It had been a week since the gaining of our LEV’s and Anima’s (10 December 2018) and with our training we’ve learnt a lot about our capabilities and limits (for instance, Michael is even scarier with a bow than I thought he’d be, though he got surprisingly tired after firing for a while… takes up more stamina than expected.)

Personal Information

Name:

Arthur Clive

Level:

1

10 EXP

Rank:

L

Anima:

Traveller’s Cloak

The Nameless Dagger

Stats:

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 5 (5.25)

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 5 (6.8)

Vitality: 5

Constitution: 5

Skills:

Shooting (H), Blade Wielding (E), Tactician (D), Recovery (F), Close Combat (K)

The original setup of my status screen annoyed me due to the lack of organization, and somehow it adjusted… it even changed colour if I wished, though I just left it white for now, though I’d later change it…

I had actually checked out what my skills meant during this week, and of them all, I must say, Recovery was both amazing and horrible all at once.

Recovery (F): The ability to heal quicker than average, this ability gives the demerit of Blood-Letting. Passively increases recovery speed by 28% and bleeding caused by 32%

The Blood-Letting thing there, it means that I bleed more when injured compared to most, as, for some reason unknown to me, when my blood flows faster, wounds close quicker… but if I’m hit in a spot where I’m susceptible to bleeding, I’ll bleed a lot before I heal…

That means I’ll be in danger of bleeding out due to my own ability to heal quicker… annoying… oh, but the others were all brilliant though, like Shooting.

Shooting (H): The ability to use ranged weaponry better, this ability passively increases damage done with ranged weapons.

So I could use any ranged weapon with some small amount of skill, so it was similar to Alice’s Weapon-Meister ability, just for guns and bows, not that a gun could be used in the Dungeon. (Apparently)

Close Combat (K): The ability to fight using the body as a weapon, this allows the user to combine kicks, punches, grabs and throws into their weapon use. Due to this skill, damage done using no weapon increases very slightly.

This was a good one in my opinion; though it had a low rank… didn’t mean it wasn’t unusable though… still, I had a feeling this would be an extremely useful skill to have.

Blade Wielding (E): as long as your weapon has the basic shape of a sword or knife, you can use it with great skill, knowing how to use the weapon and where to aim. Slightly increases damage dealt with weapons that possess a cutting edge.

This was one of my two favourites, I mean, considering my love for knives and swords this should have been obvious, though I hadn’t been aware that my skill was that high… This was nothing compared to Tactician though.

Tactician (D): The ability to see the path to victory. Even when in a hopeless situation, if there is a chance for victory, you will see it. Your plans are more feasible, and people would be wise to take heed. Passively boosts the effectiveness of Wisdom points by 36%

This meant that every one point in wisdom counted as a one point thirty six. So my five points in wisdom, after counting in this skill, roughly counts as six point eight points…

A stat boosting skill, at such a high level when I was still technically level one? Amazing… then again, it increases by… four percentages, per rank in it, which is awesome in my opinion.

I would have thought I’d have more skills, but apparently the amount of skills you can have depends on the strength of your Anima, for instance a person who could use a nuclear warhead as their Anima (not that this is possible) would likely only have one Skill or even none.

At some stage we would begin earning more skills, but until then, no more would be learnt… it didn’t mean we couldn’t use certain weapons or abilities, but it did mean we wouldn’t be passively boosted by our LEV’s into doing it well.

…That was a huge info dump, wasn’t it? Sigh, I have a bad habit of that… anyway, I’ve learnt my abilities, and my limits, as did everyone else in our six man team (Matt and John joined in soon after Michael, Emilia, Alice and I started) and we knew what was too dangerous or easily done…

With that being said, our group now stood in front of a Dungeon Entrance… these are surprisingly common you know? I mean, you can see them just about every city block really…

That didn’t make sense to me though, having that many bases to attack us from? The forces of Chronos would be very split, it wouldn’t make sense… unless all the ‘bases’ in one area led to the same place actually, or even all of them… that would be a scary thought.

During our training outings we’ve walked past these a couple times, though each time they’d be guarded by some people… Some would try to break through either way…

This whole incident with Chronos really affected the world in a messed up way for sure, even if you just look around and occasionally see a still damaged building…

For one, Religion has never been more popular or followed… with the literal proof of Hell existing having come to attack us, many were being more religious than ever, some were even claiming we should not use Anima as they are gifts from the Devil (or Chronos, I prefer Chronos… doesn’t feel as far off)

I disagreed with those people… after all, Chronos couldn’t exactly give you a soul could he? I mean, didn’t you already have that when he gave it shape and form? That’s all he did in my opinion.

Despite my confusion on having two Anima, they are mine… they are of me, and therefore they are mine, they are me… not a gift from my enemy, but a realization of my inner self… lots of philosophical stuff right there… I still hate Chronos though, despite the ‘help’ he gave.

Philosophers also seemed to try to understand a person based on their Anima’s as it is the truest form of your Soul at current that can be seen…

I mean, a guy can look nice, but for all you know his Anima could be a Scythe that causes plague… makes me wonder about Emilia who has knives specialized in shredding, and Alice who can use anything as a weapon…

I shook my thoughts away as we walked up to the small plate in front of the entrance, which glowed as we approached, my left arm stinging as I felt as if my LEV tattoo was now rebranded. The small plate shone with words in response.

Group of Six detected. Create party?

…Really, he even set this up? I clicked yes as it changed to a new screen… it was hard to keep up my extreme hatred for Chronos when he acted like a child… then I remembered what he did to me and I felt justified.

Arthur Clive is the designated leader of this party. Set experience ratio?

I then got choices between our members, it was currently at 16 percentage for everyone (there was a fraction involved, but for the sake of convenience, it was sixteen) and I accepted it…

What is your party's name?

Really… even this… I turned to the group… none of us really looked like we were about to go fight really, except for Matt who was holding his shield and a very sharp dagger he bought online long before this happened… he looked like he was about to become a serial killer actually…

“Uh, guys, what should we name our group?” I asked as immediately five different suggestions appeared…

Michael: “I say Wolf Pack.”

John: “I don’t want to be here… no, that’s the name, not how I feel.”

Alice: “Uh, Party 1?”

Emilia: “Spec Ops.”

Matt: “Dead Teddy Bears.”

… I blinked at all of that randomness and sighed… “Any favourites?” the group all seemed conflicted, though Michael seemed to go with Emilia on Spec Ops now…

“Uh… how about Caliburn?” I offered as the group blinked at my suggestion. “What’s that?” asked John as I scratched my hair…

It was kind of embarrassing to mention my love of mythology… even if it wasn’t that embarrassing, it just ended up sounding like that.

“It’s from the King Arthur legends… obviously I’ve read them.” I deadpanned as they realized the joke slowly. “Anyway, King Arthur had his sword, Excalibur, the sword of the King, and his sheathe, Avalon, which stood for his vision of a Utopia that we, as flawed humans, would never achieve, hence, Ever-Distant Utopia.”

I caught a blank stare from Michael as that went over his head, Alice nodded, Emilia just tilting her head, John caught it and as for Matt… he looked serious and seemed to have actually understood that. He was smart and very attentive, despite his false insanity.

“Anyway, those are the two famous ones, but the King had another sword at one point, known as Caliburn. Caliburn was the sword which Chooses the King. It was the Sword in the Stone.” I explained as the group understood my meaning.

“Oh, so you want to name us after the sword that chose Arthur as King, because we made you our leader? I call bias.” Michael said as I sighed, it was worth a shot… hey, if I was going to be leader I wanted to have my ‘name’ on something.

“Sure, we’ll take it… better than our ideas, though Spec Ops would have been awesome.” Micheal added just afterwards as I chuckled at his antics… right, I entered Caliburn into the plate, and was awarded with this next message.

The party known as Caliburn has been created, any future gatherings of these six people will be known as Caliburn. Now, you may enter the Dungeon.

The block of black so deep it seemed light couldn’t reflect off it, suddenly shone, making me blink away the spots in my vision as the doorway appeared, and we stared…

“…Let’s go.” There was no need to offer an escape from this. We were all here for our own reasons, but we came together to destroy Chronos and that’s what we would do… eventually.

I stepped through first, and the transition was jarring. It was a corridor of dirt suddenly, and despite no light sources appearing, it was bright enough to see clearly.

I waited for the rest of the group to appear as I allowed my Anima to appear, both my Cloak and my Nameless Dagger, as the rest of the group got their own Anima set up (Alice was the fastest, she just reached for a woodcutters axe she kept in one of our bags and it glowed for a second)

“Right… according to people who’ve been in here before, the first floor has nothing to truly worry about other than small green people… yes, I mean Goblins.” I added after noting the deadpanned looks of my fellow dungeon goers.

“Be careful of them though… Slimes are easy, obviously, but Goblins might have weaponry, they might be smarter, and they might be capable of ambushing… for now, let’s get into formation.” We nodded, and got ready.

The formation itself looked similar to two arrows nearly overlapping, as Matt stood in front, followed by Alice and Emilia, then me, then Michael and John… there might have been a problem of Michael using his archery in what amounts to a corridor, but luckily these were wide and had higher ceilings allowing for movement… Luckily we practiced shooting through a fight… Matt looked pissed at Michael for that whole day… too many arrows he said…

I wasn’t sure how much one week of practice would amount to though. We were just lucky that Michael could control the kind of arrows he shot and shot a lot of blunt ones (though he only had those and normal ones, hopefully he’d get better ones).

It was after three minutes of walking we encountered our first enemy, namely Slime… now, what most groups did upon encountering a Slime was mob it until it died… I didn’t agree with that idea…

I mean, sure, it was ‘safer’ but no one really learnt anything from such a tactic... at least, nothing meaningful long term.

“Matt, you step in, try and kill it as quick as possible. If it does anything dangerous, Alice, you step in.” I chose based on weapons here, Matt has a dagger just like Emilia (dagger, knife, same thing to me really, a blade) so if he had a problem, I’d rather send in the axe user.

Matt nodded and stepped forward, body facing the right as he stepped forward, his left arm with the shield in front, his right behind him holding the dagger as he stepped forward.

The slime, a small blue coloured blob that looked similar to moving jelly, twitched after he was two metres close to it, and I reacted instantly.

“Get ready to block.” I spoke loudly enough that he could hear me, but I made sure not to shout, that might attract Goblins to attack us.

Matt followed my advice and kneeled suddenly, raising his shield until he could just barely see past said shield, and the slime jumped at him, knocking into the shield and bouncing back a small amount… I expected the attack, not the method really…

Matt took the chance though, seeing as he’s been in more fights than me really, he saw the chance to hurt his enemy and stabbed out the knife sinking into the Slime and causing a very tiny squeak to come from it, similar to how one would imagine a teddy bear crying… honestly Emilia and I both looked sorry for it… Alice looked ready to cut it more, despite the cuteness in the small monster.

The slime slowed down a bit, some piece of it seemed to try and fix the hole in it, but Matt wasn’t even giving it the chance before he cut it this time instead of stabbing, a chunk of the slime falling off as it wiggled a bit more before forming into a puddle and dying.

[1 experience point earned] appeared in front of my eyes as I nodded… that’s a good notification… it means that if we fight something, it isn’t dead until we see the experience points, so if we don’t see the notification, stay ready for a fight.

In place of the puddle that was the slime at one point, a small red stone appeared… I walked over and picked it up as everyone else asked questions about how the fight felt, or patting Matt on his back.

According to my LEV, this was a Soul Gem… hey, copyright infringement right there… this one was a ‘worthless’ quality gem which housed the soul of a Slime obviously… these could be used for different magical purposes, from overpowering a spell to making it longer lasting, but how that would work depended on the gem used apparently.

“So, are there drops?” Michael walked closer to ask as I nodded, tossing him the tiny gem easily, it was a small blue gem, similar in colour to the actual slime. He held it up and then grinned at the nice colour.

“Hey, think we could sell this? I mean, we probably don’t need to use it now, and it has a nice colour…” I agreed with that sentiment, these are likely to be extremely common very soon, so if we were going to sell these for money, it would have to be soon…

“Maybe, though selling it would have to be quick based on just appearances… not to mention that it wouldn’t be worth much based on the ‘worthless’ tag.” I added and Michael frowned. Indeed, only people who liked appearances would buy it, and they would quickly realize that this gem was worthless to them, much like the reading on the item itself.

“Right, we all got one Experience point from that… so yeah, even the monster itself is pretty worthless… Though at our levels, we’re pretty worthless ourselves.” I was notoriously blunt, even with people I didn’t know, so obviously my friends just sighed at my wording.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it… so nine more Slimes and we’re on the second level?” John asked and I nodded. I sighed though… “This won’t be so simple for level 2 though… Experience needed tends to jump between levels… we’ll see when we get there though. For now, let’s continue.”

I’m really glad that LEV’s contain a mapping function, otherwise we would have gotten lost… I won’t say the area was huge, but we did wander for around for a half hour, and in that time we met five more Slimes too, each of us got a turn against them…

None of us really had a problem against Slimes, but that was because Slimes were hilariously weak… I myself killed my one without getting hit due to simply side stepping around the jumps of the slime… it was surprisingly easy once I focused…

Of course, nothing could go so simple for so long, and we turned a corner to find a group of three green little men with warts… disgusting really, but hey, we don’t choose our appearances really.

Of course, both groups noted each other at the same time, and I had to think fast as the leader of the group. It was an easy choice to make in my mind. “Matt, Michael, team up against one, Alice, John, the other, Emilia, you and I on the last, go!” I said quickly, the group splitting as I recommended.

I chose this due to Michael only being capable of fighting at a range (reliably… he was figuring something out involving close range fighting apparently) and Matt with his shield should be good at keeping the Goblins away from Michael.

John was our healer and thus didn’t really need to fight to get EXP, though he could when necessary, and Alice was an up-close fighter, she might need healing after this.

As for Emilia and myself, Emilia had a minor health-steal on her blades (not yet though), so she’d heal as she fought anyway, and my Cloak provided nice defence against blows… Emilia would still need healing though… (I tested by ‘tanking’ a Slime charge)

With this, we were ready… or so we thought… see, there is that saying about plans… they only last until contact with the enemy. In our case, we really didn’t expect the strategy of Goblins… to exist if I was being honest.

They had a simple but effective plan (I heard of, and approved, of the idea that if a plan was complicated it wouldn’t work) which involved sending one in front, and before we could hit it, they’d have that one jump back and another step forward to block, then rotate continuously…

…it was an effective strategy and surprised us… worse, they weren’t that much weaker than us. But in the end, we won… I mean, we had more people than them obviously, not to mention none of them could penetrate Matt’s shield and his job wasn’t to hit them at all, but to just block… though one did surprise us by using claws on its offhand to scratch at me.

Other than that attack, they didn’t get much else in, between Emilia and Alice pulverizing them at the same time, Michael somehow sniping one in the eye (he seemed surprised as well) and me stabbing one through the jaw and into its skull… no matter of levels or other things, but realistically, anything would die in the situation of their brain being punctured.

“Well… you okay? Arthur?” Michael asked as I looked at the wound… it bled a bit more than usual… but it felt strangely… alright. Like I’d be fine soon. “I’m fine, it’s just a scratch.” I rubbed at my left arm and shrugged at the pain… it honestly burned like hell, seeing as it bled a lot for such a small scratch.

“That’s good… though John could heal you, you know?” Michael reminded and I shrugged. It didn’t matter at this point, and better to save his magic for later. “Okay, anyone check how much EXP we got?” I asked (I was busy noticing my bleeding) and Alice nodded. “Yeah, we got three EXP each… that’s great actually.” She noted and I agreed… because-

Personal Information

Name:

Arthur Clive

Level:

1 → 2

38 EXP

Rank:

L

Anima:

Traveller’s Cloak

The Nameless Dagger

Stats (5):

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 5

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 5 (6.8)

Vitality: 5

Constitution: 5

Skills:

Shooting (H), Blade Wielding (E), Tactician (D), Recovery (F), Close Combat (K)

Hm… five status points per level… quick calculation, and including your base stats which count up to 30 in total, and you’d get 495+30, for 525 stat points total if you were level 100… hm.. I was already trying to get some idea of a status point distribution…

I was most certainly going to place points into Wisdom, I already got bonus stats to it, better to capitalize on what one possessed rather than cover weaknesses when you had too little time to cover it.

Still 525 stat points… before I begin distribution, let’s consider the stats and what they do. Strength was a given when you remember that I hit things physically, Dexterity would help me NOT get hit at all, Wisdom was my obvious pick, Vitality increased healing rate to an extent apparently (it stacked with my Recovery Skill) and between Constitution and Intelligence… hmm…

Let’s see… for now I’d be placing my stats as two points in Dexterity, one in Vitality, one in Strength and the final one in Wisdom. Wisdom affected regeneration of magic apparently, the magical version of Vitality, while Intelligence and Constitution were the stats that ‘increased the length of the bar’ so to speak. Magic damage and resistances were calculated using both stats apparently, so one could be an amazing Magician with low intelligence and high Wisdom, though you’d be limited by a low Mana Pool that would never let you use stronger spells… complicated, yet I understood.

With that done, my status screen now read as such:

Personal Information

Name:

Arthur Clive

Level:

2

33 EXP

Rank:

L

Anima:

Traveller’s Cloak

The Nameless Dagger

Stats (5):

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 7 (7.4)

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 6 (8.2)

Vitality: 6

Constitution: 5

Skills:

Shooting (H), Blade Wielding (E), Tactician (D), Recovery (F), Close Combat (K)

Eh, still low as heck, but hey, it was progress… though… that EXP count annoyed me a bit… from 10 to 33? That was more than a three times jump! Hm… no wait, we got 15 EXP total, and thus there were 5 extra EXP… so 38? So an almost four times jump actually… the EXP system was whack…

I recognized it by the way… it’s the same experience count used for Medium-slow growth creatures in the Pokémon games… I don’t think most would notice or care though...

“…” we all glared at the two threes on our status screens… “Right, so, eleven Goblins?” I asked as the group agreed… either that or 33 Slimes… and I was not fighting 33 things that cried like a dying ball of cuteness…

“…let’s agree, if we don’t find more Goblins within twenty minutes… wait, rather not… let’s go home. Fighting continuously is tiring, even if our enemies are weak.” I had wanted to continue, but then decided against that when I realized that we were still new to this, rather rest and think about what happened today, than continue and get hurt.

They agreed to my suggestion and we walked back, encountering a group of three Goblins again on the way back… this time John was the unlucky victim to get hurt, scratches like me, but still, and he healed himself quick…

I also noted that my wound had already healed in the 30 minutes’ walk… yeah, it was practically regeneration when I saw that, I mean, it didn’t even get a scab or anything…

Well, other than a few more encounters (netting us a twelve experience point total) we reached the exit safely, the exit looking like a solid obsidian wall… luckily LEV’s come with mapping features… I turned back to our group with a smile on my face, a small one, but it was there.

“Alright, we’ve fought, we’ve gotten stronger, and we’re going home safely…. So that’s a successful expedition.” I stated, making the group blink at me as I held out my dagger.

“And we’re only going to be doing this more and more, getting stronger, and deeper into these places… until one day, we will have destroyed all obstacles barring our way to that bastard Chronos…”

I made little attempt to hide the hate in my voice, but they didn’t look at me any differently for my hate, nor did they care about my sudden speech… they just stood quietly, listening.

“And on that day, our blades will have been sharpened to such a point, that we’ll tear his throat from the rest of him… and this was the first step to accomplishing that goal.” I gave a savage grin here…

And my own friends, instead of recoiling, replied in kind, with their own vicious grins. “Of course we’ll tear his throat out.” Michael stated as I turned, smile still on my face.

“After all, our little Arthur has a score to settle with that ass…” I felt my hands going into clawing motions at my sides as I turned my head back, still walking forward.

“Yeah… your king demands it.” I stated and we walked… then we all burst out laughing at the absurdity of the statement… and we didn’t care how cliché it was, or how childish… because in that moment, we we’re happy and content… but we weren’t done.

No, our blades weren’t sharp yet… in fact, they hadn’t even been shaped yet… but they were being forged… and it’ll be our blade to reach that bastard, no one else’s…