The first goal I set myself was to get to 50 defense while I figured out what my actual goal should be before I went out to confront Fang again. Several days of hard grinding should be enough. No, a week. A week should be enough to see some serious improvements and maybe even be enough to surpass Fang’s combat level. I’d done grinds like this before, and this time I had access to a perfect dungeon.

An hour later, my defense ticked over.

By the time the level-up notification popped up, I only had to get 573 more experience to level up my health. Health leveled slower than the other stats, but such a small amount of experience barely took half an hour to collect.

The level up didn’t increase my combat level which was stuck at 56. I felt like in the previous iteration I would have gotten something, but not this time. The upside though, was the dungeon monsters were now massively nerfed. Instead of taking 15+ hits to bring down one of the moss giants, it now only took less than three solid thwacks.

I’d also become quite resistant to the huge monsters. Before, every hit I took required me to eat some food to recover. This would shorten my trips and force me to return to the farm and harvest more. Post update, however, a single inventory of food lasted through dozens of kills or even more if I got into a good rhythm.

When my attack hit 60, I switched to a steel mace to bring my defense on par with my attack. It was downright refreshing to do so. The experience requirement was so low for each level that it felt like every other kill netted me another level up.

Each level made killing the monsters easier. Even though my damage was stagnant, the fact I could tank more blows without having to waste as much time dodging meant that kill times went down. Which in turn meant cramming more kills per trip, and overall more experience.

I brought the spellbook down with me to train. Incorporating it into my rotation turned out to be surprisingly difficult. The large cumbersome book was awkward to hold in my shield hand, and touching the book with a hand was required to cast ice strike. In the end, I settled for strapping the tome to my back and practicing whipping a hand back to trigger the spell cast.

The first day passed and the combat style still felt clunky. On the second day, however, I improved markedly, and casting ice strike in between attacks became second nature. Since magic sometimes killed the target, my defense and health experience per hour dropped marginally, but I got more magic experience in exchange.

It came as a pleasant surprise then that I gained access to another spell at level 53 magic. Shadow strike was similar to ice strike except it seemed to deal a little more damage. It was pretty hard to tell without life bars to check, though.

I switched to the new spell, now even more eager to see what other secrets the strange tome birthed during my sleep possessed. Levels slowed down, but still more than one per day.

This time, my combat level increased when my defense incremented. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I popped open my full status numerous times to try and figure out what determined the improvements, but with so little data, I eventually just shrugged and moved on. At the end of the day, I was one step closer to my ultimate goal.

The days passed, and on the morning of the seventh day, I pulled open my stats to review my gains.

Combat level:59 Health:52/52 Attack:78/60 Defense:77/59 Recovery:58/58 Magic:56/56 Woodcutting:52/52 Firemaking:48/48 Crafting:33/33 Mining:49/49 Smithing:49/49 Cooking:51/51 Hunter:47/47 Farming:68/68

My health had improved marginally with the greatest improvement in defense. Counting my buffs from gear, I was finally taking less than one damage per attack from the moss giants. It didn’t make me immune to them, but it was pretty close. Very little could kill me in the tunnels unless they knocked me out and hit me while I was out like a light. Level 60 defense was right around the corner, but I’d set myself a hard cut-off of a week to grind. My status said that I needed 12,000 more experience for the next level which would take most of a day to collect.

Magic had also improved a lot, though I seemed to remember it contributed to combat level in the past. Not a single level up in the skill had changed my combat level, even though I'd gained six during the grind. Luckily, I'd also gained another spell at level 56. Smoke strike seemed to be a stronger version of shadow strike, and I'd quickly switched to casting it. Assuming the pattern remained, I should get another spell at level 59.

The most important metric, however, was combat level, and it really hadn’t improved as much as I wished it had. Three combat levels a week would mean that I could expect six in two weeks. Twelve in...four. And...Fang was level 87 which was...

I hate math, I rubbed my temples, finding it difficult to focus. Dammit, Fang was level 87. Subtracted by my 59 meant he was ahead of me by...argh! About 30 levels. Ish... Maybe. So if I extrapolated my current pace, I should expect to match him in fifteen weeks?

That was...

A long time. Four months of nonstop training to get to a point where he might not attack me seemed a tad excessive. I could do it. It would just be a little boring. I itched to head out and complete the chunk objectives. For some odd reason, that endless patience I’d maintained during the rat grind was gone, replaced by a fiery itch to go out and do something.

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Alright, screw it, I thought. I’d waited long enough. Now was the time for action. I should just go out and check if Fang had become peaceful. If he was, then all this thinking was just wasting time.

I jumped up and rushed out of the dungeon. The sun was once again a huge relief, but I didn’t waste time enjoying it. Instead, I raised my head and howled. Within seconds, an answering howl reverberated through the trees and I heard a crashing through the trees. I hopped on my toes, nervously gripping and regripping my steel mace as I waited for Fang to arrive.

Fang erupted from the trees and started circling 30 paces distant. His bloodshot eyes scanned me hungrily, and his entire posture was clearly aggressive. That was frustrating but not unexpected. What was unexpected where the tiny crimson letters pulsing above his head.

>

I swear...I blinked, rubbing my eyes. Fang took that as a sign to attack and I barely had time to hop back through the portal. I landed roughly and then spun to look pensively at the swirling darkness of the portal.

Fang had gained levels. A level, but that meant that my — admittedly rough — calculation was way off. Not just way off. Completely wrong. To get an accurate estimation, I would have to figure out how fast Fang was gaining levels and compare it to how fast I was. Just thinking about doing that gave me a headache, though. Regardless of the actual number, it was safe to say it would take more than 4 months.

“Bloody hell, this is ridiculous,” I shook my head, then gathered as much food as I could. Then jumped out of the portal again. “Dammit, Fang! Snap out of it, or I will beat the shit out of you and make you snap out of it!”

Fang’s hackles rose and he responded with a feral snarl.

“You asked for it,” I grumbled to myself as I reached behind me and touched the ancient spellbook.

A bolt of grasping smoke surged out between us and struck Fang on the nose. He recoiled as the insidious magic sizzled across his sensitive snout. He shook his head to try and dislodge the offending magic. I took the opportunity to race forward and deliver a sneaky strike with my mace.

Fang roared and lashed out with his teeth. I caught the flashing teeth on my shield and bludgeoned Fang on the shoulder with another hit. He ducked back, raking at me with his claws.

Health:42/52

The attack was devastating, dealing 10 points of damage. Nearly 20 times as much damage as a moss giant did. It was devastating, but still far less than it would have before I'd trained my defense. My time training defense was really coming in clutch.

I retaliated by striking a brutal uppercut with my mace and then taking advantage of Fang’s disorientation to jump back. The distance allowed me to touch my spellbook once again and unleash another smoke strike. Before the spell even hit, Fang was on me again.

My health dipped another ten points. My flesh tore like tissue paper, while each of my hard attacks stopped dead on Fang’s coat as if his fur was made from steel. It was a decidedly unfair, and unbalanced engagement, but I hadn’t spent this long fighting strange and exotic animals for nothing.

Fang’s unadulterated rage was terrifying, but it lacked finesse. His wild strikes could be avoided, dodged, ducked, or circumvented by using the surrounding terrain. I also sported a rather heavy shield that must have been rather unpleasant to bite into despite the system augmenting Fang’s physicality.

My health hit 12, then rocketed up to 35 as I tossed back a handful of kiku fruit. Then it ping-ponged back down before I ate some more. Fang’s enormous health pool was intimidating, but even he couldn’t withstand close combat with me while I had food.

I targeted his snout at the outset, leaving it a mess of bloody bruises as the fight devolved. When he wizened up to that strategy, I turned my strikes to his joints. His thick fur on his shoulders and back provided great protection against teeth and blades but could do little against a three-pound hardened steel cudgel.

When I got hurt, I healed, and he didn’t have the finesse or the awareness to remove my bag of food. Fueled by the system, his rage burned brighter as his health dropped. He limped around me, desperate to gain an advantage, but I didn’t let him. Every lunge was met with hard steel, every dodge was predicted and followed through. If he tried to run, I simply blasted him at range with cloying smoke.

There was nothing he could do.

Then Fang stiffened.

He melted away into a pile of wet goo.

And I cried.

It sucked. Everything sucked. I hated that my best friend was effectively gone. I hated that I had to dismantle him so entirely in open combat. I hated that I had decided that killing him might return him to normal. Why couldn’t I have just stayed in the dungeon and grinded out levels until I was a higher level than him?

I walked over to the hemogris fort and sat down beside the ever-burning campfire. I waited there for what felt like an age but was probably closer to half an hour. I didn’t think much during this time. I just sat there and watched the world pass by.

In due time Fang respawned, but the red hunger in his eyes hadn’t faded. If anything it had grown.

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“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I sat around a campfire within the ancient dungeon sometime later. My stats hovered before my eyes, patient and cool, as if taunting me with the lie in my words. I did want to keep doing this. I liked grinding my stats. I loved the visceral satisfaction of seeing the values increase and then feeling the improvement in the real world.

The problem was my stats had grown much recently, but I didn’t know how much or how long they needed to grow before I was done with this current challenge. With Fang, there wasn’t some set goal I could set for myself. Every level I gained, could be a level Fang gained as well. I could perhaps close the gap, but how long would it take to surpass him? Could I even surpass him?

It was the confusion and imprecision that bothered me. My first grind in this world had been tough. The Rat Grind was the moniker I’d granted it. A special event that I still recalled fondly from time to time. Killing nearly 5,000 rats with no resources over such a short time frame had been difficult, but it had never felt impossible. There was an ending. A hard limit on both time and effort that was guaranteed to occur. It was that ending that kept me afloat during the hardest moments. Here...there was none of that.

I was adrift.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do this, it was that I knew — deep down — that I fundamentally couldn’t do this. Not alone at any rate. Not when I couldn’t figure out even the most basic estimates of how long it would take. Ever since the Mindscape incident, there had been something wrong with my head. A fuzziness I couldn’t shake.

“Well. Duhrrr,” I gently slapped my forehead. “If you can’t do this alone, go find someone to do it with. Preferably Crusty. Or maybe that bird fellow that I can’t remember the name of. Or hell, maybe even that Thrun dictator guy might have some insight. One of them is bound to be able to help.”

I got up and dusted my knees.

“Or maybe,” I muttered darkly. “If you keep talking to yourself, those weirdos will think you’re crazy.”

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the unhelpful thoughts. The mindscape was presumably my head, so maybe the unhelpful thought was Crusty’s opinion. Wait...Could they hear my thoughts?

“Bah, this is dumb,” I grumbled, and went to lie on the softest bit of land in the area: One of the garden beds. My straw mattress was gone since I’d left the dungeon the first time, and I hadn’t been inside this instance long enough to merit such amenities yet.

Now, how to get back to the mindscape? Meditation seemed reasonable. Though it felt silly just sitting and ohmming until something happened. Maybe it functioned like my sleep; just will it and it will happen. My sleep certainly wasn’t normal, all things considered, so it was worth a shot.

I scrunched my eyes and imagined that I was back in that grungy throne room. I pulled up the scent of acrid motor oil and the endless clamoring of ghostly voices. I imagined the hard seat made of steel. The dim fluorescent lighting. Everything I remembered, I brought to the forefront of my thoughts.

I didn’t just want to think it. I wanted to be there.

So I was.