The next few hours were a blur for Myles.

When he had come to, Myles was in the office from before, alone, leaning back into the chair as if he’d never left its cozy embrace. He was barely even conscious before he was rushed by a small army, shoved through doors, stuffed into, out of, and through a variety of closets, and assigned a room before he even had a chance to ask what had happened or how he’d even gotten back into the chair he’d been so unceremoniously dumped from into the trials.

Up until he’d gone through the closets, Myles still didn’t have his shirt back, so it couldn’t have all been in his head, could it?

Still, he couldn’t complain as he lay in what had to be the most comfortable bed he’d ever had the pleasure of putting his weight on. It wasn’t just springs and stuffing. No, that wouldn’t do for one of his kind it seemed. Qualified runners were treated to the finest of the fine. When he looked under the mattress, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. There were mana crystals embedded under and into the mattress, reshaping it as his bodies moved keeping it into the perfect comfortable cradled of sleep.

The wealth of it all was unreal! The sheer cost of the bed alone almost made him sick.

Then again, he and whoever else qualified would become the nation’s most important event for the next… however long it took for a group to reach the bottom.

Or for everyone to die.

Myles really didn’t want to think of that second option though, so he propped his head up on his pillow and thought about the other Runs. At least, what he could recall of them.

The first run of the grand dungeons was notorious. It took place almost as soon as the five grand dungeons were properly evaluated by their kingdom. Every hero in every kingdom was briefed on the rules that existed, but even with that information, the run only lasted a month, seeing as everyone died off rather quickly.

Despite the warnings, not one hero thought through about what it would take, why the rules were in place, and simply went into it thinking that the Run was like every other dungeon they’d ever dived. No one gave a second thought to the gathering phase, the build phase, or the fact the first floor could open safe havens from monsters. They were the best, most celebrated heroes of the collected kingdoms. What could this dungeon throw at them that they hadn’t seen before.

But no, they all ran in with their supplies and died.

It only took two weeks for dungeon to recharge its power and the call from the kingdoms to go out again. With that call, the second running began. Myles only knew that this group did much better overall compared to the heroes of the other kingdoms with almost five years in the dungeon. One of them almost made it to the bottom, but they all died as well.

Runs three and four ran about the same, but had almost as many causalities as the first two. However, both runs produced teams of four that had reached the bottom floor. Their names were legendary: Kia the Relentless — [Barbarian Queen], Quill the Vast - [Ink Sage], Ris the Redeemer of Souls — [Soulcaller], Darwin the Everchanging — [Changling], Dalf the Impassable — [Barrier Sage], Nyeban the Clever — [Trickster], Noir the Black — [Nightcaster], and Embertail the Everburning — [Pyromanctic Supreme]. They served as the beacons of power, heroes in their own rights thanks to the power of their unique Classes, clearing monster nests and shoring up Kess’s power for years. Only Embertail, Darwin, and Noir served in an official capacity still, the rest vanishing back into legend.

The fifth run was a record twelve years! Twelve years! They set the precedent for how the run should be done. After clearing the first level, the Runners had taken on dual positions, runners and townsfolk. No group before had put such thought and effort into establishing a base of operations, but everyone learned from them. It was the first Run where more people had come out than had gone in! The run produced fifteen new heroes, and a group of children born with hero classes like [Paladin] and [Druid]!

The sixth lasted ten years and followed the fifth’s ideas, but the sixth was the first with true broadcasting. When the fifth was shown to the world, they devoured it, and new rules were put into place. Myles didn’t even want to think how having a sponsor already could affect his future performance. Just like everyone else, he was going in with what he could carry and nothing else.

Looking over at the table on the right of the room, he sighed. There was still the paperwork to complete, and it wasn’t going to complete itself. So he hauled himself from the comfort, dragged himself over, and began reading the stacks of paperwork and first round rules.

He still had a lot to learn.

***

As the pen scratched Myles’s approval one last time, the sun was far below the horizon of the floating city, and he was exhausted.

One day.

One day was all that was left until his trial began. One day before he’d have to really put this [Monster Tamer] class to the test.

“Interface”

One of the general skills of being a Runner, Interface was probably the most useful. After it was spoken, he felt a wave of mana passing over his body and then moving to his hands, manifesting a nearly solid, blue window of crystal with easily legible white text across it in three columns that he was just beginning to understand.

Name: Myles Chase

Age: 18

Sex: Male

Race: Human

Patron:

Primary Class:

Monster Tamer

Unskilled

Secondary Class:

Baker

Proficient

Brawn - 11

Dexterity - 15

Will - 13

Influence - 14

Soul Energy: 50/50

Elemental Alignment:

Title: Runner (Kess)

Skills:

Bait

Soul Link

Monster Lore - Expanded

Neophyte’s Item Lore

Keen Eye

Traits:

Taste Test

Deft Hands

Resourceful

Mind over Matter

Toss of a Coin

Empathic Link

He’d heard about the interface before, but this was the first time he was able to view it for himself. Usually, it took a [Skill Master] or an [Anointer] to view the life’s work of another, but here he was, looking at it for himself.

For the first time, Myles could see the way his world was broken down. He knew that the four life stats, Brawn, Dexterity, Will, and Influence, all related back to his life up until this moment. His dad used to joke that it was based around apples.

Brawn was his body’s general toughness and regulated how strong he was to how much it would take for him to succumb to injury, or how many apples he could lift and have thrown at him.

Dexterity was how quickly his body could respond to his thoughts and how fast his hands and feet could move. How quickly he could dodge and catch the apples throw at him.

Will was a combination of his intelligence, wisdom, and spirituality, or how much smarter he was than an apple. Intelligence was the easy one for Myles to figure out. Wisdom and spirituality were always a bit more abstract, and they seemed to overlap a lot more.

Influence was the strangest.

Influence was how well he dealt with others and how well he knew himself. He’d always heard it called charisma, but it always felt like more than just that. Otherwise, why wasn’t it just called charisma? Influence was always important in his line of work; it was what it took to sell the apples for the price he wanted.

The numbers were just as important. Myles knew from the information he’d been given that normal humans had an average stat level between 10 and 15 to be considered average to the higher side of it. Anything over 15 was considered to be above average and reaching into the 20s was extremely skilled. Knowing that, he was pretty proud of his Dexterity and his Influence.

The heroes of legend though?

Their stat levels were rumored to be in the 40s or higher. A realm most people just called heroic. Of course, the only people that knew those stats were the heroes themselves and whoever kept track of the hero’s progress in the kingdom. What would it be like to have four or five times his strength, his speed, his intelligence? It was like trying to figure out what it would be like to command the sun.

Myles had a feeling he wasn’t the only one that would be thinking about all this. According to the primer he’d been given to read, anyone with the title of Runner gained access to the Interface skill as a general skill. General skills were simple skills given to improve the performance of the Runner’s by the powers governing the grand dungeons. In addition to Interface, he would be able to form groups and communicate across long distances with them as well as distribute loot fairly among his party if he deemed it important enough to invoke the Need/Greed skill.

However, that wasn’t what he was concerned about. He’d finally been able to get a better idea what his skills did. Well, two skills in specific.

—

Soul Link

Skill Type: Active - Monster Tamer

Cost: 10 SE

Distance: 20 Ft.

Success Determination: Influence against Attitude, Brawn, Influence, and/or Will

Effect: Forge a link between your soul and the soul of another willing creature. A successful link will give you access to the creature’s interface and control of the evolution of their skills and traits. This creature gains the Soul Linked status at the cost of 1 SE per forged link. As a Link ages, more abilities are conferred. All new links begin as Simple Links.

Status Effect - Soul Linked: A creature under the effect of Soul Linked shares in your growth and benefits from your individual trait bonuses as if they were naturally part of its own. For all intents and purposes, the creature is considered an extension of the tamer. The death of a Soul Linked creature invokes the Soul Shivered attribute for X hours, where X was the number of day’s the creature was bonded to you.

Status Effect - Soul Shivered: All Traits are reduced by X, where X is the bonus granted between you and your creature. Soul Shivered effects are divided among all active Soul Links.

Empathic Link

Skill Type: Passive - Monster Tamer

Cost: None

Distance: 42 Ft. (Influence x3 Ft.)

Success Determination: Soul Link Strength, nature, traits

Effect: Feel the emotions of your monsters through your Soul Linked status effect. Using this link, send mental commands for your monster to follow directions, use skills, retrieve materials or perform other actions. Success varies on the monster’s traits to perform the requested action and their intelligence.

—

The ability was long, that was for sure, but at least it made sense. His soul energy would sustain a link between him and a monster, but he could only make as many links as he had SE, which came from… somewhere? Not to mention if his monsters died, he would be crippled for quite a while unless he had other links to mitigate the damage.

He really, really didn’t like that, but it encouraged him to find monsters at least.

Then there was Empathic Link. The way it was explained… almost worried him. Would it work two ways? Would he feel their emotions as well?

Well, as much as he hated to think on it, it wouldn’t do him any good to worry about it now. Not until he had a monster of his own to test it on, and if worse got to worse, he could always try to upgrade his [Baker] class into one of the others he’d seen.

Finally getting up from the desk with his work behind him, Myles went over to the window and looked outside. The sun was gently beginning to set over the edge of the normal world as he looked out across the floating city. The sky was beginning to turn black while Myles watched, and the stars began to ignite in the sky like a thousand thousand fireflies. As the city moved in its orbit around the nation, clouds lazily bumped into the city and parted like water around it or turned to fog as they flowed through the streets. It was a beautiful thing, and it would be the last time he saw the floating city and the walls below from the outside for a long, long time.

Well, unless he screwed up and died, but he didn’t really want to think about that particular aspect of things.

As if on cue, the smell of a thick stew and fresh bread wafted up from under his door as someone began knocking. Thoughts of doom could wait. Myles’s stomach was the only threat at the moment, and it was growling at him like a dire bear after hibernation.