The rest of the two weeks until the dungeon school opened passed by in a flash. Kyle’s time was mostly spent grinding his skills, but he also found time to spend with his family before he left and even found some time to hang out with Sarah. His efficiency soared, and if previously he was behind the curve in regards to stats and skill levels, he was most certainly above the curve now. As soon as he got his Mana Bolt skill to level ten and gained another ten base mana his progress practically exploded. The day before school started this is what his status was.

Name: Kyle Anders

Health: 20

Mana: 50

Physical Power: 2

Magic Power: 2

Skills:

Exponential Mana Regeneration, level 5: Actively meditate to regenerate mana equal to .25 of the user’s current mana with an additional .025 per skill level every five minutes.

Mana Bolt, level 18: Fires a small bolt of mana that deals magic power plus one per odd level of this skill in damage. One second cast time. Costs two mana.

Small Fireball, level 10: Fires a small fireball that explodes on impact. This fireball deals two times the user’s magic power plus two per skill level in damage. Three second cast time. Costs five mana.

Mana Pool Extension, level 3: Creates an extended mana pool that is attached to the user’s original one. This extended Mana pool is equal to two times the original mana pool times this skills level. The extended mana pool can only be filled by active regeneration skills. The extended mana pool cannot be filled by mana crystals. The extended mana pool must be drawn from before the regular mana pool. The extended mana pool cannot have mana transferred to it or from it by any outside source and can only be channeled by the user.

Kyle obviously put both the points he gained from his skills reaching level ten into his mana, as that synergized the best with his skills. With the increases he received, his effective mana was now 350! He could almost regenerate a hundred mana in five minutes. That was about twenty times as fast as when he only had twenty mana!

While his skill levels and magic power were not particularly impressive, the fact that he could access 350 mana put him way above the average mage. His spells may not do as much damage as someone with a high magic power or a powerful spell, but he would be able to use many more spells over the course of a fight.

I can just get more powerful skills later on anyway. There has to be some skills that no one wants because of their high mana cost.

It was now the morning of their departure date, and Kyle and Sarah were busy getting their last minute packing done. Sarah’s dad was driving them the hour and a half drive to the school while the other three kids who were also going were taking a separate car.

The school they were going to was not really a school per se, and was more like a training camp sponsored by the government. When the Change occurred, all the worlds governments knew about it beforehand and made an announcement. Even the Pope made his own announcement. Because of that, and the fact that nothing really changed (if you discount dungeons appearing and people becoming super human), the world generally continued functioning normally.

The biggest surprise was that most governments actually stopped being unable to finds their own ass with both hands and got something done. In the USA, that was the Office of Dungeon Expeditions, or ODE. It was a semi-autonomous organization that shared information about dungeons and created a common market to sell what was found inside. It was also vaguely associated with the armed forces, as if you had enough stat points or the right skills people were able to fly and lift cars which was obviously attractive to the military.

If a dungeon spawned on a property you owned, you could join ODE and file for control over that dungeon. You were then given primary access to that dungeon and various other benefits, while having to share information and pay a small fee. The advantages to doing this far outweighed the disadvantages, as ODE was the biggest source of information and information is power.

By joining you could also send young adults aged 16-25 to what ODE called “dungeon schools”. They were basically training camps set up around a group of dungeons that were suitable to train people in. While you could grind your skills outside of a dungeon, doing so inside one gave you a much higher growth rate and monsters from dungeons also dropped things like skill and enhancement crystals and even artifacts.

The school that Kyle and Sarah were going to was located in the national park closest to where they lived. There were five dungeons there. Dungeons had different levels depending on how dangerous they were, and the dungeons located at this national park were perfect for farming. They even had the requisite “level zero” dungeon. Dungeons typically had a levels ranging from one to five, but there were two exceptions to this. First, level zero dungeons. These dungeons had almost no danger to them such that you could survive on only the base stats without any skills. They rarely dropped anything of value though except for some mana crystals. Then there were unleveled dungeons. These dungeons were deemed too dangerous to go into, and had a mortality rate of at least thirty percent.

Kyle was now in the middle of a flurry of packing. Despite knowing the date was coming for a while, he had been too caught up in grinding his skills to adequately pack. That is how he found himself in his current situation: running around his room and making sure he had everything packed while Sarah stood around making disparaging comments and generally being more of a nuisance than a help. Kyle really wanted to fire back, but since Sarah had been packed over an hour ago, he didn’t have any grounds to respond.

Half an hour later they were in the car on their way. Most of the car ride was spent with Sarah’s dad quizzing them on the different monsters that could be found in dungeons. His special skill enabled him to learn detailed information about monsters just by seeing them, so his knowledge was within the top echelons of humanity regarding dungeon fauna.

When they finally arrived at the national park, Kyle was blown away by the changes that had been made. While he hadn’t been there in a while, he was quite sure there was not what looked like a small subsection of a city in the middle of the park before. Kyle guessed that the reason they built up so much was so they didn’t have to build out so they could preserve as much of the land as possible. It was still a national park after all. Some of the building were over twenty stories tall. Kyle had heard that there was supposed to be some four thousand people arriving this month, and next month there were supposed to be another four thousand or so.

The traffic flow actually seemed intelligently designed, so despite the traffic, they found a spot in a parking garage in under five minutes. Just as Kyle was about to get out of the car, he felt someone grab hold of his hand. By the time he looked over, Sarah had already finished squeezing his hand and was getting out of the car.

Kyle sat in the car for another few seconds, but once he got out he quickly caught up to Sarah and her dad, who knew where they were going as he had been here before to use his ability on the creatures in the dungeons. The general flow of pedestrians all seemed to be going the same way along the clearly marked route, but it was still nice to have someone along who knew the lay of the land.

The check in was fast and painless. Sarah already had an ID card from when she visited another dungeon, but Kyle needed to make one. They were made by combining someone’s skill and an artifact found in a dungeon. Once Kyle input his mana into the card, it showed his name, dorm, and his base stats. It would also update in real time and worked as a key to get into the various buildings.

The housing was apartment style, with four bedrooms, two bathroom, a small kitchen area, and a communal lounge area. You could make requests for the housing, but otherwise they matched you based on a questionnaire about what position you would fill when entering a dungeon to form four person teams. Each four person apartment would have at least one frontline position, at least one ranged position, and when possible, someone with a crowd control or disable ability and someone with a healing ability. Those last two were rather rare though, so not every group contained them. Skill crystals with disables and healing abilities were some of the most expensive, even above passive enhancement skills which could be stacked.

Kyle and Sarah had requested to be put in the same group, and the staff member who had checked them in said the other two people in their apartment had already arrived. For some strange reason, Sarah seemed impatient to meet their dorm mates and constantly nagged the other two to walk faster when going back to the car to get their luggage.

After picking up their luggage, Kyle and Sarah headed off to their dorm while Sarah’s father went off to take care of some business elsewhere since he was an associate professor because of his skill.

Kyle finally found out the reason for Sarah’s impatience when they reached their dorm. As soon as they opened the door Sarah jumped on one of the two people in the room and tackled her onto the couch. It took Kyle a few seconds to recognize her, but he soon realized it was Sarah’s best friend Li who had moved away a few years ago. She had gone to the same school as Kyle and Sarah, but moved away during middle school. Kyle knew her, but he had not been as close to Sarah then, so despite Li being very close with Sarah, Li and Kyle were not more than acquaintances.

Kyle and the other guy in the room stood there awkwardly for a few seconds witnessing the touching reunion before the other guy broke the ice.

“Erm, I take it those two know each other? Oh, my names Walt by the way,” said Walt as he held out his hand.

Kyle shook his hand.

“Kyle. Nice to meet you. Yes, they do know each other. Li used to go to our school a while ago.”

“Guess I’m the odd man out huh,” said Walt. “So what are you two’s specialties? Li said she has some sort of CC skill and I am a tank.”

“Right now my build is more of a traditional DPS mage,” Kyle responded. “I have a lot of mana so I can machine gun out spells. Sarah is a frontline fighter but I think she is more DPS than tank.”

“How much mana is a lot? My special skill allows others to heal me with their mana, but it’s not that efficient. Right now, it only heals me by three health for every ten mana put in.”

“Currently I only have an effective mana pool of three fifty,” Kyle said trying to be modest. “But I should be able to raise that a lot more once I get some grinding in. I only got the skill recently.”

“Only three fifty!? Most mages have mana pools under one hundred! You must have a really good skill.”

Walt was impressed. He started to drool in his mind thinking about how much he could level his skill up if Kyle healed him with that much mana.

“But how is your mana regeneration? With a pool that big it must take a while to fill it back up. It would suck if you had to invest a lot of mana healing me and then didn’t have any to use for spells.”

“Actually, it’s only because of my regen skill that my mana pool skill is any good,” Kyle said. “My mana pool is only fifty normally, and because of the skills restrictions the three hundred pool I get from it can only be filled up by an active mana regen skill, can’t be filled up by mana crystals, and needs to be drained before my normal mana pool. My mana regen skill combines well with the additional pool size though because it makes me regen mana faster the more I have in my pool. If I start with two fifty I can be back up to full in a little over five minutes.”

Walt’s jaw hit the floor. What kind of skill was it that could regenerate a hundred mana in five minutes? He quickly started doing some mental math.

My skill heals one health for every ten mana invested per level of the skill. It seems to level based of off how much I am healed for, and has been hard to level based on the mana requirements. It took healing over five hundred health to get the skill to level three so, let’s see. A hundred mana every five minutes. That’s thirty health every five minutes, so every hour I could be healed for three hundred and sixty health. At that ratio it shouldn’t be hard for my skill to hit level ten and get the ratio of health to mana even and get a stat point!

In Walt’s head, ‘Kyle’ had already been replaced by ‘healbot’.

While Walt was having a mental orgasm thinking how much he could grow his skill, Li, who was eavesdropping on Kyle and Walt’s conversation while having her own with Sarah, interjected with surprise; “Wait! That means you can regenerate about a hundred mana in five minutes. What kind of crazy rate is that!? I have good mana regeneration skill, but I can only regenerate about thirty five mana in five minutes!”

Li had reason to be surprised. As far as the internet knew, the best mana regeneration skill that anyone had was called Godlike Mana Regeneration, and it passively regenerated twenty mana per level of the skill in five minutes. Since it was fairly easy to get passive mana regeneration skills up to level ten, that skill should be generating at least a two hundred mana every five minutes. But that was the best mana regeneration skill in existence. Kyle’s skill couldn’t compare, right?

Li advanced threateningly while Kyle was pressured into retreating, which was impressive since Li was a small Asian girl only a little over five feet while Kyle was almost six.

“Spill it,” she said.

“Now that I think about it, you never told me the specifics of your skills,” Sarah said.

She looked expectantly at Kyle while cracking her knuckles. The message was clear.

Kyle gulped.

Even Walt came out of his skillgasm to stare intently at his healbot, demanding answers.

Kyle instantly folded under the pressure of the three people before him.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you guys. Just, please no violence.”

That last part was mostly directed at Sarah. While she had calmed down a bit now that they were older, in the past Kyle had occasion to be part of numerous “headlock training sessions”.

Even though Sarah and Li had not seen each other in years, they were obviously still in sync as at the same time they both backed off and made puppy dog eyes, eagerly awaiting the scoop.

Once it was clear Kyle would have time to talk, he continued.

“So I have two mana skills. My special skill is called Exponential Mana Regeneration, and I recently got a skill called Mana Pool Expansion. Exponential Mana Regeneration regenerates mana based of off how much mana I have in my pool. Currently, in five minutes it regenerates about thirty five percent of what is left in my pool. So when I only had twenty mana, it would take me over twenty minutes to go from ten to twenty mana. With me so far?”

He got three nods in response. Kyle then continued.

“That is where Mana Pool Expansion comes in. It has a lot of limits on it that make it undesirable for others, but it is perfect for me. It increases my mana pool by two times my original pool times the level of the skill. So currently it is like my base mana pool is multiplied by seven.”

Kyle watched nervously as the three in front of him digested what he just told them.

Sarah was the first to react.

“I take it you all know about the tournament that is going to happen in three weeks and what the prizes are?”

Seeing looks of confirmation in the other’s eyes, Sarah continued.

“Well, I have a plan…”