A/N: Yo, everyone! This chapter is just under 7000 words and I just want to let you all know that I have finals this coming week, so I wouldn't expect a chapter until maybe next Sunday or Monday. Read, review, and enjoy :)

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“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’”

- Eleanor Roosevelt

“You know, I’m not entirely sure this was the best idea.” Milik’s words elicited a snort from me as I watched him brush Kyra’s braids over her shoulders while she retched the copious amounts of alcohol she’d drank after dinner over the edge of the cliff in front of our cave. When we’d made it back to the cave, we’d quickly distributed the points we’d gained from leveling up from our battle and it had been Kyra’s suggestion that we drink the rest of the day away in celebration of our victory and well, some people could hold it and others couldn’t.

Izzy, to no one’s surprise, had slumped over onto Akito’s shoulder and passed out about an hour ago. She had the smallest body out of anyone here and I highly doubted she’d ever drank alcohol before tonight. Our brawny teammate had been quick to follow Izzy into the land of dreams as he had ran himself ragged fighting the Interfectorians earlier in the day, though I was sure the alcohol had helped him along.

“Oh, I don’t feel so good.” My attention turned back to the hunched over form of Kyra and I almost laughed at her in spite of myself, but Milik’s glare made sure I kept it to myself. As Milik grabbed a stone cup filled with water, and passed it into the shaking hands of Kyra, I turned my attention to Kualin. He was freestyling to the last bit of music my dying cell phone could give him much to the amusement and entertainment of the only two girls on our team that had drank themselves into a happy place—Pixie and Clara. Smiling lightly at the scene, I watched for a couple more minutes before moving aside for Milik who was carrying a passed out Kyra to her sleeping bag.

After Milik passed by, I went back to watching Kualin who was now forming dance moves to the beat of Panda by Desiigner. A minute into the song Kualin noticed I was watching and smoothly danced from his spot over to where I stood at the opening of the cave and formed some type of imaginary ball and gestured for me to put my hand out. I confusedly, lifted my hand as he tossed the imaginary ball up before catching it and popping it along his arm before pointing to my hand as he stopped dancing.

I stood there for a few moments in confusion as Kualin looked at me expectantly. After a few more seconds of standing there, I finally understood that the imaginary ball he’d passed to me was the ‘dance,’ so to speak. I hurriedly shook my head at him while throwing the imaginary ball back to him.

“Sorry, man. I don’t really dance.”

He looked at me incredulously for a moment before shrugging as he started popping his body in ways I’d only seen professional dancers do. I watched in silent wonder for a few seconds before Kualin spoke. “I can teach you how if you want. It really ain’t as hard as it looks.”

I looked at him in disbelief as his upper body, from fingertip to fingertip, let a smooth horizontal wave of motion pass through it before Pixie bumped into my shoulder.

“Yeah, Alex! You should learn how to do it. It looks like so much fun! Kualin said he’d teach me too, so we can learn together!" Pixie’s blue eyes shined in happiness and the thought of the super hyper Pixie being able to dance like Kualin passed as a fleeting thought in my mind and it brought a smile to my face.

“Eh, dancing isn’t really for me. But seriously, Kualin, where did you learn how to dance like that?” At that moment, the music from my phone cut off and I looked over towards where it was on the ground just in time to see the screen cut and go dark as the battery ran out of energy. Kualin came to a smooth stop in his dance like he’d known the phone would die at that exact moment and wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm before answering me.

“I’ve been dancing for as long as I can remember. You know how people in big cities will dance on the side of the street for money? Well, I used to watch as a kid and pretty soon I was dancing along with the best of those people on the street. Sometimes, I’d even do it by myself and well, I guess I just got better over the years.” I whistled at my friend in amazement.

“So, you’re self-taught? That’s pretty awesome, dude, not even going to lie.” Kualin nodded with a smile before shaking his body in exasperation.

“Thanks, man, but I’m still hyped up. Want to go out onto the plains with me? Work off this extra energy?” As he spoke, he was already grabbing a black hoodie with pink and lilac flowers spread across its upper half from his inventory.

“Er, right now? It’s nighttime though.” I looked over in Milik’s direction for some support, but he just shrugged in response. I shot him a look that said ‘very helpful’ before Kualin shook my shoulder. He’d already pulled his hoodie on and looked ready to go.

“Yo, you coming or not? I’m going either way.” I looked one last time at Pixie who yawned and the action was quickly repeated by Clara who stretched as she did so.

“Just go out with him, Alex. I’ll stay up until you guys get back.” I turned my attention to Milik, appalled by his treachery, and finally my gaze settled on my sleeping bag in longing. It was a shame that I wasn’t the type of person who’d let his friend go out and fight monsters all by himself. Sighing in defeat, I pulled a gray hoodie with the word, ‘Legend,’ inked in blue across the front of it out of my inventory and pulled it on.

“Fine, fine. This cave better be in one piece when we come back though.” Milik’s face split into a devilish grin that I took to mean he was making no promises. Letting out another sigh, I followed Kualin out of our cave and we took off at a reasonable jog for any monsters in the vicinity.

………………………………………………

“Catch!” A giant pillar of rock blasted out of the ground underneath an orc causing it to scream as it was launched into the air before a golden blade of wind bisected it neatly into two. “Whoo! Bruh, I could do this all day!” I felt a smile tug at my lips at Kualin’s words.

“Only you could turn hunting monsters into a game!” I shouted back at him while easily ducking the swing of a goblin’s rusty dagger before sending it flying with a kick to the chest.

“Heads up!” I quickly ducked to the ground just before a large rock crashed into a group of four orcs with a nasty snapping noise that was followed by wails of pain which were quickly extinguished when an air blade cut through the screaming orcs. I raised myself to my feet and glared at Kualin.

“Hey, man! Watch where you’re throwing that stuff. I haven’t gotten hit since this whole thing started and I’d like to keep it that way!” He sent a guilty grin my way as he weaved in and out of an orc's wildly swinging fists.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I could hear the sarcasm in his apology as I was forced to duck under the claws of some hybrid animal creature. “Didn’t know you were feeling some type of way tonight.” I pushed the hybrid back with my hand before pulling the longsword I’d gotten that day out of my inventory and slashed at the hybrid, forcing it to give me even more distance.

“Feeling some type of—! Let me throw an air blade in your direction and see how you feel!” I suddenly felt a foot push off my left shoulder and looked up to see Kualin launching himself in the air above me. He flicked his hand up causing a basketball sized clump of rock to rise out of the plains and levitate to his position before punching it off into the chest of the hybrid I’d been fighting. I winced at the noise of the hybrid’s ribs being crushed by the force of the blow and once more when Kualin landed on its chest eliciting even more crunching noises before he put it out of its misery with a spike extending from his rock gauntlet.

“But you won’t though!” Kualin’s taunt made me raise my hand in a threatening manner, but by the way he’d started laughing, I knew it was pointless. Lowering my hand, I looked around at the mass of broken and split bodies scattered across the grounds of the plains in a large circle around the two of us. Not even one of them were twitching. I turned my attention back to Kualin and smirked at him.

“Whaaaatever, man. I’m lethal. Anyways, you ready to head back or what?” We’d probably been killing monsters for a good half hour now, but I was ready to sleep. Killing monsters of this level honestly just made me even sleepier.

“Lethal? Man, you must not know the meaning of the word.” I gestured at the numerous monster bodies around us, but Kualin only laughed. “This isn’t lethal, bruh. This is easy. I wish there was something out here that we could cut loose on. We’re not even leveling up by fighting groups of these guys anymore.” Kualin’s foot nudged the body of the dead hybrid whose ribcage he’d crushed, but I could only shrug in response.

“I think I’m happier with this. We’ll have enough life-threatening situations to make it through by the time we finish with this shit.” My words caused Kualin to laugh in amusement which only led me to raise one of my eyebrows in question. I didn’t think I’d said anything particularly funny. After laughing to himself for a couple seconds, he finally noticed the look of confusion plastered on my face and, after calming himself down, he began walking over to me probably to elaborate, but he never got the chance to because at that exact moment a deep rumbling noise reverberated across the sky accompanied by an all too familiar noise.

Ding!

I felt my stomach sink at the noise before my eyes met Kualin’s for the briefest of moments and then our eyes settled on our respective notifications from the Infinity Complex.

“Dungeon, ‘Plains of Death,’ has evolved itself due to the inability of invaders to eliminate the ‘Plains of Death’ Boss within one week of activity within the dungeon. Difficulty rating increased from 1/15 to 2/15.”

I cursed silently under my breath, but there was no such reservation from Kualin.

“What kind of shit is this?” I lifted my fingers to the sides of my head in an attempt to massage it before the incoming headache fully settled in.

“This is your fault,” I said darkly, still rubbing out the soft pain in my head.

“Nig—how is this my fault!?” Kualin’s words only caused my headache to grow in intensity and I gritted my teeth at the pain.

“You just had to say something about the monsters being too weak. ‘I wish there was something we could cut loose on.’ Those were your exact words!” The lightning in the sky began to pulse and flash brightly and even more furiously than it had the entire week we’d been here and I knew at that moment that Kualin and I were about to have a really bad time. As if there was a signal, the rapid moving red beams of electricity that were roiling madly in the sky had come to a stop. I looked at Kualin in question before a deafening noise and multiple red lightning bolts struck the broken and lifeless ground in all directions around Kualin and I. Not all of the lightning bolts landed close to us, but Kualin still had the sense to stomp the ground, forcing a large slab of earth above us to block any stray lightning.

“Really starting to wonder why I even bothered putting any points into luck to begin with.” I looked at Kualin like he was crazy for a second and completely forgot about all the monsters that were sure to rise from the various lightning strikes.

“You’re telling me you wasted points like that?” My voice was all accusatory with not an ounce of humor behind it. I wasn’t even angry anymore that Kualin’s earlier words had somehow pissed off the Plains of Death and sent down a fucking army of monsters to kill us. No, this was about points—something even more important than our current situation. Kualin, noticing the tone of my voice, turned to look at me as if I’d lost my mind as he gestured around us just as a cacophony of roars and screeches filled the land around us.

“You know what? I ain’t even gonna stunt cuz you might be right. I see how a twenty in luck does me dirty, but we’ll see how you’re feeling when we get the loot from all these monsters.” I had literally just turned away from Kualin a second before he finished his sentence, but now I was looking at him again with wide eyes.

“You can’t be serious. We have to get the fuck out of here.”

Kualin shook his head and set himself into a fighting stance. “The Lin Que don’t run from a challenge. If that’s what we’re gonna even call this.” The dirt lingering in the air around us was beginning to clear and I could clearly see a heavily scaled, emerald green serpent-like creature that was at least the size of a gigantula if not larger with no less than 12 heavily muscled legs planted firmly on the ground. Two black horns that I’d very much hate to be on the receiving end of extended from the top of the creature’s head pointing skyward, but I was more worried about the hungry look in its primal yellow eyes. Surveying the area around us, I saw that there were tons of them and I do mean tons—at least like forty of them. They were accompanied by very ugly, twenty foot tall monsters that I could only associate with what I’d always assumed an ogre would look like. I was not pleased to see that there were just as many ogres as there were monster snakes.

Hearing more screeching noises, I saw a surge of monsters shoot off from the ground and into the sky as a unit. The flying creatures looked like an ugly mix between the huge twelve-legged serpents on the ground and a chicken or maybe a rooster. These flying rooster-snakes, however, had the leathery wings of a bat rather than the feathered wings of poultry and it only took me half a second to relate their appearance to a cockatrice—a monster in medieval folklore that was believed to be birthed from a snake or toad hatching a rooster’s egg. Goddamn monsters couldn’t mind their own business and had to make life even more difficult for me and Kualin by birthing a magical beast and to make matters worse, there were gigantulas, orcs, and beastmen mixed into the throng of monsters and I just knew they were levels above those we’d fought before this whole fiasco started.

I tugged on Kualin’s flower-patterned hoodie and pointed up into the sky. “Don’t let those flying fuckers bite you. If they are what I think they are, then you’ll turn to stone.” Kualin flashed me a grin before I felt a pulse of mana and found myself staring at Kualin who was now covered from head to toe in the mineral he’d used in our fight against the Interfectorians—Fluorite.

“Bruh, please. It’ll be a cooooold day before anything can threaten me with earth.” I face palmed at Kualin’s ability to joke at being potentially petrified, but I didn’t waste time on it because he probably had a point. The man could control earth after all. Me though? No such possibility of immunity, but I did have defensive measures. Grabbing a hold of my mana, I let an air cloak swiftly envelop my body, leaving a thrumming layer of high-speed wind revolving around me.

“So…remember last night when I said I dumped all my points into dexterity just in case I had to outrun you all?” Kualin looked at me in disbelief before I laughed and twirled my longsword lightly in my right hand. “I never said it was to run away.”

“This dude—” I didn’t get to catch the rest of Kualin’s words as I left him on the ground and disappeared at top speed into the sky where a flock of cockatrices were circling at least three hundred meters above us. I trusted that Kualin could handle himself on the ground and though the monsters up here were undeniably born to fly, I knew a thing or two about maneuvering in the air myself.

‘Time to make it rain…dead monsters…and blood. That won’t be very fun for Kualin to have to deal with.’ An evil grin spread across my face at one last thought before I lunged for the nearest cockatrice. ‘Meh, this is his fault anyways.’

……………………………………………

‘Fuck Alex.’

This was the sixth time Kualin had to dodge the body of a beheaded or bisected cockatrice falling from the sky and he was wholeheartedly starting to believe the bastard was actually aiming for him on purpose even if a number of other bodies had narrowly missed many of the twelve legged-snake creatures and crushed about ten of the ogres, killing them instantly.

When he wasn’t dodging monsters falling from the sky, Kualin was smartly ignoring the loot and targeting the less tough ogres in favor of the armored snake monsters and in the time since the fight had started, about four or five minutes ago, Kualin had already brought down six ogres by tripping them up with well-timed protrusions of earth pillars and finishing them off with an earth spear or spiked gauntlet…well multiple spears and spiked gauntlets considering the extraordinary size of the bastards, but that was beside the point.

‘And goddamn these motherfuckers stink!’

“Yo,” Kualin shouted at a mob of approaching ogres with his arms crossed and anger evident in his eyes. “Just cuz you ugly ass…things…are monsters doesn’t mean you can’t take care of yo goddamn selves!” The monsters ignored his words, opting instead to charge towards Kualin who just shook his head in disgust at the ogres. It was a mystery to Kualin how these ugly things even got around to reproducing and it was with a shudder that he quickly closed that line of thought before deflecting a fist the size of a tree with a punch of his own. Kualin had wondered just how extensive the changes in his strength would be since he’d increased it only a couple hours ago up to fifty-four, but this was beyond even his expectations. He was not one whit inferior to the giant ogres in pure strength and he even felt like he was probably stronger despite the fact those giants were easily throwing at least two tons of force behind their punches.

Stomping on the ground, at least four car sized rocks exploded out of the ground hovering to a halt in front of Kualin before he kicked them away from him hitting three ogres in the skulls with a resounding crack and just barely missing the last one which dumbly tripped over its own feet in an effort to evade, leaving it wide open for an earth spear which pierced through its head in a shower of blood and chipped bone. There were still at least twenty ogres still standing and Kualin smiled in delight. The fight wasn’t so dangerous for him yet, but it had definitely relieved the boredom. Summoning a large rock to fall and crush the body of a rushing gigantula, Kualin ran forward into the throng of smaller monsters standing between him and the next ogre he’d chosen to kill.

…………………………………..

‘Well, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’

Slipping past another set of sharp teeth intent on ripping me to pieces, I decapitated the cockatrice with an air blade and kicked off an air platform across the sky to the next unsuspecting monster. This hadn’t been as difficult as I’d thought it would be since one cut with my air blade through a cockatrice’s wing or neck was enough to send them falling to their death, but the real problem lied with the snake monsters on the ground. I was sure their scales provided a wealth of protection from attacks and, not for the first time, I was beginning to doubt that one air blade would be enough to cut through and kill the whole monster in one go. It had taken several concentrated air blades to cut Prince Adal in half earlier that day and it was just annoyingly difficult to have to aim for the same spot over and over again. I’d noticed that Kualin was only focusing on the small fry and ogres while completely avoiding the house-sized, twelve-legged snakes and they’d been content to let him do so. Actually, if I looked at the ground closer, it seemed like the snake monsters were all moving to gather together in one spot and…shit.

Abandoning my battle in the sky, I used air platform after platform to race towards Kualin who, at that exact moment, had punched the legs out from one of the giants and buried it under a pile of fast moving rocks. Kualin’s armor was cracked in various places and he was wildly swinging at the monster horde closing in on him and, though I was probably a little more than fifty points ahead of Kualin in dexterity, when I’d gotten within range, he threw a punch in my direction that I just barely dodged—I knew his strength was well above mine, so there was no way I was trying to catch that. He threw another punch at me that I deftly ducked under before shouting at him.

“Kualin! We need to go right now!” His eyes, which had been clouded in a battle-induced haze focused on me just before I grabbed his upper arm and jumped the both of us into the sky. Using my air platforms, we quickly reached a height above the range of any of the land-locked monsters. As soon as I’d stopped moving, Kualin pulled his arm out of my grasp and it was all I could do to make sure an air platform was under his feet before he fell to a nasty death. Seemed like he wasn’t really worried about that though as he looked to be gauging the distance from where we stood in the air and the expansive area of ground filled to the brim with varying creatures.

“What do you mean we need to go? We have it under control.” He crouched his legs like he was about to hop back down into the field of monsters and I sighed in exasperation before speaking.

“I know you were too busy tearing shit up down there to notice, but the snake creatures haven’t attacked. If you look closely, they’re readying themselves for some kind of big attack. Maybe a stampede. Maybe something even worse than that. My point is that we can’t stay here and finish this. As much as neither of us want to ‘run,’ just think of it as a strategic retreat. We need to get the hell out of this place before the Plains of Death decide to evolve on us again.” My mouth was set in a grim line after explaining everything and Kualin took the chance to survey the snake monsters that were still attempting to group up with one another.

“Well, what do you think they’re doing?” Was his only response after several tense moments which was of course when the horns on the monstrous snakes began to glow white in the darkness of the plains.

“Don’t know…” More and more of their horns began to glow and it was almost like watching a light show…albeit you wouldn’t usually die if you stuck around a normal light show. “We should get going though.” Kualin nodded, still mesmerized by the mass of lights on the glowing horns that seemed to light up the whole field. Once again taking a hold of his upper arm, we ‘strategically retreated’ in step with one another as we ran across the skies gaining distance between us and the crowd of monsters as fast as we could move.

It proved to be futile though.

A sharp crack rang out right before I felt a numbing sensation in my right shoulder that quickly spread to the rest of my body before exiting with a flash of light on Kualin’s fluorite armor. After taking the hit, I promptly lost all control of my body, Kualin’s arm slipped out of my grip, and I began to fall headfirst towards the ground. I could barely notice that Kualin was there falling with me despite his loud shout of “Holy shit!” The pain was nearly unbearable, but I willed myself to move and only got a slight twitch at the tip of my fingers. More cracking sounds filled the night and the sky was suddenly filled with arcing bolts of white lightning tearing across the sky all around us as I took another two hits—one to my previously uninjured left arm causing me to spin around and take the second in the dead center of my chest. I felt the mind-numbing pain, but all my attention was on forcing one of my body parts to move before Kualin and I hit the ground that was rapidly approaching.

‘Come on! Come on! Move, Alex! Move! Fucking MOVE!’

My arm finally responded to my commands and I swung it an arc to grab Kualin by his hoodie. His eyes jolted open in surprise and I was sure that he’d been praying before I grabbed him. The thought almost made me laugh, but first I forced a lot of wind into an upward draft centered on both of our lower abdomens to catch our center of masses and sufficiently slow the momentum we’d picked up from falling a couple hundred meters out of the sky. Once we’d reached a satisfactory speed, I kicked off an air platform, the impact jarring my leg, and we were once again able to move in tandem through the skies, or so I thought.

“Let me the fuck down! I refuse to fall again!”

I looked at Kualin incredulously. “Dude, we’re fine! Chill out.”

Kualin’s eyes grew wide as if I’d just insulted him. “Fine!? Hell nah, Alex, we just free fell for god knows how far! Put me down!” Rolling my eyes, I planned a route to the ground and executed it with Kualin by my side. As soon as we touched the ground he walked back and forth for a bit, trying to get the feeling of the world underneath him again while muttering things like “People don’t fly,” and “Got me all the way fucked up,” before he finally came to a stop in front of me. He eyed me silently before speaking in a tone softer than any he’d ever used before. “How much HP do you have left?” I blinked in surprise at the question before checking for myself and my mouth dropped open in surprise while my eyes widened in slight fear.

“Holy shit! They took nearly half of my health!” Kualin shook his head before lifting his fist towards me. I quickly bumped it in confusion, but he quickly elaborated.

“Yo, I know you took an ugly hit because you ain’t shit, but we kicked some major ass tonight!” His words left me standing with a small frown on my face, but Kualin seemed not to notice though as he began jogging in the direction of the Shrouded Mountains. “Let’s get you healed up and get the fuck out of here!” Shrugging, I quickly appeared on Kualin’s side as he set the pace for our run back to our impromptu base. Getting the hell out of here was an idea I could get behind.

……………………………….

Making it to the entrance of the cave about half an hour later, Kualin and I were welcomed to the sight of our entire team passed out in their sleeping bags…well, aside from Izzy who was still passed out while resting her head against Akito’s shoulder as he leaned against the rock wall for support while he also slept. Sharing a silent look with Kualin, we both nodded to each other and he went straight to Milik, who was supposed to be keeping watch, while I headed towards Clara’s sleeping form. Reaching her, I was reminded once more of just how cute she was as a small bit of drool fell out of her slightly open mouth onto her sleeping bag. Suppressing a chuckle, I lightly shook her shoulder, but all she did was turn over and catch my arm in between hers, clutching it tight against her chest with a content sigh.

My heart instantly went into overdrive. I reveled in the softness of Clara’s body for only a moment before using my free hand to shake her shoulder again, but this time I called out to her. “Clara. Wake up please…” A couple more gentle shakes caused her to slowly open her eyes and I saw the confusion linger in them for only a moment before she finally focused on my face.

“Alex…?” She then looked down to my arm that was currently trapped in her embrace and hastily scrambled to untangle my arm from her grasp. This time I couldn’t help it and I let out a laugh at her reaction, causing her to blush while she wiped away the little bit of drool that was lingering on the corner of her lips. I laughed a little harder at this to which she blushed even more intensely before mumbling, “What did you wake me up for?”

“Oh, I need you to heal me. It’s nothing—” I never got the chance to finish because Clara had cut me off.

“What happened!?” Clara’s eyes were feverishly scanning my body for any marks, but I was completely covered in my hoodie and jeans.

Running my fingers through my hair in embarrassment I shot her a grin and said, “Well, if I had to explain it, I’d say that Kualin pissed off the Plains of Death—”

“Did not!” Kualin’s voice came from behind me where he was still waking up the rest of our members, but I just rolled my eyes and carried on like I hadn’t even heard him.

“…and then a horde of…well, not particularly strong, but definitely dangerous monsters shot some lighting out of these horns on their heads—”

“Ah, Milik, you should’ve seen that shit. Alex got frosted!” Milik’s laugh in response to Kualin’s words made a vein start to pulse on my forehead, but I kept my voice level.

“…and anyways, I got hit by lightning…um, three times. Did I mention it was all Kualin’s fault?” Clara seemed not to worry about anything I’d said after she heard the word ‘lightning’ because she was looking at me in what I could tell was distress.

“Take off your hoodie and shirt.”

“Wait…what?” Clara blushed under my questioning, but she looked like she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so I reluctantly pulled my hoodie off followed quickly by my shirt and then the strike vest that I’d only ever taken off to sleep. I looked away from Clara kind of embarrassed on how intently she was looking at me before I heard her gasp in surprise which was quickly repeated by me when I saw what was different. The black roman numeral number one covering the area above my heart that I’d gotten from my awakening was old news to me and I could say the same for the long jagged scar across the top of my chest from when the beastman at my dorm dragged a lone claw across my chest before I’d passed out. When my eyes traveled to my arms is when I saw the problem; there, running along both arms where I’d been hit, were lightning burns in the form of what I knew to be called Lichtenberg figures.

“Just like I thought.” Clara’s hands were now glowing green and she placed them in the middle of my chest where a warmth spread from there to every part of my body. It was a comforting feeling, one that I missed when she withdrew her hands from me after a minute. When she took a step back to look at my arms, she frowned and looking down, I saw that the electrical burns hadn’t gone away when she healed me.

‘Status’

Title: Lord Sky’s Heir (Active)

Name: Alexander Taylor

Class: Sky Walker

Level: 29

HP: 1032/1032

MP: 2080/2340 (4220/4740)

STR: 40

VIT: 25

DEX: 67 (101)

INT: 50 (63)

WIS: 35 (44)

LUK: 11

POINTS: 0

MONEY: 47 USD…8 Gold, 16 Silver, 67 Copper

Lightly clicking my tongue at the small loss of my mana reserves, I dismissed my status screen with a wave of my hand and gave a light smile to Clara but she was still frowning at the marks on my arms. “It’s okay Clara. It’s just another couple of scars to add to the collection.” I thought my words were going to comfort her, but I guess they had an opposite effect because Clara now looked like she was close to tears. “Clara, what’s wrong?”

Sniffing a little bit, Clara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand while I began to pull on my strike vest and shirt followed closely by my gray hoodie. I was unsure of what to say to her and stood there awkwardly for a couple seconds just looking at her before I was saved by Kualin.

“Alex!” Turning around, I saw Kualin had woken everyone up. I could tell that Kyra and Izzy were sporting some massive headaches if the way they were rubbing their heads and swearing under each other’s breaths were any indication. Akito, Milik, and Pixie on the other hand were all on high alert. Sparing Clara one last look, I lightly pulled her with me to join the rest of my friends at the entrance of the cave just as Kualin shouted, much to the annoyance of the hungover Izzy and Kyra who both winced at his voice, “Yo! We’re getting the hell out of this mountain range! Something happened—”

“You happened.” I muttered under my breath, but no one seemed to have heard me.

“…and the monsters are getting stronger so we got to get the hell up out of here!” Sighing, I nodded my head at Kualin’s words but still decided to elaborate for the group.

“Kualin and I were out there and the Plains of Death turned out to be a Dungeon of sorts,” Milik’s eyes widened in surprise but there would be plenty of time to catch him up with specifics later. Specifically, how this whole damn thing was Kualin’s fault. “Anyways, this place apparently evolves the longer we stay here without defeating the boss, so we should probably get out of here. Maybe head to the capital, Rohan, while we have the chance.”

“Wait, why don’t we just go kill the boss?”

“I—” Milik’s words brought my whole train of thought to a screeching halt. Aside from hunting for experience, I was all for avoiding monsters, but I did say earlier that day that we’d need to get a hell of a lot stronger hadn’t I? “Well, I mean…the monsters Kualin and I were fighting seemed like something we’d be able to handle, so…yeah I mean we could do that. It’s obviously going to be dangerous though.”

“Well, why don’t we put it to a vote instead of sitting around all night?” Izzy’s disgruntled voice broke into the conversation and the sight of her still massaging her head nearly made me laugh.

Ding!

Kualin and I shared a look before all of us turned our attention to the Infinity Complex’s notification.

“Dungeon, ‘Shrouded Mountains,’ has evolved itself due to the inability of invaders to eliminate the ‘Shrouded Mountains’ Boss within one week of activity within the dungeon. Difficulty rating increased from 1/15 to 2/15.”

“What the fuck!?” Kualin’s words broke the silence and he was quickly followed by Izzy.

“What is this? We haven’t even encountered monsters in the mountains!”

‘Map.’ The whole of Letheron spread itself out in my mind and I zoned in on the southern region of the map where the Shrouded Mountains lay. The markers that signified my friends and I were located on the eastern side in the middle of the mountains that only stretched north to south about a quarter of the way through the map. To the east lay the Plains of Death and it stretched about half the length of the map before a body of water titled ‘The Lost Ocean’ cut across the entirety of Letheron and took up the rest of the area in the east. I quickly scanned the map for the capital city, Rohan, and wasn’t so surprised to see that it was literally smack dab in the middle of the map. It would make sense for an entire continent’s capital city to be in the center if resources allowed it to be. Thinking about the distance we’d ventured into the Plains of Death every day for the past week, I eye balled the distance between us and Rohan as at least two weeks of travel if we moved at a reasonable pace.

“Soooooo if we’re still going to vote, then we should all just know that it will take us about two weeks to travel to Rohan. So, it’s not like we won’t have time to deal with these dungeons.” There were nods all around at my words before Izzy spoke up.

“All in favor of kicking ass and taking names?” Shrugging at Izzy’s choice of words, I raised my hand along with the entirety of the group aside from Clara who was standing right next to me. I raised an eyebrow at her in question before she elaborated for all of us.

“I don’t really fight so I don’t think it’s really appropriate for me to vote on something like this.”

“That’s nonsense. We’re a team. I mean, just by majority vote, we’re staying here, but if you’re uncomfortable staying here then you should at least let everyone know.” I nodded along with Kyra’s words, as did the rest of the group, but Clara was quick to shake her head.

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. I’m not scared to stick around…it’s just the whole me voting on you all to risk your lives in something like this.” Kualin snorted at her words which made her attention switch from Kyra to him.

“I ain’t risking shit. We’re all strong enough to make it through this, so don’t even worry about it.” I wouldn’t have put it the same way that Kualin did, but he may be right as long as the dungeon doesn’t go crazy on us before we find the boss so we should be good.

“Kyra.” Her attention turned to me, but before I could get another word out, a black shadow dropped into the entrance of the cave right behind an unsuspecting Akito and Izzy. Time seemed to slow down as I jumped into action, but I wasn’t the only one to move. Kualin stomped on the ground before the shadow could attack and an earth pillar shot out of the cave floor knocking it back a couple feet before I slammed into it shoulder first and sent it flying off the cliff of the mountains to what I hoped would be the monster’s death. After the monster had been disposed of, time returned to normal and I realized that I was breathing harshly and my heart was thumping so hard in my chest that it hurt. I was unsure how much damage that shadow could have done to my friends, but I knew it was out to kill.

Taking a second to compose myself, I spoke again. “We can’t stay here. We need to move. Kyra…” Kyra nodded at me and gestured towards Milik and just like they’d done all week, he slung her over one shoulder and she immediately used her Spirit Scout ability to search for the Shrouded Mountains’ boss monster. I silently wished her luck and hoped that the monster wouldn’t be very hard to distinguish.

In under a minute, everyone had packed their sleeping bags into their inventories and changed into some better clothing. We were all now once again gathered at the entrance of the cave. There were no sentimental goodbyes to our home for the past week or anything like that. I just gestured for Kualin to take the lead and set the pace. It was going to be a long night.