Alex didn’t say anything, just nodded back to Valerian as the man moved to the edge of the clearing.

Daven turned to him from the ground, then grinned when he saw his expression. “First time is it?” Alex nodded again, numb, and the archer laughed. “Awesome. Diana and I haven’t been to many, but it’s quite the experience. Don’t worry about it, though. Cedric and Val will have our backs.”

“You’re certain you’re talking about a dungeon and not an orgy, right?” Alex said, pushing himself up.

Daven cackled. “Let your mind decide for itself, my friend.” He rose too, clapping him in the shoulder with even more familiarity than before. Apparently, he had decided they were friends.

“Don’t listen to the kid, Alex,” Cedric said when Daven moved off after the pony. He was coming up from the center of the clearing, a reassuring smile on his face. Diana followed behind him, except her attention was solely on the strange wooden token she held in her hands. It looked like a stake of some kind, or half of it at least, as it seemed to have been cut straight down the middle.

That must be whatever they had been looking at, he thought curiously.

Tearing his eyes away from the token, he asked, “Is there a reason to go to a dungeon instead of chasing in the forest?” Alex wanted to go, yes, but he couldn’t help being apprehensive. He was only level three after all.

“That was the plan all along, actually, until Daven spotted the Wild Boar tracks,” the leader of the crew said. “As long as it’s pruned some three times a year, a dungeon like this one shouldn’t be spewing its monsters outside, and I was part of the group who last did it not three months ago. Imagine my surprise to see the boars roaming the forest.”

Alex stopped to consider those words. “Does that mean anything?”

Cedric shrugged. “Nothing in and of itself. Chasing is not an exact science after all. We can check the records later at the village to see if anything like this has happened before, but really it’s no matter. If it’s just the Wild Boars that are coming outside earlier than they should, then it’s really not a big deal.”

“I killed a Killer Sloth early,” Alex offered, “outside the dungeon.”

The crew leader waved a hand airily. “It’s still a first stage monster, and this is a fairly tame dungeon all things considered. Killer Sloth, maybe a Bushtail or two, it's the worst it can get.”

Alex didn’t say anything, but this sounded too much like trouble to ignore it. That’s how the stories went, right? He was dropped into the world, then a problem that had been piling up under everyone’s noses slaps him in the cheek, and it’s his outside perspective that allows him to see the reality of the situation. And, of course, there’s always some disbelieving local blinding himself and others to the truth until it blows up in all their faces.

Should I? he asked himself.

Even if Alex was hesitant to participate, he had to admit it was an opportunity. Both for personal growth, as there was certainly no better way to level up than to go dungeon diving, but also for knowledge—knowledge of a world he barely understood. Starting things out at this tame dungeon was better than some other hellish place. As long as he could safely complete it, then he had no reason not to.

“Alright, let’s go then,” Cedric announced. “It’s an hour’s walk to the dungeon border from this spot, if I’m not mistaken. Let’s get this over with and get back to Riverbend in time for supper.”

The rest of the crew nodded, and Alex went along with it. He had forgotten all his last compunctions in going to a dungeon after he heard the word supper.

xx

Alex had breathed a sigh of relief when he first saw the road. It wasn’t anything special, a dirt aisle cutting through the forest, only wide enough for one way wagon-traffic and some room to squeeze past. But it was something. A sign of civilization.

For someone who’d grown up in a modern city his whole life it was a sight for sore eyes. I better get used to it, though, he’d thought. From what he’d seen, he would be visiting the woods more often than not from now on. City parks and the occasional school trip summed up his previous field experience, but let it not be said he wasn’t a fast learner. I killed a man-sized sloth with a fucking wooden stick, damn it! That had to count for something.

The crew had first passed through dense forest much like Alex had become used to in this world, and sometimes Valerian or Cedric had to stop and lift the wagon whole out of a hollow or carry it over large roots that got in their way. He tried to help once, but discreetly begged off when he couldn’t raise it an inch off the ground. That level of strength served to prove to him that these were far from ordinary people, especially when the siblings had taken it all in stride.

Daven had caught sight of his attempt—because of course he had—and the next five minutes had been a lecture in ribbing that had Alex taking deep breaths to calm himself at times, and reluctantly holding in his laughter at others. The archer wasn’t particularly eloquent—at least in the formal way of things, which was strange since his sister certainly seemed to be from their conversation earlier—but he did have a clever way to make simple words seem overly offensive or absurdly hilarious.

At some point after they hit the road, Diana had taken out the token again, scrutinizing it so thoroughly it was a surprise she managed to keep walking straight. Alex had given it only a passing glance just for the sake of curiosity, but when blue light started shining from between her hands he knew he had to check.

Daven caught his look, muttered something along the lines of, “Not another magic-head,” and went ahead to speak with Valerian and Cedric who walked by the pony.

Shrugging, Alex slowly fell back from the wagon to get a better look, and soon enough he was walking by her side, peering at her work. Diana’s thumb and index finger on her right hand glowed with a soft blue light at their tips, and she ran them over the face of the token with the care of an artisan. Her brows were furrowed with focus, and despite her blue eyes being fixed at the half-stake, she seemed to be looking at something deeper, something beyond it.

Alex squinted, and for the first time he spotted something different about the piece. Grooves ran all along the surface of the wood. No, not just grooves. They were markings, small and thin, clustered together, too regular to be anything other than a form of script. Is that what she is looking at? No, there’s something else.

“Interested, are you?”

Alex looked up. Diana was staring right back at him, an eyebrow raised. The blue light on her fingers dimmed until they were a healthy pink again.

“Should I not be?” Alex tried for nonchalance, as if he had not just been caught peeping. “It’s an interesting work of magic, whatever it is. Can’t say I’ve seen it before.” He thought maybe it was one of the relics she mentioned, but he didn’t want to say it out loud just to be proved wrong.

She watched him for a moment, as if trying to spot some nefarious intention beneath his words. “It’s a Siren,” she finally said, “or that’s what I call it.” Then she took out another, smaller piece of wood from a pocket. “In reality it just sends a signal to this piece if something or someone were to remove the main token from its place. I made it myself. ” The last words were whispered, but he could hear the pride behind them, even if she tried to hide it.

“I thought you said you weren’t trained?” he asked.

“I did,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t train myself.”

Alex nodded meaningfully. He had no basis on whether that was good or not in this world’s context, but it certainly sounded impressive. A method of long-distance communication achieved through magic. In a primitive society, it would be the equivalent to a smartphone.

Diana hadn’t made a move to hide the pieces as she kept inspecting them, so Alex kept stealing glances at the tokens.

“Are those... runes or something?” he chanced.

She shot him a sidelong glance. “Or something.” She bit her lip for a moment, then continued, “It’s a form of poetry—song, really. Well, both. When written, they are poetry. But if I were to speak them, it would be in songform. That’s how you activate them, actually.” Proffering the piece to him with one hand, she nodded reassuringly. “You want to give it a try?”

Alex’s hand was half-raised before he caught the twitch of her lips and he snapped it back to his side. He glared at her. “You’re fucking with me.”

“We’re walking, actually,” she said, a cheeky smile on her face.

“Well then.” Alex shook his head, then laughed despite himself. “Now I know you weren’t trained in comedy either.”

Diana chuckled with him. Her eyes fell back to the token, but after a few moments of walking in silence, she looked at him again. “You’re actually interested?” Her voice sounded guarded somehow.

“I’m sure I led the conversation with that.”

“Right, right. It’s just…” she trailed off, then shook her head. “Nevermind.”

Alex frowned. There was a story there, but he had no intention of poking into it. It wasn’t his problem. “So… are those things runes or not?” he tried again.

“Oh, right.” She flushed at her lapse for a second, before clearing her throat. “Uhm yes, they are runes. You never heard of them?”

He thought for a moment, and decided to just go for it. “Not really,” he said. “Should I have?”

“No, no. I mean, it makes sense, if you haven’t been trained or spoken with someone who was. They’re not that common. Few mages path that direction. As for what they are, well, think of them as a language of sorts, which you write or carve on an anchor.” She pointed at the finely-carved lines engraved in the wood. They were arrayed in small clusters, some jagged and harsh, others curved and elegant. “They act as a guidebook—very specific instructions to what arcane power should do. Really, they can do anything.” Diana’s cheeks reddened again as she spoke, but it was more excitement than any embarrassment. “They need a stable power source to work, and the anchor needs to be stable and power-conductive. If you don’t have those, at best the whole thing will simply not work, at worst you’ll soon find yourself short of a hand.”

“Huh.” Was his dumb response. “Arcane power, you said. I know what that is, I mean…” He trailed off before he could say anything more. Did he even know if these people had a system like he did, with status and skills and health points? Should he risk speaking about it?

Alex licked his lips. “I still haven’t picked it yet, even if it sounds interesting,” he said, watching for her reaction. “I just didn’t know enough about it, and the other elements were pretty self-evident.”

Diana nodded as if she expected the answer. “It was my third choice too, and I only did it because a chaser Daven and I ran into a couple of years ago was kind enough to explain the possibilities of it to me. When I plateaued again, she even unsealed the Gate of Runes from my sight.”

“That was nice of her,” Alex said, though all he could do was think of the meaning behind her words. He understood the gist of it, of course, it lined up similarly enough with his system. Gates would be the proficiencies, plateauing meant to level up, sealed skills could be the locked ones for him, and sight might just be the system itself, or how the people of this world viewed it. Most likely, what he had was based on how magic worked here. But if it was so similar, why not just give him the same thing? Still, he would have to be careful with what he said until he caught up to everything. “So runes is a skill that must be… taught, somehow?”

“Yes and no.” She rolled a thumb along the many runes on the face of the siren. “Every mage has to craft his own runes. You can’t use those of your teacher, you won’t even understand them. But someone who has the gate already unsealed can guide you in the process of doing it. A good enough grasp of arcane power is the only requirement.”

“Makes sense if you need one for the other,” he said, then added, “How good of a grasp do you need it to have though? Two, three plateaus? Maybe five?”

“What?” Diana frowned. “You mean how much I’ve trained with it?”

Alex shook his head. “No, no. More like, how many times did you have to pick the Gate of Arcane after plateauing in order to be able to unseal the Gate of Runes?” He spoke cautiously, trying to measure every word that came out of his mouth.

Diana glanced at him for a moment, as if to make certain he was serious, then snorted. “You really are new at this, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“It doesn’t work like that, Alex.” She sighed as if she was speaking to a child. “You can’t just pick a Gate again to get better at it. It takes years of practice to master a skill. Most people never do.”

Alex came to a full stop in the middle of the road, his mind reeling.

Diana took a few more steps before she noticed him and turned back. “What now?”

“Wait.” Alex put two hands up, more to stop his own racing thoughts than anything. He needed to understand exactly what was going on. “You’re telling me you can’t just pick a gate again and again after you plateau to get better at it?” His status screen was open in front of his eyes, and he was focused on one part only.

[Skill Points]: 1

Fire Proficiency - 2/5

Water Proficiency

Lightning Proficiency

...

“Yesss,” Diana said with a patronizing roll of the tongue. “What part did you not understand?”

Her tone was beyond aggravating, but Alex couldn’t seem to care about it at all. He had to do everything he could not to break out into a grin.

“Oh no, I got it,” he said. “I got that all right.”