Cerion stood across from me, staring me in the eyes with a serious expression on his face.

“I’m sorry. I did not mean what I said. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

I crossed my arms and sighed.

“Forget about it. I understand you were in some kind of trance at the time. I won’t blame you for falling under that little ghost’s spell. I hope you won’t fall for the same trick next time, though. Apart from its ability to control people, that boss was incredibly weak.”, I replied, forgiving him.

Cerion rubbed the back of his head awkwardly as we ate our post-battle meal. The rations hardly tasted like anything, but they served to fill our stomachs and calm us down after that ordeal. Despite the circumstances of our fight, I couldn’t help but tease my friend.

“You know, if that fight shows anything about our strength…”, I began.

“Don’t you dare…”, Cerion interrupted, glaring at me.

“...it’s that between the two of us, I’m the strongest.”, I finished, a shit-eating grin on my face.

Thankfully, Cerion could see the irony in the situation. Just a moment later, we were both laughing to the sky, the tension between us alleviating.

I couldn’t deny that what Cerion had said hurt, but at the same time I was confident those weren’t his true thoughts.

That compulsion had been incredibly powerful. I should know, for a moment I had experienced it myself. By using pain as a medium, I had taken control of my mind again, though [Mental Palace]’s passive mental resistance could have played a role as well. If what Doran had told me was true, Cerion would probably have the standard [Mindset] skill as his wisdom milestone, rather than my specialized [Mental resistance], which had since evolved to [Mental palace]. That would explain his lack of any defense against that ghostly opponent.

“Cerion, do you have any skills that could have protected you against that mental effect?”

He flinched and looked down to the ground.

“I don’t. To be honest, I could’ve taken an effect like that when I reached wisdom’s tier 2 milestone. Instead, I chose [Water mind], a skill that would help my affinity growth.”

I chuckled.

“Man, it sure would’ve been nice if you had taken that skill… you might have snapped out of that compulsion after a few minutes.”, I joked.

We had a good-natured laugh about it, before I continued the conversation.

“Say, Cerion. I have several questions about this whole thing. Mind answering a few?”

Cerion nodded attentively.

“Ask away.”

“Right. Question one, what was that whole thing? How can she just take control of our minds without even knowing we were there? I thought mind control would at least take some concentration on the caster’s part.”

Cerion shook his head.

“While that boss was most certainly capable of mind-control, I don’t think that was the state we fell under at the beginning. I think that was what the system calls a ‘status effect’. Your curse mark would probably be defined as one as well, now that I think about it. By hearing it sing, we were ‘charmed’ in a way, so that we felt very positively about her. We weren’t under her control at the time, though. For example, while I was saying things to you that I would otherwise never say, I wasn’t outright attacking you in the beginning. That’s because I was technically still in control at the time. When the ghost realized we were on our own, and that she wouldn’t be able to charm you, she decided to take control of me completely. From there, I don’t remember anything, it’s just a blank spot in my memory. From what you’ve told me, that was when we started fighting.”

“Judging from the fact that she only controlled one of us, do you think she could only wholly control one person at a time? How did she get you under control in the first place?”, I asked.

“That’s probably the case. She was only tier 3, after all. Not to mention that your uncle wouldn’t recommend this dungeon if we were destined to lose like that. As for how she did it, I figure that she had a passive skill that allowed her to target charmed opponents with mind control skills directly.”

We continued to discuss the various skills I had seen the boss use. Cerion was able to explain some that I described to him, like the increase in strength and decrease in intelligence probably being another skill unto itself and so on. Initially, I had thought the ghost lady had only been a one-trick pony, but now it seemed that she had used a plethora of skills in every single one of her actions. Even charming us had to have been a feat managed by combining several skills into one action, including a few passive ones. That didn’t leave much room for battle-power as far as anything else went, though. A single proper hit had been enough to end the battle.

Next, I decided to ask for the answer to a question that had been plaguing me for the last little while.

“So… you talked about affinity growth earlier. How does that actually work?”

“Oh, right. I hadn’t explained that yet, had I. Well, as far as I understand it, a higher affinity stat allows for easier use of the skills that follow that affinity. They become more powerful, use incrementally less mana, and so on. Each tier, you can raise your affinity by 300. For tier 1, it caps out at 299, for tier 2 it’s 599 and so on. It, apparently, also affects the power of the class you get at the next tier. Raising your affinity depends on the actions you take and how your mind grows. It goes up depending on how closely you act to your affinity’s properties, but can’t go down even if you act the complete opposite to them. The more talented you are, the more your affinity will rise with less and less effort. The fact that you have the [Dark prodigy] title means that your affinity will rise rather easily, as long as you act ‘obsessively’, I guess? Oh boy, you must have it rough, huh.”

I sighed.

“You don’t know the half of it…”

Tiredly, I opened up my status screen.

Name:

Arthur

Titles

[Dark prodigy]

Class:

[Overloading Death Knight] LVL 46

Strength

288

Constitution

284

Dexterity

284

Intelligence

75

Wisdom

238

Affinity

494

Free stat points

30

Skills:

Passive: [Dark radiance core](39%), [Dark sight](76%), [Berserker Swordsmanship](78%),

[Growing lifespan](N/A), [Mental palace](N/A), [Fast processing](N/A), [Dark Form](27%), [Overload Aura](39%)

Active: [Ghost apparation](11%), [Flexible senses](N/A), [Curse mark(guide)](81%), [Overloaded orb](75%), [Overloaded sword](58%), [Dark Blade Maelstrom](42%), [Aura step](23%)

I had left the last 5 free stat points I had gained unspent after our most recent fight, so I put them in wisdom again, bringing it up to 243.

More importantly, my affinity had grown a little since entering the dungeon, gaining 31 points through my fights and search for strong opponents. Unfortunately, it wouldn't grow enough to reach 599 by the time I got to level 50. The tournament itself would take a while, but I didn’t know if even that would be enough. Even if the line-up of difficult fights could increase my affinity, I couldn't be sure that would be the case. I didn’t really feel like delaying my tier up's either, though I would if I had to.

That meant more training. As long as I threw myself into my training in the near future, maybe even involving my [Mental palace], I could reach the cap.

What pleased me more was my skill progression. My tier 2 skills were finally shaping up and slowly reaching tier 3. Newly created skills like [Overloaded sword] and [Dark blade maelstrom] still had a ways to go, but even they were getting there. I had big hopes for some of those skills to get a major power increase in the near future.

The dilemma that was my intelligence stat was still plaguing me, but I decided to put the matter off until I met with my uncle, who could probably give me some good advice as far as the third intelligence milestone went. Now that I was thinking about it, the guild head could most likely help me out on that front as well.

I felt a little bad ignoring Doran’s advice about spending free points as soon as you got them, but felt that this issue was both too risky and too important to just throw myself into willy-nilly. While this dungeon was dangerous, so far it hadn’t warranted me to be that cautious.

Finally, my physical stats. At this point, I could almost taste the next milestones at 300. Milestone skills didn’t tend to help much in direct combat, but the idea of skill tier up’s remained an exciting one. Even if they didn’t benefit me much in the short term, long term they could have a large impact on my build.

With my status reflected upon, I waved away the blue screen floating in my vision and looked over to Cerion, who had similarly finished looking at his skills. He glanced over to me and smiled.

“I just got the fourth intelligence milestone at 300 stats!”, he said excitedly, “I’m able to split my thoughts and control multiple pieces of my skills at once now.”

I returned his jovial mood with a smile, though I had to admit I was a bit jealous. He didn’t have to be careful of which skills he chose, since they could never come to bite him the ass upon class evolution, like mine could. The amount of exciting skills I had foregone for a more reliable option at this point… Just the thought made me sigh.

I couldn’t lie and say that hadn’t been the right decision, either. I still remembered the terrible mana-efficiency I had to deal with just a few months ago, where I had to finish all of my battles within half a minute, or I would be the one to die instead. At least as far as mana went, I couldn’t complain. Picking reliable skills had served me well until now, with the only experimental ones being [Ghost apparition] and [Aura step]. I intended to tier those up into more reliable versions, too, so I felt rather satisfied with my build so far.

“Good going, Cerion. Just a little more and even your dad will have to bow down in front of your superior intelligence!”, I replied bombastically. Cerion grinned.

“Now that you mention it, shouldn’t you be getting on your knees yourself? As far as I’m aware, your intelligence isn’t even at 100 yet, right?”, he teased back.

“Want me to start talking about physical stats? For a melee warrior, you’re looking a little thin, Cerion. Do you need some training tips?”

“Oh sure! In exchange, I’ll teach you about those monsters we fight every day, that you’ve usually never heard of!”

We both laughed, seeing the humor in our shortcomings.

After bantering back and forth a few more times, I continued our more serious conversation from earlier.

“Is it fine if I meditate for a while before we head out to the arena?”

“The arena, right! The boss there was represented by a knife-looking thing, if I remember correctly? An assassin-type, maybe. Yeah, sure, go ahead. I’ll continue practicing skills until you’re done. We only have another 3 days to finish this, so let’s kill the next boss before we head to bed later tonight.”

“Sure thing. I think we can deal with an assassin rather easily, if it comes down to it.”, I replied, smiling.

I closed my eyes and headed into my meditation space, determined to get the most out of my affinity training, growing my forest at the same time. Peak efficiency, just how I always liked it.