When Dylan opened his eyes again, he realized that he was the last to finish meditating. He grabbed the incense bowl he’d left on the ground before the fight and stood.

“Everyone else ready?” he asked, stretching.

“Just waiting on you,” said Rowan.

Dylan nodded. “Let’s go then.”

The group began to shuffle out of the room toward the final set of challenge doors.

Chester, as usual, took point. When he looked, Dylan saw the Guardian had a new vambrace covering his left forearm. It was a muted silver and engraved with something that he couldn’t quite make out.

Probably his reward from the last trial.

Rowan came next, and he was wearing a new pair of boots, the old ones carried under his arm as he walked.

Dylan couldn’t see whatever the other members of their group had received. The items may have been too small for him to make out, possibly worn under the rest of their clothes. Or, they could have been something like his own reward. Something related to class mechanics and not always tangible.

As for Alice, it was hard for her to hide her excitement at finally having a sword of her own. She kept glancing down and gripping the hilt of the weapon with a smile on her face. Dylan could also see that she was now fully recovered. Aided by the time acceleration during the trial and another round of meditation, she was ready to fight.

When the group entered the next room, Dylan went to put the bowl down near the intersection of the curved and straight parts of the wall.

Stupid of me to leave it as exposed as it was during the last trial, he thought. Could have easily tripped over it.

He saw Rowan doing the same with his old boots.

“Everyone ready?” asked Chester.

“Just a sec,” Dylan said. When he summoned his deck, the first thing he was going to do was play Lunadera’s Bloom, and because of the room’s limited size, he wanted to explain what would happen when he activated the card. That way, no one would be surprised, and it would be easier to avoid accidentally messing up Chester’s Taunt.

“So, it’s an area effect that restores mana and eliminates mental debuffs?” Chester asked, and Dylan nodded. “How big is the range?”

“Sixteen feet,” Dylan paused, thinking of something. “Hold on.” After multiple fights and rounds of meditation it was possible that his stats had improved. Especially with how mana-infused the System’s Tutorial was.

He called up his status.

[Statistics]

[Resilience: 17, Tier 1]

[Physical Power: 5.2, Tier 0]

[Magic Power: 17, Tier 1]

[Mana: 103/103]

[Mana Regeneration: 1.05/minute]

[Class Statistics: Resilience, Magic Power]

They really did increase.

He summed his card catalog just to double check, and the range on Lunadera’s Bloom had also gone up to seventeen feet.

As he let the book dissipate, he turned back to Chester. “Sorry, seventeen feet. My stats went up a bit, so now the card will affect everything within seventeen feet of where I am when I play it.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem to work around that,” the Guardian said, “but just to be on the safe side, make sure you stay back near the trial area when you use it.”

“Got it.”

“Now, anyone else have anything?” Seeing no one respond, Chester looked at Sara. “Okay, you can start whenever you’re ready.”

She nodded and walked over to her door, touching the line of glowing runic script.

When the familiar flowing walls and blinding wave of light receded, they revealed the inside of a half dome made of white marble. It would have reminded Dylan of the training room from the individual part of the Tutorial if it weren’t for the dense lines of runic script lining almost every bare surface of the smooth stone.

The only blank space was found at the center of the back wall. A long series of characters were engraved in a larger font, and a few feet beneath them was a black line spreading twice their width.

[Runic Scribe’s Trial has begun.]

[Defend the Runic Scribe as she completes her task.]

At the same time, five new passages opened in the walls outside the trial space, ready to ferry monsters toward the group.

“It’s a puzzle,” Sara said, and then pointed to the larger runes. “That’s the key. I need to decipher the script, and then use it to find the correct series of runes from around the room to depict the answer.” She gestured over the half dome before pointing back to the black line. “Once I write the solution there and empower the runes, the trial is over.”

That looks like a mess, Dylan thought. There’s no way I’d be able to do it.

He wondered how much simpler things would have looked if Sara had challenged earlier in the dungeon, but then he heard her say, “It looks easy enough. I don’t think this will take too long.”

She stepped onto the marble, and before Dylan had a chance to react, he began to notice the skittering of spiders.

This time, the arachnids came in all their varieties from the start. The overlapping utility of venom, web, and armor made the group of monsters more difficult to deal with, and the addition of a fifth channel they could charge from only increased the challenge. But with Alice now permanently added to the group’s combat power, the pressure they faced wasn’t significantly higher than it had been during the last trial.

Still, Dylan planned to summon his deck earlier than he had before. One reason being that the fight looked like it would escalate more quickly. Another was that he was planning on reshuffling, and when that happened, he wouldn’t have a hand to play. He’d need a few extra turns to draw before he could truly join the battle.

When he called the deck, he only had four cards in his starting hand. The same ones he’d been left with at the end of the last fight. Lunadera’s Bloom, Draw, Basic Energy, and Immobilize.

With nothing left in the deck, Draw was currently useless, and with the worries he’d face about mana expenditure after he reshuffled, Immobilize was of limited value.

Basic Energy could be played because the resource would carry over, but he wanted to activate Lunadera’s Bloom first. Once he spent the energy his deck enhancement gave him, he wouldn’t have any left, allowing him to generate at the beginning of his next turn. By following that with Basic Energy, he’d could have two energy ready for after he reshuffled the deck.

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He glanced at the display in the corner of his eyes that tracked his mana, and willed it to return to its original, complete appearance.

[Starter Deck Summoned]

[Summoning Cost: 67 mana]

[Maintenance Cost: 3.35 mana/minute]

[Adjusted Mana Expenditure: 2.3 mana/minute]

[Total Mana: 36/103]

He’d only reshuffled his deck once before. It’d been during the training section of the individual Tutorial. This time, because he was in a battle where it actually mattered, he wanted to make sure he understood all the details of his mana usage.

Dylan let out a breath and thought, Okay, here we go.

Checking that he was on the edge of the marble marking the beginning of the trial space, he pulled Lunadera’s Bloom into his hand and activated it.

As the card disintegrated into motes of light, a transparent white orchid grew in the air where it had just been. When it bloomed it was significantly larger than the real flower, but it produced the same gentle fragrance to tickle Dylan’s nose.

A white halo formed around the plant, quickly growing into a waxing moon. That same alien sound ran across Dylan’s ears, and the moon rose.

Once it was full, a rush of clarity washed through Dylan’s mind. He felt refreshed, as if his thoughts were unhindered, and new mana trickled through his veins.

It all happened faster than with the real orchid, and unlike the first time he’d seen the flower bloom, the image of the full moon showed no signs of leaving. He assumed that it would last for the entire duration of the card.

Jaiden and Dena both stepped closer to the field effect, and behind him, Dylan could hear Sara doing the same.

After a few seconds, a new turn began, and, following his previous plan, he generated before playing Basic Energy.

But what caught him off guard was his mana. He’d played Lunadera’s Bloom less than ten seconds ago, but when the turn started, he felt a new flush of mana.

Pleasantly surprised, Dylan realized a mistake he’d make when he’d first analyzed the card’s functions. He’d seen the one-minute duration and had automatically divided it in his head to mean four turns. The card regenerated mana every turn, so he’d assumed that it would provide mana four times. He’d failed to take into account that while the card’s mana effect used turns, the card’s duration operated under time instead.

The moment the card was activated counted as its first turn, but if he didn’t play it at the exact start of that turn, the length of a minute would span across five turns in total. Dylan smiled.

That’ll help what comes next.

He repeated the mental command he’d used back in the individual training room and reshuffled. His out of play cards flowed back into his deck, and after a moment, he felt his mind thrum.

It was done.

He checked the display for his mana values.

[Starter Deck Summoned]

[Summoning Cost: 134 mana]

[Maintenance Cost: 6.7 mana/minute]

[Adjusted Mana Expenditure: 5.65 mana/minute]

[Total Mana: 42.3/103]

As he’d expected, the summoning and maintenance costs had doubled. After adjusting for his natural mana regeneration, he was spending close to six mana every minute to maintain the deck.

Even with the total mana that would be regenerated by Lunadera’s Bloom, he could only last for somewhere around nine minutes. If he assumed he’d be able to draw either of his mana restoring cards before time ran out, he should just barely be able to play through his entire deck.

As long as I’m not ridiculously unlucky and don’t have both cards at the bottom of my draw pile.

His mind split and he chose to add a new card to his hand. Draw.

Activating it immediately, he got a Mana Spike, a Basic Energy, and then joined the battle.

By the time the moon over Dylan’s head began to wane, a diversely equipped group of lizards had begun to mix in with the spiders, and the fighting looked like it was about to get more intense.

But before Dylan knew what happened, the trial was over.

A wash a light spread through the room, and the monsters retreated.

Well, that was anticlimactic. I hardly got to do anything.

After his preparations in the previous trial to make sure he had enough mana to maintain his combat power through this one, everything had ended before it’d mattered.

[Congratulations on finishing the Runic Scribe’s Trial.]

[As a reward, you will be given Deck Enhancement: Tempo.]

It’s not a card this time.

As Dylan let his deck dissipate, he turned to look at Sara. “That was fast.”

She nodded. “You helped.”

“Me?” he pointed to himself, confused.

“The puzzle was simple enough already, but when you activated your flower card, things felt even easier.” She paused with a wistful look on her face. “It was like all my disordered thoughts clicked into place. After that, it was basically over.”

“Glad it was useful,” Dylan said, before reflecting back to how he’d felt under the effects of Lunadera’s Bloom.

Both with the card and the real orchid, he’d experienced a sense of refreshing clarity. He assumed that it was a byproduct of whatever power was clearing mental debuffs, but maybe it was more than that.

Maybe there was more to all of his cards than what appeared in their descriptions. The text didn’t explain how his summoned creatures would behave, the ways they moved or attacked. It didn’t do more than hint at the range and operability of spells like Mana Bolt and Mana Spike. And now this. An unexpected benefit from Lunadera’s Bloom.

Whenever he could finally get a calm moment of time, he’d have to start doing more serious and varied experiments with his cards and their abilities.

Pulling himself from thoughts of the future, Dylan summoned his catalog to check his reward.

[Tempo: While the enhanced deck is summoned, the base turn duration is reduced by 3 seconds.]

He could immediately see how useful the enhancement could be. There’d already been too many examples of him waiting on a draw before being able to do anything. With a shortened turn, he could act faster and more often. And with cards that had timed durations and turn based effects like Lunadera’s Bloom, Tempo could allow him to get a greater value out of a single activation.

But he could also see the downsides the new deck enhancement would bring. If he was using a lot of creatures like the phantoms, then Tempo would shorten their stay on the battlefield.

Paired with the right deck, the reward was quite a boon, but with the wrong one, it was nothing but a hindrance.

Dylan still had a limited card pool and felt like the decision to swap enhancements would need careful deliberation. He relied heavily on the phantoms for his sustained output and the Summoned Energy enhancement allowed him to act immediately when he first drew his hand.

Tempo was something he wanted to build toward, but he didn’t know if switching was the best idea while still in the dungeon.

I’ll consider it again when adjusting my deck at the end of the section.

Dylan looked up to the rest of the group and saw them checking their own rewards.

Jaiden was inspecting a new amulet, while the others were looking at the air in front of them. Dylan assumed they’d gotten something related to their class skills and were reading System screens.

The happiest was Dena. She usually came off as a bit stoic in Dylan’s eyes, but right now, she was having trouble containing her smile.

“What’s got you so chipper,” Rowan asked.

“I can finally be more useful than a walking debuff.”

“Oh?”

“I got an upgrade to my damaging skill that lets me designate people as friendlies. Now, I can attack without hurting anyone I don’t want to.” Her eyes shone with excitement. “Says it takes more mana and concentration, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That’s great,” said Chester. “But does that mean you won’t be slowing the monsters down anymore?”

“Nah. I can stack the damage on top of any other effect that my music produces. It’s what I did back in the combat trial.” She paused. “But again, it takes more mana and concentration.”

“Well, as long as the new cost isn’t too much for you, that’ll be a big help moving forward.” The Guardian glanced over the group. “We should be getting close to the end of the dungeon.”

“Speaking of,” Alice said, pointing around the room, “where do we go next?”

After the walls closed off the monster channels and restored their original appearance, the only exit was the entrance. The other room had been the same.

There didn’t appear to be a way forward.

“Let’s go back and check.” Chester began to walk down the passage, and most of the group followed.

Dylan jogged over to retrieve the incense bowl while Rowan picked up his boots; then the two joined everyone else.

“There,” Chester said when they reached the fork between the rooms, “that’s where we go.”

A new path had opened in the wall, and it was short. Dylan could already see what was at its end. The stone room marking that the second section of the dungeon was over.

As the group walked closer, he noticed more of the familiar details. Once again, the only difference was the gate. This time, it was made of silver.

Dylan was the last person to step into the room. As a warm current seeped through him, the front of the gate began to shift, but he couldn’t make out what was happening because a notification from the System appeared, blocking his vision.

[Congratulations on clearing section 2 of the dungeon.]

[As a reward, you will be given the following.]

[Mana: 5]

[Mana Regeneration: 0.05/minute]

[Mana Crystals: 2]

[No more monsters will attack until you begin the next section.]

[Should you not begin within 3 hours, your accumulated reward will be reduced.]

Dylan pocketed the two small crystals that materialized in front of him and looked at the gate.

A stylized symbol of a skull had imprinted itself into the metal. It made him excited and just a little bit afraid.

They really were nearing the end of the dungeon.

That symbol meant Boss.

Behind that gate was their final challenge.