When Daniel left the dungeon, he saw that Anna, Fedor and Isabella were not in the camp. Azza was working on some goblin furs and he decided to go over to her. Before he was able to talk to her, the man whose battery he charged called him over. Deciding that the dead goblins in his inventory could wait, Daniel changed directions and went over to the man.

“Hello James, is there a problem?” Daniel asked.

“Hello, yes you can say that. I created an inventory about all available supplies and with our current consumption, they will only last us four more days. After that, we need to eat goblin meat.” James explained.

“Who knows about this? What is the opinion of the others?” Daniel inquired.

“I only talked with Fedor, John and Azza about it. They just shrugged it off.” James responded.

Daniel shook his head and laughed. When James looked hurt, he started to explain him his fault.

“You’ve probably chosen the three worst people to talk to about that topic. Fedor and John were soldiers and they were fighting in active war zones. They must gotten used to eating all kinds of disgusting stuff while deployed in the field. Azza is from a poor village in Namibia. I don’t think they could’ve afforded to be picky with their food. Maybe, we wait for the groups that are currently in the dungeon to come back. Then, we can talk about this.” Daniel suggested and James seemed relieved. The thought of eating goblins probably didn’t sit well with him.

“The good news though, is that the ice shoes are finished.” James continued and Daniel was confused for a moment.

“What ice shoes?” He asked.

“Oh, you didn’t know? Fedor and John collected the rusty short swords from the stronger goblins. They thought it would be a good idea to bend them so that you can put them over your shoes. Just in case on the way out of here, there isn’t only snow, but ice, too.” James explained and Daniel nodded in understanding. He hadn’t thought about that.

After that, Daniel went over to Azza and he removed the goblins he gathered from his inventory.

“Good evening Azza. How is it going?” Daniel greeted her.

“Hello Daniel, not bad.” She gestured to the two middle aged men that were working on a goblin and continued. “ I’ve gotten help. While they are slower than me at skinning the goblins without damaging the fur, it makes the work go a lot faster. We have finished around eight sets of protective clothing. I think one more day, and we’ll have created enough clothes for all of the travelers. Sewing together the fur pieces with the goblin tendons is a bit tedious, but we manage.”

“That is good to hear. Do you know how the leveling of the other travelers is going? Fedor and Isabella wanted to take care of it.” He inquired.

“I think they are almost finished. Most people are level five now. But, I heard that Fedor wanted to extend it a bit, so that everybody can upgrade their inventory.” Azza informed him.

Daniel thought about that for a moment. As far as he remembered to reach level five, you required around 5000 experience. So it should go reasonable fast to get another 5k for the inventory upgrade.

“That will probably be useful. Do you know if Anna went into the dungeon?”

“Yes, she wanted to test her new magic.” Azza responded.

Daniel looked around a bit, but with nothing to do and his friends in the dungeon, he decided to do another round of training in the cold. After they left the mountains, access to ice and snow would probably be a lot harder to come by.

After he finished, he moved to the fire to warm himself up again, he saw Anna leaving the dungeon. The system told him that she had increased her level to 12. He went over and greeted her.

“Welcome back Anna. I’ve heard you developed some new magic?” Daniel asked interested.

“Hi Daniel, yes I did. Ever since I saw my class skill mana shield, I thought that there must be a way to get access to basic mana. I was successful.” Anna responded while she formed a small ball of blue mana in her hand, before shooting it at the cave wall. To Daniel's surprise, the other travelers didn’t react. She probably had done it before, while she experimented, he concluded.

“I call the spell Mana Missile and I even got a perk for accessing basic mana.” She continued with a smile.

“May I ask what kind of perk?” Daniel asked curiously and Anna’s smile just became wider when she continued.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. You should try to access basic mana yourself. I don’t want to take your motivation away.”

Their talk went on about the supply situation and the furs Azza was creating. But, Daniel was a bit distracted. He wanted to get access to basic mana and was curious about the perk. After ten minutes, they finished their discussion and Daniel sat down and started to do some mana experiments. Anna had not given him any tips. She said that she was curious how long it would take Daniel to do it by himself.

He went through his different elements. They all were different, but when he concentrated, he was able to feel their common core. Was it really this easy? He kept focusing on the common core of his elements, and tried to create magic of the same type. It took him only five minutes, before he was successful.

Congratulation, your understanding opened a door to a new type of magic for you.

Access to basic magic gained.

Perk gained

Basic Mana User

For gaining access to the basic form of magic, the user’s mana capacity will be 5% more efficient.

Daniel smiled and started to gather basic mana in his hand. When Anna saw that, she came over.

“That is unfair. It took me two hours.” She complained.

“Well, I’m that good.” Daniel replied in an arrogant tone before he started to laugh and continued. “The fact that I knew that basic mana is possible, was a great help. Seeing the end goal from your spell, showed me the way. Finding the common core of the other elements wasn’t that difficult. I wouldn’t feel bad about the fact that you needed more time. Without your idea, I wouldn’t have thought about it for a long time.” Daniel tried to cheer Anna up. She nodded and showed a slight smile. It seemed like his words had had an effect to increase her mood.

“We should probably do as much boss runs as possible before we leave. Most of the other travelers are too weak to kill the boss. They won’t have access to money. I think it would be risky to attack the boss with just the two of us. Do you mind leveling a few people until Fedor and Isabella come back?” Anna asked and Daniel agreed.

Five minutes later, Daniel, Anna, Azza and the two other leather workers entered the dungeon.

“Ok everybody, you just stay back. If you have any spells, you can use them. If you use area of attack spells while I’m standing near the goblins, I’ll be really pissed. If some goblins survive the spells, Anna and I will block them from getting you. Don’t panic, the normal goblins aren’t very strong and I would be able to kill them all by myself.” Daniel explained.

In the first battles, Anna and Daniel hold themselves back to reduce mana consumption and break times. The three other’s spells were enough to kill a few weak goblins. After the enemy groups increased in size, Daniel started to use his Lightning Edge to kill the survivors, while Anna supported him with her new Magic Missile.

When the three guests ran out of mana, he started to use his Air bomb to whittle down the goblin numbers. Then he went into close combat with Anna supporting him from behind. In the narrow tunnels, the goblins had no chance of getting past him, so the others weren't in any danger. They managed to kill over a hundred of the little creatures, before they took their first break. At this point, Azza and the two men were already level five. At their low levels, the weak goblins still gave a good amount of experience.

“If you don’t mind, we just keep going until we arrive at the boss room.” Daniel suggested and Azza looked surprised.

“Didn’t you only want to bring us to level five and to have us gather enough experience to increase our inventory?” She asked.

“Whatever, at least the stronger goblins will bring me some experience, too. I want to earn the experience points that I spend on bringing my inventory to level 3 back anyway.” Daniel responded and they kept going.

They needed to take a few more breaks, but when they reached the boss room, Azza had already reached level nine.

“You know, we could try the boss room.” Anna suggested and Daniel only shook his head.

“No, there is a huge difference between standing in the back throwing some spells at goblins and be in real danger of injury.” He turned to the other three. “If you want to fight the boss, you should fight your way through the dungeon first. You don’t know how you react to being swarmed by the little bastards until you try.” Daniel said to the group and then they turned back and made their way back through the dungeon.

When they left, all the other travelers were already waiting for them. A look around showed Daniel that Fedor was like himself at level 13 while Isabella was at level 12. Of the rest, four more persons were level 11. There were only two people left that were below level 5.

When the discussion about the supply situation began, he left the talking mostly to Fedor and John. They had much more experience in rough terrain than himself. In the end, it was decided to stay for two more days. While there should be enough goblin fur clothing available at the end of the next day, most of the people were destitute right now. The only way to change that was to grind the dungeon boss and farm the silver and gold from the chest behind its throne.

The next two days were tough. They created three dungeon parties. Fedor was with Isabella, John and another young man. Daniel stayed together with Anna and was accompanied by two other men who were level 9. The four persons that were level 11 decided to stick together.

Daniel and Anna tested their new companions and let them handle the first half of the dungeon alone. They were both close combat fighters that were wielding the goblin boss’s large axe. When he asked, they explained that Fedor had dropped the weapons in the camp for the rest of the travelers to use. Like the Russian, they were concentrating on Earth magic and defense spells.

They managed to complete the dungeon run with only minor injuries. Mainly, because Daniel and Anna had handled the boss and caster after they killed the archers at the start of the fight. All in all, it had taken them around three hours. Most of the time was spent regenerating mana. When they left the dungeon, they went immediately back inside for the next run.

They were slowly getting faster and Daniel’s group managed seven runs on the first and eight on the second day. Each run gave them four pounds of silver and a few gold nuggets. Fedor’s group only managed six runs on the first and seven on the second day. The last group only finished three runs on the first and five on the second day.

After going through their income, it was decided on Daniel’s suggestion that every traveler would get at least a pound of silver. Azza and a few other essential workers got two or three pounds. Daniel's reasoning was that he didn’t want to be in company of destitute persons when they arrived at civilization. If someone had no money and no contacts, the only way to survive would be crime. This would in the end only fall back onto the others, because they arrived together. Giving everyone at least a starting capital wouldn’t hurt his party very much. Daniel and Anna had still each around ten pounds of silver and half a pound of gold left.

With the silver distributed, the travelers went to sleep for the night. Daniel, with his very high regeneration and endurance, wasn’t tired, yet. So, he decided to do a few more cold trainings like the night before.

When he went to sleep, he had a last look at his status screen.

Status Daniel Krieger

Level

XP

Free Attribute Points

14

124,657

0

Attributes Efficiency bonus

Strength

Agility

Vitality

Endurance

Mana Capacity

Regeneration

Mana Regeneration

Toughness

33

62

19

61

62

93

11

42

-

+30%

-

-

+35%

-

-

-

Skills

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Slot 5

Swordsmanship

Meditation

Self Improvement

Channeler

unlocked at Level 15

Novice 56%

Novice 21%

Novice 19%

Novice 18%

-

Class Skills:

Slot 1

Slot 2

Domain

unlocked at Level 20

Novice 20%