The pair, excited that they had found a way past the dungeon loot exploit, decided to head back in and try to get even more loot. As they passed the dead ice swan Dan stopped them for a moment to scan it., while Lashandra looked on in curiosity. Finally when the swan melted below the soil she asked the question that had been on the tip of her tongue. “What are you doing with those swans? Is it some kind of necromancer thing?”

Dan looked behind him in surprise that she cared, though her whole demeanor had seemed to change once she found out there was a potential way out of the dungeon. “I’m scanning the animals for the god I.. well I suppose worship would be the right word though it doesn’t sound quite fitting. Basically there’s a ton of gods in this world and my god allows me to scan creatures and then I can gain bonuses for scanning them. Usually I get something for the first scan and the third scan but I have a feeling that won’t continue like that forever.”

“Can you scan more than three times? Also can you help me join up right now? Having extra abilities would be helpful.” Her hazel eyes bored into Dan and he realized just how seriously she wanted out of here, he had understood before when she had mentioned her daughter but seeing this glimmer of hope out of here had completely changed her demeanor. If she thought he was going to get in her way of getting out of here he might just be in trouble with her around. For the moment though there was no harm in answering her questions.

“I was told by my deity I could scan them up to three times, though I have never tried scanning a fourth time and I don’t really want to try and end up losing the power somehow. I might be able to help you join up, I’d have to communicate with my deity, though I’m not sure how… hold on, I think I may have gotten a skill for that just yesterday.”

Dan took a moment to look at his skill sheet and found the Pray skill within it. Taking a moment to look over it, he clasped his hands together, closed his eyes and thought about adding Lashandra to the god’s followers. After a minute of praying like this he had almost given up until his eyes moved over a stone pile in the back and he felt almost an electric shock pass through him.

Pray increased to Novice II - Praying to help you out of this mess? Why not just try to do something on your own for once.

Ignoring the snarky message he pointed out the stone pile on the opposite wall to Lashandra and said, “I think that has something to do with it. I tried to pray to him, which is a by the way, and I was nudged into looking at those.”

“There’s something else you missed in your excitement of seeing those stones though.” Lashandra grabbed his arm and pointed it down slightly, so it was pointing at a large ice sculpture of a razor-tusked warthog, presumably a miniboss, then lower and lower as she made a point of emphasizing every enemy in the room between them and the opposite wall.

“Well.. we were planning on grinding our way through there anyways, weren’t we? May as well make that a goal, right? No time like the present, so let’s get grinding.” Dan sent his thrall forward towards a statue of a tiger which came to life with a roar and jumped the rabbit, trying to maul through its magically enhanced bones and failing as its claw got stuck in the ribcage of it.

Dan stepped into spell range and activated decomposing mist, then as he tried to cast Death Missile he realized he hadn’t waited long enough to regenerate mana for a second, nonetheless his one bolt raced out to hit the tiger in the head, dealing double damage due to decomposing mist already being on it and inflicting the necrotic healing debuff. It seemed the tiger was actually healing every time it used its jaws to bite into the skeletal rabbit, likely some kind of life steal effect.

Dan looked at the five mana he had left and tried to figure out how long it would take for his mana to fifteen. According to his stat sheet he would gain a quarter of a point of mana for every point of wisdom he had. So with his score of fifteen wisdom he should be gaining just under four points of mana a second. Which means he could cast a Death Missile every four seconds, speaking of, he cast another death missile at the tiger causing all the healing it was receiving from its life steal to be negated as the second stack of the Necrotic Healing debuff was applied.

The tiger roared in frustration as its bites no longer healed it and tried to get its paw unstuck. It looked like the raille was on its last legs so to speak as its health was under twenty percent. The tiger looked pretty rough itself as it was pelted by another earth based spell from Lashandra. It gave a roar and finally managed to pull its paw from the rabbit's body as it stumbled back from a small earthquake that seemingly came from Lashandra. Dan threw another Death Missile as the tiger decided to ignore the rabbit and focus on them instead. It started rushing at them and without any other recourse Dan threw himself in front of the Tiger to prevent it from getting to Lashandra. As it bit at him, the third stack of debuff from Necrotic Healing kicked and downed the tiger as its own lifesteal killed it.

Dan was shocked as the one bite had taken off nearly half his health, showing just how dangerous the mobs in here were. “I wish we could get my Raille some kind of taunt spell or something. That really sucked and a second hit like that would have finished me off. Give me a moment for my healing to kick in then I’ll scan this and we can move on.” While waiting for his mana and health to return Dan opened his notifications.

Exp gained - 100 reduced to 50

Exp gained - 200 reduced to 100

“Hey, I get a whole hundred experience off that tiger, they’re worth way more than the swans. Let’s try to target them as we make our way further into the dungeon.” Lashandra nodded as she went back to her own notifications.

You have defended someone from a potentially fatal attack with no thought to your own safety. This honorable action has changed the title ‘Fool’s Frontline’ to ‘Secondary Frontline’.

Secondary Frontline - Sometimes those that would rather stay in the back must take a stand when you lose your protector. You are the person who stands up when that happens. This title allows you to use the skill ‘Frontline Rush’ once per day to rush in front of an attack that will hit another person while taking 30% reduced damage from that attack. Pain is reduced by 50% at all times.

That was… pretty helpful given his current predicament actually. Now that he had a tank and had a taste of how much pain you actually endured in this world it was nice not to be expected to always be on the frontline. Not to mention he seemed to be inching his way closer to a mage build anyways, though with the way it seemed the game wanted necromancers to play, he doubted he would ever be as squishy as other mages. In fact it actually seemed like he would generally be on par with some of the more squishy warriors in terms of health.

Death missile increased to Novice IV

Mana Manipulation increased to Novice V

That was the first time his Mana Manipulation had actually increased, and it jumped up an entire five skill levels, that was insane. He had no idea what happened to cause such a massive increase. The only difference was when he had been casting spells he had… oh he had been working his way through how fast his mana regen was. Was that it?

You have figured out that knowledge of your skills increases how fast you gain levels in them. You managed to figure it out much slower than most do but you got there in the end. Intelligence +1

That explained quite a bit. And was something he would need to keep in mind when using his skills in the future. Speaking of, it was about time he scanned this tiger. Getting up he moved near the tiger and used his scan skill on the tiger. As it sunk into the ground he got a notification.

Your deity has granted you a passive skill, Bloody Mana (Novice I)

Bloody Mana (Novice I) - You can use your own health in place of mana fueling the cost using blood. Be careful as your health is a precious resource and some spells may react differently when using your blood instead of mana. This can be used actively by choosing to use health instead of mana for a spell or passively by casting a spell when you do not have the mana cost for it. Cost: 1:1 ratio for mana to health used.

This was a game changer! It would let him use tons more spells as long as he was careful never to overextend himself. This would make killing many of the monsters here trivial in fact -

WARNING! You have received a restricted class, Blood Mage. Turn yourself in or seek out a trainer.

_Error_ subject is already detained.

Quest failed: Find a blood mage trainer.

Quest succeeded: Turn yourself in.

Well that was worrying, not only the flashing red text in the message but also the error that had led to many problems in the past. Luckily it seemed he hadn’t drawn the ire of the game’s AI once again though. He probably shouldn’t bring it up as the mages hated him for being a Necromancer already. Looking down he found the drop from the tiger and picked it up.

Tiger’s eye - This jewel is shaped exactly the same as a tiger’s eye. Looking into it you feel a strange gaze looking back. You may use this stone in order to permanently increase a random stat by 1 or it might fail instead and decrease a random stat by one for a week. Do you want to try?

Dan tossed the stone to Lashandra. “Have you seen these? Seems really good if you’re lucky, and even if you’re not it's not a permanent debuff at least.” Lashandra nodded and started speaking.

“From what I’ve seen they always drop this, and maybe one other thing if you’re lucky.. The other, not so obvious, problem with them is there’s a one week cooldown after using them. Though just one of these is enough that we could retire for the day. I could never hunt these on my own so I would never try to target the tigers. If you want you can try to get a stat buff. Last time I did, I got an increase to my luck.”

She tossed it back to Dan who spent a moment longer thinking it over before staring into the jewel and trying to increase his stats. The longer he looked the more sure he was that he could see something within the depths of the murky red gem. Finally the ‘something’ materialized itself as a tiger of the same hue as the gem, roaring its displeasure at him and disappearing back into the jump which crumpled to dust in front of him.

Debuff added - Intelligence lowered by 1 for 1 week.

“I guess that’s a no to getting stronger through these gems this week. Though let’s try to hoard them. I have a feeling they might be worth something in the outside world. We could probably sell them for a decent price. Though we can use the next one to appease the mages here I suppose. Let’s keep going.”

Dan led the way forward towards the next tiger and when he was just outside of its range sent forward his Raille. It still wasn’t completely healed from the last fight but it was enough that it could probably last until this tiger was dead. Dan cast Decomposing Mist right as the tiger jumped off its pedestal and started using his Death Missile on it. Before it had even reached the rabbit he had used three of them on it causing its first bite on the rabbit to hurt it as its lifesteal tried to heal it.

Dan’s next missile had to be cast using his health pool and he felt a fleeting stab of pain in his gut as his health was sapped for the spell and the normally black shaded missile was covered in the dark scarlet of blood which dripped off of it as it zoomed towards the tiger, impacting it and causing the blood to seep inside of it. Surprisingly this seemed to scare the tiger as it felt the impact and it began to try to run away, clawing the rabbit out of its way as it did which tore through the Raille’s remaining health, killing it.

The Tiger in its blind panic ran right back into the platform it had been posed on before and was stunned for a moment before Lashandra finished it off with a well placed Seed Bullet. She looked at him and the bloodied missile, which was still embedded in the side of the Tiger unlike the other that had disappeared, before raising her eyebrow while expecting him to spill his guts.

“I may have um… earned a skill that lets me use my health as mana for spells, I didn’t want to say anything since it was supposed to be a restricted class or something but I’m not sure I can actually hide it looking at this. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”

“I wasn’t angry at you for that, Dan, I was more wondering why you hadn’t shown it before, that’s a lot of extra firepower we can use every fight and it seemed to have some form of fear effect on it. We’ll need to try that at the start of the next fight to see if it happens again.” She began to rattle off different ways that Dan might be able to take advantage of this new ability, lending credence to the theory Dan had of her being an incredibly experienced gamer before getting stuck in here.

Dan summoned back his Raille using regular mana instead of blood, he wanted to reserve his health as a resource for his missiles and for when he was going to face the boss. But as the day dragged on it seemed unlikely they were going to make it to the boss that day. Though they did manage to gather a small pile of loot including, five Tiger’s Eyes, three pairs of the swan earrings, and three tiger claws which restored ten points of mana when crushed. When he picked up a set of earrings he read the stats and found out another reason Lashandra had been so excited to put on the earrings and he even considered wearing a pair himself even if they would have looked ridiculous on him.

Earrings of the Swan - Increases mana regeneration by one point per second for each hit with a spell for the next five seconds up to a maximum of three mana per second from this effect.

They were pretty insane, in fact it seemed most of the loot in the dungeon was crazy, it was no wonder the Mage’s College was a force to be reckoned with if this was the kind of firepower they were packing. It was a wonder they didn’t clear out the dungeon themselves, though they likely thought of dungeon diving as something that was beneath them and best left to prisoners.

Dan made sure that every piece of loot was carried out by his thrall except for one of the Tiger’s Eyes which he let the dungeon take from him as they left to satisfy the mages. He had managed to barely level up as they moved through the dungeon though he had high hopes of making it to the boss the next day now that they knew what they were doing, and killing it was apparently enough to make it to level three according to Lashandra.

They left in high spirits, slightly dampened by the knowledge that all experience they had earned was going to be nullified that night by one of the mages. Dan made sure that all their loot was out of sight and that Lashandra had taken off her earrings as they went back into the cell to wait for their executioner.

An hour passed with no person coming even though, as best as Dan could tell from his starving body, it was well into evening. Dan sat back against the bars and tried to get comfortable and maybe even sleep, though with the cold bars it was difficult. After another hour passed Dan finally managed to nod off. He woke up not long later to two people whispering. Dan was curious why they would send two mages down to kill them, and why they felt the need to be quiet instead of just killing them right there and resume talking normally when they were dead.

Cracking his eyes slightly, he moved his stiff neck just enough to catch sight of Lashandra and another mage as they talked through the bars. The mage was a short and round young woman in a bright red cloak, and a pair of oversized glasses. She handed something to Lashandra and shook her head, a slightly panicked look on her face. He still couldn’t make out what they were saying, unfortunately. Lashandra sighed and put the package she got on the ground before letting the mage send a firebolt into her head, instantly killing her, Dan tensed slightly as a wave of wire rolled through the cell, killing him as well as the others people that had left this world.

Respawn time set to 30 minutes due to prison. 500 exp lost due to the set loss rate of the dungeon.

Dan sighed knowing he was in for another death as soon as he respawned and knowing he could do nothing about it, he figured he may as well try to get some more sleep before the inevitable death when he came back again.