'Fairy' Sensei's little corner:

(A.N. Yeah. We are going to need this at the front if not this chapter will be confusing as crap. Well, not really. It’s quite long, but…… I find it interesting, so you might want to sit through it. If not, just skip to the line.)

Today's Topic: Placements

Placements, or rankings, more commonly known as the Circles, are a way of measuring a dungeon, or a human, or any living creature’s for that matter, level of strength and power.

This ranking is meant such that newb humans will not bite off more than they can chew, and the strong ones will not waste their time on something that is not worth it, since weaker dungeons generally have lower value yields. This ‘dungeon yield’ will be a topic for another day.

The circles are arranged in a concentric manner (sample: ?), the most outer circle being the ‘Ring’, and the inner circles the ‘Placing Circles’. The Ring is a determinant of the dungeon type, or type in general, is a crude gage to how strong a dungeon or monster is. The type of dungeon is already a good gage on its difficulty, since a Demon dungeon will be of a far greater strength compared to a mere Goblin dungeon. That being said, however, that the Ring simply isn’t enough.

An example of how a dungeon is ringed: a wolf dungeon would be of the Canine Ring. Our dungeon is of the UN Ring (UNRinged), since we are not placed yet. A dungeon of a never before seen type would be labelled U Ring (Unknown Ring) until the type receives an official name.

Then comes the Placing Circles. The circles’ colouration determines the circles’ own placing with other circles, called ‘Colour’. The circle rank goes as, order in weak to strong: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Crystal, Legendary, Heroic, Master, Champion, Challenger. The entire system wasn't just created in one day. When people found more challenging dungeons, or wanted to split up the ranks to have a clearer knowledge of the dungeon, they just added on. Since no one really bothered to follow the previous pattern, the ranking names ended up pretty fragmented.

The rankings are set-up in such a way with 3 main blocks of exponentially increasing strength. The Metal (Bronze to Crystal), Seeker (Legendary to Master) and Legend (Champion and Challenger).

Challenger because those who hold this title were called ‘the challenger of the Gods’, or so the stories go. It might not be true.

Within the ranks, each Colour has its own number of concentric circles. Metal Colours, except Bronze, has 5 circles each. Bronze has 10. Seeker colours have 3. Champion has 2, Challenger only 1.

The innermost circle is the highest(strongest) and the outermost the lowest(weakest). The numbering also increases as the circles expand out. Say for Silver, the innermost would be 1st Circle and outermost 5th.

Example: Bronze of the 1st circle would be stronger that Bronze of the 5th circle.

Most of the time, the rank is given, but it only applies to humans and other sentient beings. Monsters and dungeons have a natural ranking system of the same system(it is unknown who copied who), so that there would be no discrepancies.

to get Placed, a dungeon must win 10 Dungeon Battles. This is a must. How the rank is decided is unknown.

It is also exponentially harder to climb in circle placings, but that is once again a topic for another day. (As is the rewards for achieving such placing)

That would conclude the basics of the Placements system.

“Tapira......what do you suggest we do?” I ask. Being honest, I feel slightly bored. It’s two days since we finished our battle. Tapira has already completed her mourning of her fallen monsters by now.

“No idea. It’s really up to you to choose. We have a couple of choices, but all of them are too dangerous as of now.” Tapira admitted.

“Uhn Uhn.” The ‘fairy’s’ hand bobbed up and down.

“Placements” She said.

Ahhhh, that might work. Just yesterday, she was introducing me to this placements thing. It took a little too long, so she simply transferred her knowledge directly to my core. Something about the perks of being a companion......

It also appears that Tapira was already placed, but only at the measly rank of Bronze of the 7th circle. Well, it’s at the level where one cannot simply stroll in and expect to leave alive, but it’s still very weak.

And so, it seems like we have a goal now. Get my ‘Probationals’ done and get a rank. Oh yes, Probationals is just a term for those 10 Dungeon battles. Now 8 for me. But first, we have to get stronger. Much, much stronger.

Well, first of all, we have to check our loot. I mean...... we never checked did we?

Rewards for Dungeon Battle DP 4000 Animus 200 Misc Gift of Spider Dungeon Gift of Spider Dungeon Altered Eggs [Silkworm] 10 Essence of Gift [Altered egg-Unkown] 1 Gift of Dungeon Trait Nest

*Whistle* Quite the haul if I do say so myself. That amount of DP will last me quite a while......

Hmmmmmmm, I think that I should grab 100 seeds to play around with. That would leave me with....7000DP. Nice! Next up, we’re going to splurge a little. 200 eggs! *Sigh*...... only 1000DP left in my piggy-bank. But hey, 200 eggs you know?! Who knows what kinds of adaptations will we see.

This gifted trait thing still confuses me.... maybe I should ask my companion? Oh well, just leave that for later I guess. Let’s go! Our grind fest begin!

(3rd person POV)

True to his word, the ‘fairy’ received pretty much little to no (sometimes) food. Her combat was atrocious, all fingers and thumbs in gardening and had absolutely no strength to chisel through the rock. The least she could do was be sort of an errand boy kind of duty, running around to deliver items, and even then she tripped many times on the uneven floor, spilling her goods. Thank goodness that the dungeon master had no physical body, or his face would have fallen off considering how many times he did a facepalm.

There was even once where she even ate the poisonous vakiolum to sate her hunger, thankfully not enough to be fatal, but leaving her in quite the pitiful state.

Still, he was unwilling to give up on his companion. With the help of Tapira, he launched Boot Camp Beevare, what he calls ‘Are you starving but too weak? Then look no further, for Boot Camp Beevare will make you ensure you end with tank-tread six-packs. The emergency program for those who lack basic physical capability. Food provided!’

Following that, he rounded up the weakest of his current forces, including his Queen and Consort (and ‘fairy’ as well), and dropped them into hell.

It’s not as if the dungeon master actually attended a military training camp, but for other camps, he did attend. To which he took them blew up their difficulty by..... a lot.

There was no clock in the dungeon(s), but there was an instinctual sense for the passage of time. Thus, the dungeon master simply denoted one portion of time as ‘’1 hour‘’ and proceeded to name 24 hours as one day.

The participants of this “camp” had only about four hours of sleep, with another two hours spread out throughout the day as breaks. The rest was pure physical training. With the help of the bees and larvacks, they created weights from beeswax and the hardened dissolved stone of the larvacks. With a bit of trial and error, they even created gym equipment (a crude copy, eg if you consider a looks-to-be-going-to-crumble arch to be a pull up bar) for the ‘fairy’.

They, of course, were well fed. No meaning in starving them when they did such rigorous training, they needed nutrition to build muscle, and not giving them food would defeat the purpose of this “camp”. This was the only part of the camp that the ‘fairy’ actively looked forward to. The gleam in her eyes when the training ended and was food time, plus the fact that she apparently still had energy to run to be the first in line was a sure proof.

To give a brief run-down of this two-week long camp, the larval (and some bees) training differed from that of the ‘fairy’s’. For obvious reasons.

There were 5 types of training for the larvae: Endurance, Burst, Stamina, Combat, Strength.

Endurance was simply to train their exoskeleton, usually with something hitting it or under a large weight. Nothing lethal, of course.

Burst was to train their reflexes, as well as train their speed burst for combat. With the help of the bees and largots, throwing stones at them for them to dodge. There were targets set up, if any of them could hit one of the flying stones in the air to knock down the target, they received extra food. Though, unknown to the dungeon master, it was the larvae’s drive to impress him that was their main motivation, not food. But it worked out in the end, so no big deal.

Stamina was where they had to be attached to a cart of sorts, and do laps round the dungeon. After every fixed number of laps, a weight is dropped into the cart. Thus, with ever increasing difficulty the laps will become, to train their stamina.

Combat was.... self-explanatory. Simply combat training and nothing else. Under the guidance of leading militarvae and other combat experienced larvae, with bees for aerial combat simulation, they chocked up quite the battle sense.

Strength was simply just trying to push a weight from a fixed point to another. Of course the mass of such increases over time (by adding more weights).

The Queen in particular even managed to utilize her plentiful mana to some extent.

For the ‘fairy’, she had a much more different (by that means tougher) schedule. Burst, Stamina, Combat, Dexterity, Strength, Dexterity II.

For her, Burst, Stamina, Combat remained the same (they were quite similar)

Dexterity was flexibility training as well as agility. Those tears and screams of pain when she was stretched to her limits and beyond were pretty terrifying, though it appeared to have some form of effect.

Strength was modified, where she used her “gym” equipment to train. Such as pull-ups or sit-ups and push-ups and other such mundane physical training. The dungeon master kept a close eye, making sure that she never slacked off.

Dexterity II was currently not in effect. The first attempt at it resulted in her faceplanting into the ground at the double bars....so she was banned from taking part until the dungeon master saw fit. It’s pretty much gymnastics, to those curious.

And so....... this “Camp” of his continued, until two weeks later, the tell-tale crack of eggs hatching resounded throughout both dungeons. It was time to end this little journey and welcome the new life that has come.

It’s going to be even busier from now on.......