[Status] locked and exploring the walls

Tobias was still staring at the holographic screen as it started to fade, slowly losing it's colour.

Even though it was gone, there was no way he could forget it. After all, who wouldn't be startled by waking up in a desolate place only to be attacked by a Goblin and have a hologram pop up.

In fact he was so surprised that he totally forgot the situation he was in. Well, that didn't last for long, because he now suddenly started to smell the stench of the momsters blood, that splattered all over his face when stabbed the Goblin.

Feeling a wave of disgust hit him, he turned around and threw up on the now less empty stone floor.

'Luckily I didn't eat yet'

After wiping away the remains of his bodily fluids and drinking a mouth full of water to get rid of the taste and smell, he started to think about what just happened.

'After I defeated it, the screen told me I couldn't gain exp because I didn't unlock my [status] yet...'

"...status..." he mumbled.

Suddenly a new screen popped up.

________________________________________________

[feature] still locked

[requirement] not met

________________________________________________

Curiosly Tobias looked at the screen from every angle he could, which weren't many since the screen moved with him. In the end he could only look at it from the front. It had a dark blurple background, a light blurple font and it seemed to be indefinitely thin.

Wondering how this system worked, he started to experiment a bit, opening and closing it again and again, trying to do it loudly, quietly, just with thoughts and even upside down, checking if it would turn too.

The result:

He performed a little circus show, doing handstands and shouting, luckily for no one to hear.

At least now he knew that he only needed to think about it and that it wouldn't matter in which direction he was oriented, the screen telling him that it was useless would follow him, like a little annoying pixie.

"Arhghh damn, I won't get anything from continuing this farce. Let's continue!" he yelled out, frustrated by the screen teasing him with the missing requirements.

×××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

Two hours later.

'It feels like it should already be way darker. Thinking about it, how is it this bright with all

these giant walls around?'

He couldn't see any lamps or mirrors, hell he couldn't even see the sun.

'Strange'

He was forcefully snapped out of his thoughts as he tripped over a rather big stone and fell face first into a hole in the wall. He could barely catch his fall with his arms and only hurt his knees and shins. Considering all the rubble lying around, that was rather lucky.

Tobias got up and started looking around, perplexed by the sight. After all he just fell into a hole in a nigh indestructible looking wall, but the surprise didn't stop there... The interior of the wall was spacios. This giant wall was hollow inside.

'Amazing, this is a giant area hidden behind 3m of unknown stone. I really don't want to imagine what was able to blow open this hole.'

Even with his guts screeming at him, that it was a bad, a terribly stupid idea his curiosity got the better of him abd he went deeper in to the wall. After walking a bit in what looked like a cave, the scenery changed and turned into a surprisingly well maintained mineshaft lit up with torches.

Just when Tobias started to wonder who would refuel the torches and maintainthe shaft, he started to think of the Goblin he met not long ago and cold sweat started to run down his back, making him shiver imagining a whole town of these creatures.

'Let's hope it's humans and not them, else... I don't know what else, I would probably die.'

Grim but still curios he follow down the shaft, looking for any hints about who build this. The path got narrower and narrower and from one point on forced him to continue crawling on all fours.

Suddenly he felt a vibration. And another one. And another one. Withing seconds the ground started to tremble snd he could hear the rumbling of dozens and dozens of footsteps coming from where he came from.