“Kill it!” “I’m trying!” “Michael, hit it with fire!” “It keeps running away!” No, we were not in fact inside the Dungeon, and we were actually inside of our new home that was given to us by President Clayton after the deal I made with him to be the ‘face’ of all American Adventurers…

“Why are you all panicking?” Ironically the calmest one of our group was Alice, a girl… oh, we were trying to kill a cockroach by the way… disgusting little things…

“Got it!” we all made our own little shouts at joy at having the threat killed as Alice shook her head at our antics and simply walked away… likely to go make coffee or something, considering how early it was in the morning.

“Coffee, Tea?” Ah… Coffee was my choice. I need that in the morning… “Coffee, you know how I like it.” I waved off as I walked to my ‘work bench’ that I had brought in due to my deal with President Clayton… it was a simple thing that just held tools necessary for Blacksmithing and an extra bit of space where I could enchant whatever I worked on.

Quite frankly, I was a bit annoyed with how all of my skills dropped in ranking to such extremes, but I thought it made sense… I now knew there to be levels much higher than one hundred (what the highest was, I didn’t know, but it had to be somewhere beyond two hundred) plus, at least my Enchanting, Tactician and Recovery were left alone…

Actually… none of our skills really felt like they dropped… in fact, it felt like they were actually labelled wrongly, and this was always our abilities… sucked, but it also made sense.

I absently noted the orders of everyone as I held up one of my attempts at metal working, a short sword. It actually came out pretty well… when compared to normal weaponry. In actual fact, this was just a tiny bit better than the Lantern Swords, so by now we all had these, or even swords bought from Blacksmiths who had ranks in the skill higher than my own.

“Sigh… I can’t wait for level fifty…” I thought, and with a glance I opened up my own LEV’s information (I think I heard John complaining about people actually saying the word sigh…).

Personal Information

Name:

Arthur Clive

Level:

42

2170 EXP

Rank:

K

Class:

Smith

Kingdom:

Camelot

King

Anima:

Traveller’s Cloak

The Nameless Dagger

Stats:

Strength: 38 (45)

Dexterity: 51 (63)

Intelligence: 28

Wisdom: 52 (83)

Vitality: 38 (43)

Constitution: 28

Skills:

Shooting (K), Blade Wielding ©, Tactician (S), Recovery (B), Close Combat (E), Enchanting (D), Soul Reading

Class Skills:

Blacksmith (K), Fire Resistance (K), Metallurgy (K), Armour Appraisal (K), Weapon Appraisal (K), Weight Reduction (K)

I had found out what some of the ‘adjustments’ were, including in my spell list (like Echo Step was now listed as an F ranked Spell, Jolt Step a K ranked spell… that was terrifying, what would an S rank spell be like, let alone SSS?) and I noted that decimals in stats were completely gone now… and that it never rounded up, always down… most likely because you weren’t that strong and couldn’t act that strong.

As for other things, being a Smith raised none of my stat values by a hard number just yet (though I feel as if my Wisdom stat increased, which was strange since other Smiths online said that Strength might increase a bit depending on your level… and that the stat increase should be shown) but the skills were nice.

I did have some guess on what the highest level was now though, thanks to the usage of ranks. See, I was still a rank K, even though I was in the 40’s now… so ranks change every 25 levels. From L, to S, was roughly level 301 to level 325. That didn’t seem like Chronos though… to leave something not nice and even (unless he played those games where the highest level available was level 255) so, if I rounded up, that was level 400… damn, that’s a huge number… I’m just around a tenth of that...

Still, continuing my little calculations (I apologize for this, but I like facts, facts are the truth and worth knowing, because any information is worth knowing unless it’s disturbing.) into the stat areas, that meant, levelling 399 times multiplied by five is 1995 points, plus the thirty you start with, 2025 points total…

I already had some idea how my final stats would look with that amount, but I might (should) make adjustments as I went… then again, looking at that massive level, it explained why Chronos had to adjust everything, it made it look like I was almost as good as I could get in certain areas, when in fact I had a long way to go…

It also revealed something involving my Tactician skill… it wasn’t at the highest point yet (I did think it was weird that it only multiplied a stat by 60%...) so that meant I could still increase that… not that I knew how… at level 50 I’d know, because from what I understand about my LEV, that was the level that skills became a bit more malleable, or something to that effect.

I absently accepted my coffee and took a sip, just staring at the sword in front of me as it was successfully enchanted after I placed a Petty Soul Stone on it and sent magic through it with my intent.

[Short Sword of Blitz created]

Eh… it was alright. The Blitz enchantment was a good one, the one I used to have on my own Lantern Sword (I cursed Blade for having broken it in our fight, it’s why I had to roll and pick up Matt’s sword after all)…

Still, considering it’s been two weeks since New Year’s (today was the 15th of January 2019) I’ve cranked out a lot of these by now… it was a nice stable source of income, considering metal now dropped from monsters, even if it was [Petty Iron]

Ah right… that Soul Reader skill… I didn’t know what to make of it really… it couldn’t rise in rank, so it should be as good as it will ever be… but it also didn’t feel like it should be all the skill does.

[Soul Reader (Unique Skill): You can read the flow of the soul, an understanding of your place in this world, grants a sixth sense when it comes to timing, positioning and decision making.]

It had ‘activated’ a few times in the Dungeon since then, but it was small things, like feeling like I had to tell the group that we shouldn’t go down one path, and two minutes after that we found the stairs using the other path, or in one fight against a Kobold (the theme enemies for floors eleven to thirteen) dodging an attack I couldn’t even see, and then turning and killing the Kobold in one hit because I happened to hit a ‘critical’ area at just the right angle to lop its head off… it wasn’t always active, but it just made me feel more… sure, of things. Not quite confidence, but a feeling of acceptance was more likely.

It reminded me of a story I read where someone could ‘see’ the best choice of the available ones given. It was similar in a strange way, and I don’t know why I have this skill… but I appreciated it. It just seemed like there was more to it than just ‘feelings’ because of its description… if I understand the soul, how does that give me my ‘feelings’…

“Hey, stop brooding.” John sat next to me as I glared at him.

“I’ll have you know that I am not brooding. I am thinking.” I said as he waved his hand in a so-so manner.

“With you, that’s probably the same thing. Come on, what you say you and I go to a shop.” I sighed, standing up from my chair, handling the short sword before placing it in a small basket where a few other enchanted swords sat… not all were with the Blitz enchantment though.

[Short Sword of Razor]

I had finally gotten another element to my magic, namely metal, which meant that boosted stats also counted towards the element count… luckily. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of insane that I have like eighty Wisdom and only twenty Intelligence… hey… that almost sounds insulting…

“Stop admiring your sword and let’s go.” I glared at John before I even heard Alice and Matt break out into laughter… damn innuendo’s…

“Hey, I’m… going with.” Alice corrected herself before she could continue the innuendo as she and Emilia both arrived and I shrugged. Michael was busy training with Shaun so I didn’t need to check where he was.

Shaun had agreed to train us occasionally, but he very rarely trained with me, instead tossing me to train with his (usual) second in command (a guy named Dante, seemed cool, liked music, had this weird ability to control sound or light depending on how he used his power… it had a lot of potential)

Shaun and I just couldn’t agree with each other… it wasn’t a matter of opinion but a matter of instinct…

There are just some people you can’t get along with even if you wanted to.

As for Matt, well… he seemed to be considering going out with his car, something I still haven’t done with my bike… I was considering getting a car too, but we had Matt’s and Emilia’s, having another wasn’t really necessary… at the same time though, Ford GT’s were beautiful…

So with everyone busy except for the four of us, we decided to go walk a bit and just relax… today was our day off, having decided to not go into the Dungeon once in a while to just rest from that place…

It was relaxing really, not needing to always be fighting… though the money was good, and the whole ‘we’re getting stronger’ thing was even better.

As usual, I was the highest levelled in our group, at my level 42, with the rest of the group all sitting on level 40, having slowly but surely caught up with me.

As we walked I noted many people wearing short sleeves or having the left wrist area cut out slightly from their long sleeves, all showing off their LEV’s for others to admire… It was kind of stupid in my opinion, letting other people judge you like that, but it was the kind of society we lived in.

Judge others and get judged yourself, and do it all again with something else. Over and over the story went. The people in my team didn’t really care what others thought of us (we were the strongest in our entire country, we were confident in any competition between us and others) so sometimes we wore the LEV’s covered, the other times we let them be shown, uncaring of what others thought…

I, on the other hand, tried my best to hide my LEV in public. Seeing a number as high as 42 would set off alarms in most minds when the average level of adventurers who started the day the Dungeon was ‘opened’ for the public was around twenty to twenty five, having a number almost double that was bound to disturb people.

Alice and Emilia seemed to not care, both wearing short sleeves, though the jackets they wore above it for the cool Winter air. John walked around in a long sleeve much like I usually did, he didn’t wear short sleeves often (I think it had to do with him being the skinniest guy in our group… considering he was our healer, he shouldn’t be worried about that, but that’s like telling someone that the darkness wasn’t scary. It really wasn’t, but some part of you said otherwise.)

“Ah, people are staring again…” I complained, because even though I had hidden my LEV most people on our current path recognized us as ‘that team of super high levelled people’ due to having seen everyone’s LEV’s except for Johns and my own.

“Yeah… the gossiping is more disturbing though.” Alice said and I had to agree. They didn’t know our team much beyond that we were the first registered Adventurers, and the ones who had gone the deepest into the Dungeon.

So because of that, they had lots of rumours about our team, like John and I were just tag along wizards or healers, that Michael was our leader, that Matt was using our reputation to sell drugs or something (…that honestly didn’t sound farfetched, Matt didn’t do any except the plant based one, and never around me due to my request) or that Alice and Emilia were in our group just for eye-candy.

“You two do make nice eye-candy though…” I added jokingly as Emilia blushed a bit as Alice punched my arm with a grin… damn it, your strength stat’s higher than mine, don’t do that!

“That was for saying it the way you did… thanks for the compliment though.” Alice admitted as I waved it off, before frowning as John grinned and opened his mouth.

“Astrid, that isn’t how it goes. After punching him and saying ‘that’s for-insert problem here-’ then comes the-” I cut him off by grabbing his mini-afro as he widened his eyes in fear while I glared.

“…Finish that and you die.” I said and he stopped the joke… seriously, I don’t see Alice that way… and John had this strange belief that I was slightly similar to the main character of that series involving dragons…

“What, what was he going to say?” Luckily for me Alice didn’t really watch that series though she knew I read the books of it…

“…Arthur…” Unluckily for me, Emilia did watch it… damn… I looked to her to see her getting ready to punch me on the arm… then she realized how that would look and stopped and just frowned with a small blush.

Thank goodness, my arm would break after getting hit by two people with such high strength… luckily it was already feeling better thanks to my Recovery and my relatively high Vitality score.

I was glad for the Recovery skill’s new ranking especially… because as it was now, I healed 45% faster but bled 16% more… by my estimate, when I reached rank SSS (at least I think it’s that) I’d stop bleeding so much, and also recover 80% faster than normal… which was great. My Vitality stat was equal to my Strength stat, both were much higher than my Intelligence and Constitution.

“Still… in just a month and a half, a lot has changed, hasn’t it?” Emilia noted as I agreed with her. Just a month and a half ago you wouldn’t see people talking so animatedly about levels and monsters and such, or see someone practicing magic (hey, that person was using earth magic, a surprisingly good magic type actually)

“Yeah… our world is changing, has changed, very quickly…” I thought, noticing some people calling out for people to join their ‘Kingdom’ or ‘Clan’…

How a Kingdom was made was kind of embarrassing if it was done in public, and I most certainly wouldn’t have done that… oh, it was kneeling.

To join a Kingdom, one had to kneel before the ‘King’ of the Kingdom, then raise your left hand to the King (making sure not to look at the King during the process, instead looking at the feet of the King) and then the King took your arm with his hand, your LEV’s both touching as he grabbed your forearm.

All of my friends did this, though we proved the ‘don’t look at the King’s face’ part because Matt was tall as hell… and John didn’t feel like kneeling but it ended up happening… still, it’s embarrassing having someone you know personally bow to you.

“Isn’t it kind of good though? I mean, there are much more jobs, crime rate has dropped, and there is a new flow of money.” I had explained the benefits before, and I agreed with Alice’s assessment, then I frowned.

“Yeah… it’s a good change… for now. But what happens when ex-criminals can’t continue in the Dungeon due to its danger, and go back to crime? They’d now have what amounts to super powers to commit robberies of any kind with.” My friends frowned at my words, knowing that I had a habit of looking at both sides of an argument.

“Well, the ‘good guys’ are also going into the Dungeon so it wouldn’t be too bad, but it just means that instead of a gunfight between two people you might see fireballs and boulders fly between two people as they try to stab, bash or shoot to death with a sword, club or bow. Fights and wars haven’t left, they’re just in the process of changing, so it feels peaceful for now.” I added, looking around at the strange nature of our world… a world where people were openly trying to get stronger and yet everyone ignores that these people could be good or bad… Then again, America, Land of the Free.

“…Arthur, that isn’t something you should worry about.” John finally said as I looked to him as he patted my shoulder with a smile.

“You’re our ‘King’ not the person who solves the world’s problems. Worry about your things, let the other big shots handle the rest.” I smiled and nodded at his words as we kept walking…

Yeah, trust John to bring me back to normal. I haven’t mentioned it much, but John and Matt were the mood-makers for the group, Matt using the brute force (move and shut up!) usually while John joked around to get us out of problems.

“That being said, you all forced me into this ‘Kingdom’ thing… this is slavery, isn’t it… no wonder you forced me in to this thing, it’s slavery all over again, damn cracker.”

I almost faltered at the false venom in his words as he grinned and laughed… yeah, only John could get away with jokes like that… then again, they always made me unsure of how to react until he laughed first.

Within the next minute or so we stopped talking, just taking in the random sights (like that strange black cat in the corner of my eye) instead of worrying, we were just… at peace.

If Emilia absently slipped her hand into my own, I wasn’t complaining.

“Reporting in, commander.” I saluted my superior as he looked at me, his eyes flashing green as I stood still, those eyes don’t disturb me as much as they did at first.

“Right, what’s your call on Clive, Dante?” Commander Fife asked me as I nodded, wondering why the Commander assigned me to the ‘King Candidate’ (I heard that they might scrap that title for some other one, not sure what though) when the Commander was clearly much better suited for training the man.

“Yes sir, Arthur Clive has exceptional adaptability when it comes to combat, though he struggles when it comes to kicking this bad habit he has where he rushes forward leading with his left hand… it works for him, as it had helped him beat me the first few times, but his arm doesn’t have armour on it, so I can easily just aim for the attacking hand and that ruins his tactic.” I mentioned that strange habit the King Candidate had during a fight…

He seemed to be trying to grab his enemy so that he could have his way with them… whenever I try to call him out on it he seems to be surprised that he’s actually doing it… a reflex? Seems like a weird one to have for someone new to fighting.

“I also have reason to believe that he’s doing that action instinctively; as he has shown surprise when I mentioned it to him after our spars. It’s… I don’t know sir, that fighting style doesn’t make sense to me… but I have seen it before sir. You use one similar.” I added, and the Commander nodded with a frown.

“…That actually doesn’t make much sense… that method is used very rarely by certain soldiers, it’s mainly used for dominating your opponent, but its useless if you aren’t quick enough… though Clive is fast, isn’t he.” The Commander noted as I nodded in agreement.

“Yes sir. According to Arthur Clive himself, he has Dexterity as his second highest stat, his highest being Wisdom.” I was admittedly confused by the tactic, until we allowed magic to be used and I was defeated… I only beat the King Candidate once in a spar where magic was involved, and that was when I managed to alter the waves of his magic (something very difficult to do and I rarely got it right, even at level 36)

His Wisdom stat actually was worth something, namely the regeneration that came with it… I could practically feel his Mana dropping and rising at a certain pace during our fight when magic was involved.

“As for his other tactics, his magic use is very dangerous, due to his high Wisdom stat he is capable of firing off weaker magic near constantly, commonly using an L ranked spell known as Spark to distract me during our fights… I’m ashamed to say I lose most of them.” I said as the Commander shook his head, glancing at his own wrist as he nodded.

“Clive is strong, and dangerous. Remember that, that Demon Lord was killed by him alone after all.” I nodded, remembering hearing the story, the King Candidate had fought the Demon Lord one on one after his entire group was defeated and he won… it had to do with the durability of the Demon Lord apparently, as the Demon Lord admitted that his body was brittle, easily broken with a hit or two… but nonetheless, the King Candidate won that fight against that thing…

Our Team One (lead by the Commander and myself, though Agent Grey was considered equally ranked with myself due to his utility) had reached the tenth floor two days after the King Candidate had reached there, only to find the Demon Lord not dead… or so it seemed.

It was just a husk apparently; it could be fought for experience and items, but only once a month by any single team. It also wasn’t as strong as it was before… it was just a left over.

When the King Candidate had heard of this, he nodded saying that it was good that the Demon Lord wasn’t technically alive anymore… why that mattered, I didn’t know.

But our team fought the thing, and we defeated it, though we were all very injured during the fight, the only people who weren’t that bad off were myself, Grey and the Commander…

The Commander was untouched during that battle… it was my honest opinion, but the Commander was a monster when it came to fighting… though that was mostly due to his Eyes.

With the Anima, Dragon Eyes, the Commander could see the actions of the enemy before they occurred, just barely, but that, along with his ability to see weaknesses and strengths, made the Commander uniquely suitable to fighting creatures such as that Demon Lord, who hadn’t even managed to hit the Commander.

The King Candidate had come out of his own fight against the original form with a stab wound and lots of smaller cuts and scrapes, and my Commander left the fight with no injury. Of course, the King Candidate fought a stronger version of the being we fought…

But I still believed that the Commander should have been the one to have fought the Demon Lord… He would have made an excellent King Candidate, as much as he disagrees… that’s apparently something common between the two.

Both the King Candidate and Commander Fife didn’t want to be the King Candidate… Commander Fife did say that the King Candidate is likely just as strong as him, possibly more depending on how the fight went…

I believed that was a lie…

After all, the Level 40 on my Commanders arm showed that he was much stronger than most thought, and against anyone even remotely as strong as him… the Commander would win. His Eyes didn’t make fights fair. In the words of my sister: ‘Your boss has cheats activated, he’s unfair’ Then again, Danielle had quite a bit of sarcasm when she wasn’t being watched by superiors… I’m happy she got an appraisal job though, even if the King Candidate was the one she usually dealt with.

“Sir… permission to speak.” I asked as the Commander nodded with a sigh at my manners as I looked him in the eyes.

“Sir, why do you hate Arthur Clive?” I asked as the Commander looked at me, and this time I winced at his look when his eyes turned green and narrowed at me… those eyes didn’t scare me, it was that feeling that the Commander showed when he didn’t like what someone just did, and then glared at them.

“…I don’t hate him… I just can’t understand him. And that’s scary. I’m honestly afraid of that kid.” He admitted and I gulped… that… the King Candidate scared the Commander?

“Yeah… that kid isn’t normal, and he only gets stranger the more I look at him… he confuses my Eyes you know? My eyes don’t know what to think of him.” That was scary, there was supposed to be nothing his eyes couldn’t read eventually.

“Like he says that he has no combat training, and my Eyes agree… then the next moment he’s fighting as if he was trained for covert warfare and my Eyes tell me he was… what is he… it’s disturbing.” He added and I had to admit, that would be strange, having something you trust be unsure of a person, you’d be suspicious of that person naturally.

“That, and his nature changes, easily. Occasionally he’ll be shy, occasionally he’ll have an outburst of stupidity, other times he’s insanely calculating… now for humans change is normal… but not even knowing how you are changing, not acknowledging it at all, and changing to such extremes as easily as someone changes clothes… it’s weird.” The Commander seemed to be just complaining at this point, as he looked at me, his eyes still activated and glaring… they activate by themselves sometimes.

“…Not to mention the fact that, if we ignore the parts that change so suddenly, and just look at the base that is unchanging… he’s similar to me.” He looked away, his Dragon Eyes finally fading back to his normal colour.

“…I don’t like people like me. I’m a hypocrite really, but I just can’t stand him…” he sighed before he looked out of the window at the night sky.

“Yes… that kid is a monster, and with the way this world is going… there will be change soon… a new world order is arriving.” I could only nod, salute, and walk away… change was approaching… and my Commander seems to think that the King Candidate will be at the centre of it…

We are a world where one man cannot change everything… but we were becoming a world where that could very well happen.