The running was constant and fierce. They were now coming from all sides leaving only straight ahead left to go. It only made matters worse as Jude’s stamina was running out. His arms burned with the strain carrying Ellie for such a long period of time. But if he turned left or right, he would just end up trapped even worse.

If the situation hadn’t been dire, he would have been amazed at how long he had lasted. Never before had he been so fit! Able to run for so long while carrying someone else was abnormal, at least for Jude's old life.

But now there was a hill!

^&*#!!! Jude wasn’t one to swear, but sometimes it just comes out.

The hill started slowing Jude down and that’s when he noticed that there were caves on this hillside. As he moved forward a foreboding sense filled the air, not long followed by the smell of death.

“Oh no!” Ellie said. “It’s the Grimwar Caves!”

“It’s the wha—“ before he could finish, the ground fell out from below them and darkness overtook them.

***

“Hold!” The Trainer shouted as soon as he saw the lover's pair fall. “Now let’s quickly retreat!”

“Why are we retreating? I thought we were going to kill those two?” Said the bloodthirsty Shield.

The Trainer looked at him mockingly, “They just fell into the Grimwar Caves, are you sure you want to stay?”

“The Grimwar Caves?!” The healer said. “We need to get out of here before the undead come out and surround us!”

Shield paled as well, even now there were already skeletons crawling out of the caves.

The Trainer then decided to use this as a good time to teach, “I’m sure you’ve all heard of the horrors of Grimwar Caves. This is the most dangerous place in all of the newbie zone. Not only is there a never ending stream of undead, they are notoriously difficult to kill. Most people end up surrounded and overrun.

“So if you guys want to keep your lives, make sure you don’t lag behind. Because they will not only come out of the caves but out of the ground as well! You saw how those two fell into the ground? They are already dead.”

***

The fall wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Merely 5 meters or so and Jude found out another interesting fact about his : it absorbed fall damage. As soon as he landed the shield popped like a glass bubble, but neither he or Ellie had been injured.

Which was great for what happened next!

Cobalt blue eyes lit up inside numerous skeletons eye sockets. As if they had once died on the floor, they now started to rise up. The room was no bigger than 6x6 meters (400 sq/f room) and had three doorways, leaving one wall without a door.

That’s right, it was a room with doors. Jude was momentarily confused. He thought the Grimwar Caves would be, well, caves. But this was clearly a room. There was a lot of questions and no answers. However, now was not the time to ask. At least 10 skeletons were making their way towards him.

Still holding Ellie, who was now scared out of her mind, he made his way out one of the doorways. Now he found himself in a small hallway with a high rocky roof. It was too dark for him to see more.

“!” Jude said trying to create a floating flame for light. The magic sputtered but didn’t fully form, puffing out.

“F*%K!” This time he really did curse out loud.

Ellie had also noticed the problem and had already pulled out a crystal the size of a small sword handle. She squeezed it and much like a glow stick, there was a slight crack sound and green light started to light up the area.

Satisfied, Jude started to make his way down the hall, but before he left the doorway he decided to try one more thing.

“.” He said creating a purple door that fit into the passage. He wasn’t sure if it would hold, but it was worth trying.

He now put Ellie down, in case he had to fight and they made their way to the end of the skinny hallway. This came true very soon as they came to a large pile of debris nearly blocking the path. Inside the debris was a stuck skeleton whose blue eyes came to live as they approached.

A chopped its exposed parts to bits, yet somehow it still lived even without its head.

Just as they made it over the ‘wiggling’ debris the skeletons behind them burst through the door.

At least it slowed them down a bit. Jude thought.

The skinny hallway came to an end and Jude didn’t like what he saw. The area opened up and was much larger. A combination of cave and structure. The floor was mostly paved, like a cobble stone street. There were a variety of walls: some smooth, some jagged and other walls of stacked stone like a dungeon. The ceiling was uneven containing many dark and hidden places.

At first, there didn’t seem to be any skeletons out here. But as soon as their presence entered the place, skeletons started crawling out of ever dark corner and nook, every broken hole and pile of refuse. There were far more here than from the first room!

Jude’s mind worked quickly. To get out of this situation he would need a plan. But first, he had to assess what he could do.

He knew that these skeletons had more HP than the goblins. His average damage now was over 100 when using which would one shot a goblin from before. But since it didn’t kill that last skeleton, that meant they had more health. Another important note was that they couldn’t be critically hit. Headshots almost always gave a critical hit and he had obliterated that skeletons head without killing it.

Next was the sheer amount of skeletons. They seemed to be without end. But they were slow. Allowing him to get around them. But he knew better from his old world that things like these had a tendency to surround you even when they were slow. And this environment would only help them with that. He needed a place where they would only attack him from one direction, but also wouldn’t back him into a corner.

Lastly was mana. He had a max of 94 and was currently at 91 with a regen rate of 1.57 per minute. So as long as he only used one and a half attacks every minute he could do it forever. This, of course, wasn’t feasible. There was just too many.

As Jude saw it, his options were to run, level up or skill up. Running was nixed as he didn’t know the best way out. Leveling was also nixed as he would run out of mana. And since level 5, he no longer got his HP and MP back after leveling too. Level 5 was apparently the end of that grace period. So his best option was to hole himself up somewhere until he could rank up his skills to something even more powerful.

The decision made, he quickly looked for a doorway that had a door. Seeing one not far away, he grabbed his sword in one hand and Ellie’s hand in the other. There were 3 skeletons in the way. The first one was easily avoided, the second one he took out its legs with and the last one must have been lower level or something as it died in one hit.

“Where are we going,” Ellie finally asked as we ducked into the next room.

“I have a plan; we just need to hold ourselves up for a while. Find a secure room!” Jude closed the door behind them.

There were only five skeletons in this room. Oddly enough it looked like an old tavern. Jude quickly cast his , but this time he used a longer cast duration and a sword formation. The swords followed one after another like a long bizarre ribbon. It swept the room one direction hitting 4 over the skeletons. Then looped back and permanently took down 3 of them. The last sweep took out the rest.

The maneuver was far quicker than his normal method, but it came at a steep price of 32 mana. This was far greater than his normal usage. But he needed to eliminate them as quickly as possible.

He spied the stairs and quickly decided that the deeper they went in, the less likely they would draw large groups of skeletons.

“Quick, grab the weapons and head upstairs!” Jude told Ellie.

Without a reply, she immediately took to the task. Jude also grabbed 2 weapons the skeletons had dropped and put them into his .

They went up the stairs and there was another hallway that had several doors along it. Just as I thought, this is exactly like a tavern. But what is it doing in a dungeon?

Going down the hallway, the sounds of ‘occupants’ could be heard in some of the rooms. Jude ignored all the other doors and choose the last one. Carefully opening it he was relieved to find that it was empty.

He took a chair then pushed it up under the door handle to block the door. He checked the ‘window’ to only find a stone wall on the other side.

The neighboring rooms were starting to get noisier.

“What are we going to do?!” Ellie asked in a panic.

“!” Jude said creating two spectral blankets. “Quick, wrap yourself in this.”

“Why?” She asked, but still complied.

“Because it’s made from spectral magic.”

“What does that have to—“ her voice had quieted to a whisper and the noise outside settled down as well. “What happened?”

“Think about it, spectral magic, spectral, specter? is all about manipulating the ether. The objects I made are all ghost like. That’s because Spectral Magic has a very close relation to ghost and the undead. If I had to guess, what sustains the skeletons is ether. So making these blankets and covering ourselves will blanket our scent.”

“Our scent?”

“Yeah, I was hoping it would keep us from their sight too, but they busted through the spectral door, so I guess that’s a no go.”

“Then how did you know that it would work this time?”

“I didn’t, it was an educated guess.”

Ellie didn’t look pleased with that comment.

“Look,” Jude said, “even if it didn’t work, I needed time to recover my mana and this was still the best place to do so. This was the best place to do that.”

“So this was your plan…”

“No, this was just a stop gap. My plan is to get us out of here.” Jude smiled.

***

The Trainer and his trainees all walked back to town. The young Warriors were in high spirits as they thoroughly enjoyed chasing after and dooming the couple of newbies from earlier. The Healer and Rogue, however, were not as pleased but kept their mouths shut. The Trainer would normally be feeling like the Warriors, somehow did not. He had a very nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.

Seeing crafters, especially freelance ones, out in the field to gather materials was not that rare. However, seeing them by the goblin area was quite rare unless they had a full group to escort them. To see one with only one other person was odd. And for that one person to be a Wizard, was odder still.

The only thing that made sense was that the Wizard was at least level 10. At level 10, Wizards gained and Rank II of unlocked . That would account for his shield spell and his confidence in the area. The goblins on the outskirts were only level 5 and a level 10 Wizard would have no problem with them. Most likely he was leading his girlfriend out to help her level. But what didn’t make sense was an unaffiliated wizard.

Wizards are the rarest class, as one had to be born into it. Warriors and Rogues are relatively easy to acquire as it only required one to kill with a specific weapon. Healer is more troublesome, but with enough patience and training, one could still gain that class. No one knew how to gain the Wizard class, it was speculated that you had to kill a mob with a spell, but that spell had to be a Wizard spell. One required the other, hence it was deemed impossible.

Unaffiliated Wizards are truly a rare thing. Every organization out there would offer bountiful rewards to any Wizard. So the Trainer knew that the Wizard they had chased had to be a part of some sort of organization.

The group arrived back to town at the end of the day. Grimwar Caves was the furthest location away from town in the newbie area. The Trainer immediately reported to the Head Trainer for the Riwa Kingdom here in town.

Abaud, the Trainer, told Guudnash, the Head Trainer, the whole story. He did not leave out a detail.

“Abaud, you are truly an idiot!” Guudnash said.

“How is this any different than when you trained me?!” Abaud replied astounded.

“I don’t remember having you attack any wizard out in the open! I may have had you kill some newbies back then, but at least I made sure no one knew them! I got you this job, because you’re like a son to me. But if this kid’s organization finds out we are responsible for his death, it could be our hides to pay!”

“But who would oppose the Riwa Kingdom? Especially in our own territory! At most we would only half to pay a fine.”

“A fine?! Maybe if it was a Healer! But this is a Wizard we are talking about. Even our own kingdom won’t protect us from that. Wizards are just that important!”

“If it’s that bad, then we should start some damage control. Perhaps we can make him out to be the bad guy.”

“Huh?” Guudnash was surprised, “That’s not a bad idea. Tell me your plan Abaud.”