Talent System: I Instantly Master My Opponents Skills
Chapter 58: Shock

Chapter 58: Shock

The journey to the cavern wasn’t eventful, the waters weren’t acting up and he didn’t get lost.

His only company he had were his thoughts as he navigated.

Zane arrived at the shore of the island after an hour, he carried his raft from the water and hoisted it onto the shore.

He could tell that this island was different, for one there weren’t any large trees and this island was remotely desolate.

He noticed Hereon’s raft on the shore as well.

Zane walked towards the entrance of the cavern, the entrance loomed before him. It didn’t look like a cave where monsters dwell.

"There doesn’t seem to be anything here." Zane muttered to himself.

He stepped into it.

Zane felt a sensation spreading in his right leg – the leg he put inside – a sensation that reminded him of the elder’s teleportation talisman.

Curious, he put his other leg inside.

The sensation spread throughout his entire body, intensifying in degree.

The cave seemed to envelop him, the interior of the cavern wasn’t the same as what is seemed outside.

"An instant dungeon..."

An instant dungeon; a sub-space of the dungeon that formed mysteriously, it wasn’t known how they were formed. A dungeon that formed inside a dungeon, up until now he had only heard about this, now he was living the experience of actually entering one.

He hadn’t considered the possibility of the dungeon being an instant dungeon because it was recorded that only dungeons ranked 2 and above had the possibility of containing an instant dungeon, and even then the possibility was only 0.001 in a thousand.

Zane looked behind him, there was no opening that would allow him to leave.

He began to feel a little worried, he was a rank 3 but if under the right circumstances even he would fall in a rank 4 dungeon.

"At least there will be monsters inside." That thought rejuvenated his spirits.

With newfound strength in his steps he moved forward.

"Three paths?"

It cavern branched into three different paths, each branched off into different directions.

All three seemed the same.

Without thinking much he went through the middle.

The moment Zane entered the path in the middle he felt a change, the mana in this cave seemed a little too lighter than when he was outside.

And that was saying something considering that mana in the air was very small.

He glanced at the walls.

"Mana stones."

Crystallized stones formed when mana condensed after staying as an energy for sometime, the forming of mana stones didn’t take much time.

It only took a month for mana stones to form.

Apart from illuminating it also had other functions; they could be used to restore mana in a person’s mana reserve by crushing.

Ideally speaking, someone could also create their own mana stone.

"If only my space ring wasn’t so full, I would have taken some."

Mana stones could be mined from dungeons and used or sold later.

"Whatever."

Zane continued on his way.

He could feel the mana getting lesser the further he went in the dungeon.

He soon found a monster corpse.

Zane walked up to the monster’s corpse, it was a spider with long bony limbs.

"It’s dead."

He retrieved his dagger and carved out the exterior of the monster.

He dropped the dagger onto the ground and dipped its hand into the internal of the monster.

It only had a small head, the head housed the brain, the heart and all the other components. He had learned all that through experience, his hand now covered in indescribable organs.

Zane used water magic to rinse it off his hand.

He stared at the small organ, it wasn’t as big as a goblin’s heart or a wolf’s heart but it was undeniably a heart.

The space ring on his finger glowed as the heart vanished from his grasp.

"Who killed it."

Now that he was done extracting the heart he allowed himself to wonder.

"Hereon?" That seemed most likely.

"Or that girl?"

"But they wouldn’t do that, they need all the hearts they can get."

Only he and Jason had the most amount of hearts, the rest only had 2 or 3, a few had 7.

But that was it, even if you had seven hearts there was still the need to gather more.

He continued on his path.

The light that was being emanated from the mana stones slowly dimmed, lowering in intensity. Zane paid no heed to that, he continued on his way.

That was until he saw another one.

Another spider, this one had its long slender limbs cut off before it was stabbed in the head.

"Who killed you?" Zane asked the corpse as he dipped his hand into it to retrieve the heart.

He got up and resumed.

While walking he encountered many spiders, some were cleaved into half, some were stabbed in the head and some had their limbs cut off before before cleaved in half or stabbed in the head.

Those cleaved were of no use to Zane as their hearts would obviously be in the same condition.

"Is this place getting darker?" Zane asked himself.

He had been walking for awhile and hadn’t seen the entrance, even when he used the Null eyes to scan ahead he couldn’t see it.

Right now the lighting was barely enough to see a meter forward.

"I should turn back."

But despite those words he still continued.

Until everything went pitch-black.

He couldn’t see anything, if he turned back it would still be utter darkness.

If he couldn’t see then he was in trouble.

Zane stood in the suffocating darkness, his other senses were heightened when his eyesight could no longer be used.

The silence was thick, disturbed only by the sound of his own breathing.

"I’m turning back."

He began to retrace his steps, straining his ear to be careful of an attack.

But to his surprise, after only half a minute of walking he arrived back at the beginning of the middle path.

He was facing the middle path, just a step away from re-entering it.

Zane felt a rush of confusion and unease, he turned around, trying to recall how long he had been walking only to turn back and see himself at the entrance.

"Could it be... This path takes me in a loop?" He wondered.

That was the only plausible explanation for his current predicament.

"What would happen if I take the right path?" Zane muttered to himself, he walked to the entrance of the last path – the third – and stepped into it.

He saw writings on the wall but ignored them, his steps were brisk and hurried.

A black horned wolf and a steel fanged lycan.

Both of the monsters were now corpses, both their hearts were taken out of them.

Next to the bodies of the monsters was an opening.

"Was I wrong?" He mused as he went through the entrance.

The familiar sensation of teleportation washed over him, Zane felt a bit light-headed.

But the next thing that entered his vision made him freeze.

In a distance there were two people; one was a boy with blue hair wielding a broadsword as he fended off attacks from a giant spider, and the other one was a girl with blue hair condensing balls of water before shooting them at the monster.

But that wasn’t what shocked Zane.

Lying in a pool of blood was a body, they had lifeless eyes, blood dripped out of a gaping hole that went through the heart and formed a small puddle.

This person was Jason.

He was undoubtedly dead.

However, a phenomenon happened.

His palm curled into a fist.