I

Eva staggered back to the village entrance before flopping down onto her back. She was disgusted by how dirty she was, but she was so tired after the battle that she couldn’t bring herself to do anything about it. The fighting might have only lasted twenty minutes, but those were a very busy twenty minutes.

“Are you ok?” someone nearby asked.

“Mhm,” was all she could say.

“Are you sure? That’s a lot of blood.”

“I’m not bleeding anymore,” she answered. “Just exhausted.”

The person took her answer as the truth and left her alone.

Eva brought up her status and added as many Stat Points as she could. It seemed that 63 was the maximum any Stat could be without breaking through since the cost of each Stat went from 63 to N/A after buying the Stat Point. Once all of the Stats were maxed out, she had another option pop up.

Spend 1,000 experience to advance?

She mentally confirmed the decision. All at once, she felt a rush of energy run through her. It started at her extremities; and like a wave, it rushed towards her core. It was a tingling sensation inside combined with goosebumps outside—a decidedly odd feeling. Though it seemed to take half a minute to complete, almost no time had actually passed. When it was done, Eva was again prompted by the System.

Choose a Class

If one is not chosen in [9:56], one will be chosen at random

Like with the other message to advance, she mentally accepted that she was ready to choose a Class.

Choose a Class from one of the following:

Spearman▲

Swordsman▲

Brawler▲

Shieldman▲

Warrior✦

Infantryman✦

Knight✦

Fire Mage✦

Earth Mage✦

Air Mage✦

Water Mage✦

Light Mage✦

Dark Mage✦

Fire Swordsman★

…

Dark Swordsman★

Elementalist★

Fire Warrior✶

…

Dark Knight✶

Elemental Swordsman✶

Elemental Warrior✷

Elemental Infantryman✷

Elemental Knight✷

There were certainly a lot of options to choose from. They seemed to follow the same rating system as everything else, which meant that the ones at the bottom were whatever was above Adept✶. She wanted to see more information on them, and started with Spearman▲to get an idea of what each had going for it. After seeing a couple at each rarity, she didn’t need to look beyond that to understand what each would do.

Basic Class Spearman▲

Have the skill Polearms at basic or higher

Novice Class Warrior✦

Have a weapon skill and an auxiliary skill at novice level or higher

Journeyman Class Elementalist★

Be able to use all elements with a skill or set of skills that are at novice level or higher

Adept Class Fire Warrior✶

Have a fire elemental skill to journeyman level or higher. Have a weapon skill and an auxiliary skill at journeyman level or higher

Master Class Elemental Knight✷

Be able to use all elements with a skill or set of skills that are at journeyman level or higher. Have a weapon skill, an auxiliary skill, and an armor skill at journeyman level or higher.

Eva threw away all of the Basic▲ and most of the Novice✦ Classes since she liked magic and wanted to keep using it. She also discarded the focused hybrid Classes like Fire Swordsman★. She wanted to do more than just be a swordsman with a bit of magic. By the same token, she rejected the focused magic Classes and their hybrids for the same reason. This left her four possibilities with the elementalist Class and its hybrids.

Elemental Infantryman✷ was similar to Elemental Warrior✷, except that it required an armor skill instead of an auxiliary skill. Eva wasn’t sure what auxiliary skills were, but she knew she had some to Journeyman★ level to meet the requirements. Eventually, she settled on Elemental Knight✷ since it had the most requirements to meet out of all the Classes she was offered.

Master Class Gained: Elemental Knight✷

Class point gained

When Eva considered the use of the Class point, a three dimensional web appeared in her mind. The web was vaguely shaped like a diamond, with five thicker strands of the web coming out of the middle, and thinner webbing connecting them. When she looked at each of the thicker parts, she could see that it was made up of many smaller nodes that were dimmed out. Each of the nodes had an effect. Each of the five thicker sections had a theme—Stats, weapon Skills, auxiliary Skills, armor Skills, and elemental Skills. It was in the auxiliary Skills section that she figured out what those were. They were skills like Dodge★ and Pierce✦.

At the center of the web, there were five blinking nodes to choose from, one for each of the primary paths of the Class. She guessed that choosing any of them would open up the connected nodes, so taking something for the Stats now might not be the best option when there were much juicier nodes down farther down the web that she’d want to go for. The web would be something she’d have to study at some point.

For the moment, however, Eva chose to put her point in the first elemental Skills node, which gave her 5% increased elemental damage when using an elemental Skill. Finally, she dumped her remaining experience into boosting her Stats as far as they would go. She took one last look at her status before standing up and making her way back to the dungeon camp.

Name: Eva Greene

Species: Human II (Modified)

Class: Elemental Knight✷

Level: 11

Experience: 15

Health: 694

Regen: 7.0/min

Stamina: 674

Regen: 71/min

Mana: 840

Regen: 70/min

Strength: 71

Cost: 72 Exp

Dexterity: 71

Cost: 72 Exp

Agility: 78.1

Cost: 72 Exp

Endurance: 71

Cost: 72 Exp

Wisdom: 71

Cost: 72 Exp

Acuity: 70

Cost: 71 Exp

Intelligence: 70

Cost: 71 Exp

Willpower: 70

Cost: 71 Exp

Vitality: 70

Cost: 71 Exp

Perception: 70

Cost: 71 Exp

Skills/Spells: Throwing▲: 5, Polearms▲: 6, Unarmed▲: 5, Swords★: 9, Shields★: 5, Charge★: 2, Infuse Weapon★: 9, Medium Armor★: 6, Pierce✦: 8, Air Resistance★: 3, Fire Resistance★: 2, Earth Resistance★: 2, Water Resistance★: 3, Dodge★: 5, Poison Resistance★: 4, Meditation✦: 5, Observe✦: 10, Human Language✹, First Aid▲: 1, Mapmaking▲: 10, Fireball▲: 1

Titles:

Equipment: Shortsword★, Shield✦, Magister's Emerald Ring✹, Boots of the Traveler✦, Shard Ring✹

II

As soon as Eva arrived at the dungeon camp, she made her way to the first person she found selling armor. With her armor and clothes doing a great impression of transparency, she needed something. What was for sale—for the rather high price of five Basic Augmentation Shards▲—was the now common set of monster skin armor that consisted of a shirt and a pair of pants.

With the purchase completed, she jogged to the dungeon entrance and chose Adept✶ after talking to the scheduler. She wasn’t there to fight monsters, though she did end up clearing one room. Rather, she was there to change her clothes away from prying eyes. It wasn’t that she hated getting looks or even showing herself off in the right setting. Hell, she’d been to a few nude beaches in her time. No, she chose to change in the dungeon because she wanted to avoid the possible dangers that changing outside might have exposed her to.

When she was done changing and testing out her new gear against the rabbits, she went back to the stalls and purchased an axe. It was crude, but Infuse Weapon★ would make it tough enough to do what she wanted.

Eva walked a hundred yards from the dungeon to the edge of the camp and Infused★ the axe with air. With the added sharpness the air element provided, she was able to quickly fell a number of trees. The sharpened axe was perfect for her to slice thick crude boards from the trees that she then used to start building a structure for Hideki and herself.

She placed trees in a rectangle with cutouts to make them all fit together as the foundation. Eva pounded thinner branches into the ground just inside of the logs and lashed them to the foundation. Outside of the uprights, and on top of the foundation, she tied the planks to form the walls.

“Looks good,” said a nearby voice.

Eva saw Hideki coming from the direction of the middle of the dungeon camp.

“Thanks,” she answered.

“This is for us?”

“Mhm. Now that you’re here, can you help me with the roof?”

“Sure, how can I help?”

“Take this,” Eva handed him a long branch, “and tie it off to the upright on the higher side while I take care of the other end.”

Hideki nodded and did as she asked.

They worked on the structure for another hour before it was complete enough to settle into. It was a far cry better than the lean-to they’d had before, with enough room to stand up in and an area to store some belongings. The sloped roof had a gap of a few inches between the branches that made up the roof and the top of the walls that was perfect for letting the smoke of a fire out, so they built their fire inside for the warmth it provided. She wasn’t going to sleep covered in leaves anymore!

III

“Do you want to go raid the dungeon?” Eva asked while they were eating dinner.

“Tonight?” Hideki confirmed.

“Yeah. I didn’t get a chance after the monster wave, and I’d like to test out my new Class and my new Skill.”

“I think I’ll pass,” he decided.

She gave him a questioning look.

“After all the fighting and the building today, I’m worn out,” he clarified.

“That’s fine. I shouldn’t be more than a couple hours, probably. Don’t stay up too late.”

Eva dove in for a long kiss before she left the building.

Before going to the dungeon, she picked up a couple of Stamina Potions✦ and another Health Potion✦. This ensured that she had three of each.

“What’s the availability like?” Eva asked the woman in charge of scheduling once she’d made her way to the dungeon entrance.

“Everything Journeyman★ and below is busy, though Journeyman★ will open up in about twenty minutes if you’re willing to wait.”

“Thanks. I’ll just go in Adept✶ then.”

“Good luck.”

Eva nodded to the woman and selected Adept✶ at the dungeon entrance. For this dungeon run, she planned on testing and leveling Fireball▲.

Basic Fireball▲ Lv 1

Deals 1 damage per mana spent

1 second cast time

Costs up to 100 Mana to activate

As soon as she reached the first room, she charged and shot her first Fireball▲ at one of the two rabbits in the room. The base monsters were around level 18 according to Observe✦. The small ball of fire struck the rabbit before it could hop away. The Fireball▲ absorbed into its fur, blackening it and causing some less affected patches to catch fire. It was rather anticlimactic, visually, and there was no kill message. It took a further two fully charged Fireballs▲ to kill the first rabbit. The second died by her blade.

The Skill didn’t do much damage yet, and these higher leveled monsters had enough health to take a couple of hits. It would be better, she decided, to hit each rabbit with a Fireball▲ before killing it with a slash of her shortsword. That would allow her to keep the pace up as well as to level the Skill.

Before she moved to the next room, she started making a map with Mapmaking▲. This was enough to level it to the next level. It was time to choose what to do with the skill.

Choose a Novice rank upgrade for Mapmaking▲

Map accuracy increased by 1%

Mental map maintained for 1 hour

Memorize 1 route between two points. Can be changed once per week.

Estimate distance between two points with an accuracy of no worse than 11%

Know if and where a map is less than 11% accurate

With all of the available options, Eva went with the mental map option.

Novice Mapmaking✦ Lv 1

Remember all steps taken for at least 11 hours

Mental map maintained for 1 hour

It was an improvement to be sure. She could make the map in her head instead of using the piece of paper. The only issue was the limited time. With an extra hour or two, she’d be able to do an entire dungeon without paper and pen. For the time being, she decided to mentally mark the map as well as to draw it on paper as a backup. If she could get a couple of levels to the Skill, she’d be able to fully stick with the mental map.

The base rooms went quickly. They only took around five minutes each with the number of rabbits being anywhere from two to four. The experience was decent, though not as good as it had been before she tiered up. On the other hand, killing the rabbits was trivial. It felt like they took more damage than they had the last time she cleared the dungeon.

It took almost three hours for Eva to complete all of the rooms besides the boss room. With the added ranged ability in Fireball▲, killing the rabbits was a breeze. The reason it took as long as it did was so that she could recoup her mana between rooms. On the plus side, the extra time meant that Fireball▲ was able to get to level 5 with all the usage she’d put it through.

Eva sat outside the boss room. She’d allocated her experience and gained another Class Point sometime between picking her Class and checking again. Either way, she wanted to do a deeper dive into how she might build her Class before making any more decisions. At the present, she had a more pressing choice to make: to fight the boss or not.

Normally, she would have gone in with a team and cleared it no problem. After all, she wasn’t the one going to get hurt. She knew she could probably do it. She’d fought the previous iterations of the boss plenty enough to understand its attack patterns. The only thing she was missing was what its newest Skill would be. Every time the dungeon ranked up, the boss had something new, and every time it had something new, it had been a Skill. The current build it had was pretty strong, but she knew she was stronger.

Eva stepped into the boss room after making her decision. The boss monster looked much like it had in the previous iteration, despite a minor name change. She knew that the first thing it was liable to do was stun her. As such, she kept her head down when she Charged★. One Charge★ wasn’t enough to get her all the way to it, but it was good enough to get close enough for a Fireball▲.

The flaming orb shot out and impacted the boss, who responded with a screech. Instead of attempting to stun her as it previously had, it had used its newest Skill. Out from the shadows came four level 18 rabbits. Eva turned her back to the boss and Charged★ the closest one. An Infused★ slash was plenty to take care of it.

With one down, she was faced with a predicament. She had to avoid the boss while taking care of the new threats just in case there was a stun attempt. She’d be very dead if she was immobile for even a few seconds. On the other hand, fiddling with the minions wouldn’t make the boss dead any faster. Still, killing the minions was the safer option, so that is what she did. With a quick glance back at the boss to make sure she had enough space, Eva Charged★ the next rabbit.

In only two minutes, the extra monsters were dead. It was time to face the boss alone. She kept her shield between it and her. It Charged her in return, which she was able to Dodge★. The boss was only slightly weaker in Stats than she was, and she did not want to find out how much damage it could do to her. She already knew how much she could do in a short period of time.

A Fireball▲ struck the boss in the side, eliciting a yelp. The monster tried to stun her in response, but she was ready to avoid the skill. An air Infused★ slash cut into its side superficially. It was enough to draw some blood, but not enough to deal any real damage. The boss Bit back multiple times, of which she Dodged★ all but one. The attack she couldn’t avoid went through her armor and tore a chunk from her left thigh.

Eva immediately downed one of her Health Potions✦. She had to quickly block the monster with her shield while the medicine took effect. Her leg knitted itself back together, and she was ready for the next attack.

It took several Infused★ slashes before she was able to get any kind of progress going against the boss. It got her back now and again, which ended up being enough for her to unlock the Light Armor▲ skill. The monster leather armor did not count for Medium Armor★, for whatever reason. She wondered if it was the material or the style that made the difference. All the extra Stats she would otherwise have had were no longer there. Unless she got lucky with one of the quest rewards, she would have to train up another skill to get back to where she had been. She shook her head to get back into the game.

Eva had to Dodge★ a swipe from the boss, but that gave her an opening to send a Fireball▲ into its face. The monster screamed in pain and Called for backup. Three level 18 rabbits appeared near the boss that she had to deal with before she could work on the boss again. This repetition clued her into the fact that the boss might try to stun her again. She wasn’t sure what the cooldown on the Skill was, if there was any. Regardless, she spent the few minutes Dodging★ and striking the nuisances that the boss had summoned before returning to her objective.

The monster made the decision to stun her, but like the first time, she was ready for it. All that it got in return was an Infused★ Pierce✦ that did a fair amount more damage than the first round of slashes had done. However, all the exertion meant that she needed to drink the second of her Stamina Potions✦ to keep going.

It took another round of extra enemies, Bites, and a stun attempt before Eva finished off the boss. It was a fairly difficult fight that had drained her of all but one Health Potion✦, but she’d made it through the Adept✶ dungeon alone. She could probably do Master✷ with more potions or with a couple other people. That the boss was able to summon extras really did make the fight last significantly longer than if it had just had some other attack Skill.

As a reward for finishing the dungeon, Eva got many Novice Shards✦ and even a couple Journeyman Shards★. The boss gave her second Disenhance Shard✹. She put the loot into the Shard Ring✹ and exited the dungeon.