“This is the crawling, please don’t touch it,” Stephanie said, pointing at a suspiciously dungeon core like object. “The defense signature is quite extensive for people not keyed in.”

“This here,” the receptionist pointed at the metal rod holding the object that looked like a dungeon core, “Is the mana inlet. With sufficient mana control you can channel the precise amount needed to run the crawling at a desired strength.”

Kent didn’t really have any attention to spare for what the receptionist was saying. His eyes were fixated on what looked like a dungeon core, with a few cracks within. While he wasn’t supposed to touch it, he could identify it.

Dungeon Interface – Crawling of Farburg

Variable Level Dungeon – Artificial – Crown of Issar

Charge: Level 7

Reopening Schedule – 0.1 second

Current Group Size - Null

Dungeon Interaction – Artificial Dungeon “Crawling of Farburg”

Forced Open/Shatter Core/Release Core

He didn’t get an item descriptor back as he had expected, instead the dungeon interface lay before him. That also meant that he had some options. Which in itself was interesting, yet he wouldn’t touch any of them. This time around he however got no ‘Notes’, explaining what the system abilities were. What was interesting was that shattering the core was seemingly not an option. Not like he would have considered that much in the first place. He was however deeply intrigued in releasing the core. The avowal he had received previously was neat, and more abilities akin to his sleep control would surely be advantageous.

But releasing the core would most likely cause a beheading or some such. Being murdered just seconds after gaining a powerup would certainly ruin an alright day. So, he didn’t attempt it.

As he stood there the charge went up to level eight, nine, and further.

The receptionist switched the hand with which she touched the metal construct below the dungeon core and, if Kent’s senses were to be trusted, he saw a very small trickle of mana flow into the object for a moment.

‘Small’ in this case, was of course a quantifier of the stream's size, and not the actual mana transferred. Attributing any sort of mana density to another’s mana required a lot of practice and a high affinity for such. Kent, as far as he knew, had neither. But the diameter of the stream spoke of at least moderate skill, which came either from high magical attributes, a lot of practice, or both.

Kent would have loved to figure out what exactly was going on, but regardless of what he identified, the only change was that the dungeon interface updated. As it reached a charge of level seventeen, the receptionist turned to Estes.

“I think five levels higher is a sufficient challenge,” which left her with a grunt as a response.

But the moment Stefanie interrupted the flow of mana – incidentally just as it reached eighteen – a rift opened around the dungeon core, the edges slightly blurred with an orange haze. The first impression was quite a bit different from the previous dungeon Kent had seen, the black void that gazed at him certainly was quite a bit different. It felt ominous, dark, and dangerous. Instead of a welcoming, cool light, and turrl chittering akin to the previous dungeon he was greeted by the darkness of night.

“Alright, get in. You have about an hour and a half. See you later.”

With those words, the receptionist left the room. As he turned around to his companions, he just barely saw Estes stepping through the rift. Agatha was nowhere to be seen.

Since it looked very similar to what he had been told dungeons looked like, he saw no reason not to follow the others. With a few fast steps, he stepped closer to where the pair had vanished, and with resolve, he stepped through the void in the world.

For a single breath, he lost his sense of orientation and location but quickly gathered himself again. When he was steady and no longer had to stare on the black monotonous ground to avoid falling over, he raised his eyes directly at Estes who was standing in front of him. The imposing statue of the man in front of him paled in comparison to what he was seeing. Pure blackness surrounded them. There was something to the space that gave Kent a rough understanding of the layout of the place, his depth perception still worked, though only if he focused.

Something in the very core of his being resonated with the space, but he couldn’t really pay any attention to it with everything else going on.

Expecting Estes' voice to reach his ear he jerked slightly when it wasn’t the first thing that Kent heard. The space seemingly anticipated that someone was going to speak up and sent a shivering copy of Kent’s voice throughout the dungeon. The garbled mess of sounds that sounded like him but made no sense had him shivering.

As quickly as they had appeared, they vanished again. This time, the softer sounding voice of Agatha from his side grabbed his attention.

“Don’t worry about the loss of orientation and the phantom voices,” she said. “You get used to it with training and exposure. Just be glad that you ended up here, there is a crawling in Tistin that echoes with the screams of the dead. I heard that they had a bard in here once and even the assessor struggled to keep his composure .”

It wasn’t the disorientation that niggled Kent, but rather the overall oddness of the place. Estes laid a hand on Kent’s shoulder and led him to the woman standing a bit further away from the entrance.

“First things first, Kent,” Estes began explaining. “You remember the rule about not using your own weapons. Well, there isn’t anything for you to worry about in that regard, so just ignore it for the most part. Using weapons made of mana-conducting materials or with properties like thaumic or absorbing can be dangerous in here. Similarly, other materials and alloys of such origin are ill-advised. The rest is basically fair game. Enchantments are also tough on the lower-level iterations of this dungeon but we also don’t have to worry about that. Mana skills should also be avoided unless you have charged the core higher than what you require.”

Kent barely, just barely, listened. Instead, he stared disappointedly at his interface. He had hoped for a new quest for dungeon completion but it seemed there was none. Maybe due to the artificial status of the dungeon, or maybe due to it having been cleared beforehand.

“Now,” the man continued. “This all doesn’t really apply to you. Of course, getting used to your own weapons would be advantageous, but the crap you carry doesn’t even qualify as a weapon to the system, so you might not even be able to apply most dagger-based system skills to those. Now, hand Agatha one for some testingwhile you and I look for one that suits you.”

Kent handed off his shabby knife and the two remaining blades made from a canteen to his newfound instructor – who stepped out of the dungeon to test them. Upon inquiring about her leaving he was informed that Agatha would try out skills that could otherwise be copied by the phantoms. He followed Estes to a table close to the dungeon’s exit point that had several weapon racks and tables with metallic looking objects. They were all weapons he quickly determined.

With some input from Estes, he decided on a couple of metallic looking – but not feeling – knives.

“Don’t ask me what exactly is going on with this stuff, but basically those daggers will act as though they are made of steel when interacting with dungeon material. Otherwise, they will be this weird almost-wooden texture as you no doubt can tell. They might also work with your metal skill.”

“This is odd,” Kent determined. “I can even feel something like grain, but it looks like metal.”

Kent followed through with checking whether it actually qualified as metal by quickly using Metallic Presence for a brief moment to determine whether it really did. Having confirmed that the items did indeed qualify, he readied himself for what is perhaps a daring question.

“You’ll get used to it. Next point. You won’t be able to hurt either me or Agatha with those weapons, but that doesn’t mean that you should act carelessly with them. Finally, we will encounter specters or apparitions further in. With time they become a copy of you and the skills you use in the dungeon. Not just you but everyone that uses skills in the dungeon. But primarily yours because you are the closest in level to the dungeon. Any questions?”

“Yes, what exactly is the plan?”

“Oh,” Agatha chuckled from the entrance. “This is brilliant. You are going to fight those specters of course. What else did you expect? Us to show off what we can do? Also, kiddo, your knives are crap. I was only able to cast my foundational skills through your stuff and uhm both of them kinda broke when I tried core skills. I’ll give you a replacement from my stock one once we are out. That alright with you? No need to go home and cry to mommy.”

Kent’s eyes lit up. He in fact was very happy about that offer. Anything would be better than those things. And he still had his thaumic dagger and the kitchen knife. Those he hadn’t dared parting with for exactly that reason.

“Wooow! Calm down there, buddy,” his grin must have shown on his face to elicit such a reaction from Agatha. “I’m gonna give you my worst knife but don’t you worry, it’s still going to be better than the one I just broke. It will also allow you to use Core skills without breaking. It’s made for throwing, not that good at stabbing stuff so there you go.”

“Either way,” she continued, she pointed over her shoulder. “Over there is the first specter, I’d advise you to start slow and steady. The specter is going to learn all the movements and skills you use. The only thing it can’t replicate is your trait, so use that as your trump card to finish a fight if you can’t otherwise. Logically that implies that once you need your trait to finish a fight you should leave the dungeon. It’ll get dangerous otherwise.”

Use my trait to get out of danger… You are funny. Even his fake trait version was crappy at best, and there was no way he could gain an edge over a combatant that had copied all his skills, he would need help sooner or later.

“Na, using his trait is not gonna work. It’s a low-tier defensive ability. Mostly against projectiles, and even that only to a lesser degree against specific projectiles. We should not let him practice without our oversight. In the upcoming days until Kent can safely retreat from the apparitions. The safeword is ‘help’. You got it Kent?”

“Uhm sure,” he responded.

There wasn’t much else to consider as he slowly approached the grayish black figure – a silhouette roughly mimicking his own. It mirrored his actions, stepping towards him with rigid steps. It almost looked hesitant, fearful, and uncertain but most of all overcautious.

Those were his emotions.

It mimicked him down to the convulsed fingers around the dungeon-made dagger.

To the previous passive emotions, new ones came. Annoyance and anger at his own reaction quickly triumphed over the others – those weren’t adopted by the phantom, at least not initially.

They were only a few steps apart from each other, but neither had attacked yet.

Specter of Kent Larsson – Level 18 Apparition

That’s just great. The dungeon even knows my name. Seems like I need to be extra careful in here. No using any skills I don’t want to be public knowledge, I guess. Better safe than sorry and assume that the dungeon has the functionality to record my actions and skills.

Standing just a single step apart from each other, they made eye contact. The eyes of the creature were hollow, barely translucent, letting light fall on something deeper within. Something that might be a weak point. There was a lot that Kent considered before making his first attack. Estes had previously mentioned that less movement would always be ideal since it would give you more options for later fights. Within the confines of the crawling it would be vital to only show new moves to your opponents when you were certain it would enable you to win the fight with that same move.

Somehow, Kent felt bad. He consciously knew that dungeon monsters were always a threat, yet this one didn’t attack him.

According to both Agatha and Estes, that was because it couldn’t. Could he really attack someone just straight up out of the blue?

Kent thrust the dagger in his right hand towards the abdomen of the creature. The dark silhouette, not entirely physical seeming, took a step back almost like the reverse of how Kent had approached the creature in the first place. With Penetrate he might not have missed but it would have been worse to give the monster all his cards from the get-go.

The very same attack he had started with came down on his arm from a previously unarmed silhouette. Its movements a bit slower than his, but almost completely mirroring them. The dagger in the apparition’s hand imitated his own slash but towards the hand instead of towards Kent’s gut. It was too slow. Meanwhile, Kent had slightly re-adjusted his grip and was slashing backwards towards the monster’s arm.

Upon impact his opponent’s hand twitched briefly in response to the impacting dagger. Moments later the metallic clinks of the dungeon-made knife echoed over the floor and all throughout the dungeon, dropped by the monster’s hand.

With one of the monster’s hands disabled, Kent moved back inside the monster’s reach and went for the other arm. He considered a feint, but teaching the opponent feints would not be smart so he just went straight forward. Instead of dodging his approaching dagger the apparition plunged its dagger sidewards – just like Kent had disabled its other hand.

The same pattern repeated a few times, Kent slowly gaining the upper hand through simple motions and by the virtue of having his opponent at a disadvantage. In the end he didn’t win by disabling the other arm, but simply by outmaneuvering the monster and stabbing its throat with a well-placed dagger.

There was no reaction on the monster’s face, most likely because Kent hadn’t shown pain yet but he was positively encouraged by how much the fight had seemingly done for his capabilities with a knife. He already felt more secure and there was little doubt that he had made at least a few experience points of progress with Mosquito.

But that wasn’t the biggest surprise after the encounter. He had gained roughly one percent of experience. He would be able to level in here.