“Is anyone hungry?” Dovik asks back along the line of our group that treads quietly down the stairwell. He pulls a line of jerky from a lazily sewn pouch on his belt and offers it around.

“What is that?” I ask, taking the jerky and biting it.

“Bear,” he says. “Shouldn’t you know that.”

“You can’t have made bear jerky in a day.” The meat is hard and chewy, but somehow it has been spiced well.

In the tight space of the spiraling stairway, sconces are recessed into the stone walls, casting flickering torchlight over us. The stairs are actually far wider than I expected they might be from the bridge, almost five feet across, enough room to maneuver past people, and the steps themselves are almost two feet deep, meaning that this stairwell is much longer than strictly necessary. The oddest thing are the torches however. The holes they have been recessed into are covered by some barrier that not even my eye can detect, invisible force stops my hand from reaching the fire.

The elves look back at me and Dovik as I continue to chew on the jerky he handed me, the oddest looks of irritation on their faces. I take some water that I collected from the lake out of a canteen I smuggled into the competition to wash the jerky down with.

“It’s good though even if its contraband,” I tell Dovik.

“You think Lionel was lying about making jerky?” Dovik inspects another strip of “bear jerky” before shrugging and taking a bite. “Maybe he did. It tastes good though.”

“There is no way he dried out the meat in a day,” I say.

“Is this an important conversation to have right now?” Samissa whispers back to us. We stop, still chewing the stringy meat and look back to the front of our little line.

“I guess not,” Dovik says.

“I have mana exhaustion,” I lie, pointing at Dovik. “He doesn’t have an excuse.”

Samissa shakes her head. “You are supposed to be the group leader.”

“Shouldn’t you be scouting or something?” Dovik asks her, motioning for the group to keep moving.

“You told me not to,” Samissa defends.

Macille, at the head of the group, groans and continues his march down the stairs. After a bit more sniping back and forth between Dovik and Samissa, we continue along behind our Guardian. In all honesty, I am grateful they build the stairs so wide, there are more than a few people in this competition that look like they would have a hard time on normal stairs.

Our walk down the spiraling staircase has lasted nearly half an hour at this point, and we have run into no other groups on our ways down the stairs. It is difficult to keep my mind focused on the task at hand. I open my attribute window, trying to engage my brain by at least planning on how to spend my next batch of free points.

Charlene Devardem

Human(Level 21)(Rank 1)

Emperor Conflux

Attributes

Vitality: 36

Strength: 25

Magic: 209(244)

Defense: 36(56)

Magic Defense: 29(44)

Speed: 102

Recovery: 161

Perception: 26

Presence: 0

Healing Points: 360

Mana: 2440

Stamina: 598

Free Points: 0

Essentia

Gold Essentia

Magic Essentia

Dragon Essentia

Emperor Conflux

A part of me wants to try and break the threshold for speed. I’m not certain on when I decided that Speed was an important attribute to me, but it seems like it is too late to turn back on that now. Or, if I look at things in the view of the long term, I am still pretty early in my career as an essentia magician. If there was ever a time to really try and refocus on what I should be putting my free points into it would be now.

As far as I have been able to tell, only my Magic and Recovery attributes ever really see any effort value gains. Since joining this competition, I haven’t been running daily like I had back in Arabella Willian’s flying mansion, and so my Speed has plateaued. Defense and Magic Defense only ever really improve when I severely mess up in a battle. That rank two catfish slapping me around a bit gave me three entire points in defense.

I am a mage; I have come to really accept that in the last few days. Standing at the top of the slope, hurling balls of exploding dragonfire down onto the rampaging bears was a highlight of my career as a magician. Killing a rank two monster by myself, far before I reached threshold of rank two myself, was also made possible by the effectiveness of my magic. Just now, torching over a dozen invisible, incredibly creepy, monsters out in the cavern was something that only I could do. No one else in our group can even approach my strength in ranged combat. Magic is clearly a powerful attribute; I just need to find a proper fantasy for myself with it but seeing myself as an incredibly powerful mage setting fire to the world seem a bit…manic. I recognize that it is odd I need to fantasize about hurling explosive dragonfire in order to enjoy it the same way that I do when thinking about how incredible it would be to lift a boulder above my head with an insane Strength attribute, but I am a girl that loves thinking about those kinds of things. Maybe that’s a habit that I need to curb as well.

At the end of the day, I am convinced now how important it is to keep my Magic attribute high, just breaking the first threshold for it has caused noticeable improvements. That just leaves what else to spend my effort and free points on. No matter how much I might try to avoid it, the answer is obvious. It has to be Recovery.

I might lament not being graced with the Magic specialization. Exeter, now that would be something incredible. That isn’t reality though, Recovery is my specialization, and so far, I think that I have leveraged it to a great degree. It lets me do what Halford advised me to do, work harder than everyone else to make up for the inherent advantages the elites of the world have that I don’t. If nothing else, the mere fact that I get more out of the attribute than anyone else should be a clear indication to me of how important it is to put my effort there. There even seems to be a clear leaning for my effort values to try and always include Recovery as a part of my gains. Why then have I been hesitating so much?

“Stop here,” I hear from up ahead. It is Macille, holding up a hand to stop Samissa from continuing down the stairs after him.

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“What is it?” Adrius whispers to him, almost crouching against the wall of the spiraling stairwell.

I close the window in front of me and call on my dragonfire, waiting for some unseen horribleness to leap out at us so that I might strike it down. Enjoy exploding monsters more, I think to myself. It will make you feel better about spending points there.

“I don’t know,” Macille says. He leans his sword against the wall and pulls a stone out of his pocket, chucking it down the stairwell at something I can’t see. The stone rings off the wall, clicking the air as it bounces a few times before coming to a standstill. “Odd.”

Samissa tiptoes down to Macille’s step, peaking around the bend of the stairwell, and screwing up her face. She looks back at Dovik, an eyebrow raised. “It’s a doorway,” she says.

“We are scared of doors now?” Dovik almost laughs. He stops, scratching his chin. “Actually, that is probably a good approach. I saw someone get their beard singed off because they opened the wrong door in a dungeon once. The trap almost got his eye.”

“No door,” Samissa says, shaking her head. “Just a doorway.” The woman shoulders past Macille, walking around the corner. “There is a landing to stand on here, seems safe.”

Macille shakes his head at the woman and picks his sword back up. “Why would you want the man with the heavy armor and shield to go first? Why even bring a Guardian.”

Dovik and Adrius can’t help but chuckle to themselves as they also walk past the man on the stairs. I pat Macille’s armored shoulder as we both walk the few steps down to the landing that was indicated. Samissa squats in a small passageway illuminated by six ensconced torches set into the walls. A rectangular platform leads away from us for a dozen feet, ending at an open doorway. Above the empty doorway are words in a language foreign to me, etched into the stone in an arch that follows the curve at the top of the doorway.

I look at Macille, but the man just shrugs back to me, clearly unable to read the words either. “Does anyone know what it says?” I ask.

“I do, unfortunately.” Dovik points at the line of script. “Give me a second, it has been a while since I needed to translate this.”

“What language is it?” Adrius asks. The purple gemstone that perpetually orbits the man’s head leaves its eclipse for the first time I have ever seen, floating up toward the words and emitting a warm purple light to help Dovik see clearer. I frown, realizing for the first time that Adrius has been allowing me to be the light carrier for the group, and let the fire on my hand disappear.

“It is Alucrean,” Dovik says. “The old script of Alucrean too, before the fall.”

At my side, Macille stiffens, and I can’t blame him for being off put by Dovik’s proclamation. The Alucreans were the staunchest followers of Parfillio, the human god, and were at the spearhead of the crazed god’s crusade against the world. Their magic and technology has been said to be incredibly advanced. Were it not for the combined efforts of the united races, they might have succeeded in their bid to conquer the world.

“Why would that filth be here?” Samissa asks Dovik.

“I said give me a moment,” he says, irritation clear in his voice. The group falls silent, waiting on the man as he mumbles his way through his translation. “Alright,” he says after a few minutes, “I think that I have it.”

Dovik points to the start of the line of text. “Hopeful beginnings. Ignominious ends. Where we begin the others behind us shall cease. Step forward toward the ending. Hike back to the start.”

“Well, what is that supposed to mean?” Macille asks.

“It sounds like a Feathian meditation of cyclization,” Adrius guesses.

“Does it really matter?” Samissa asks. “The Alucreans were insane, this is probably just some mad scribbling. It doesn’t need to make sense.”

“The Alucreans weren’t the ones to write this,” I remind her. “The Willian guild are the ones that created this dungeon.”

Dovik shakes his head and looks over the words on the wall again. “It reads like saying that this doorway is the starting point. We start where others did, or where they ended maybe. I hate this cryptic shit. Alucreans loved their philosophy and every person that I have ever met who fetishizes their history is the same. It’s probably best to ignore it.” He looks back at me. “Do you see any traps?”

“What!” I blurt out, completely caught off guard by the question.

“You’re the Mage,” Dovik explains to me, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you see any magical traps?”

“I am supposed to just see traps?” I ask. I look around, and the faces looking back at me seem confused as to why I would even need it explained to me.

“No,” Dovik corrects. “You are supposed to check for traps.”

I look at Samissa. “I thought the Scout was supposed to spot traps.”

“I’ll check after you do,” she says. “I don’t like the look of this door–probably trapped.”

I scoff, shouldering through the crowded landing in front of the doorway and come stand next to Dovik. He flicks his hand, gesturing for me to go ahead, and giving him the dirtiest look that I can muster, I finally do so. No one ever explained to me that I am the one that is supposed to be finding magical traps. How does having a high Magic attribute even relate to that anyway? Just because I can throw balls of fire around like it was nothing doesn’t mean--

“Ah,” I say after an entire three seconds of looking. “Yeah, that’s a trap.”

Emanating from the side of the door, where the hinges of a real door should be, is the slight glow of magic. The glow is so faint that if I hadn’t been directly looking for it, I don’t think that there is any chance that I would have seen it. When I try to pull up information about the glow with my eye, the window that appears is far fainter than any I have seen before, and the information it gives isn’t all that useful.

Spiderleg Trap(???):

???

Sure, my eye has been unable to give me information before, mostly on people like Arabella Willian and Gaius Gore. This seems different though; it is almost as if there is magic at work actively blocking me from identifying it.

“It’s called a Spiderleg Trap,” I tell the party, getting blank stares back as an answer. I ask anyways, “Does anyone know how to disarm it?”

“Blow it up?” Dovik says, shrugging.

We all turn, looking at Samissa, who holds her hands up flustered. “I don’t know much about magical traps,” she says. “I don’t have an ability that lets me see magic at rank one.”

“And you just assume that I do,” I huff.

Samissa looks at me, a bit of embarrassment reddening her face. “I mean, you have at least one ability that effects your eyes right.” She looks around at everyone else. “Did I misjudge?”

Everyone turns their gazes back on me, which makes it my turn for my face to heat up in embarrassment. Sometimes I forget how obvious my Dragon’s Eye and Eye of Volaash are. Still, it seems insane to me that everyone just assumed that I could see magical auras. Even if they are right, that is some crazy kind of leap to make.

“Whatever,” I say. “That still leaves us wondering what to do about the trap.”

“I already said to blow it up,” Dovik says, shooing me forward. “Burn mage, burn.”

“Seriously?”

“As far as I am aware, if you find a trap in a dungeon, you either disarm it or trip it intentionally. If your fire can set it off so that we don’t have to deal with it later, then that would be one method for getting past,” Macille tells me.

I roll my eyes at the group and turn back to the doorway, summoning dragonfire in my hand. “Don’t blame me if we all die because of this.” I hurl the fire at the doorway.

“We should back up first!” Samissa shrieks as the fire flashes forward.

My Dragonfire Bolt splashes into the side of the doorway, spreading fire over the stone that continues to smolder for almost a minute before slowly dying out. Nothing happens over the span of that minute, no impending doom coming at us from the set off trap, no spiders shooting out of tiny holes in the ceiling, nothing. When the fire has consumed itself, harsh black marks are left on the stone, an indication of the blast I threw into the door.

The window marking the magical trap remains.

Spiderleg Trap(???):

???

“Didn’t work,” I tell the group.

“I guess we have to do this the hard way then,” Dovik says. He looks around, eyes falling on Samissa. “Who is the fastest in our group?”