Cyn instinctively wanted to open up her menu and check notifications as soon as she felt the world around her fade, Meditate dampening all of her physical senses. Well, all her physical senses except the feeling of hard ground under her ass. She had forgotten to bring out her bedroll to sit on before using the skill. At any rate, Cyn was barely able to hold herself back from opening her menu immediately. Only the knowledge that it would likely increase the pressure in her mind held her back. Instead, she first tried to sort all of the information that had been steadily cluttering up her subconscious.
She found it was actually fairly difficult to try and sort everything in her current state. Everything was just so... intangible. Not only that, it was as if all of the intangible concepts were at full volume, all at once. Her own resources, everyone else’s health, Spam, her inventory inside of the Promising Ring of Holding... while Cyn might be able to bring one piece of data at a time into her conscious focus, they were otherwise equally important and loud as background noise. And that background noise was now a dull roar that was overwhelming. It hadn’t been a problem before, since the amount of data was limited, but not only had that changed, she wasn’t sure what else might get added onto the pile in the future. She needed to be able to turn some of it down, or even shut it off entirely.
Cyn needed a HUD.
Not literally , since she also needed the full scope of her vision, - and she had more than enough distractions already - but it was a good metaphor. And there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t create one in her own mind, even just temporarily, to help her visualize and hopefully tweak all of the data adding to her mental load.
Imagining a big, empty screen, Cyn started to dump all of the information she was subconsciously keeping track of onto it one by one. First and foremost, her own resources. Seeing no reason to reinvent the wheel, her health, mana, and stamina pools were just represented by a stack of three colored bars, though the one representing stamina was grayed out. Cyn still was not able to innately feel her stamina, but she had no doubt she would be able to someday, so it was added to the HUD.
Next came her Familiar Bond to Spam, which was simply represented by the image of a frog. Her awareness of Spam did not need tweaking, but she added him anyway.
The health and location of her party - and the extended raid party - was a little more messy and was the bulk of information that was causing the mental pressure. In her mind, Cyn had been separating them into two separate categories, her party and the ‘others’. But that did not make much sense for her to do. While Scott, Dana, Sam, and Hex had been her near-constant companions for around two weeks, there was nothing that should make them inherently more important than everyone else.
Everyone’s location relative to Cyn was technically a different set of data, but it seemed so intrinsically tied to their health there was no reason for her to try and separate the two. Every health and location she could feel became an orb, some labelled and others not, and as Cyn dumped the representations of her eighteen party members onto her imaginary screen, she tried to imagine them shrinking.
To Cyn’s amazement, she could feel it working. The pressure on her mind eased rapidly, bringing immense relief. She still had the same information as before, it was just... quieter. She could bring any of it into focus, but the background was so much more manageable. Cyn would also likely have trouble noticing a problem with anyone’s health when she wasn’t actively paying attention, but that sacrifice was going to be required to keep her sanity. At least while she had so many people around.
Even though her goal of relieving the mental pressure had been achieved, Cyn wasn’t done. She still had her storage ring to deal with, and frankly that was something Cyn felt she only needed awareness of on demand. It didn’t need to be an undetailed list in the back of her brain at all times. I just need to... close my bags. So it stops taking up space on the screen. It took some trial and error, but she was finally able to tweak her awareness of the items stored inside of her Promising Ring of Holding. With just a bit of effort, she could glance through and remove items, but otherwise it was almost entirely shoved out of her consciousness. It was now represented by a very original image of a brown sack.
The final thing that Cyn wanted to try and tweak was significantly more complicated, but she was pretty sure she would need to take a look at her menu and notifications first. Pulling up her menu, Cyn’s visualization of her HUD vanished. Her mind was not instantly assaulted by pressure, so she knew her method worked. Feeling optimistic, Cyn glanced over her stats, and was pleased to find she had hit level eleven in her class. Creature Handler still stubbornly remained at level eight. Going over her notifications, the first few were expected from changing dungeon floors.
Bonus Objective complete!
Transitional dungeon floor 2: The Hungering Labyrinth -
? You have been separated from your companions. Once you find an exit, you can choose to leave alone or as a party. Anyone left behind will need to find a different exit.
? Bonus Objective: Reunite your party 5/5. (Completed)
? Reward: Bonus class experience.
? ...
? Bonus Objective: Find the center of the labyrinth. (Completed)
Rewards: [Uncommon Item Upgrade Scroll]
[Claim]
...
Bonus Objective: Trials completed 6/6. (Completed)
Reward: Bonus class experience.
...
Bonus Objective: Complete the final Trial. (Completed)
Reward: [Uncommon Skill Upgrade Scroll]
[Claim]
...
Objective: Find an exit.
? Reward: Bonus class experience.
Between her completed objective notifications was a notification of her level up. Cyn Inspected the Uncommon Item Upgrade Scroll, finding it claimed to do close to what she expected. It could be used on most items of ‘Common’ quality or below, and would increase its rarity by one. The skill scroll had an identical function for skills. The only item Cyn might consider upgrading would be her cloak, but she was not sure it was worth it. At least not without knowing how difficult it was to get more of these scrolls.
She had more options when it came to the skill scroll. Meditate, Harvesting, Restoration, and Purify were all common quality. But Purify and Restoration had already been offered upgrades she had passed over, and Harvesting just was not worth upgrading as far as Cyn was concerned. She also remembered seeing a skill option at level five, Mana Barrier, that had been an even lower quality. Meditate was probably her best use of it, but she would hold on to it as well for now.
Cyn had a persistent bad habit of ‘saving’ useful items in games and never using them, and that was not a trait she was going to be able to rid herself of quickly. If she found a skill or item at low quality she could not live without, the scrolls would definitely come in handy.
When she went to claim the scrolls, a new notification overlapped the current one she was looking at.
Eligible storage item detected: [Promising Ring of Holding].
? Would you like the claimed reward to be directly deposited?
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
? [Yes] [No]
Sweet. Rather than have to exit Meditate to put away her rewards, Cyn instead had the System deposit them directly into her storage so she could continue scrolling notifications. The next batch involved all her new objectives, including a few that were clearly exclusive to her Elite Adapter feat.
New objective for transitional dungeon floor 3: Under Siege -
? 45 Days, 20 Hours, 33 Minutes, 54 Seconds remaining.
? Objective: Survive.
As Cyn watched, the timer ticked down in real time. Cyn wasn’t sure exactly how long they had been in the dungeon, but the first two floors combined with the remaining time on this one would add up to around sixty days. Two entire months.
The realization of how long it had been since the System first swept her away, and how much further she had to go before heading home, hit Cyn like a brick. So much had happened, and yet so little. It felt like she still barely had a grasp of what was going on. The thought of going back home - back to Earth - also made her think of her family, and by extension everyone she knew even casually. She couldn’t say she missed them, exactly, but Cyn couldn’t help but wonder how they were doing. If they were even still alive. For a moment, guilt gnawed at her stomach.
Because she should miss her family at least. They were family, after all, and it wasn’t like they had been horrible to her. Sure, they had had fights, especially between Cyn and her parents - Cyn’s flash fire temper and stubbornness were both inherited traits - but never anything serious. After turning eighteen she had moved out and just... drifted away. She loved them, of course, alongside her brother and sister, but she just did not feel any real attachment. It wasn’t uncommon for her to go months without thinking about them at all.
On top of the guilt, there was a genuine fear creeping up in the back of her mind that this really was a dream, and going back would result in her waking up in her apartment, needing to go back to work at the office.
And that would be absolutely devastating.
Shuddering, she pushed the thoughts back into the mental ‘ignore’ box they came from and moved on to the other objectives. Despite the fact that the current raid was struggling with even the main objective, Cyn wanted more goals than just survival.
...
? Your raid’s claim on this territory empowers you. Should the claim be passed to another faction, survival will be much more difficult.
Bonus Objective: Maintain your raid’s control of the Territory Heart.
She had already known keeping control of the Territory Heart was important based on the talk they had had with the survivors, but knowing it would likely empower their enemies - and would definitely weaken her party - should they lose control of it was a pretty critical detail that was left out of the conversation.
...
? The front line.
Elite Objective: Find and eliminate the threats to your raid’s claim on the Territory Heart.
We already know about the Vampires, but that phrasing seems to imply there is more than one threat. That did not bode well for them, and the survivors would likely not be of any help pinpointing any other threats. In part since they had already assumed the Vampires were not a real danger, and since they were extremely unlikely to be Elite Adapters they would not have even seen this objective to know there might be even more threats out there. They had said some of the early deaths had been to overestimating themselves against challenges, but she also doubted anything that picked off only a few of them would end up being a threat to the Territory Heart.
...
? The final bastion.
Elite Objective: Have all Awakened survive. (Failed)
Well, if that isn’t just a kick in the teeth... It wasn’t her fault people had died, but apparently, she would lose out anyway. She let herself sulk for a minute, silently cussing out the System for putting them in a floor-in-progress, before looking at the remaining notifications.
Class experience earned for assisting in the death of Vampire - Level 17.
Kirpal Banewood.
Hunter Level 11.
Woodworker Level 6.
? Experience has been split among all nearby, living members of your dungeon party.
The rest of the notifications were similar, for all of the Vampires that had died in her general vicinity. The notifications were very uncomfortable, simply due to how different they all were from the kill notifications she had received for creatures. It even gave their name . They were people. Cyn was almost certain they were just soul impressions, but it did not make her feel much better. They were humanoids. The Vampires had classes, and professions, just like she did. And she had gotten experience for killing them. It may have been in defense of their raid party, and it still felt justified, but that did not totally erase the disturbing feeling that she had assisted in killing people. Shuddering again and trying to shove the feeling in the same box as the guilt about not missing her family, she quickly dismissed all of the kill notifications and moved on to her final goal for the moment when it came to her mental HUD.
She was still feeling a bit salty about not getting a notification regarding new objectives while midway through the Hungering Labyrinth, and thus wanted to have some level of awareness of her objectives at all times. At least so she would know if more were added to the list. Since Cyn currently had no subconscious tracking of her objectives, she wasn’t even sure it would be possible for her to do what she wanted to do.
Now that she knew what her current objectives were, she tried to revisualize her HUD. It appeared in her mind easily, almost as easy as pulling up her menu. There was one critical difference, however. When she was originally visualizing it, it was just an empty screen. And it barely even qualified as that, since she had not bothered with imagining a border for it. Now though, there was an outline surrounding her visualization - looking like a thick layer of glowing, sky-blue bricks with black mortar - she definitely had not thought up herself. Cyn attempted to study the new addition, confused, and received a pop-up.
Mental Fortress (Divine)(Passive) - Your mind is your own.
? You are immune to the effects of most mental afflictions, regardless of source.
? You are not able to be fooled by illusionary magic.
? You are able to detect and shrug off attempts at mental influence.
?
Does this mean what I am doing is a function of the System, or am I just breaking more things on accident? Cyn didn’t really have a way to know for sure, but she was relatively convinced that the addition of the skill to her visualization meant it was at least partly an intended feature. The skill was intended to protect her mind from outside influence, and Cyn was - perhaps more literally than she had expected - working with a portion of her own mind. If that’s the case, this is probably also dangerous as fuck for me.
Cyn hesitated for a moment, debating if she wanted to continue with the plan to try and add her objectives to the HUD. Visualization was supposed to be a technique that could help her keep her thoughts organized and sort out the important parts. When she had started this, Cyn had not considered that she might be actually messing with her own mind. The line between testing her limits and getting herself killed was razor thin, and Cyn was very aware she was walking that line with no harness to save her if she slipped.
On one hand, she had already completed her goal of relieving the mental pressure. Adding her objectives was purely for her own benefit, and it was definitely not needed by any measure. On the other hand... she just kind of wanted to? The frustration of missing out on objectives was something she wanted to avoid, even if it was safer and more logical to quit while she was ahead. Pure logic couldn’t dictate her every action, anyway, especially since Cyn’s logic tended to be quite warped and...
Her internal debate was interrupted by a feeling of warning from Spam. Cyn quickly shuffled through her party members to see who she could feel approaching her, before cutting off Meditate. Blinking away the bright light of the mid-morning sun, she looked up in time to lock gazes with a pair of unassuming, yet completely unnerving dark brown eyes looking curiously down at her.
