Kyle had known that others were stronger than he was. He had seen his uncle’s stats and skills and they were way ahead of Kyle and his group. His uncle had even told him recently when they talked on the phone that the bounty hunter group might join another group to challenge their level four dungeon.

But seeing someone in his same situation be ahead by so far hurt Kyle’s ego far more than he thought it would.

“By Merrill, does that mean he is one of those Merrills?” Kyle asked.

Walt nodded. “Yeah. He is the youngest son. I checked.”

Kyle supposed it made sense on some level. While most people were unwilling to sell crystals for money, having money also meant having a higher likelihood of owning a property that had a dungeon appear on it. And the Merrill family certainly had money and property to spare.

The bounty hunter group that formed the guild that Kyle’s uncle was part of only had a level two dungeon, which was good and bad. It was good because it meant they were able to enter it sooner to farm it, and bad because level two dungeons only dropped so many crystals. The fee for students to come to the dungeon school was not cheap, and the guild had to pay for five people which they could not have done without Sarah’s dad going and teaching there.

The Merrill family likely had multiple dungeons including some higher level ones. It would be trivial to send some extra crystals over Gray’s way.

“This is no time to get depressed,” Sarah said. “I’m sure we can take him. There are many skills that money just can’t buy after all, and we just need to have Li CC him and then I can carve him up like a stuck pig.”

“Besides,” Sarah continued. “We still have these new skills you guys haven’t looked at yet.”

Sarah then laid out the four skill descriptions on the table. She had already gotten rid of the one that was useless.

Name: Dual Wielding

Effect: When fighting with two weapons your damage is increased by one per skill level. Dual wielding mastery is also slightly increased. This skill is passive and cannot stack with any other passive skills that give a bonus to dual wielding.

Name: Pillar of Light

Effect: Designate a target area within ten feet per skill level of the user. After ten seconds, a beam of light falls from the sky in the center of the target area with a diameter of six inches per skill level dealing ten times magic power plus two per skill level in damage. Costs 100 mana. Takes ten seconds to cast. Cannot be used twice in five minutes.

Name: Basic Magic Attraction.

Effect: Within an area of six inches per every odd level of this skill, low leveled magic attacks targeting or fired towards the user’s allies will instead target or fly towards the user. Costs five mana per second to keep active. This skill cannot be activated for 30 seconds after it is deactivated.

Name: Basic Physical Power Gain

Effect: Gain one physical power for every odd level of this skill.

I want it, Kyle thought. But there is only one spell skill so I can’t exactly give Li some other skill to make up for it. And it even works with her Dual Target too. Damnit! Maybe I should have kept that for myself.

While the skills they received for their run were very powerful, there was only one magic skill to split between two mages.

Realizing his distress Sarah tried to pacify Kyle.

“I know we only got one magic skill, but since it targets Li should really have it. We can get you a few skills at the market that you can grind up using your ridiculous regeneration so you can get some more enhancement points.”

Kyle collected himself with a firm, quick shake of his head. Improving the team’s efficiency would not only get them a better result in the tournament, but would also improve their safety and hunting speed in dungeons. Kyle taking a spell that would be better suited for Li at the cost of an increase in hunting speed would hurt him in the long run.

“Yeah, I know Li should get it,” Kyle said with a sigh. “It is addicting watching your stats and skills increase though, so I can’t help but want it for myself.”

“Your generosity has been noted and your class has increased from reptile to mammal,” Li replied with a large smile on her face as she took the skill crystal.

It was a fairly easy decision to give Walt the tank skill and Sarah the other two. Dual Wielding in particular was a good fit for her as while it only said it increased her damage by one per skill level that effect would apply to both of her weapons so it was really double that.

The group decided to grind their skills for two days as there was a presentation tomorrow that they wanted to attend.

The school’s offered classes leaned more towards lectures regarding common sense in regards to dungeon diving and information about what was inside an individual dungeon. Classes did exist for training things like swordsmanship and archery, but there was only so much that could be trained as old fighting techniques were just not meant for super humans. Most people though it was more efficient to just get a skill that could help you improve you fighting ability, as leveling up a skill also gave you a better idea of how to use it. It was basically only special content presentations that had students attending after the first week.

After their skill distribution meeting, Walt and Li went off to grind while Sarah and Kyle went to buy some skills from the market.

Kyle did not have high hopes for finding a good skill and was resigned to just getting a few crappy skills to grind some stat points off of. He ended up being pleasantly surprised by what they found when he found a skill he generally wanted for a little over four hundred points. Most skills that were at all powerful were at least six hundred.

Name: Compressed Mana Explosion

Effect: Creates a ball of compressed mana that can then be fired and then explodes causing wide area destruction. The explosion deals 200 plus five times magic power plus five per skill level in damage. Costs 500 mana. Takes twenty seconds to cast. This skill cannot be used twice within five minutes.

Kyle thought that the skill was so cheap because of its high mana cost. While the skill did a huge amount of damage, it would be impossible to cast let alone level up for anyone without access to a ton of mana. Most mages would immediately need to use a mana crystal to recover their mana or be useless for the rest of a fight if they cast the spell, and being low on mana in a dungeon could be incredibly dangerous if you did not have other means to protect yourself.

The mana cost was not a problem for Kyle as he could cast the skill on cooldown with his current mana pool and regeneration rate. He also picked up two crappy skills that he could level just for the stat points since he now knew he could always get rid of them later.

They each spent the rest of the day until dinner grinding skills in the ogre or slime dungeons. It was important to have lots of skills and high stats, but it was commonly acknowledged that having one skill at a high level was better than having two skills at low levels. This was not true for supportive skills and passive ones, but anyone who could stack skills like those was either already powerful or was very rich.

The group had made plans to take the night off for some rest and relaxation. They ended up playing three rounds of Dungeon Settlers. It was a board game where you compete with the other players to conquer a dungeon before your allies can by taking control of resources like monster spawning grounds and enhancement crystal mines. The first one to successfully defeat the boss and escape the dungeon was the winner.

Sarah ended up winning all three games which threw Walt into fits as it was his game and he thought he was quite good at it. Kyle had long gotten used to losing to Sarah so losing no longer bothered him. The game was still fun even though he lost. Playing the game was a bastion of normalcy in a world that was otherwise unrecognizable from the past.

They did some more grinding the next day before eating lunch and heading over to the event they wanted to attend. Sarah’s dad said it was not something they would want to miss.

The event was basically a movie screening of a team of professors fighting the level four dungeon’s final boss. Technology did not function inside dungeons, so the only footage that could be taken inside was with rare video recording skills. They did exist, but there could not have been more than a few hundred or so in existence.

The screening took place in a large lecture hall. When Kyle and the rest of the gang arrived it looked like around a fourth of the student body was in attendance with some time still before the event started. The lecture hall had plenty more seats (it was really more of a full-blown auditorium) so they found some good ones and sat down to enjoy the show.

The level four dungeon was commonly called the dragon dungeon as it was populated by large fire breathing lizards. The monsters looked like large, red iguanas and could breathe fire from their mouths in addition to having tails that could shoot spikes. The dungeon’s boss was a two headed lizard that was over seventy feet from its noses to its tail and easily reached twelve feet at the shoulder. While normal lizards in the dungeon breathed fire in a steady stream that was limited in range, both the heads of the boss could shoot full blown fireballs that exploded on impact.

Walt, who was not as well versed in dungeon ecology as Sarah and Kyle, had asked when they would start running the level four dungeon. They had both emphatically told him that is was off limits until they were much stronger. Walt had wanted to know just what was so scary about the dungeon, and he was about to find out.

Sarah’s dad came over to say hi before the start of the movie. Walt had not met him personally, but had taken one of his lectures when he attended some classes a week or so ago. Li of course knew him from when she was younger and had lived by Sarah. Sarah’s dad was very tight lipped about the content of the movie. It was clear he knew more than he was telling, but even Sarah was not able to work him over enough to get him to spill the beans.

When the movie finally started the audience fell into a hush. Movies and CGI had made incredible strides in special effects, but nothing could have prepared them for what they saw onscreen.

First, it was all real. Everyone there had fought monsters before, so movies featuring fake ones had lost their appeal. The newest Dinosaur movie in a popular series had been a spectacular flop.

Secondly, there was only so much you could do with CGI. You were still working with real actors and actresses so stunts were only human by nature.

There was nothing natural about the movement that were seen onscreen.

The dungeon was being challenged by a party of twelve, with one person recording the fight with their skill and someone protecting them. The party of ten that was fighting the boss had three tanks. Two to each block a head and one to block the tail. The rest of the party was made up of one close range physical damage dealer, one ranged physical damage dealer, two DPS focus mages, and three that were more focused on healing and supportive skills.

The entire audience watched spellbound at the scene unfolding on the screen before them.

The tanks were all using rare taunting skills to draw the aggro of the boss. You could almost feel the power radiating off of its attacks through the screen. The force from its claw swipes would have to be measured in tons. The close ranged DPS fighter’s movements were elusive and ethereal with how she dodged the lizard’s attacks and weaved in her own. The ranged physical DPS was not quite so impressive, but his arrows were clearly finding their mark.

The real draw was the mages.

There were millions of videos online of people using their skills. They often were rather far away to avoid frying the camera, but some of the skills shown were impressive none the less. Kyle had certainly thought so at least. He even though his rain of Rapid Air Bullets and his new Compressed Mana Explosion were rather cool. Not anymore.

Lightning falling from the sky, pillars of blue fire, chains of stone that sprung from the ground restrained their prey. All those and more were thrown at the lizard. But it did not go down easily, and it took the party well over twenty minutes to finally wear it down.

The finale was like watching professional sports after watching amateurs all your life. The two DPS mages gathered together and spent a good minute casting a skill. When they were done, the close ranged fighters leapt away from the lizard as it suddenly stopped all movement.

Ever so slowly, the lizard started turning blue. Kyle was not sure what was happening at first. He finally figured it out. The lizard was freezing from the inside out.

Ice formed along the ground surrounding the lizard as it emitted mist like dry ice. Once it was done turning into an ice sculpture, even time seemed to freeze for a second before the stature of the once proud boss shattered into millions of pieces.

The movie then cut off rather abruptly, not having any credits or ending scene. The audience sat in silence, floored by what they had been privileged to witness. Ever so slowly, applause started up, ending in a standing ovation.

The group of four slowly made their way back towards their dorm, each one lost in their own thoughts.

Kyle kept thinking about what he saw. It had been a transcendent experience. The skills, the monster, the teamwork, everything about the movie was truly mind-blowing.

“We need to get stronger,” Kyle muttered.

The other three could only nod.

Kyle had been complacent. He knew that others were stronger than him. Of course they were. Whether they had started sooner, had more money or resources, or even had a stronger skill, it would be pure arrogance to think he was at the top of the food chain.

Kyle thought back on something his dad had told him a long time ago.

“I was not the best shot, not the strongest, and not the smartest. There were even others who put in more work than I did. I had the will to fight though. Maybe my all wasn’t as much as someone else’s all. I still put it in. If I had fallen, then my all would not have been enough. Sometimes that’s just how life works Kyle. That fear was not going to stop me from trying. One of the strongest and most courageous men I have ever known fell right next to me. None of that mattered once he had a bullet in his brain. I saw the look his eyes as he fell. He had not given up even after it was clear his life was over. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Even with all the advantages life gives you it can all end in an instant. You can face that head on, or cower in fear. I am still cowering in fear, but I keep charging ahead hoping that one day I will finally be brave enough to make a difference. I am charging ahead so that when I finally have that chance and that bravery, I won’t falter. And I’m going to make damn sure that until I feel that way, I do everything I can to prepare myself so I will be able to take that chance and make a difference in this shitty world we live in.”

Kyle had not really understood what it all meant, but for some reason his dad’s words had stuck with him. He was still not sure he knew what it meant, but he felt those words had more meaning now than ever before. Ever since the Change had come with its game like system and killed his father he had felt lost.

Maybe he meant that it was okay to feel lost sometimes. It feels like he wanted to tell me that there would be times when I would feel down and out, but I would have to persevere for the times when I felt better and had a direction. I guess I might not have a direction now, but I’m sure I’ll have one in the future. I guess if I can count on Sarah to make sure of that.

Kyle was not strong now, but he was sure there would come a time in the future when he needed to be, and when that time came, he would be ready.