I listened to the woman's moans reverberating through my walls. As I watched the two of them ravage each other, for a few seconds there, I felt a pang of jealousy mingled with regret.
Such were the things I would never enjoy again in my life. Never again would I know the feel and the warmth of being inside a woman.
I was now a fucking dungeon.
Quickly however, that regret morphed into a sort of fury mixed with hunger. And beneath that all, it gave me an excuse to take up my role.
Now what? I asked inwardly, already afraid that the man would finish fast and my two victims would leave with no benefit at all to me.
That thought triggered a notification that filled my awareness.
You have three options.
Spawn a monster. Locked. Insufficient. Energy stone.
Construct a trap. Locked. Insufficient. Energy stone.
Observe. Active.
Freaking hell. Now, all I could do was nothing but watch?
Surely there had to be something I could do. How else would I be able to even spawn a monster if I had zero energy stones? These two were the best victims for my current power level . They were not powerful since they were not adventurers. But if an adventurer came in here, weak, however they might be, there was no way I was protecting myself from them.
Then a thought occurred to me.
The previous prompt has explained ways I could farm energy.
To farm energy, I did not have to kill. Also, it wasn't necessary to hurt them. But I could scare them.
If one of them got scared in one instance, that would be a +2 energy stones. So both of them was 4, And if I could manage to trigger different instances of a scare, I might be able to farm some levels of energy stone.
Maybe I could even reach ten, which would be enough to spawn a monster.
The trick, however, was how exactly to scare them.
I was immobile. And in all manner and appearance, I was just an empty abandoned mine.
In my frustration, I withdrew my awareness momentarily from the cave opening and drew it deeper inside, focusing my attention onto the walls.
Come on, there had to be something. A loose pebble, a dangling drop of water, just waiting for a breeze. There had to be something. Something that could even cause an uncertainty. Small enough to trigger doubt, which would trigger fear.
True enough, there were plenty of loose pebbles and even more loose wooden support beams throughout the cave. But loose as they were, there was still no power in me at all to trigger their final fall.
I cursed again, driving my energay back to the cave entrance to observe my victims. At this rate, the man should have climaxed already. They should be leaving.
I was pathetically weak. Mainly because even my awareness wasn't in form of a breeze. It was intangible. It couldn't be felt, and therefore it couldn't influence any form of movement in the surrounding things.
I really needed fucking energy. And to me, now it was becoming a mystery how I would even be able to get even a single energy stone, let alone enough to unlock any activity that would enhance my protection. Then it happened
it was a sheer luck and it was too sudden that even I, who didn't feel fear in the human type of way,was caught off guard at the unexpectedness of the incident.
It happened right above the pool I was buried in.
A piece of rock the size of a grown-up's fist had broken off. I felt it before it hit the surface of the puddle that sheltered me and I almost rose to embrace it as it came hurtling down.
The chunk hit the water pool, sending reverberating echoes through the cave.
I felt it rather than saw it. The woman cursed with a sudden yell before pulling forward, forcing the man to withdraw. She didn't even wait to see what was happening.
She was already running away from the cave.
'No, no, no, no, please don't leave. Don't fucking leave' , I cursed. But even before she reached the exit, a notification had already surfaced.
Fear detected. +2 energy stones .
Fear detected. +2 energy stones .
That meant both the man and the woman had been jolted into fear. Good.
Now I had four energy stones. I felt a warmth begin to engross me. Come on, come on, come on. Six more, I need Six more. The man had been scared all right, but unlike the woman, he had not rushed out right away.
He reached and pulled his pants up. And then from his pockets came out a tiny but ugly dagger.
"Hello? Hey, who the fuck is there? You want to fucking show yourself?"
To my utter joy, He began to slowly move towards the direction of the sound.
'You're not entirely just a harmless man are you?' I thought.
That thought wiped the joy out of my awareness.
Fuck. I still had four energy. I could not spawn anything to my defense. And if he was not just a plain man, then for fuck's sake, I was in big trouble. Because he was coming slowly towards my direction. And if he reached the pond and decided to probe further, I would be just sitting right there for the taking.
"Did you hear what I said? The man growled, but I could sense it was feigned courage, probably out of a bruised ego. Come on, I can hear you alright.
I needed one more accident. One more incident that would trigger something to fall. Maybe even the woman comes back calling suddenly.That might trigger fear.
I needed to see some plus energy stones falling back into me, filling me with more warmth. But as he drew nearer and nearer, no more luck came to my aid.
What a useless mine... I mean such structures collapsed often, why not now? Even the dangling drop of water seemed to be held by a gluey suspension.
Soon enough, the man already had traversed the twisting corridors of the cave and was now standing on the brim of the Murky pond
"Ah, fuck. Must have been a stone falling into this shitty pod" .he said
I didn't even bother to think or be angry at his words. I was focusing on controlling my twinkle helplessly since there was not much I could do about it anyway. All my hope rested on the opaqueness of the pond, aided by the dirtiness of the mixture that sheltered me.
As if to confirm his theory, he picked another chunky piece of stone from the floor and tossed it in the pool.
"Fuck, that must be it"he added grumpy. For a second there, I held my breath or whatever equivalent that passed for it, for a dungeon. Because then I thought that the ripples that had been triggered would cause the thick layer above me to spill and the lights from my shiny surface would leak through the water and into the man's eye. then I would be doomed.
But when the man stood, I allowed myself an equivalent of a sigh.
He suddenly turned quickly away from me. "That whore can't have gone. Have to get my money's worth. I wasn't done with her" And he was off running across the cave in a hopeless attempt to catch the woman. from my extended awareness I could tell the woman was nowhere near. Most probably she was off to whatever nearest village that was around here. But as it turned out, my luck wasn't completely done yet. As the man retreated eagerly, the opportunity came in form of one of the wooden support beams that was well hidden on the side that the man may not have seen it right away.
He passed it quickly only for his clothes to be grabbed from behind causing his own force to work against him.
I heard a yelp Followed by a short scream. And then the dagger rising as the man turned. I didn't care about all of that. I cared about the notification that followed next.
Fear detected. +2 energy stones.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now all I I need is four more stones... Just four more.
'Please stay a little while longer' .
But even luck had its limits. When the man turned and saw there was no any life-threatening creature pursuing him, he calmed down and freed himself from the support beam and then quickly proceeded to head out of the cave.
I cursed in frustration as soon as he was out of the mouth of the mine.
'Fucking idiot' .
Should have stayed more, should have stayed to explore.
But at least I wasn't entirely helpless now. Yes, to some extent I was as far as real adventurers were concerned .
But at least now, I only needed four more energy stones. And four was way easier to get than ten completely from scratch. And now I had realized one thing.
Fear. Fear was my best weapon. Fear and pain.