I

The morning came sooner than she wanted it to. She rose but did not shine; at least not until she had shoveled some food in her mouth. Most of the trainees were waiting for her by the gate while the rest had to be rounded up. Once gathered, Eva led them to the dungeon.

“Alright,” she said when they arrived. “Today is like yesterday. Break into groups and fight the monsters, not the boss. There was one group that had a couple injuries from not listening yesterday. Don’t be like them.”

She paused before remembering that she was going to move to the dungeon area starting that day.

“Oh, before you start, I am going to be moving here today to be by the dungeon, so you’ll need to come here in the morning starting tomorrow. I’m not going to chase after you. If you’re not here, you’re dead weight. Now, go kill some rabbits!”

Eva sighed as the trainees went about their mission. She’d told the scheduler about them, and they’d learned about the way the schedule worked the day before. They would be ok. She wasn’t going to waste any more time than she had to. They would get better or they would not. She wasn’t going to be their mother and make sure they did their homework. Plus, it was a job she didn’t want.

With them gone, there were a few hours before she’d head back to deal with the monsters near the village. That burst of experience might be enough to get her over the hump to level 10 and unlock her Class. Eva wondered what would be available to her. Hideki’d had several options to choose from but couldn’t go into much detail from the time constraints. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too difficult for her to choose when her turn came. She shook the thoughts from her head. It was time to run the dungeon.

II

Eva went to the scheduler a few minutes after the trainees had begun to enter the dungeon. Seeing as it would take around half an hour for everyone to enter, there were plenty of them still milling about.

“How can I help you today?” the woman doing the scheduling sighed.

“Anyone doing Adept✶ yet, or Journeyman★ if there’s a group that might want some extra help.”

“Adept✶? No one’s asked to try that one. There’s a small group of classers who popped out maybe twenty minutes ago from doing Journeyman★. They might be interested in some help.”

“Where’d they go?”

“They’re probably at the market stalls if I had to guess.”

“Thanks.”

Eva walked away from the woman back to the small camp near the dungeon. The stalls from the prior day had multiplied to include one for weapons and another for armor. She Observed✦ the crowd before she found a group of three people with Classes. Two were level 10 and one was level 11. She strode up to the three men.

“Hi, I’m Eva,” she said. “I spoke with the scheduler, and she said you guys are running Journeyman★. Can I join your next run?”

“Um,” said one of the men—a tall, older man with gray hair and pale skin, wearing monster skin armor and holding a bow. “Are you that Eva that is at the top of the monster wave quest every day?”

“That’s me,” she answered, a little embarrassed by the attention.

“Sure, you can join us. We’re going into the dungeon in around ten minutes.”

Eva nodded. When she looked more closely at their Classes, it made some sense. Two were spearmen and the other was a ranger that fought with a bow.

She used the intervening time to check her equipment and make sure there was nothing else she needed. The general goods vendor had either figured out how to make potions or was buying them from the man in town. The prices—a full shard higher—led her to believe it was probably the latter. Still, it was convenient enough that she picked up an extra Healing Potion✦ just in case. Dungeons were awfully dangerous places.

Quickly enough, the minutes ticked by, and it was time to enter the dungeon. Selecting Journeyman★, she entered behind the men.

With four people, the base rooms were rather easy. There was usually one monster per melee fighter, with the archer providing extra damage where needed. Not that Eva needed any help when an Infused★ blow could cut a rabbit in two easily enough.

“So, Eva,” one of the spearmen—whose name she’d learned was Nikita. “How is it that you don’t have a Class yet? You can tear through monsters like butter.”

Eva felt her heart rate rise. It was not a question she was prepared to answer, despite having told Hideki the truth. It wasn’t that Nikita seemed like a bad person or that Hideki was a great person, but rather that she’d gotten it off her chest by telling someone she’d come to trust while Nikita was only a stranger.

“Um,” she began.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Bryan—the archer. ”If you don’t want to say, that’s ok too.”

Nikita glared at the other man but kept his mouth shut. Bryan blushed and looked away. She could see the tragedy coming a mile away. She didn’t have the heart to come right out and tell him that she was already involved with Hideki. Though if he asked, she wouldn’t hesitate to lay down the law.

“Should we go for the boss?” the second spearman—Fan—asked.

“The boss is pretty hard,” Eva said. When they looked at her with puzzled expressions, she continued. “I fought it yesterday with a group of five. Two of them were injured badly, with one that probably would have died without potions. It’s got a pretty nasty Skill where it can bite your arm off. I have the Dodge★ Skill fairly high, so I can avoid it, but it’s a real problem if you can’t.”

“I think we should do it,” Bryan decided. “What about you guys?”

Nikita and Fan nodded in agreement. Eva shrugged. She could probably kill the boss on her own if they all died, but she’d rather not do that if she didn’t have to. She entered first, followed by the two spearmen. Bryan took up the rear. She Infused★ her shortsword with air and Charged★ the boss.

What unfolded was similar to the first attempt, only that the other people fighting were somewhat competent. This meant no injuries and a fairly efficient boss kill. The support from the archer did make a difference. It seemed that he had Pierce—or something similar—which made his arrows deal a ton of damage to the boss. The spearmen had Dodge, which helped when the monster tried to Bite them.

In the end, Eva was able to pick up a fair number of shards from the base monsters and one from the boss that was a little different than the ones she’d seen before.

Disenhance Shard✹

Removed all enhancements from an item, turning it into a Basic▲ item

It was the first any of them had seen something like that. She paid each of the men a Novice Augment Shard✦ for it. She had no idea what they would be worth, but it was an interesting curiosity for her to have for later. Eva exited the dungeon with the others and applied her experience to raise a few Stats before making her way towards the village and tea time with some monsters.

III

There are 23 days remaining

6231/10000 are still alive

New Quest: Defeat a monster wave. 0/1431 killed

There had been several deaths in the last day. The prior monster wave had been a fair bit more difficult, and some of the people who normally defended the village were instead running the dungeon or protecting the nascent dungeon camp instead.

Eva positioned herself in the front as she had nearly every day thus far. There were several people with Classes now. It wasn’t just the ones that showed up on the leaderboard often, but also some people who were consistently just outside of that threshold and who did dungeon runs the rest of the time.

The piles of monster corpses were starting to get ridiculous. There were rotting goblin corpses, with rat corpses and bones all piled high. There was only so much that burning could take care of. As a result, the ground between the wall and the woodline had several large pits being dug to deal with the overwhelming amount of carrion.

All this meant was that the monsters coming out of the trees had an extra set of obstacles to negotiate on their way to the village. Only, it wasn’t any issue for them. No, it just had to be spiders; and not just any spiders, but dog-sized arachnids that sent shivers down Eva’s spine. She hated spiders. That they were enormous made her desire to wipe them from the face of the Earth—well, Tutorial—all the more absolute.

As the monsters approached, she Infused★ her sword with fire. Normally, she’d have chosen air, but spiders were best dealt with in a particular way. In her mind, that meant burning them until there was nothing left but ash. With that in mind, Eva Charged★ the spiders as soon as they were within range.

Every swipe of her blade either split a spider in two or set it ablaze. Sometimes she got both. The best part was hearing the sounds of death coming from the vile monsters. Her Stats meant that they were easy foes to deal with, even if there were more than a thousand.

She waded her way deep into the spider army, cutting a path towards the first of the more powerful versions coming through the trees. The elite spider was human sized—something that Observe✦ called an elite wolf spider. Eva did not need to be convinced that it should be destroyed with extreme prejudice.

She killed many spiders on her crusade towards the elite, their corpses smoking behind her as she Charged★. The elite didn’t stand there waiting for her. It skittered along with the army in the direction of the village. Her proximity made it change course towards her as soon as she was close enough.

Eva slashed at the disgusting monster with her flaming sword. It tried to Dodge the blow, but she was faster. Her blade cut deep and cauterized the wound as it went. If the spider had any regeneration, it wasn’t enough to prevent it from losing control of the area that was nearly severed.

While the next few slashes were enough to end the elite’s life, Eva took a small amount of damage from the smaller spiders. She had been unable to split her focus, and the spiders seemed to attack based on proximity rather than some kind of battle plan like many of the other monsters had.

It was through this damage that she learned what made the spiders more fearsome than just being spiders. They were venomous. Though not much of a concern to her due to Poison Resistance★ kicking in and granting immunity after several bites, it would be devastating to everyone else. That there were Health Potions floating around mitigated that somewhat, but she knew deep down that a fair number would die from the venom.

Eva cut her way through the army of spiders, keeping a good distance from any of the pits. Even she could die if she fell and got trapped beneath the spiders. Several elites later, the big boss spider made its appearance. It was the broodmother—a horse-sized spider that made horror films seem like a sunday stroll in the park.

One look at the vile monster, and she knew her mission. She burnt every spider between her and the broodmother. That got its attention. Those were its children she’d been slaying, and good riddance at that!

Eva Charged★ and Pierced✦ into the spider’s chest. Not as much damage was done as she would have expected, but her rational mind had been switched off since the first leg had stepped out of the trees. That the enemy was tougher than usual, or that she’d been hurt by its counter attack meant nothing. She was on a mission, and it would die.

Eva hacked the broodmother to pieces, giving as good as she got in return. The spider didn’t have Health Potions or Stamina Potions like she did. In a fight of endurance, she had the upper hand because of those potions. It certainly helped that she set the monster on fire part way through the fight. In the end, all that remained was a slowly crisping carcass and a bloodied Eva. Her equipment was pretty banged up to the point that almost everything defensive without Self Repair was destined for one of those pits. The lucky survivor was her boots.

She cracked a huge smile. Now that the big mommy was dead, the real slaughter could begin. She fell into a trance that didn’t end until all of the spiders were dead. Even then, she didn’t fully come out of it until she had felt something land in her arms. It was the reward for placing first in the spider killing extravaganza. It was a spell book of some kind. She Observed✦ it.

Tome of Fireball★

Eva cracked it open. Strange sigils spun through her mind before she was greeted by another System message.

Basic Skill Learned: Fireball▲