I think I had a dream. I couldn’t really remember what exactly it was but I know I have dreamed about something.

I knew I had no chance of increasing my status and therefore didn’t really initiate the process and just slept. It felt awesome despite not really needing it at all physically. Sort of like mediation. Maybe should learn that. Might be incredibly useful, considering that every time in games or stories this used to be one of the op op things for magic users.

Wonder why I cannot remember the dream I just woke up from…

Anyways when I woke up Lilia was there. I think she also slept because it seemed that way a bit.

Right now she was awake though and there was a huge pile of food. Glad it didn’t stink or so because there was so much.

I wonder what Is it from? Considering I haven’t seen such meat so far.

¨Yo Lilia that’s for me?¨

She looks at me as if I was suggesting something insanely rude to her.

¨Obviously that’s for you… Do you see any other monster that would eat this pile of garbage?¨

Oh common, you don’t eat meat at all or so? I also remember the queen mentioning they send a hunting party for the highest quality of biomass or something. Maybe just highest amount of biomass?

Even then it cannot be that bad even for you Lilia… unless they are vegans.

Now… the interesting part is… I am not fucking hungry at all. If I tell them I cannot even get biomass at all anymore… will they even believe me?

Well lets test it out anyways. I know biomass disappeared from my status screen before already but maybe it gives me something anyways. Also it just might taste good and they already gave it to me. Would be a waste to not eat at all.

So I did. It tasted actually really good. Very different flavors as well. I guess from many different types of monsters. Judging from the taste solely it has to be something really damn strong. I think because so far the strength of the monster actually had impact on the taste as well.

I still remember when I thought that the bear meat would be one of the highest quality meat in the dungeon. HAHA. It wasn’t even that long in the past… funny how things can change so quickly.

Anyways after I finished gulping so much meat. I think around fifty monsters or so worth of meat. I knew I had taken in more than thousands of biomass.

Unfortunately I also knew that all of it was just wasted. Maybe there was something else happening but I just knew I had not increased my biomass one bit.

¨Thanks Lilia, it was good¨ She was watching me all this time… I hope I didn’t really embarrass myself.

¨You don’t have to thank me. I was just there with you, it wasn’t me who hunted that for you¨

Jeez sure I know but you are the only one I can talk to right now. I still need to ask many questions so I guess who cares about this.

¨How long did I sleep?¨

¨Not that long…. I had a nap and you woke up a bit after me, maybe two hours¨

Hm… that’s is impressive. So they managed to hunt all this meat in two hours? That’s some results right there.

Now… what would I ask about first? I think even if they have religious people there it might be stupid to ask them about giving me my first class. So either get a rune and somehow check it… or just straight up go to place of power.

Honestly if I start trying to get the rune…. I might as well go already to the whoever can change my class. Seems about same to me. The only chance for me to not arise any suspicion would be to just go to place of power.

There are problems with that though. I just don’t know where place of power is. I need to know and from what Lilia said she doesn’t know.

Why would she? She proly just did all her class changes here in safety of home.

I know that there has to be a reason why such place exist. Probably also a requirement for some class.

I will try to ask Lilia again… she might not know where it is but maybe how to find it.

¨Hey do you have any idea how to find places of power?¨

She gives me this really annoyed look again….

¨No… I really don’t understand your fixation with this¨

¨Common Lilia then at least tell me how to find the place¨

¨Sure. You go around and when you feel a place with huge amounts of mana at single spot, that’s it¨

Oh well… at least I know something. Better than nothing. I just don’t get why she is still so hateful towards me. Hm… maybe not exactly hateful but she still feels quite unfriendly to me.

¨Well thanks anyways¨

¨You are welcome¨

Yea she is definitely just doing this because of orders. Oh well. Time for her to do something funny. Lets see how she will act now.

¨Lilia I think you will love this. Do you remember how you stabbed me in the face? Do that again to me, preferably exactly the same way as before¨

She is absolutely shocked. I don’t think she believed me one bit.

¨I am actually serious. I want your best shot at killing me in the face again… well that is if that was your best¨

¨That wasn’t my best attack. I underestimated you heavily¨

Well at least she believes me now. Funny.

¨Just do the same one. I don’t want to risk dying that much. Please do the exact same attack on the exact same spot¨

¨Alright you asked for this. Don’t you regret it¨

She just took her trident swam towards me still snuggled. I pointed my face towards her.

Aaaand her trident is in my face. I did feel it coming this time. I also saw it somehow but it was really fast. I think I would have to speed up like before to even have chance of doing something to prevent this from landing.

However in that exact moment. I have sped up my thoughts focusing only on the sensation of her trident piercing my face and the feeling of hp going down. I am sure now that what happened before is happening exactly the same. However this time I know why I didn’t die.

Once the hp hit zero. Or well it felt that way. I was certain my mana was dropping a little bit. Only a tiny fragment of my mana disappeared. Around five.

I think my hp and mana are either linked and are essentially the same thing. Not quite sure about this. It could be also something that activates at the moment of my supposed death and if I have enough mana it saves me from certain death. That would be incredibly cheap then… so most likely my mana and hp are the same shit.

I can test that very easily. I don’t want to get stabbed in my face again but I can easily deplete my mana and see what happens when I try doing something with my mana.

After she put her trident of my face. She just stood there dumbfounded again by my absolutely unaffected state. My hp regenerated even before she stopped pulling the trident back to her.

¨That’s some impressive regeneration Felix¨

She looked at me with her curious eyes…

¨I just don’t understand why would you willingly wanted to experience pain¨

She doesn’t know that my pain threshold is a bit insane. Oh well.

¨It was to test something Lilia. After I do one more test I want to speak to Aqua afterwards¨

I think she is a bit pissed by the fact she isn’t enough anymore for me but who cares. Honestly I need to know what they actually want from me and ask some other important questions.

So right now I depleted my mana into our surroundings and made sure It doesn’t regenerate instantly on its own.

When I tried doing something with mana I felt my hp dropping down like crazy nearly killing myself and that pretty much confirmed it. Now I know.

I activated all the boons of my skills. Regenerated both mana and hp to full very quickly. Finally I know how that works. So now I am sure I need to maximize my mana. At all times.

It seems as a lost case to do something about hp seeing how little it increased. I mean the increase is high but compared to mana it is one tenth…

¨So actually…Lilia… maybe I don’t need Aqua. Just tell me what your people would want from me¨

I could swear she is a bit happy that I just asked her instead of going to someone else. But it is very slim increase of happiness.

¨We will need you to activate gate to our home¨

What? What does she mean? The fuck is that supposed to mean seriously?

¨What? What gate? Could you be a bit more specific?¨

¨Alright Felix. I know you cannot know such things. Even I am not an expert on the matter. It is just that every mermaid living in Aquantum knows about our original home and how we lost our way back there¨

Okay that didn’t really explain much… but sure. Maybe she is about to continue. Yeah it seems that way…

¨Look we are living in the dungeon and we are not monsters… that’s not how it is supposed to be. Our bodies changed across generations. We are way stronger physically and have greater status increases through levels similar to monsters. The problem is…. If this will continue…. We might change into monsters¨

I am not really sure if that would be that bad… but I guess for some reason.

¨Is that such a bad thing?¨

She looks at me a bit pitifully…

¨Look I get it that it doesn’t seem so bad to a monster. There are huge problems with that for us though. We will lose access to our classes. That’s probably the most important thing. Also we will need to get biomass to evolve and such¨

She is quite a bit stressed just by thinking about that… I think they would hate being monsters and it might be something worse than death for them.

¨That’s not all. Humans did this. They basically locked us in the dungeon because of their sick idea of revenge. Despite they wronged us first they are still in the right to revenge their fallen kin. They wanted to turn us slowly into monsters to hunt us forever for experience and cores¨

That’s some level of fuckery right there. Not only humans waged war against them they also want to turn them into monsters to farm? Eh… that’s really sick.

Okay that’s all interesting but how does that equal to you can save us Felix. Even I realize that going against humans is suicide. At least for now… So?

¨Okay that’s really harsh. I understand your people don’t want to turn into monsters and now I realized why Aqua was so desperate… but where do I come in? What am I supposed to do with the gate or so?¨

This is where I noticed she actually looks at me very differently and her words are a lot more warm towards me. I think even she genuinely think I can save her people and treat me that way. Telepathy is so odd, I don’t know if as a human I would want others to literally be able to tell how I feel most of the time I drop my guard in conversation…

¨You will need to find the gate for us. It is sealed by humans. Then you will need to break the seal…. Then the last and the hardest part. We don’t have the knowledge of the exact procedure to activate the gate and we doubt entire Aquantum has enough mana combined to activate it even if we knew¨

Seems easy enough… except the fact that they don’t even fucking know where the shit is... or how to activate it…. JESUS!!!

¨That’s interesting. The problem is I cannot help you unless you point me a little bit at least¨

She is close enough to pet me and I think she wants to a little bit but fights the urge easily.

¨Oh that’s not a problem at all. We know very well where the gate is… at least the floor. It is just that the floor is so huge we weren’t able to find the gate itself for many generations¨

What? How can it be so big? That’s sick.

¨Which floor are we talking about?¨

I am sure she is a bit scared remembering something…

¨Forty¨

The fuck? I would assume it Is also underwater otherwise they wouldn’t really be able to navigate it easily at all right? But what the fuck is wrong with the dungeons floors? From four to twenty?

¨Does the floor also have dry spawn points?¨

Oh I am so damn sure she is scared even remembering about the floor.

¨No…¨

How insane it has to be there. They want me to go there and look for the gate… then probably activate such gate in a place where who knows what horrors lie… yeeeeah soooo easy bring it on… jeez.

Alright… so do I climb up to floor fifteen first or try to do anything about the mermaids? I would assume that whatever is waiting me on floor fifteen can wait a bit… but the mermaids can proly turn into monsters at any time. Maybe generation tops. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so desperate.

I know I have promised Candace to get there asap... but this is a bit… I honestly just cannot shake the feeling I want to see the monstrosity such floor can bring out. I am so curious I don’t think I can handle mentally going up when I can instead go down…

¨Alright Lilia… how do you get to floor forty? I am sure there is a shortcut again right? No way you can swim through non water floors anyways¨

¨You are correct. The floor four serves as a crossroads for us… we connected every underwater floor through it. Until the floor forty¨

She hesitantly added.

¨We wouldn’t dare to even think going deeper. Floor forty is already insane… only humans are so crazy¨

Makes me wonder how they connected it but I guess it has to be magic of some sorts. Obviously it has to be magic so yeah. Also I am pretty sure monsters dare to descend lower too but I would have to agree being crazy is requirement to do so.

I decided to check the floor forty for a bit first. Then use the shortcuts they made to get as close to floor fifteen as possible and go there then.

I just have to see the floor forty.

I am that crazy.