When Daniel arrived back at the dungeon entrance, he saw that Fedor and Isabella already went back into the dungeon. Anna was sitting by herself against the cave wall, so he decided to go over to her.

“Hi, I want to go back into the dungeon, testing some things and train a few skills. Did Fedor say anything about the plan to level up people, before he left?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, they decided to start right away. I asked if they needed help, but he told me that they are good. When they tried to enter the dungeon with more than six people, they got a notification that they would only get half of the experience. I’ll stay here for the moment. I’m doing some testing myself. Maybe, we can compare our results later.” Anna responded.

Daniel said his goodbyes and went into the dungeon. There, he went ahead until he found the first group of goblins.

The first thing he wanted to test was to keep three channeling spells going at the same time. He started with the activation of Lightning Edge on his blade. Then, he added Advanced Haste. Keeping two spells active at the same time, was no big problem. He’d done it a lot on the last dungeon run.

The third spell he added was his earth spell Toughen Skin. Keeping the three spells active, was much more difficult than using Arc Lightning together with the other spells. Maybe, the fact that they were all from the same element had made the task easier. Daniel had to halt the thought, when the first goblins arrived in front of him. To test his earth spell, he didn’t try to dodge the enemy’s attacks. He just cut them down and ignored the pain form getting hit.

When the six starving goblins were dead, he only had suffered some small bruises and lost 3% of his health, even without wearing his protective gear. The Toughen Skin had worked to a degree. Against enemies of his own level, the physical protection would be limited. But, it was probably more useful against mana based attacks or after the spell reached a higher level. The only drawback of this new training tactic was the damage his clothes were taking.

Daniel hesitated for a moment, but then he removed his clothes with the exception of his boots. He grinned when he thought about the little scrawny goblins being intimidated by his naked body.

In the next fight, he used the same tactic, but he decided to dodge the attacks that were aimed at his crotch. There was a limit to his commitment for this training exercise.

For the next fifteen minutes, Daniel went on to slaughter one group of goblins after another. When his mana was starting to run low, he checked his life and saw that it was at 86%. He didn’t get a vitality level up, so he probably needed to get injured more. He started his meditation while he thought about ways to improve his Toughen Skin spell. Shortly before his mana was full again, he had come up with a new idea.

Similar to how he improved his Windcutter spell to Lightning Edge, he activated Toughen Skin and started to surround himself with electricity. Right now, he was not able to cast another spell, with three active ones. So in his opinion, it was a good idea to have the skill that was protecting him do damage to his enemies.

Having created a similar effect before, it took him less than ten minutes before he was rewarded.

Elemental Spell advanced

Earth - Toughen Skin to Lightning – Lightning Armor (A)

Surrounds the caster’s toughened body with a layer of high static electricity that will afflict shocks to nearby enemies.

With the new spell finished, he went back to meditate until his mana was full again. After that, he looked for the next group of enemies.

In the fight, he noticed that keeping up the Lightning Armor together with the other two lightning spells, had become easier. Probably it was because the spells shared an elemental connection now. He tried to use an additional Air Wave in the fight, but stopped when he noticed that his control over the other three spells started to slip. Daniel decided he needed to get more used to keeping the other spells up. So, instead he decided to keep an eye on his mana consumption during the fight. When he first had created Windcutter, it had used up 1% of his mana for every three seconds. Right now, with his higher mana cap, he was using 1% of his mana every four seconds while maintaining three advanced spells at the same time. This steep progress in just a few days made him smile.

He went on like this and was rewarded with his first increase in vitality when his life went below 80%. Daniel kept going and got his first increase in toughness when his life was at 72%. After that, he stopped. He decided that this attribute training method was not worth it. Even with his high regeneration, he only got 3% life back in one hour.

When he reached the next group of 20 weak goblins, he dodged their attacks while he cut them down. The goblins were only at level three and of no challenge anymore. He didn’t get hit and could have probably killed them with his eyes closed, just by relying on his domain skill.

After cutting his way through a few more groups of low leveled goblins, he met the first higher leveled foes. There were five sword wielding goblins and three with bows. Daniel used Windshield to block the arrows and killed the archers with two Air bombs before the other goblins were able to reach him. Wanting to try out something new, he just activated Advanced Haste and Lightning Armor. He didn’t attack the goblins. Instead, he used his speed and domain to keep dodging their attacks.

While he did this for three minutes, he was rewarded with an increase in his agility and endurance. When his mana got below 40%,he decided to fight back and kill the goblins. They were getting slower and more sluggish anyway. Probably ran low und stamina, he thought.

After the fight, he checked his status.

Life

Stamina

Mana

73%

67%

36%

The fight had cost him a lot of stamina and mana, but he decided it had been worth it. Leveling up two attributes in three minutes was insane. The drawback was that he would need 20 minutes to regenerate his mana reserves.

While he meditated, he contemplated to only use Advanced Haste, but decided against it. Without the increased damage resistance, he could get seriously hurt from one hit. While he could wear his protective gear, it wasn’t in the best state and he didn’t want to damage it further just for training.

After his mana was full again, he went on. In the next fight, he got an additional increase in his mana cap from all the spells he was casting. While he was killing the fourth group of enemies, he reached level 12.

Having found a good way to train his agility and endurance, and with his mana cap increasing from the mana use, he put everything into regeneration, again.

When the enemy group began to become larger than 12 goblins, he changed his tactic. Again, he killed the archers first with his Air Bombs, but he only started his dodging exercise, after he killed all sword wielding goblins except for five.

He had killed 60 more goblins when he finally reached the boss room. For a moment Daniel thought about challenging the boss alone. But, he stopped himself. While the dropped metals, weapons and the wood from the furniture would be nice, it wasn’t worth the risk. The boss fight didn’t bring more experience than killing 60 of the level seven goblins. The reward was not worth the risk. He turned around and made his way to the dungeon exit.

After leaving, he went over to Azza first. There he dropped the 15 medium goblins he had collected in his inventory.

“Thanks, with that I think we should only use the small goblins to fuel the fire.” Azza said.

Daniel only nodded and just as he wanted to leave, she continued.

“The bearded guy left.”

“Who?” Daniel asked.

“We don’t know his name, he never talked to anyone. I mean the man that was already level four when we were summoned outside. He kept entering the dungeon alone and an hour ago, he just left. He was already level ten.” Azza explained.

Daniel thought about that a bit. Reaching level ten on his own was an achievement. He himself could’ve done it, but he had been lucky and started with a real weapon. He didn’t know what kind of inventory the quiet man had.

“Maybe, he didn’t speak English?” Daniel suggested.

“I highly doubt it. We checked, every other traveler, it doesn’t matter from where he or she came from, spoke English. It is the only thing that connects us all. I think the problem is that most english speakers are somewhat influenced by western culture. There are a lot of people on earth that hate everything the west and especially America stands for.” Azza suggested.

“And?” Daniel asked.

“ Judging by his skin tone, I would guess that he came from somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East. There are a lot of wars going on there right now.” Azza clarified.

“Well, does it really matter? If he is some kind of radical Muslim or someone who lost family from a drone strike and is hellbend on revenge, he probably had a rough time transitioning to this world. I don’t see 72 virgins here, so he is probably very disappointed.” Daniel joked.

“If you had ever experienced an armed militia plundering your village, you wouldn’t joke about something like that. You are young and come from a safe country. But, you are right. He isn’t our problem. I highly doubt that he would lay an ambush for us out there in the snow.” Azza responded in a serious tone.

When Daniel nodded and turned around, he saw the manager, who wanted to create a government council earlier standing in front of him.

“Hello, we are making an inventory about our current supply situation. Most people want to know when they’d have to start eating goblins.” The man explained. Then, he showed Daniel his notebook and continued. “We have not much paper, and maybe it is smarter to sell it than to use it. So, I thought about using the notebook, but I ran out of battery. I talked to Anna and she said you have access to lightning magic. I thought, maybe you could use magic to load the battery?” The man asked.

Daniel turned to Azza, he wanted to know if the man was really doing something useful and she was in a position to know. She nodded, so he turned back to the man.

“Let me see the battery.” Daniel said and removed it from the computer. He saw it was different from his own. He would need a steady supply of 24V to load it. He was not sure how he could find out which voltage the electricity he created had. Then, he had an idea and removed his own notebook from his inventory. After he took out the battery, he touched the contacts. He didn’t use the computer since he arrived here, so the battery was still full. Ever since he gained access to lightning magic, he became much more sensitive to electricity. He had used that to manipulate the electric currents in his own body to advance his Haste spell.

With the full battery in one hand, he took the empty one in the other. Then he created a very weak Arc Lightning between the contacts of the empty battery. He increased the current little by little, until it felt the same as the one from the full battery.

“This will take a while.” Daniel explained and put his computer back in his inventory. He sat down and started the boring task of loading the battery. At least, it would give him a good training in fine mana control.

An hour later, the battery was full again and he returned it to the man, who had introduced himself as James and came from England. Daniel hesitated for a moment. Then, he removed most of his food from his inventory and added it to the common supply. This earned him the honest thanks of all people attendant. The fact that the other travelers had stopped complaining and were in most cases doing something useful had increased his respect for them by a huge margin. With the alternative of eating goblins, he was in no danger from starvation. He didn’t want to have the other travelers jealous of him, because he had found a lot of food from dead people.

After this, Daniel returned to the dungeon for another training run. Killing 150 weak and around 100 stronger goblins, earned him another level and a few other power ups. The last run had given him around 16000 experience. He decided to buy the second inventory upgrade for 50k XP.

Inventory Level 3 - Space 4 m³- Weight reduction 4000kg

Upgrade to Level 4 – Space: 8 m³ - Weight reduction; 8000 kg - Cost: 500k XP

After this, he was back at 30k experience like he had on level 10. But, while his experience decreased, he didn’t lose a level.