“Lunaris, I’ve been meaning to ask for a while now. What made you want to specialize in researching the Darkness?” it felt awkward to ask, but James had been wondering about it since they first met.

Lunaris seemed a bit reluctant when she heard the question, but she decided to reveal her motivations to her friend.

“For the longest time, I wasn’t good at anything. I had no passions, nothing was of interest to me, so I wasn’t able to learn anything to the point I was good at it. I was totally useless." Lunaris sighed, feeling a bit ashamed, but it also felt good to share these things with a friend.

"Eventually though, I forced myself to start learning a bit of everything. And that’s what led me to learning about the Darkness, especially since the Darkness is such a multidisciplinary field of study.”

James could relate to the feeling of not being good at anything. His [Jack of all trades, master of none] skill was basically proof of it. It was his innate skill, one linked to his soul, to who he is. He never really liked anything to the point he would specialize in it. Unless lying in bed reading fantasy counts.

“Jeez, when I saw your reluctance I thought it would be something more serious. There’s no need to feel self-conscious about it, I’m the same way. And I’m sure plenty of other people are too. You were just a late bloomer, that’s all. I’m glad you found your calling.” James then patted her shoulder and tried making a silly face to lighten the mood, although he just ended up looking weird. The recluse's social skills were still lacking, but he was slowly getting better by hanging out with his friends.

“Then I’ll make you the leading expert in the Darkness. You can observe this half-demon bastard till you unlock all the secrets this Darkness thing is hiding!” James said with a radiant smile, pointing a thumb at his own chest.

“Then I’ll take you up on your offer.” Lunaris chuckled.

Afterwards, James went to the market to sell his drops of Darkness that he looted from all those demons.

He received a whopping 10000 gold coins for them. Which was a lot, considering a potion only cost 10 gold coins.

He then used 2000 gold coins to buy gifts for Helios and Lunaris. He wanted to do something nice for them since they were always so nice to him. Because he had the soul of a lazy bastard, he bought gifts that could only be called laziness incarnate.

Two bracelets, one for each person, that when activated would create an aetherial floating armchair for the user to sit on. They even could even be used as a mount, albeit a rather slow one. One could lazily sit in the armchair all day long, but instead of rotting in their room, they could roam the city, flying in their chair without moving a muscle.

After leaving the store, he couldn't resist the temptation and returned shortly after to buy one for himself as well. These babies can even fly way up in the air, hundreds of feet high. Depending on your intelligence level, you can even increase the speed till you're zooming through the air. It’s a flying armchair, who wouldn’t want one?

James then bought 50 health potions and 50 mana potions. He would’ve bought more, but apparently you get potion sickness after drinking 5 potions in the same day, so there’s no need for more. He also bought a small spatial ring so he could store all those potions, but that set him back 5000 gold.

That left him with 1000 gold. He didn’t expect to spend that much so quickly, back on Earth he was very frugal. But being surrounded by magical wonders can make a man loosen his purse strings.

He spent the last of his money on a pair of boots that had an enchantment which removed the exhaustion from your feet. Having spent so many years as a recluse, James wasn’t used to walking and running around so much. These boots were more of a lifesaver than even the potions, his feet were killing him.

That night, James had a hard time falling asleep. He was only level 15, but from then on Helios and Lunaris would be joining him when he trained. He needed to level up fast in order to lessen the danger they faced.

As much as the two denied it, dampening their levels was not a safe thing to do. If anybody with a high level attacked them, stalling the attacker until the dampening was deactivated would be a life and death struggle.

But he now had a bunch of potions and two good friends by his side. His leveling speed would definitely increase.

Having steeled his resolve to try his hardest, James finally drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Helios proposed something crazy.

“There is one way you could level up quickly. But it’s a lot more dangerous than anything you’ve faced until now.” Helios grinned like a maniac. "Well, you couldn't do this on your own, but with us there it's doable. Probably."

“I don’t mind the danger." He really didn't. Leveling up was quite intoxicating, James would gladly jump into battle with just about anything if it meant he'd level up quickly. "I want to become more powerful and I can’t do that by playing safe. That being said, I don’t want to put you guys in danger.”

“Don’t worry about us. Our levels and stats will be lowered, but our skills and items will still be very strong. Nothing can touch us.” Helios announced proudly.

“So what’s the plan?” James asked.

“We’re going to battle a sentient dungeon!”

“What?! Did you hit your head with one of your dumbbells? The whole point of us going with him is so we can diminish the danger. With a sentient dungeon, one wrong step and he’s dead. Even we could die.” Lunaris protested vehemently.

Hearing that, James became worried. “I don’t want to put you guys in danger.” He could risk his own life, but he’d never want to risk the life of his friends.

“Relax, we won’t die, not with these puppies.” That’s when Helios revealed three scrolls.

“Grade 3 teleportation scrolls? These cost a fortune, how did you get them?” Lunaris was shocked.

“My father gave them to me. After I told him we were going to dampen our levels, he spent all night crafting these with the help of three other Archmages.” Helios said with a sense of admiration.

James would have to thank Cadmus as well, the time and effort of four archmages doesn't come cheap.

“Ok, those do make it safer. But even if the scrolls can teleport us back to Hedonia immediately without any delay, the dungeon could kill him before he can even activate the scroll. Sentient dungeons are very unpredictable!” Lunaris then went silent, deep in thought.

“That is true, I suppose we can just go another time when James possesses more powerful skills.” Helios conceded.

“No, wait, I’ve got it. If he can learn a sufficiently powerful protection spell that is active at all times, he could survive even a surprise attack and activate the teleportation.” Lunaris suggested.

“An advanced enough mana shield could do the trick.” Helios added.

“Oh I already know mana shield, I crafted that skill on my own.” James said nonchalantly.

“What?!” Helios and Lunaris were shocked.

“I needed to warm myself up back in the frozen caverns so I crafted several skills to warm myself up.”

“So that’s what you were doing there, it wasn’t clear when we were watching what the observers recorded. I guess accompanying you will be much more useful for our research after all.” Lunaris chuckled. “But James, it’s very unusual for someone at your level to craft their own skills. Even Helios and I can barely do that. We only learned how to make our own spells when we needed to deepen our understanding of our specializations.”

“That’s our boy from another world for you, full of surprises.” Helios laughed. “Let me see your mana shield, put as much mana into it as you can without going above your mana recovery rate.”

James activated his mana shield, and then Helios gave him a quick poke infused with his own mana. James’ mana shield shattered instantly.

“No, that won’t do. It’s way too weak.” Helios thought for a little bit. “Your fireballs are infused with Darkness, but your mana shield wasn’t, why is that?”

“I could infuse some Darkness into the shield, but it would consume way too much mana, I couldn’t have it active at all times.”

“What if you didn’t continuously provide mana into the shield?” Lunaris proposed.

“What do you mean, it’s a mana shield, how can it stay active with no mana?” Both James and Helios were confused.

“You already created your own skill, right? What if you created a Darkness shield instead of a mana shield? You can’t have a pure Darkness shield because that would just be a corruptive and corrosive, dangerous force. But if you first formed a mana shield, then used the Darkness you absorbed as a fuel for the shield, you could potentially use Darkness instead of mana to keep it active.”

James didn’t need any more convincing. “Let’s try it out.”

James sat down and meditated, trying to imagine the process of forming a shield and using Darkness to fuel it instead of mana.

He formed a mana shield as he usually did, but then he stopped sending mana into it, and sent Darkness instead.

His head hurt, his eyes stung. It felt like a corrosive liquid was burning his skin.

“James! Stop! Use much less of it!” Lunaris said with concern, James had been pouring out way too much Darkness.

Heeding her advice, James finally stabilized a mana shield fueled by Darkness.

[Skill unlocked: Darkness shield]

“Oh, that’s interesting. Let’s test it out!” Helios grinned and poked the shield.

Surprisingly, the shield didn’t even react, it’s like he did nothing at all.

“Nice. Let’s see if it can handle this though.” Helios then pulled back his fist and unleashed a punch so powerful on the shield, that the winds from the punch seemed like they would snap the tree next to them in two. It still had no effect on the shield.

Helios's face then turned serious, his competitive spirit spurring him on. “Time for the real test now."

He raised his palm, casting a fireball that was so powerful, it was making the air distort around it. “Don’t worry, if it hurts you, Lunaris can just heal you.”

Once Helios unleashed the fireball, James was sent flying. His shield flickered and shattered soon after. But James wasn't hurt at all.

“Now that’s a good shield.” Helios smiled while extending his hand, helping James stand up.

“Now that you possess this shield, I agree on going to conquer a sentient dungeon. But we still have to be very careful.” Lunaris acquiesced. “Also, since you have a limited supply of Darkness, we can only spend a few hours in the dungeon. Once you run out of Darkness, we’ll have to return immediately!”

James nodded. He felt a lot safer with a powerful protective spell enveloping him, but he couldn’t be careless for a even a second.