Looking at the notifications, I got some answers though they weren’t terribly informative. The obvious ones were a pair of level-up notifications, bringing me to sixty-five, one that told me that my Darkness Magic had risen to fifty. Additionally, there was one telling me that the Dungeon Explorer Title had been ungraded because we earned it again, increasing the amount of EXP we gained when completing a dungeon for the first time even further.

The level-ups spiralled into additional notifications, especially the ones that displayed my increased attributes, those coming from my class, two Intelligence and one Intuition, alongside those coming from the Dragon-Touched Trait, one in each attribute, and the two unassigned ones.

Those points brought two attributes to relevant levels, namely my Dexterity and Vitality to thirty each, both granting minor traits for that achievement. Dexterous Shaper slightly improved my accuracy when shaping things with my hands, while the Sunlight Resistance trait greatly decreased the harmful effects of Sunlight on my body. It took me a moment to realise why the second trait sounded so much more useful, before realising that it was because of my special circumstances. For a normal person, the Sunlight Resistance Trait would be almost useless, unless they were living in a desert or something like that. Sunscreen could most likely accomplish similar effects, so having a trait for something that could be accomplished with something that simple would be a disappointment to many. In opposition to that, the Dexterous Shaper trait was fairly useless to me, it might help a bit with my Runes and casting them, but ultimately, I mostly did my shaping with magic, not with my hands. Still, having the traits, and being able to pick whether I wanted one for Intelligence or Intuition next was quite neat. However, it did bring back the decision paralysis that had plagued me for the last few weeks until I had made the snap decision in the Dungeon.

Something to think about later.

In addition to these fairly obvious notifications, there were some that shed a little light on the situation. One was quite interesting, telling me that we had defeated the Anomaly, still indicating its level as ??, gaining a massive chunk of EXP in the process. It was almost en-par with what we, according to the next message, had gained for defeating the Dungeon, and together it answered the question of how I had gained two levels. The notification about defeating the Dungeon also indicated that we had pushed the Disturbance at the Waldhof back into the Dark, making me wonder if there was another way to complete it, but given that we couldn’t even see the hotel any longer, I doubted we’d be able to enter it again. If the dungeon was still there at all, we wouldn’t be able to enter it again. Maybe another group could, at some point, enter and force the anomaly into the light, or whatever the opposite to pushing it into the dark was.

“Everyone alright?” I quietly called out, still a little too exhausted to push myself up from where I was lying.

“We’re fine,” Lia replied, while Silva let out an affirmative huff, to which Luna added a soft, but somewhat positive groan. “Any idea what exactly happened there?” Lia asked and going by the tone of her voice, she was as confused as I was, maybe even more so.

“We killed it? The anomaly and the dungeon, I mean,” I replied, trying to sound more convincing than I felt.

“But how? We were just fighting those creepy plushes, once they were destroyed the baby-mouth-tentacle thing showed up, wailing and flailing, before it vanished again. And then the world went wonky, what was that?” Lia prodded, making me wonder how the fight was supposed to play out if you didn’t have a powerful Darkness Spellcaster on your side. I doubted fighting the anomaly in the shadows was the only way, it was too specialised an ability for that to make sense.

“Did you notice I vanished at the beginning of the fight?” I asked, pausing for a moment before continuing, “I stepped into the shadows and tried to wrestle control from that thing, it was stupidly powerful. Until it disappeared, likely because it appeared in the normal world. At that moment, I had all the power channelled into the Darkness by that thing and myself at my disposal, but it was too much for me to really control. I tried to funnel it back into the Astral River but then, the thing was back and I did the simplest thing I could, I used all that power I had to strike at it. We all saw the results, that’s what happens when too much reality-warping power is unleashed all at once,” I felt my lips curl into a grin, knowing just how insane the effect had been. Darkness existed everywhere in the physical world, sitting in the gaps and cracks of reality so that much Darkness had some incredibly interesting effects. Sadly, I doubted I’d be able to play with such effects for quite some time unless I could accomplish an effect similar to the one created by the anomaly.

“Oh, I also managed to grab these before we jumped out,” I told them, picking up the items I had grabbed on the way out. Now, with more than a few split seconds to look at them, I could see that one of them was a fairly ornate dagger with its sheath, again decorated with an eagle motive, one was a large glass stein and the last one was a pair of leather combat boots, I had just grabbed the shoestrings when leaving.

There was something drawing my attention to the dagger and when I used Inspect on it, I realised that it was similar enough to the one I had on Mundus, including some runes that improved the flow of magic through it. There was another eagle set into the pommel and one again, I was quite glad that the eagle wasn’t carrying a swastika. Having to decide whether the discomfort of carrying that symbol around with me was worth the benefit was not a decision I wanted to make. The item itself was a dedicated Athame, crafted to improve the effects of Blood Magic when using it to draw the blood while increasing the user’s Dexterity and Intelligence while holding it. It wouldn’t be terribly useful most of the time, I usually didn’t hold a weapon in hand while fighting, but I’d certainly be able to make use of it. I wasn’t sure whether I liked the name, Blutklinge, but wasn’t about to throw away a useful weapon simply because the name and decorations didn’t sit well with me.

Looking at the boots, and Inspecting them at the same time, I quickly realised these weren’t for me. They increased Strength and Endurance, while increasing the damage dealt by kicks, making them a neat fit for Lia, if they actually fit her feet. But given that the Pickelhaube we had put on Silva earlier had moved into something perfectly fitting on her canine head, I had little doubt that the boots would fit Lia. Moments after handing them over, my thoughts were confirmed when the boots shrunk just a little bit, moulding themselves to Lia’s feet, including the thick, nailed soles and the steel caps protecting her toes. After the earlier experience, I was just numb to the magic going on, though I did make a note to take a look at them later. If I wanted to learn how to enchant items, taking good looks at those we discovered was necessary.

Lastly, the Stein I had taken. There was magic about it, that much was obvious, and I wasn’t disappointed when I inspected it. It had two primary effects, one was that harmful effects caused by anything drunk from it were reduced, and the other was that drinking from it increased the drinker’s vitality by one for a day., with a maximum of five people having the effect at the same time. An interesting item for sure, especially that first effect, how could a stein determine what was harmful and what was not? As the old saying goes, the dosage made the poison, if consumed in large enough quantities anything could be harmful, and a lot of normally poisonous substances were incredibly potent and beneficial drugs when used in the correct dosage.

Adding another item to my list of things I wanted to figure out, I put the mug into my backpack and the five of us got ready to depart. The dungeon was, according to the best of our knowledge, dealt with, though I would come back during the next night, trying to figure out a little more. But for now, I was simply too tired and exhausted to try wrestling with things that couldn’t be, or understanding how and why the world had come apart at the seams. Those were questions best dealt with while having a rested mind, or while completely and utterly drunk. Currently, I was neither so dealing with them had to wait.