On Wednesday, Lucia asks me to go out on a date but we quickly have to scrap that idea considering our current restrictions.

Instead, I tell her a few stories from my old world and how very different dating worked over there. In exchange, I have to promise her that once this is all over we'll properly recreate how dates would go on my old world. Totally fine by me.

It is Thursday again, time for the next dungeon trip.

Even after all these days, the options on the Joker Core refuse to change. Useless thing.

The last few days and today's morning routine almost pushed me to the next milestone of Summoner level 10.

Name Jared Delacroix Status disguised Age 18 (frozen) Classes Wizard 15, Survivor 9, Blood Mage 9, Summoner 9, Lore Seeker 5 Race Silver Elf 10 Extra Vampire 10, Noble 2, Lord 3, Progenitor 2 Divine TBD Title World Resident, World Navigator, Noble, Vampire Progenitor, Daywalker, Demon Lord, Regenerator, Title Holder, Demon, Fortress Lord, Fate Breaker, Happily Married, Master Crafter, R̶̟̐û̴̫l̶̩͋e̸̡͒ṙ̶̫ ̵̼͠ǫ̸̽f̸̯͗ ̴̱̊F̴̙́a̴̙͝m̶̲̐i̵̹͠l̸̕i̴̫̒a̴͚̔ṛ̸̽s̷̪̑

Title Level 5 EXP 6214 HP 2169/2169 [2712] MP 138/2849 [3562] SP 644/1749 [2187] STR 331+75 (staff) or +156 (claws) DEX 372 VIT 353+55 MAG 618+47 FTH 524+2 WIL 506+20 CHA 445 Equipment Topaz Staff, Book, Apprentice Headband, Robe, Sun Cloak, Defense Ring, Sun Guard Ring Skills - Weapon Spear Training 9, Unnatural Claws 2 Skills - Magic Blood Burst 9, Cure Magic 10 (Rank 1), Dark Magic 15 (Rank 1), Earth Magic 15 (Rank 1), Ice Magic 15 (Rank 1), Lightning Magic 15 (Rank 1), S̵̖̀ḁ̴̉ń̷̼g̴̽͜u̵͉̎i̸͈͆n̶̦͒e̷͚̍ ̵̔ͅW̸̍á̵̫v̸̺́e̴ 9, Summon Spirit 9 (Rank 1), Water Magic 15 (Rank 1) Skills - Status Charm Eye 2, Disguise 10, Intimidation 4, Stealth 10 Skills - Special Embrace 2, Familiar 3, Greater Vampiric Bite 3 Skills - Passive Affinity Magic 15 (Rank 1), Ageless 3, Beast Killer 2, Enhanced Regeneration 3, Extra Affinity 15, Keen Perception 5, Magical Secret 5, Mana Boost 9, Mana Regeneration 15, Sleepless 10, Supernatural Toughness 2, Trap Lore 9, Undead 10, Vampire Hierarchy 10 Weakness Fire, Light, Holy

The next Summoner level costs 6335 exp, so only 124 exp to go. If not during the dungeon crawl, I'll have it shortly after, and with that, we can finally execute the plan to acquire the 'Summon Master' title.

Lucia's stats don't look too bad either.

Name Lucia Delacroix Status disguised Age 18 (frozen) Classes Battle Smith 15, Fallen Saint 9, Blood Witch 9, Lead Singer 9, Forge Wizard 5 Race Sunbound (human) 10 Extra Vampire 10, Noble 2, Lord 3, Progenitor 2 Divine Cursed Queen 5 Title World Resident, World Navigator, Noble, Vampire Progenitor, Daywalker, Demon Lord, Regenerator, Title Holder, Demon, Fortress Lord, Fate Breaker, Happily Married, Master Crafter, R̶̟̐û̴̫l̶̩͋e̸̡͒ṙ̶̫ ̵̼͠ǫ̸̽f̸̯͗ ̴̱̊F̴̙́a̴̙͝m̶̲̐i̵̹͠l̸̕i̴̫̒a̴͚̔ṛ̸̽s̷̪̑

Title Level 5 EXP irrelevant HP 2700/2700 [3376] MP 255/255 [2819] SP 2667/2667 [3334] STR 545+94 (hammer) or +111 (claws) or +38 (created 1-handed weapon) DEX 421 VIT 447+55 MAG 439+20 FTH 403+15 WIL 377+30 CHA 440 Equipment Smith Hammer, Robe, Habit, Sun Guard Ring Skills - Weapon Axe Training 9, Unnatural Claws 2 Skills - Magic Corrosive Rain 5, Enchant Weapon 5, Dark Magic 5 (Rank 1), Earth Magic 5 (Rank 1), Fire Magic 15 (Rank 1), Ice Magic 5 (Rank 1), Profane Bolt 5, Twisted Pillar of Light 9 Skills - Status Charm Eye 2, Create Weapon 15, Disguise 10, Energizing Song 9, Intimidation 4, Sharpen Weapon 15 Skills - Special Embrace 2, Familiar 3, Greater Vampiric Bite 3 Skills - Passive Affinity Magic 5 (Rank 1), Ageless 3, Armor Training 15, Beast Killer 2, C̷̨̒u̶̢̕r̸̲̅(̶̞͝s̴̺͝)̴̩̀ĕ̵͓ Magic 5, Dark Lord 5, Enhanced Regeneration 3, Forgery 9, Hard Worker 10, Living Undead 5, Sleepless 10, Supernatural Toughness 2, Undead 10, Unholy Matrimony 5, Vampire Hierarchy 10 Weakness Fire, Light, Dark, Holy

But bluntly put, no one else in our group made a big improvement in the week since my takeover. And though we gained three more allies in Lucia, Anna and Iris, almost doubling our numbers, at least the latter two are just not combat ready.

After partying up and entering the dungeon everyone gets ready to start fighting.

"Let's clear the first floor quickly, after that we can discuss a few things while we regenerate resources, objections?"

"None", says Chloe, and the others nod in agreement.

"Good, then let's do that. Anna, you stick with Iris and guard her. With her current classes, she can't properly defend herself. Got it?"

"Uh-huh, will do."

"I think I'll be fine for now", says Iris, "I got a good weapon from Lucia."

"What weapon would compensate for a lack of experience?"

She shows her... new 'dagger', "Maybe not compensate but..."

"I have questions about how that qualifies as a dagger but that can wait. Let's get moving."

The first floor houses a swarm of white spider swarms.

Name N/A Age N/A Classes Pale Spider 1 Race Monster 1 Extra Monster 1, Swarm 1 HP 180/180 MP 514/514 SP 1113/1113 STR 157 DEX 199 VIT 63 MAG 105 FTH 63 WIL 21 CHA 42 Skills Flash Step 1, Poison Bite 1, Spider Climb 1, Swarm 1 Weakness Wind

A couple of skills I don't know yet. Let's change that.

Flash Step

100 SP

Teleport to a spot that you could reach within 5 seconds of running.

"Seems like they can teleport right towards their target, so watch for sudden movements."

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Poison Bite

Passive

Attacks with bites or spider appendages can inflict poison at a rate of 15.

Luckily, damage over time status effects were nerfed.

Spider Climb

Concentration

Can climb along walls, webs and web-like structures.

Can climb along non-web surfaces at 20% of the base speed.

And there are no webs here, so not an issue.

"Iris and Anna, you two stay back. They don't respect personal space. Iris has no so far no defense worth speaking of and Anna you don't have the passive regeneration to deal with the poison."

Anna sounds disappointed, "Yeah, yeah..."

"Elly, please watch over them as well."

"Yes, sir", she mock-salutes.

Well, given her past, I'll let the foolery slide.

Swarm monsters are easy to kill individually, so I can kill a lot of them with one spell.

Your Ice Blast has inflicted a total of 9954 damage and killed 14 monsters.

A few spiders use their [Flash Step] to warp before me. One of them manages to bite me.

You have taken 43 damage from Pale Spider and resisted the status effect.

Almost didn't feel that one.

They are too close to cast spells but I still have claws to defend myself.

You have inflicted 431 damage to Pale Spider and defeated it.

The others also have no major problems with the monsters. A few spiders slipped past us toward Anna and Iris but the two got out of it with only a few bite marks thanks to Elly's help.

Iris has a worrisome remark, "They were kinda cute, maybe there's a way to keep one as a pet?"

A drow priestess in the making, great. Though maybe monster taming as a secondary could work for her if such a class exists.

"Ignoring that statement, I guess we have now time for a few discussions."

Lucia asks, "What is on your mind, dear?"

"Okay, first... what is up with Iris' weapon? Since when are daggers that large?"

"Don't ask me, that's just a special class of weaponry. It wouldn't even be too good in the hand of an experienced warrior, it has a decent base attack power but only profits from half its wielder's base STR."

Geoffrey is curious, "How much base attack are we speaking of?"

Does he want a bigger weapon?

"That depends on the weapon type. For some reason, the stronger the regular weapon is, the weaker this 'ahnimay' class of weapons turns out. For this dagger, I got 470 attack power."

'Ahnimay'? Sounds like another present from a past Lost One. Is the invention of anime a universal constant or are the gods just selecting their helpers from the same city over and over again? They really need to branch out more.

So the alleged dagger has 470 base attack power... I think a regular, higher-power dagger would be about 120 attack power... 350 difference, half growth...

"So that means Iris needs about 700 STR before a regular weapon catches up? No offense, Iris, but that isn't happening any time soon if ever."

Iris responds, "I don't mind. You wanted me to become a healer anyway once we get a Class Core. As such, my damage potential is secondary."

"Right, that brings me to my main point. You won't get the core. I have different plans."

Lucia is exasperated, "What is going on, Jared? Didn't we invite her, especially for that reason?"

"Please let me finish, Lucia. So, a few days ago, I got a title that has a strange interaction between my summoned spirits and familiars. At a minimum, our familiars can take classes without needing Class Cores up to how many classes my strongest summon has."

Chloe sounds happy, "That is good news, so what is the problem?"

"For one, I can give my summons at most three classes currently, supposedly four after the next level. I'll need the Class Core that was intended for Iris to find a class with a skill that increases that cap further."

Lucia asks me, "Does that mean basically all our classes are now tied to you? Directly for me, for everyone else indirectly through that title and your summon skills?"

"In a sense, though that excludes Anna since she isn't our familiar. Everyone else would still have to meet the stat requirements and gain the exp. Also, there is no guarantee that I can ever improve a spirit until it has ten classes so that everyone can hit the class cap. Not to mention that I need to reach five thousand maximum MP so I can summon that spirit. Given our twenty percent penalty, that is quite the problem as well."

"Don't worry about that too much, Jared", Elly assures me, "I have already found a few skills that would push us to eight classes. Two more shouldn't be too hard. The problem is rather that you personally won't gain much from the attached classes aside from stats."

"Well, the only other skill that I would consider mandatory is flight. Considering the one title you looked up, it shouldn't be possible for me to get locked out of a relevant elite class."

Elly continues, "Yeah, exp and Class Cores should be your only restrictions on getting both a flight skill and maxed out spirits."

Geoffrey is confused, "I don't follow what you two are talking about."

"Hmm? Ah, nothing too drastic. By default, you're just limited to three elite classes but allegedly if you have three elite classes with a total of at least level fifty you can take the 'Elitist' title that allows you to take two more elite classes. Not that there would be enough Class Cores around for the average person for that to matter."

Geoffrey confesses, "Uh, about that... it seems like I can't have titles anymore. Like, at all. The tab is just gone from the menu and as far as I can check, the titles I had don't apply anymore."

"Huh? Since when?"

He scratches his head, "If not when I became your familiar, then shortly afterwards. Marca and I only found out a few days ago during training."

Marca nods.

"And you, Chloe and Iris?"

Chloe answers, "Honestly, I haven't checked, give me a moment."

Iris tells us, "I have nothing to check, I never took any titles in the first place. My apologies."

"While we wait for her", Anna begs, "why don't you make me a familiar as well? It sounds like it would be very convenient."

"...I don't know how that would interact with your hero's trial. I have already trouble believing that the gods would allow a hero to be enslaved like you are right now. My guess is that part of that trial is to free yourself from that status. But if they saw you as a voluntary servant of a monster like me... I doubt they would forgive you."

"So what? What does it change if I fail? Look, I can do my best all I want but I can still fail. I talked with Marca and she told me that there are probably a dozen candidates out there, not only me. I just... want to be useful... I don't care if that makes me fail."

I pat the little cat girl, "Let us both think about this for a few more days, okay? This is a big decision that can't be taken back. Also, I'll need more exp to increase the cap of familiars first."

"It is okay, I can wait."

So she didn't accept it because she wanted to be a hero but because she felt useless?

Why am I surprised? She was basically trapped for half her life in a hospital bed and didn't have many chances to make friends. Here she has now found if not friends then at least companions who count on her.

So do I even have the right to deny her request?

...I do, at least until I better understand the consequences of making someone my familiar. And given that I only learned today that familiars lose all of their titles, I clearly don't know enough about them.

Finally, Chloe is done looking, "Yeah, seems like the titles are just gone."

"Did you lose anything important?"

She shakes her head, "Not really, and alone the passive regeneration through [Sleepless] you gave me is a hundred times more useful than what I had."

"Well, I have said what I wanted to say. Anyone else got anything?"

"No", Geoffrey is straight to the point.

"Alright, then let's play a round of cards while we wait for the HP regeneration to finish. Elly, would you do the honors?"

A while later, everyone aside from Anna is back to full health so we can continue our journey through the dungeon. And I'll definitely skip over how I lost every single round of cards, thanks for not asking.

Floor 2 is home to a bunch of mummies. Not really much different from any other slow-moving brute we had before.

Floor 3 has Orcs, followed by Earth Golems, then trip-attacking Tables, floor 6 has Ghouls and floor 7 consists of Floor Chicken. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Anna got hit one more time, so we have her sit in the safe zone and just leech exp. Maria plays cards with her during that time.

While everyone else is either playing cards or eating during downtime, I play around with [Magical Secret] and Elly assists me. And I'm certainly not doing that as an excuse to get out of my 100% losing streak.

...okay, I admit it, I'm a bad loser.

During our trials, we find out a few things about rank 0 magic.

For one, it can be used as an attack but the option sucks. Its innate power is about a fourth of my regular rank 1 spells, and the projectile moves only about half as fast with reduced range to boot. Also, the projectile can't be altered the same way proper magic can. It is a fixed single target projectile, no rain, no area explosion, nothing; can't add a status effect either. Eldritch Blast it ain't.

Though, if I didn't have to worry about the sun and had nothing better to do with my time, it would let me throw low-powered spells twenty-four seven at the flood. Possibly practical but totally mind-numbingly boring. Pass.

On the non-combat side, we found out that I can create minor things with rank 0 magic and those created things are real enough. At least they didn't expire for several hours.

The water from water magic is suited for washing or cleansing but certainly not for drinking, it is too pure for that.

Ice... uh, ice cubes for cooling drinks, maybe as throwing projectiles? I can also make a pile of snow or a snowball. Can't really think of much use for that. But aside from just creating the snow, I can also remove it. No more snow shoveling for me, yeah!

On the downside, I tried to freeze some food to conserve it and that failed, the food was instantly destroyed...

Come to think of it, why bother? Everyone has an inventory, stuff doesn't seem to change in there. So that was a waste of a good apple...

Earth lets me produce dirt, soil, clay and rocks. Could maybe become useful to quickly fix a breach in a wall or build some trenches, or get me into pottery if I were interested. Maybe once we're outside, it could also be used to remove unwanted earth? At least as with ice, I can delete the rocks that I've produced but not anything that was here before. Could be a dungeon thing or limited permission due to non-ownership, who knows.

At first, I had no idea what dark could do but then I managed to create artificial shadows on the ground. How is that supposed to be useful?

After a bit more fooling around with dark magic, I accidentally create an ink-like substance. However, it vanishes when it touches anything that isn't paper, can't even fill a pen with it. I try for a while to write with it but the result is a bit of a mess. Certainly need to practice a lot if you want to write something readable with just magic.

Lightning lets me create little zaps or shocks. Don't see a use for it, maybe if we had batteries I could try charging them, but that level of tech is a distant dream in this world.

I also play around with fire to create a small flame or sparks to create a campfire, but since I don't have the affinity it indeed wastes 75 MP per try, so I quickly abandon branching out like that. At a minimum, the created flame is real enough to create warmth.

What could've been if the system would've let me take Brightflame Sorcerer... I could've played around with fire and light with no restrictions, only missing out on wind and poison for now. Maybe one day...