Sher noticed that Louie still acted weird as they got ready to head out.

He would come out of his room, close the door, then head to the workshop through to the practice room, then out of the practice room, closing the door, out of the workshop, closing the door, and back to his room.

He would repeat this over and over at least ten times since she got up, but she was sure that he had been doing it from before they woke up.

"What are you doing? You are driving me crazy."

Louie just smiled and got that far away look that people have when they look at their status.

"Have you found some way to cheat on your stats or something?"

Louie laughed. "No, I never used cheat codes in games and stuff. That would be a quick way to die out here. Overconfidence will kill you real quick. I have no problem with bending the rules or thinking outside the box but cheat codes that were a big no for me."

Louie went to the Vendor and bought a couple of runestones and another couple of small chests that he has seen last night and thought might be useful outside

He stopped and sat down next to her.

"How are you feeling, Sher?" He placed a golem limb on the table for Ansi to eat as he handed a piece of stainless steel to BOB.

Sher shrugged. "Yesterday brought up a lot of old pain, but I'm feeling better now, and strangely, having Ansi nearby helped me to sleep without any nightmares for the first time since the pulse."

She strokes the spider as it fed. She stood up and held her arms out like a showman, and her clothes were replaced with her armour.

"TADA!" They were still laughing as Joe entered the room.

"You guys are full of energy and happy, you all ready to go kill golems?"

"Yip, let's go."

As they left the room, Louie turned around and gave the place a last smile before he closed the door and stepped out into the tunnel.

He walked up to the wall blocking the road and looked up at the Lightstone, he reached up, and the roof started to droop like hot wax. He took the stone and stored it in his inventory.

"I'm going to take every second one. Let's take everything not nailed down that might be useful outside. You guys have raised your levels real nice, and we should crank up the pace a bit. I want to be done with this dungeon."

They agreed.

The first set of golems was two melee fighters and two mages which could have been a problem as Sher took out a mage that looked like it was on fire. The other shot a ball of spinning lighting at her. Still, Joe managed to block it with his axe, which surprisingly absorbed the ball lightning.

In the meantime, Louie had run up and kneeled on the floor, and as the fighters came into range, he dropped them waist-deep in liquid rock. Sher took the lightning mage out, and then they strolled up to the mages that were still burning and shooting lightning in random directions.

Louie smothered them in stone, and then exposing them a piece at a time, Joe took them apart till only the torso with the core was left. They inventoried the parts, took the core, and looted the golems' remains.

The whole encounter didn't even take ten minutes.

They took out one more party of golems and a roaming bulwark of eight defending a couple of mages.

They were walking and talking about the fight when BOB growled, and Ansi screeched.

That was the only warning they got.

Louie ducked as he heard a grunt from Joe and grabbed the black blur that he saw out of the corner of his eye, hurling towards him, and shoved the cold metal into the floor.

He realised he had been stabbed as the pain spread through his lower back.

Pushing the pain down, he noticed Sher, 2 meters away, on the floor with a glowing Ansi stuck to her neck and Joe leaning against the wall with a blade in his back.

He saw Sher move, so he rushed to Joe, pulled the blade, poured a health potion directly into the wound before lifting his head to the side, and poured another one down his throat.

He turned to Sher and saw that she had been stabbed three times and was bleeding all over the place. Still, Ansi had bitten her neck, and it looked like she was feeding golden light directly into her veins like an intravenous drip.

Loo poured another health potion directly on her wounds and emptied another one in her mouth, and he saw her wounds starting to close. He made sure that both Sher and Joe were ok before he sat down on the floor and took a health potion.

He had only then noticed that he was stabbed in the lower back, the right leg, and right shoulder.

If he had not moved when he did, the blade in the shoulder would have gone through the back of his head.

As the adrenaline left his body, he moved over to his party and looked at the still moving limbs sticking out of the road surface.

"Fuck, that was close, that thing is fast."

Sher and Joe were still shaken from the encounter. Joe took out his Dog treats and gave BOB the whole pouch.

"Thanks, BOB." He saw Louie looking.

"He saved my life. He bumped me, and that caused the blade to miss my spine and heart."

Joe struggled to his feet and wanted to take his fury out on the golem that nearly killed them.

He looked at the arms. "What the fuck is this thing?"

Shaking his head, Louie stood up and moved closer. He used Manipulation> to move the golem nearer to the floor's surface but still wrap its head and the rest of its body in bands of stone connected to the floor.

What he could see had many arms, too many arms. It was black, like absorbing the light black. He had heard that some scientists had been working on creating the ultimate black so he asumed that this was the result.

Louie imagined it was something like this. It bends the eye like it's forcing you not to notice it. It also looked sleek, built for speed, and dangerous.

It reminded him of a guy he knew during his army days, a stone-cold killer.

It vibrated as it struggled to free itself from its bonds. "What the fuck is this thing?"

Assasin Golem (Roaming) This golem was originally a McLaren 720S Stealth that took on the shape of the life force trapped in it as it came into existence.

Definitely, the fastest and darkest kid in the class, as it hates all life.

Be careful, or you will get your ass handed to you.

"Fuck, it's a roaming assassin."

He shared the report with them.

"We got overconfident. We thought we could take everything in here."

He shook his head. "When I played MMO's, it was fun. If you get tired, just pause the game or log out. Continue later... *sigh* ... I forgot, this is no game. There must be rules that we must start living by, or we will all die. In the game our guild had a set of rules. I suggest we follow it."

He opened his journal and wrote ten rules down. He thought for a while and then shrugged before trying to share the page with them. Surprisingly a note appeared in their inventory.

It was a page with a list of Rules.

Rules 1: Watch your partners back for sneaky fuckers, and never split the party.

2: Plan ahead, learn as much as you can and have a good map.

3: Always be prepared for the worst, and you won't be surprised.

4: Take care of your gear, and it will take care of you.

5: Always expect everything to be a trap or a mimic.

6: Never make plans out loud fate is listening.

7: PROTECT THE HEALER!

8: Skeletons are never just lying around for fun.

9: Loot everything that's not nailed down and then find a crowbar.

10: Always stay vigilant. Everything is trying to kill you.

Sher read the page, which crumbled into dust when she was finished. Shocked, she looked at Louie. "Suddenly, I just know the rules and what it meant and why they are rules."

Louie stared at his journal as the gears in his mind started turning. "Damn."

By this time, Joe's anger was at boiling point, and he stomped up to the assassin and screamed.

"DIE!"

As he stomped his foot into the tarmac. A massive wicked-looking stone spike burst from the pavement and impaled the golem tearing through its body and into its head, ripping it clear off.

Sher stood and stared in amazement as Joe slowly toppled over and got caught by Louie just before he hit the road.

She stared in shock at the two halves and the still twitching golem head hanging in mid air on what looked like a dark glass spike. Ansi nudged her in the neck.

She shook her head and rushed over to Joe casting , slowly all their health ticked up to full as she squatted next to him using , "He got a debuff called . I guess he used up all his mana in creating that spike. What is that?"

Louie took out a couple of light stones and arranged them around them, making sure there were no dark spots where assassins could hide.

Ansi had jumped on BOB's back, and the two of them were walking a slow circle around them, watching for any Sneaky golems.

Loo took a cushion out of his inventory and placed it under Joe's head. He looked at the spike. "That, if I remember correctly from the games, is called or or something like that. And I think he overdid it and used all his mana."

Joe stirred, and as he sat up, he grabbed his head in his hands and groaned.

Sher saw Louie store the cushion. "Where did you get the cushion?"

Louie shrugged. "I went through the Vendor before we left and bought some stuff. We are not going to be in here forever."

Louie smacked Joe on his back. "Congrats on your third spell, brother. And this one seems more useful than "

They laughed as he groaned.

After a couple of minutes, Joe staggered to his feet, and they walked over to the spike with the head stuck on it. It was dark blue at the bottom and turned black at the tip.

"Dam... wicked-looking spike."

Joe just grunted. He didn't want to shook his still aching head. *Sigh* "I was so angry I just wanted to drive a blade through its body. As the power rushed from me, I remember thinking of the impaled bodies in the deadland of Oblivion."

"It looks like it made from obsidian."

Joe had that far away look that Louie had started associate with people reading their status pages.

"The spell is called and it cost 100MP, nearly all my mana."

"Good spell even if it's expensive."

They started looking for the core but couldn't find it in the parts strewn around. They were stumped since the golem was obviously still alive. Sher was the bright one to look inside the head that was still stuck to the tip of the spike.

Louie inventoried all the pieces before removing the head from the spike, and the core fell out and rolled away.

BOB, ever vigilant, jumped on the sneaky piece of golem that tried to escape, and before they could stop him, he had swallowed it.

"Fuck, BOB, you can't just eat anything. You don't know where it might have been."

He wanted to berate BOB further, but he stopped to read the BB that appeared before him in shock.

Your pet has absorbed a shadow affinity core.

Allow him the stealth skill Y/N

"Huh?"

He looked at the satisfied-looking BOB as he sat in front of him.

"I didn't know that was possible."

"What's up?"

Louie shared the BB with them.

"Wow. Pick yes, come on, Louie. Think Shadow Wolves." Joe urged.

Louie shook his head as he pressed Y. BOB shook himself as a ripple ran through him and his colour changed from silver to more of a soft mist grey. His sharp edges were also more rounded.

After BOB received his round of good boy and pats, he was ready to proceed with hunting these sneaky buggers.

Louie looked at the spike and, thinking of the rules, liquefied the floor under it and placing the whole spike in his inventory. He also picked up the pieces that had broken off. Out of curiosity, he used on them.

With a smile, he sends the rest of the party the report. "RULE 9!"

Black obsidian. A strongly protective crystal, it forms a shield against negativity.

+20% blocks mental attacks.

+60% negate negative energies from the environment.

Relieve 20% mental stress and tension.

Crafting material: Form very thin, fragile, sharp blades.

Highly sought after by Seekers, urging exploration of the unknown and opening new horizons. Blue Obsidian Crystals enable communication between friendly crystal holders, ranges only limited by mana.

+25% clear thinking.

+25% to perception.

+5% precognition.

+5% scrying.

+5% possibility of astral travel.

They were more alert and quiet as they cleared up the site and set out to clear the rest of the dungeon.

The golems had become easy to handle. It was just the roamers' surprise attacks that caught them unaware once or twice but nothing as serious as the first assassin.

Luckily it seemed to have been the only one.

They were nearly caught unaware again as they neared a section where it looked as if the roof partly collapsed and the tunnel road was strewn with boulders.

There were even a couple of crushed cars under some huge rocks.

The closest car was right at the boulders' edge and looked half-buried under a massive rock twice its size.

Louie looked on in wonder.

"Is that one of those new minis I have seen in the magazines? Wow, it looks badass."

Joe shook his head but then remember that Louie missed out on the last twenty years.

It looked like the rock landed on the rear of the Mini and buried the back half under rubble and the boulder leaving the front end sticking into the air with its bonnet open.

Louie saw BOB acting nervous and stopped to look around to see if there were any golems near. Seeing nothing he stepped up to the Mini when there was a snap right as he was bowled over by BOB.

What looked like a thick red swag rug hit the dirt next to him, and it started wiggling around. Suddenly Ansi was there and bit the tip of the rug, which snapped back, giving Louie time to scream, "WTF?"

As he rolled away from whatever that was. He cast at the Mini as it shimmered like a heatwave and disappeared behind the boulder.

He crab-walked away from the boulder, and only his good reflexes and perception saved him as a nearby boulder exploded into what looked like a steel agave cactus with 2meter long, razor-sharp leaves.

He looked on in horror as the leaves slowly rolled up and into a tight ball, and a ripple passed over it and started looking like an ordinary boulder again.

He held BOB by a plate on his neck as he wanted to chase the new sneaky bugger into the boulder field.

Louie looked around at all the strewn boulders. "It's a bloody minefield."

"Damn, I ignored Rule 8. I didn't even think why there were no other wrecks round."

Sher and Joe still stood rooted to the floor in shock. Louie stood up and balled his fist to stop them from shaking as the adrenalin left his body, his legs still felt weak as he read the report.

"I was wondering if we would see any here?"

He shared the report with them as Joe asked what that was.

MIMIC John Cooper Works GP (golem powered) With a new 300 core and featuring MIMIC TwinPowered Mana Technology, the new MIMIC John Cooper Works GP is set to become the fastest and most powerful MIMIC ever to be approved for use in dungeons and will be produced in a limited number for worldwide spawning.

Suddenly the boulder-strewn minefield had turned much more dangerous.

"Fucking mimics."

He looked at the rock, and only the fact that he had seen it deployed let it be analysed as a spine trap.

They looked around before retreating a couple of meters to think out a strategy. Louie took out a couple of cores, stood before Sher, and showed her and Ansi the cores.

"She saved my life by biting that mimics tongue. I think she can take one of these, don't you?"

Sher nodded and nudged Ansi in the direction of the cores. Louie took out an air affinity core and held it to BOB, and he got a skill that, at a low level, makes him less noticeable in the evenings.

After Ansi rolled the cores around for a while, she stuck her fangs into one, and it looked as if it turned into sparkles that she inhaled. Sher raised her eyebrows as she read the BB, then shared it with them as she clicked on yes.

Your companion has absorbed an air affinity core.

Grant her the skill Y/N

Louie right-clicked on the skill.

Alter Self: level 0 (00/100) grants the means to reduce your size and weight, limited to size at birth. The maxed level will grant the ability to double the weight and size once a day for two hours.

"Nice. It's a good skill for her. She will get really big later on, not fat little one."

They laughed as he talked to Ansi.

"Really big as in powerful and strong, with this skill, you will be able to ride on Sher's shoulder no matter how big you get."

"Sher, can you and Ansi watch our backs together with BOB? I want to try something, and I think that Joe should also be able to do it because of his Earth affinity."

They approached the spine trap, and when Louie was about 5meters away from it, he sat down and indicated for Joe to sit next to him facing the minefield.

"Ok, I have never done this, but I have read a book about doing something similar, so it should work. Let's try. I'm going to meditate, and I want you also to meditate, then close your eyes and try at the same time to empower cCall>. I will empower . I mean by empowering that you should cast the spell but not use it, like holding it in your hand ready to throw, then slowly reach out through the spell and feel the earth around you. Try and feel what is out there, feel Sher standing behind us. Feel BOB and Ansi moving around, feel the boulders, feel the trap, feel the earth itself. Do you understand what I mean?"

Joe looked thoughtful for a moment. "Yes, I think I get where you are going with this."

"Well, let's try."

They made sure that Sher was standing right behind them, studying the minefield for any stealth golem trying to sneak upon them. And BOB was at her heels with Ansi looking everywhere else.

Louie closed his eyes and started. At first, it was easy to feel the earth because got a radius of 11 meters now.

But all it does is tell him an object is there. It was like a bad glitchy radar screen, then he remembered his senses skill.

Slowly he reached out, trying not to lose the two workings he had in hand, trying to add a third. He blocked out everything and then brought his senses in one at a time, Taste the air around him, Touch the earth, Smell the subtle perfume of Sher behind him, Hear BOB as he moved around. He slowly opened his eyes, See the minefield. He then sent all that through his earth spell.

"Yes!"

Sher gave a little squeal of fright and then, blushing beet red, returned to studying the minefield. Louie chuckled softly as he stood up.

Seeing that Joe was still busy, he leaned towards Sher and whispered that he had unlocked .

It took another half hour before Joe stood up and announced that he got a passive skill called . He explained that it works the same as a sonar. He is picking up the vibrations of everything around him in a 10m radius.

"Damn Joe, I'm jealous that is better than mine. I think even that assassin would have trouble sneaking up on you now. I love passive skills."

Sher wanted to know what he meant by passive skill.

"A passive skill is a skill that just happens, like that assassin would sneak up on Joe and his would notify him, he would just know. Active skill is when I have to use my before I might know that the assassin might be there. A simple explanation is that imagine knowledge as a stream of water. Water keeps flowing into him. While I got to open a tap to get the water flowing."

"Ah, ok. . . So how are we getting through here?"

Louie spoke up. "Slow and steady, we have to clear this minefield while Joe keeps an eye out for the mimics. I want you, Sher, to be ready to shoot the fuckers when they show."

They agreed, and Joe pointed the spike traps out, of which Louie had missed one. Louie studied the trap with his skill and noticed a power source below the trap between a mass of small spikes that act to anchor the trap to the floor.

"Ok, here we go."

Louie reached out with and covered the trap with liquid rock as he dropped it into the floor. He flipped it over and brought it to the surface with just the root spikes sticking out. The small mana stone was clearly evident.

He removed the stone before taking the trap out of the floor.

Louie shook his head as he studied the trap. "It is truly a bloody landmine. Trigger it, and it shreds everything in a 2metre radius before it resets waiting for the next victim."

He took a small chest out of his inventory and placed the trap inside before replacing the chest. He saw Sher and Joe looking at him.

"Can't have this lounging around in my inventory. I might think it is an ordinary rock."

They had cleared twelve traps when the Mimic struck, but an ambush only works if you know it's not there, so they were ready.

Sher hit it with an imbued shot, and while it was stunned, the others practically smashed it to pieces. Strangely with the loot, they got a big old-style key. and one of the golem pieces was a long red shag carpet.

Mimic key Place this key within an inanimate object, and within 7days, it will transform into a mimic.

"Damn, it's a respawn key." He shared the report with them.

They cleared the minefield killing the other Mimic before it could even move from its place against the tunnel wall.

They bagged 62 spike traps and 14 concussion traps that release a concussion wave that would throw you away from it when tripped, not dangerous on its own but deadly in a minefield.

They had killed another couple of golems when Louie became very nervous as he saw the tarmac end and steel replaced the walls, floor, and roof of the tunnel.

It has been over twelve hours since they left the last restroom, and they thought it was time for a rest but couldn't find any indication of a safe zone.

Louie stomped on the steel floor. "Shit, this is getting predictable. How many golems had we taken down after the assassin Joe?"

"Our quest counter reads (099/102)" They took a breather but kept their guard up.

"So, do we keep going and try to take down the dungeon boss now or go rest and take him when we are fresh, I would vote for rest, but it's up to you guys."

They shrugged before Joe spoke up.

"I say that we push on slowly to see if there is a restroom before hitting the Boss. If not, then we return to the other restroom and hit it tomorrow."

Status

Name:

Lewis (Louie) Poren

Race:

Human (Male) Lvl 10 (177 850/ 204 800 -> lvl 11)

Class:

Seeker (2) (35%)

Sub-classes:

(exterminator) (1%)

Titles:

Jack Black Brodifacoum. (Dungeon pioneer)

Affinity:

Darkness

Statistics

Health points (HP):

380

Mana Points (MP):

230

Stamina (SP):

460

Critical Hit Chance

4%

Attributes

Strength:

19

Agility:

15

Constitution:

19

Perception:

18

Intelligence:

11

Willpower:

12

Charisma:

7

Luck:

5

Free attribute points:

0

Skills

Skill

Level

Progression

Wu shu

3

60/100

Improvised weaponry:

9

51/100

Glacial Rage:

6

00/100

Meditation

4

30/100

Regeneration:

7

88/100

Mana Manipulation:

7

20/100

Survival:

6

60/100

Pain resistance:

6

65/100

Poison resistance:

3

37/100

Cat`s eye:

2

14/100

Senses:

3

90/100

Armourer

4

95/100

System Minimap:

1

40/100

Cartography:

1

00/100

Class Skill Proficiencies

Investigation

Level 4 (14/100)

Tracking

Level 4 (24/100)

Intuition

Level 8 (55/100)

Analyze

Level 8 (95/100)

Spells

Spell

Level

Progression

Activation

Improvise

4

65/100

Touch

Earth Manipulation

9

70/100

Cast

Earth Sense

3

90/100

Touch