Thankfully there was still light in the throne room. But, in contrast to before, it did not come from the magnificent chandelier, but from light crystals scattered all over the floor. Some additional light came from torches that had been mostly protected from the blast by the columns scattered throughout the room.

Looking at the destruction, I had no idea why I was even alive. I should have been ripped apart by the explosion, or, if not killed by the blast, the shards should have killed me on the spot. Based on the grooves cut into the stone floor in a burst-like pattern, the shards had had enough force to even mar stone, so certainly enough to carve a flesh-and-blood body into tiny strips.

Interestingly, the circle around my body did not have such indentations in the stone, apart from plenty of scratches and crystal dust. So perhaps the hexagram had done more than just provide a conduit for sucking out my mana and had also offered some protection.

Either way, I felt lucky to be alive.

And given the way the goblin looked despite being in a hexagram as well, it must have been a really close call.

That could have easily been me.

So what now?

I felt famished. All that healing had taken its toll. And looking at my arms and legs further drove home that point – I was all bone and skin, not much left in terms of muscle or fat. It reminded me of those pictures of half-starved people somewhere in a drought area in Africa. So even if I had more amber mana to spent, I should take it easy, lest I consumed my own body.

And I had not even thought about it during the healing process…

I made a mental note to be more circumspect of the side-effect of extensive healing. Maybe if I got out of this, I should open my own line of weight loss programs. The dungeon fat burner approach to weight loss. Great title. A surefire winner.

Given the appearance of my body, I was almost scared to look at my stats sheet. But better to know than to die because of my ignorance…

Name

Daniel Hollander

Rank

Initiate 1

Title:

Mental Bastion; First Initiate; Army of One; Against the Mighty II

Strength:

6.25 [-4]

Intuitive Reasoning:

15

Mana

Free

Current

Potential

Agility:

7

Complex Reasoning:

17

Silver

60

10

10

Speed:

5 [-1]

Emotional Intelligence:

9

Black

70

55

55

Dexterity:

6

Perception:

14

Amber

60

0

21

Endurance:

7 [-3]

Spatial Awareness:

21

Purple

11

0

0

Vitality:

7.2 [-2]

Willpower:

21

Gold

1

0

0

Available characteristic points: 4

Spells

Mana Vision

Level 12 [+1]

Twilight Vision

Level 1

Minor Healing

Level 8

Shadow Skin

Level 4

Shadow Sense

Level 1

Midnight Skin

Level 1

Partial Incorporeality

Level 2

Available spell points: 0

Skills

Mental Ward

Level 8

Mental Fortitude

Level 12 [+2]

Multitasking

Level 3 [+1]

Internal Mana Manipulation

Level 8 [+1]

Meditation

Level 4 [+1]

External Mana Manipulation

Level 2

Enhanced Mana Recovery

Level 1 [+1]

Sword Fighting

Level 10

Available skill points: 0

Well, not as bad as I had feared, but not great either. The sizeable drop in strength, endurance, and vitality reinforced the need to be cautious with healing in the future. Too bad that killing the goblin had not given me another title upgrade for Against the Mighty. I had been kinda hoping for that, and it would have alleviated the drop in raw strength, at least. Maybe there were some non-linear requirements for further levels in the title…

At least, the change in available mana was a pleasant surprise. A huge upgrade for silver, black, and amber mana… some useless purple, that I probably had absorbed initially, before figuring out how to change to different mana types, and… one gold mana.

Fuck yeah!

I had done it!

It was a paltry one mana, but it was fucking gold mana… Not that I had any idea of what to do with it. But I could experiment later.

There was also an annoyingly blinking box at the corner of my vision, indicating that there was some type of notification. Curious, I mentally switched to the message.

Congratulations. By defeating the boss, your group is the first to complete this level of the dungeon. To the victors go the spoils. Would you like to obtain your rewards at this point?

Well, what kind of question was that? Of course, I would…

Immediately another two windows opened up. The first one read:

Your group receives ten points for characteristics, spells, and skills to be divided according to contributions. In addition, each member of the group may obtain a core of the mana color of their choice or fifty mana of their choice. Which would you like?

I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh a bit, even though it probably came out slightly deranged. That was a huge power boost! If I had been in a group of five people, the standard setup for dungeon-diving in the litrpg stories, it would have been a paltry two points on average – not bad, but also nothing to write home about. But freaking ten points was a game-changer. And not just in one area, but all three categories on my stats sheet.

But I had to make a choice… mana or core? If I understood it right, a mana core came with ten mana. At least, it had been like that so far. So was a core worth more than forty extra mana? Hell yeah. At least for me. I figured that others might not be able to use multiple types of cores at once, due to the lack of silver mana… but luckily, I did not suffer that problem.

“I want a gold core!” I said confidently.

Nothing happened.

“Dungeon, I want a gold core!” I repeated.

Still no reaction.

Well, shit. Not that I was surprised. But it had been worth a shot.

So if not golden mana… what core would be good to pick?

From what I remembered, white mana was some air stuff, blue was ice, red was fire, yellow lightning,… turquoise, was that water? Something like that. And then… hmm, something about metal and stone, and… oh, green was nature and strength. And purple of course.

All of them were tempting in their own way. I could see useful applications for almost all of them. Initially, I had disregarded purple as the weakest of the colors, but fighting that goblin had changed my mind. If anything, I now thought it was one of the stronger ones, at least when fighting something that relied primarily on visual senses.

But I felt really drawn toward red mana.

There just was something about the ability to create a fireball. Playing roleplaying games I had always started a mage, just to be able to cast that fireball on the third spell level. Most of my groups had never reached that level, with players leaving, dungeon masters changing, or characters dying. But that had never deterred me.

But it wasn’t just some immature, hormone-driven wish to throw around fireballs and blow stuff apart… sure there was some of that. But it also offered the strategic addition of ranged attacks, which I sorely lacked so far.

So did lightning, of course.

But whatever…

“I want a red core!” I stated into the empty room, feeling a tiny bit foolish about seemingly talking to the air.

Immediately, I forgot about any embarrassment, because I could feel something changing inside of me. Nothing monumental, but a slight bit of pressure that quickly eased, and within seconds was unnoticeable.

And, lo and behold, when I looked inside of my body with Mana Vision, I could now see a red core sitting smack-dab at the center of my mana cycle, with a bit of red mana milling around, aimlessly.

I am sure I was grinning like a fool, but the presence of red mana inside of me just made me unreasonably happy.

About ready to start the process of incorporating the red core into my mana cycle, I remembered that there was another message waiting. And while I could not wait to get access to red mana, looking at the notification would only take a few seconds and then I could get to play around with my new mana.

Well, that said… I was actually starving, literally. So maybe that had priority over the time-consuming process of dealing with my newest mana-toy. And there was the issue of Legolas, who might still be alive somewhere.

Fuck.

Somewhat annoyed, I looked at the last message, which quickly dealt with my slightly sour mood.

For having singlehandedly completed the first level of the dungeon, you may choose which of the following titles to be bestowed upon you:

· Overachiever: Each of your characteristic points is increased by one unless it is at a value of zero.

· Transformer: You may transform mana into any core-mana type at a rate of five to one instead of the usual rate.

· Lone Wolf: Whenever you fight alone, your speed and endurance are increased by twenty percent.

Holy shit.

Overachiever gave the most immediate benefits but lacked a bit in future potential. But an extra twelve characteristic points was nothing to sneeze at.

Transformer… sounded a bit lame at first, but it would allow me to deal with the bottleneck of mana a lot more effectively. Speaking off… the text confirmed that it WAS possible to transform mana. I just had not poured enough into it when I had tested to make it actually happen. Of course, I had no idea what the usual rate was, but given how good the other two titles were, I had to assume that the transformer-rate was pretty darn good.

Lone Wolf was sweet as hell. I already envisioned myself zipping through crowds of monsters that almost seemed in slow-motion, killing them left and right…

That was a tough one.

In the end, I decided to go with Transformer. While Lone Wolf was sweet, I was a bit turned off by the requirement of fighting alone. While I was not necessarily the most social person, I did not intend to be a loner for the rest of my life, or even for more days than I had to. And Overachiever was just too limited in the long run.

And, frankly, I felt that magic was the way to go. I couldn’t even imagine how many more cool spells were out there, ready for me to explore and experiment with. If my hunch was right, mana was also the key to leveling up and that, surely, was going to give characteristic points too.

So it was decided.

“Transformer!”

When there was no further reaction or feeling of change apart from the new title appearing on my stats sheet, I shrugged my shoulders and began searching the room for loot and edibles.

After my experience with the crown, I gave the staff with the skull on top that the dead goblin still was clutching to its shredded chest a wide berth. There was no telling what kind of evil magic was contained in that thing. It did have a couple of twisted-metal rings though that glowed with a faint aura of mana and one little bag made out of supple leather, which looked rather ordinary but was covered in dimly glowing runes when I switched on my Mana Vision.

A quick search of the remainder of the throne room, yielded precious little of interest, apart from the deflated and shredded remains of Elrond, which was still equipped with the camouflaging cloak, even more torn than my own, a set of beautiful weapons, similar to the ones I already was carrying, and a few gold coins with dimly shimmering cores. Not sure what they were good for, I decided to pocket them anyway. At the very least, they looked kind of fancy.

No elven bread, though, or any other rations for that matter. Just another one of those waterskins, but this one punctured by a myriad of shards.

I was getting a bit nervous about more goblins showing up and not having found any way out yet, so when there was nothing of apparent interest left to explore, I turned to the smaller set of double doors behind the throne.

One of them was slightly ajar, and I could see flickering light behind. Weary of further surprises, I cast Shadow Skin and stealthily made my way toward the doors. As stealthily as I could be, dragging my feet over the floor.

Truth be told, I was utterly exhausted. I needed some rest, food, and water.

A recurring theme.

So I really hoped that I got a lucky break and there was something here that could help me. Like a fucking exit to this dungeon.

And an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Of course, I didn’t find either one. Instead, the double doors opened into a smallish room, which looked like an antechamber to another room, with a couple of decrepit benches left and right, some closet-like thing which had mostly fallen apart and another set of doors leading into a much bigger room.

And there, right after the second set of doors, was a tall humanoid, with long blonde hair and beautiful features, all tied up lying on the ground – Legolas.

Finally.

I limped to his prone body fast as I could and cut him loose.

“There you go, mate,” I said when I finished cutting through the last ropes. Not that I thought he would respond, as he seemed to be out cold.

Up close, I realized how pale he looked, and his body was kind of cold as well. But he was still breathing, so I figured that he was probably going to be alright. I didn’t have any amber mana, so there was nothing I could do anyway, even if I wanted. And there was no water either.

So I waited.

A few minutes later, Legolas stirred and slowly opened his eyes.

At first, his vision seemed unfocused, staring at the wall, but then I saw something like awareness return to his beautiful, deep-blue eyes.

He blinked a couple of times and then focused his piercing gaze on me. Immediately, I could feel a jolt go through my body, part fear, part… attraction? Well, perhaps not attraction, I mean, he was a dude and I wasn’t really into the gay thing. Not that I had ever tried. Either way, I guess one could say that I felt mesmerized.

“Ein Mensch! Wunderbar! Komm her, hilf mir auf,” Legolas said.

My mind blanked for a moment.

Was that… like, fucking German? That just didn’t feel right. I mean, Scandinavian, ok, maybe, or, I don’t know, like French maybe.

But German?

German elves?

What the fuck?

And…

“What’s up with your teeth, dude? Those look like vicious…,” I blurted out.

For the first time, I noticed that Legolas had huge canines, elongated, wickedly sharp and… hollow, it seemed.

Just like in the crown of the goblin king.

Legolas looked quizzically at me as if he hadn’t understood a single word.

“Do you speak English?” I asked, surreptitiously staring at the elf’s teeth. “Sorry, I don’t really speak German… I mean, … Heil Hitler! Scheisse!, uhm, Weltuntergang, and Schadenfreude! That’s about it…”

I trailed off when I noticed that Legolas was starting to look a bit irritated.

Or perhaps it was just a toothy smile.

Damn, those teeth made me nervous.

Legolas started to get up but clearly was struggling. His legs seemed wobbly and barely able to hold his weight. After he had stabilized a bit, he looked again at me and snarled: “Steh nicht blöd rum, sondern hilf mir. Ich brauche Nahrung!”

“Wow, hold your horses there… I am not sure what you just said, but I am here to help you… In fact, I just saved your sorry ass, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take that tone with me.”

I was a bit taken aback by the attitude of the elf. Confusion I could understand, but barking orders at your savior was… a bit strange, I thought.

“So clearly we have some communication problems. Let’s start again,” I said.

“I am Daniel,” I continued, pointing at myself. Waving my hand at him, I then asked: “And you?”

The elf looked at me somewhat annoyed and ready to bark something, but then seemed to reconsider.

“Du’Andrazzil.”

“Du what?” I asked, a bit surprised. For whatever reason, I had thought that it would be close to Legolas. Probably because I had been using that name in my mind for the last few hours and so I had come to associate it with the elf in front of me.

“Du’Andrazzil, Erstgeborener von Baron Andraz, von Gi’Andorath,” the elf repeated, with a bit of exasperation in his expression.

“Uhm, ok, Du’Andrazzil. Nice to meet you. So, it seems clear to me that we both need some rest and food and… well, a way out of here, I guess. Any thoughts?”

“-“

“Well, right, that was kind of a useless question… you don’t understand any of what I am saying anyway, I guess.”

Somehow it had never occurred to me that I would meet Legolas, well, Du’Andrazzil, and not be able to talk to him.

While I was blabbing, Du’Andrazzil cocked his head slightly, and I could see his ears swivel, like a rabbit. Which was endearing in some way, but also reinforced how alien he was. At first, I thought that it was just some random behavior, but the tense body and absolute concentration in the elf made me think that he had noticed something.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Du’Andrazzil held up his hand, clearly indicating I should keep my trap shut. And then I heard it too. Shouting from down the hallway. Still far away, but coming closer.

Goblins.

Shit, they had probably found the dead goblin king and the slaughtered guards. It had been only a matter of time, and frankly, I had lucked out that it took them this long, but now the shit was going to hit the fan.

Du’Andrazzil and I shared a look and then, almost simultaneously shuffled our way to the double door leading into the big chamber. It was a solidly built door, made out of the same dark hardwood as the other doors, and, most importantly, it had a bigass crossbeam.

It was freaking heavy, and I was weak. And exhausted. The elf was not doing much better than me. But together, we managed to secure the door before sinking down to the ground to get a breather.

Nothing short of a battering ram was going to get through this door any time soon. Unless the goblins had some magic tricks up their dirty sleeves…

A short while later, I could hear grunting right behind the door, and soon after, the goblins started banging their fists and weapons against the door.

“Hey, Du’Andrazzil, how long do yo – fuck! What the fucking fuck? Stop doing that, you're scaring the shit out of me.” Turning toward Du’Andrazzil, I suddenly had found myself face to face with Du’Andrazzil, with our noses almost touching. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed that his long canines were partially bared.

It took me a few seconds to calm down my rapidly beating heart.

“Ever heard of personal space?” I grumbled while scooting away.

But he just followed, and he was… sniffing. His eyes were partially glazed over and staring at… my cheek?

That started to be just seriously creepy. I mean, I had ok cheeks and whatnot, but currently, they were probably a bloody mess from all those cuts and scrapes. Plus I was not used to a guy staring at me like that. Or a girl for that matter.

I moved another few inches away, but Du’Andrazzil kept on following me.

This was getting worrisome.

Surreptitiously, I grabbed my dagger, but it was already too late. With frightening speed, the elf leaned over, and its long fingernails dug into my arm, pinning it to the side.

I tried to turn to the side and get some distance away from Du’Andrazzil’s wicked-looking fangs, but his body was half draped over mine. In my weakened state, there was no way I could toss him off me.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I closed my eyes and headbutted him right in the face.

With a crunch, his beautiful aquiline nose got another kink and started spurting blood all over my face. Instead of pulling back or showing any overt reaction to the pain, he… started licking my face.

Disgusted, I slammed my forehead into his nose again and was rewarded with a squelching noise and a big splash of blood and snot, dripping off both of our faces.

For good measure, I did it once more… three times is the charm.

But then I could feel sharp teeth pierce the skin on the side of my throat and my neck began to feel numb.

And then I started feeling strangely relaxed, all the pain and discomfort fading away, and even the pounding at the door behind my back and the uncomfortable proximity of Du’Andrazzil strangely distant, as if perceived through a layer of fluffy cotton balls.

I sat there, enjoying the feeling of relaxation for a while, ignoring the tiny voice at the back of my head that was screaming for me to do something, to move, to fight.

I didn’t really see the point in any of that. After all, I was finally comfortable, even though it was getting a bit cold, but in a sort of distant, detached way. Not entirely uncomfortable.

Even the head to Du’Andrazzil snuggled against mine felt, if not entirely appropriate, then much less intrusive. I mean, a fucking elf cuddling with me. If only he was a she… I wondered if female elves also had huge teeth li-

“Fuck,” I screamed as I suddenly felt as if waking from a dream. And I felt the weakness permeating all of my body, due to the blood loss. And the cold.

I bucked, trying to throw off the elf, but he held on to me with an iron grip, its strength seemingly increased proportionally to the decrease in my own strength.

I pulled forth black mana, trying to coat my skin for whatever good that might do, but that didn’t faze the elf one single bit. Silver was probably just as useless, and I was fresh out of amber mana.

Desperately I tried grabbing for the red mana, but since I had not yet incorporated it into my cycling mana, it was like trying to pull boots out of knee-deep mud – it was there, I could feel it, and I could grasp it and pull… but it was just not responsive. With a supreme amount of willpower, I finally got a hold of a small quantity and forced it toward my throat and neck, willing it to scorch the mouth of Du’Andrazzil.

Quickly, I could feel blistering heat, and the smell of burned flesh rose to my nostrils. I still couldn’t feel anything around my throat, but probably some of that stink came from my own flesh. But so be it… I’d rather burn both of us than meekly let myself be slaughtered.

Du’Andrazzil groaned a bit but did not let go of me. If anything, he grabbed me even stronger. And I could feed the last vestiges of my strength ebbing away.

“Why? I just wanted to help you…,” I murmured with a weak voice, still unable to understand what had suddenly happened.

But Du’Andrazzil did not react in any way, and soon, I could feel my vision narrow to a long dark tunnel, which was getting narrower every passing second until, finally, the light at the end of the tunnel blinked out.

------------------------------------------------

Du’Andrazzil sucked the last drops of blood from the pale and still corpse in front of him, before leaning back against the door.

He felt oddly conflicted.

On the one hand, he had finally stilled that overwhelming hunger that had driven him nearly insane, with sweet human blood to boot. On the other hand, the human had done him a great service… no matter whether that was a premediated rescue or a happy accident. Without the puny human, he would have surely perished under that goblin mentalist, just like, he had to assume, Du’Gorath and earlier Dra’Baladine.

With a frown, Du’Andrazzil considered the ill-fated mission. As a third born, the loss of Dra’Baladine would have fewer repercussions than the death of Du’Gorath, even more so, because Du’Gorath was the personal favorite of the Panriarch.

But it could not be helped.

At least he himself had survived and hopefully could salvage something out of this mess. If nothing else, then some information at least.

Du’Andrazzil looked speculatively at the dead human next to him. Perhaps he should search the body to see if there was anything valuable on it. Not that he had high hopes, given the poor condition of its clothes and the malnourished body.

Going through his pockets, he was shocked to find two magical rings, and, even more astounding, an extra-dimensional bag.

The elf’s hands started shaking slightly when he pried the bag out of the grimy and torn pocket. If he gave this to the Panriarch, everything else would be forgiven and forgotten. Even the loss of two priceless Drathi Cloaks would be considered an acceptable cost for that kind of artifact.

How had the skinny, emaciated-looking human gotten its hands on that bag? Was he part of the artificers’ faction from Randmere? There had been rumors that they had opted to participate in this dungeon conquest as well, despite their usual internal squabbles and misgivings about the financial viability…

But if so, where was the rest of the human’s group? Surely, he hadn’t gotten past the goblin king and the mentalist by himself… those had been challenging, much more so than the typical first level of a dungeon.

He had heard the chime, of course. Someone had finished the dungeon, but it was hard to imagine that this Daniel had done it by himself. Unless the rest of his party had perished in the attempt and he was the only survivor.

Either way, there was nothing he could do. Regretfully, he hadn’t been able to resist the blood hunger, so the human was gone. And what kind of blood it had been – uncommonly rich in magical energy, enough to provide sustenance for a few days.

With a last, almost regretful look at the human, Du’Andrazzil turned around and walked toward the back of the room, where a narrow passage had opened up, leading into a brightly lit chamber. A few seconds later, there was just silence left, only interrupted by the feeble hammering of goblins on the other side of the solid door.

------------------------------------------------

A short while later, easily dismissed in the flickering light of the torches, a faint golden shimmer emanated from Daniel’s body, as the tiny mote of golden mana briefly increased in size only to flicker out of existence.