In his haste, Eric forgot to bring a towel with him. He didn’t want to dry himself with any of the dirty clothes he brought with him, so he walked toward the roof access with no clothes on.
The door was locked, but with his current strength, it was only a matter of applying more strength to the door and forcing it open. He walked down what were clearly emergency stairs.
He arrived at the top floor; the door opened easily. Once inside, he noticed that it was an office. One of those that had the entire main floor full of nothing but cubicles.
From a quick glance, he could tell that they had been working when the integration began.
Chairs, documents, and all sorts of office supplies were spread everywhere. It wasn’t just the main floor that was like this. Every office, conference, and break room were the exact same.
He went to the break room and took the entire paper towel roll and looked for some more in the cabinets. By the end, Eric only found four rolls. He quickly went back to the roof, now dry, and dressed himself.
Even now, when he had removed all the grim, dirt, and other things that were making him dirty, he could still see the various spots in his arm that looked new.
It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Parts of him appeared and even felt new, combining that with the bloodline messages he had gotten, it wasn’t hard to infer that his survival was due to some unique bloodline ability. The problem was that one of the messages spoke about assimilation, at that simple message disturbed his understanding.
Not wanting to dwell on what was currently beyond his scope, he descended, grabbed his cart, and continued on his dungeon-clearing journey.
After a couple of days, his cart had become full of various rewards. The best dungeon he had found was one that could give slight enhancements toward whatever weapon you were wielding.
For him, it had upgraded the spear he was wielding by adding the slight chance for it to paralyze his opponents.
Ever since the enhancement, he had not seen it activate, or at least he hadn’t noticed it. Though, to be fair, he did kill everything fairly quickly.
He had also realized something as he continued clearing the dungeons. Something that he hadn’t considered, but when coupled with what he knew from his own dungeon, it was clear how it worked.
Basically, the more dungeons he cleared, the longer it took for the newer dungeons to become available once more. He himself had already gotten stuck once.
The reason that this was happening was simple, the mana that the dungeons used to remake everything had already been taken by the previously cleared dungeons. That meant that the more dungeons he cleared, the more they would become a one-time per day thing.
Eric lifted his head toward the center of the city, where most of the bigger buildings were. He had more or less figured out the distribution that had occurred when the System moved the cities around.
The buildings on the outskirts consisted of one or two-story buildings, with the occasional three-story one. And the further you ventured into the city, the higher the buildings got.
He actually recognized one of the buildings that was in the distance. It was a thirty-story building with a big G near the top. The building was built and owned by a local family that specialized in agriculture and dabbled a bit with construction, though only recently.
“Not crazy enough to go there,” Eric said, shaking his head. “Better finish with these streets and head back,” he added as he lowered his gaze back toward the street and continued walking.
A part of Eric really wanted to venture deeper into the city and see what was happening there. However, there were far too many unknowns. His encounter with the rats had really given him a reality check.
Sure, he could kill most if not all monsters easily, even boss monsters fell with little effort, but that was now, what about later on? Even now that he was easily killing everything he came across, he could tell that the monsters were getting stronger with each passing day.
If he were to enter any of the dungeons from his first round of clearing, he could probably sweep it clean in less than two minutes, and the time would mostly be because he would have to move from one place to another.
If all the monsters were in the same room, it would be a matter of seconds. But now, the monsters were beginning to survive the first strike and required the second to be finished off.
The central part of this amalgamation city was much more packed with buildings, small and big, anything that survived in there was not an ordinary monster.
So instead, he had decided that he would return with his friends. “Why risk it alone?” he said to himself.
Night came, and he had finished clearing all the dungeons that he wanted to. He was relaxed having accomplished what he had set out to do, though something did gnaw at him.
“I didn’t find the rat dungeon,” he said with a bit of worry.
None of the dungeons he had cleared had a rat as a boss, nor did he find any giant rats roaming the streets. That meant that the rats wandered here from somewhere else, probably from deeper in the city.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The possibility that the rats were from deeper into the city was all he needed to further cement his determination to only venture into it when he was stronger and with his friends.
“Don’t want to increase the assimilation,” he said with a light chuckle. “At least not until I know what it is.”
Eric was currently walking back toward the dungeon that had enhanced his spear. He wanted to know if it was possible for the dungeon to upgrade the same thing multiple times, and if it could, what the limit was.
He quickly arrived at the dungeon, took the spear from his cart, and headed in. “I feel like a homeless man.”
Once inside, he quickly got rid of all the monsters, which were small mud golems. The golems were really small, like kindergarten children.
The only attack they possessed was the ability to blow up once they got ahold of their target. It was the main reason that Eric had chosen the spear when he entered the dungeon the first time.
The building that made up the dungeon wasn’t even a store; it was a house. A house tucked in between two clothing stores.
The house was impressive in size, but it only had four rooms other than the kitchen, living room, and a small library, which were all on the first floor.
Eric easily cleared three of the four rooms on the second floor. When he was about to reach for the door handle of the main room, he hesitated, he remembered the rats, the certainty of death.
The event hadn’t shaken him, but it did serve as a motivator to get stronger. He was planning to wait until he got back to Solace and entered the dungeon, but right now, right now he felt like a man eager to spend some money.
He rushed down into the living room floor. Quickly laying down some blankets, he prepared the perfect spot for meditation. He went to the kitchen but found that most of it was destroyed. “Dammit.”
Returning to the living room, disappointed at not having something to drink, he quickly got past it.
Something he had noticed fairly quickly was that the sensations for hunger and thirst, now started way before he was actually hungry or thirsty. It was like his body was struggling to adapt to its new capabilities and reacted at similar intervals to before the changes.
Letting go of the wandering thoughts, he sat down on the blankets, crossed his legs and lastly, he closed his eyes.
He activated Mental Focus and Mana Insight. He wasn’t sure what he would do today, but it was something that he would have to do at some point, especially when all other options seemed so far away.
He focused both skills on his core, Mental Focus failing due to not being given a task. Carefully, he examined his core with Mana Insight, concentrating as much as possible. Slowly, he moved the skill around his core, searching for the crack.
After what felt like hours of examination, he gave up.
No matter where he moved his skill, he didn’t find anything resembling a crack, a hole, or anything from which the energy could escape.
The System wouldn’t lie, would it? he asked himself. Only one way to find out.
He retrieved Mana insight and began the haphazard strengthening process once more. Choosing a random strand of mana, he pulled it toward his core.
However, this time there was a small difference. He quickly enveloped his core with his skill, to see if he could feel the energy escape, but none did, or at least none that he could detect.
He repeated the process of introducing more mana into his core and considered that it might be because his core wasn’t full enough, and it didn’t need to push anything out.
Once more, his skill felt nothing, so he repeated the strengthening process until he could no longer tolerate the pain.
With gritted teeth, he enveloped the core and waited. Not long after, he began to feel that his core was slightly less strained and immediately he tried to focus his skill more. He did his best to push his skill into the core and to make it as thin as possible, condensing its search area.
Mana insight has reached level 6.
Mana insight has reached level 7.
Mana insight has reached level 8.
Eric was surprised by the system windows, but he was even more surprised by what he began to feel through his skill.
At first, a certain section of his detection area began to feel a stream of mana. But then, due to Eric pressing into his core, he began to feel an intense heat. Though he quickly reasoned that it wasn’t only heat, it was heated mana, no, it was mana that had been processed.
Astonished to finally be able to sense some of the energy that was inside his core, he was slow to react, and the energy disappeared.
Determined, he once again brought more mana into his core and when he had to grit his teeth, he stopped.
He quickly put Mental Focus to work, or at least got into the right headspace to get it to work. He waited for a couple seconds, but when the stream of processed mana began, he quickly activated Mental Focus.
It wasn’t just his Mental Focus that was working hard, he tried to condense Mana Insight around the mana stream and catch as much as possible. However, the energy was odd, unlike anything he had seen before.
The mana was extremely processed, becoming something entirely different.
Whatever his core did to the mana, it made it incredibly fine, capable of slipping through his skill even though it completely encapsulated it.
Eric let out a big gasp as soon as his skills spent all of his mana. It had only been a few seconds, but it was more than enough to leave him feeling strained.
Experience 8751/9075
Experience 8512/9075
Experience 8444/9075
Having recovered a bit, he brought up his status and looked at his experience. One thing was to know something, and another was to see it happening, or in this case, see a numerical representation of it happening.
Before him, in his status screen, his experience was disappearing. He couldn’t even investigate as to where it was going to because he was out of mana.
He sat back and waited for his mana as his mind began to wander. He considered if he should try to make a mana core, like Stella had told him.
According to her, if done right, it increased his mana capacity. Though she did clarify that she herself had done it wrong and was still trying to figure out how to go about it.
He then considered what Mental Focus had told him about mana regeneration and considered that maybe he could shove mana into his body and try to use that for skills. But he knew it wouldn’t work.
Mana for skills was more alike to regular mana than the processed one from his core, but it was still distinct enough that he wouldn’t be able to use it.
“I wonder if Stella has already figured this out,” Eric asked himself.
Some time later, his mana was completely back, but by then his desire to continue had completely evaporated.
His reason had returned to him, and he saw that it would be much better to return to Solace and do it there, where he had all sorts of bonuses.
“Also,” he said in a low tone as he took three hub crystals out of his pocket. “I have to put these to use.”
He put the crystals back in his pocket and began to walk upstairs, more than ready to take on the boss.
----------
Inside the forest, a figure was fidgeting with a strange circle that was inscribed on a tree trunk. The circle itself was full of equally strange symbols.
“What the fuck did that monster do to leave them like this?!” they exclaimed as they examined the circle, trying to correct something on it.
After a moment, it appeared that they had finished with whatever it was that they were doing and began to move somewhere else.
Eventually they arrived at another tree, equally deep within the forest, and they repeated whatever it was that they had done to the previous circle.