Even after an hour of guided effort, Vesper didn't manage to latch her mind onto the vial of fire mana. Morgana assured her that was entirely to be expected. She would need to practice with every idle moment she could find over the following weeks if she genuinely wanted to pursue magecraft. It wasn't the sort of thing picked up overnight. Even the basics, even for apparent prodigies.

Based on her shocking progress in their first session, though, Morgana was certain she would figure it out before long. Vesper seemed encouraged by that news, taking the vial of fire mana and tucking it away for later. Morgana wouldn't miss the small amount of the resource: she would need much, much more mana for it to be useful in any real capacity.

Even a full vial would only be of so much use. All Morgana was doing with her initial collection plate was stockpiling an emergency reserve, since raw mana had no such limitations like the ones placed on [Magic Missile].

Following that impromptu lesson, Morgana and Vesper headed into town. The current plans were to spend their hard-earned coin—of which they had found much more than most level ones would on their first trip, but certainly no fortune—to further upgrade themselves for their next delve. Which would be happening at noon. All three of them were eager to continue their money-making expeditions.

In their first shopping trip, prior to the dungeon, they had kept to the mundane portions of equipment stores: plain, if solid, leather armor and mundanely forged weapons. With a small influx of coin, they were now able to peruse some of the better wares peddled by the shops of Quarrygate's adventuring hub, not just the mundane crop.

Which, as a whole, came with price tags that made Morgana wince.

"You weren't kidding," she muttered, peering down into a glass case holding a pair of metal boots. "Twelve gold? Isn't that…a lot?"

"I mean, that's higher level stuff," Vesper said. "But yeah. None of it's cheap."

"So Flint will get a good price for those gloves we found?" Since none of them were [Healers], they had obviously chosen to sell them.

"It won't go for chump change, but what you sell stuff for is always less than what you'll see a merchant list it for. A lot less, sometimes."

"Is there not some kind of auction house? To eliminate the middleman? Or at least reduce it."

Vesper shrugged. "Not sure. In a bigger city, I'm sure there's something like that. But most adventurers won't bother taking every single piece of gear they find to a bigger city. Only the actually good stuff. And not even that, always. It'd be a waste of time—why not keep delving?"

They spent around an hour looking through the different merchandise, even bumping into Flint halfway through, since there weren't that many shops in a relatively small town—however burgeoning—like Quarrygate, and the boy had set off earlier in the day to also go shopping.

They didn't end up making any major purchases. Flint and Vesper wanted to save up for something meaningful, like an enchanted blade or breastplate, rather than the cheaper items they could afford right now. Especially when their first dungeon trip hadn't been all that dangerous, why waste money on better gear when almost everything was dying before it even got to them? Usually on the first strike, even?

After returning to the guild and collecting necessary supplies, they ventured out for their second dungeon expedition. The light of the outside world faded as they wound deeper into the twisting mineshafts of the magically created pocket dimension.

Was it a pocket dimension, though? How else would the Grand Architect of this place, or the System in general, have managed the shifting nature of the dungeon's hallways, where no two parties saw the same dungeon, and its layout constantly morphed? One more question added to the growing list of millions.

Combat continued. It was a bit of a nondescript blur, if nonetheless intense at times, as they crept through, on-edge, checking for traps and killing monsters where they showed up. It certainly wasn't her preferred way to spend her evening, but Morgana needed both the money and the levels—the former for necessity and the latter out of growing curiosity. She wanted to know what abilities she would get next. And whether they would unlock further insight into the System.

Traps were rare. Yesterday, they had only bumped into two very obvious ones. Anytime they found one, Morgana couldn't help but crouch down and study the thing. In this most recent case, it was a pressure plate that crossed the width of the mineshaft, about two feet long. Impossible to miss, to be frank, but they were on the first floor, the least deadly within the dungeon.

She peered at it from side to side, scrutinizing it while opening her senses as widely as she could. But the trap made no imprint on the Ether. She could find no spell designs, nor any hints of magic whatsoever. Not that she'd expected to. Magical sensing could only do so much. Trying to identify a spell through its imprint on the Ether was like trying to identify a sea creature by the waves it made as it swam past her. Just, it was her only hope, considering how thoroughly missing all the System's spell formulae were.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Do you really need to check every one of those things?" Flint asked, exasperated.

Morgana made a displeased noise. "Surely I'll find something eventually. It's driving me mad. I just want to know how it all works."

"Why?"

"Why? Why wouldn't I want to know how the dungeon works? It's trying to kill us—understanding it will obviously be useful. Not to mention the benefits to be gained from reverse-engineering it."

His brow furrowed. "Reverse engineering it?"

"If I can discover how he's doing what he's doing, then I can emulate him—or break his System entirely, possibly. To our benefit."

He blinked. She supposed it sounded like a rather over-achieving ambition. Rather than addressing that, though, he asked, "What 'he' are you talking about?"

She waved her hand. "You know, the Grand Architect. The designer of this place. The System. Whoever he, or she, or it, is." She'd defaulted to a 'he.'

"What do you mean by break it?" Vesper asked.

Morgana shrugged. "I'm not precisely sure, to be honest. And that's not necessarily my goal either. But who knows what's possible? I'm curious." She was the only one who even seemed aware of how magic worked at its fundamental level. The Grand Architect was obviously also an archmage of significant skill—though even the generous descriptor of 'archmage' felt like it was blaspheming his name. Archmage was a title applied to people she knew. Humans. Talented ones, but mortals nonetheless. This creator was a mage of some entirely other caliber. Nearly godlike in his abilities. "Even if I can't manage to, I don't know, exploit his designs in some way, then there's so much to learn in general. The opportunity to study the complex creations of an archmage—no, an arch-archmage." Morgana's thoughts went briefly wandering away, imagining it.

If only she could find where he was hiding the spell formulae…

"Don't salivate too much at the idea," Vesper laughed. "But if he's as smart as you're saying, he's probably hidden things pretty well. Made it tamper-proof. Sounds like it'd be a hard thing to 'break'."

"And dangerous," Flint added.

Morgana's mood briefly spoiled. The two of them were, of course, correct. The Grand Architect clearly didn't want his creation exploited—or at least easily.

Then again, maybe the possibility simply hadn't crossed his mind when creating everything? Perhaps the System's obfuscation was inherent to its design, not a 'preventative measure.' Because there weren't other mages here, it seemed, besides the ones granted powers through his own designs.

Seeing how she had no clue what the real circumstances behind the System's creation was, anything was possible. Theorizing was almost pointless. Not that she would be able to help herself from doing so.

Even just to take a peek at his designs, though…who knew what she could learn?

But it wasn't happening with this pressure plate, or even today, likely. Morgana sighed and stood.

Less than an hour into their adventures, right after putting down another one of those gruesome [Unseen Lurkers], a welcome surprise came.

***

You have leveled up.

***

"Hey," Vesper said, straightening up in surprise. "Did you get that?" she asked, glancing at Morgana.

"I did, yes," Morgana said, mildly surprised, both at the speed of the progress and that Vesper had gotten the notification at the same time. "I thought you said it would take up to a week to level?"

Vesper raised an eyebrow at her. "You do realize I have no clue what I'm talking about? It's not like I grew up in some adventuring family. Don't take anything I say too seriously." She paused. "Plus, I didn't account for how many monsters you'd be killing every trip," she said dryly.

"You two leveled?" Flint asked.

"Yep." Vesper twitched. "Wait, did you get a class, then?"

"No."

Vesper deflated.

"I'm surprised the experience gain is so synchronized," Morgana said. "I had figured since I was doing most of the work, I would level before you."

Vesper shrugged. "Me too. But guess not."

"Is all of this really not solved, to some extent?"

"Solved?"

"Well documented. Understood. It's still such a mystery to everyone? After so many years?"

"Maybe some people know more. But information is power. Anything about dungeons, levels, the System is kept hidden, when possible. To use to their advantage."

That didn't surprise Morgana; it was perfectly rational behavior.

Also, it wouldn't surprise her if the Architect had designed a convoluted and even purposefully obfuscated system to keep people from 'gaming' it. Seeing how the System could read thoughts to some extent, perhaps intentions even mattered. When it came to experience gain, maybe acting in good faith affected the result. That she and Vesper were genuinely teaming up, rather than, for example, one person intentionally carrying another through the dungeon for the purpose of leveling them—as a rich prince might hire someone to do.

"In any case," Morgana said. "It's a good thing we're leveling at the same rate. I'm glad it's not all going to me." While Vesper and Flint weren't contributing loads to most combat encounters, Morgana absolutely didn't want to be down here alone, with no back-up. Nor did she want to leave Vesper behind in levels; she wanted to continue exploring the dungeon with her on, while not truly equal footing, at least equal when it came to levels.

"Is pretty weird, though," Vesper commented. "Really would've figured you'd level before me."

"What skills did you get?" Flint asked.

Glancing over at him, Morgana saw Flint had asked Vesper, not her—though at the question, Vesper had turned to Morgana, clearly curious at what she had gotten.

Closing her eyes, Morgana sought out her skill list.

***

[Magic Missile]: MASTERED. Aim a burst of arcane energy.

[Efficient Usage]: Primordial mana, when utilized directly, is three times as effective.

[Frost Nova]: CLUMSY. Encase a target in ice, reducing magical defenses and slowing or disabling.

***