In Snowdrift village, three young men were loitering outside of a store with a sign covered in glowing runes. Their expressions and movements were very animated as they discussed something in hushed tones. Two of these men were normal blue-furred people that could be seen anywhere in Snowdrift. As for the third…

“Why do I have to do it?”

“It’s easy, Vilar. Just go in and write the request.”

“I didn’t ask if it was easy, I asked why I have to go in?”

“Marin is friends with your dad, right?”

“They aren’t friends, she just visits his store a lot.”

“I heard him say that if she wasn’t a woman, he would force her to marry your sister.”

“That was before we knew she was a…” Vilar cut himself off with a sigh. Despite his rigid exoskeleton, the insectoid directed a sharp look at his friend. “Don’t push me or I’ll drag you down there and tell dad I caught Vorona a husband.”

The young blue-furred man blanched and stepped back, his cat ears lying flat atop his head. The two glared at each other until the third guy broke things up.

“…Someone needs to write the request.”

Vilar acquiesced, “Fine, I’ll do it. Happy?”

“I will be when I see the show, heheh.”

“You mean the slaughter.”

“Do you think she’d…Whatever, just go in there.”

Grunting, Vilar used his smaller pair of arms to open the door to Marin’s shop. After confirming that she wasn’t manning the counter, the green insectoid quietly snuck inside.

---

As it turned out, wild dungeons had their own ecosystems. Monsters were a bit special as far as lifeforms went because they didn’t need to reproduce or eat. As long as they lived surrounded by mana with the same mix of aspects that they were born in, they could live without such fundamental concerns. This meant that there were rarely predator and prey relationships between monsters. Instead of sustenance, a dungeon’s ecosystem revolved around territory. Weaker monsters would be killed endlessly until they spawned with the ability to hide from the strong. As for stronger monsters, they fought other territory owners until one side was eliminated. Once a winner was determined, they would adjust the territory to suit them and hopefully cause the dungeon to spawn more of their own kind. However, this method was unreliable and similarly leveled monsters usually didn’t have much of an advantage over each other. After all, they were all born from the same aspects. That was why monster territories trended towards balance and rarely exceeded certain limits, even in the wild.

This information was given to Jayce by Elva, the jotun woman with the halberd. During a break several hours into their expedition, she hadn’t needed much prodding before she launched into a passionate dissertation about dungeons and the monsters that inhabited them. Jayce kept up a stiff smile as he listened to her drone on and on. Initially, he had been trying to talk to Theresa, the Tool Specialist, about her artifacts. She was kinder to him than the other Jotun, so he’d felt that he had a shot. However, Weiss shut him down the instant he broached the subject. Terrified by her icy glare, Jayce hastily switched the subject to the kobolds and asked why there was one monster species dominating a segment of the dungeon.

Considering how interested she was in monsters—her enemies; Jayce was now sure that Elva was a Trickster. She probably had very high class affinity as well.

After spending several hours with these people, Jayce was able to make some basic assessments. Weiss was scary, Elva and Theresa were surprisingly amiable, the female Flow Controller was recalcitrant and the two male jotun were extremely aggressive. Whenever Jayce entered their range, they would take a heavy swing at him like it was natural. They liked to aim for his broken arm and even got mad at him when he tried to dodge. Jayce saw them occasionally smack each other as well, but they never did this to the women. It was easy to guess what Weiss would do if they did.

He had noticed a weird gulf between the two sexes that went beyond the gap in their levels. The females held weight in the group that the males couldn’t hope to grasp. Whenever the men suggested something, it had to be accepted by one of the other women before Weiss even considered it. Jayce sometimes felt like Weiss was running a team of four plus two slaves. Of course, Froker and his friend were horrible, and Jayce had no sympathy for them.

He also had no idea what these Jotun were looking for in the dungeon. All he knew was that they were traveling further and further away from Snowdrift’s entrance. Using his relatively high vital energy, Jayce barely managed to keep up with them as they fought their way deeper into the dungeon.

“Hmm?” Weiss turned to Jayce who was cutting out a monster’s heart and narrowed her eyes. “Your arm is healed?”

“I’ve always healed quickly.” Jayce replied calmly. “This is my only gift from lord Sky-Swallower.”

Weiss grunted and that was the end of the matter. Jayce wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but he didn’t dare. He had no confidence in pretending to be injured, so he could only reveal that his arm had fully healed. As for why it healed so quickly, that was because Jayce had been secretly storing monster blood in his Star Girdle while collecting talismans.

Gathering the blood wasn’t too difficult, but drinking it was another story. Star Girdle allowed Jayce to place objects a short distance from his body, but the artifact didn’t like when he tried to place things inside other things. For example, Jaye couldn’t teleport blood into his stomach nor could he teleport his knife inside an enemy’s body, even if they were touching one another. With practice, Jayce learned to open his mouth, place blood from Star Girdle inside his mouth, and then drink it. Finding opportunities to do this was easy, since the jotun neglected him every time monsters appeared.

This, combined with lugging heavy materials around and constantly using soulfire to ward against the cold, created the bizarre training regimen that Jayce followed while traveling with the jotun.

As he poured his mental energy into the corpse of a strange snowball throwing insect called a cannon beetle, Jayce found that there was no talisman in its body. Instead, there was a tiny black crystalline orb trapped at its center of mass. Jayce retrieved the mana core and looked at it with a conflicted expression.

Stealing it to either swallow or sell was an easy task with Star Girdle. The problem was that bodies that formed mana cores didn’t have talismans. Even though the jotun weren’t always watching him, they knew how many monsters they killed. If things didn’t add up, Jayce might be executed on the spot. Eventually, Jayce decided to avoid this risk.

Not long after that, Theresa suddenly announced that the sun had fallen. Day on Caelum had ended and unsurprisingly, the jotun still hadn’t turned around. Jayce raised a question about this just to act out his role, and Weiss shut him down again. Tonight, they would sleep inside the dungeon.

Their resting place was as side tunnel that Theresa had somehow located. The jotun usually didn’t seem to care about the cold but they used artifacts to blow the icy fog out of the tunnel, indirectly raising the surrounding temperature. Tarps made from animal skin and fur were hung at the tunnel’s entrance, and Jayce was shocked when he saw the tarps passively repel the mist.

For once, their dislike of Jayce worked in his favor. Since he couldn’t be trusted to keep watch, Jayce was free to sleep the entire night.

Once again, Jayce woke up in a cold sweat and it took him a while to calm down. Visions of the terrible things he’d experienced during his first two weeks in the Upper Bound plagued his dreams. At the very least, he had managed to sleep through the night. Jayce woke up weary, but he wasn’t close to becoming sleep deprived.

Turning his head, Jayce received a second scare that morning when he noticed Weiss watching him. The others were still asleep, and she was the last one on watch before morning. Her pale blue eyes stared at him with an unreadable gaze.

‘Shit. If she wants to kill me, this isn’t a bad opportunity. She could just say I ran off or something.’

When Jayce raised his guard, Weiss turned away and continued watching for threats. Even so, Jayce didn’t feel safe until the rest of the party woke up and they continued on their journey.

---

Bloodrager has reached level 15.

Your mental energy has improved (+15).

Your mana capacity has improved (+10).

After three days, Jayce finally reached a new milestone in one of his classes. Though, he was only leveling out of helplessness. Weiss and the others never asked him to fight, and Jayce didn’t want to use his guns in front of them, so he tried to stay out of conflicts. This was difficult when Weiss kept using him as bait for monsters. She technically never asked Jayce to play this role, but the party would frequently abandon him while he was gathering talismans, only to reappear once something attacked him. In fact, Jayce was almost positive this was the real reason Weiss had suggested using a porter as compensation when Soest refused to pay with money.

Being bait was very stimulating for his Bloodrager class, so it leveled up quickly. On the other hand, his Marksman class had stagnated, only rising to level 12. Jayce’s Soul Forger class still hadn’t improved at all and Jayce wasn’t sure how to stimulate it. He had expected it to level up when he crafted those charms, but afterwards he didn’t sense that it was stimulated by his forging. For now, Jayce could only hope that the internet would have some clue on how to level this strange class.

‘More energy, huh?’ Jayce would have been more disappointed if he hadn’t been relying so heavily on his vital energy these days. He was starting to learn just how useful these three energies were. Curious, he checked his status and realized something interesting.

Mental Energy Grade: F (35)

Mana Capacity Grade: E (45)

Vital Energy Grade: E (45)

Jayce knew these grades corresponded to different gates/level caps. His energies had started at grade F- with a score of 20, which matched his current maximum level of 20. Now that he had two scores above 40, that meant his mana capacity and vital energy were both powerful enough to sustain someone who had just opened the second gate.

‘Isn’t that kind of…insane?’

Thinking about it some more, Jayce understood that things weren’t so simple. Even if he could pay the cost, his battle strength wouldn’t rise without powerful abilities. For now, this just meant that he could use his current abilities more freely.

Still, Jayce knew he would be receiving three sets of energy boosts from his three classes. This was an advantage that normal people couldn’t even dream of. If he found a way to leverage them, his high energy grades might become one of his greatest advantages.

On the morning of their fourth day, Jayce woke up earlier than usual. Breathing heavily, he glanced at Weiss and saw that she was still asleep. Jayce’s next breath caught in his throat when he saw that she was grunting faintly while her expression warped between extreme anger and pale-faced terror. It was obvious that she was trapped in a terrible nightmare. Theresa, who was standing guard, made eye contact with Jayce and put a finger to her lips.

Understanding the double meaning in her gesture, Jayce hurriedly pretended like he was still sleeping. Waking Weiss up would be dangerous but letting her know what he’d seen would be equally dangerous.

When they set out in the morning, Jayce felt a strange tension in the group. It seemed like they were close to their objective. The Tool Specialist was the busiest out of all of them. Theresa was constantly messing with her cube, reading and confirming things Jayce couldn’t see.

“Based on everything we know, it should have set up its territory around this area.”

Weiss nodded. Her expression remained cold, but Jayce noticed a covetous glint flash in her eyes. “Alright, let’s go a bit further.”

The other jotun also showed greedy expressions, as if there was a pile of gold just beyond the mist. However, what Jayce saw first was not gold, but ice pillars. Like many of the ice pillars in this ‘forest’, these ones had been modified by the monsters that lived nearby. The majority of these pillars had been hollowed out with over a dozen 1.5-meter-wide holes. Strangely, these holes only started appearing around 6 meters above the ground. Jayce also noticed burrows around the base of many pillars. It seemed that monsters in this territory could only live in the air or below the ground.

“Porter. Hold this for a while.”

Weiss took something out of her storage and thrust it at Jayce. Looking it over, Jayce was confused. It was a staff made out of bright green wood. Tied to the staff’s tip was a white palm-sized feather. Jayce wondered if it was his imagination, but he felt like the staff wanted to wriggle out of his grasp and escape. Inspecting it with his mental energy, Jayce felt a ‘heavy’ feeling that went far beyond any of the talismans he’d collected.

Worried that it might be something harmful, Jayce took the risk and closed his eyes to activate Sense Aspects. After the improvement to his mental energy and his constant practice controlling his soulfire, Jayce was more comfortable with splitting his focus on things like this. The result was both expected and unexpected. This staff only held a single type of aspect and its concentration was the purest Jayce had ever seen. The strange thing was that it held aspects of freedom.

‘This is to make the bait more enticing, right? What kind of monster would be attracted to aspects of freedom?’

Rather than the monster’s appearance, Jayce was more worried about how he would survive its attack. Once he started walking with the staff, Jayce felt like there were dozens of eyes trained on his position. Looking up, he saw many sets of piercing green eyes hiding in the upper part of the pillars. Steel-colored beaks peeked out of the dark holes and followed his every move.

“Glacial worm. 15 meters, 90 degrees.”

“Scuttler. 10 meters, 15 degrees.”

“Sickle-thread spider. 15 meters, 270 degrees.”

Theresa rapidly listed several monsters but just as the team was about to act, a series of shrill screeches came from above.

“Cancel that. All monsters below ground have retreated.”

“Steel wing swallows.” Weiss cut in with her frigid voice. “Distance and angle don’t matter. They’ll be everywhere soon. Repel them and keep an eye out for our target.”

Steely grey figures darted out of the pillars, covering the sky like a frenzied cloud. With wingspans over a meter long, these swallows weren’t small. Their numbers were also well beyond anything Jayce had seen so far. It seemed these birds ruled over an absurdly large territory. As Weiss predicted, the swallows started divebombing the group from every angle.

Not panicking in the slightest, Theresa took her eyes away from her cube and tossed something in the air. Jayce saw its ovoid shape with Keen Eyes, but he could only guess that it was some kind of grenade. This guess was proven correct when the Flow Controller erected a barrier above their heads and loud bang tore through the Frozen Expanse. Bright yellow-blue light nearly blinded Jayce as lightning arced through the nearby swallows.

The Marksman’s axes followed up, cutting down the swallows that obstructed their way forward. Elva and Froker stood at the wings of their formation, ready to knock away any monsters that got too close. Weiss, as usual, was observing everything carefully. Jayce still had no idea what her class was. He only knew that her senses were almost as strong as Theresa’s detection artifact and her stance gave off the impression that she could join any part of the battle at any time.

Jayce, for once, stood safely at the center of the formation beside Weiss. He didn’t know what they were hunting but he hoped Weiss would act before their target literally took the bait.

‘Well…If it really comes to that, just see how fast I’ll toss this staff.’ Jayce thought resentfully.