Christopher woke up the next day, his two partners, the dwarf and anoying woman were already eating breakfast or was it diner, whatever downstairs.

"Should we go see the elder, or go dig some more ore first?"

Christopher asked as he took a bite of what he was told is a meat worm, in truth he hadn't seen how a meat worm looks like but he prefered it that way.

"Lets dig some more, if we can leave for the capital and live there like kings, why not doing so?"

Kurlidandr said gulping his wine in a good mood.

"Even if you go to the Patriarch he will simply take the ring back saying that it's his grand grandfathers"

Vadima said while laughting and then begun arguing with Kurlidandr about the honor of the dwarves and other old time classic beliefs.

"Well then after a good munch I'll go dig out some more silver"

Christopher said and made true of his promise, the last time he had dug for three and a half hours, filling 7 carts of silver. This time he was even faster raising his magic calculation ability by 1 level while trying to teleport the further away silver.

Of course the silver he harvested earned him no less than 8000 a cart, making not only the miners crazy, but even the old partiarch whom got word that Christopher was still digging for more, he dug for only two hours earning for himself 32000dp before leaving.

Christopher was getting somewhat bored of teleporting ore thus he took the dwarf and woman to go shopping, after all they had more than enough dp at the moment.

The shopping spree cost them 80000dp in total forcing Christopher to return back to the mines, he could only curse Vadima's expensive tastes and the dwarf's alliance with her.

Whenever it came to weapons and armors they became brothers in arms, saying that this was a great masterpiece, that was a great price, the third was a unique oportunity, there was simply no stopping them from buying stuff until the two drained him of all points, the dwarf even forgot that he needed 50000dp to recover his item.

"The Patriarch has asked for your presence at the bank"

A dwarf suddenly came asking for them.

"He probably wants the ring so greatly that he can't wait"

Vadima said, foretelling the future, but making Kurlidandr somewhat angry at her he didn't have the patriarch for such a person.

Arriving at the Bank the Patriarch not even greeting them informed them that the ring was found to be stolen by a dwarf woman named Jugolina and although both Vadima, Kurlidandr and the gnome made a huge scene at the place the ring was still taken away leaving the group with a balance of 9189dp, of course it was better than before but it was not enough to live like kings.

"Well it's not like I don't remember where the silver vein is"

Christopher said making them regain some of the light in their eyes, but the poor gnome was heartbroken, he was just swindled out of 3000dp.

The moment Christopher arrived at the mines every miner surrounded him trying to sell things to him, some even said they would sell themselves to him as slaves as long as he took them out of the mines.

Christopher was lost in thought, in truth he was an advocator of freedom, but he knew that this world was simply too diferent than our own.

"Kurlidard, Vadina what do you think should be done?"

Christopher asked, of course he had his own opinion but asking for the opinions of his companions wasn't a bad idea.

"It's Kurlidandr"

"It's Vadima"

The both of the fiercely corrected him.

"I say leave them be, we need the points more than manpower at the moment"

The dwarf said mercilessly into their faces, making them want to kill him.

"I say take the talented leave the commoners behind"

Vadima said, making a majority of the people hate her as well.

"I have decided, those of you whom have a debt of less than a hundred can come over, I will be paying for your debts, the rest can decide to form a contract with me or trade for items"

Christopher said, after all he wasn'd about to give more than 100dp for nothing, in the end he earned himself a 12300dp debt and the gratitude of over 123 people, there were twenty whom decided to form a contract for 25000 in total, of course majority of them simply had 100+ dp of debt, whome he let leave, but four of them had debts of thousands, of them however the only person with whom he was somewhat familiar, well having met him three times, although he had no idea what his name was.

"So the four of you will be coming with us until you pay off the debt, it's not like I don't want to let you go, but your debts are simply too big"

Christopher begun with the sorry excuses, he was just being stingy with his dp, which he didn't have at the moment.

Next he went and begun teleporting ore, of course without the ring his effectiveness fell by more than half, meaning that he needed a lot of time to get dp, but he didn't mind.

It took him 4hours to only get 20000dp, something that the patriarch loafed when he learned about it.

Of course the Patriarch was somewhat angry with letting 120 miners simply off, but new miners would arrived from the dwarven mines of other locations.

In a way Christopher already did more than 100times their job, so why would he even care about them leaving.

He simply looked at the ring in his hand and passed it over to Gregry, the leader of their own dwarven miners.

Gregry arriving at the now empty mines, where only Christopher still remained followed the Indication of the ring and begun to dig with his men.

"Look out, there's a hollow spot!"

The dwarf shouted as he hit with his pickaxe shovel into the wall, causing the stones to collapse, thus them having to remove the rubble with their shovels.

It was a harsh work, and dwarves were known for being the best miners, since they had greater endurance than most races, but this mines had suddenly become rather troublesome, at times they would encounter strange unnatural hollows in the rockbed, of course they wouldn't go make trouble to Christopher for his dangerous mining method, since it wouldn't make their mining any easier.

"Look out, It's going to collapse!"

The dwarf in the back shouted and they begun running out of the tunnel like crazy.

The tunnel they had just dug had simply collapsed, from the right side of the mine, they had of course put support beams and stuff, but in front of gravity's might they only bought them enough time to escape the tunnel.

Gregry wanted to simply go to the mage whom left all those cavities in the stonebeds and punch him, but his pride wouldn't let him.

They begun digging once more, By the time their tunnel had ended four hours had passed and Christopher had made another 12000 in silver reducing his debt to 0 and getting himself back to where he begun with just 3886dp as he went to sleep.

The dwarves continued digging through the night, of course by the end of the day they made it to the Silver Ore vein, celebrating their success at the Inn.

Of course the Patriarch wasn't verry happy at first, but he was no noob in mining, he knew that mining like Christopher was due to magical means.

Christopher's four new companions or more like debtors were the gnome, a human girl whom had wanted to sell her body to him, a big guy whom was a strange mix of races, something like human,ogre,elf,beastman all together and last was an old Ork whom was half step into the grave, whom called himself a shaman.

The next day Christopher went once more to the mine he begun trying to teleport ore, but 1/5 tries ended in air, while 3/5 ended in rocks comming, it was evident that he couldn't find any more ore.

Well it didn't matter to him, he simply stopped after half an hour sending his cart to be appraised.

The surprising thing however was that in his unluckiness he had found something interesting, inside some stone, there was a strange golden dagger which was appraised for 8000dp, but since it was fragmented into two parts they only gave him 2000dp for it.

"Well today lets make our final preparations to leave, although I know that you are probably somewhat depressed we couldn't reclaim your item..."

Christopher said to Kurlidandr.

"What Item?"

Kurlidandr asked somewhat surprised.

"The one you wanted to reclaim for 50000dp from the bank"

Christopher reminded.

"You mean that, well it wasn't mine to begin with, I simply wanted to reclaim it for a friend of mine, but since he's already left the mine yesterday I believe that he will reclaim it himself with his own effort"

Kurlidandr said with an arrogant and prideful look on his face.

"Then the four of you will probably ask me how you can repay your debt, well we will be heading to the Pillar dungeon, but before we go we will be establishing a shop, thus we will need your help until we reach the Dungeon pillar and establish the shop after that you are free to go or stay"

Christopher said, of course the road to the dungeon pillar would take them a few months and establishing themselves there would take another few months in the least.

"I'm called Tris"

The slim girl said, well you could call her a woman since she was 20, but non the less she was rather young, her long black hair was covering her face and even reached to the end of her back, of course her story was heartbreaking, she was kidnapped from her own village by bandits, they then took her to the mines and used her as a scapegoat to shoulder their debt, it was of course something that didn't always go well, but since they had brought twenty people with her, the Patriarch simply made them into a group as they shared the same debt together, the others simply commited suicide after the first year, but she survived, she was too cowardly to kill herself, but she had already begun finding alternative ways of raising some points, she had calculated that in another ten years she would be able to get out of the mines by herself.

"I'm called Oswoeld"

The gnome said, well his story wasn't as dramatic, he simply had the bad luck to be caught stealing something, he didn't say what it was, but it didn't really matter anyway, thus being sent to mine to pay for the item, which was now considered as his.

"I'm Diwit, I don't know what I am"

The one whom spoke was a strange large man, he looked like a human, but his physique was similar to an ogre's.

Although he looked human he had the ears of an elf, his feet had claws on them being similar to those of beastmen.

People like him were called Mixbloods, people with more than two races' blood, most of them don't live long and unlike half-bloods, they are a minority that is very rare to appear, to begin with there has to be two half-bloods with at least one diferent race than the other, but the chances of the child being a mix-blood is still rather low.

In general his story was rather short, he was conceived by two half-bloods whom had a debt, after he reached the age of fourteen they left, leaving him behind to shoulder their debts.

In general debtors don't have to work for their debts, but if their debt isn't reduced even by 1dp for a duration of one month then they are sent to the dwarven arenas.

Meaning that they will most probably die, escaping from the mines is impossible since there are strange runes that will attack anyone whom tries to escape with a debt and those that are transported are even more impossible to escape since they are engraved with special runes that put them into suspended animation, also known as "fake death" for the duration of their travel, in other words at one moment they are said that they will be transported and on the next they find themselves transported, but in reality months might have passed some even take years to awaken because of different problems in the runes, the worst however thing that might happen is the transporters getting killed by monsters and all the debtors dying.

"I'm Kraag, a once venerable shaman"

The Ork elder said, his words holding a hint of pain in them.

In truth their problem begun when their tribe's warriors accompanied by himself came to the dwarves asking for weapons, of course they had no idea about prices.

You have to understand that while the other countries had some unified governance, Orks were more like multiple tribes fighting for territory and food. It was the first time their tribe had come to trade with the dwarves and their arithmetics weren't so good, thus they went into debt, the Patriarch of course explained to them that they had two roads to earn the points, the mines or the arena, of course he whom was a weak shaman decided the mines instead of the arena, but not even three days afterwards he was told that barely anyone survives the arena, since the main purpose of the arena was to earn experience for the dwarven Nobles, whom will be armed to the teeth with the best equipment possible.

Of course if you survived in the arena you were awarded points and at some point would be allowed to leave or might even be recruited.

The most tricky arena fighters whom survive 90% of the times are elves, since their fighting style involves a lot of evasion, they will simply evade until the dwarf gets tired or makes some mistake they can use against him, their battles were so boring that the dwarves even created rules against them participating in the arena, especialy those that want to eat and run, meaning buy really expensive stuff and then go to the arena with them.

"Well lets go to the dungeon pillar Outpost first, We have already prepared all that we need, right?"

Christopher said as he looked at the dwarf and woman next to him, whom gulped heavily, truth was that they were so caught up in the shopping, that they had completely forgotten to buy supplies.

"Well we still have around 6000dp, I hope you won't go crazy on me and begin shoping weapons and armors you can't even use"

Christopher said, making the two of them go red with shame, they had bought four pieces of equipment that in the end non of them could use, a pair of daggers for a rogue, a runic staff for rune mages, a helmet for level 300 warriors, a tower shield that requires 200 physicality and a staff that required rune magic art skill to equip.

In general they can still hold the item even if it requires some conditions, but they are unable to use skills with it and even worse its abilities won't work, meaning that its better to equip a shield of your own level than hold a shield of a higher level which has a higher defense stat, unless of course you had no ability in using shields in the first place, meaning that as long as you are able to carry it around it would be alright.

Now Imagine an almighty shield sold for a once in a million bargain, but you simply cannot carry the shield with one hand, even with both it's still rather hard, that's one of the items the two of them bought.

The daggers had stats and abilities that were only for rogues meaning that non of them could use them even if they could carry them as weapons, but the price was rather good for their stats and enchantments.

The helmet was simply monstrous, it gave such good stats, the reason however it was sold for so little was because only heroes could use it, meaning people with heroic profession, since only they could reach such high levels.

Lastly the runic staff, frankly speaking Kurlidandr could use, since he had rune magic arts, but reality was that he had used his skill mutation altexir to turn his skill into a mutated version of themselves, other than the thing about being bedridden for some days, they had a more grave effect, skills that had been mutated could no longer evolve and not all mutated skills were stronger than their regular counterparts, for example his "Runic magic art" mutated into a skill named "Inconcistent Runic magic art" which was a farcry from the regular skill, it made runic magic to depend on his magicality instead of his skill, but at the same time he became unable to use powerful runes like before.

For example before he could use any rune he wanted, only the power would be rather weak, now most runes wouldn't even activate, even though their power would be rather strong if they did, but the chances were so much against him that he as a common class alchemist had given up on runes.

Of course he could the other thing was that he couldn't delete mutated skills nor take skill points off of them, meaning that 9 skillpoints had been wasted that way.

At that time he had already mutated 3 of his skills, creating amazing abilities, thus it wasn't surprising that he was careless with the fourth one ending up with a subpar ability.

Of course now that they had more people, they might in the future be useful, since at the moment non of them reached the criteria for equiping them, thus letting them waste away, not like they couldn't sell them back earning at least half of what they paid, but it would be rather stupid at present, maybe when they reach their destination, or maybe they could just send them to their destination beforehand, but reality was that they might still use them, even without equiping them, for example the shield could be used as a wall from missiles, the staff could be used as a travelling staff, the daggers could still cut things and the helm, well that was pretty pointless to say but could still be worn on their heads even without the aditional stats it was a rather sturdy helmet that looked like a roman centurion's helmet, but lacking the ornaments.

=====================================

While Christopher and the others were getting ready to leave, another group of adventurers were heading from the dwarven Capital towards the Dungeon pillar.

They were the four heroes whom decided to join the dwarven kingdom, due to benefits and due to their admiration for the dwarves, from games.

The fearless however and warrior like dwarves they waited to see weren't there all they found were merchants and runesmiths, while a large number of dwarves were on Junkies, hyped on drugs as they worked daily in the mines and worm farms.

Kris,Stelio,Dimitri and Mike decided to change their race, two becoming half-dwarves and of the two cousins, Dimitri and Mike, Dimitri went for a quarter dwarf and Mike went full dwarf.

The evolution curse allowed them to select from ten dwarven characteristic traits, if they selected only three or less they became a quarter, with 4-8 they became a half and with 9-10 they became a dwarf, of course the things most people would not select were the disadvantages of the dwarves.

Now the points they could select were.

Dwarven strength

(Infates hands, shoulders and breastcage),

doubles strength from physicality stat.

Dwarven hardheadedness

(Inflates Cranial bone and head), double resistance to control spells from mentality stat.

Dwarven speed

(Inflates legs and spine),

gives double the speed from physique.

Dwarven size

(lowers your size, height),

gives you half the speed of normal per physique, advantages, doubles strength and physical resistance.

Hammer hand

(makes your hands rougher),

gives more damage to your blows and makes your grip stronger, but palm skin is rought and harsh to the touch, disliked by other races other than dwarves and orks.

Dwarven Rune spirit,

(gives you a beard)

gives you double the bonus of rune arts, but when you die your soul will be sealed in the closest gemstone, if you aren't carrying one, then the gemstone might be still unmined, meaning you won't be able to be resourected.

Aditionaly gives you a Magicality penalty meaning that 1 point of magicality for them were equal to 0.5, meaning that they only enjoyed half the benefits of their real magicality when calculating spell damage and spellcasting, but on the other side, it gave twice as much spell defense, that's also the reason while dwarves invented rune magic.

Dwarven blood,

(Can live for a longer time)

your children and offsprings will have dwarven genes, you are resistant to intoxication, poisons,drugs and deceases.

Dwarven greed

(personality correction),

makes you feel a hint of love towards gemstones, gives you the ability to feel if gemstones are nearby even if not unearthened yet.

Post note, your distance from the gemstone can be a km away, or in another dwarf's pocket, so most dwarves wisely decide to simply ignore it.

Dwarven belly,

(inflates your stomach),

allows you to digest things humans generaly cannot, even stones can become lowly nutrients to your organism and can drink a barrel of ale without the tiniest hint of intoxication poisoning.Also gives resistance to food poisoning, when eating rotten or raw food. As for how this works, you can imagine their stomach having the same function as a camel's hump.

Dark vision

(your eyes shine in the dark),

can see in dark places as if they were in faintly lit places, they see normaly in faintly lit places.

In the end these were their results.

Kris, the monk and one of Christopher's nerdy friends now looked like a large barbarian, whose body looked like that of bodybuilders, with the exception of his particularly small head in comparison to his body and particularly large feet, of course before becoming a dwarf he was rather good looking, but after the evolution he hadn't fixed his face, thus it becoming more like a brute's, but his eyes became shiny brown as if they were jewels due to night vision.

He had taken Dwarven strength, Dwarven speed, Dwarven blood and dark vision, thus becoming a half.

As for the rewards promissed he was given a rune armor vest and helm, a sword and shield, two rune skills, one being Rune magic art and the other a skill of his own preference, he chose the "Hammer rune" skill, which materializes a runic phantom of a hammer that cause elemental magic damage to the creatures they hit, the element is random, the hammer is shot from the rune, meaning it's ranged attack rune.

Of course the problem that appeared was that he needed training in targeting with his new skill.

Disregarding that it only did 2dmg and he could only make one small hammer appear at a time.

He was given three bodyguards and the title he desired, the Dragonslayer, which boosted his attack against dragon folk two times, meaning that any creature with dragonic blood or spirit or soul would suffer double damage from his attacks.

Stelio, the nerdy blacksmith on the other side looked no different than a large Dwarf, meaning that he even had a brown beard, he still wore glasses even though his eyes shined like jewels.

The thing was that he only lacked one point to be considered a full dwarf, meaning he had selected 8 traits out of ten, leaving out only the dwarven size and greed.

Stelio of course was not like Kris whom went with his dream choosing the Dragon slayer title, without even consulting what they were going to encounter, of course learning that they would be fighting undead he could only go Zombieslayer, Zombies were a low ranking undead which he was told by his four bodyguards were plentiful in the dungeon pillar.

Of course he was given a custom made rune vest and a helm, the weapon given upon finding he was a smith was a warhammer and a shield.

Warhammers are not like smithing hammers, with a large surface hammer, they have a small surface an a pick at one end.

Lastly since he was already level 10, the dwarved decided to teach him three skills instead of two, them of course including "rune magic arts", the second being "blacksmithing" and lastly the "repair rune", altough he really wanted to gain the harden rune as well, but was told that later he would be able to select much better runes. Don't of course forget that he could already use any rune he liked, only the chances of it activating were rather low, while for the repair rune they were 100%, but it's power was only 3points, meaning that it needed a lot of time to repair even the most basic of equipment at the moment.

Of course his blacksmith skill was also plain bullshit, he didn't even know how to use it, not to tell that he needed a forge and tools to use it in the first place.

Dimitri, Mike's cousin and a monk, was the one with the less dwarven traits, in truth he didn't look much different than he normaly looked, he only chose the Hammer hand and Dark vision traits which weren't visible on first sight, even looking at him other than his jewel like brown eyes there was nothing else to indicate him as a quarter dwarf.

He was only given 2 bodyguards for some reason and chose the title of Vampireslayer, which is the strongest undead found in the dungeon pillar they were going to go, of course finding a vampire was rather rare on the first floor, but it was said that they still existed, thus he decided to be readed in case they met one.

Of course he was given the basic rune vest,helm,spear and shield. He himself decided on the spear.

His rune was the Harden Rune, advised by Stelio, since they didn't allow him to take it he advised it to Dimitri and Mike.

What the rune did was increase the defense of the creature or equipment by one, of course the same rune was already engraved on the runic equipment they were given, but that didn't mean that he couldn't use it on all his clothes and even himself or his allies, if not for the problem that it was rather low level at the moment, only giving 2defense and could only be cast on one item at a time for a short duration of no more than 2minutes.

What is 2defense, well 2physique means that unarmed you can do 2damage, thus you understand that with 10physique, only 8damage will be landed on the person of course you have to understand that a common warrior will have at least 50strength and dwarves even have 3times that in strength, and 4times in damage, meaning that it's quite pointless for an average level 100 person, since even unarmed he can easily overcome your 2point of defense, in general it will only help if your physique is similar to his, in unarmed combat, since weapons gave a shitload of damage.

But if using weapons meant for lower levels their durability will suffer greatly, meaning they will break faster due to your crude handling of them.

Lastly Mike, Dimitri's cousin and the only monster tamer in all the summoned heroes, he decided to evolve fully into a dwarf, after all he could probably revert back to human before they defeat the Demon king.

As a result he became a nerdy looking dwarf, with a black beard, that looked more like a gnome in some sense, it seems that he didn't stay and edit his looks even a little, seemingly in a hurry as he evolved.

Of course he gained all the bonuses and penalties of the dwarven race, something however that made the Dwarves give him a group of 8 bodyguards.

He was given a full dwarven rune armor, a dwarven rune helmet, a rune shovelpike and a rune shield.

It wasn't him who decided on the Shovelpike, he was simply given one since he looked like a real dwarf or something.

He was given two titles, one being decided by himself, the skeletonslayer and the other being the Dwarven hero, which gave him popularity with the dwarves.

The rune he was given, once more not decided by himself was the "Trap rune", you had to point at a location and a small symbol would appear on it, if it was pressed the target would be paralyzed for a few seconds, of course it could also target a person or creature directly, of course at low level he could only place one trap, that would stay only for 3minutes, of course for his monster taming ability that would be rather good, or so he thought since he hadn't even tried it once yet since it was based on his mentality stat which was rather low in the beginning, but in truth his special ability "Pat" was rather discouraging, since all it did was lower the aggro of the monster towards him, he had no way of capturing or taming it at the moment or at least he didn't know how to do so.

The four of them were each given a house, it wasn't something luxurious, but it was big enough for ten people to stay, it even had a small forge and a bathroom with a strange runic stone that generated hot water.

The Dwarven Capital was a lot different from Nivava, there were light runes, heat runes and other luxuries which modern people are used to, the only difference is that except for technology they use runes for everything, there are even Air conditioning runes.

In the Dwarven Society there are no slaves, although you could call debtors a sort of slave, but in general even in our modern society there are people whom work their lives off just to pay off debts, or rot in jail, are they too slaves?

This was the equivelant of a debtor in the Dwarven society, those whom were criminals or too poor to even survive were used to mine minerals to pay their debts, of course many of them eventualy got their freedom back, but that "eventualy" wasn't less than a year the least.

The four lived close to one another and they decided that they would be going together when they enter the dungeon, the problem of course was that the government had given them a monthly quota that they had to meet.

They had to collect 100pounches of undead dust, a rather valuable alchemic material that could only be collected in the dwarven territory's underground tunnels.

"So what do you think of your new home, tomorrow we will begin our travel towards the Dungeon pillar"

The Dwarf said as he looked at Kris, whom simply noded, not knowing how to respond.

Kris wasn't very good at socializing, he wasn't exactly shy, he was good looking, but he had problems explaining what he wanted to say, thus he didn't talk too much in order to not embarass himself.

"Sir Dragonslayer, we have ended our preparations, the other heroes are also about ready will we be meeting them at the decided location?"

The Dwarf bodyguard, or what Kris could make as the three bodyguards' leader said.

"Couldn't you at least introduce yourselves, I'm called Kris, I know that you might not think much about me since my level is low, but I was told that the pillar dungeon's monsters give a fair amount of experience"

Kris said making the dwarves somewhat reluctant to answer, in truth they were forced to guard him by the higher ups the job payed well and although they wouldn't see their families for awhile, they were still confident in accompicing their task.

"Sir Dragonslayer, you can call me Yngir the Skullcrusher"

The leader of the bodyguards said.

"I'm Odin Eyeshooter, I will be your guide"

A Dwarf carrying a huge backpack and lots of weapons and armors said.

"I'm Nibel, I will be your rune mage"

Another dwarf wearing a mage robe said, in his hand he had a strange stone staff engraved with runes.

"Then lets first wait for the others and see what we can do to help, after all it's not like we will be instantly killed or something"

Ten hours later...

Kris was standing in a pool of blood, zombies, skeletons and ghouls ravaging through the corpses, he...

9 hours 30 minutes earlier...

The four heroes met at the gathering spot.

"Mike what took you so long?"

His cousin Dimitri asked, of course one had 8 dwarf bodyguards and the other only 2.

"My dwarven friends couldn't decide what things were necessary for our first outing, they are rather troublesome, I even heard that it might be really dangerous going to the dungeon pillar without first experiencing a battle with the undeads on the surface level"

Mike said as he huffed and puffed, he looked rather exhausted carrying his own bag, while wearing a full plate armor and all the equipment he was given, in truth he looked more like a tin can rather than a dwarf, there was only small holes for him to look around, while all the rest was either covered in chaimail or plate mail.

Of course the armor had lots of runes to make him feel more comfortable, like ventilation,heating, even cleaning and self repair function, it was hundreds of times better than the simple rune vest the others were given, which had harden and self repair as its only runes, of course the hardening rune was a rather miraculous 20points of defense, probably the best they could equip for their low levels, but their armors lacked all the other fancy stuff "runes" that Mike's had.

"Whatever, lets first experience a little fight here in the underground tunnels before going to the dungeon pillar"

Stelio said, having already made plans for their course of action.

"Whatever as long as we level up"

Dimitri said not really caring.

"You don't mind if I join you as well?"

Kris asked them, after all he didn't know the three of them very well, while they were already quite close even before being trasported to this world.

"Are you dump, why would we care, it's not like three more dwarves will not be usefull, as for us, what can low level people like us even do to begin with"

Dimitri said, somewhat reprimenting him, but in general he had no bad feelings towards him, he simply didn't care.

"Well I think we should go"

Stelio said and with everyone's aknowledgement they left the safety of the Dwarven City and entered the dark tunnel.

The dwarves were more than jolly to see some actions and the four heroes begun bonding as they found that they had more in common than they thought with Kris. Although he was somewhat shy and not very social, he had hobbies that were very close to theirs.

I won't talk about football, since of the three only Dimitri was somewhat hooked on football teams, the others were more into computer gaming and anime, finding a common language really fast.

Of course the dwarves were completely lost in the prattle going on between the heroes but they didn't care.

With a large enough group they went towards the closest monster infested tunnel, a tunnel connected with the Dungeon pillar, well if you went some hundreds kilometers ahead, you would end up facing the Dungeon pillar's entrance or at least one of them.

The first monster they encountered was a skeleton, or rather as they called them Skeletals. They were magicaly animated bones through the malicious miasma of magic, meaning that they have a broken soul operating the bones, but it has no intelligent all it has is its hatred towards the livings, clerics simply dispell the malice instead of the magic keeping it together.

Killing a skeletal ended up being a precious lesson to them, since even four of them together weren't able to hold the skeletal from moving and seriously wounding Kris, whom had the smart idea of trying to block its blow even with his meager 20strength which was doubled by his dwarven strength.

Kris Coughed blood with the first blow he took, the second blow didn't come to finish him off because the dwarves decided to intervene.

Eyeshooter Odin shot an arrow into the skeletal successfuly pushing it back giving Yngir Skullcrusher enough time to bash it's bones good enough for it to stop moving.

There were three ways to stop a skeletal from moving, one of course being the clerics', the second was to wreck it well enough until it stops moving, lastly mages could simply dispell them.

"Try to flank them, low ranking undead can't react fast enough to changes, meaning that a simple side hop or dodge roll will give you a large chance to attack it once or even twice if you are lucky"

Yngir said while Nibel their rune mage was healing Kris.

The other three whom didn't even the chance to hit the hit the rather fast for them skeletal creature, in truth even Kris could only block the blow somehow because of his martial arts skill and because the skeletal had made him its target.

After experiencing their first real fight, the four of them begun to think of tactics to defeat the skeletal creature, although in theory all they had to do was land one hit on it and then let the dwarves deal with it, in general that was what they were told to do, but seeing how fast the undead were when they targeted someone it was very hard to land even a single hit before being hit yourself.

The second encounter was with five skeletals at once, the dwarves of course took care of the undead leaving them with little to no chance to even land a hit on them, of course they still at least hit one of them, making insignificant damage, but it didn't matter.

Hours passed and all they found were skeletals, of course for Kris and the others its wasn't so bad, nether the less however they did their best to at least help a little.

By now they could even do something, of course the most they could do was use their powers to hold a skeletal for a few seconds.

kris' ability was called Air punch, he was able to punch someone without his power connecting, of course the chances of it succeeding were dependent on magicality, meaning that he had 24% possiblity of success, the damage of the punch however was equal to his strength 19x2(due to dwarf trait) meaning 38, which of course wasn't enough to do any significant damage to a level 100 monster.

Of course there were times they encountered lower level skeletals, which they blew into smitherins by themselves, but that wasn't really as refreshing as they thought it would be, even the experience they gained was total shit, of course the practical experience was something else since they understood that if they reached level 100, they could probably almost oneshoot the skeletal creatures.

The time was ticking and a strange shadow loomed over their hearts.

The dwarves had told them that at night time the undead became harder to fight, thus they needed to fortify their resting location.

The rune mages of their group begun casting their runes onto the surrounding walls, right where they stood.

When Stelio asked why they didn't look for a cave, since it would be easier to defend, the dwarves laughed at his proposition.

A cave with only one entrance meant that they would simply trap themselves in case of real danger, as for easy foes, there was even less reason to care about them, this was after all not the dungeon pillar and they were confident enough of protecting themselves here, every single one of them were veterans after all.

The night was silent in the underground, of course there was no clear difference between day and night in the underground but the dwarves could still tell. When asked how, they showed them a strange pocket watch, that had only one arrow and three divisions one was for summer night and day and the other was a smaller onr for winter season only.

"At night undead become unrestfull, thus it's dangerous to travel around, since by traveling you will encounter double the undead you would when waiting at one location"

A Guide called Fummodin "Goldfinger", of course his title hadn't much to do with his own profession, he could simply find gold ore easier, something about chances.

Before he used to be a miner, but decided to change his Class some said he still regreted it, but he himself seemed rather content with his decision.

"Everyone be on guard, an undead has come into range of the detection rune"

A Rune mage said and the Guides begun inspect the surrounding.

"You, you and You, protect the Skeletonslayer, we will try holding them back for you, remember to return my stone back to my kid"

The dwarf leader of Mike's group of eight said as they detected the danger to their own lives, but most important was keeping their oaths.

The Guides and rune mages begun to retreat with the heroes, leaving behind only a minimum of guides and mages for support, with their numbers only two stayed behind with the seven dwarven warriors, in truth it wasn't so surprising that the majority of the bodyguards were warriors to begin with.

the eight guides and mages escorted the heroes some way away from the battle, as they retreated the guides still shot rounds to support the fighting warriors from a distance, but as they went so far that even the sounds of battle begun to feint, the four heroes felt rather useless and pathetic.

An hour later the guides were still trying to move them as far from the battle as they could.

"What is that?"

Mike whom looked like a nerdy dwarf asked while pointing at the ceiling of the cave.

"Everyone, begin a second division, we must escort the heroes to safety"

A dwarf mage whom took control of the situation begun to fortify their location, as half of the bodyguards led the four Young heroes away from that spot.

"What was the thing on the ceiling?"

Mike asked when they had left the range of the battle and only a hint could be heard of the battle.

"They are Ghouls, in general they are feral humanoid undead that like to eat corpses, they have large claws that can easily dig through the ground which helps them in climbing and even walking on the ceiling of the caves, they are however more widely known for their brute tactics, they are really fast but rather frail in contrast to their crude strength, in one word they are suicidal"

The dwarf Guide explained, of course he didn't say that the only reason they had to divide was so that they heroes wouldn't get targeted.

In truth they planned to regroup with the others once the sounds of battle stopped, which was right about now.

"Lets return and regroup, I only hope that we won't encounter more of them"

The Dwarf Guide said as he directed them back to the location where the battle took place.

"Wait, something isn't right!"

Another Guide shouted as he looked towards the location of the battle.

At the moment there were no lights comming from the dwarven rune magic, thus making the situation rather tricky.

"Someone should Go check out the situation"

The one whom spoke was the Guide whom acted like the leader. There were only 5 dwarf bodyguards left and they were mostly guides, only one rune mage was in their midst, not that they needed multiple rune mages to begin with.

"Odin, you go check on them and return, if you don't return in ten minutes we will consider you dead and the road cut"

The Guide leader said, he didn't even give Odin a chance to protest as it seemed that he had some sort of seniority towards him.

Ten minutes passed and Odin didn't return, Kris whom lost his last bodyguard whom he sort of thought would be staying with him longer was somewhat touched in the head.

"I will go see what happened with Odin"

Kris said.

"Are you crazy, don't go blowin his noble sucrifice, we now know that the others are all dead, lets retreat towards the closest dwarven mines"

The guide said as he looked at a map of their area.

"Let him go, who cares if he wants to go and die, after all who knows he might even stumble onto that other dwarf on his way"

Dimitri said.

"But..."

The Dwarf leader wanted to say some excuse, but truth was that he didn't really have a valid reason as to obstruct the Hero from going to this own death.

"Whatever, you may go, but It would still be wiser to reach the nearest mine and wait for the warriors to return, after all we have been leaving them directions to follow, thus they won't get lost"

"Thank you..."

This was the only thing Kris said to Dimitri as he headed towards the earie tunnel.

Kris was now standing in a pool of blood, zombies, skeletons and ghouls ravaging through the corpses, he didn't dare to make a sound as he was completely terrorstricken.

"Don't even dare breathing"

A silent voice came from next to him, it was Odin whom hadn't died, but was hidding while waiting for the monsters to leave, but now the situation had grown somewhat troublesome.

"I won't ask why you came, just hold on these bottles, if you think that they have found you throw one of them towards them and then Boom, the downside is that you gain no experience from this and it might attract even more of them"

Odin said as he gave Kris two pale green, almost white, bottles to carry.

"Why do you smell so funny, don't tell me you pissin your pants?"

The dwarf asked him, but in truth the dwarf did his best not to laugh out loud.

"Charge!"

Suddenly a war shout could be heard from the distance and three dwarf warriors whom they had previously left behind appeared from the distance and begun slaughtering the Ghouls and undead in the area, from time to time Odin would support them with arrows, wounding some of the ghouls in the rear, whom were still feasting on the remnant corpses.

Of the three warriors one died in the fight and even though Yngir was still alive, Kris felt like a useless decoration in this battle.

"You think you have escaped!"

A Voice as if coming from the depths of hell could be heard from the tunnel from where the warriors had come from.

"Hero, we must run now!"

Odin said as he begun dragging Kris away from the other dwarves and the battlefield.

"We have to hurry, the vampire won't follow us into a mine, but better if we could hide you somewhere since your speed is barely enough to follow behind me when I'm walking, not to talk about running"

Odin said somewhat disatisfied, in truth if Kris hadn't come back, it would have been easy for him to stealthily disappear, of course you might ask why didn't he return in the ten minutes given to him before.

Truth was that he was about to return when he saw a few shiny items lying around, but now he only wanted to his his greedy head for this misunderstanding, after all it was understandable why an idiot whom would piss in his pants come back, it was most probably fear and loneliness. After all his bodyguards had already seen that the other three heroes weren't as close to him as they were among themselves and of his bodyguards only he was left at that moment, well their rune mage's corpse was now littering the ground and their warrior was trying to run away from the aproaching Vampire.

It was generaly impossible for him to think of a way they could survive a vampire that could take out 5 dwarven warriors and even worse he could see the thralls marching in the front, they were the dwarven warriors whom had stayed to fight the vampire to give the others time to escape, of course how could they have known that just a few tunnels away they would run into a horde of undeads, it was as if the Hero they had agreed to protect was some sort of Jinx.

Before Kris and Odin could take a few steps away the vampire's thralls had already arrived.

Thrall were regular dwarves whose blood had been sucked, and a curse had been put onto their bodies, sort of like mind control making them act like mindless zombies.

Of course the vampire, a dwarf whom had two fangs protruding from his mouth wasn't exactly the allpowerful sort.

"What the fuck is this?"

The vampire asked as it caught a potion that was thrown towards it by Kris.

"Idiot you throw that at the floor not at the person himself!"

Odin said infuriated, but what happened a few seconds afterwards made him take back his comment, as an air punch hit the potion the vampire held in its hand blowing it's right hand into smitherings, the second potion was thrown expertly at the vampire's lying body and Boom!.

"Nice assist Odin!"

Yngir said thinking that it was Odin's doing, whom he had seen shouting just then, but Yngir didn't rest, he charged with his mace towards the vampire's body and begun bashing its head until nothing but mash remained behind.

"It's rather fortunate that Noble vampires don't appear outside the dungeon pillar, those bastards won't die even with their skull crashed"

Yngir was rightly titled as the Skullcrusher.

"Well you should have gained a rather good amount of experience for this one, of course if you could kill it with explosives it would have given you zero, but since your attack now counts as an assist you can await for some sweet rewards"

The dwarf said as he continued to bash the still reforming head of the vampire, while Odin and the other warrior dwarf took care of the undeads, the thralls just stood there like idiots, since their master the vampire hadn't given them some new order.

With the vampire's final "breath", the thralls came back to their senses and the undead killing process went even faster with seven warriors and a single guide supporting them there was little they couldn't handle, in truth if not for the vampire's undead minions there was no way that they would had been turned into thralls.

Vampires have great strength, reflexes, magicality and mentality, it's greatest however weakness other than sunlight and garlic of course is their speed, which is comparable to the zombie's, they simply cannot run as fast with their corpse of a body.

Of course a vampire's considered a rank S monster since they simply collect thralls and then feed on them in some unknown place and only come out when all their thralls die to catch new ones, thus continuing an endless circle.

Of course noble vampires are even more troublesome, since their victims turn into common vampires and there are even the Feral vampires whom are practicaly wild beasts in humanoid form, which only appear at lower floors, where they are considered low rank in contrast to the strongest monsters there.

Lastly Thralls whom had their blood sucked will either turn into ghouls or zombies.

Of course the misunderstanding that Odin was the one whom threw the potion was rather hard to clear off, but the fact that it was Kris whom hit the potion to explode into the vampire's face was also clear to all the dwarves they saved.

Of course rumors about how only one of the four heroes returned with a single dwarf to save the rest of them begun at some point going out of proportion, but the facts were still there, the three heroes retreated without even fighting, while only one risking his life returned for his "fellows in arms".

Of course the main gains for Kris was the thousands of experience points he gained from the vampire as well as the even more important battle experience.

Of course the fact that he had pissed his pants was held a secret between him and Odin, whom had used a cleaning rune to hide all evidence just before the final victory, making the others think that is was to clean off the blood on his boots or something.

At Stelio home the three remaining heroes were having a gathering.

"Should we have stayed to fight, but their words the vampire shouldn't have been such a big deal, since that idiot Kris could help them beat it"

Dimitri asked, his class was exactly the same as Kris and their levels were similar, but his power was somewhat more useful, it was called Knockback kick, it had the ability to knockback any creature he kicked by a few meters, but the most important part was that till now there wasn't exactly any resistance visible to his skill, enemies simply slide backwards if he hits them, and if he does so towards when the monster's back faces a wall it will be momentarily stuned, the best however is using it to a cluster of enemies, since the effect will apply to the people behind the person as well, of course it will lose some of its might, the problem however was that it was a contact skill, while Kris' air punch was a ranged one.

"I believe that we did the right thing, it was simply not worth rushing into danger and risking ones life, remember what I told you, if you die, the dwarves put a large debt on your head, right now we already have a small debt due to our bodyguards dying, but it's not as tragic as dying yourself, a bodyguard's death will cost you 100million points if you want to resurrect him, but letting him dead costs you nothing, but if you want to resurrect yourself, that will cost you one billion points, of course the dwarves love to have strong heroes indebted to them, do you however know what's the price for recruiting new bodyguards?"

Stelio asked them, he had already gathered all the info he needed for this Quest and their best interests.

"Is it 1million or something?"

Mike asked, of course 1million was 1/100th of the resurrection fee, but Stelio Shook his head negatively.

"10 millions?"

Nope yet again.

"Come on tell us"

Mike asid rather interested expecting something interesting.

"100dp, meaning a simple 100points can buy you a common warrior, 200points can buy you a Guide and 1000points a rune mage"

His words made the two others gape in surprise, the value of life by the dwarves was simply too low, they sold their lives for a mere 100dp, of course that was the price for a single mission, but a mission could last for days, like escort missions and monster hunts, mostly done for materials, of course the dwarves or adventurers they hire wouldn't be sworn to protect them like the bodyguards, meaning that they wouldn't die for them, but that wasn't what they wanted to begin with.

Simply speaking, what they wanted was someone to kill monsters for them, the remaining bodyguards would be responsible for protecting them, while the adventurers would kill monsters all they had to do was land a hit or two on the monsters before they die.

"Brilliant, should we inform Kris as well?"

Mike said as he was ready to go tell him.

"No reason to do so, if he asks then you can tell him, but until then let him play the hero a little"

Stelio said as he had a demonic smile on his face Smurf face.

Of course Kris not even a day later was called to the Palace and given the title of Dwarven hero and a debt of 10millions after having his rune mage resurrected.

There was of course a reasons why he only had to pay 10M, one tenth of the total price, first was because they had brought Nibel's body back with them and secondly because he was now the Dwarven hero.

Of course his three bodyguards now saw him as one of them and even as someone great, after all not every hero would fall into debt to resurrect a common npc soldier by their side.

Nibel was a common rune mage, the price of having a common rune mage swear an oath to you didn't go over ten thousand points, while hiring a talented one didn't go over a hundred thousands, meaning that it was considerably cheaper to simply get a new bodyguard rather than reviving a weak one.

Nibel didn't even know what to say, he had already swore the oath to protect the hero till death to lift his daily debt, but now he sincerely swore once more with tears in his eyes, after all no one wanted to die, the memory of them getting overun by undead creatures was still fresh in his mind, the desperate struggle and the unwillingness to die on his fellow kinsmen's faces.

Resurrection was like Waking up from a terrible nightmare.

Of course were was a price to pay other than death and that was a loss of a level and for him whom was already over level 100, this was a rather large loss, meaning something around 2mil experience lost, of course it was a cheap price for returning to life.

The price of resurrection of course wasn't 1billion points like Stelio said, that was the cost of resurrection without a body or a soulstone, in other words it's complete resurrection without even a scrap of the person's flesh, not even a photo was needed, they simply resurrected the person, it was of course the most expensive and costly resurrection.

Next in price was the 100mil resurrection, where you needed to have the soulstone of the person with you, without the body or the way around.

Next for 10mil was the resurrection with a body and a soulstone which made it a lot easier.

Of course if they weren't a dwarf their resurrection fee would only be around 1-10mil, it was the dwarven spirit trait that made resurrecting them a pain in the ass, but also a great way to make more weath for the Ecclesia Country since no noble would let their child simply die.

By the end of the month whom had profited most was still questionable, since although both met their quotas, both Kris and the other heroes were now in debt to the Dwarven country, one for resurrecting a single person, while the others for hiring multiple people for every outing. Of course for them the small loses in the beginning were inevitable, but as their level would rise, they will at some moment enjoy profit, it's like a small shop that just opened and this debt was a loan in order for the shop to flourish and become a large shop chain.

For Kris however whose information gathering ability was zero, he ended in a debt, meaning that he would be unable to enjoy his stay at this fantasy world and his equipment and supplies could only be subpar to theirs.

It wasn't like they were hateful of him or anything, it was simple envy of sorts, after all everyone would be envy of someone whom casualy bought a jackpot and won, it's common logic.

To them at the moment, Kris fame was no different than him winning the jackpot once, but then going and losing it all through gambling and being left in debt instead.

Of course in one month's time they had seen huge improvements, non the less however the greatest improvements were Kris' as he rose from level 2 to the striking level of 42, as the others were still crawling at level 9 and 17, with Dimitri being the lowest level, while the other two begun enchancing their levels through their production skills, one simply produced crap and then destroyed them and repaired them, the other simply tried to comunicate and tame pets bought by the goblins, whom were called as experts at taming, but truth was that their pets weren't exactly as timid as cats and dogs, they were even known to eat their own masters when hungry, since goblins were too stupid to care about a few gobs gone missing in their animal pens to begin with.

Leaving Dimitri in the dust as he tried his hardest to catch up to them through hunting in the tunnels.

Kris however had trully hit the jackpot, the vampire that was killed had given him enough experience to proppel him to level 21, but being able to attack from a distance with his power and magic rune was enough to earn experience, simply by mimicking the others, employing the same adventurers the other did.

Of course his debt didn't go down, but the country didn't care, this was as much an investment to begin with and if they could make him friends with the trio of bodyguards they were willing to give him a layway out, even if his debt was 10mil dwarf points, they still let him buy supplies and equipment, as they thought that in the future it will all come back as profit anyway.