I

The walk over to the dungeon was pleasant. With her blade Infused★ with light, she could see well, and the path itself had been trampled enough by that point to be quite easy to follow in the gloom of night. The dungeon camp—from what she could see—had been cleaned up. The bodies of the dead had been burned and the broken buildings had been repurposed for new shelters. Two watchtowers had been built near the side the attack had come from. A wall was being built—starting by the watchtowers—with a trench running around the dungeon camp making where the rest of the wall would go when it was completed.

There were several people milling about. Some of them were getting ready to sleep while others looked to be readying for dungeon runs or to patrol the area—Eva was unsure of which. Regardless of what they were doing, she made her way towards the cave and the dungeon.

“Hey!” called a man as she entered the cave.

“Yes?” came a frustrated answer as she turned to look at him.

“Where’s your pass to enter the dungeon?”

“The fuck I need a pass for?”

“New rules from the council. Gotta have a pass to make sure you’re not one of the traitors.”

“I’m Eva. You know, the one who kills the monsters every day? I went off to kill those traitors yesterday after seeing what they did.”

“Prove it. Where’s your pass?”

“My friend died in the attack yesterday, and I need to blow off some steam. Would it rather be you or the monsters in the dungeon? You know what? I’ve got my pass right here.”

Eva flipped him the bird.

“I’m going into Master✷.”

She walked into the dungeon despite his protests. He’d be unable to stop her from entering anyway. Bureaucracy was stupid when you were strong enough to not give a damn.

From the instant she entered the dungeon, she could tell that Master✷ was different. Unlike the dimly lit burrows she could stand in, this version of the dungeon was lit well enough to see, and the tunnels connecting the rooms were much smaller and made of rough dirt all around. Rather than the rectangular shape they’d had before, the tunnels were closer to oval in shape. Eva would have to crouch to get through them.

As before, each room had two to four rabbits to fight. Observe★ put them at level 23 on average. The main difference between these rooms and the ones in lower difficulties was size. The rooms were smaller with lower ceilings that made it hard for her to attack the rabbits without getting her sword stuck in the ceiling. It meant that she’d have to be more careful and rely on Fireball▲ more often since it wouldn’t have the unfortunate roof colliding problem.

She tested her Fireball▲ spell against the rabbits, finding that it took seven to kill one of them outright as compared to three in the Adept✶ version when they were level 18. Her strategy for clearing the rooms ended up being the same as last time: sling a Fireball▲ at each of the rabbits and kill them with her sword. It took a couple more swings to end each one, but the experience was a lot better at 46 per monster.

II

Three and a half hours later, Eva found herself in front of the boss room. She used her experience from the monster wave and from the dungeon so far to boost her Stats as far as they would go. She gained two levels out of it and stuck the Class Points into the web, netting another 10% to her elemental damage when using an elemental Skill. One more Class level and she’d have her first important node: an additional level for her elemental Skills.

Eva took a deep breath. It was time to face the boss. She pushed open the doors and entered the room. Like the other rooms, the boss room was smaller with a lower ceiling than in past runs. The boss itself, it turned out, was yet another human invention.

Vorpal Rabbit Lv 28

Eva knew that was not good. She thought she remembered what it was, but she wasn’t sure. What she did know, however, was that the rabbit was normal-rabbit sized instead of the monster it had been previously. In light of previous experience, she was cautious. The rabbit should have the same attacks it had before along with something new--unless being small was the new thing. She prepared herself for the stunning skill and Charged★ her adversary.

The fight was more frustrating than it had been previously. Despite the increase in rank, there was no new skill added. The rabbit was just small, which was the frustrating part. It was fast—though not nearly as fast as Eva—and would also aim to Bite her throat, which she was able to easily Dodge★. Without the ability to reliably slash it with her sword, she resorted to kicking it and burning it with Fireball▲ every so often. Besides making the monster mad, all that really did was prolong the fight.

In the end, the damage she took was mostly from the extra rabbits the boss Summoned to the fight. The potions helped mitigate the damage. Though it took about half an hour, the vorpal rabbit eventually lay dead. It was after the fight that she figured out that the extra monsters summoned by the boss gave no experience.

The haul from completing Master✷ difficulty was really something, however. First were the typical shards. They were a mix of Journeyman★ and lower, with most of them being Novice✦ varieties. There were no special shards to be found. Instead, Eva received an item from the boss, a Dungeoneer’s Backpack✹. The backpack had one cubic yard of space inside that she could fill, despite being the size of a normal backpack! After filling it with all the contents of her other backpack, she realized that it did not reduce the weight of items, only the size. It also came with a couple of loops for tools to be hung from.

The biggest prize was from the System itself.

Unclaimed Dungeon Conquered

As the owner, you can now set rules for this dungeon

New Quest: Own all the dungeons in the Tutorial. 1/6 owned

Eva chuckled upon discovering the new Quest. Surviving wasn’t enough for the Tutorial and the System. No, she needed to go find five more dungeons and make them hers. Shaking her head, she put her old backpack inside her new one and left the dungeon.

“There she is!” yelled the idiot of a dungeon keeper, pointing at her.

There were two guards near the man, both of which she recognized from fighting the monsters and the patrol on her fight night in the village.

“You idiot,” one of the guards said to the man, “she’s the one running around killing monsters every day.”

“Hey, Eva,” the other guard called to her. “We missed you today. Everything ok?”

“Not really, no. My friend died in the raid, so I went after them. Going to go back to that after I sleep tonight. Fucking traitors.”

“Yeah, I heard. I’m sorry. I lost a couple friends from the guards, too. I wish I coulda done something, you know? So thanks for kicking their asses for me.”

Eva nodded. She was tired from being up for almost an entire day. If there was an open shelter she could use for a few hours, she’d do that. Otherwise the entrance to the cave would have to do.

She eventually found an unoccupied lean-to. She made sure to check with one of the people still awake that she wasn’t taking anyone’s spot before laying down.

Rather than sleep right away, she looked into her control over the dungeon. There turned out to be several options for her to choose from. The first was controlling who could enter. That could be done with either a whitelist or a blacklist. Going into the whitelist allowed her to choose human, blocking out everyone else. She could add names of people, too, but that wasn’t too useful at that moment. There were options for factions, but the village was not a recognized faction, nor was the fort for that matter.

Next, she could choose an entrance fee and a tax rate for the people using the dungeon. This she left alone at 0%. There was no reason for that when the point of the dungeon was to get humanity as strong as possible. The more people used it, the better! There were options like minimum and maximum party size, which she enabled, setting the maximum to 10. If it worked how she hoped, there would be less stress on the people trying to figure out how many people could go through it. Finally, there were options around setting managers for the dungeon, who could whitelist or blacklist people, but could not make any other changes. Eva left the rest of the options alone and went to sleep.

III

She woke up with a plan fully formed in her mind. First, she would need to stock up on potions again, just in case. Then she would head over to the landwalkers’ town and see if she could find their dungeon. If it was hidden inside the town, she would be out of luck, probably. On the other hand, if it was outside the town, she would find a way to sneak in. Once inside, she’d be able to quickly conquer the dungeon over the course of a day. At that point, she could lock them out after she was free and clear. Without the extra experience from the dungeon, they would fall behind the village and be less of a threat. Hopefully.

With her plan firmly in her head, Eva walked to the village to trade her shards for potions. She was able to sell her old backpack for two Basic Shards▲, and used most of her Novice Shards✦ to purchase Stamina Potions✦ and a couple Mana Potions✦ and Health Potions✦ as well. Lex had some stronger ones he was selling for Journeyman Shards★, but she wasn’t all that interested in those yet.

It took almost four hours for Eva to find her way from the village, through the territory controlled by the fort, to the landwalker town. She had to Sneak▲ for much of the way so as to not be detected. That gained her a couple levels in the Skill, but otherwise added an unhelpful amount of time to the journey.

Once at the town, she Snuck▲ around the perimeter, using her better-than-average vision to look into the town to see if she could notice any kind of dungeon there. She was able to find a market district and their equivalent of a town hall, but she did not find any hints of a dungeon inside the town.

Outside, however, was a different story. Eva moved around the town a few trees into the forest so as not to be seen by the guards patrolling the wall. As she came around the far side of the town from where she’d arrived, she saw a fairly steady stream of landwalkers moving between a gate in the town wall to something inside the woods just out of sight. When she approached, she was able to see that it was something important.

A quarter mile into the forest, an area had been cleared of trees. The far side of the clearing from the town was a 60 foot cliff with forest covering the top. Surrounding one part of the bottom was a palisade with a gate where the landwalkers would enter and exit. If she were a betting woman—which she was not—she would have put her house on that being the dungeon. It made sense why they were unable to directly defend the dungeon entrance by putting the town around it. The cliff really messed with that sort of planning. Monsters would be able to just drop in the town or over the wall even if they’d built half the town up high. It was a stroke of luck Eva would be happy to take advantage of.

Climbing the cliff turned out to not be much of a problem as, around a mile away, the cliff was only around ten feet high. It was something she was able to climb with relative ease. The extra Stats she had over a normal human made the movements and gripping much easier than if she were her old self. Her old self wouldn’t have been able to hold onto the cliff at all.

Once on the top of the cliff, she Snuck▲ her way back to the dungeon. Lying on her stomach, she was able to look down into the area protected by the palisade. Inside, there were a handful of guards and around thirty landwalkers either hanging around waiting or traveling into the dungeon or back to town. She could get in there, but not with that many around. They’d all flood after her in the Basic▲ version of the dungeon, probably. Even if not, it would alert the town to her presence right away, which would be bad. She’d need to wait for an opportunity to climb down unnoticed.

As she waited, she looked over her equipment. Her sword and shield were in good condition. Her armor was still intact, even if it wasn’t very good to look at. She had her potions and a short rope from when she rescued the women the previous day. It wouldn’t be enough to repel down the cliff, but it would probably be useful for something, eventually. Her equipment in good order, she looked at her Stats.

Name: Eva Greene

Species: Human II (Modified)

Class: Elemental Knight✷

Level: 13

Experience: 25

Health: 952

Regen: 8.7/min

Stamina: 919

Regen: 95/min

Mana: 1058

Regen: 87/min

Strength: 88

Cost: 89 Exp

Dexterity: 91

Cost: 89 Exp

Agility: 101.2

Cost: 89 Exp

Endurance: 95

Cost: 89 Exp

Wisdom: 88

Cost: 89 Exp

Acuity: 88

Cost: 89 Exp

Intelligence: 87

Cost: 88 Exp

Willpower: 87

Cost: 88 Exp

Vitality: 87

Cost: 88 Exp

Perception: 87

Cost: 88 Exp

Skills/Spells: Throwing▲: 5, Polearms▲: 6, Unarmed▲: 5, Swords★: 10, Shields★: 5, Charge★: 3, Infuse Weapon★: 10, Medium Armor★: 6, Pierce✦: 9, Air Resistance★: 3, Fire Resistance★: 2, Earth Resistance★: 2, Water Resistance★: 3, Dodge★: 5, Poison Resistance★: 5, Meditation✦: 5, Observe★: 1, Human Language✹, First Aid▲: 2, Mapmaking✦: 2, Fireball▲: 7, Light Armor▲: 2, Sneaking▲: 4

Titles:

Equipment: Shortsword★, Shield★, Magister's Emerald Ring✹, Boots of the Traveler★, Shard Ring✹, Leather Armor★, Leather Leggings★, Dungeoneer’s Backpack✹

Running dungeons repeatedly was rather draining, but she’d already spent a month doing that before the Tutorial with only the occasional day off. She was strong enough to go through the dungeons on her own. Instead of splitting 6,000 experience for a Master✷ tier dungeon six to ten ways, she got all of that for herself. The results spoke for themselves.

Only an hour or so into her observation, she noticed a change in the behavior of the landwalkers. Instead of new people from the town coming in to replace the people who had gone into the dungeon, people who exited the dungeon were leaving for the town and no one was entering. Soon, there were only around ten landwalkers behind the gate. Two of the guards shut the gate and barred it. Eva wondered what was going on, but the daily System message answered her curiosity.

There are 22 days remaining

5222/10000 are still alive

New Quest: Defeat a monster wave. 0/2191 killed

She knew this was her chance. Though the landwalkers might look up and might give her a somewhat hard time, she’d have backup from whatever the monster-du-jour was. If she could sneak in without alerting them, she would. Otherwise, she’d kill them all in such a way that it looked like the monsters overwhelmed them. Maybe the landwalkers would be stupid enough to believe it.

Eva latched onto the rock face and engaged Sneak▲ to keep her noise to a minimum. At a low level, it wouldn’t do much, but it was the thought that counted. Slowly and quietly she descended the cliff. Occasionally, a monster would drop from the top of the cliff and splat on the ground. Very occasionally, one of those monsters would land on a landwalker or somehow survive the journey to the ground. The ones that landed on the landwalkers were able to kill one or two of them, but the survivors didn’t fare very well. It did at least tell Eva what they were: zombies.

As she neared the ground, one of the elite zombies survived the fall. The attention of the landwalkers was focused on the monster, which allowed Eva to drop to the ground and make her way to the dungeon. Like the rabbit dungeon, this one was in a cave as well. She chose to enter the dungeon quickly without Observing★ the dungeon itself. She selected Basic▲ when given the option.