and waving.
The woman’s face immediately breaks out into a small smile, her gaze comforting. Heh, too easy. Socializing is quite simple when you don’t actually have to act like yourself, you think.
“Erm… S-sorry to interrupt you from your work,” you say, looking downwards to your feet, even adding a small fake stutter, “b-but I wanted to ask a f-few questions about the guild, if that’s alright…” You trail off, shifting like an uncertain little kid.

“Oh?” Murmurs the receptionist, softly, gently. “Of course, of course. Feel free to ask any questions you’d like dear!” Her smile widens.

“O-oh! Really? Th-thank you, Miss..?”

“You can just call me Helen, dear, no need for such formalities!” says Helen, waving her hand.
Well, Operation: Adorable was a smashing success.

Now, what to ask?
>Ask about the guild’s functions.
>Ask about the guildmaster herself.
>Ask about the electrical lighting.
>Anything else? (Write In)

>>41413184
>Ask about the guildmaster herself.
>Ask about the electrical lighting.

>>41413184
>Ask about the guild’s functions.
>Ask about the guildmaster herself.

>>41413285
>>41413295
Writing.

>>41413184
“Well, you see, Miss Helen,” heavens, you’re already tasting the diabetes in your blood, “I wanted to learn a little bit about the guild itself. One of my papa’s friend’s friend mentioned it to me, and I thought it was really cool!”
“Mmm,” hums the receptionist. “Well, you know what the original function of our little guild was, yes? We were just a little pit-stop for more powerful adventurers, I suppose is the best way to call it.”

“However, we’re also equipped to help induct young, inexperienced mages into the adventuring life! I’m sure you’ve heard all about that too, right?” You nod enthusiastically.

“Well, we have everything here that a young, enterprising adventurer could possibly need:- food, board, basic missions ranging in difficulty, that sort of thing- and at the very end, we have this small graduation ceremony! I’m sure your papa’s friend didn’t talk about that, did he?”

“After that, they’re an official member of the guild, and are free to leave for greener pastures with our blessing, or take one of the more difficult missions.”

“More difficult? How?” You ask. At your question, Helen smiles.

“Well, I’m afraid that that’s a secret. You’ll have to join if you want to know, hm? Anyway, any other questions?”

(1/?)

>>41413714

You ask about the guildmaster.

“Our ‘great and esteemed’ leader? Her? Well, I would be the first to say that she’s… unique. She can be a tad airheaded at times, but there’s no doubt that she is a talented mage. She served in the War, you know!" You nod. A war veteran? That doesn't sound like someone who would go down too easily, you think.

"She often leads the more experienced members out on hunts or scouting missions outside the village.” Helen frowns. “However, I’m afraid that she’s… unavailable, at the moment. She seems to have incurred quite an injury on the last mission. Don’t worry though!” Helen says quickly, taking your thoughtful expression as disappointment. “I’m sure you’ll be able to meet her later.”

You chat with Helen a little more before finally asking about the electric lights. As far as you know, lighting a fairly large building like this with electricity is rather rare out here, so far from the coasts.

“Yes, they are quite fancy, aren’t they?” Muses the receptionist. “They were only installed about a week ago, alongside our brand-new generator downstairs. The entire thing is ran by some very complicated magecraft that none of us except the guildmaster’s actually been able to puzzle out. Actually…” The receptionist looks back at you, her smile growing. “Would you like to see? I’m sure a cute, polite kid like you has quite a few friends, right? Wouldn’t you like to have a tale to tell them? It’ll be just like an adventure!” She says enticingly.

>Well, I had a few other questions…
>Sure! I’d love to!

When has capcha started asking about pickup trucks instead of food?

>>41413741
>Sure! I’d love to!

>>41413768
Writing.

>>41413741
>Sure! I’d love to!

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>>41413741
“Sure! I’d love to!” You chirp, smiling. You even clap your hands to seal the deal.

Helen chuckles at your unbounding enthusiasm. She quickly gathers up the bundle of paper into a corner of her desk, and calls out to one of the guildmembers lying about in the lounge, telling him to leave any messages back on her desk.
Afterwards, she gently grasps your hand in hers, leading you up the stairs in the corner.

“I thought you said the generator was DOWNstairs, Miss Helen?” you ask. Just in case, you pull in a small bit of mana into the palm of your free hand. You’re thankful that ambient mana is only really visible when concentrated. “Why are we going upstairs?”

“You’ll see! Just hold on to me; we’ll be there in no time!” If you say so, you think.

Helen leads you down several long hallways, telling you that most of the rooms you see are merely bedrooms for the many guildmembers. You file away the information for later.

Finally, Helen leads you to a sliding door, made out of steel. A small metal scanner lies next to it on the wall. It looks completely out of place, you think. “This,” says Helen proudly, “is an elevator! You’ve heard of those, haven’t you?”
She asks. She quickly waves anything you had to say. “Don’t answer- I’m sure you have. You’ve never seen one in the village though, have you?” You shake your head. It is technically the truth, even if you hadn’t seen much of the village at all.

“This is our ticket to the generator downstairs! I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t want to place on the ground floor, but here it is. Now, all you have to do is swipe your finger across here,“ Helen demonstrates using her thumb, “and wait a few moments.”
***

>>41414414
The two of you wait about a minute before a soft ‘ding’ sounds from the inside of the elevator doors, which quickly open. The two of you step inside.

“Absolutely fascinating, isn’t it? And I’m sure we’ll be getting a few more tech packages soon!” Says Helen, enthusiastically.

The two of you wait inside the elevator for another minute. Soon enough, the same ‘ding’ noise sounds, and the doors open.

You blink in surprise. This… isn’t what you’d expected. What you expected was perhaps a large, black box, painted over with runes and a simple, efficient mana-to-electricity warding pattern. Instead…

The entire room is carefully painted over with long, curved lines, runes carved into the metal alongside them. You’re not entirely sure what all of the runes mean- the warding pattern is quite complicated, and at the middle of it is the keystone to the whole thing- the generator.

In truth, the generator itself isn’t very impressive. What is impressive, however, is the fact that somehow, the various wires leading out from the piece of machinery seem to be able to interact with the large curving pattern around it, despite the fact that the wires aren’t actually connecting to anything. In fact, the wires outright look as if they were cut.

“Beautiful, right? I’ve never seen anything like it.” Honestly? You never had either, and you have far more experience in warding than she does. If you had some time to yourself, you could probably figure out how the thing worked, but…

(2/3)

>>41414466
You glance over at Helen. You don’t exactly have privacy here.

You’re certain you could take her out easily. She wouldn’t see it coming, and though she’s probably experienced, you’re confident in your abilities. The problem comes if you’re trying to subdue her non-lethally.

You might be able to persuade her to leave you alone for a short while, but if she finds you tampering with the ward, she’ll signal the rest of the guild, and you’d be swarmed. Even if you don’t get caught, you’ll only have a short while to work.

>Try to persuade her to leave you alone. (DC: 6)
>Subdue her nonlethally. (DC: 7)
>Eh, just stab her in the back. You’ll get over it.
>Something else? (Write In)

>Roll 3d10 for any option.

>>41414496
>Something else? (Write In)
Continue the tour, and then we can return here later (sneak in during the night?) once we know more about the security.

Rolled 4, 4, 1 = 9 (3d10)

>>41414496
>>Try to persuade her to leave you alone. (DC: 6)
Sup Kyuu, new guy here

>>41414616
Hello, new-anon!
...That's an excellent roll you have there!

If one of the other three previous voters backed my option of not doing anything suspicious, we might even get out of here without blowing our cover.

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>>41414711
I'll leave it to a coin-flip in 2 minutes.
Of course, if that Write In is used, I'll be using that crit-fail for something else later...

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>41414779
Coin-Flip!
1:Write In
2:Persuasion
Writing.

>>41414845
Wonderful.
Time to spend the rest of the thread sitting in a basement and dozing off so the crit-fail won't fuck everything up.

>>41414496
Regardless of how much you’d like to take a look at the immensely interesting warding pattern as soon as possible, you realize that you could probably just break in here later tonight, when everyone’s asleep. Smiling at Helen, you say a few words expressing your childish wonder of the magical feat lying in front of you. She similarly expresses her amazement, gushing about the sheer intricateness of the entire warding pattern, and how the machinery interacts with the mana circuits to produce electricity seemingly out of thin air. Surprisingly, she seems entirely sincere in her enthusiasm. It seems she’s quite interested in learning warding.

You can understand her enthusiasm. It’s how you felt when you first managed to build your own original warding pattern, and that rush of victory and wonder at having made something entirely your own is what has kept you on this path. Well, that and the fact that you were press-ganged into the role of warding by being a ward-BREAKER, but still.

At any rate, after Helen finally finishes her praise, she leads you back up into the elevator, and she leads you back into the guild lounge/lobby.

“I’m afraid that that’s about as much as I can show you, dear.” Says Helen regretfully, as she sits back down behind her desk. “The guildmaster certainly would have been pleased to see you, but she’s still completely out of it, as far as I know.”

>Ask if you can see the GM tomorrow, then.
>Thank Helen and leave.
>Anything else?

>>41414921
It's not that bad anon. It's not like Will is just gonna go and slaughter everyone in the town just because of a crit-fail!

>>41415131
>Thank Helen and leave.

>>41415220
Writing.

>>41415295
Where the hell did everyone go?
>>41415156
Now I can add paranoia to the things I'm stewing in!

>>41415376
Well I'm at work, on top of not wanting to fuck up again

>>41415376
I'm around, but I couldn't even catch up with this thread yet...

>>41415131
“It’s okay Miss Helen!” You say, smiling. “I had a lot of fun! I’m gonna go tell all my friends now! Thank you!”

She chuckles again. “Well, alright. Try not to get hurt, okay?”

You nod, running out of the guild.

When you think you’re a healthy distance away, you finally allow the sunny smile to melt off of your face. Heavens, your cheeks ache. You have no clue how ‘normal’ kids could possibly keep something like that up the entire day.

You look up to the sky, spying the sun high above the village. It’s about midday.

You took the liberty of quickly inspecting the defenses of the guild using your aura before leaving. After taking a glance, it seems that whoever decided to set up that electrical generator ward downstairs also decided to give the guild an upgrade in defense.

Unfortunately, it was far more of a patch-up job than a proper ward. You could easily detect the remains of an improperly-broken warding pattern lying under the primary defenses, and ironically, the entire mess may actually be a far better defense than either properly-made warding scheme alone. Of course, you’re not going to let something like THAT stop you from breaking in. Your nickname was Lockpick for a reason.

Still, this ward might actually take you some time to both break and to reset. You’ll have to get to sleep quite early, both to make sure you break when no one’s awake, and to ensure you have the time to figure out the guild’s defenses.

>Head to the inn for a few extra winks.
>Head to the Merchant Quarter.
>Try the tavern. It’ll probably be empty, but you never know.

>>41415629
>Head to the inn for a few extra winks.

>>41415676
Writing.

>>41415629
There’s not much of a point in wasting any more time in the town. You’ll go ahead and grab a large lunch and head to sleep. You’re always a decent bit drowsier after a nice meal.
***
You open your eyes. After wiping out the gunk, you silently slip out of bed, making sure to stuff the covers with one of the extra pillows you’d found in the room. Finally, you open the window, freezing in place as it creaks.

The tension in your stance slowly leaks out. You’re fairly certain no one heard that. Even if someone heard, you doubt anyone’s actually going to check up on you.

Sighing in relief, you climb out of the window, jumping down onto the ground silently. You activate the invisibility enchantments weaved into your clothing, feeling the strange sensation of water wrapping itself around you as you disappear from sight.

Stopping in front of a pane of glass, you smirk, satisfied. You’re perfectly invisible. Excellent.

You dash off in the direction of the guild, careful to silence your footsteps; there wouldn’t be much point in being invisible if someone could track you through sound. After a short while, you find yourself standing in front of the guild doors. After swiveling yourself around, you evaluate that no, there’s no one around you. The guards are probably patrolling the outer edge of the town at this hour, seeing as you hadn’t seen a single one.

You crouch down, allowing your invisibility to fade. Your aura seeps into the ground, evaluating every small part of the strange defensive setup the guild has.
>Roll 1d6.

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>41416065

>>41416090
Writing.

>>41416065
You tense for a moment, as if expecting, something, anything, to happen.

The breeze blows into your clothes, causing you to shiver a little, but nothing more happens. You get back to work.

…the runes interact here, here, and here, causing both circles to fire and activate this section….
…Burn? No, not quite. Illumination? Hmm. That works, that works…
…Right, so if you place the counter-rune there and reactivate that rune here, THAT section lights up, which is fairly complicated for a simple alarm system, seriously, who designs wards like this?...
…And, done. Finally. You wipe the sweat from your brow- that had taken far longer than you thought it would, but you finally managed to create a counter-ward for the stubborn thing. Ugh. That was not an experience you’d like to repeat. Remember folks, always make sure that the previous ward is completely SHATTERED before you try to put something on top of it. Heavens…

The ward shatters into tiny pieces as your counter is layered on top and activated with a burst of your own aura. You slip inside the guild, replacing the Franken-ward with a copy.
Now, where should you go..?

>Head to the generator room. You’d like to take a look at that warding pattern.
>Head to the GM’s chambers. That’s what you came here for originally, after all.
>Head to the bedrooms. Maybe there’s something in there you could use.

>Roll1d6 for any option.

Rolled 3 (1d6)

>>41416371
>Head to the generator room. You’d like to take a look at that warding pattern.

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>41416371
>>Head to the generator room. You’d like to take a look at that warding pattern.

>>41416405
>>41416411
Oh hey, more than one person voted for once!
Writin'.

>>41416432
>the D6s are for that crit fail
>if we roll a 6 it happens

>>41416371
Well, curiosity never killed anyone, did it? Except for a bunch of dumb cats, but who cares about cats anyway? You prefer dogs. Or hamsters. Or even snakes.
You creep down the hallways, making sure to take the very same path you and Helen had taken earlier. The halls are far more foreboding at night, you think. Not to mention the fact that if you made a loud enough sound, you’d instantly have several fairly-experienced mages to deal with. Nothing you couldn’t handle, but certainly annoying, especially if you want to keep from killing anyone.

Finally, you arrive at your destination, the steel doors as abrupt and out-of-place as before. You walk closer, expecting the doors to open…

Only to mentally slap yourself. Heavens, how could you forget? Helen had to swipe her finger against a scanner of some sort before, didn’t she? You glance over to the small sheet of metal on the wall.

Yep. You’re an idiot. That’s looks like a fingerprint scanner, and-after a short inspection using your aura- it’s heavily connected to a security warding pattern. Dammit.

Well, you could probably get past the security ward easily. It’s nowhere near as ridiculously messy as the one from earlier. Your issue comes from the fact that you don’t have the right fingerprints, if it is a fingerprint scanner.

On the other hand, something like a fingerprint scanner seems a little much to order for a technology care package from the coasts. Surely, the finger-swiping mechanism is something else?

>Swipe your finger and bypass the security ward.
>Go somewhere else in the building. (Where?)

>Roll 1d6.

>>41416657
Couldn't we get to the generator room any other way?
How thick are the elevator doors?

>>41416791
They're fairly thick, but they're not made of Mana-Reinforced steel, thankfully. You could try prying them open using Reinforcement magic.

There is another way into the generator room, yes. It's somewhere in the building.

>>41416868
We didn't see any ventilation shafts did we? they sometimes open out into elevator shafts.

Are we capable of melting a square of steel, taking it out of the door, and then replacing it when we leave?

>>41416912
The one fire spell Will has managed to convert into glyph form at this point is Fireball. You're not going to melt the doors without multiple uses. You could try using your saber to cut through, but that'll take time.

You could certainly try looking for a ventilation shaft somewhere else. As far as you can see, there isn't one close to the elevator.

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>41416657
>Swipe your finger and bypass the security ward.

>>41417052
Writing for this.

>>41417170
You frown, multiple different ideas flitting about your head- alternate entrances, cutting through the door, melting it down, ventilation shafts- but in the end you decide to just bite the bullet and swipe your finger anyway.

After quickly breaking apart the alarm ward, you swipe your thumb across the scanner, your body tensed in case a mechanical alarm sounds anyway.

To your surprise, the door responds with a soft ‘ding’ and opens. You blink, disbelieving.

Was the security tied only to the wards? Seriously? That’s just… well. You suppose you’ll thank your ancestors, whoever they may be, for idiots who don't use redundant security systems. Oh, and for over-reliance on wards. That too. Heavens…
Stepping inside the elevator, the doors slide closed.
***
Stepping out of the elevator doors, you take a good look at the room around you.
Before, you took only a cursory glance at your surroundings before your attention was taken up entirely by the strange, semi-mechanical warding pattern. That was a mistake.

You spy a ventilation chamber in one of the upper corners to your left. You could probably reach it with a Reinforced jump, but it’d be a tight fit to crawl through. You should be able to manage it, though.

To your right is another exit: a large metal pole sticks out from the floor, reaching upwards into a hole in the ceiling. Someone apparently needed easy access to this area.

You switch your focus back to the ward. There are three parts to it you could take a look at:
>The Generator itself. You don’t have much experience with machinery, though.
>The non-mechanical half of the ward. There are multiple strange runes, and you’re rather curious about them.
>The wires that make up the mechanical half of the warding pattern. You’re exceedingly curious about how that half works.

Choose One.

>>41417429
>The wires that make up the mechanical half of the warding pattern. You’re exceedingly curious about how that half works.

Do we have any understanding of mechanics at all?

Also, are we any good at sketching? maybe we could draw some of the machine so that we could study it later.

>>41417505
Will doesn't have much more than a passing understanding of mechanics- Techie mostly took care of that sort of stuff. Most of what he knows is to destroy the damn things.

Will does have a notepad. His drawings are... well, they're about what you'd expect from someone who doesn't have any experience drawing. He'll understand what it's supposed to look like, though.

>>41417575
(From what I understand from the description)
The most interesting part of the whole affair is how the wires are interfacing with the wards, so look at that as a priority.

Then, if we have time, we could draw a few of the runes we don't know, so that we can experiment with them and try to figure them out later on.

then if we have even more time, we could check out the actual generator, despite the fact that it looks like a bog-standard one, and that we don't know how it works.

>>41417505
>>41417649
Going with this, and to sketch any part of the machine you observe.

>>41417429
You take out a pencil and a notepad. Recording this sort of thing for later should prove prudent, if you ever wanted to explore these concepts for your own wards.

Making sure not to disturb any of the wires or runes, you kneel down to the mechanical portion of the ward. The wires themselves aren’t all too special- from what you can tell, it’s all bog-standard mana-Reinforced metal. Useful, sturdy stuff, but not special.

No, what’s far more interesting is the fact that the wires are very carefully bent and shaped to resemble runes, like in standard wards. The main problem you find in this approach is the fact that the wires are actually forming closed circuits and are attached to each other- which is to say that none of the runes made by the wires are actually properly written.

Normally, this would completely fudge-up the meaning of the runes, and by the same token, the meaning and use of the ward. However, it seems that the runes are working perfectly fine for their intended purpose.

In fact, you’re fairly certain that the runes are merely forming the standard mana-to-electricity ward- though there are a few changes. Most of the changes, for whatever reason, seem to refer back to the generator, if you’re getting the meanings correctly.

But if that’s the case, then what’s the purpose of the runes on the outside half, covering the walls and ceiling?

You scribble down the general appearance of the generator and the ward and wires, alongside your observations.
Now, what to look at next?

>The other runes.
>The generator.

>>41417925
>The other runes.
Now someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in this time sensitive operation, we're much more likely to get info quickly looking at the portion we are an expert in.

After this, we should probably try to get into the GM's office.

>>41417925
>>41417925
>The generator.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>41417966
>>41417992
Coin-flip time!
1-Runes
2-Generator
Oh, and
>Roll 1d6.

Rolled 5 (1d6)

>>41418115

Rolled 3 (1d6)

>>41418115

>>41417925
Well. This wasn’t exactly a very hard choice. Of course you’re going to look at the runes- you don’t really know the first thing about mechanics anyway.

Stepping back towards one of the walls, your hands trace the mysterious runes. Now, you’re not going to say you’re an expert on every warding language there is, but you’ll say that there are very few you don’t have completely translated and memorized. Whatever language this half of the ward is written in is one of them.

You look over each and every rune you don’t know, carefully recording them into your note pad. Meanwhile, you look at the few runes around that you do actually know the meaning of. Unfortunately, these runes are the very basic ones, mostly meant to serve as connectors between multiple parts of the same ward, to ensure stability as the ward grows larger. Place-holders, in other words. They aren’t very useful in helping you translate the other runes.

However, there is one other rune that you can recognize. It’s the rune for ‘transfer,’ though the way it’s written suggests that it’s not transferring the electricity or mana to surrounding runes, like usual.

In fact, it seems as if the ‘transfer’ rune is the very last in a long chain of other runes, which you can’t seem to get the meaning of.

Hmm…

So, the entire ward is transferring at least part of the mana drawn in and the electricity produced somewhere else? But where?
You frown. That’s the big question, isn’t it? Where is all of this supposed to be leading you?

You sigh, and decide to take a look at the last piece of the puzzle: the generator itself.

(1/?)

>>41418563
Looking it over, it looks like every other generator used to turn ambient mana into electricity. You decide to take a closer look, and prod at its innards with your aura.

…Huh. That’s strange. Besides the wires inside that likely lead out to the small power grid of the guild, there’s an entire other warding pattern inscribed on to the inside of the generator. It too appears to be made entirely of wires. Unlike on the outside though, the runes are similar to, if not the same as the mysterious runes you were looking at before, with the same strange ‘transfer’ rune located there as well. Beyond that, though, the strange runes are arranged in a very different warding pattern.

…All in all, this is a very strange setup for something as simple as electricity generation. It’s clear that the warding scheme is being used for something else. You don’t know what it is, but it can’t be anything good.
***

That’s about as much as you can glean from the warding scheme. It’s given you a few ideas, and you might experiment using the strange runes later. For now, though, you have a guildmaster to investigate.

>Take the elevator back out.
>Try the ventilation chamber.
>Climb up the pole.

>>41418581
Vent work is a classic

>>41418581
>>Try the ventilation chamber.

>>41418806
>>41418830
Writing for air vents!
Seven different posters, only two votes. Are all of you switch from mobile to PC or something?

>>41418581
Well, it’s always worked in the movies. Why wouldn’t it work here? You walk over to the air vent in the upper corner.

You breathe, pulling the ambient mana in your direction. You allow it to crowd into your legs, Reinforcing them. Finally, you bend your knees, and Jump.

THUNK

You cringe in pain. Alright, you think, point taken. Don’t jump around indoors, or at the very least, Reinforce your head first.

Expending a small bit of your aura, you let out a breath as the pain slowly lessens. When it’s down to a manageable level, you open your eyes, looking at the grate in front of you. Time to get to work.

This time, you Reinforce your arms and hands, and slowly pry off the grate from the air vent. After prying it off, you leave it in the generator room, and wrggle your way inside of the vent.

Your first thought as you inch your way through the vent is that this is incredibly uncomfortable, and that it’s nothing like the movies. You can barely move; you can’t even move your arms or legs out of position. Still, what little room you have is enough.

Your second thought as you crawl through the vent is that air vents are dark. You can’t really see much of anything. Still, you manage to make out that there’s a small intersection in the vents.

The one to the left seems to lead out to the elevator shaft, while the one to the right leads elsewhere. Figuring that you should’ve just taken the elevator if you wanted to go that way, you instead take the right path.

After what feels like hours, you finally come up to another grate. It leads down, but that’s about as much as you can figure out. It’s too dark to see anything else.

>Jump down.
>Keep crawling.

>>41419271

>Jump down.

>>41419271
>Keep crawling.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>41419301
>>41419367
Coin flip!
1-Jump
2-Crawl

>>41419404
Crawling it is

Time to crawl.
Writing.

>>41419271
…Nah. You don’t think you’ve gotten far enough that you’d be at the guildmaster’s chambers anyway. Instead, you continue to crawl, inching your way over the grate.
***
After another while of crawling, your entire everything is aching and you’re beginning to regret your decision.

You aren’t sure how long you’ve been crawling for anymore. You just want this to be over at this point. Thankfully, it seems that your ancestors have answered your plea for help, and you see another grate at the very end. Finally!

You inch your way to the grate, and are surprised when a blast of cold mid-winter air hits your face. You growl in frustration when you realize that you aren’t indoors anymore. You’d gone all this way, and in the end, you get rewarded by ending up farther away from your goal? What kind of bull is that?

Ugh. Well, whatever. At this point, you’re willing to trudge your way back into the guild, so long as you can finally get out of this damn air vent.

Your skull throbs as you pry off the grate using your Reinforced arms. Ow. Shimmying your way out of the grate, and rubbing circles into your forehead, you glance around at your current locale.

…Where the hell are you anyway? It looks like you’re out in the forest, but if that’s the case, what the hell? Why would you make an entire air vent say, half a mile away from the building it’s supposed to be venting, or something? You groan, rubbing more circles into your forehead.

Well, you have two choices as to where to go: Left or Right?
>Left.
>Right.

>>41419624
>Right.
Go the right way

>>41419720
Writing.

>>41419624
You have no clue which way to go, so instead you pick at random. Right, you suppose.
You walk.
***
You’re not entirely sure how long you’ve been walking. At some point, a strange fog settled down around you. The reason you say strange is because you don’t believe the village or the forest around were humid enough to make any sort of thick fog, especially not in the middle of winter. You're on your guard now.

The path splits again. This time, there’s a pretty clear difference between the paths: The path to the left seems to have much thicker fog, while the path to the right is strewn with rocks and pebbles.

You also note that the trees are far thicker around here, and although they’re all still bare, you’re hesitant to say they’re dead.
Which path do you take?

>Left, deeper into the fog.
>Right, on the pebbly path.
>Center, through the trees.

>>41420003
>>Left, deeper into the fog.
Use mana as our eyes.

>>41420219
Writing.
I think the next update is going to be the last one for this thread.

>>41420003
You’re already knee-deep into this. Why not wade even deeper?

You take the path to the left, walking deeper into the soupy fog.
***
As you expected, the fog only gets thicker and soupier. And, strangely enough, Colder.
You shiver. You're certain now; this fog is magical in nature. You aren’t entirely sure what kind of mage would be able to make something like this, but your best guess is simultaneous darkness and water.

You take another shuddering breath. You shiver against the cold that pervades the area, and continue walking.
***
You don’t know how long you’ve been trudging through the fog anymore. At some point, the fog became so thick that you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. You began using your mana pulse to make sure you weren’t walking into a tree, or something.

Lately though, whenever you send out a pulse of mana, it just gets...swallowed, for lack of a better word. It’s creepy, and you’re beginning to think this was the worst decision you’ve made in a while.

Suddenly, you feel a strange weight fall upon your shoulders. Your knees buckle, and you fall down face first into the mud and dirt, unable to stand.

It feels difficult to breathe, now. You feel almost constricted, as if something decided to wrap itself around your lungs. The weight is still there, and you feel your body being crushed…

>Auto Crit-Failure.

You gasp in pain as the weight multiplies thousands of time over. You curl up into a ball, the pain almost unbearable…

Finally, the last dam in your body breaks, and the pain floods into your head. It’s indescribable- the best comparison your brain could come up with was when you used your mana-controlling abilities for far, far too long, except about a million times worse.

The last thing you remember before blacking out is your body shaking and spasming in pain…
>Gained trait: Weakness to ???
***
Welp, that’s where we’re going to leave off while I take a two-week hiatus! Fun times!

>>41420696
>two-week hiatus
ded quest
I bet the reactor is involved in this.

>>41420752
To be honest, I'm probably going to drop this for a while and try something else when I come back. If enough people show interest, though, I might bring it back early.

This was a good learning experience though!

>>41420807
I've really enjoyed the quest! Sadly, it seems we are available at different times, so I have few live posts.