Crossing his arms across his chest, Kreg leaned back against the stone walls of the corridor as he waited for the boy to exit the Demon Gate. Time ran faster inside than it did outside – six times faster to be precise – so he could afford to wait for him to make his choice.

His knowledge of the secrets of the Demon Gate was a sign of Master Silveros’ favour. The fact that the astute orc had chosen to spend the coin required to have a mage with an Oath shard draw up a contract binding Kreg to secrecy showed that he valued him above his other subordinates. The contract had led to Silveros putting more trust in him and Kreg knew more than most mages when it came to the mysteries of Dungeons.

While most knew that a violet mage was the peak of mortal magic and beyond that lay the realm of Dungeon mages, they had no idea what becoming a Dungeon mage truly entailed. They didn’t know that skill shards could merge into a Dungeon and that the Dungeon so formed was the basis of a Dungeon mage’s power. They didn’t know that all skills weren’t compatible with each other – choosing each one on the basis of its individual merit, lacking consideration for the whole.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, most of these ignorant mages lacked the talent required to reach the level of a violet mage. Thus, their choices were actually optimal for their situation.

The silver mine was one of the economic backbones of the Silveros family. A large part of the reason for Kreg’s appointment there was his contract with his master. As the current head of the Silveros family, Torak obviously wanted to consolidate the family’s power in his own hand – side-lining the competing factions within his family. Sending a trusted subordinate to supervise the working of the mine was an obvious step to take.

The thing about magic was that to maintain one’s realm, a constant stream of resources was required to counterbalance the drain in one’s mana resulting from skill usage, physical exertion and even the slow, natural conversion of mana to heat.

The higher one’s realm, the more resources one needed. A red mage could hope to supplement his mana with ample food and strenuous exercise but a yellow mage could only pin his hope on energy rich foods prepared by chefs with specialized skills. After all, there was only so much food one could digest in a day. The volume of ordinary food that would be needed to supplement yellow mana was impractical to say the least.

If a yellow mage didn’t promptly replenish his mana when he ran out of it, then there was a high probability that his realm would drop back to that of a red mage. Therefore, magical power was inextricably tied to economic prosperity.

Torak Silveros was a blue mage today because he could leverage his status as the Head of the Silveros family to allocate its resources to maintaining his magical prowess. Who was to say that there wouldn't be another Silveros sitting in his place tomorrow?

There were far more mages with high-grade talent capable of reaching the level of a blue mage than there were actual blue mages. Each mage that had crawled his way up to that position or higher couldn't be underestimated. Their magic was a testament to their intelligence and charisma being far beyond that of their peers.

Kreg himself possessed a middle-grade talent and depending on how well he served his master, he could expect to step into the ranks of a green mage in his lifetime. That was why he had decided to risk the initial capital required to test his ore-slaves for magical aptitude for the last three years.

This year, his scheme had finally borne fruit and he had managed to identify two slaves with magical talent. Crooked and Sand. The former, once fitted with a logistic skill, would more than make up for his investment by becoming a valuable magical slave. The latter – now that had been a pleasant surprise.

Not only was the boy’s natural talent high, his disposition was extremely suited to the charnel house that was the Arena of Sin. Kreg couldn't help but anticipate the skill he would choose as his first and his subsequent performance in the Arena. Anyone who could kill a Tier 1 magical beast with the body of a mortal was a freak. And the Arena was where these freaks gathered to spill each other’s blood for the enjoyment of their audience.

With the creaking of stone against stone the demonic face came to life, alerting Kreg to Sand’s return. Pushing off the wall he had been leaning on, he stood straight with his arms crossed across his chest as he stared at the emerging portal.

The mouth of the demon opened disproportionately wide, ejecting Sand out of the dark vortex that formed within it. Staggering to a stop, the boy watched as the portal disappeared along with the shutting of the demon’s mouth, leaving an inanimate mural behind.

Turning around, he faced Kreg’s vision of anticipation. Opening his clenched palm, he offered up the shard he had chosen.

Picking the blood-red crystal up with his fingers, Kreg stared at it with narrowed eyes.

‘Quite the sly little thing,’ he sneered internally. ‘A shard that combines attack and healing, even though its not as impressive offensively as many of the other choices, it gives ‘im a way out.’

Even in victory, Gladiators often ended up injured too seriously to fight again. Rather than spend to heal them or pay a mage with a Dissociate skill to remove their shard while they still lived and transfer them to logistics duty, it became cheaper to kill them and recycle their shards.

‘By choosing a dual-purpose shard, 'e at least doesn’t have to worry about that. I guess it ain’t that surprising seeing 'e chopped 'is own arm off. His self-preservation consciousness is greatly strengthened. Not a bad thing but he's got ta survive the first few rounds with a lacklustre shard. Well, better to risk it now, I guess, than later when ‘is opponents are gettin’ stronger and stronger.’

Pinning Sand with his gaze he asked, “Why did ye go and pick this one?”

“Master Torak was kind enough to heal me up and even let me have a shard so I wanted to pick a shard that’d let me earn some coin of my own to repay him someday. I saw the medic back at the mine and the one who healed me earning a lot so I chose a healing shard that could attack too.”

‘False!' Kreg snorted contemptuously. 'But… come to think of it…’ He rubbed his chin with his finger as he stared at Sand appraisingly, ‘I could use ‘im to solve my problem.’

Shaking his head, he decided to tackle the matter later. “Whatever ye say, boy. Whatever ye say. Come with me, I’ll put ye in yer quarters and help ye fuse that skill,” he said before striding away, motioning for Sand to follow.

Having caught on to his pause, Sand affirmed that he had succeeded in planting the suggestion into Kreg’s mind. Now he would go back and consider the matter along the path Sand had guided his thoughts down.

‘For his wife to rent a clinic in such a lucrative location like the Arena, he must have invested much. There should be no dearth of medics who covet her clinic, and now, with her unable to use her skills due to her pregnancy, they must be putting pressure on the couple to evacuate the premises. But once they leave, it will be near impossible to get the clinic back. So, all they can do is forcefully occupy it by paying the rent without any returns. But my appearance solves this problem perfectly. By allowing me to take her place and use my shard under her guidance, they can resume the business. All they need to do is pay me a pittance in comparison to their actual profits.’

Analysing the current situation, Sand had decided to choose the Phlebotomy shard first. It would be much more useful now. Not only would it allow him to earn more resources to boost his cultivation speed by taking advantage of Kreg’s situation, it would be much safer as well. Rather than later when each fight became extremely close – and every single mistake, life-threating; it would be better to take the shard now when his extremely rich fight-experience could tide him over its weak lethality.

Sand followed Kreg down a winding network of corridors until they reached a row of cells. Solid stone doors blocked the sight of their interiors with only a narrow slat affording their occupants a view of the outside. As the two of them passed by the cells, Sand could clearly feel hostile gazes settling upon him before flinching fearfully at the sight of Kreg. All of them were eerily silent.

Reaching the end of the corridor, Kreg took out another hexagonal token from his pocket, this time made of a mottled brown rock, and slotted it into a matching impression. With a grating rumble, the heavy door was winched upwards, revealing the interior.

Nondescript stone walls, a stone bed with a folded bedsheet and a pillow atop it, a depression with a channel leading away (what Sand assumed was the toilet), and a metallic table that had been bolted down to the ground – all squeezed into a space a mere few square metres large. Windows were conspicuously absent and the only sources of ventilation were the slat in the door and a narrow duct leading away from one upper corner of the room.

“I was gonna make ye work up a sweat and fill yer mana the good old way but since I’m in a good mood and I don’t have time to waste, ye can have this.” Kraig said, tossing a small wooden box at Sand.

Catching it, he fumbled around with it till he found the seam and pried it open with his fingernails. A sweet scent fluttered from the reddish-orange pill that was revealed within. “That’s a mana-replenishing pill. Just swallow it down without crackin’ it with yer teeth.” instructed Kreg.

Unhesitant, Sand popped the pill, worked up some saliva and swallowed it down. Suddenly, he felt as though instead of a pill, he had swallowed a burning piece of coal. A tremendous heat began to radiate from it as it made its way down his gullet, his entire body blushing with the heat. Beads of sweat trickled out of him before vaporizing in a translucent mist, turning his form fuzzy. Then with a throb, the heat coalesced into a strand of red mana that branched out into several hair-thin streams, permeating his muscles, blood, bones, and organs. Under Sand’s control, the rate of mana formation only matched that of a mage with medium-level talent.

“Don’t waste the precious pill, ye idiot!” berated Kreg, “Use yer mana to find yer pores and then will them closed. Ye need ta learn to gather mana without the crutch of the mud.”

Pretending to follow his instructions, Sand tried and failed intentionally a few times before showing a passable prowess in locking the heat within his body. Under the dual influence of the pill and the sealed pores, his mana levels began to shoot up, dyeing the interior of his body an ethereal red.

Pulling out a dagger, before he could react, Kreg grabbed Sand’s right wrist and slashed across it causing blood to spew out copiously. Bringing the skill shard up to the gash, Kreg brought it in contact with the blood. Immediately, the jagged, sanguine crystal absorbed the blood greedily, making Sand feel dizzy from blood-loss and sway on his feet. Having drunk its fill, the crystal bloomed with a beautiful blood-light, dissolving into a sparkling, red liquid and sneaking into his veins. The wound healed at an observable speed, vanishing within moments, leaving a jagged scar behind.

The mana that was still being released by the pill within his body seethed as the skill began to integrate into his bloodstream. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three; with every beat of Sand’s heart, the shard began to reform within his atrium, each cycle of blood bringing more parts of the dissolved shard and depositing it on the growing crystal.

Finally, with a bright flash that lit his chest red from the inside, the skill shard merged completely with him. Now, it was his -- unto death.