“Jarrod! You’re alive, what in Chaos happened?!” Jumping at the abrupt noise and spinning around standing behind Jarrod was his father at the head of a contingent of guardsmen.

“What? What do you mean? I just went into the dungeon like all new Awakened would do.” I don’t want to tell them anything at the moment, they already think I’m weird, I don’t need to give them anything else to complain about or gossip about. Gods all I want is a nice warm meal and my bed. I’m so done.

“Well, I would’ve guessed you’d have entered the Chaos forsaken place, but on your own? I knew you had a chip on your shoulder, you felt like you wanted to prove something, but never before have I heard of anyone doing anything so monumentally stupid. Everybody enters these places as a group for a reason. They are dangerous, I don’t care that The Father is your patron he won’t protect you inside system run dungeons. You’re lucky you got out alive, not to mention how long it’s been!? Three days! Three days? No one’s run ever lasts three days, people are in and out within 12 hours. Your feet?! What am I going to tell your mother? Oh, she’s going to hit the roof. You’ll be lucky to see the sun again before next midsummer festival boy. Get home, get home now.”

Hanging his head, simmering with a rage barely contained, biting his tongue at multiple opportunities rather than snapping back at his father, he bent down to collect his reward sack. Slinging it over his shoulder, ignoring the other guardsmen, as well as his father and the glances they were all casting at that same sack. A few of them tried to say something to him, but he didn’t wait around, by this point he was fifty feet away and the gap was growing, giving him a reason to ignore their questions.

By the time he was home, his rage had settled from a raging bonfire to a coalesced deep-seated nugget sat in his core. How dare they? He didn’t even ask how I was?! Just because I’m not identical to him, just because I want to go and see the world, have an adventure or two. All of that in front of his friends, belittling me and why? Just because I wanted to get out of this shithole, dead-end village, because I don’t want my life to be stunted and grow up having 14 in-bred children with whichever chicken-fucker my parents dump on me!?

Not stopping for breath, nor pausing to wish his mother hello, not even checking his system notifications he slammed the door to his house open strode directly to his bedroom and slammed the door shut so hard the entire house shook.

“Jarrod Shatterstone, I don’t care what you have fought about with your father now you were missing for over three days, without so much as a how do you do, or telling me where the fuck you were going!? Here, there’s food outside your door, you eat every Gods forsaken mouthful and you will be civil later when he’s back or I’ll have your hide myself.” The entire tirade was delivered at absolute maximum volume, with copious amounts of slamming and crashing from his mother’s part. A quite frankly prodigious amount in fact.

He knew he wouldn’t be disturbed until the next morning; his mother would keep everyone out, even her own husband Gerald. Now with a chance to breathe, he could look over everything in the sack, as well as any system messages following his successful completion (after a fashion) of the very first dungeon!

Congratulations Jarrod Shatterstone, you have successfully completed the maximum challenge tier available of The Goblins Grotto / Home of Elouan’s Chosen. For your successful completion, as well as your unorthodox final challenge review you have earned two levels.

You have earned the ability to understand, speak, read and write Goblin, Ancient Goblin and High Goblin.

You have earned a lavish sack.

You have earned four new achievements.

Dungeon Diver [1] [Common]

You have successfully completed your first dungeon. This is your first step on the road to greatness. Here is to many more.

This achievement will evolve with further completions.

+1 to all stats when in a dungeon setting

1 achievement point

Challenge Dungeon Completion [1] [Rare]

You have successfully completed your first challenge tier dungeon. This is an incredible feat, bards would make songs that last generations describing your feats of strength, expertise and power. You are undoubtably due to complete great feats.

+10 to all stats when in an elite or challenge dungeon setting.

This achievement will evolve with further completions.

10 achievement points.

Flawless Dungeon Clearing [1] [Uncommon]

You have successfully cleared all dungeon challenges on your first attempt. You have not had to withdraw from the dungeon and re-enter it with foreknowledge of the challenge. Your ability to react and act on a whim is unparalleled at your level.

This achievement will evolve with further completions.

+5 to LUCK when in a dungeon setting

5 achievement points

Flawless Dungeon Completion [1] [Uncommon]

Your ability in a dungeon is second to none. You have completed a dungeon without losing a single member of your party, either to death or retreating from the dungeon. The ability to keep your party together, hale and healthy is a remarkable feat for anyone to have achieved.

This achievement will evolve with further completions.

+2 CON to all party members when in a dungeon setting.

5 achievement points.

Wow! What an amazing power boost for my next dungeon. I’m going in with +11 to all stats, a further +5 for LUCK as well as +2 CON on top of that! I think that’s more than enough that I’ll be able to save my free points to allocate as and when. No need to apply them just now when there’s no immediate reason to.

After reviewing his system messages, Jarrod felt a lot happier and more at peace. A very significant power boost from a fraught, dangerous but eventually successful dungeon clear did seem like a fair reward. Reviewing back his messages however, there was at no point a choice to select the challenge level of the dungeon, he still had no idea why it had dropped him in to the hardest possible tier of any system dungeon. He truly would’ve been incredibly happy with clearing a standard challenge of dungeon, one with a few scattered malnourished goblins in. Instead, he had been fighting for his life, relying on his wits and his sheet LUCK stat at various points as well.

He took stock of what he had before opening up the sack. He had a scroll case he still for neither love nor money could open. He had a ring that would protect him from arcane damage to a certain degree. He had a blade of some wickedly sharp black stone. He had 1 gold, 16 silver in a small coin purse and a goblin made satchel. He had an uncut emerald of an indeterminate worth, and finally there was the tome. Now that he had chance to look at it more fully, without risk of being shanked by goblin assassins or being eaten by some ridiculous earth, stone and soil eating liquid he saw that its leather was actually a deep burnished red orange in colour. On the front cover was stylistic imagery of spreading flames, down the spine ran symbols that previously would’ve eluded Jarrod but was now able to read perfectly.

“True mastery of the wild-flame, gifted by Elouan.”

As he traced the spine and read its title, he was alarmed by a system message that flashed across his vision.

Do you wish to change class? You will lose all your stat gains in your current class, starting again at level 1. Please confirm / deny.

That message was the very last thing he expected to happen, panic flooded him and instinctively he started shaking his head before replying out loud to make sure the system couldn’t misunderstand him.

“No! No no no no. No definitely not, I wish to stay exactly as I am thanking you very much”

Taking a few moments to let his heart stop racing quite so fast, he stood and quickly scooped up the bowl of stew and glass of watered-down beer his Mom had left outside his door for him. Taking a few minutes to get all of it into him before it went cold (or in the case of the beer room-temperature warm) he felt much more satisfied. That left only one task to accomplish before sleeping for a solid 18 hours.

Sliding open the drawstring on the sack, it unfolded of its own accord before slowly pooling beneath a small pile of items and dissolving into nothingness. There was a cloak of fine blue cloth, edged in white fur folded neatly on the bottom. Sat on top were a pair of leather boots, the same green as forest moss, with a fine belt buckle made of steel sat on top. To one side sat a bulging coin pouch. Reaching first for the coin pouch, he pulled open the drawstring and gaped agog at the wealth he found within. He tipped the coinage out across his mattress and swiftly counting it, accounted for 17 gold and 157 silver, bringing his total material wealth up to 18 gold and 173 silver coins. He had, in his own possession more now than his father would earn in just over 100 cycles. That was frankly an insane amount of money – especially when a party could expect 60 – 75 silver for a full clear of the dungeon at its base level. He was set up for whatever he wanted; he could buy anything he could think of. A fine house, a four-horse carriage, as many fine steel weapons as he wanted. Even after all of that he would have a huge amount of wealth left over!

Checking his new items, he found a cloak that would help protect him from the cold, as well as the boots which would help in the forests.

Boots of the Forest [Uncommon]

Whilst travelling through forest terrain, you leave no trace. Your passage is silent and untraceable. You are more likely to find what you are looking for or hide from what is looking for you whilst in a forest.

These boots have a minor self-repair charm stitched into them.

Cloak of the Cold [Rare]

This garment is made of a fine blue cloth, woven together by a master craftsman. It is edged with the fur of a polar wolf. Whilst wearing this cloak, you are utterly resistant to cold weather, spells, skills and effects with the [cold] descriptor do at most half damage to you. You are triply resistant to all [frozen] affects. Whilst wearing this cloak any cold damage you may do is tripled.

This cloak has a major self-repair charm stitched into the hood.

All in all, an excellent haul, literally better than he could have dreamed of. A smile on his lips for the first time in a long time, he fell asleep looking over his freshly updated status.

Name: Jarrod Shatterstone

Race: Human

Class: Lucky Warrior [Uncommon] +++

Level: 4

Achievement Points: 36

Stat points to allocate 10

HP: 120/120

MP: 80/80

STR: 12

REF: 14

CON: 12

INT: 8

CHA: 11

INS: 8

LUCK: 28