Leo wiped off goblin blood from his weapon Lucky. He looked at his small group of followers. Each of them had a reason for following him. Majority of those reasons were related to vengeance. To right a wrong. To acquire satisfaction for delivering punishment for a crime. All of them have become followers of his god Kur.

“Good work everyone. I think we can finally rest.” The horde wasn’t easy. Even with his Apprentice ranked powers, he had a few close calls. Everyone did. But nobody died.

“What about Carly and the others? Are we sending them back?” Terry asked. Terry was a small guy. Barely old enough to use The System. His birthday was two weeks after it started, and he had a long way to catch up once he acquired it. He was growing to become Leo’s most trusted in his group.

“We don’t have a strong enough healing force to repair flesh. A missing limb can’t be regrown sadly.” His mind wandered for a moment, thinking of someone who might be able to. “Let them break their tokens and go back home. It won’t be but another couple of weeks before we return back to earth from their perspective.”

Terry nodded and went off to inform the others. Leo liked Terry. But he didn’t grow close to him. Not again. He kept every relationship at arms length. With a quick glance at his menu, he allocated the levels he gained, noting a few improvements to his techniques.

Leo glanced down at his divine weapon. “Good job girl,” he whispered. With a grunt, Leo stood up to talk to everyone at least once. Ensure they were actually okay to move on, and were not putting up a false bravado.

“Ku, don’t think I didn’t see that broken hand. You are getting sent back.” Leo said with disappointment. He didn’t like it when people hid injuries.

“It’s fine! It’ll heal up in a few days. With you and Carly to fix it-”

“Carly is missing her leg Ku! She is getting sent back, that means she can’t fix it. Come on, you aren't a stupid man. You are the oldest one of us!” Leo argued. “Show some of that wisdom, and go home. You can’t keep fighting if you die. If you stay, you won’t be with us.”

Ku just sat in silence. Leo walked off to another gathering of people. In total, there were fourteen who were left. They started with twenty eight. Only one had died since they entered two weeks ago. Leo thought that was an acceptable number.

A part of him deep down wanted to leave everyone behind. To go off and kill everything on his own. “Just like a certain person I know of.”

He shook the idea out of his head. Leo had bigger plans. Bigger objectives. He can’t do it alone, not yet.

“Where’s Little Z?” Leo asked as he looked around. Their smallest companion was the one he worried the least about.

“Here!” A high pitched voice said. A three foot tall man came into view. The small man took a dangerous profession and class combination. It forced him to shrink down, but Leo couldn’t disagree with the reasons. His stealth and movement skills rivaled that of even Damien’s.

“Go scout ahead. I want to find some other people. Trade information, maybe resources.”

“Sure thing. Is your bag still not empty yet?” Little Z pointed at the bag.

Leo rolled his eyes. The man cared way too much about some enchanted bag. “It’s my own personal Tardis, now get going.”

Little Z smirked, “Sure, I still plan to stick my head in there. I want to know where you got it.”

Leo snapped his fingers and sent the small man off.

Terry came over to Leo. “Everyone is ready when you are Leo.”

“We wait for Z to come back. Once we get details of everything, we’ll move on.”

----------------------------------------

Mathew walked out of another challenge. It was somewhat difficult, requiring him to attack moving targets. His reward wasn’t worth the effort. Just a choice in either a bow and arrow, a new staff, or a mana powered rifle. He chose the staff to replace one of the few he had damaged. It was decent and Beginner tiered in quality. Yet, Mathew knew it wouldn’t match up to his main magical weapon.

It’s been a week inside the second floor. Nearly three weeks inside the world quest as a whole. Mathew had already found a golem dungeon. Yet, he didn’t go in just yet. He was going to time it.

His entire plan hinged on a bit of information he traded recently. A group of three caught Mathew’s intrigue. They were not very strong. In fact, he guessed none of them were over level twenty. Now, he could believe they survived the first floor horde through dumb luck, or teaming up with others. The second floor? No way. Not without a far larger group, and higher levels.

So he struck up a conversation with them. He learned they were from Brazil. One of them had a language skill and it made conversation easy. They hid inside a Dungeon when the hordes came. So long as you time it right, you can stay inside all the way after the hordes dissipated.

Mathew traded his ability to enchant bags for more information. Brazil fell hard when The System arrived. Cartels fully took over everything when their own government failed. It was a bloodbath the first few weeks. After it all, groups formed. Those groups then joined together. There were more kills, more deaths, but one man stood out on top. Not for his level, he was relatively weak.

He proclaimed to be the Voice of God. Mathew asked which god, and the three gave him a weird look. Apparently the name of the God was never mentioned. Just God was the deity he talked to.

There were several things backing up his claim. One of their group said he could fly, heal any wound, and never was able to be killed. Poison turned into wine. Blades turned into dust. Nothing could harm him.

The only problem South America seemed to have was a Dungeon Outbreak. Just like how Murthos had done, a few dungeons in Brazil were taking over land. Most people fled into the World Quest to escape it while most of their fighters stayed to end the threats.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Mathew filed all that information to be dealt with later. As far as he knew, there were no Dungeons near Blue Oaks anymore. Not within a day’s worth of foot travel. As people leveled up, and vehicles were acquired, what used to be a day on foot would change.

A problem for the future.

Right now, he had two days to finish getting ready for his delve into the golem dungeon. From what he could tell, it would be difficult, but not impossible. A Piercing Axiom infused [Mana Bolt] that aimed for their cores killed them in one shot. But anywhere else was just the same as doing nothing.

Jeffery would be mostly useless offensively. He could keep the golems distracted, and that was fine. Agnox would need to rely on ranged attacks, or focus on distractions just like Jeffery.

That left him with his two wisps. Wispy could explode one of the cores with enough mana. Whis on the other hand was his growing gatling gun. Requiring five or six shots to kill a golem wasn’t going to cut it.

Mathew had a brand new ritual to test out. Depending on how it worked would depend on how reliable it is.

The ritual itself was simple and straightforward. The downside was he couldn’t modify it or steal any parts of it. Just like how he can cast [Summon Jeffery] or use his enchanting spell, [Ritual of Enchantment: Increased Space] all the knowledge of how to use it was beyond his ability to learn from it.

He tried already. So there was no point in continuing to try until another day.

With a load of newly acquired Mana Cores, testing the ritual once wasn’t going to hurt his stockpile. Mathew found a safe place and had Jeffery and Agnox keep watch. He didn’t expect anything to cause problems, but the extra security put his mind at ease.

The ritual wasn’t mana intensive, just a little more than what it takes to keep Jeffery out and about. It was the time that caused Mathew to worry. He never stopped, but half an hour came and went when the ritual finally finished.

Nothing immediately happened. No creature appeared in front of him, nor any system prompts. But something was in the air. Mathew could feel it. His soul tickled. It was not a feeling he wished to repeat.

After the feeling faded a creature started to take shape in front of him. It was larger than a house cat, around the size of a medium sized dog. Six leggs formed that each had three joins plus the connecting joint to the body.

Its entire body was a dark purple and shiny like metal. Its body was sectioned off into three parts. The head had a pair of pincers that looked like it could tear off a man's arm with little effort. A giant dark purple ant appeared.

“Huh, I don’t know what I honestly expected, but not this…” Mathew partially complained. The ant looked up at him, as if waiting for something.

“Can you understand me?” Mathew asked curiously.

The ant didn’t answer at first, but then nodded.

“Can you speak back?”

The ant shook its head.

“Okay, well. What can you do? Hell, what even are you?” Mathew put up a hand to stop it from answering. “I know, you can’t answer. This is just a bit weird for me.” He rubbed his head thinking things over.

“A talking fish I could handle. A flying snake I can deal with. A mute purple ant the size of a dog? Why is this any weirder?”

Mathew opened his eyes to see the ant was digging at something in the wall. “What? Leaving me already?”

The ant dug out a large rock. Then it snapped the boulder in half with its pincers. Mathew was no longer weirded out. “Okay. You just became useful to me. Let’s go see how useful those pinsers are. Are you good at fighting?”

Mathew kept talking to it. The ritual said the spirit can leave him at any time. So, he would be forced to play nice with it. That didn’t mean he would accept the first spirit that appeared.

The ant tilted its head side to side, as if it was thinking. “I need something that can fight for me. If you can’t do it, I'll get someone else to replace you.”

The ant stopped moving. Then it moved closer to Mathew. He didn’t react in any way. Mathew watched the ant just sit next to him, waiting.

“I’ll take that as you are willing to fight. Don’t chicken out halfway through. You fight till the end and follow my orders, you will get out of the fight alive. Got it?”

The ant followed Mathew as they all traversed the tunnels. Two fights later, Mathew was impressed by the ant. It made sense how strong it was. The summon scaled off of his [Rituals] skill.

He wished he could bring out more than one spirit, but that wasn’t an option. “Something to acquire at a future upgrade possibly.”

The third week neared its end, and Mathew had finished preparing as much as he could. Primary plan, back up plan, backup to the backup plan, and of course, the back up to the backup to the backup plan.

Mathew doubted he would go past the second backup plan, but one couldn’t be too careful when your life was on the line. He had already received the notification for the horde that would be showing up in a few hours. He had until then to crush his token.

The golems dungeon portal swirled with brown energy. “It’s time. Any last minute suggestions, Agnox, as the only other speaking member of this group?”

“Nope. I think it’ll work, the logic makes sense to me!”

Mathew rolled his shoulders and summoned up his rod, “Then let’s get this over with.”