Hmm, that’s not so bad. ‘Farming’, she called it? Scarlet wanted me to farm dungeons, which was just a term they coined for repeatedly doing dungeons to gather up soul shards and items.

“To be honest, the guild is already pretty rich,” she admitted with a shrug, “we have black-tier items, which is better than the previously best red-tier. That means there’s only one thing we can do to make ourselves stronger. We have to level up!” She exclaimed, quite excited about the prospect.

“You mean rank-up?”

She shook her head and waved her hand side to side in front of her face, “I mean level up. Sometimes I forget you’re not from this world. Every dungeoneer has a level that determines his power. Each level you gain, you are awarded three expendable attribute points. These points can be placed in either intelligence, strength, or agility.”

So, they can inherently raise their primary attributes here? That’s amazing. If that’s world magic…

“Then it applies to you too,” Donna said what I was thinking.

“Say, Scarlet, how do I see my level? Is it similar to the inventory?”

She nodded, “It’s a status window. Just imagine a little copy of yourself and there should be some information around you.”

I did as she said, concentrating hard for the first time, but after a minute or so, I could see the status window she talked about. In it, I could see the items that had some sort of enchant, effect, or use that I had equipped. The staff of Scien was one and the rings were the others. At the side of my miniature self was my attribute points. My strength and agility were just around two hundred, where-as my intelligence looked to be a bit over three hundred. There wasn’t as big of a difference as I thought. It showed my mana power, which read ‘4.2’. I reckoned it must’ve been the bit of mana I was stealing that made it go past four hundred percent. The level that she spoke of was the first thing I saw, but I was too excited to view the attribute points. Seventy-two, huh? I wonder if that’s low or high… I gave Scarlet a look, “What level is considered high?”

“Hmm, well, forty-five to fifty. Levelling up after fifty becomes extremely difficult. The highest recorded level in Yunaris history is fifty-five. I’m,” she palmed her face, “afraid to ask what yours is, but I’m too curious. So, what is it?”

“I see seventy-two.”

She gave a weary sigh, “I can’t even act surprised.”

“What are the plus symbols for at my attribute points? Are those the ones I can spend? I see two hundred and sixteen.”

That was when she chose to act shocked. “Goodness… Where in blazes did you two come from?”

“A pretty normal world compared to yours actually.” After reading what each primary attribute does, I realised August was mostly correct when he told me about them the first time. But he failed to mention that strength also boosted durability, although by a really small amount. Intelligence boosted mana power, by an equally small amount. After I distributed my points, I ended up with around two hundred and fifty in strength and agility, and four hundred and fifty for intelligence. That boosted my mana power to four hundred and fifty percent.

Once I told August about it, he quickly spent his points. His agility was the highest, reaching around one thousand. His strength was eight hundred and his intelligence just below one hundred. I wondered why his attributes were at such a ludicrous level, but then I remembered his quint training. His level was seventy. Whilst spending his attribute points, he kept a coy grin and licked his lips occasionally, mumbling “Come to daddy,” at the end of it.

The next day, I was grouped with another batch of sorcerers. The mandatory two healers were present. This time, the A-rank dungeon we ventured into was a great desert as far as the eyes could see. Before I could even get a chance to distribute potions, three scorpions the size of wolves sprung out of the sand. Three of the mages were sinking in quicksand and the scorpions were airborne, pincers opened and ready to grip onto the sinking mages. Who knew scorpions could jump?

I blasted them away with some wind and reversed the Quicksand spell. “I’ll help out every now and then, but it’s you guys’ job to complete the dungeon.” There were about twenty enemies that we had to fight through, and that they did. Many of them opted for earth spells to bring the enemies out of hiding and finished off the monsters once they surfaced.

The dungeon must’ve taken around twenty minutes to complete after they killed the boss, a huge dune worm. It was mobile and agile underground, but atop ground it would suffer. They beat it a lot easier than the group that fought the giants yesterday.

At any break I could get, I’d practise light manipulation, seeing that it was of importance to defeating the great demon, Apollyon. But that was only after doing the desert dungeon a couple dozen times.

As a guild, we focused primarily on A-rank dungeons for the three upcoming months. Within those months, my practise in light manipulation granted me yet another spell, but I’ll get to that later. Those three months of constantly absorbing mana from monsters in dungeons boosted my mana power to a cool five hundred percent. It appeared to go slower the more I absorbed but I was still rather excited – giddy even – to have it sit comfortably at five times the normal power. I’d grown quite fond of the staff.

“How were your groups?” I asked Scadia who sat next to me in the RC’s hall and awaited a few C-ranks to return from their rank-up trial.

“Promising. Yours?” she returned my question, keeping her replies short. In fact, since I woke up in bed with her after the party, she’d been dodging me, but trying to play it off like she wasn’t. Maybe she was embarrassed about it? It was hard to tell what was going through that girl’s head.

“They should at least hit A-rank,” I replied, and she nodded in acknowledgment. An awkward silence swept between us. As you all know, I wasn’t one for hiding behind what-ifs and maybes, so I looked at her daringly from the side. “You want to tell me why you’re mad now? Looks like giving you time to cool off isn’t working.”

“I don’t like womanisers. You’re one such man,” she replied, guileless in her delivery.

“Wow!” Donna was taken by surprise. “Even I didn’t expect that answer.”

“Hmm, I see. It’s fair to think that way. I can’t blame you. But would you still think the same if I told you they were okay with it? In fact, they encourage it,” I clarified. Her folded arms stiffened and her fingers dug into her skin.

“You expect me to believe that?” she pouted, not at all buying my honeyed words. Her angered expression sure was cute, but that didn’t diminish the fact that she was mad at me.

“Well, it does sound farfetched. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’d like you to trust me.”

“Save it,” she dismissed me, her eyes facing forward and not even giving me the time of day.

So, I did ‘save’ it. In fact, I stood up to leave. Donna conjured herself into existence and told me to stop. She wanted me to do my usual and finesse her, but in truth, I’d had enough. Anjali and Donna were more than enough for me, and there was no way in hell Scadia could ever compare to my beloved Dawn. She couldn’t even compare to Steyza. And no, I didn’t mean looks, I meant character. There was just something about the sorceress that made me feel she wasn’t worth chasing. “Why don’t you just let her and Anjali meet and prove it to her?” Donna asked.

My glide halted. “Donna,” my voice’s tone low, as well as my thoughts of Scadia of late, “her problem isn’t actually you or Anjali. It’s elsewhere. Besides, she’s not worth my time, nor Anjali’s time. She won’t be worth yours either.”

I have a job to do anyway. I shouldn’t even be helping others level up. But with this rank-up, they should be okay, I told myself, and left the RC hall to farm S-rank dungeons, but figured I should use my newfound time to instead do something I put off for far too long now.

I flew to a tranquil and secluded place near a stream of water and sat on the grass, embracing the gentle winds. “Vena,” I called out to the spirit lord of void magic.

“You and your little girlfriend had an argument and now you want to plough me?” her tone denoted severe revulsion. Then suddenly she switched it up, “I don’t mind, but you’d have to master void manipulation first.”

I chuckled; she always was roundabout in her words, yet so straightforward. “Come on out, I want a face to talk to,” I pleaded, shaking the staff side to side. She obliged and came out, standing up to appreciate the winds as well. “Say, why did you and Qora actually come with us? I can’t think of anything else but monitoring us.”

She shook her head, then thought, and nodded afterward. What a confusing lady. “It’s monitoring, but not to report back to Arcana or anything like that. To tell you the truth, it’s pretty boring in the spirit void. I’m pretty sure if you asked Arcana to come with you, she’d have said yes. She’s just a bit prideful so she didn’t take the initiative. Hethekk on the other hand is the king of boring! All he does is sit and meditate!” she complained, plopping herself down next to me.

“So, Magnet, Voidwalk, and Convergence. All useful spells in their own right,” her short hair danced in the breeze. “I can’t imagine how difficult Magnet must’ve been to learn. Anyway, I’m here to get your manipulation level up to par, and to have fun.”

She sure was talkative, but I didn’t mind at all, “So, what did you have in mind?”

“Sex,” she answered flatly.

“I, uh, I mean…”

“Oh! You’re talking about training. Well,” she shrugged, “your manipulation level isn’t too bad, but it’s still low. Your first assignment is to understand that the ethereal plane, obeys the laws of physics, whilst not obeying them at all. It does both, at the same time. That’s why you can pass through walls in the void, but still stand on the ground. To properly understand that contradiction, you’ll need to spend copious amounts of time in the void. Only come out if you’ve gotta attack an enemy!”

“What if I get the overwhelming urge to have sex?” I placed my chin on the back of my hands.

“Use your hand, then,” she grinned maliciously, as if she was relishing my torment.

We chatted away, making small talk. The rest of my day consisted of practising light manipulation within the void. To keep up that, I had to pour a mana potion down the hatch. Manipulation was convenient with freedom of use, but it didn’t care much for the user’s mana. Unless one’s mana was infinite, or something similar, spells would never go obsolete.

After repeatedly burning a huge patch of grass in the field, I would spread light magic throughout, repairing the burnt parts before they completely died. Even though I did this, the grass in the corporeal was unaffected. My mind wandered on that particular subject. Grass is a living thing, and I can see and feel it in the void. But I don’t see certain animals or insects… I wondered why that would be, until busting my brain over it began distracting me from my training. So, I satiated my curiosity by simply asking Vena about it.

The playful spirit lord explained that beings over a certain level of sentience cannot be seen in the void unless the user ups his manipulation skill. “Is sitting in the void really that helpful? It doesn’t feel like I’m improving void manipulation at all.”

“There is another way,” she placed a finger at the side of her lips and smiled, “but it’s pretty dangerous.”

What a tantalising offer. Had I known what she truly meant by “dangerous”, I’d have outrightly rejected that offer. But I was ignorant and a slave to learning new magics, so I accepted.

“Let’s do it,” I told her.

Her eyes were full of pity, but she trained me anyway. She returned to her dark amethyst flame form and engulfed me. My body began to feel a bit weird and my head was becoming a little dizzy. My blood felt like it stopped flowing. The heart’s job of pumping blood was something that people would never pay attention to throughout their lifetime so it was hard to focus on your own heartbeat, but I swear to Hydra’s sweet ass that my heartbeat stopped.

I could no longer feel myself breathe. My mind began collapsing upon itself, yet becoming greater and more complex. My flesh was melting along with my muscle tissues, and bones, yet somehow, I felt like I was standing over the entire world like a giant. I tried touching my forearm and it simply just went through it.

Nothing made sense.

My body was melting into liquid and turning into gas, as if I was approaching the sun, but it wasn’t hot. The gases were swirling upwards into the sky, but there was no sky anymore. The scene constantly shifted into things I couldn’t recognise, but then I realised that I lost my vision along the way. However, I still felt the unending shift around me. Even as things rapidly changed, I knew deep down that all was the same.

And the scariest thing of all eventually took place – I began losing my ability to formulate thoughts. With this, I panicked, knowing that the very ability to think and be conscious of one’s existence is what made me human; what made me, me. I began getting anxious, really damn anxious. Suffering under Mind Break was scary, but feeling like your entire existence was being unwoven and being lost in the winds of the void felt otherworldly.

Thankfully, Vena felt my fear and stopped whatever she was doing to me. When I returned to the corporeal plane, my breath was frighteningly short. I collapsed, trembling uncontrollably, soaked in sweat and releasing a pungent odour reminiscent of the homeless. But at that moment, I was conscious of nothing but my utter horror. In fact, I didn’t even know what I was afraid of. It was as if the fear I felt had no source, as if cowering was second nature.

I curled into myself, until I felt Vena’s arms wrapped around me. She felt so warm and I felt so safe. After a few minutes, my quivering slowed and I became aware of my own presence, as if returning to consciousness. I looked up, and saw Vena. She smiled when I did. I tried to ask what happened, but my throat was blocked, my mouth sealed. My body didn’t properly respond how I wanted it too, causing me to lose the bit of calm I began exuding.

Eventually, I passed out. When I awoke, a gentle hand swept along my hair and my body wrested on a comfy sofa, with someone’s legs as my pillow. I know this… I thought, realising that only the goddess, Zanthia, would do this.

I was still a bit meek, so she held my hand. “It’s alright now,” she comforted. Even though I was facing forward and couldn’t see her face, I knew she was smiling at me.

“Did I, die?” I inquired.

The goddess continued, “If I said yes, would you have regrets?”

At that moment, it felt like my entire life flashed before my eyes. “Yes,” I answered. Anjali was pregnant, I couldn’t possibly be okay with never seeing my child. I had so many plans for my family alone. I had even pondered on somehow creating a bridge to Tyrr, so that elves and humans can share in the wealth that was magic and improve ourselves. I wondered what Steyza would do if her father, Fenral, got cured of his werewolf blood. What would I name my kid? Would my household be okay? Would Ulanos need aid? Would Phoenix’s child die? Would Donna? That last question made me jerk awake. “No, I can’t die yet! I can’t!” I sat up, then stood up. “There are still so many things I hav–”

I stopped when I noticed the goddess’ beautiful smile. She simply waved me goodbye, and I awoke once again in a room. With Renew, I got myself back in order. I transmuted some breakfast quickly and ate greedily. How long was I asleep for? I wondered, trying to measure the time passed out by the level of starvation I felt. I downed a glass of water then drank a health potion and mana potion after. In fifteen or so minutes, my body felt like it should again.

I was so busy studying what had happened, that I hadn’t realised my left hand was no longer on fire. The little bird landed on my shoulder. I tickled its neck, “Now what is your name, I wonder…”