Flint snorted. "It doesn't work like that. Those are special spider legs."

"Special spider legs," Morgana repeated. "Really."

"The ones dropped as loot can be used in crafting recipes. You can't just peel apart monsters and lug them back into town. The real legs won't have the same magical properties." Flint frowned. "Or something like that."

That sounded ridiculous to her, but at the same time, was no stranger than anything else about this 'System'.

"How do we get them, though?" Morgana asked. "From the loot?" She had tried mentally withdrawing the items out of curiosity, but nothing had happened—one of the first times her intuition had failed her.

Flint answered through action. He approached the corpse, cautiously looking around for other threats, and held his hand out into the curling wisps of white light. Slowly, the light gathered into a ball, as if responding to his presence. After finishing manifesting, Flint held a small white orb between his fingers. The light disappeared.

"It's stored in here," Flint said, waggling the item toward her. "The monster core."

"The…monster core?"

"We'll need to take it into town to have the items withdrawn," he said, peering at the ball with obvious interest. "But yeah. They're stored in here somehow. Makes looting easier, 'cuz our backpacks would get clogged up real fast if we had to carry everything."

"Condensed spatial storage?" Morgana asked. "On something so small? How? Where are the spell designs?"

Flint shrugged. He tucked the orb into a pouch. "Who cares? It just works."

Morgana couldn't help the indignant look that appeared on her face, which Flint laughed at. She calmed herself. She couldn't blame the laymen for not caring about such a fascinating artifact. He didn't understand how incredible it was.

But really. Each lootable monster came with its own spatial storage artifact?

Could Morgana study it? Maybe reverse-engineer something? Even by her world's standard, spatial artifacts were bleeding-edge technology. And in fact, the very field she was most involved in.

She would have to find the spell designs first. Which the orb clearly lacked. Where were they? Where were all of the designs governing the System's functions? That question was driving her more and more insane.

She shook her head clear, not letting herself get distracted.

"Four copper coins," Morgana said. "You know, I don't actually have a great sense of what that means."

"Twenty copper to a silver, ten silver to a gold," Flint said. "But this isn't four copper, anyway."

"It isn't?"

"Dungeon coins are smaller than Liren ones. Plus they take a cut to convert them."

She assumed 'they' meant the bank or some similar organization. "A cut? How much?"

"Dunno. But it's a decent chunk. Like a third."

"A third?" Of their entire earnings, at least when it came to raw coinage? "What a scam!"

"What isn't, when it comes to government?" Flint muttered.

Morgana paused, then laughed. Some realities transcended cultures even through worlds, it seemed. Distaste of bureaucratic agencies persisted everywhere.

"Alright. Let's keep moving?" Flint asked.

"Did we get experience for that?" Vesper chimed in.

Morgana and Flint paused at the question

"Seeing how, you know, Morgana blew it up herself," Vesper said. "Did we get anything?"

"How does experience sharing work?" Morgana asked.

"I think it's just shared between the party." Vesper wrinkled her nose. "But I would figure in most parties, everyone still helps a little bit. We just stood there."

"Fine with me," Flint said. "Still gets us loot. Keep doing that as much as you can," he told Morgana. "Besides, there will be something you'll need our help with eventually. Strong as it is, you can only fire one spell at a time."

Flint's words ended up being prescient. While they took a more confident pace down the dungeon mineshaft tunnel after how thoroughly Morgana had trounced the first monster, it took only a handful more encounters before they ran into something Morgana couldn't demolish on her lonesome. And it was, indeed, as Flint had said: a fight where having only one single-target spell meant Morgana couldn't carry through by herself.

Interestingly, the inspection announcement even identified the encounter as a single enemy—just of a 'swarm' type.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

***

Swarm of [Cave Bats]

Level 1

***

The monsters were small, their main bodies about the size of her fist, though their wingspans much larger, and they moved quickly. So fast Morgana barely registered the attack before it had started. One second they were walking down the mine shaft, the next, two dozen screeching bats were tearing through the air, slashing, biting, scratching, and otherwise being a complete menace to each of them.

It was Morgana's first test of 'battle-readiness,' if it could be called that. Of having to keep a cool head in a frantic situation. Panic almost had her shooting off [Magic Missiles] in every direction, simply trying to kill as many of the things as possible, but she stopped herself. If one of those abilities went stray and hit her teammates, it could cause serious damage.

And, horrifying and frantic as the assault of the many tiny creatures was, it wasn't all that deadly. The bats were small and vicious, but they left only bites and scratches before darting away. They didn't even go for her eyes or ears. It could have been much worse. She supposed it was, after all, a 'level one' encounter. The weakest the dungeon would ever throw at them.

Aiming was much harder, this time. [Magic Missile] didn't automatically target enemies; it followed the direction she guided the spell. The tiny zipping-by creatures were all but impossible to hit, and there were so many of them, besides. Embarrassingly, Flint and Vesper had to come to her rescue, having cut down their own with their daggers or, barring that, simply grappled and swatted at them until they were dead or fleeing.

When it was over, Morgana was seriously reconsidering her career choice.

"Hey, hey," Vesper said. "It's fine. They're gone now."

Morgana knew she must have looked like a mess if Vesper was taking that tone with her, so she huffed, then brushed herself off and tried to wrangle her hair back into order.

"Monstrous little creatures. The second I get my hands on some mana, I'm making an area-effect spell. They're lucky I only have a magic missile. Let's see how they hold up against a fireball."

Vesper blinked, then grinned. "For the record, I would also love to see that."

Morgana took a deep breath, calming her racing heart. Again, she was no warmage. The most strenuous activity most days in the Ivory Institute was climbing the stairs—of which there were admittedly a ridiculous amount. Being assaulted by a screeching mass of monsters had left her more than a little flustered.

While unpleasant, she was hardly deterred. She might not enjoy combat, but she was deeply intrigued by the dungeon, the potential for levels, and the System in general. The only way to learn more would be to continue.

Just, she hoped those swarm encounters were rare. Or that at a minimum, leveling didn't take long, so she could earn a real spell to deal with them.

Progress continued. A few seared, exploded, or otherwise annihilated regular monsters later, and Vesper unexpectedly burst out laughing.

"What?" Morgana asked, alert. "What is it?"

"This is just…so ridiculous. Who the hell are you? Is your mana even getting low?"

"Hm," Morgana said. "Not really. The original was horrendously inefficient. It feels…twenty percent empty?" It was hard to quantify the 'mana pool' vibrating within her chest. She could get a general sense for how much mana she had left, but there wasn't some specific number associated with it.

Vesper shook her head in incredulity. "All that, and you only used twenty percent of your mana. You're really something."

Morgana wasn't entirely sure why, but she blushed. "It's just a [Magic Missile]. And not even my own design. I took it from the Institute." She'd always hated being praised when she didn't feel it was deserved. Especially when she had her own designs that were groundbreaking—and in more complicated fields than warmagic.

"You think we could even try and find a boss?" Vesper asked Flint. "If we're blowing through regular monsters like this? Besides the loot we'd get, we could maybe head down to the next floor after."

"Definitely not," Flint said immediately. "Not worth the risk. We're taking it slow and steady. Don't get a big head just because we have a firepower advantage."

"I mean…yeah," Vesper said, "but you know how much better loot gets the further down we go. So you sure?"

"Slow and steady," Flint repeated firmly.

Vesper made a dissatisfied noise, looking at Morgana to get her opinion.

"What's a boss?" Morgana asked instead.

"Oh," Vesper said. "Uh, it's like, a big fight against a much stronger monster than usual. When you kill one, the dungeon starts spawning passages into deeper floors."

"And floors are what? I mean, practically speaking." She understood the basics.

"Just groupings of difficulty. It varies from dungeon to dungeon, but each floor usually has a range of levels inside them."

"Deeper floors change in terrain, too," Flint added. "This one looks like a mine shaft, since it originally spawned in a quarry, but not all of them will, as we get deeper. Might be info on what the other floors are like, but people are greedy with that kind of stuff. So it might be hard to get our hands on."

"Information is power," Morgana said thoughtfully. "I'm not surprised." That was another downside to having joined Rune's guild. She obviously would have no great amount of knowledge when it came to Quarrygate's dungeon.

"Not something we need to worry about, for now," Flint said. "I don't care how hard those [Magic Missiles] hit. We're not risking deeper floors until we're familiar with delving. I don't even have a class yet. Imagine another of those bat encounters, except this time, they're strong. Not level ones. We wouldn't be leaving with some scratches and bites, I'll tell you that."

Morgana shivered. It was, of course, a salient point.

"Besides," Flint murmured, holding up the newest monster core. "We're doing just fine for ourselves with our current pace." His eyes took on a greedy glint. "A few copper every couple of minutes? Ridiculous. We'll be rich within the week."

"For a generous definition of rich, I guess," Vesper said dryly. "And don't forget how much more expensive things are in adventuring towns. Copper won't go nearly as far."

"I'll be needing certain supplies, too," Morgana commented off-handedly. "I expect they'll be…difficult to obtain. What we're earning now certainly won't cut it."

"Supplies?" Flint asked. "For what?"

"I do intend to harvest mana myself," she reminded him. "I won't allow myself to be restrained by this 'System' of yours." She pursed her lips. "If, admittedly, a renewable source of internal mana is extremely useful." So she wouldn't neglect it either.

"What does that take?" Flint asked.

"Collection plates. Made of special alloys. And a custom spell design, which I'll handle—but I don't know how to engrave metal, so I'll need to hire someone." She waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter. I was just bringing it up. I don't want to rush and put ourselves at risk, but as soon as we're able, I do want to advance to further floors."

"Didn't come here to scrounge around on the first floor forever," Vesper said. "Besides, I don't think any of us will turn down faster money." She raised a hand toward Flint to cut off his reply. "Once we're a little accustomed to things. Maybe next delve."

Flint frowned, obviously not agreeing with the timeline of next delve, but, after hesitating, he faced back forward, not disagreeing outright.

"We'll see," he said noncommittally.