Susanoo grinned as he watched his new favorite toy bumbling through his first Dungeon. The ancient mischief-maker was one of the few gods who managed to retain that status after the Sublimation, and he was happily abusing his Authority to show him Lyam’s antics.

To Susanoo, Lyam’s soul looked like a shattered mosaic of ice, darkness, and coagulated blood. His old karma from Earth seeped out of every pore, and most gods would have sought to punish him or ignored him entirely. To Susanoo, however, Lyam was the best kind of toy… one who quite naturally attracted trouble everywhere it went.

Before the Sublimation, Susanoo marked Lyam as a potential pawn after a brief interaction with one of his worshipers. Those gods who retained some degree of autonomy from the System all picked pawns and people to ‘inspire’ from amongst the mortals they believed might survive what was to come, and Susanoo had particular tastes when it came to those he chose to ‘bless’ with his attentions.

Susanoo liked chaos and trouble, so he picked people who were unlikely to be satisfied with merely surviving, marking dozens who he thought might have the potential to thrive in the System’s world. Lyam was merely the most amusing one of those, currently. Several of his other marked mortals were becoming interesting as well, so he couldn’t focus entirely on the Saevere assassin, but the dungeon run was impossible to resist watching.

It had been worth expending a portion of his divine essence to influence the elf to be more well-inclined to his toy. It had cost him, but there was little for him to do these days but toy with the fates of mortals and do paperwork, in any case.

Speaking of which, Susanoo looked down at the massive stack of paper on his desk and sighed, Damn Uzume, anyway. The bitch managed to offload sixty-thousand people worth of paperwork onto me… and I don’t have any System Fairies to help me file them away!

Uzume had somehow managed to convince the System that Susanoo’s role as a deity wasn’t sufficient to keep him busy, and as a result, it had arranged for him to be busy. Though the terms of the System’s deal with Earth’s creator deity ensured those gods who still had worshipers would function as deities still, it still had the right to assign them work and give orders.

After a century of half my worshipers being paper-pushers, I thought I would be free of this shit after the Sublimation, He grumbled mentally, his mood souring.

Unlike most of Earth’s deities, he had been looking forward to the Sublimation. Influencing the minds of his followers to fall in love with virtual gaming had been a small price to pay to finally escape the sheer boredom of the modern world. He wasn’t like Amaterasu, who had resisted to the very end, until her existence winked out and her divine essence was absorbed by the System. The Chaos that the Sublimation promised was enough to get him to work his ass off for the century or so it took to prepare the way.

I wonder what Loki is doing… he never did call me back after that party in Paris… He thought. The two gods usually got along like a house on fire… usually because things ended up catching on fire or exploding whenever they got drunk. The last party they had was on the night before Sublimation, and Susanoo vaguely recalled the Eiffel Tower turning into a rocket and flying out of the atmosphere a few minutes before the actual event.

Unfortunately, the System had rudely cleared his spiritual body of the seventeen barrels of divine liquor he consumed during the four-day bender, so he entered the new world stone-cold sober, to his disappointment.

Loki was likely to be messing around with that mob boss he named as his champion before the Sublimation, and Kali was probably busy making her husband miserable as usual. In this new world, the gods’ only connection to the world was their followers, so if they had no followers in an area, they had no idea what was going on unless it was part of their job.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand what Shiva sees in her… even for a deity of Chaos, she is a bit crazy, He thought as he stamped his approval for yet another Earthling’s access to a new Class. The survivors in the worst areas were leveling like crazy, resulting in way too much paperwork… it wasn’t like the System actually needed the paper records, since it had a memory that grew infinitely with each new Sublimation.

Susanoo continued to grumble in between bouts of snickering over the plight of his marked ones, stamping papers with a speed as fast as thought.

____________________________________________________________________

Laevarian was laughing hysterically as Lyam bumbled around in the fight with the two Ragar Warriors. It was obvious that Lyam hadn’t fought on his own since the Sublimation in that he didn’t seem to be familiar with how stats could differ in their effects based on race or individual. The Ragar were faster than a human with the same stats would have been, as well as being several times tougher and stronger.

He never had any doubt that Lyam would win, but seeing him get knocked on his ass was highly amusing.

“You can tell by how he is being tossed around by his own stats and the Ragar that he is unfamiliar with level gains,” Urgo remarked.

Laevarian calmed himself as Lyam took down the last of the Warriors, nodding seriously, “Yes. It was something I worried about during our travels. While he has a good grasp of what that spell, Psychokinesis, can do, he is not yet the master of his own body. His stats have grown too fast without him working his body to understand its limits. His spellcasting is actually already decent, but I think even he knows now that he needs to figure out how to handle physical stat gains.”

“I remember the first time I put points in strength… took me almost a month to get used to how my body worked after,” Urgo said, his expression nostalgic.

“That he handled it so well up to now is a mark of how that weird mental technique he uses keeps him going,” Laevarian remarked.

“Mental technique?” Urgo asked curiously.

“According to him, he has a habit of separating aspects of himself off into personas that handle different tasks. If I had to guess, up until now, movement was one of those tasks, but actually having to push himself in battle meant that the technique could not handle the strain,” Laevarian hypothesized.

“That sounds like a recipe for insanity,” Urgo remarked.

“I thought so too, but in the time I have been around him, he has shown no signs of madness,” The elf replied with a shrug.

“Still, that look on his face is creepy as a dwarf screwing a dragonkin,” Urgo remarked, the flat, emotionless mask that was Lyam making him shiver slightly. To Urgo’s mind, a battle should always call up a variety of emotions. For him, it was usually rage and joy, but he had never seen someone look like Lyam while fighting.

The elf nodded in agreement, “It is the primary reason I never considered making a party with him. While he was a good companion much of the time, I sometimes caught him staring at others like a quartermaster counting beans.”

“The System pricked you when you thought about it?” Urgo asked curiously. They were both aware of the System’s hidden ‘bonds’ mechanic, so it was permissible for them to talk about it to one another.

“By the way it prodded me and drew my attention to his expressions at the right times, almost definitely. We might last a few months as companions, but he would eventually do something that would drive me away,” Laevarian said, shrugging slightly. The System’s ‘bonds’ mechanic was a complex mechanism that influenced those who were interested in joining up, for whatever reason, driving them together or apart based on whether their essential natures were compatible.

Urgo smiled wryly. They had both experienced the System’s prodding that way before. At first, it had terrified them how strongly it could influence their mind and spirit, but there eventually came a point where one just gave up and accepted it for what it was… well, most people, anyway. There were always those who couldn’t handle being manipulated that way and went mad.

“How do you think he will do? The Ragar Level gets up to Level 50 at the boss room,” Urgo asked curiously. So far, Lyam had impressed him with his lack of hesitation, but his actual skill in using the power of the System was lacking.

“I think he will get through the level, though it might take him a few subjective days. Thankfully, the Challenge Dungeon’s time compression is 10:1, so he can probably level up significantly if he really pushes it,” Laevarian said thoughtfully. All Dungeons compressed time within their bounds, though the degree differed depending on the power of the core and the depth of their Dungeon.

“Do you think he will come back immediately?”

“That is a bit more complicated… I think he might linger to gain more levels, so maybe he will clear the second and third?” Laevarian replied after a few minutes of consideration.

“The Undead Level and the Drake Level… to be honest, I do not anticipate him being able to handle the Drakes, given what you mentioned about his world of origin,” Urgo said skeptically.

“We will see. I will probably need to leave before then, though. If I am still here when he returns, I have a feeling things will not turn out well for me,” The elf said, looking a bit down. Though it would not work out in the end, he would have liked to party with Lyam to celebrate after, though he had a feeling Lyam might look to get a bit of petty revenge if he had the chance.

“That’s life in the System,” Urgo said, a bitter expression briefly twisting his mouth into a moue of disgust accented by his tusks.

Laevarian merely took a long gulp from the bottle of clear spirits at his right hand and stared at the display showing Lyam’s first dungeon dive.

_____________________________________________

Lyam’s sword punctured the Ragar Scout’s heart from behind, and he willed bloodfire to flow into the wound through the blade, burning away the lungs to keep it from alerting any nearby allies. The creature slumped in his arms, and he slowly lowered it to the ground. With a thought, he looted everything (the crossbow and dagger that every Scout seemed to have) and dragged the corpse into a nearby corner. His observations told him the corpse would remain for around an hour before it vanished or until it was looted or he left it behind if an hour had already passed.

So far, he had used Stealth and similar techniques to kill nineteen Scouts, and he was half a dozen caverns farther into the Dungeon. Each cavern had held at least three Ragar, usually a combination of Warriors, Scouts, and Shamans. As a result, his level had shot up rather quickly, along with his Stealth and Long Blades skills.

Name: Lyam Aldren

Level: 15

Race: Saevere

Profession: Hired Killer

Class: Curse Blade

Title: Cain’s Successor, Kinslayer, The First Curse Blade

Available AP: 25

Available SP: 5

HP: 2420/2420

MP: 2750/2750

Str: 16

Agi: 25

Dex: 25

Con: 23

End: 20

Int: 33

Will: 34

Cha: 14

Lck: 15

Martial Skills: Light Blades 40, Long Blades 25, Backstab 35, Stealth 40, Magic Resistance 5, Shadow Manipulation 10

Magic Skills: True Sight 45, Gravity Magic 25, Curse Magic 12, Soul Magic 1

Crafting Skills: Blood Curse Tattoo 15, Enchanting 10, Skinning 3

Knowledge Skills: Anatomy 15

Spells: Psychokinesis, Gravity Arrow, Blood Curse, Create Soul Familiar, Blood Curse: Bloodfire (invocation and manipulation, basic invocation consumes 1 HP and 1 MP per second), Karmic Sacrifice

Weapon Style: Cat Dances with Swords (Novice)

Non-Combat: Perception 50, Mana Cultivation 25, Dissection 1

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Novice), Shadow Cloak (Novice)

Perks: Kinslayer I (5% damage boost to sapient humanoids, -5% to damage taken from sapient humanoids), Absolute Metabolism (Perfect immunity to and absorption of poison, disease, and curses)

Racial Perks: Mana Core, Innovative Nature II, Inspiration

Talents: Compartmentalization (This individual can shuffle his emotions to the side almost at will), Cold Mind (This individual will ignore all attempts to sway him emotionally from a chosen course, whether born of magic or conventional means), Persona Creation (This individual naturally adopts personality traits that will give him a better chance of success in his chosen endeavors), Greater Magic Affinity (potential to master at least 3 schools of magic, two basic, one Celestial, Class Schools do not count for Affinity Talents)

Shadow Manipulation was… difficult to level. While he had no problem extending shadows slightly or causing them to make it harder to catch sight of him when he stood within, he found that the skill began to exhaust him if he moved or in any way made contact with a strong light source.

Gravity Magic had made it to Journeyman, and as a result, he had gained a mild flood of knowledge that had enhanced his understanding of the magic greatly. He sensed that leveling the skill further would require study as well as use, as his understanding of the magic was so far gained solely from practical use and a vague recollection of explanations of gravity from his physics classes in high school.

His use of the sword in his battles so far had gotten more effective as he blew past the Apprentice levels to Journeyman in Long Blades in three days… unfortunately, his sword was starting to show signs of wear and tear, despite him doing his best to maintain the weapon. There was only so much he could do with a whetstone and oil. The blade’s enchantments were nice, but Ragar chitin was still tough enough that the blade caught briefly on it at times, which was the source of most of the wear and tear.

More importantly, he was getting the hang of utilizing his own body, once again. After the first group battle, he had stopped relying on psychokinesis to guide his movements, as he found that his mastery of the spell was as of yet inadequate for anything beyond abrupt movements for closing with an enemy or evasion of a blow that would have been difficult to avoid using his physical combat abilities.

He was growing accustomed to the movements of Cat Dances with Swords, his mental understanding of the sword style slowly catching up to the imprinted knowledge and muscle memory as he used it. Unfortunately, the style was somewhat unsuited for use against an enemy with a high rate of regeneration. The need for amputations or decapitations to deal significant damage to the Ragar made most of the style ineffective, as it was highly reliant on shallow, precise blows that flowed from one to another rather than single powerful blows meant to wreak havoc on an enemy’s flesh.

Most of the time, he was taking the Ragars’ limbs one by one after finding openings or severing heads after using Gravity Arrows to knock them off-balance. Crush had turned out to be difficult to use once a battle had started, as it took a moment to take effect, allowing the Warriors and Scouts to evade it if they detected the spell’s use. As a result, he was mostly using it as a preemptive strike against Shamans, as it had enough range that he could usually use it from Stealth with little difficulty.

He looked down at his armor and grimaced at a patch of exposed skin along his right side where one of the Shamans’ spells had melted the leather (and his ribs) when it managed to hit. The Acid Shot spell some of the Shamans had was seriously nasty.

So far, he had suffered having the skin of his right hand partially melted on four different occasions, his lowest right rib and part of his lung destroyed by acid once, and his left arm broken twice by Warriors’ shield bashes. His relatively high constitution seemingly resulted in a regenerative capacity that allowed such wounds to heal within a few hours, but the pain was pretty horrific at times.

He examined the mortal wound he had dealt to the Scout, frowning as he cut it open. It had occurred to him a few minutes before that he was unsure of how much damage his blood fire was doing when he channeled it through the sword.

He winced at the stench of scorched bug flesh, which had a vaguely sulfuric scent to it that reminded him of his trip to Sulphur Springs on one of his few vacations. He noted that, as expected, the heart was outright gone. The bloodfire, which was roughly equivalent to a 1.5x charge of the base spell he’d tattooed on his arm, was apparently powerful enough to do that much. However, he noted that there was only minimal damage to the surrounding flesh, telling him that Ragar must be fairly resistant to fire magic.

Skill Dissection has reached level 2.

I thought I turned off skill notifications, He cursed mentally as he made the series of commands to access his notifications settings. He quickly turned skill notifications off, wondering if the System was trying to sabotage him or something. He found most notifications to be annoying or distracting, and even his level up notifications were set to hit him only when there were no enemies present.

He chewed on some unnamed jerky he’d looted from one of the Drones as he waited for his mana and health to be regenerated. The last few kills had occurred in relatively rapid succession, so he had fallen below the halfway mark. Bloodfire wasn’t that expensive, but Shadow Manipulation most definitely was. The skill seemed to devour his mana at a ridiculous rate while he was mobile.

One thing he was noticing about this ‘Dungeon’ was that whenever he started to get hungry and thirsty, the loot seemed to turn to food and drink instead of coin equipment. It was as if whatever part of the System that was running it wanted those who entered to fight and die without having to worry about such ‘petty’ matters.

Another issue that was beginning to worry him was the rate at which enemy levels were increasing. The last two rooms had had enemies at Level 40, and the Scout he just killed was 43. It was making surviving more difficult than he would have liked, as his margin for error was narrowing with each room.

With a sigh, he considered what stats he should increase next.

Magic is all well and good, but it seems to work best as an aid rather than a go-to tool, at least at my level. Perhaps after I expand my repertoire a bit, I will be able to keep enemies at a proper distance, but until then… He thought. It would probably be better to use his five levels of stats to increase his physical abilities. The way they were lagging behind the enemies’ increases was the greatest reason his margin for error kept narrowing.

Ten points to Agility, ten to Dexterity, Five to Strength… their chitin seems to get tougher with each level up, He thought, entering his Attribute points and accepting the result. He then moved on to the Skill Shop and his eyebrows shot up.

New skills… well that is interesting.

The first was a remnant from his previous look at the Skill Shop, but there were a number of new ones available. Not only that, but the new skills, spells, and techniques all had a cost associated with them, indicating that they were more expensive to obtain than the ‘base’ ones he had obtained previously.

Blood Magic (Skill)- A School of Magic that functions through blood sacrifice, a close cousin of the Curse Magic School. This School will not count against Magic Affinity Talents.

Debilitating Curse (Spell)- An intermediate Curse Magic spell designed to temporarily weaken an enemy. This spell works by temporarily sacrificing max HP and MP to inflict a short-term curse that weakens a particular stat or resistance of an opponent. Mild negative karma is inflicted upon the caster based on the degree of debilitation. Cost: 3 SP

Dimension Thrust (Technique)- A technique designed by the Drow Mage Daggers to allow a strike that bypasses all resistances at a cost in MP. As this is a Class Technique, it bypasses a lack of access to the associated school of magic. If the user does not have access to Dimensional Magic, MP cost rises by 3x. Cost: 5 SP

Core Disruption (technique)- a bare-handed technique that injects the user’s mana into an enemy’s core, disrupting its equilibrium. If the user’s Willpower is more than 1.25x that of his opponent, the opponent’s cultivation will be damaged. If the user’s Willpower is more than 2x that of his opponent, the opponent’s cultivation will be permanently destroyed. This is a Cultivator technique incorporated into the Mage Dagger Class. Cost: 4 SP

Gravity Manipulation (Spell)- A Gravity Magic spell that is considered the most basic form of the school’s magic. It is offered to all users of Gravity Magic upon obtaining Journeyman rank. This spell allows the user to create a single field and vector of gravitational force at a cost in MP commensurate to the distance from the caster and the intensity and size of the field. As the caster’s familiarity with the spell rises, more benefits may be seen. Cost: 3 SP

Karma Manipulation (Skill)- An intermediate skill available to the Curse Mage Class. This allows the caster to redirect the flow of karma directed at him toward an object or person, thus bypassing the cost of Curse Magic spells to an extent. While complete redirection of the negative karma of higher level curses is impossible, it is possible to completely redirect the negative or positive karma from minor curses to a particular object or person. This skill requires that the medium that will absorb the karma be designated and marked in advance. Cost: 2 SP

Lyam smiled wryly at the choices available. All of them were potentially useful (except Blood Magic, which he had no intention of obtaining).

Debilitating Curse sounded like an excellent spell to have when facing most enemies, but it also sounded like something that could backfire on the user if he abused it, like most Curse Mage abilities and spells. He liked the idea of possibly using the spell to disable a Ragar’s regeneration, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be that simple.

Dimension Thrust… almost made him drool. He was getting seriously tired of the way the Ragar chitin was so good at resisting his blows. If he had a technique that could let him bypass that limitation, it would be immensely useful. However, the cost at 5 SP was just too high. He knew from Lyam’s explanations that his Level 20 specialization would increase the amount of SP he obtained per level, so he decided to wait until then to decide on whether to obtain it or not.

Core Disruption… didn’t really sound all that attractive to him. It seemed like it might be useful, but it was far too conditional with the way it relied on Willpower differences to function. Sure, most monsters seemed to have relatively low Willpower, but it would be almost useless against people at higher levels. It was an important point for him, since it was unlikely he would be facing people of lower level that often, and if he was, they would mostly be easy for him to deal with, based on the advantages he had over most.

That left the last two, Gravity Manipulation and Karma Manipulation. The latter was most definitely a necessary skill for anyone with a Curse Magic-using Class. Lyam had indicated that there were serious consequences for having too much negative karma, and being able to offload it onto someone else – perhaps an enemy – would be immensely useful in preventing such an overload.

Gravity Manipulation was even more of a game-changer. Laevarian had explained to him that every school of magic had several types of ‘manipulation’ spells that would allow a caster to learn to make his own. Psychokinesis was technically a ‘manipulation’ spell, but it was more narrowly focused, not to mention being a multi-school spell rather than a single-school one, meaning it was less effective when training the use of Gravity Magic than some others.

Given the utility of the last two abilities, he was easily able to bring himself to give up on the others. He selected Gravity Manipulation and Karmic Manipulation and took another look at his status.

Name: Lyam Aldren

Level: 15

Race: Saevere

Profession: Hired Killer

Class: Curse Blade

Title: Cain’s Successor, Kinslayer, The First Curse Blade

Available AP: 0

Available SP: 0

HP: 3070/3070

MP: 2750/2750

Str: 21

Agi: 35

Dex: 35

Con: 23

End: 20

Int: 33

Will: 34

Cha: 14

Lck: 15

Martial Skills: Light Blades 40, Long Blades 25, Backstab 35, Stealth 40, Magic Resistance 5, Shadow Manipulation 10

Magic Skills: True Sight 45, Gravity Magic 25, Curse Magic 12, Soul Magic 1, Karma Manipulation 1

Crafting Skills: Blood Curse Tattoo 15, Enchanting 10, Skinning 3

Knowledge Skills: Anatomy 15

Spells: Psychokinesis, Gravity Arrow, Blood Curse, Create Soul Familiar, Blood Curse: Bloodfire (invocation and manipulation, basic invocation consumes 1 HP and 1 MP per second), Karmic Sacrifice, Gravity Manipulation

Weapon Style: Cat Dances with Swords (Novice)

Non-Combat: Perception 50, Mana Cultivation 25, Dissection 1

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Novice), Shadow Cloak (Novice)

Perks: Kinslayer I (5% damage boost to sapient humanoids, -5% to damage taken from sapient humanoids), Absolute Metabolism (Perfect immunity to and absorption of poison, disease, and curses)

Racial Perks: Mana Core, Innovative Nature II, Inspiration

Talents: Compartmentalization (This individual can shuffle his emotions to the side almost at will), Cold Mind (This individual will ignore all attempts to sway him emotionally from a chosen course, whether born of magic or conventional means), Persona Creation (This individual naturally adopts personality traits that will give him a better chance of success in his chosen endeavors), Greater Magic Affinity (potential to master at least 3 schools of magic, two basic, one Celestial, Class Schools do not count for Affinity Talents)

He needed to get used to his body’s new stats, so he headed back to the previous cavern. Four Drones awaited him there, confirming his suspicion that the Dungeon spawned more Ragar behind him after a time. He swept through them easily, the muscular but slow Drones going down in moments, the awkwardness of using a pickaxe for a weapon making them easy game.

The agility jump is going to cause problems… I might need to clear a few more to get used to it, He headed back to the cavern before that, going at a loping run. When he came across two Scouts, he used Psychokinesis to deflect their crossbow bolts, followed by a Gravity Arrow to their heads. He looted them in passing, not bothering to stop and examine the bodies.

Thankfully, the next cavern had what he needed, two Warriors armed with longswords and shields. Upon sighting him, their proboscises twitched, and they let out angry shrieks as they leapt toward him.

He dove to the right, putting one of them between him and the other. The Ragar slashed out sideways with the bug-men’s usual speed, and he found that he was able to perceive the blow more clearly, allowing him to evade by bending his knees and rolling forward.

Once he was behind the creature, he lashed out with his sword, cutting through the tendons of the Ragar’s left ankle. This caused it to crumple to one knee, and he used its brief moment of vulnerability to call a dagger into his left hand and drive it through the creature’s disturbingly human-like eye, surging bloodfire through the simple steel blade before taking his hand off, leaving it behind. The dagger turned cherry red and shattered inside the creature’s skull, the poor quality weapon (taken off a Scout) unable to withstand the extreme heat of the focused double-charged spell.

The second Ragar gave another piercing shriek, making Lyam’s ears throb with pain, and it leapt over its dead compatriot’s collapsing corpse, thrusting out with its long sword at his chest. Lyam brought his sword up in both hands, twisting aside so that the Warrior’s sword scraped off the flat of the blade instead of puncturing his chest. He then dropped to one knee, barely avoiding a scything blow of the shield’s sharpened edge.

He was now inside the creature’s guard, and he placed his right hand on its chest, casting Crush. The creature jerked, and green froth burst from its mouth as the spell pulverized its innards before exploding outwards as he surged psychokinesis, doubling the momentum of the release from the pressure.

The creature collapsed, lifeless, at his feet, its sword clanging to the ground. Lyam rose to his feet with a sigh, examining his sword, That’s it for this thing.

The sword was cracked, the last blow having hit a dented spot in the already-weakened blade. He tossed it aside and picked up one of the Warriors’ swords and swung it a few times, trying to get a feel for it. He frowned, not liking the balance, and he tossed it into his inventory along with a stack of three others, before picking up the remaining one. This one was slightly better quality, so he chose to use it, looting the corpse of the Warrior for the sheath and equipping it to his belt with a thought. After some consideration, he also called in his old short sword, putting it on his other hip.

I think that is about enough to get me used to how my body moves now… time to head back to where I was, He thought, running through the corridors. It had been less than an hour, so the looted corpses in the other rooms remained, and he was able to get back to his original spot without incident.

Before moving on, he had a sudden thought, I’ve been fighting my way straight through this Dungeon, but what if that isn’t what this is about? What if it is meant to be a place where people get stronger by gaining levels?

It was a thought that any gamer would have almost instantly, just by hearing the word ‘dungeon’. However, Lyam wasn’t a gamer, unlike more than nine out of ten of the rest of Earth’s former denizens. Ironically, the very qualities that made it so easy for him to ‘punch above his weight class’ also made him miss the obvious signs a gamer would have picked up in minutes: the loot that encouraged further delving (food and drink), the rapidly increasing levels of the mobs from room to room, and the fact that each room respawned after a time, providing a perfect place to grind.

However, since Lyam had no background to understand these realities, he’d gone through over half the level in a few days, instead of the ten days to two weeks the Dungeon Core designed the level to be taken in. He was under-leveled even for the first few caverns, but he was getting by on the advantages from his Tier 2 race, his unusual Class, and his unusual mentality.

The Challenge Dungeon was meant to be taken by people up to level 120, with the first of its ten levels meant to be conquered by people in the mid to late forties. Throwing Lyam into it without permission was a measure only taken because of Laevarian’s belief that his friend needed the levels and battle experience to survive the days to come… and was able to convince an old friend to get in on the fun with him.

Ragar were difficult opponents for most, their high regeneration and physical stats making them dangerous even at relatively low levels.

Lyam decided, without realizing that was what he was doing, to do some level grinding.

__________________________________________

“I wondered when he would figure it out,” Laevarian remarked, his face flushed from far too much drink over the course of the last few days. Typical of an elf, his ability to hold his drink was far greater than his constitution would indicate.

“What? That he needed to grind before going any further? I would have thought that with the System’s indoctrination programs, he would already be familiar with the concept,” Urgo said, looking confused.

“Apparently, he is one of those types that never bothered with playing the games or reading the books the System seeded on his homeworld. If it was not for his natural talent and the advantages he has already gained, he would have died already, though I am fairly sure he has not realized this yet,” The elf replied.

“I have never heard of someone making it out of a Raid Zone without knowing about dungeons and grinding levels,” Urgo said, shaking his head in a mixture of wonder and exasperation. The System was usually very thorough about seeding the basic concepts in the worlds it absorbed beforehand, to maximize the number that could survive what was to come. It was almost inconceivable to him that someone could survive the first weeks without that knowledge.

“Even if he does not have the knowledge from his world, I think he is gaining it now. I expect him to reach Level 40, at the least, before he returns,” Laevarian said, smiling slightly.

“That is a high level to get to starting from 10 in a Dungeon. Most people would break if they had to spend enough time to get to that level in the depths,” Urgo observed. The majority of adventurers were more conservative, more careful when grinding out levels. Most young adventurers who managed to join the Association killed the lesser kobolds and giant rats in the sewers until they hit level 20, simply because trying to hunt anything else was beyond their skills... or their courage.

“I am mostly betting on him because of that odd mental Talent of his,” Laevarian admitted. His observation of Lyam, both on the road and since he had entered the Challenge Dungeon, made him think the Saevere was unlikely to be broken by the sense of isolation and constant danger one was forced to face delving alone.

“I hope you are right. He has already shown enough skill and talent that I would hate to lose him before he reaches his potential,” Urgo said, looking a bit worried. Good adventurers were hard to find in the best of times, and he hated to see potential wasted.

Laevarian shrugged, tossing his empty bottle of spirits into the large bin next to his cushy chair, causing it to clink against the two dozen empties already inside. With a single fluid motion, he popped the cork on another bottle of clear spirits and took a sip, earning a look of disgust from the orc.

If he fails to take full advantage of the opportunity here, I will have wasted my time since I was influenced into helping him, Laevarian thought as he nursed his newest drink.