A yawn was how Michael greeted the Monday morning, but within moments he felt wide awake. He was one of those kinds of people, who, despite struggling to wake up, once awake they were alert and ready for the day.

He was awaken in an undignified manner via pillow to the face by Alice, but after his brief surge of anger he sat up, and that was when the yawn kicked in as he heard a few feminine voices saying goodbye, then the front door of his house closing.

Michael scratched his head as he stood, noting the change to his LEV which now showed the number two instead of one, meaning he was now stronger than a normal adult male.

Well, he had placed his points equally, at the recommendation of his best friend Arthur, though he had one stat, namely Strength, be higher than the others, all his stats were at six except for Strength at seven.

His reasoning was that as an archer, his strength determined the power of his arrows, and his Dexterity determined his accuracy. Seeing as he wasn’t taking shots from a hundred metres away or anything like that, he wasn’t worried about aiming for now.

After washing up, brushing his teeth and such, Michael got dressed and ate his breakfast, a favourite of his… cereal.

He enjoyed that ‘I’m a cereal killer’ joke… the pun got dry after a while though.

After finishing his cereal, he looked around the now empty house with a sigh, knowing that he’d have to clean it. It’s how it went every day at this point, even before Red Sky Day.

Michael didn’t work much, though he did work part-time jobs every once in a while, he just hadn’t been sure what he wanted to do. Originally he had been thinking of joining the air force or the police, but he had never gotten around to joining.

Now, with the Dungeons, he had found his profession, an Adventurer, someone who entered the Dungeon as a candidate to slay Chronos the ruler of Hell… it didn’t pay a lot yet, seeing as Michael and his team weren’t that strong, but he was glad for it, knowing his pay would only increase.

Due to Michael not working, or at least not having to be anywhere early, he was left to clean the house after all three of his sisters left the house.

Yes, he had three sisters and he was the eldest of the siblings, it was difficult at times, and while his sisters all annoyed him to some degree he wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.

Michael had time to think as he began to sweep and pack away clothes, change bedding, and such, and during that time he thought to his team, Einherjar.

Michael had honestly been a bit worried when he had been placed as the leader, as he had been hoping for Arthur to take that place.

It was a strange thought to those who knew both Michael and Arthur, as clearly Michael was the more outgoing between the two… but Michael knew Arthur was a brilliant planner and he noticed things that Michael didn’t.

For example, during the day they had Awakened, when their group had separated to go their separate ways and think about their experiences, Michael had gotten a few messages from Arthur.

The main point of the first messages was that Arthur wanted Michael to be their team’s leader, or at least a spokesperson. From there they had discussed placements for the group, and what they would all do in their roles for the group.

Their skills weren’t quite known at that point, but Arthur noted his Soul Sight was activated for a moment then, just enough for him to see their souls… a scary prospect, but Michael didn’t hold it against Arthur.

From what he could see, their group all complimented each other, with a blocker, an archer, a healer, a thief/assassin and warrior, Arthur was quick to note he’d probably end up a magic user mostly…

He had ended up correct. Out of all six members of their group, Arthur had the greatest apparent magic ability and control over his magic, likely due to his large understanding of physics and an imagination that ran wild at times.

They could all do magic, but from what they had discussed, Michael noted that Arthur’s magic was one of, if not the best at pure damage dealing, for the simple reason that Lightning magic seemed to penetrate most defences.

So they all had their roles. Archer, Healer, Guardian, Assassin, Warrior and Wizard, and while there was clearly some uncertainty at this point, in time it would change.

Michael chuckled, thinking about how their Swordsman fit the role of a Wizard best as his phone vibrated, a message, likely from Arthur stating they would go into the Dungeon nearby without Alice, who would go with a team from her school.

Michael checked his phone, and indeed his thoughts were right, so he just shrugged, picking up the keys and walked out, locking the door and then taking the key and stashing it in his inventory (keys were a negligible weight really)

He was lucky enough to live near the Dungeon, it only took him about four minutes to walk there, a long time unless one listened to music like he did.

He really wanted a car, a BMW M3 to be exact, but he didn’t have the money, or the licence yet really, and so he had never gotten one… the fact that Emilia had one made him jealous, but just in the sense of ‘I wish I had one too’.

Motorbikes like Arthur, on the other hand, Michael decided to never buy. Motorbikes were death-traps in his opinion, with the exception of old school choppers, otherwise known as Harley Davidsons.

Michael looked around in thought, and frowned when he saw a man standing on one corner, shouting uncaring of whether or not anyone was listening, the man shouting about how all who wielded a LEV were vile for accepting a contract with a person who was essentially the devil…

The world had changed a lot, due to Red Sky Day, in ways not immediately apparent to some. For religion, it was proof that Hell existed, which meant that Heaven had to exist in some form right?

Of course the most switched to religion in the past month was Christianity, due to Chronos referencing his domain as ‘Hell’ and speaking about Lucifer, though Michael wondered a bit at that…

Michael was a Christian, went to church every Sunday for mass and went to Sunday school until finishing that around the age of sixteen…

But he never considered Christianity to be wholly the correct religion. Or to be exact, after talking with Arthur for a long time about Arthur’s views on religion, he now no longer viewed any singular religion as correct.

Arthur’s views of religion were quite extreme, thinking that religion was essentially man made. That wasn’t to say he thought God or a being of that level did not exist, in fact Arthur believed that such a being had to exist. But why would said being care how the being was believed in?

As long as belief was there, Arthur claimed, it should be enough. Be kind, share, do not murder, things like those were taught in religion, but most of that was common sense, don’t kill someone’s mother because you wouldn’t like it if someone killed yours.

As for the act of prayer, again according to Arthur, it was a comforting act for humans who wished for acceptance and comfort somewhere in the uncertainty that was life, in truth whether or not the Creator listened it would comfort the person doing it, knowing that they let their hopes and worries out in some manner.

Michael didn’t agree with everything Arthur said, thinking Arthur to be one of those strange forward thinkers, but accepting Arthur for his views all the same.

The final thing of note about Arthur’s strange belief was that he ‘did not support religion, but he supported faith’, saying that religion, while a beautiful thing when done correctly, also had the potential for being twisted to the needs of the believers, much like the Crusades or Isis bombers, using religion almost as an excuse to hate or do violent actions…

Of course not everyone did that, but the fact that it could be used as an excuse at all annoyed Arthur, and made him refuse to even have anything to do with religion, rather having faith, but no religion. Called himself agnostic, which in the dictionary, meant a person who ‘was questioning the existence of God’ or believed that ‘even if God exists, we have no way of knowing what God would want from us’.

The only thing Michael agreed with Arthur whole heartedly was that no religion was innately more ‘right’ than another. Even Hinduism with its many Gods didn’t deserve to be looked down, as it was their faith.

Faith between people was just that, faith. There was no reason to hate a person for what they believed in, only when they tried to force another to believe what they did, would there truly be an issue.

Arthur’s family, like Michael’s, was Christian, though less religious, Arthur’s father was a humble sort of religious person, and while he had disliked Arthur’s refusal to adhere to any religion, he had accepted it in the end.

The Dungeon changed a lot about religion though, unfortunately… it was once more being changed by the views of man.

Chronos’ LEV was a contract between Chronos and every human on earth; Awakening was the acceptance of the contract and its terms. The terms were simple, get stronger, try and kill Chronos, the LEV will help with the ‘get stronger’ bit.

Many religions were split on how to take that, some believed that humans should use the LEV to kill demons, fight fire with fire, while others still believed that using the LEV was betraying a person’s basic humanity.

“The Devil’s Contract it is, don’t join those fools who walk willingly hand in hand with the truest of evil, no, we should stay away from temptation!” The man was shouting, spittle flying as he tried to get people to listen…

No one did. There were only five or so Billion (more around 5.3 Billion) people left on Earth. Of that group, more than ninety per cent of those people Awakened, or died soon after they entered the Dungeon.

The amount of people walking around with their LEV’s Awakened were more than nine people to one, and even the people who weren’t Awakened usually didn’t because of other reasons, such as not wanting to fight, or being too young or old.

“None of you may care, but when your souls are dragged to the lowest pits of hell you will remember my words and wonder why you did not listen!” The man was pretty annoying, and Michael went into a shop and got himself something to eat for later in the Dungeon…

Michael thought that guy was preaching not only to the wrong crowd, but incorrectly… because every Adventurer was actively trying to get into hell anyway, so the dragging would be unnecessary.

As he approached the Dungeon, turning into the parking lot of the Adventurer’s Guild Building, which Michael had learnt was created using Earth Magic…

It would be made to look better as time went on, but for now it completed its job.

“Michael, you took too damn long!” Michael ignored the profanity and focused on the meaning of the sentence instead, having learnt to filter the vulgarity of Matt to just get the meaning of his words.

“Sorry man, had to clean the house.” Michael noted, getting a cigarette from Matt as Michael looked around, wondering where the other members of their team were, seeing Arthur’s bike.

“Ah, Arthur went to go practice his magic for a bit, he’s figured out a thing or two about magic.” Michael raised an eyebrow at this, wondering what Matt meant by that.

“Basically, he wants to check why his element manipulation doesn’t result in spells, and while he thinks he gets the difference between Spells and manipulation he wants to check it out first before he says anything is certain.” Matt explained, and while someone who didn’t know Matt might have been a bit confused by the difference in Matt’s first words and the factual tone here, Michael wasn’t.

Matt was loud and violent, but he was most certainly not stupid. He was actually very attentive and capable of speaking calmly… he just chose not to.

Matt’s reasoning was unknown to Michael, but Matt assured Michael that it was just how he was at this point.

“Ah, Michael, you’re here, John and Emilia should be by in a moment… we are only going to go a bit further than yesterday, since while we’re all stronger, we’re also down a member. Is that right?” Michael held back his chuckle at Arthur’s antics…

Arthur had just essentially told Michael what they should do, but he had voiced it as if it was a question instead of fact… it was a habit that Michael was certain Arthur knew he possessed…

Accountability was something that Arthur feared. That wasn’t to say he was a coward, but rather that he feared having expectations heaped on him, and then coming up short.

So instead of being the leader, and thus having expectations, he pushed the role on others, only on those who’d thrive there though, such as Michael.

A puppet master would be one way of looking at Arthur’s habit of making other people lead while he advised them.

“Sure, that’s what’ll be done.” Michael didn’t mind though… despite his apparent role as leader, he knew that he wasn’t a long-term leader. He could lead in a fight, he could come up with plans on the fly…

But long term situations required fore-thought, something Michael wasn’t that good at in comparison to Arthur.

“Right then… well, I’m going to be listening to some music while we wait.” Arthur removed his phone, but before he could plug in his earphones Matt stopped him with a grin.

“Don’t do that man… how about we talk about girls… or rather, your girl.” Matt grinned even as Arthur carefully kept his face neutral… Michael indeed found this to be more interesting.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Arthur denied, though Matt and Michael, who was also smiling by now, didn’t accept his denial.

“Oh you know who we mean… haven’t you been brushing up on your Russian a lot in the past year?” Michael joked, and Arthur looked away in an attempt to hide his embarrassment at his words.

“Emilia has to speak her second language to us all the time, I figured she’d be happy talking in her home language.” Arthur said, and even as he said it he realized he was making a mistake.

“Aha, so you admit you learnt Russian for Emilia! You like her, right?” Matt added in as Arthur folded his arms as he looked at the cousins, unsure whether or not to glare or look passive.

“Whether I do or not, means nothing at this point.” Arthur neither confirmed or denied, because if he were to agree, more teasing would follow, were he to deny, they would likely switch to asking why he wouldn’t like her while listing her positive traits.

Traits such as her beauty, her interest in books almost on the level of Arthur himself, or her kind personality, for example…

“Oh, is that a blush?” Arthur inwardly cursed, hoping for something to distract them from their line of questioning… and was awarded with a white BMW pulling into the parking lot.

“Oh look, Emilia and John just got here, let’s go there and ignore what we were talking about before.” Arthur said the sentence so quickly Matt and Michael were a bit uncertain to his words by the time the three reached the car.

After greetings were done, though Emilia was curious on why Arthur seemed to be a bit quieter than usual, they headed inside to the Adventurer’s guild.

Once inside, they signed up with Ellie once more, and went to the access panel once it was opened.

Their group, Einherjar, was still listed as their team, but this time there were only five of them, which was acceptable to the Dungeon.

After checking their skills, and Arthur noting worriedly that his Soul Sight skill was getting better at a notable pace, they moved into the Dungeon after summoning their Animae.

Fun fact, Anima is Latin for Soul, and Animae was the plural, meaning ‘Souls’. Just in case that wasn’t known at this point.

“Alright, let’s move. Take care to note that Alice isn’t here, meaning more pressure will be on our melee fighters.” Emilia and Matt nodded at Michael’s words, while Arthur just listened in…

Everyone at this point knew that Arthur was the real leader of the group, Michael just being a really good spokesperson… but no one would call Arthur out on it.

Their movement through the Dungeon was simple, much like the day before, due to Alice being incapable of hurting the Slimes much, when against Slimes they rarely felt the loss of a person to their group…

Soul Sight, Arthur’s chosen/forced method of experimentation proved something, lowering the amount of people in a team would not increase the individual ‘experience’ a member would receive.

Though Arthur did mention once in a while that he’d think he was seeing something involving the pieces of souls approaching their own… but he wasn’t sure what it was yet.

It was only upon reaching the Goblins that the loss of Alice was felt, as this time the first Goblin was eliminated by Emilia and Michael, with Matt being an efficient guard for when she’d almost get hit by the Goblin’s rusty dagger…

The rust made Arthur wonder about sickness, and whether or not they’d even get sick anymore… possibly, but only if the sickness was really unique.

Arthur’s understanding of the soul grew as he witnessed the destruction of clear souls and the absorption by unique, colourful souls, and he was beginning to understand that his theory was correct, Souls impacted the world, using the body as the medium.

Meaning that they were now more soul than body, which was likely why Awakening felt so painful. It was essentially causing the Soul to act in place of the body in certain situations.

Running, for example, if someone could someday run at the speed of sound, the sound barrier would not break.

This was because the souls only partially impacted the world, making certain ‘laws’ no longer affect them.

Logic and the power of the soul were not good friends. For instance, a fireball should theoretically hurt more than getting hit with a ball of air.

This was not the case, as an ‘air-ball’ dealt just as much base damage as a fire-ball, and it confused Arthur when he witnessed this with help from Emilia and Michael against a Slime or two.

Emilia shot a globe of water at them. Slimes resist water to some extent so obviously the damage was slightly lower… but because they were mostly of a liquid, they resisted fire just as much.

The result was that both required two ‘shots’ to kill a Slime, despite fire being more destructive and the water like splashing a bucket of water on someone.

It was this last bit that proved that Arthur was right, though the guys in his group didn’t seem to care, saying that it was magic, what else could be expected?

Emilia on the other hand realized what he was saying, and sought to understand… if only in an attempt to keep Arthur from becoming depressed that something he discovered with excitement was being written off as boring.

“But… but, souls can ignore physics… why isn’t that interesting Emilia… why?” Arthur was half way to sobbing as he sat on the floor while Emilia patted his head in an attempt to help him.

“There, there Arthur… remember that Michael didn’t do Physics, Matt isn’t that great at it, and John is an artist, he has nothing to do with it… they don’t get it.” Emilia stated.

“You’re right… do you think Alice would think it’s interesting?” Arthur stood after a moment and Emilia nodded with a small smile.

“Surely, she’s pretty good at Physics, she might find it interesting.” Emilia stated as Arthur calmed down.

Their dungeon-dive was over within two hours, most of the time being spent travelling or mentally relaxing after a fight, usually through music.

Certain things could not be brought into the Dungeon, such as guns or vehicles, but surprisingly phones could be brought in, and while Einherjar had not done it, they knew that skateboards and scooters, the ones without motors, could be brought into the Dungeons.

As they began to leave the Dungeon, their group agreed to get themselves some form of transport inside the Dungeon until their movement speed overtook the speed on a skateboard or scooter.

Their levels, to their annoyance, had stayed level two, though from what Arthur could see, they would have only needed a few more kills to level up, something that made all of them happy as they’d definitely have a chance to fight tomorrow.

Michael was the first to leave, due to needing to unlock his house for his sisters when they came out of school, and then he’d simply zone out for the rest of the day.

While Michael’s end of the day plan was decided, Arthur and the others did their own things, Matt took off in his Nissan to just drive around, the love of going fast is what caused that kind of reaction.

John was an artist studying graphic designing, he had projects and commissions outstanding so he was busy even beyond the Dungeons… one of said commissions tying into Arthur’s plan for the day.

Arthur, with his love of books, was trying to write his own story. He’d succeeded, though he had yet to edit the book, or have a cover for it…

Said cover was meant to be designed by John, who had been putting it off for a long time, to Arthur’s annoyance.

Emilia, for the day, decided to hang out with Arthur. Something everyone else was quick to take note of and tease both of them over… even Arthur’s parents when they got to his house.

Emilia didn’t go out much, partly because she didn’t quite care for dressing up and going shopping for needless amounts of clothes, though she still liked her shoes.

The other reason she didn’t go out was because of her looks actually, much to her displeasure she had a habit of turning heads with her looks.

To Arthur and Emilia, it was perfect though, as Arthur also wasn’t one for going out much, when the two just relaxed in each other’s presence reading their own books, listening to music, it was a tiny world for the two of them, filled with soft music and the occasional sound of a page turning.

And no, they were not dating, no matter what anyone said... Arthur was too indecisive and Emilia wasn’t used to actually liking another person romantically… quite silly to anyone who knew the two… but this was how their group handle their days until the weekend, where Alice would join them once more.

On that note, Alice’s day was filled with the boredom of school, a sneeze during physics class and an annoyance at her time in the Dungeon with ‘incompetent’ partners who didn’t know how to decide a leader.

But that was her problem.

Arthur Clive

Level: 2

Class: Linked Swordsman- Grants one stat point to Strength and Wisdom per level

Gives Soul Sight (Unique) Skill

Anima

Dagger of Hunger

Cloak of Will

Anima Skills

Dagger- Devour- Increase Soul Gain by 6.25%

Cloak- Defence- lowers damage taken by 1%

Primary Element: Lightning

Personal Skills

Tactician I (1/50) - increases Wisdom by 10% (total 110%)

Swordsmanship I (1/50) - Increases ease of weapon handling

Soul Sight I (6/200) - Allows insight beyond mortality

Stats

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 6

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 7

Endurance: 6

Vitality: 6

Chapter 4- Natural Violence

“Ah! I’m glad I’m back!” Arthur rolled his eyes as he spoke out at Alice’s exclamation.

“Alice, we saw you every day of the week.” He retorted, making sure to dodge Alice’s fist which had a faint red aura around it, a result of her Anima Skill, the World is a Weapon, registering her own body as a weapon.

Meaning she now knew Kung-Fu. Neo would have been impressed.

“Yeah, but I didn’t enter the Dungeon with you guys, I got stuck with people in my class.” She looked really annoyed at that, seeing as she was a level behind Arthur and the others now.

It was now the eleventh of January, a week after their group of six had Awakened, and they were already getting better, each member of the group in level six, or like Alice, was at level five.

This level made them strong enough to be ‘allowed’ entry into Floor two, where the ratio of Slimes to Goblins changed from around 2:1 to 1.5:1. Doesn’t seem like much, but Goblins were troublesome creatures since they had actual intellect…

A week intellect, but it was there nonetheless.

“Well… I want to say it couldn’t have been that bad, but your level…” Arthur didn’t dodge the fist this time, and was thus left to cradle his shoulder as he cried for a medic half-jokingly.

Arthur did actually feel pain because Alice’s Strength stat was already around twelve or so, and that was twice the strength of a grown man.

“See Arthur, this is why Endurance is a good stat.” Matt was quick to extol the virtues of his main stat which was now at fifteen, it was enough for normal people to barely bruise him even with a hard punch.

“Yes, it is, but Arthur rarely gets hit anyway.” Emilia added even as she helped Arthur up, knowing that Arthur’s stats were all around ten or higher, but while he did place points in Endurance, he didn’t care much for the stat, since, as Emilia stated, he rarely got hit.

“Whatever, can we leave, some people think I’m about to rob you guys.” And there was John’s self-deprecating racist joke of the day, a good eight out of ten on John’s joke-o-meter.

“Yes, yes, let’s leave. Come on Alice, you’re going to need to play catch up with the group now.” Michael joked as they entered the building after greeting the man at the door, Dante Vasquez, the right hand-man of the Guild Leader.

“So Arthur, got an explanation for why Matt has five points more in one stat than the others, yet his soul is still stable?” Michael asked, having gotten surprisingly interested in the near philosophical discussion over the week as Arthur made different observations every once in a while.

“It’s his Class. It acts as a stabilizing agent in the soul, keeping it from undergoing an imbalance due to stats placed by said Class.” Right… Michael still got lost once in a while, but he got the gist, it only worked because the Class was causing it.

“Does that mean those stats can rise higher than normal?” John inserted his own question while it was ‘ask Arthur time’.

“No, if Matt placed one point into Endurance it would probably tear his soul or something… but if it grows naturally due to the Class, it’s fine.” He explained, and it helped a bit…

Of course, Arthur was saying these things confidently due to the fact that he was the only person actually capable of seeing what he was explaining. He’d be just as sceptical as others if he had been incapable of seeing souls…

Of course, everyone else didn’t notice the disturbance in their souls if they did try placing all their points in one stat, and Arthur was heavily exaggerating the extent of the possible imbalance, but he did it knowing that while specialization would occur no matter what, it was better if it occurred later, after having a stable base of all stats being slightly high, then one or two could be very high.

Think of it like building a pyramid, without the base then it wouldn’t be possible as it would collapse under its own weight, in this situation, the base was the stats.

They had already entered the Guild and had lined up to talk to Ellie, another group in front of theirs already having their weapons out and prepared…

Arthur didn’t understand why the showed off in such a manner, much in the same way he didn’t understand why girls liked looking prettier than other girls, or men wanted to be richer or stronger than other boys.

He just didn’t care much for competition - not when it would end quickly when someone died - not when he wasn’t the competitive type… he felt a sense of inconsistency for a moment but shook his head.

Unfortunately, he happened to shake his head just as one of the people at the back of the next group looked at him, making a misunderstanding occur.

“Hey, you got a problem with me?” The man spoke, glaring at Arthur as Michael and the others just kept quiet, already wanting to break into giggles or chuckles.

“No, I was just wondering about how silly it is to carry your weapons everywhere.” Michael choked back his laugh, knowing that Arthur wasn’t even trying to be rude, just stating fact.

“Oh so we do got a problem! You wanna sort it out?” he held his sword out, Ellie at the counter looking a bit annoyed as she tried to warn the other teams leader, only for said leader to be looking contemplatively at Arthur.

“Firstly, I don’t know you, why would we have a problem? Looks like you want to share your problems; I don’t care for them though. As for the second thing, it’s ‘want to’, please speak properly, I barely understood you.” Okay, by now Arthur had been getting a bit irritated, and Michael could tell.

“Alice, your strength stat is the highest, get ready to step in when Arthur goes ballistic.” Michael warned his sister as she nodded, already knowing about Arthur’s rare temper.

“Oh you little mother-” the man swung his sword at Arthur, only for wrist to be grabbed before the swing could be completed, with Arthur stepping under the arm, sliding behind him and his other hand clenching around the man’s throat, now having him in a one handed chokehold with his arm behind his back, sword left on the floor.

“Leave my mother out of this, before I hurt you.” Arthur’s anger was cold and intelligent, but oh so very violent, and the man had a moment to struggle before Arthur began choking him, causing Alice to walk over and tap Arthur’s shoulder.

“Oh… yes, sorry about that…” Arthur seemed to realize that he had been watched as the altercation occurred as he let go while shoving the man at level three to the side, towards his group as Arthur looked to Ellie with an awkward look on his face.

“Sorry Ellie… a bit of anger, it’s my fault.” Arthur apologized as Ellie smiled with narrowed eyes.

“It’s okay Arthur, I saw everything.” She said, looking to the man who was now glaring back at Arthur with a glare of her own.

“Be aware that had he knocked you out I would have accepted that, and everyone in here would agree. Just because you’ve levelled up a bit doesn’t mean anything.” Ellie glared, her own level was level eight, and she would have been stronger if she was actually focused on fighting though.

“I’m sorry about that, really. We’ll discuss this between ourselves.” Their team leader spoke, glaring at the person who swung his sword at Arthur with annoyance…

Arthur, in response to the team leader’s words, gave a smile that just seemed to reek of trouble as he spoke up.

“Yes, I’m sure you’ll praise him for checking the strength of someone at double your level.” The man paused, looking to Arthur before shaking his head with a sigh, walking away with his team, to enter the Dungeon.

“Really now… so, I take it your group is set to enter the Dungeon now? Finally challenging the second floor?” Ellie asked curiously as the group signed some forms and logged in their entry time, Michael nodding at her words.

“Yeah, we would have entered floor two earlier, but Arthur said we’d be better off at level six, plus we were missing a member.” Michael looked to Alice who let out a huff of air in annoyance with her being too busy to enter the Dungeon with them.

“Well, she’s level five as well, so it should be alright. Go ahead, though know the boss will want a word with you all after you get out of there.” The group nodded, moving towards the entrance, making last minute checks to their stats and skills before walking in.

No one in their group had armour yet, not willing to buy any with their meagre earnings, and even if they did, normal armour wasn’t as good as armour made by people with the Blacksmith class.

This was once more a side-effect of Arthur’s theory involving souls becoming strong enough to have an effect on the physical plane, but only in certain ways. In this case, the soul of the Blacksmith found more ‘weight’ in their creations compared to those without that class.

Upon checking their stats and skills, they went into the Dungeon’s first floor once more.

From experience, Arthur’s group knew there to be a total of twenty one Slimes and eight Goblins, split into different groups with a rare occurrence where two Goblins partnered up with Slimes.

Their group moved through the floor, by now strong enough to easily mow through the Slimes, and while Goblins died a bit easier now for those who did not kill them in one hit, they were a bit easier to fight.

Alice could even use her magic now, though not for long before she started feeling headaches, Arthur noted that it wasn’t actually a headache so much as her soul’s colour, a deep black tinged with purple, seemed to fade a bit.

After a while though, the colour would return to be as it was, and this could be viewed as having regained your Mana, how quickly this happened apparently depended on Wisdom, and how much your soul kept was determined by Intelligence, which is where the colour was stored, in Arthur’s vision…

Again, souls, despite Arthur’s new ability to see them, were conceptual, if two people had his ability they would both see souls differently as they fit into ideas and concepts one already had.

If Arthur found souls easier to understand as toy blocks he might have just seen toy blocks being moved around and added onto some central block which would be the core of the soul… instead, he saw crystal, as he understood it better in that sense.

After killing the group blocking the way down to the second floor, their group paused to rest a bit and eat their lunch, now being capable of moving through the first floor much quicker.

Oh, and the group blocking the stairs comprised of two goblins and four Slimes. A large group, but they just sent Alice, Matt and John towards the Goblins, leaving Arthur, Emilia and Michael to face the Slimes.

Goblins were tougher than Alice made them out to be, with her buffed up Strength stat and her ability to use any weapon to the point of ‘I trained with it a few times’. She almost always killed a Goblin in a hit or two, where everyone else took a bit more.

Michael, Arthur and Emilia, on the other hand, found the Slimes really easy to kill, Michael just stood from a distance as Emilia and Arthur weaved through the idiotic blobs of blue, slashing at each one at least once before Michael would shoot them and end their lives.

As mentioned, they had already killed that group though. When Alice wasn’t there, it changed to leaving Emilia against the Goblins and just Michael and Arthur against the Slimes.

“Alright, let’s head down to the second floor. Apparently Goblins appear more often and Slimes are rarer, meaning we can fight more often.” Michael spoke out as everyone else nodded in agreement.

Slimes required magic to fight, and casting magic made one mentally tired. Using less magic meant less mental tiredness, and more physical when it came to fighting. And as for the physical fatigue, they rarely if ever felt that at this point, only breathing hard against the final group of the first floor, or that one case involving three Goblins.

Even then, according to the access panel and its information, Vitality was the stat corresponding to recovery from physical exertion and wounds, having a high enough Vitality stat would make a person capable of going days without sleep theoretically.

The reason it was theoretically was because at current no one wanted to stay up longer than their usual, though Arthur had already noted that he could go a bit longer without sleeping… a real problem for him as he already had trouble falling asleep.

“Alright… let’s go.” Michael added as they moved to the stairs… and they were immediately amazed at the appearance.

The stairs themselves seemed to be made of polished marble, shining and easily visible in the light… the light itself, was what made the view so amazing, with the rest of the way down having the walls and ceiling covered with that obsidian-type metal that made the Dungeon Entrance, with pinpricks of light dotting the walls and ceiling.

To be honest, it was as if walking on a staircase through the night sky, and it was honestly beautiful… Arthur found it a good point to make a reference, but with the exception of Alice, no one got the reference…

Well it made sense; the two of them were the only ones to ever play the first ‘paper’ version of that game with a plumber killing turtles with jumps. So it was obvious only the two of them would understand the joke behind ‘Star Way’ at all.

Once at the bottom, they noted that the second floor looked similar to the first. Namely, like a cave with no sources of light, yet bright enough for everyone to see everything clearly… basically, Hollywood darkness.

They continued moving after Emilia had removed her drawing board and begun a new map, the first map possessing all the ‘known’ areas, leaving aside paths they had not gone down, and showing the dead-ends of wrong paths.

Now they moved, and their first enemies were a Goblin accompanied by two Slimes.

Alice was quick to demolish the Goblin, not wanting to use her magic due to its insane consumption rate in comparison to the others, and Michael and Emilia quickly dispatched the two Slimes…

“We really need to fix our equipment…” Arthur noted as he looked at Matt’s baseball bat, which occasionally shone as if covered in metal, and also noting that all of them were wearing casual clothes…

Honestly, they were like Cosplay-characters who got the equipment right but forgot their outfits.

“How should we do that? We aren’t exactly earning a lot, and armour would cost a lot.” Michael noted as Arthur raised an eyebrow in return.

“Uh, what about bullet-proof vests, welder gauntlets, safety boots, shin-guards?” Arthur’s words caused the group to contemplate what he had just mentioned, and they really didn’t agree with the combination, but they saw his point.

One didn’t need to get medieval armour or even things made by a Blacksmith, just some basic protection would do for a while.

“Right… we’ll check that out next time.” Michael stated, and the group agreed with him, but they continued on their dungeon-dive, not willing to turn around at this point.

Their dive was filled with more of the usual, Goblins, Slimes, but the amount was around double of the first floor.

It was enough that Alice felt the pressure of levelling up, and the rest of the group was approaching level seven.

They were eventually forced to pause as they encountered a new enemy, one which confused Arthur especially… because every other enemy they had fought had appeared in a role-playing game, but these ones, he did not recognize.

Luckily for them, the LEV actually stored information involving witnessed enemies, and it gave more information for defeated enemies. For the enemy in front of them, they were only informed that it was known as a Lantern Squire.

It floated, kept from falling by tiny red flames on its legs, which ended in stumps with the flames below, likewise, it possessed no head, instead having a flame there. In its hand it carried a sword, and in the centre of its chest it had a glass panel with a flickering flame inside of it, the flame growing and shrinking much like a heart-beat.

Michael took the first attack, being the person who started the majority of their fights with a pre-emptive attack… ranged people were best suited for those, even if Michael inwardly groaned at how cowardly that sounded.

When the arrow pinged off the chest of the monster, that was when their group realized that the monster was much stronger than Goblins, and it turned to their group.

It moved quickly, floating on its flames as it rushed to attack their group, stabbing out at Emilia who jumped back even as Matt got in the way with his shield.

The blade of the Squire bounced off, and as it recoiled Alice took a large swing with her sledgehammer hitting the thing square through the flame where its head would be.

It somehow actually hurt the creature, but not by a large amount, as Arthur carefully observed the enemy, scanning it to find weaknesses.

“Alright, its weak spot should be the panel on its chest, its resistant to cutting edges, so blunt force should work! Matt and Alice, the two of you are up!” Arthur scanned the enemy quickly and Matt and Alice grinned, the only members of their group that actually fought with blunt weapons…

John had a long stick that was basically a staff, but he didn’t actually fight. His Anima required a ‘focus’ which constituted as a giant piece of crystal, a wand, or a staff. Didn’t even have to be real, there was a guy who used a plastic made in china ‘crystal’ ball and shot off spells with it. It was about mentality.

“Die!” seriously, it was kind of silly but it apparently helped Matt and Alice get into the mind-set of ‘kill this thing in front of me’… people shouting die at something was still weird though.

Matt’s silvery baseball bat was intercepted by the Squire’s sword, surprisingly, while Alice’s sledgehammer was unimpeded, resulting in a massive crack on the chest of the Squire as it’s flame crackled as if screaming.

It wasn’t out just yet, but before it could strike back at Alice, Arthur was there, surprising his team as he stood to its side, turning in a classical right hook, his fist heading towards the glass bit.

Arthur’s first reaction, upon seeing the attack did not kill the enemy in one shot, was to hit the thing away from the group, if only for a moment, as he triggered his magic, layering it into his fist, causing it to spark as it impacted the glass casing that was the Squire’s chest.

The attack didn’t kill the enemy, only causing it to move back from the force, though Arthur did note that the flame that replaced its heart seemed to be flickering erratically, no longer timing itself, it now expanded and contracted to irregular sizes.

Without getting a chance to wonder about this phenomenon, the Squire dashed forward, slashing out at Arthur who blocked with his dagger, using his free arm to reach out and grab its arm… which was uncomfortably warm, like holding a bowl with how water in it, as he turned the enemy.

The reason he turned it was to place the Squire in front of Emilia, who was jabbing forward with both daggers towards the cracked glass, finally breaking it as the flame sputtered and died, the Squire, which looked like a floating suit of armour, fell to the floor, disintegrating much like all other Demons did…

Though surprisingly, it dropped something other than a Soul Stone… the blade the Squire had carried had also dropped.

“Huh… looks like Matt might not need to look for a weapon… or are you going to wait for a mace or hammer?” Alice asked her fellow ‘warrior’ type as Matt looked to the sword with a frown… then shook his head.

“Nah, I’m not using that. We’ve just found a Demon that resists cutting it, so I won’t switch… though I’m hoping to get a metal base-ball bat at least.” Matt joked as the group chuckled.

“Well… can I use it then?” Everyone turned to their resident ‘scientist’ as Arthur looked at the blade, holding it in his right hand, after moving his dagger to the left.

“Arthur? Planning on dual-wielding? That’s pretty difficult in real life from what I hear…” Michael seemed uncertain, but Arthur smirked, holding his dagger in a reverse grip and the sword loosely as he wiggled his wrists a bit.

“Oh I can manage… besides, just like you like guns, you know I like blades… I’m good with them.” Arthur’s words felt a bit deeper than they first appeared, but no one argued with his claim.

“Alright then… so, a Lantern Squire… that thing was pretty strong… Arthur, did you check how much Soul we got from that?” Michael asked, using the now official term ‘Soul’ which was equivalent to a role-playing game’s ‘experience points’.

“Yeah, it’s about three Goblin’s worth… closer to two Goblins and a Slime though.” There were no concrete values for Soul gained per fight, but depending on the enemy soul only a certain amount could be gained in return.

If someone entered a Dungeon with a group of seven, the amount of Soul everyone would gain would decrease, by half each, meaning that there was quite a bit of the Soul being wasted, so a group of six was the max.

On the other hand, even if you were alone, you’d get the same amount of Soul as if you were in a group of six, because that was the limit of your soul to absorb the left overs of another.

The larger the soul, the more you could absorb of it, leading to stronger monsters giving more Soul.

Soul is the experience points and soul is the actual thing, just in case there was any confusion.

“Well… you want to fight another one?” Michael asked, looking into the distance with his Hawk Eye skill, and noting another Squire.

“We can get away with that… mind if I try out my dual-wielding?” Arthur asked as the group looked interested at his request.

“Sure, though Matt and Alice are going to be on standby, obviously.” Arthur knew there would be a bit of a condition like that, and accepted it as he stalked towards his next enemy, his team following behind him.

The lantern witnessed Arthur’s approach, and it ‘looked’ to the group behind Arthur, before raising its sword, gripping it with both hands in a manner similar to Kendo.

“Interesting… honour amongst Demons huh…” Arthur mumbled to himself as he activated Soul Sight, and while his back was to his team, they had no doubt that he would be grinning.

Arthur was weird like that, disliking emotional conflict and yet thriving in physical violence like this… Michael wasn’t sure why Arthur acted like that, but he just accepted it, as did everyone else.

The only one who had an idea on why was Emilia and that was only because she spoke to Arthur a lot more than Michael these days.

See, the human mind possesses a trait known as empathy, the degree of empathy changes between humans, but the standard is to care about some, and disregard others emotionally.

Arthur dislikes other people, and only amongst his closest friends and family would he actually care about what their lives were like, otherwise he’d steamroll a conversation to be about him or something he was interested in. If he couldn’t do that, he’d just leave.

The reason for that was because Arthur’s empathy was really high, not because it was low. He could see and feel the other party’s lack of interest in him, their boredom, their dislike, so he treated them likewise.

It was because of this empathy that Arthur got strangely emotional when it came to things like shouting matches and such, and yet he’d probably break the neck of an animal with no care.

“Well… how long do you think that Squire will last?” John asked aloud, as he was pretty casual at times due to the ability of his team, they rarely if ever got hit.

“Knowing Arthur, and how brutal he can be at times… I’d say twenty seconds to a minute.” Alice said as they all began to input their own thoughts, Emilia offering a thirty five seconds, Michael twenty and Matt a full minute.

The fight began as they finished, with Arthur dashing forward.

Bit of trivia, the average human adult male’s running speed would be anywhere between 10 and 15 miles per hour, or converted to Kilometres, aka the standard of the rest of the world except America, would be between 16.1 and 24.14 Km/h.

So averaging that, it would be around 20.12 KM/hr. Now recall that according to Stats, a stat totalling five would be the average of an adult human male, meaning with a stat of five in Strength and Dexterity you could run at that speed even if before you could barely run half of it.

Some people, like that famous sprinter who holds the world record, are obviously faster than that, but their stat points would still total five, just they’d be given a Stat booster Skill and possibly a Skill for running faster actually.

Now consider that Arthur was level six, and he had a pretty average stat score of ten in each stat at a minimum… in fact, all his stats, with the exception of Endurance, were at eleven points each.

So with eleven points in Strength and Dexterity, he sprinted at just around 2.2 times the speed of an average adult male.

So with his dashing speed of roughly 44.26 Km/h, or 27.5 Miles per hour, he was just slightly slower than that record holding sprinter’s max speed, with barely any warm up.

Ah, Arthur believed whole heartedly in the brilliance of solid numbers… if everything could be quantified, there would be very few random answers in his opinion… of course, quantifying everything would make life too boring, but having some numbers made him overall happier.

So it was with this blitz that he appeared in front of the Squire, surprising the group as they hadn’t tried actually pushing their stats to the max at this point…

This was because they were still in the mind-set of a normal human. The thoughts that ‘there is no way I can run that fast’ or ‘I can’t lift that much’ and it was messing with their fighting.

Arthur, on the other hand, liked testing out things… one of which was how Stats actually affected him.

From the results, he knew how fast he was now, how strong he was… and yet, the Squire still reacted in time, which made Arthur smile, even as his dagger in his left hand shot out to intercept the blade.

The block was successful, as Arthur angled his right arm so that it stabbed beneath the blocking left arm, creating a sort of cross with his arms as he stabbed into the Squire’s chest with a sword very much like the one in its hands.

His first strike, much like Michael’s arrow just bounced off, but unlike Michael’s arrow which lost a bit of force in the distance travelled, Arthur’s attack caused a small crack in the chest of the Squire as it pulled its blade back.

With a thrust, it attempted to stab into Arthur’s stomach as he tilted so that the blade breezed past his back, the blade turned to try and turn the stab into a slash but once more Arthur’s Dagger of Hunger was there to block it, the sword lashing out towards the chest of the Squire once more.

“Wow… he’s using that dagger like Matt would use a shield… a tiny shield, but still.” Alice noted and their group watched with an impressed air, as Arthur had shown no knowledge of dual-wielding before this, beyond speaking about it and an Anime-character who gets trapped in a VR-game.

Once again, Copyrights and trademarks are scary.

“Yeah… I actually recognize the style a bit, it was used by European nobles actually. He’s using his Dagger of Hunger like those nobles would use a specially designed dagger just for parrying… of course, he’s attacking with the Dagger of Hunger too, so it’s more like a quick and messy mix of that style and traditional Kendo dual-wielding.” Emilia spoke, causing Michael and the others to look at her with wide eyes.

“Hey, I learnt Kendo at one point, I found it fun… couldn’t do the dual-wielding thing though.” Emilia pointed out, and they nodded.

“Yeah… using a shield is kind of easy because I just need to put it where the enemy is hitting… if I want to get fancy, I could angle it to make the attacks glance off instead of fully stopping them, but it’s simple.” Matt noted as he saw Arthur’s dagger lash out, widening the crack in the glass chest of the Squire.

“The thing is, that Dagger isn’t as big as my shield, meaning you have to have really good spatial awareness to know where it is relative to your opponents attacks and yourself, plus most people can’t attack with their other hand while doing stuff like that.” Matt was the only one in their group other than Arthur that used different equipment in his two hands, so he knew best.

Arthur, while fighting the Squire, had finally gotten bored as he did a move similar to a shield bash using his right arm to knock the sword arm of the Squire into the air, surprising Arthur in that they used their swords in their left hands.

After the sword arm was knocked away, Arthur stepped forward, and channelling his Lightning magic into his Dagger of Hunger, and it sparked.

The basic ability to cover a weapon in magic was known as Clad to all users of it, but what Arthur was doing here was ever so slightly different, instead of covering the weapon in magic, he was using it as a director for the magic to increase the weapons piercing force.

The Squire died, with its crackling fire-like voice and the Soul Stone and its sword dropped to the floor, while Arthur smiled.

“That was fun.” Yes… Arthur was their little ball of natural violence.

Arthur Clive

Level: 7

Class: Linked Swordsman- Grants one stat point to Strength and Wisdom per level

Gives Soul Sight (Unique) Skill

Anima

Dagger of Hunger

Cloak of Will

Anima Skills

Dagger- Devour- Increase Soul Gain by 6.25%

Cloak- Defence- lowers damage taken by 1%

Primary Element: Lightning

Personal Skills

Tactician I (8/50) - increases Wisdom by 10% (total 110%)

Swordsmanship I (10/50) - Increases ease of weapon handling

Soul Sight I (38/200) - Allows insight beyond mortality

Stats

Strength: 12

Dexterity: 12

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 13 (14)

Endurance: 11

Vitality: 12