The following hour had been quiet, but smelly. Even though Nise set up her work table and lay out the sour joys to dry a fair distance away, we could still smell it. The only players in the field was Petals and her pickup group. They had worked methodically to get to the loot dropped by the two Bears. They now faced the five remaining rabbits, but one of them could be a problem for them. The possible troublesome rabbit was only level 1, but it was bigger than the others. The reason why it was bigger, was because it was an enhanced rabbit, or a Tier 1, meaning it had access to more powerful spells and double the amount of attributes per level.

I kept half an eye on them, as I continued butchering the white rabbit in front of me. I finished the final cut, and was quite surprised by the loot in front of me. It had dropped everything, including a rabbit’s foot. At the same time, it provided enough experience to put me over the top. My Butchery skill was now level 4.

“What’s the rabbit’s foot for?” Nise asked, with a bored tone. While waiting for the sour joy to dry, she had nothing to do.

“Most would think it’s worthless, I mean it does nothing and doesn’t even have a value.”

“Why do you seem excited then?”

“Because I know something most people don’t.”

“Kira said you liked being mysterious.”

‘That’s no— well, it might be true,’ I thought, before answering her, “Well, I don’t mean to. But when I have one of each colour, I’ll show you. It involves Greater Transmutation.”

“Oh,” she perked up at the mention of one of her skills, “Speaking of transmuting stuff. I was talking with Fillard, he said it’s pretty expensive in manastones.”

“It can be, but I’m turning out quite a few of them, I just need some rocks and time. It’s almost like printing money,” I said, borrowing a phrase from the 21st century.

“Printing money?” her face scrunched up in confusion. It looked kind of cute.

“At one point, money was made with paper. You printed them,” I explained with a sigh, feeling old. Not because I had ever seen paper money, but as a history teacher, I had been exposed to a lot of culture from earlier centuries.

“That’s so weird,” she said. Then jumped up and headed to her drying sour joys. The process was luckily very fast, just a single hour out in the open and you had dried sour joys. I pulled out the small mortar and pestle for her to use. Seeing that she gave me a smile, “Thanks. I decided to buy the recipe from one of the other vendors. It makes it easier to know what to do.”

“Indeed, especially when dealing with materials that have few crafting points. When we start working with better materials, it’s better to experiment and customize,” I answered and turned my attention back to Petals and her group. One of them had been killed, but they had secured a victory against the rabbits guarding the loot.

A few minutes later Petals and her new friend stood in front of me. It was Petals who spoke for them, “We just defeated this enhanced rabbits, what’s it worth?”

“To be honest, except for the extra XP you earned for killing it. Not a whole lot. For me it gives the same XP as a normal level one rabbit. The only extra thing about is that it has a flat one percent chance of dropping a Monster Core,” I started.

Petals immediately jumped on that, “What is that?”

“It’s a consumable, but because it’s only an enhanced creature, no matter what skill level I have, if it drops it’ll be of very poor quality. Meaning it’ll only provide five XP when consumed. You’ve the same chance and outcome by just looting it, I don’t have a higher chance of getting the Monster Core,” I was being brutally honest, though her new friend looked like he doubted my sincerity.

“But how much extra will you pay for it.”

“To be honest, I shouldn’t even consider paying extra, but I’m willing to pay five coppers extra.”

Leaning in he shouted, “That’s bullshit!”

“Take it or leave it,” I shrugged, not the least bit intimidated by his shouting and getting in my face.

“We’ll take it,” Petals immediately said. After I bought it and the other rabbits from them, they started dividing the loot. The guy left as soon as he had gotten his share. Petals turned back to me, “Sorry. It was a PUG.”

“No problem,” I grinned, and started butchering the enhanced rabbit.

“I’ve seen pictures of pugs. That didn’t look like one,” Nise commented, her voice a bit muffled. She had bought a piece of cloth to cover the lower half of her face.

‘I should’ve thought of that. Throw some perfume or scented soap in, and the stink won’t be as bad,’ I thought.

Petals was the one answering Nise, “It means a pickup group. A random group.”

“Oh,” Nise said, and looked away. I could see the blush in her cheeks.

“Anyway Damian, how come this is the first time I’ve seen one of these enhanced rabbits? I don’t think any of the others have either.”

“I’m surprised that one evolved. The rabbits are not really difficult enemies, so it’s surprising.”

“Evolved?”

“Yes, every creature that kills a number of Travellers or Natives equal to their level plus one, will evolve into an enhanced version. It receives double the attribute points per level, and access to new magic. It seems this one got the kills on both Bears.”

“Yeah, I saw that. It sent Pie flying through the air, not just using wind blades like the others. Can they evolve further?”

“Sure, if they manage to kill another three plus their level, they become special mobs. Of course, they’re rare. But you’ll see that enhanced rabbit at least once more,” I explained as I chopped off the head of the enhanced rabbit.

“Unlike normal creatures, the horned rabbits have become twisted creatures. That means the evolved creatures can respawn. This enhanced rabbit has to die twice without killing another Traveller or Native, the same number as it had to kill to evolve, before it stops respawning.”

“It killed Pie,” Petals muttered.

“Well, then it still has two lives left,” I pointed out, as I finished butchering the rabbit. No Monster Core, just a whole lot of loot. All that was missing was the Monster Core, foot and one eye. It had been a long shot anyway.

She bid me goodbye, and went back to town. Probably needed to sell some of her acquired loot, and find this Pie guy. Me and Nise settled into a companionable silence as we worked. Me, I continued butchering rabbits and making manastone solution. She was focused on making the sour bombs, buying rabbits from the independent players that once again roamed the plains and selling sacks filled with very poor sour joys.

Three hours passed by, when I saw the rest of the guild approaching us. Most of them were smiling and laughing it up, while Ed remained unreadable.

“Hey guys, here for some food?” I greeted them.

“Sure,” Blaze grinned, “Why didn’t you give us a heads up?”

“On what?” I wondered out loud, as I started dicing up some rabbit meat. I noticed Ed slip some manastones to Nise. Probably those that could be recharged. It was good that she got to grind her skills, and instead of recharging I could focus on making new ones.

“On taking down the Bears, we missed their executions!” One-Eye sounded affronted. He had been showing his increased frustration with the Bears and their antics of the last couple of ingame days.

“Not like I planned it,” I grinned.

“What happened?” Blaze demanded eagerly, “I want all the gory and lewd details.”

“There’s no lewd details, nor is it particularly gory. This is what happened,” I then launched into an explanation of the events leading to the Bears’ eleven executions. I managed to time the explanation to the time I cooked for them. The rabbit skewers were bland. Unfortunately now that I was level five I had to eat as well. I was really looking forward to getting my hands on some thyme or carrots from Nise.

When I finished the story, Blaze and One-Eye high-fived. Robin, who was always analysing things, asked, “But isn’t the deaths after the first pointless? I mean they won’t be losing any more XP.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Blaze whined, starting to look a little sad.

I could not help but laugh, “If it had just been us repeatedly killing them, you would be right. However, they were caught and executed by the guards, under the eye of the God of Judgement. That means that there’s an extra punishment.”

Stopping my explanation for effect, and to finish off my own skewer, turned out to be a bad decision; at least according to Blaze. Impatiently he demanded, “Come on, don’t leave us hanging like that. Tell us.”

“Sorry,” I gulped down the last of the skewer, “The first death would be normal. Just losing all skill XP earned since last level up. However, each subsequent one they’ll incur a ten percent penalty. The penalty is ten percent of the needed XP to level up. So if they’ve a skill that is level four, they would need five thousand to level up. Ten percent is five hundred, so now they’re minus five hundred in that skill. The next would put them at minus thousand.”

“And this happened to all their skills, ten times?” One-Eye asked for clarifications with a vicious gleam in his eyes.

Grinning, I nodded, “Indeed. And what’s worse, until they’ve recovered back to zero, the minus is their new lower limit. Each time they die, they revert to minus five thousand on a level four skill, unless they’ve gone back into positive XP.”

“Oh, this is so awesome!” One-Eye roared, jumping up with arms above his head, as if he had just scored a goal. We had gathered a few onlookers who laughed at the Bears misfortune and One-Eye’s enthusiasm.

“The real reason we’re here, is that we finally became a level one party, and unlocked that perk Escort that you mentioned. You said to come find you when that happened,” Ed said while Blaze and One-Eye was coming up with ridiculous plans on getting the Bears punished even further by the law.

“That’s great, how do you feel about going into a dungeon?” I asked. This question garnered me the attention of everyone nearby.

“Has someone discovered a dungeon?” one of the onlookers whispered loudly.

“I’m not going into the sewer any more today,” Kira complained.

“There’s a sewer dungeon?” someone shouted the question.

Robin immediately answered, a bit too fast, as if she was hiding something, “Yes, but it’s crappy.”

I elaborated on her answer, “It’s only level one creatures down there, no real rewards. But if you want to dive it, go to the side of town, find a gazebo made out of plants.”

Turning back to my own guild, I addressed Kira’s concerns, “No, not the sewer dungeon, but a level five dungeon.”

“Where is it?” Ed demanded, “I’ve not heard that anyone had found one.”

“See that hill over there?” I pointed to a hill halfway to the forest.

Someone in the crowd asked, “Isn’t that the Hill of Dead?”

Another answered, “Yeah, it’s filled with level five rabbits. Twenty of them, it’s suicide to approach. You can’t pull one with aggroing every single one of them.”

“Indeed. That hill has a spatial rift leading to a dungeon world,” I said, not particularly concerned hoarding the details. It would be discovered soon anyway, since the players had reached level six or higher. It was only a matter of time.

“Dungeon world?” Ed’s eyebrows furrowed.

“It’s a special kind of dungeon. It leads to a pocket dimension or something. You can end up in the mountains, in a forest or underground. You never know. After two hours you’re transported out of it, no matter what you’re doing.”

“Two hours doesn’t sound like a lot of time to explore a pocket dimension,” Blaze pointed out.

“No, but time works differently in there. We’re talking about two hours in Carn, but the time is further dilated in there. Up to six times more than the main game. Unless you’re unlucky and get the one where time moves at the same speed of the real world,” I chuckled.

“How do you know all this?” some random guy asked.

“Know a beta tester,” I answered. The half-lie had become a bit too easy to deliver.

“But how do we get there?” Ed was once again demanding answers, instead of just trusting that I knew what I was talking about.

“Do you mind?” I asked Nise, and picked up one of her sour bombs, “With these.”

I let everyone Inspect it for a few seconds, before loudly stating, “Our guildmate Nise will be selling these to any interested parties. Limited stock. Starting price is two and a half silver coins on the low end.”

I then picked up twenty of the stock she had finished, costing me seven hundred contribution points. Turning to the party, I smiled, “Before we go there, we need to do some shopping though.”

Thirty minutes later found us in front of the Hill of Dead. The use of the sour bombs had cleared a path. And I still had twelve of them remaining. Should be enough to make a hole and get to the rift, as well as getting out of there later. A few independent players were observing us from afar. They wanted to see if we were successful.

I had One-Eye, Kira and Robin each throw one of the sour bombs at the front of the hill. The rabbits screeched, as they moved away from the stench created by Kira’s bomb, then Robin’s fell, and they pulled even further back. Leaving us enough space to rush to the top of the hill. One-Eye’s bomb ensured that they moved even further away. My increased Strength due to my level ups really helped, meaning I did not need help pulling the cart up the hill.

“I don’t see a rift or dungeon around here,” Ed commented loudly, as we were halfway up the hill.

“You’ll see it soon enough,” I shook my head. He was starting to get on my nerves. As soon as One-Eye, who was in front, reached the top of the hill, a loud crack boomed. The crack sounded like ice breaking apart. Accompanying the sound, was a disturbing sight of the fabric of reality tearing in two in front of us. A diagonal tear appeared in front of is. The black which reminded me of the void in space, almost seemed to shimmer, wriggling as if alive.

Seeing them sliding to a stop, I shouted, “Just hurry in there, before the sour bombs wear off.”

Kira was the first to react and jumped into the rift. I cast Observe on it, just to be sure that I remembered correctly.

Dungeon Name

Type

Max Party Size

The Rabbit Warren

Small Pocket World

Apprentice

Recommended Level

Creature Level

Times Entered Today

5

3 to 7

0/1

A blue rabbit overcame its disgust, and got close enough to launch an icicle at me. Luckily I was in motion, so it whizzed right past me. However, it had been close, ‘Maybe I should invest a little in vitality now that I’ve reached twenty in Dexterity and Endurance.’

When I was about to enter the rift, a pop up demanded my immediate attention.

You’re about to enter a dungeon as an escortee of the Gold Squad.

WARNING

Since this is your first time entering a dungeon as an escortee, you’re receiving this explanation.

As an escortee the following rules apply.

-You cannot harm, heal or buff any creatures or the members of the party. But you can be harmed.

-Anything you pick up the party can’t touch. Anything they pick up, you can’t touch.

-You’re only allowed to trade item once per tier of the party leader’s Leadership skill.

-You’ll not earn any XP for kills made by the party.

-You’ll not be accredited with completion of the dungeon.

Do you still wish to enter?

Yes/No

I already knew about the rules, so I just accepted and entered hot on the heels of Robin, who was the last party member to enter.

Entering the rift felt like entering ice cold water, immediately followed by the gut wrenching, nauseating displacement of teleportation. Looking around, I noticed we were in complete darkness. Either we were underground or it was a starless night. Because it was pitch black. I heard Ed mutter a few words, and light spread as he summoned a fire elemental from the one fire manastone I had finished charging for him.

The elemental did not spread a lot of light, but enough light for both me and Ed to light our torches we had bought earlier. While I was fumbling with my flint and steel, I kept an eye on the clock showing the ingame time, “We’re a bit unlucky it seems. We’re not getting time compressed further, so we only have two hours before we get thrown out.”

“Okay,” Ed commented and started looking around. He was better at lighting a torch than I was, I observed with a wry smile.

“How do we divide loot?” Blaze asked, sounding a little high pitched.

“Anything any of us find or recover goes into the common pool. Each of you get two shares, while Damian and I get three shares,” Ed answered immediately. By the time I got my torch lit, he had already made a full circle with himself and the elemental. We were in a small oblong stone cavern, with three exits. Two in one end, and one in the other. I had also noticed a few lighter patches of stone in as he made his round; mining nodes.

“Which path are we taking?” Robin asked.

Ed pondered it for a moment, “The one in the back. Hopefully we’ll have time to look at the others.”

“You go ahead, and when you’ve cleared the next room, come get me. Just don’t touch the corpses, otherwise I can’t butcher them,” I told them, “Oh, and if you hear me screaming like Blaze, I’m in trouble.”

With confusion in his face, Blaze asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means you scream like a little girl,” One-Eye chuckled before ducking into the tunnel, just behind the elemental.

“I don’t scream like a girl,” Blaze huffed, and followed behind Kira into the tunnel. A few seconds later I was alone in the cavern.

“Oh, watch out for traps,” I shouted down the tunnel. Loud cursing flowed back, followed by a “should’ve figured” from Ed. Chuckling, I turned my attention to the node in front of me and cast Observe. It turned out to be a common level 1 node. Which was actually lucky for me. Sure I would have liked some rare node instead, but the levels would be higher, and I had not even unlocked mining yet. If I wanted to know what kind of node it was, I would need the Prospect spell.

Putting the torch on the ground, I summoned my newly acquired pickaxe from my inventory. I felt I should probably spit in both hands before taking my first swing, but I discarded the silly notion, and just swung with all my might.

You’ve unlocked the skill Mining, do you wish to learn this skill at this time?

Yes/No

Since I had a skill slot to spare, I chose to learn the skill. To be frank, even if I did not have a skill slot to spare, I would still have learned it. Next I took a glance at the log.

>You’ve hit an Unknown Node, level 1. 50 stamina spent.<

>Roll for damage, 1d4: 4 - 1 (pickaxe) - 1 (Node level) + 0 (Mining level) + 5 (strength) = 7.<

>Unknown Node’s remaining durability: 18/25.<

The five point in strength really helped me out here. Another four hits followed before the section of cavern wall in front of me grumbled, leaving behind its loot. Taking another glance at the log, just to get an idea of what was waiting for me.

>You’ve mined Unknown Node, level 1.<

>Roll for loot: 22.<

>Roll for quality: 41 - Quality remains Below Average.<

>You’ve gained 17 Mining XP.<

Looking at the ground, I saw four rocks of below average quality, and a single lump of tin. The rocks were of four different sizes. A small, like I was already using for making manastones, a medium, a big one and a large one. The largest rock was the size of a closed fist. The larger sizes provided more crafting points, but also used more solution to create the manastones and a larger manastonekit. A medium rock would provide twice the number of crafting points, but consume three uses of the manastone solution.

The tin was not something that was really useful to me at the moment, but it was loot, and better than nothing. I sat down for a few minutes to regenerate my spent stamina. I moved on to the next node, a common level 5. Sighing I looked around for another node, because it would take far too long to get through the 125 durability when I was only able to do 0 to 3 damage with each hit.

Unfortunately there was only those two in the end I was in. I had seen a few down at the other end, but it was simply too dangerous, my banging on the wall might lure in rabbits from the two corridors. Instead, I sat down and switched between meditating and imbuing, while waiting for the others to come back.

After eight minutes they were finally back to get me. The others moved towards the other tunnels, while Robin quickly informed me, “It leads to a dead end, there’s eight rabbits down there, but the tunnel narrows, so you can’t bring the cart.”

“Okay, are you taking the left or right tunnel?” I asked as I started moving around a few items in my inventory.

“Blaze says you always go left,” she sounded doubtful.

“Well, that’s one way to decide,” I replied with a grin. She just shook her head, before hurrying through the dark to catch up. Having sorted my inventory, I spent the next few minutes walking down the tunnel. The new chamber I came to, was a smaller version of the last one. With one major difference. There was glowing moss on the wall, which made me giddy. The moss came in three different colour; red, green and blue. And they were one of the ingredients that could be used in healing, stamina and mana potions. The other thing needed was ground horns from the white rabbits, or similar, and an alcohol base for the potion.

I turned my attention to the rabbits first though. There were eight as Robin had claimed, five of them level 3, two of them level 4 and one level 5. The fifth level rabbit was an enhanced specimen. One of the perks of going into dungeons was that they spawned monsters all the way up to tier 4 elite monsters, without players needing to die. Because of the uncomfortable working position, working on the ground instead of a table, it took me a couple extra minutes total to butcher them.

Next I spent fifteen minutes scraping moss off the wall, before heading back to the entrance cavern. I left reluctantly though, because I had spotted three nodes in there. I was not even halfway, when I was met by a very irritated looking group. Ed snarled, “Where have you been?”

“I was collecting the moss, it’s used for healing potions etcetera,” I gave him a look that was a bit cold. I would have to remind him who was boss another time, it was not the right place or time with in audience, to take that conversation.

“You were taking too long,” he huffed before turning around. Rolling my eyes, I followed them back to the main cavern.

“We ran into an underground lake, but no creatures down that tunnel, just a long ass walk,” Blaze complained.

“We need to find you a light spell,” I commented.

“Tell me about it, there were probably treasures hidden down there,” he nodded along. I had been impressed, he had not said anything inappropriate for the entire trip as far as I knew. Of course, just to shoot that impression down, he mused with a creepy smile, “Or some hot naked mermaids. I wonder what it would be like sleeping with one. What do you think?”

Groaning, I just concentrated on the tunnel ahead of me. What was only a few minutes, suddenly felt like a lot longer as he launched into a one-sided discussion about mermaid anatomy.