The plan was supposed to be action. Levi wasn’t sure what lay ahead of him, but he wanted to face it head on, to drown his sorrows in battle. Each step he took, each room he cleared was concrete proof he was doing something, moving forward. Instead, he was sitting on the ground, back against the tunnel wall, trying to decide which skill to take. He had been sitting there for almost half an hour.

[Available skills: Organization, Driving, Musicality, Exploration, Retreat, Meditation, Berserker’s Rage, Combat Sense, Killing Fist, Battledance, Unyielding, Manabody, Aura of Slaughter.]

It was a hard choice, made all the harder when he didn’t actually know what the skills did. It felt like he was playing Russian Roulette with his survival chances. Choose Mediation and gain a skill to help him focus his mind or choose Berserker’s Rage and get a skill to make him lose it. Except, knowing the System, who knew what the names actually meant. Unyielding could refer to something Willpower related, or it could make him able to hold it in and not need to pee. It felt like a total crapshoot.

He needed to choose eventually, and he had narrowed down his choices a little at least. His older skills were out. He wanted Meditation, but it would have to wait. He could always get it later. Next level in fact, if he really wanted to. If he was right and skills were unlocked based on actions, then the new skills all had something to do with battle. Some of the names suggested that too, and that was the kind of skill he needed. He couldn’t have killed all those goblins without Brawling helping him fight better.

Out of the new skills, Berserker’s Rage was immediately out. He didn’t want that kind of skill. Same for Aura of Slaughter. Killing Fist seemed too focused, so that was out as well. That left him with four options.

Of those, he was leaning towards Manabody or Combat Sense. Unyielding did God knows what, and Battledance was also a little nebulous from the name. And if he was going off of the name, which, to be fair, he basically had to, Combat Sense and Manabody seemed like safe bets. Combat Sense presumably did what its name implied: gave him a combat sense. This seemed like something incredibly useful, but he did already have Brawling, so it might not be quite as necessary as before. Manabody also seemed like exactly what he wanted. He couldn’t be sure, but if he went off of name components, it should help boost his Aecylic Empowerment. Aecylic Energy was a form of mana, or he thought it was, so something that had to do with mana and his body sounded like the perfect thing to boost a mana empowerment skill.

He had to make a choice eventually. One short inhale and long exhale later, Levi made his selection.

[Unlocked skill: Manabody! This skill allows for greater ease and ability when augmenting the body with any form of mana, as well as using the body as a medium to channel mana. This skill is associated with: Attunement, Attunement, Constitution.]

Levi’s neck relaxed, his head leaning back against the wall, letting out tension he hadn’t even known he was holding. This seemed perfectly suited to supporting Aecylic Empowerment, and the fact that it had three stat associations hopefully meant it was powerful too. Trepidation filled him as he slowly flared Aecylic Empowerment. He needn’t have worried. It was immediately apparent how his new skill helped him, the energy noticeably easier to control as he guided it around his body.

He jumped to his feet, swinging his fists, punching imaginary enemies. Whereas before Aecylic Energy felt like a foreign substance flowing through his veins, now it felt natural, the energy feeling like just another part of him. He had a feeling that it would also allow him to channel more too, especially as he leveled up the skill.

With renewed focus, Levi started back down the tunnel, more confident than ever in breaking through the dungeon and finally escaping.

The tunnel stretched onwards, twisting and turning, raising Levi’s hackles every time he rounded a corner, expecting blades to swing down the ceiling in an attempt to bisect him. Nothing appeared, and the first sign something had changed was when he reached up to wipe the copious amounts of sweat from his brow.

Feeling his wet hand, Levi paused, taking in his surroundings. It was hot. He wasn’t sure when it had started, but the temperature had noticeably increased, evidenced by the increased activity of his sweat glands. He slowly started to move forwards again, dreading what he would find. His fears got worse and worse as he advanced, and the temperature climbed rapidly. It felt like he was leaving a trail of sweat behind him as he crept down the tunnel.

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A final turn, and Levi faced his newest challenge. It was the dream of every child hopping around their house, moving from chair to couch to table, avoiding touching the floor. In other words, a giant room of the floor is lava, where the floor actually was lava.

“Shit.”

That one word about summed up his feelings. The room before him reminded Levi of those jumping puzzles where you had to navigate your way across a bottomless pit by carefully jumping on a series of platforms. That type of puzzle often involved other obstacles too, like dodging arrows or fireballs or platforms that would collapse if you stayed on them for too long. He sincerely hoped those were lacking from the room in front of him.

The room was huge, the vast expanse of lava creating swirling eddies in the air as heat waves washed over a maze of platforms and spires. He thought he could just make out the exit, hidden as it was by heat distortion and jutting spires of stone. As Levi surveyed the room, a particularly large lava bubble popped, causing him to jump, a wave of sulfur washing over him. Another thing to keep in mind. He might be on a timer navigating the room, forced to quickly move through it by air of dubious quality. He wasn’t sure how much sulfurous air he could safely breathe.   

Knowing what was ahead, Levi backed up the tunnel to get some room to breathe, both from the smell and from the heat. He felt like he could feel his skin cooking already, and he hadn’t even entered the room proper. This was going to be a shitshow no matter how he thought about it. One where he likely had one shot. He could feel a clear difference in how tough his body was from his increased Constitution, but it was clear that Constitution or not the lava would cook him alive. He needed a plan.

Ten minutes later he was exactly where he started, dreading the thought of traversing the room ahead and still having no idea how to do so other than ‘wing it’. How exactly does one prepare for something like that? He didn’t have any fire resistance or shield skills, and it was unlikely he could get any. With how the dungeon had been going so far, he would step into the room and geysers of lava would spring up, showering him in scalding hot liquid rock. But what was he going to do, turn back?

Levi had actually debated exactly that when he had first found the goblins. The way he entered the chamber wasn’t exactly normal, and there likely was a way back to the entrance if he had gone the other way. He just couldn’t imagine it though. After all this, after everything he had been through, after Susan, he would just give up? Retreat with his tail between his legs? No, this dungeon would pay. If turning back wasn’t an option, he could only move forwards. He found himself standing on the edge of the lava looking out over the field of platforms amid bubbling rock. Advancing was his only option.

With a flaring of Aecylic Empowerment Levi dashed forward, taking his first step into the lava filled hellscape. The heat was like a literal wall, slamming into his skin as he moved into the room, caressing him with its dry clutches, slowly invading his body, pore by pore, setting each pain receptor on fire one at a time. He ignored it, focusing instead on the pathway he would take, his mind moving a mile a minute.

A dash, a hop, a back step here, a running jump there. He felt like one of those ninja warrior people he watched on TV, leaping onto platforms and climbing spires of stone. Except here falling wouldn’t just net him some wet clothing and shoes. His breathing became increasingly labored as he advanced, moving as quickly as he could while still keeping safety in mind.

It was nerve-wracking. The heat, the smell, the way his fevered mind kept imagining creatures forming from the swirling superheated air, trying to drag him into the liquid stone. Every small movement out of the corner of his eye turned into an arrow or a stream of fire trying to impede his progress, guiding him onto an unstable platform and his eventual doom.

Levi could feel his breathing speed up, his overtaxed mind not able to control the fear taking over him. It was all he could do to move forward, trying to spot a path through the chaotically arrayed islands of stone. Each jump felt like his last, the spire he jumped to always feeling just out of reach. But somehow his grasping hands always found hold, grasping the crags in the rock as he wildly swung his head, searching for his next location along his island-hopping trail.

He felt like he had been jumping forever, leaping from rock to rock, always just one stumble away from death. His skin was burning, he could imagine sailing through the air, the gusts of hot wind searing the hair from his arms. He wasn’t going to make it. It was endless, each jump farther than the last, forcing him to reach farther, desperately praying his legs had enough strength left for next platform. Fervently hoping to find solid ground under his feet as he touched down, his tortured mind imagining the stone crumbling beneath him as he landed, sending him sinking to a slow painful death, burning alive.

Then it was over, and Levi’s feet touched down in the tunnel on the far side of the room. The shock almost overwhelmed him, and he could feel an invisible pressure easing off, dissipating into thin air as his thoughts cleared up. He turned back, looking over the burning room behind him. Suddenly it didn’t seem so imposing, the jumps that had felt near impossible now looking quite reasonable.

Levi tried to restart his tired mind, mindlessly moving down the tunnel ahead of him, away from the heat beating on his back. There was something going on, but he couldn’t quite catch it, his thoughts as elusive as a rainbow after the rain. After stumbling on, he eventually collapsed, leaning against the wall before sliding down, ending up lying splayed on the floor. There was definitely something going on, but he would think about it later. Now it was time for a nice long nap.