Chapter 4: The Dungeon of Embodied Magic

With full health and full stamina, Catalysta stepped through the golden portal and found herself in a large cavern that appeared empty. She had no idea where the light source was for the cave but it was bright as day in the room. A cage of stalactites hung from the middle of the ceiling. A high pitched whistle started ringing through the space, soft at first but gradually building until it reminded Cat of wind moving through an instrument. A notification appeared.

Level 1: Whistling Winds. To proceed to the next level, defeat 500 monsters. To MASTER the level, defeat 1001 monsters.

As soon as she dismissed the message fifty small forms dropped from the cage of stalactites. They looked like miniature tornados and they came right at her. Not knowing what type of creature it was, Cat used Dash and kited around the room avoiding the first wave until she could get a proper Analyze, which was slightly more difficult due to the speed of the little elementals and the amount of them.

Dodging a handful of little tornados that came at her all at once, she managed to keep her eye on one that seemed to be vibrating in thought of how to get at her.

Breezee: Level 10 Air Elemental. Hit Points 75/75. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (small). Main attack--slashing damage from wind blades.

While she spent a second taking that information in, the group of five Breezees caught up to her and she knew she wouldn’t be able to Dodge in time. She tensed for the cuts that should have bit into her armor and bloodied her legs, but they didn’t come. Instead, the five little tornados snuffed out as soon as they touched her leaving five small bags floating in the air. Unlike in town, these didn’t zoom away for Aria to store for her, so she swiped her hand through the air and mentally sent them all to her inventory, as the rest of the first wave of mobs came after her as well. Based on what happened with the first five, it would have been easy to just let them kamikaze their way into her experience and Void Gauge numbers, but that wouldn’t help her other skills, which even though these Breezees were lower level than here, they might help her become more proficient in needed skill for combat where she was actually in danger. Catalysta liked to be efficient and prepared. The notifications she received from the first five mob deaths didn’t really matter, there was about to be nine hundred and ninety-five more and she’d review her spoils when she was done.

As she rolled about the open room, avoiding the two foot tornados for as long as possible before she ran out of stamina and had to allow them to kill themselves on her Void Vortex while she rested. It started to get rather repetitive and her mind began to wander. She wondered why the little monsters were weak to blunt damage. On the twenty-sixth wave and about an hour in, she got rid of all but one of the Breezees and pulled out her mace, bringing it down right through the middle of the single-minded elemental as it flew towards her. She was surprised to hit something small and hard as it rocketed away with the force of her blow, shattering against the stone floor. A pile of fine white powder appeared before it quickly transformed into a glowing loot sack. She remembered the ‘Opal Core’ part of the mob’s description and nearly slapped herself in the face, but remembered she had a mace in her hand. She had likely just destroyed a gemstone. Deciding it would be nicer to have something that was probably worth some gold to get better weapons, she stashed her mace away. She’d work on leveling that skill later for now she’d focus on Dodge and her Light Armor skills, and hopefully get as many undamaged opals in her loot as possible.

Eventually the fifty waves of level 10 Breezees ended and as Catalysta moved around the area picking up the bags she missed as she was leveling her Dodge skill a golden sparkling portal appeared opposite from where she came in and a system message popped up.

Congratulations! You have completed level 1 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You may proceed to the second level of the dungeon. If you have not moved on within 30 minutes, Master level for level one will be initiated.

Based on the type of monsters she faced in the normal mode, Catalysta figured the Master level wouldn’t be too much more difficult. Having collected all the remaining loot bags she sat in the middle of the room to rest. She still had full health, though her stamina was quite low, and her Void Point Gauge had about doubled in capacity with all the mana she was absorbing. She wondered if there was a limit to how much she could hold, but she imagined once she started using the Void points in attacks and skills, that growth would slow.

She pulled up her notifications and reviewed them. This time the notifications seemed to be more streamlined, rather than giving each individual level increase it combined like notification showed multiple level gains at once.

You have earned enough experience to reach level 16.

You have reached level 14 in Innate Ability VOID.

You have reached level 2 in Void Vortex.

You have reached level 10 in Dodge.

You have reached level 8 in Light Armor.

Only one character level and just two levels in Dodge and three in Light Armor after constant shuffling and rolling around the room and then taking five, no, four hundred and ninety-nine attacks? She remembered belatedly that she hadn’t let one of the elements touch her. She had a lot more grinding to do.

She pulled up the battle log and read the last few lines.

A level 10 Breezee attacks you for 0 damage.

You drain 75 manalife from level 10 Breezee.

You have killed level 10 Breezee. You have gained 2 experience points.

Dang, only two experience points for each one of the little elemental mobs, but she guessed that made sense. They were five levels lower than her and they couldn’t even hurt her. And she only got two each because of her buff. She wondered if she would have gotten any if she had been level 16 on entering the dungeon, but she wouldn’t know until she faced a mob that was six levels below her. Next, she was curious as to how Dodge leveled, so she pulled its description up and focused on it like she had the Light Armor skill previously.

Dodge: level 10, Novice. Experience gained for this skill is determined by the type of armor worn, the number of pieces of that armor worn, the level of the enemy being avoided, and the success of the dodge attempt. Pending a successful Dodge: For unarmored you receive one experience point per dodge if the enemy is within five levels of you. For Light Armor you receive one experience point multiplied by the number of pieces of armor worn if the enemy is within five levels of you. For Medium Armor you receive two experience points multiplied by the number of pieces of armor worn if the enemy is within five levels of you. For Heavy Armor you receive three points experience points multiplied by the number of pieces of armor worn. For every five levels above the “within” limit, gained experience will be multiplied by the level difference divided by five.

She did some mental math, easily understanding what kind of formula she needed to apply to her current equipment and stats. Basically, if she wanted to level Dodge the fastest, she should put on her plate mail, but with how heavy that was, successfully completing a dodge might be more difficult. Perhaps it would be smarter to level Dodge some more with the Light Armor and then when she was better at it increase the weight of her armor, sort of like how she might increase the amount of weights on the bench press when it became easy. That decision made, she opened her inventory to review her loot and found three new stacks of items at the top of her list: two hundred and twenty three piles of finely ground opal dust, ninety-eight cracked opals, and one hundred and seventy-nine small flawless opals. She lingered on the opal dust and discovered it was used in alchemy, casting, and crafting. The cracked opals could be turned into more dust and the flawless opals had uses including and exceeding the dust, but the description said to see a jeweler for more information. If all the mobs in this dungeon dropped gemstones, this would be a lucrative crawl.

You have five minutes to proceed to the next level before the Master mode for level 1 begins.

Catalysta looked at the dungeon warning in surprise. Had it been twenty-five minutes already. She glanced at her clock that was connected to the real world. True to the information in the antechamber, it had only moved forward by a few minutes. She decided to add a new timer that she would remove once she exited the dungeon. It would tell her how long she’d been inside. That timer told her she’d been in the dungeon for two hours and forty-seven minutes. That time just flew by. She didn’t even feel tired. Yet.

She watched the timer tick down and stood as the time went down to zero. As the last second fled, ten new mobs dropped from the ceiling and the golden portal disappeared. The new mobs appeared the same as the last mobs, except they had arms shaped like two smaller tornados. Immediately, she began avoiding the mobs so she could get more information on them.

Breezer: Level 11, Air Elemental. Hit Points 85/85. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (small) x2. Main attacks--slashing damage from wind blades, and Wind Force.

These Breezers were a little slower than the Breezees, perhaps because they were larger. Aside from a cutting attack that had no effect on Catalysta because of Void, they would also randomly blast balls of air at her. Anyone else would have been knocked from their feet because of the force of the wind, but it just dissipated against Cat, and filled her Void Point gauge even further.

The first Breezer didn’t even touch her until she ran her stamina down to five and had to rest because another Dodge would bottom her out. She watched as the tornado arms swung towards her, but rather than immediately dying, the Breezer’s hit points dropped to 10/75. The monster decided to retreat instead of continuing to attack. In fact, it went to the perimeter of the room, strategically putting itself out of the way so it could slowly heal. Cat continued to move about the room until all the Breezers of the current mob wave were milling about the edges of the dungeon level. She started toward the nearest Breezer, only to have it zip away, across the room and as far away from her as possible. She would have to chase the mobs. Well, at least there was another skill she could train.

Using a Dash--once her stamina bar had refilled--she was able to catch up to one of the Breezers, before swiping her hand through the swirling winds. It was an attempt to snatch an opal core out of the beast before Gamdrea decided it was dust or cracked, but she didn’t know where the core resided. It seemed the opal was invisible until the mob died, or was randomly hit and destroyed. Cat’s hand went through the tornado body, hitting nothing. The mob was replaced by a loot sack that quickly disappeared into her inventory when she touched it, and because the other mobs were still avoiding her, she had plenty of time to see what kind of experience the Breezer gave her.

You have killed a level 11 Breezer. You have gained four experience points.

Again? Not much experience points. It had to be the level difference. And if not for the boon it would only be two points. But then, experience points were experience points and she needed them. Making sure she had enough stamina, she used Dash to get to the next closest mob, proceeding to take down it, and then the next until a new set of Breezers, dropped down from the ceiling. The grinding of Dodge and Dash continued until after the tenth wave of Breezers, when a new wind elemental appeared.

Cyclada: Level 12, Air Elemental. Hit Points 100/100. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (medium). Main attacks--slashing damage from wind blades, and Pull.

The new air elementals were similar to the Breezees in that they had no arms, but were three times the size of the first mob. And, instead of a tiny tornado, with a small funnel at the floor and a large funnel at the top, the Cyclada was uniform in width from top to bottom. The winds it created were also stronger. Cat could see small pebbles and dust skitter across the smooth floor of the cave as the mobs performed a Pull, using wind to suck everything towards them. As a group their pull was even stronger, Cat wasn’t budged from her spot. Not even a single hair fluttered towards the cluster of Cyclada. Again, it took her touching the mobs with her active Void Vortex to kill them, but she didn’t have to chase after them like she had for the Breezers; they were just too big to move about the room easily or quickly. She repeated her grinding process with these mobs until another one hundred were done and gone. For each one of the Cyclada’s she killed, she received six experience points.

Again after the tenth wave of the level 12 mobs, a new type of air elemental appeared.

Cyclozer: Level 13, Air Elemental. Hitpoints 150/150. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (small) x2, (medium) x1. Main attacks-slashing damage from wind blades, and blunt damage from Toss.

This mob had a body of a cyclone and tornados for arms and legs. Upon appearing, half of the wave of new mobs stretched out their wind arms and ripped a stalactite off the ceiling. A sudden realization danced across Cat’s mind as she remembered taking damage from the fireball shrapnel once it hit Chittany and Hichard’s door. Those stalactites were not made of magic. And five were flying towards her.

She didn’t want to know how many hit points she’d lose if any of those made contact. Diving to the side, she went straight through one of the Cyclozers who were trying to box her in. If she hadn’t had VOID, that would have been a death by a thousand cuts. As it was, the Cyclozer seemed to shudder and its arms disappeared as Cat felt something hard hit her cheek and bounce across the floor--a small multicolored opal. With monsters that could potentially hurt her with the environment, she made the decision to take this group out as quickly as possible, especially since every time a stalactite was ripped from the ceiling it respawned immediately.

As long as the Cyclozers didn’t have a rock wrapped in the winds of their arms, they couldn’t hurt her, so she decided to see if a Void Touch would be any more effective than the Vortex effects. She had plenty of Void Points now after all, and in the unlikely event that she’d run out, the current environment would make replenishing that number easy. Using her newly leveled Dodge ability along with Dash, she chose an uninjured target and closed in, arm outstretched to perform the Void Touch. She met air. Literally. Even though she had no solid target besides the opal cores, which she couldn’t see, as soon as her finger passed through what was considered the Cyclozer’s body, the ability skill activated and the mob’s hit points went to zero. Just before she landed the blow, her target had grabbed a stalactite, and with the creature suddenly disappearing, the rock descended on Cat. She moved to the side, but not far enough as the heavy stone clipped her shoulder. Twenty-five of her hit points vanished.

Cat grunted. She would be more careful next time. Still, even with the possibility of injury, these mobs weren’t really a challenge. She could see how the dungeon would be a challenge for anyone else, and could definitely see how the non-immortal Bannor and Forwinn would be unable to, or unwilling to continue going into the dungeon, especially if the monsters just got stronger after the first level. She systematically dispatched all the Cyclozers, not drawing the fight out anymore than it had to be. And once more after the tenth wave a new mob appeared.

Galefor: Level 14, Air Elemental. Hitpoints 1500/1500. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (medium). Main attacks-slashing damage from wind blades, and blunt damage from Wind Force. Spawns Breezees after it takes enough damage.

Luckily for Cat, the shattered remains of the thrown stalactites from the last mobs vanished after a few seconds because the Galefor’s torrent of winds would have flung the rocks around the cave easily, making it extremely difficult for her to avoid damage. This time, only one mob spawned at a time. It also didn’t move from the center of the room, prompting Catalysta to move in close, which gave her an interesting opportunity. It allowed her to see how close she had to be to the mob before Void Vortex started stealing the magic it was made of. She hadn’t been able to tell before whether it was when the mob touched her that it was activated or if it started being drained within a few feet. The Beastmage’s cloud of AOE magic hadn’t touched her before the Vortex activated. She kept an eye on her Void Point gauge as she took deliberate steps towards the Galefor, which, unlike all the others so far, didn’t seem to aggro on her. The swirling winds stopped wherever she walked, but she could hear the wind blow behind her and in front, until she was about ten feet away from the mob. Her gauge started filling and the creature’s hit points started draining.

After one hundred fifty hit points drained, a level 14 Breezee appeared and rushed her. With her attention on the new threat, she noticed that the Breezee didn’t start losing health until it was within one foot. It was likely that the distance the Void Vortex needed before activating was dependent on how large the enemy or spell was, rather than the level. The Breezee only affected a small portion of the space, while the Galefor moved wind throughout the entire level of the dungeon.

There were three differences in the higher level Breezees, they were faster, it took three touches to kill them or drain them of the mana that was their health, and she got ten experience points from each one she dispatched--along with another ten for the mob that spawned them. This made grinding her Dodge even easier as she could focus on only one Breezee and use up all her stamina before she let another one spawn; it was slow work, but effective. Eventually, she whittled the Galefors and Breezee summons down to none remaining and the final leg of the Master mode commenced.

A deafening whistling sound roared out above Cat as the stalactite cage retracted into the ceiling and the rocky surface of the ceiling disappeared, replaced with what reminded Cat of swirling clouds, only instead of the dark clouds of a storm, these were white. As one, a hundred streams of swirling white descended on the floor in different places and began moving about the room in random directions. The streams of air, like water spouts in a hurricane only without water, were impossible to avoid, but as soon as one hit Catalysta it disappeared and retracted into the swirling above.

Typhada: Level 15. Air Elemental. Hitpoints 3,000/3,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (small) x25, (large) x1. Main attacks-slashing damage from wind blades, 1,000 cuts from 100 legs. Destroy all legs to summon boss.

The end of Master mode was in sight, and Cat couldn’t be more happy. She was getting kind of tired, with being constantly on the move for nearly six hours, and her stamina refilled slower each time she used it up. She also felt a bit parched and her stomach had started growling in the middle of destroying the last Galefor.

She planned on taking a break as soon as possible. Sighing, she Dashed across the room, touching as many of the Typhada’s legs as she possibly could. With the legs constantly moving, and requiring multiple contact hits, she had to make several passes. Her stamina ran out multiple times, each recovery taking longer. She found herself walking around the room, following the last few legs as they moved with no pattern. She moved slowly, as her stamina was filling at a snail's pace and she didn’t want to be bottomed out when the level boss appeared. Just in case the battle would require extra effort. At least the fight had allowed her to pick up straggling loot bags.

Eventually, she managed to despawn the last leg of the Typhada. The long leg of spinning air and cloud retracted back to the ceiling as had every single leg. The roiling ceiling began to spin and condense, before a mass dropped to the cave floor and slowly stood. This mob was the most solid of all the monsters she had seen so far. It seemed to be made of both stone and wind.

Breazelbub: Level 16. Sentient Combined Elemental. Hitpoints 1,000/1,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Opal Core (small) x2 (medium) x1, Emerald Core (small) x2 (medium) x1. Rare boss creature. Attacks with blunt damage and slashing damage.

A stone skeleton animated by swirling winds, cracked the stone floor as it smashed down both fists into the rock. The splinters created several long jagged shards that the elemental proceeded to pick up, a weapon for each hand. Those were not made by magic.

Catalysta shook herself. She needed to be awake. This mob was a higher level than her currently, and if previous encounters were any clue, it could hurt her.

“What mortal is this, who challenges Breazelbub alone and unarmed? Be they fierce or foolish?” The elemental eyes were empty sockets in a roughly ovaled stone but it seemed to stare into Cat’s heart for the answer. She didn’t speak aloud, but had the thought that she had just beaten one thousand monsters by herself to battle the Breazelbub, so she leaned more towards fierce. Though it might have been foolish for her to attempt a Master Mode on her first time in the dungeon. She pulled her mace out to ready herself, it was unlikely it would just talk for much longer. The dungeon beast read her mind.

“Some wisdom and wit behind those eyes it seems, let us see if you have the muscle to match.” Breazelbub shot forward, its heavy stone bulk propelled by magical winds. As it neared Catalysta her Void Vortex sucked out the mana giving the mob speed, but its momentum had already been established. Both stone swords slammed into the ground where Cat had been, but she rolled out of the way, using her newly leveled Dodge to easily avoid the descending blades. She came up from the roll and backhanded a swing, connecting her mace with the left lower limb of the Breazelbub. The blow jarred her arm as the metal mace head met magic reinforced stone; she had not been physically close enough for the vortex to drain its buff because the magic was so concentrated in the stone, whereas the wind encompassed a much bigger area.

Grunting, she switched the mace to her other hand, while she shook her right hand, trying to rid herself of the numbing pain. And then the elemental was after her again. Luckily, the combined elemental was slow. Cat rushed it, getting inside its defenses and rolled between its legs. She slapped her hand on the left lower leg and used a Void Touch on it; the creature lost fifty hit points and the reinforcement of the leg was removed. Cat jumped to avoid a low sweeping swing as the Brazelbub rotated its upper half in a complete three hundred sixty. She avoided the first rock sword, but the second clipped her when it changed directions mid swing. Luckily, the flat side of the sword hit her so she only suffered some blunt damage.

Using the momentum of the blow she continued a horizontal roll as quickly as she could to get out of the monster’s reach. She’d lost eighteen health with that hit. She shuddered to think what an actual solid hit would do to her, but she couldn’t let that stop her. Turning, she waited for the elemental to rush her again, and just like before she rolled to avoid the blow and back handed a mace swing at the leg she had hit with a Void Touch. Splintered stone appeared on the leg, and another hundred health points disappeared from his hit point pool. When the Breazelbub followed her this time with its two swords, Catalysta met the blows with a two handed swing of her mace. The stone sword that hit the mace head shattered with the force of her blow but the other one clanged back.

Cat turned her head and closed her eyes as stone shrapnel flew everywhere; she felt the small sharp stings but she couldn’t stand still. Without opening her eyes, she flung herself backwards, hoping the Breazelbub wouldn’t be able to hit her. She forced her eyes open and saw the massive stone sword hurtling towards her in a slash. She turned her head and leaned backwards again hoping to avoid the blade. She felt the wind from the force of the blow as a thin line of blood dribbled down her cheek.

She needed to regroup and calm down. Wiping the blood from her face with the back of her gauntleted hand, she moved out of reach of the elemental. As she kited the monster around the room, she carefully watched her stamina gauge. An insistent notification kept blinking at her that her innate ability had leveled and she had a new related skill. At the same time she saw that she had obtained the skill Power Attack, but it was the new innate ability skill she had unlocked that was really important. If it hadn’t been, it never would have interrupted her vision in the middle of a fight because of her UI settings.

You have learned the skill Void Weapon. Currently Level 1. Extends Void Touch to any equipped weapon.

That was just what she needed to expedite the battle. She couldn’t wait and dashed forward and dodged the remaining sword that Breazelbub had, before executing a two handed swing combined with a Void Weapon touch to strike the already injured leg. With the appendage already fractured, the leg sort of just crumbled as Cat struck it with the mace. With the loss of the limb, Breazelbub tumbled to the floor. Before it could rise, Catalysta jumped onto its back and started hammering away with the mace, inflicting cracking blows on its remaining limbs and body and whittling away at its rapidly diminishing health. Just before she was to make the finishing blow on the weird head, the elemental rumbled and shook her from its back. It stood, using the remaining rock sword to prop itself up. Cat rolled and got in her fighting stance, ready to avoid attacks and to go on the offensive when the opportunity presented itself.

“I yield.” Breazelbub said calmly, as it stood there, barely alive and several pieces of its ‘flesh’ crumbling to nothing.

“What?”

“I yield. You were obviously going to beat this elemental and I want to use this opportunity to speak with you.” The monster’s eyes which had previously been deep pools of hollow blackness now glowed a soft blue. Its hitpoints sat at 79/1,000. One more good hit would finish it off.

“Speak with me about what?” Catalysta wasn’t about to let her guard down. Master mode had not ended yet.

“I want to apologize. You see I am the Spirit of the Dungeon and I had been sensing several Agents of Shadow in the vicinity for some days. The difficulty of the first five levels has been elevated due to that--I expected an Agent of Shadow to be attempting to claim me and as a Divine dungeon it was my prerogative to prevent that. I did not expect an Agent of Light to be the one stepping into my portals.”

That put Cat back on her heels, “You increased the difficulty? I guess that makes sense…five hundred mobs, even weak ones, is a bit much for what is supposed to be the beginning of a dungeon. What is it normally?”

“About fifty mobs, though you didn’t seem to have any difficulty with the five hundred either. I was quite surprised when Master Mode was attempted after sending a hundred waves of Breezees at you. Even at level 10 they can cause quite a bit of damage, though you faired quite well. And it did give me the opportunity to speak with you.”

“So the next four levels will be just as long?” Cat didn’t say it was difficult, because she hadn’t found it to be so, just time consuming and tiring.

“Comparably so. It will go Fire, Water, Earth, and Lightning. Each with monsters corresponding to the level of the dungeon. Level two of the dungeon will have a maximum of level eleven monsters, level three will have level twelves, and so on. The Master modes, however, will not follow that rule. Once the five levels are complete, the following levels will likely seem easy in comparison as the difficulty will return to normal. I would normally recommend you return in a weeks time and by then I will have reset the difficulty of the first five levels for you, but--”

“But there’s a giant three headed killer cat guardian outside that will destroy me if I leave?”

“I was going to say that you seem to have things well in hand, but yes, there is Catberus and I did beef her up over the past few days as well. Don’t worry, once you’ve beaten the five levels, Catberus won’t attack you again and if you Master the first five levels, the only way she will become hostile towards you or anyone you deem an ally is if you suffer a true death. As a Dreamwalker you may die several times during your time in Gamdrea but only if your soul is banned from Gamdrea will I fall out of your control and the Catberus become feral again. The last dungeon controller never attempted a Master Mode and age stole his vigor for dungeon diving. Unfortunately, he lost his control of Catberus and she grew vicious again. That is the way of things here.”

“I see, so I’m going to have a giant three headed cat as a pet after this?”

“Catberus is much more than a pet, especially at her level now, she is quite intelligent. You should treat her with respect.”

“Of course. I hope she lets me pet her.”

The spirit of the dungeon, who up to this point had been speaking in a sort of monotone voice, seemed to have some amusement in his tone when he said, “I’m sure she will enjoy that. Now, I would recommend you wait until the safe room to level your attributes. Once you land the final blow on Breazelbub Master Mode will be complete and this will become a domain under your command. Mobs will still spawn in your mastered areas, they just won’t attack you unless you attack them. You will be able to level, but you should wait because if you increase your level you will get little to no experience from the next floors. Mastering an area also allows non party members that you desire to enter the dungeon without you.”

“Thank you for being so helpful,” Catalysta said, “I’m actually quite pleased about the difficulty level, you know. It’s allowing me to get stronger faster.”

The spirit of the dungeon inclined Breazelbub’s head, “You are quite welcome, as a Divine dungeon it is necessary that I partner with an Agent of Light, and it has been quite a long wait. Once you gain control, we will need to discuss things further about our partnership. For now, I wish you luck. I will see you again.” The soft blue glow of Breazelbub’s eyes disappeared and all that was left was the same hollow blackness of before. The spirit of the dungeon was no longer in the elemental’s shell and the mob was once again hostile. Before it could attack her, Cat Dashed forward and brought her mace down on the Breazelbub’s head, dropping its remaining health to zero. Two portals appeared again, one golden one leading to level two and a silver one leading in the opposite direction--likely out. A message appeared before Cat’s eyes.

Congratulations! You have completed the Master Mode of level 1 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the master of this location in the dungeon. Mobs will no longer attack you in this zone unless you first attack them. Gather resources such as metals, herbs, and gems will now spawn inside level one, because it is a lower level, mostly common resources will be available, however, that does not mean rare resources cannot appear.

The room of the level one area changed with the defeat of the Breazelbub as well. While it was still a cave there was now a small pool of water in one corner surrounded by a mossy bank--Cat could see no obvious place from where the pool was fed but the water moved as if there was a current. Veins of metal appeared on the walls, a temptation for any miner worth their salt. That didn’t interest Catalysta at the moment, as a wave of exhaustion swept over her.

She swiped up the loot bag from Breazelbub, and headed towards the pool of water. Sitting down cross legged at the pool’s edge, Cat decided the moss made a nice comfy seat. A perfect seat for her to rest on while she saw to her growling stomach and went through her notifications and loot drops.

She opened her inventory and pulled out a water flask, some hard cheese and bread. While she had the window open she saw her updated spoils, which included an additional two hundred ninety-eight finely ground opal dusts, one hundred and seventy-five cracked opals, and one hundred ninety-six, small, flawless opals. New drops were seventy-two flawless medium opals, one large flawless opal, two small emeralds, and one medium emerald. Lucrative indeed. She wondered how much the gemstones would be worth; she’d have to be careful not to flood the market. She took a bite of bread and sighed as the light crisp of the crunch delighted her taste buds. She felt like she hadn’t eaten in days, like she had been on a keto diet and she was finally allowed to have carbs again. Next she bit into the cheese and the flavor was divine. Food didn’t taste this good back on earth; it wasn’t even fancy bread or cheese. She gulped down the skin of water and finally felt satiated of both hunger and thirst.

She wanted to take a quick nap before continuing but first she wanted to see how far she had progressed on her skills. She pulled up her character screens and went over the new information.

You have earned enough experience to reach level 18.

Light Armor has reached level 16.

Dodge has reached level 20. Congratulations you are now an Adept!

Dash has reached level 3.

VOID has reached level 15.

Void Vortex has reached level 7.

You have learned the skill Block.

Not bad for…she looked at her clock, seeing that she had been in the dungeon for nearly six hours. She has been moving non-stop for six hours. No wonder she was tired, though if this had been a normal game in the real world, she probably could have kept going for a marathon of gaming. Six hours was nothing if you were just sitting on your couch pushing buttons. She reclined on the mossy bank, which was surprisingly quite comfortable, and closed her eyes.

She awoke when she rolled over and her arm fell into the cool pool of water. Rubbing her eyes, she yawned and was surprised to see a flashing notification. She turned and looked at the room behind her to see roving Breezees. Curious, she looked at her notification.

Congratulations you are the first Dreamwalkder to defeat an enemy while asleep. You have gained the title: No Rest for the Weary.

Your loot bag has expired and been reclaimed by the dungeon.

She went into her character sheet for a little more information.

No Rest for the Weary: You require 10% less sleep than those around you to feel fully rested.

Another interesting buff, but she wasn’t sure how useful it would be because she didn’t know how often she would need to sleep inside her dream. She also wondered if she could level the title up with how many monsters she destroyed while sleeping--with her Void Vortex ability. Questions to be answered another time she supposed; she had to get moving. Her dungeon clock showed that she had slept for about seven hours, which meant about fifteen minutes had gone by outside and back on Earth. Dreams were crazy; time always passes differently. A few seconds of a dream could span years, or a whole year could pass by in your dream and it only be a minute in the waking world. But she had to admit, she loved it, loved the vividness of this dream and the adventure it offered, real or not.

Quickly, she pulled out a piece of jerky from her inventory, basically inhaled it and then washed it down with a couple gulps of water from the little pond. A message flashed before her eyes before quickly disappearing.

You have drunk infused spring water. You feel refreshed. You have resistance to heat for the next three hours.

Was heat different from fire? If it was, she might have an issue. Definitely wouldn’t want to wear the medium or heavy armor on the next level. But maybe she’d be able to come back and refresh the buff between the normal and master modes. She definitely planned on doing both; this was her first time in the dungeon and she had the time to do it. She was going to come out of this pocket dimension OP for her level--at least she hoped she’d be OP.

She moved to the shimmering golden portal and stepped through. A blast of heat hit her in the face as she saw a circular glowing red rock wall, with shifting colors that sort of looked like embers heating up and cooling down and then repeating. It wasn’t unpleasant for her at the moment, though that might have been from the water buff from the previous level.

Level 2: Dancing flames. To proceed to the next floor, defeat 500 monsters. To defeat Master Mode defeat ??? monsters.

Small bursts of flames jumped out of the walls, all of them about the size of a basketball, and started forming lines that curled into circles. There were a total of five circles of dancing balls of flame, each with a different color and each a hundred strong. The colors included blue, red, yellow, green, and purple, and the circles were spaced out evenly so that none overlapped, and they never deviated from their paths as they danced around an invisible point. Catalysta inspected each color, but they all read the same thing.

Flaro: Level 11. Fire elemental. Hitpoints 100/100. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Ruby Core (small).

Catalysta approached the dancing flames of the red circle and nothing happened, even when she got within a few feet of the monsters. They didn’t aggro on her. But when she stepped in the path of their dance and one made contact with her, its health dropped to twenty-five percent and all the red Flaros broke ranks and converged on her. They mobbed her, committing suicide on her Void Vortex. There was no potential for dodging or dashing, it all happened too fast as one hundred level eleven Flaros vanished into puffs of smoke, only getting two attacks in on her before they met their half-way self inflicted end. Well, this level might go a bit faster than the last, but again, if she hadn’t had her VOID, there was no way she would have survived that assault. The Spirit of the Dungeon wasn’t pulling any punches to keep the Agents of the Dark from controlling it.

Cat proceeded to repeat what she had just done with the red circle of Flaros with the other colors, and within a few minutes, the normal second level of the dungeon was cleared. She didn’t even have to go across the room several times to pick up all the loot bags; they all just dropped right around where she stood.

Congratulations! You have completed level 2 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You may proceed to the third level of the dungeon. You may return to the previous level if you wish as well, but if you have not moved forward within 30 minutes, Master level for level two will be initiated.

As the timer ticked down, she reviewed her new drops. 239 flawless rubies, 53 cracked rubies, and 208 piles of finely crushed ruby dust. Less cracked rubies than there had been cracked opals wasn’t a bad thing, though she really wasn’t sure how much either gem was worth in Gamdrea.

As she waited, she walked over the wall to take a closer look, putting out her hand to touch it. She could feel heat rolling off the wall, particularly when it glowed red under her hand. She used the back of her hand to quickly test how hot it was. It was there for a millisecond and if she hadn’t had the heat resistance buff from the spring water, she would have gotten burned. As it was she had an unpleasant sensation on the back of her hand. She very much hoped that Master mode for level two did not take longer than her buff lasted. Moving back to the center of the smoldering room, she waited until the timer counted down. Soon after her five minute warning five more circles of dancing flames appeared.

These circles looked almost identical to the last batch of mobs, and Catalysta thought they were, but she decided to be careful and she was right to do so.

Bonfi-flar 1/100: level 12. Fire elemental. Hitpoints 150/150. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Ruby Core (fractionated).

The mob she analyzed was yellow in color, the reds was level 16, the blues was level 14, the purples were level 15, and the greens were level 13. She decided to repeat her method from the normal mode and went to stand in the line of the dancing flames, but the second her Void Vortex wounded one of the Bonfi-flars, all the mobs of that color converged on their center point and merged into a larger monster, a different monster that only barely fit between the floor and ceiling.

Bonfi: level 12. Fire elemental. Hitpoints 15,000/15,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Ruby Core (medium)x10.

In the leaping yellow flames of the Bonfi she could almost make out floating shapes, dipping and rising with the flames.

Congratulations you have learned the skill Perception.

She saw the notification flash in her periphery but focused on the battle at hand. The Bonfi didn’t come after her to get into close range, instead it started shooting flaming balls at her, which of course, caused her no damage. And then one of the floating shapes inside the Bonfi came hurtling at her. She didn’t think, she just reacted, snatching the object out of the air before it could hit her body, just like she might catch a hot line drive. It was one of the Bonfi’s ruby cores and the second her fingers closed around it, the elemental shrieked--she didn’t know how fire could even make a sound unless it had something to burn--and had 1,500 hit points fewer.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill Lightning Reflexes.

Despite her desire to be away from the heated room, Catalysta spent the next fifteen minutes alternating between dodging the fireballs and trying to catch them. Sometimes the fireballs had a core in them, but most of them didn’t. When the Bonfi reached 50% health it froze. Catalysta walked up closer to it but its hit points didn’t change with her proximity. She used a Void Touch and got no response. She looked into her battle log.

You attack Bonfi with a Void Touch. Bonfi is currently invulnerable. Bonfi must become vulnerable again before you can deal damage to it.

Sighing, she moved on to the next color of Bonfi-flars, and repeated the process. This time the floating cores were slightly easier to see, but the fireballs came at her with greater velocity. Again she alternated between dodging the fireballs and trying to catch them, even going so far as to dive for a core fireball that was going wide of her--as if the Bonfi had figured out it shouldn’t shoot its core directly at her. Again, when the Bonfi hit 50%, it stilled and became invulnerable.

She repeated the process three more times, each time seeing the cores more distinctly, each time the fireballs coming faster and more varied in trajectory. And each one did the same thing when it hit 50%, except when the last Bonfi hit that magic number, something changed in all of them. A deeper shade of its original color formed in the middle of their bodies and they all gravitated to the center of the ember chamber. The ceiling spit a large ruby, the size of a fist into the midst of the Bonfis and like their predecessors, the five Bonfi combined into one creature.

Volcanis: level 17. Fire Elemental. Hit Points 50,000/50,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Ruby Core (medium) x25. (large) x1.

Volcanis, being an amalgamation of the different colored Bonfi, incorporated all its colors. It was humanoid in shape, but was made of flames. The head was red, the right arm was purple, the left arm was blue, the right leg was green, and the left leg was yellow. The center mass was a normal colored fire, like what you might see at a camp or in a fireplace.

Unlike in the air level, there was no conversation with the spirit of the dungeon. Instead the elemental reached out with its left arm and a stream of blue fire shot at Catalysta. Despite the fire’s inability to hurt her, she dove out of the way. It was instinct again, rather than a conscious dodge, and it almost seemed like Volcanis had moved slower than she expected him to--not much, but enough to where she noticed it.

Volcanis rotated which arm it shot fire out at her as she rolled and dodged to get out the the way, each time aiming to get closer and closer to it. After her fifth forward roll she came up with one of the elemental’s outstretched hands in her face. She reached up and used a Void Touch before the monster let another attack go. Volcanis roared and staggered back, becoming stunned and invulnerable. The blue flames that made up its left arm and became ten bouncing balls of flame that sort of hopped around the room as if running from Catalysta. The mechanic was familiar to her; she’d played several iterations of this in regular controller games--the old games. It was a perfect time to employ her dash ability as she zipped about the room, taking out the fleeing blue flames before they could return to Volcanis.

Once all the blue flames were snuffed out, Volcanis recovered and was vulnerable again. His left arm was still there, however, now it was the color of his core. She stepped back to let her stamina gauge refill and allowed the elemental to hit her with gouts of flame. Elementals--ones that did not foster the Spirit of the Dungeon anyway--were not smart. The creature kept hitting her with magical attacks, even though it was doing no damage. Catalysta didn’t even feel the temperature of the room rising, though it was uncomfortable enough for her. She still managed to grind some of her skills while getting through the room as quick as possible. It only took a few minutes of rest before her stamina returned to normal, and then, she repeated her process five times, snuffing out the green flames next. Then the red, then the purple, and then the yellow, until only a single colored--normal flames--flickering flamed humanoid stood before her.

The fight seemed to have left the creature as it didn’t even attempt to hit her with anymore attacks. Its remaining health was less than 3,000--probably from the constant pull of the Void Vortex. She walked up to it, watching its health drain away with her proximity and it didn’t even raise it hands, resigned to its fate. Catalysta thrust her hand into Volcanis’ chest and grabbed onto the clearly visible large ruby core. She pulled the core out of the flame construct and Volcanis’ fire winked out of existence. She received a sum total of 10,000 experience points for slaying the monster. She thought that was a bit excessive of an experience boost, but since it had been made up of over two hundred and fifty individual mobs, she decided it wasn’t really that much. It was the ease with which she had gotten it that bugged her a little. She hoped she wasn’t missing anything by not leveling in a traditional manner--like the other Dreamwalkers probably did.

Congratulations! You have completed the Master Mode of level 2 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the master of this location in the dungeon. Mobs will no longer attack you in this zone unless you first attack them. Gather resources such as metals, herbs, and gems will now spawn inside level two, because it is a lower level, mostly common resources will be available, however, that does not mean rare resources cannot appear.

The room immediately cooled considerably and the ember like walls were still there, but they looked like dying coals. Another shallow pool in the same geographical area as the previous level appeared. Catalysta knelt by the pool and gingerly dipped a finger into the water. It was about the temperature she liked hot chocolate to be--not scalding and not cold. She really didn’t want to try the warm water, but she got an idea. She took an empty vial from her inventory--she had conveniently forgotten to return it to Bannor--filled it with some of the spring water and then examined it.

Infused Spring Water: Heat variant. Provides resistance to cold. Contains 1 dose. Buff will last 3 hours.

Catalysta decided to save the vial and filled another couple. Maybe Bannor would be able to use it in some way in his alchemy. She put them both back into her inventory. With the decrease in temperature she was no longer uncomfortable in the room. She decided she didn’t need a sleep but she wanted to take a look at her progression to see if she needed to focus on something else for the next few levels.

You have reached level 10 in Perception.

You have reached level 12 in Lightning reflexes.

You have reached level 25 in Light Armor. Congratulations you are now an Adept and all damage taken while wearing a full set of Light Armor will now be reduced by 10%.

You cannot progress further in Light Armor until your main character level increases. You may only level a skill 10 levels over your avatar level.

You have earned enough experience to reach level 22.

Dash has reached level 5.

Void Vortex has reached level 11.

VOID has reached level 17.

She had a choice to make. If she wanted to keep leveling her Light Armor she’d need to initiate her character level up. But if the level of mob progression remained the same, if she did that she’d get no experience for the kills. The safest bet would be to level a different set of armor. She quickly decided it would be smarter to hold off on the stat leveling and skipped right to a different armor. She decided on the heavy, because not only would it offer the best defenses in the future, but it would help level her Dash and Dodge faster. She would eventually level the medium armor too, just not yet

Opening her inventory, she mentally hovered over the plate mail and a little box popped up asking if she would like to quickchange into the new set of armor. Surprised that that was a possibility she said ‘yes.’ She blinked and felt a heavy weight suddenly drop onto her entire body, about an extra seventy-five pounds worth. She could still move without too much trouble, though she definitely would not be as quick on her feet. At least the weight was distributed evenly. An alert popped up after she had finished inspecting how restricted she was.

You have learned the skill Heavy Armor.

Warning! When using Heavy Armor, stamina based skills and attacks cost twice as much to perform. Progression in levels may change this.

She took a few steps forward and experimented with moving her arms around. She found that her stamina was slowly decreasing with how long she moved, even when it was just walking. When she stopped and stood still, the stamina bar halted and began filling back up but it was twice as slow as it was before. She rolled forward, mimicking a dodge and in addition to how difficult it felt, her stamina took a huge hit, a chunk of it vanishing. Wearing the heavy armor would not be easy--at least initially. Maybe she’d gain strength just by lugging around the extra weight. There was nothing wrong with a challenge and at the moment, making her progression a little more difficult wouldn’t hurt her--not that it was going to stall her overall grinking, it would just make her push herself more physically.

Moving to the golden portal that appeared with the completion of the Master mode, Catalysta prepared herself to enter the third level of the dungeon. The Spirit of the Dungeon had said it would be a water level; she hoped her plate mail didn’t rust, though surely Bannor would give her more if it did, or she could get more with all the gems she had picked up.

When her stamina was refilled completely she stepped through the portal with a splash. The new room she found herself in was covered with two inches of standing water. The walls were covered in a green slimy algae and lichen, the longtime residue of a moist environment.

Level 3: The Shape of Water. To proceed to the next floor, defeat 500 monsters. To defeat Master Mode, defeat ??? monsters.

Wasn’t that the name of one of those weird old movies? The thought flittered past Cat’s mind in a second, but her attention was soon absorbed by the new elementals that rippled into existence around her. With the room as massive as it was, there was plenty of room for all five hundred mobs to appear at once. They were all different sizes and took the form of different animals from an elephant to a mouse.

Dropple: level 12. Water elemental. Hitpoints 150/150. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Earth. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Sapphire Core (small). This elemental can take the shape of any animal known to live on the face of Gamdrea, but it does not change the elemental’s makeup.

So all of these different looking elementals were all Dropples? Catalysta watched several water rabbits and mice skitter away from her. She was able to see each one’s core, glowing softly. If the animals behaved like normal animals, this level would be hard in her heavy armor. Well, more long than hard. If she had to chase after easily spooked animals to take them out she’d lose stamina a lot faster. As she was distracted a water bear lumbered toward her, maw open and teeth gleaming. Its growl was silent as it swiped at her with razor sharp claws. She noticed at the last moment, but didn’t have time to attempt a dodge; she had been focusing too much on the rodents. The bear's claws dissolved harmlessly into liquid and rejoined the floor as the bear gave a silent roar of pain--at least that’s what Catalysta imagined it was doing as it reared back, shaking its head, mouth open. The bear's health went down by 75 but its paw reformed and it readied for another attack.

The bear dropple lunged forward and this time Cat dodged to the side, not a roll, just a lunge. In the full plate, she wasn’t sure how quickly she could recover from a roll dodge. As the bear missed she lunged forward again, grasping towards the sapphire core that floated in the dropple’s midsection. Even with the armor slowing her down she was able to grab onto the sapphire. The water forming the bear splashed to the floor and joined the liquid already there. One down and four hundred and ninety-nine to go.

Catalysta felt a trickle of sweat run down between her shoulder blades; she hadn’t really sweated with the leather armor on, plus it was a pleasant temperature in this cave--she would guess around sixty-five degrees--so why was she sweating? She glanced at her stamina bar and was surprised to see that it was a quarter gone. That was weird, and likely the reason she was sweating. It was only supposed to cost twice the amount of stamina to dodge, but then her stamina had gone down just walking too. Maybe she didn’t have enough strength to properly use it yet? She opened her inventory and tried to switch to the medium armor, but was told she could not change armor in the middle of combat. Great, she was stuck with heavy plate until the level ended.

Staring around she searched for an area that had mostly predator type dropples; the types of animals they mimicked were about fifty-fifty predator-prey. Determining an area with several likely to attack her including various sized feline forms and canine forms, she dashed through their vicinity and pulled them all to attack her. She dodged when she could and snatched cores as opportunities presented themselves. It was exhausting. Each time she performed this particular strategy, it nearly bottomed out her stamina and she had to wait for it to refill, but she was able to take out five to ten dropples each time. She wasn’t able to grab all the cores, but she got most of them, which gave her flawless sapphires everytime. It was also a quicker victory than letting the dropple hit her twice, though they all seemed to get at least one hit in. Soon it was only the herbivores left, but she had been able to get some of them as she was taking out the dropples that attacked automatically.

With all her dashing around the large room the skittish dropples were congregated together in little groups, but if she got too close before she dashed, they’d scatter again. The closest cluster was about ten mice, she stopped about fifteen feet away from them, allowing her stamina to refill. She was going to try something and she was unsure how it would turn out. The mice were only about a foot off the ground so it would probably take too much time to dash up to them and stoop to swipe at them. But the issue was how would her armor take a slide across the floor? She figured the bottom would be slick enough, she’d nearly fallen a couple of times already after a dash through the carnivore groups, but she’d never attempted a slide in something so heavy before. But really, what would it hurt if she tried and failed? It would just mean taking out the rest of the dropples wouldn’t be as easy.

Executing a double dash, she dove towards the huddle of rodent dropples, arms out wide to sweep through the mice. She managed to grab three cores as she performed this maneuver, caused three dropples to lose half their hitpoints and she completely missed another two. The bad news was that her move bottomed out her stamina. The good news was that her slide took her head first into the wall, and while the crash lost her some of her own hit points, she stopped with her head out of the water. She would have to remember that hazard if she decided to repeat the double dash dive. A five minute appeared in her UI as a few of the non-aggressive dropples came to investigate the half submerged Catalysta--losing some of their hit points and bolting away again in the process. Initially, her stamina bottoming out sent a throbbing ache through her body--she hadn’t noticed it the last time because of the bleeding wound, but at that point she didn’t have a life threatening injury to take her mind off the no stamina side effects.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Congratulations! Hard work has paid off! After wearing armor too heavy for your current stats for over one hour and being in combat the whole time, you have gained +1 to strength. The rate at which you lose stamina by simply walking around will decrease by 10%.

So she didn’t have the stats for the Heavy armor yet. She wondered why she didn’t get a notification when she put it on. It didn’t seem like she was lacking that much in strength for it though, if a +1 in strength reduced her handicap by 10%, that meant nine more points of strength and she could walk without draining stamina. As her bar refilled, the pain slowly subsided and she had a few minutes to plan her next moves. Once she finished the normal mode of this level, she was going to switch her armor to Medium. She’d save the smaller dropples for last and take out the easier targets of the larger dropples first. Dashing would still be part of her strategy, but she would hold off on the diving part, unless it was necessary. Hopefully the small stat increase from earlier would make stamina bottoming out less likely. She proceeded to systematically take out the dropples that were the biggest--cow forms, horse forms, deer forms. There were even some buffalo, hippo, and rhino forms, which technically weren’t traditionally hostile predators, but they were territorial, so if she hadn’t had her VOID ability they might have posed a problem for her with their horns and bulk. Soon there were only a handful of rodents remaining, including squirrels, mice, rabbits, frogs, and some kind of chicks.

She continued to take them out one to two at a time, needing to take frequent rests from the dash skill. The whole process took another couple hours on top of the three that had already passed. Through her slog through the third level of the dungeon, she gained another point of strength and a point in endurance and she managed to not lose all her stamina in one go again. For each death of a dropple, she gained six experience points and a form of a small sapphire core--fine dust, cracked, or flawless--just like the other levels. When the last dropple finally succumbed to her--a particularly speedy squirrel--she collapsed into the water, breathing heavily, her ripples lapping against all the walls of the cavernous room.

Congratulations! You have completed level 3 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You may proceed to the fourth level of the dungeon. You may return to the previous levels if you wish as well, but if you have not moved forward within 30 minutes, Master level for level three will be initiated.

Letting out a heavy sigh, and staying supine on the wet floor, she opened her inventory and equipped the Medium scale armor. The weight covering her body decreased by about forty percent and her relief was immediate. Her ability to move freely without immediately losing stamina and the ease with which she sat up made her realize just how overburdened she had been in the platemail--though she was sure she had gained several levels towards the Heavy Armor skill.

Congratulations! You have learned the Medium Armor skill.

Warning! While wearing this armor, skills and attacks that cost stamina will use 1.5x the normal amount.

She continued to rest on the floor as she waited for the Master Mode to begin, munching on some of her rations while she waited. The temperature steadily began to drop and ice began to form on the walls and floor. Cat’s breath started to form clouds of fog; cold metal against her skin made her start to shiver. With only about two minutes left until the Master mode began, Cat uncorked one of the flasks of the infused water from the previous floor and downed it. She immediately felt warmth spreading through her body as the tepid water gave her a cold resistance lasting three hours.

This time when the timer ended, six frozen stalactites exploded on the high ceiling, revealing six precious gemstones that came together in a increasingly fast circular spin that culminated in white flash of light.

A breathtaking animal appeared: an ice blue dragon that floated, undulating through the air near the ceiling of the cavern. The creature was beautiful, its ice scales shining like a thousand diamonds along its snake-like body. Much like the Chinese dragons on earth, it had long whiskers and a boxy nose, as well as short bird-like legs with sharp taloned legs. She was unsure how it was staying aloft, with no wings, but then, magic was a thing here.

Watui: level 20. Water/Ice Elemental. Hit Points 35,000/35,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Fire. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Saphire Core (large) x4. (giant) x1. Opal Core (large) x1. Breaths ice. Will spawn lesser elementals when it returns to the air.

As if the beast just noticed her it rocketed down, attempting to coil itself around her. As soon as the frozen scales touched her skin though they melted. Unlike the bear, the dragon retained its form, it just had some water displacement before it became solid again. Watui abandoned that tactic as soon as it noticed itself taking damage and began floating around its prey slowly, swiping at Cat every now and then with its ice claws--but again, when they made contact with her, they turned to liquid and Watui lost health. Rather than attacking the wondrous creature, Catalysta studied it, looking for the cores to snatch. At first she thought it may be a little difficult since ice was solid, but with her touch melting Watui’s form, that issue was taken care of. She wasn’t sure that snatching a core would be so easy on a level 20 elemental though. She could barely make out six soft glows throughout Watui’s body. The ice seemed to be distorting the core auras.

Making a decision, she pulled her mace from her back, and equipping the second mace she had still inventory--it seemed the world didn’t care if she added a weapon but changing armor during a fight was a no-no--she started swinging away at Watui’s body, using Void Weapon with each hit, and avoiding any glowing area she saw. Those cores were big precious gems and she did not want to hurt them when she didn’t have to. She was careful not to slip on the icy floor so her movements were careful, and slowed, but she managed to land a lot of solid blows. Every spot she struck turned to water as if it had touched her person, and then returned to ice. But the reformed ice had multiple cracks spreading from the point of impact. Once she had whittled down Watui by five thousand hit points, the ice dragon flew back up to the ceiling and opened its maw wide, spitting icy meteors out of its mouth, raining them down around Catalysta.

The balls of ice shattered when they hit the ground and then reformed into more Dropples, except these were all aggressive--and they were level 16 with 250 hit points each. This first set of dropples was a pack of wolves twelve strong. She attempted a dodge, but the quick movement made her lose her footing and she landed hard on her butt, crunching some of the ice with the edges of her scale mail. The pack of wolf dropples fell on her in a frenzy and died with wild abandon. It took them four attacks to kill themselves each, which if nothing else would help her level her Medium Armor skill faster. When the adds were deceased, Watui returned to within attack range, this time breathing ice shards in a wide swath making jagged icicles appear in the wake of its breath before returning to slowly float in a circle around Cat. It attempted the constriction and and clawing again because elementals were stupid, and Catalysta proceeded to damage it again with her maces until it lost enough hit points to return to the ceiling and spawn more adds. This time the dropples were puma shaped and numbered twenty-four. These were level 17. This process repeated itself four more times afterwards, with each time the adds doubling in number and increasing in level. More than halfway through and with the adds seeming to be endless, a message popped up telling Cat that her Medium Armor skill had maxed out for her current level. But it was the next notification that had her very satisfied and a little disappointed because all her proceeding kills would net her no experience.

You have earned enough experience to reach level 25. You may not gain any more experience towards your Dreamwalker avatar while in the dungeon this week, however you can still earn experience towards skills in relation to your current level. Everything else will work as normal: monsters will still drop loot, number of monsters in a level will remain unchanged, monster levels will remain as they have been predetermined, etc.

She had plenty of time to read it, even during the battle. She was just standing there while the adds kamikazed on her. She still had two more levels and their master modes to complete this run and she wouldn’t get experience for any of them. At least there was still loot. As she thought this, Cat was mindlessly chopping away at the dragon’s body, still tuned in enough to avoid the glowing areas her perception had allowed to gradually become more defined as its level grew. Then Catalysta’s final blow shattered Watui’s head and dragon’s body evaporated. The dungeon was getting somewhat tedious and boring, but Cat had to remind herself that that was what grinding was. She wished for a better drop than just gemstones, but at least she’d be able to use them to buy better gear.

Congratulations! You have completed the Master Mode of level 3 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the master of this location in the dungeon. Mobs will no longer attack you in this zone unless you first attack them. Gather resources such as metals, herbs, and gems will now spawn inside level three, because it is a lower level, mostly common resources will be available, however, that does not mean rare resources cannot appear.

After she dismissed the message, the ice on the floor and walls began to melt and little grassy islands appeared randomly on the cave floor surrounded by the remaining water. She made the conscious decision to not even taste the water here, since she had been rolling around in it and walking in it earlier--the thought of her sweat mixing with it, even diluted as it would have been, did not appeal Cat’s tastes, but a nice rest in lush grass did. The algae and lichen on the walls glowed softly as the lighting changed to a sort of twilight. Roaming dropples appeared but they were all the passive kind and none were near Cat.

She had once again been going for hours. She didn’t even want to check her drops or gains, she just found the nearest dry island, drank some water and ate a few bites of cheese before laying down to sleep. The grass was soft and she was quite comfortable in the low light of the third level of the dungeon.

She awoke fully rested once again and checked her dungeon clock. She had been asleep within her sleep for almost another four hours. Outside the dungeon, she hadn’t even reached being gone an hour yet. A quick glance at her inventory revealed that she had received a flawless giant sapphire. She’d look at the rest of her spoils once she was out of the dungeon. She re-equipped the platemail. Her reasoning for this was that she wanted to level all her armor even if it encumbered her now. And the fifth level of the dungeon was supposedly lightning; sure she was supposed to be immune to all forms of magic but if she could be hurt by the environment there might be something lightning did that caused her damage. She just didn’t know. She could do the same thing with the fourth level that she did with the third. If the normal mode showed her that the Master would be too tough, she’d switch back to the scale mail before Master mode started. Immediately, she felt the heavy pressure of the platemail and knew that when she stood and walked to the portal her stamina would begin to fall--though it wasn’t nearly as much of a hindrance pitted against when she first put it on. At least that’s what went through her mind as she pulled up the list of notification gains. Her character level and Medium armor level didn’t appear as she had already seen those notifications.

Perception has reached level 20.

Void Vortex has reached level 24. You may now toggle this passive ability on and off at will.

Void Weapon has reached level 5.

Lightning reflex has reached level 15.

Ambidexterity has reached level 7.

DualWield has reached level 7.

Dash has reached level 12.

VOID has reached level 21.

Fighting Stance has reached level 9.

Clubs/Maces has reached level 9.

She was definitely pleased with her progress. The tedium was paying off--in more ways than one. She moved to the portal, only losing a few points of stamina and stepped through.

Level 4: Rock’em Sock’em Boulders. To proceed to the next floor, defeat 500 monsters. To defeat Master Mode, defeat ??? monsters.

Cat looked around the oval shaped room, there were several boulders and rocks scattered everywhere; the landscape of the fourth level reminded her of a desert. And once again, she didn’t know where the light source for the cavern was, but it was quite bright in the space. When she took a step forward the earth began to tremble--no so much that it made her lose her balance, but enough to shift the dirt around--and she was surrounded by twenty-five spherical rocks with glowing green eyes. They had no arms or legs, and if it weren’t for the bumpy surface of the different stone types, they would have been perfectly round. They were about three feet tall.

Grockle: Level 13. Earth Elemental. Hit Points 300/300. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Emerald Core (small). The simplest of all elementals, regardless of type, what they lack in complexity, they make up for in numbers.

Cat stared at the grockles, trying to see the core within the stones--these particular grockles were a generic brown--but she couldn’t see even an aura. The rock completely distorted her ability to perceive the core’s location. The grockles began moving towards her, some rolling and some bouncing, and she got an idea. She put away one of her maces and gripped the remaining one with two hands. She waited for one of the bouncing grockles to get close before she swung her mace like a bat and launched the little elemental across the room, where it smashed into the wall. Cracks spread out over the monster as its hit points went down to five and she was able to see the core’s glow. She had used a combination of a power attack and a Void Weapon. She glanced at her stamina bar and saw that she had only lost about ten percent of her stamina. It was a much more economical strategy than dashing forward and swinging wildly, especially in the platemail.

While she was focused on the one grockle and the effects of her strike, the others closed in, crowding her, almost bowling each other over to get at her. They couldn’t hurt her, of course, but that didn’t keep them from trying. She backhand swung her mace and knocked a grockle backwards; that one felt heavier than the others. She figured the grockles that rolled probably weighed more than the ones that hopped around to move. Either way, with them crowding her like that, she wouldn’t be able to get as much batting practice--or rather power attack practice--as she would have liked. Every time a grockle touched her, cracks would appear on the mob and she’d be able to see the glow of the cores. Unlike the previous elementals though, she wasn’t able to snatch the core out of the elementals to kill them. They were doing that on their own every time they attacked.

There were twenty waves of grockles, twenty-five strong each, and as far as Cat could tell, each wave of grockles was made of a different type of rock--limestone, igneous, quartz, and sandstone to name a few. She had to force them to spawn by moving around to different areas of the room; it almost became a scavenger hunt because she had to look for different rock types strewn about the area to find where she needed to go next, but in the end she was capable She used Void Weapon and Power Attack as much as her stamina and the space would allow, but most of them fell to their own fruitless attacks against her VOID ability. By the time she had destroyed all five hundred grockles, she was no worse for wear and had actually gained another point of endurance.

Congratulations! You have completed level 4 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You may proceed to the fifth level of the dungeon. You may return to the previous levels if you wish as well, but if you have not moved forward within 30 minutes, Master level for level four will be initiated.

Catalysta plopped down onto the dusty ground and laid down from a sitting position. A cloud of dirt puffed up around her. Tiny globs of mud formed on her neck and har as it mixed with her sweat. She was hot and tired from wearing the heavy armor, but she knew it wasn’t maxed out yet. Making a potentially dangerous decision, Cat decided to continue wearing the armor for Master mode. There were things in this environment that could be used as projectiles--like the boulders and other rocks not made of magic--but she decided to chance it. Surely, a hit by rock wouldn’t take too much health away. Heavy armor was supposed to provide the best protection afterall. She closed her eyes, resting while she could.

Cat was startled awake from her impromptu power nap by a large rumble that shook the ground; this earthquake would have taken her from her feet had she been standing. Half buried boulders from around the desert biome shook themselves free of the earth and seemingly pulled by a magnetic force flew to a singular point and grouped in a pile. The pack of boulders roiled in a constant motion as if it had to fit together in just the right way and they were seeking their spots in the puzzle. Eventually, the now organized boulders stood up to form a giant humanoid rock creature. Unlike the Breazelbub from the first floor, this creature had no wind element and appeared to be just a giant man made out of rock, with giant rock muscles, an expressionless rock face, and elephant sized rock feet. The elemental reminded Cat of the Thing from the Fantastic Four--except this golem had no pants.

Tatin: Level 22. Earth Elemental. Hit Points 50,000/50,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Emerald Core (giant)x1, (large)x5, (medium)x4, (small)x20.

Catalysta rushed to stand and readied herself for another litany of Power Attacks and Void Weapon attacks, but before she could move into action. Tatin did a standing jump towards her landing a mere five feet away. The floor splintered and shook. Cat found herself on the floor, helpless as rocks fell from the ceiling. That had not been a magical attack. She desperately rolled to the side to dodge environmental damage and managed to avoid the lion’s share of the potential ding to her health. A swinging fist made out of stone came down to crush her where she had rolled to and she reflexively put her mace up to block, activating a Void Weapon at the same time. Multiple fissures formed all over the Tatin’s fist as it pulled back to perform the same maneuver with both hands in a double fisted blow. Cat didn’t move, just did the same thing she had before. This blow resulted in even more fissures, but the ground around her body indented where the force was not intercepted by her Void Vortex. She had never been so glad that VOID negated magic.

Deciding to wear the platemail armor was either the best decision she had ever made or the worst. It had saved her from the majority of environmental damage but she wasn’t sure she had enough stamina to get herself in a position to fight adequately. She made a split decision, dropping her mace as Tatin brought down its fists again. Even without the mace, the blow stopped just before it impacted Cat; before Tatin could pull its arms back, Catalysta grabbed onto the golem’s hands. The elemental reared back in pain, pulling Cat with it. Her muscles strained with the added weight of the armor but she managed to hold on and only lost about half her stamina. She let go when she was back to being vertical and landed in a fighting stance. Tatin was down only five thousand hitpoints, but one of his hands was a ruined pile of pebbles on the ground.

She wanted to distance herself from the brute but there were two problems with that. If she knew anything about game mechanics, a greater distance between her and the Tatin would probably mean another jump attack that shook the environment, resulting in another shower of damaging boulders. And, with her stamina half gone, getting a sufficient distance away to kite the mob while she figured out how to proceed would probably leave her prone and unmoving on the floor. But did she really need to kit the mob? As long as she stayed close she would do continuous damage and it wasn’t like it could hurt--She quickly jumped to the side as a rock hurtled at her. The Tatin had picked up one of the fallen stones and chucked it at her. Hurriedly she removed her mace from her inventory; her first mace was somewhere in the earth debris and she didn’t have time to find it because another missile was coming at her; the close proximity might have made things difficult for some, but Cat had faced much faster pitchers in the past.

She sent the next rock hurled at her right back at the Tatin. It impacted on the creature’s lower leg, but didn’t do much damage. She sighed. It looked like she’d have to get up close and personal again. It wasn’t that she was scared, it was more so that it was boring. She decided she would eventually train with a bow--surely Void Weapon would work on that--but at the moment she doubted very much that she would be able to accurately shoot. And then there was that whole pesky distance thing that would make the monster jump again, which she didn’t want and was getting dangerously close to being too far away from at that moment. She moved forward ducking, jumping, and dodging with as little movement as possible as the Tatin swung its arms and legs at her. She didn’t have to--in fact the fight would have gone much faster if she hadn’t but she did need the practice. She kept a wary eye on her stamina gauge and stopped moving if it got too close to zero. Unfortunately, Tatin always seemed to be moving away from her, so she mostly had to remain in constant motion. There was no help for it, she would have to use her stamina potions. Surely Bannor would be able to make her more.

She had whittled the elemental down to 40,000 hit points when she downed the first potion. It tasted like apples strangely enough. The pleasant taste did not distract her from movement in her peripheral where the previous piles of stone rubble from destroying parts of the Tatin lay. Or more accurately, where they used to lay. The stones were rolling towards her, aiming for her.

Pibbles: Level 16. Hit Points 10/10. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Water. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Emerald Core (fractionated 1/100). As annoying and as weak as mosquitoes, these mini elementals will swarm you. They can only take off one hit point per hit but if there are a thousand they pack quite a punch.

After she finished analyzing the new not-so-much-of-a threat, the pibbles--pebbles really--glowed with the green aura of their cores. She ignored them and didn’t even feel when they began knocking into her booted feet, or rather when they began disintegrating millimeters before they got to her booted feet. Before she had even gotten the Tatin to half health, she got a much welcome message about reaching the maximum level for her current avatar level of first Void Vortex, then VOID, and finally she saw the same message about the Heavy Armor skill. She had been actively looking for them because she had had an epiphany while she was following Tatin around. She knew that she couldn’t equip different armor in the middle of a fight, but maybe that was just a “quick change” equip. What was to stop her from manually removing armor?

Taking a chance as she continued being kited around the room by the monster, she loosened the straps on her gauntlets awkwardly as she still held her mace to deflect any rock missiles directed at her. Shaking one hand free as she used the other to backhand an environment rock back at the Titan, one of her gauntlets fell to the ground. She’d pick it back up before she moved on from this floor, she thought as she flipped the mace to her freed hand, and repeated the process with the other gauntlet. Her helmet, which was there, but invisible, she remembered belatedly and flung it away belatedly when she noticed another stone coming her way. She was unable to get her mace up to block in time and took a hit in the middle of her chest. Her hit points dropped by one hundred and she momentarily had the breath knocked out of her, which was both painful and a bit scary. She was sucking air in to fill her lungs, when she noticed that just moving no longer drained her stamina--she must have shed enough weight to no longer be encumbered.

She dashed forward, only using a normal two times the amount of stamina and got within swinging and kicking distance of the elemental. As it took advantage of her proximity, Cat paid no mind, instead loosening the straps on her greeves that protected her from the thighs down and stepped out of them as she continued to pursue Tatin. The last piece would be the most difficult, but she wanted it off. Her sweating along with the other pieces of armor gone had loosened the breastplate enough to where Cat was able to pull one arm inside the piece, basically handicapping herself until she succeeded in getting the chest off. This was where she’d be the most vulnerable but there was nothing for it. She dashed again, up to within feet of Tatin. Knowing she had to move quickly, she dropped her mace, and grabbed the bottom of the piece, thrusting the whole thing, up and over her head. Her hair tangled in the buckles of the back, blinding her for about twice as long as she had intended to not have the elemental in her sights. Ignoring the pain, she ripped several strands of hair out as she tossed the last piece of the heavy plate mail away. And she was once again in her starting clothes that she had worn beneath all armor types. A notification flashed once, big and RED in front of her.

WARNING! YOU ARE UNARMORED WHILE IN COMBAT WITH A BOSS! RETREAT IS RECOMMENDED.

Not gonna happen. The thought had barely crossed her mind when she realized she was much too far away from Tatin and he was preparing to jump. This time though, she was ready and practically felt weightless. The elemental itself was also not nearly as heavy as it had once been with its strangely formed body missing about half its bulk, having been transformed into mostly dead pibbles. Catalysta wasn’t even sure how it was still standing with so many missing chunks of weight bearing parts of its body, but then, magic was still a thing here.

Scooping up her mace, Cat jumped as Tatin landed. This time she avoided the shaking earth and the splintering rock and dashed forward, getting out of the rain of stones from the ceiling by closing with the elemental. Once there, she began a flurry of Void Weapon blows, reducing a few more pieces of the monster to a pile of pebbles soon to become pibbles. She had no time to find her other mace at the moment, so she pulled the club out of her inventory and dashed forward again, staying in the range of the Tatin, despite its constant movement. Without the added weight of any armor, it was much easier keeping up with the elemental, with stamina to spare. She dashed forward again, before it could even launch a thrown rock at her and executed another barrage of Void Weapon, this time double wielding. A notification popped up and vanished before she could read it, but her efforts paid off as every piece of the rock golem’s body was now turning into pibbles except one, and that remaining piece was cracked and her perception saw it glowing green through the cracks. It was the largest and she was sure that the giant emerald core lay behind that desert stone.

She quickly put her club back in her inventory and, making sure she was close enough, jumped towards the Tatin, her mace above her head, and brought the weapon down on the remaining piece of rock with all her might. Part of the piece crumbled away, revealing a loosened giant emerald; she would be able to get her fingers around a piece of it. Catalysta glanced at the creature’s hit points, noting that it only had three hundred and seventy-eight hit points left out of the fifty thousand. One more attack would do it. Flipping her mace to her left hand she dashed forward once more and grabbed onto the vulnerable core. The Tatin’s hit points drained to zero and the rest of the stone around the last piece crumbled to the ground. Unlike the other pieces, this one did not become pibbles. Cat had the core, so they had no power source. The other pibbles were still trying to get at her; there had to be at least a couple thousand still left, like every time they died they divided into smaller rocks. Again, Catalysta ignored them and went around the room, picking up her discarded heavy plate mail, as well as grabbing her other dropped mace and all the loot bags from the already destroyed pibbles. She sat down in the middle of the room and waited as the pibbles killed themselves off. After about another five minutes, she got the message she wanted.

Congratulations! You have completed the Master Mode of level 4 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the master of this location in the dungeon. Mobs will no longer attack you in this zone unless you first attack them. Gather resources such as metals, herbs, and gems will now spawn inside level four, because it is a lower level, mostly common resources will be available, however, that does not mean rare resources cannot appear.

As with the other floors, the environment became much less hostile. Catalysta even saw some strange large leafed plants with purple and white flowers growing all over the place in clumps. And as with the other floors a little pool appeared next to a rock that was shaped almost like a bed. She did plan on taking a rest before moving on; even with taking the heavy armor off, she had worn it for most of the battle and fatigue was setting in. She’d investigate the plants after a nap and look at her gains then too.

Upon waking four hours later, the first thing Catalysta did was go over her notifications.

You have reached level 25 in Perception. Congratulations you are now an Adept and hidden doors or caches are 10% more likely to catch your eye.

You have reached level 6 in Void Weapon.

You have reached level 16 in Lightning Reflexes.

You have reached level 8 and Ambidexterity.

You have reached level 9 in Dual Weild.

You have reached level 14 in Dash.

You have reached level 22 in Dodge.

You have earned the title, Foolhardy. By battling a boss without armor you have proved your bravery and your foolishness. Individuals are 10% more likely or less likely, depending on your charisma level with regards to them, to follow you into battle.

You have reached level 11 in Fighting Stance.

You have reached level 11 in Clubs/Maces.

You have reached level 7 in unarmored combat.

You have learned the attack skill Jump Strike.

You have learned the attack skill Two-Handed Barrage

That done, Catalysta moved to the nearest plant, and analyzed it.

Calotropis: a hardy plant that thrives in dry areas. Often found in desserts, it loves warm temperatures. May be used in alchemy or in crafting.

Cat was unsure how best to harvest the plant, but that didn’t matter, she wanted to try. Perhaps this would be useful. Squatting down, she carefully uprooted one of the plants and placed it in her inventory. Once inside her inventory the label read, Calotropis Petals: 7. She was sure there had been more petals on that one plant, and what about the rest of the plant? She had been very careful in her harvesting, but hopefully she would improve.

Congratulations! You have learned the Gather skill. You will be able to gather all kinds of resources that do not require tools. You will become more efficient at this with higher levels.

Before moving on to the final level she planned on facing, she went around the entire room and gathered every Calotropis she could find, bringing her Gather skill up to level 8 and netting her 977 Calotropis Petals. Then she moved to the portal leading to level 5, deciding to keep her armor off to improve her Unarmored Combat skill. She didn’t intend to go into battle in the future without armor, but what if she was attacked unaware while not wearing armor? It would be useful to have a damage reduction that came with leveling the skill.

She stepped through the portal and entered the fanciest level of the dungeon yet. The room was a perfect circle, divided into five equally partitioned pie pieces. The floor was made of different colored marble: red, green, blue, off-white, and blue tinged white. And the walls were covered in mirrors, with a chandelier of diamonds hanging in the center of the room, sparkling in every direction.

Level 5: Mirrored Magic. To proceed to the next floor, defeat 500 monsters. To defeat Master Mode, defeat ??? monsters.

The lights flashed, from bright to complete darkness, and back to bright. Orbs about the size of a basketball floated around the room, orbs that looked like they contained a ball of lighting, like those glass balls in science class that stood your hair on end when you touched. They were quite pretty, giving off a slight blue glow, and there were a lot of them, all traveling in a line, a line that spanned across the whole room, sometimes crisscrossing, sometimes vanishing into mirrors, sometimes coming out of them. Not every mirror was used as a doorway, roughly only every fifth panel was a path for the orbs to move through. The orbs moved in synchronized time.

Graaff: Level 14. Lightning Elemental. Hit points 400/400. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Earth. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Diamond Core (small).

Diamonds? Probably not worth as much here as they were back home, but the idea of diamonds as loot was exciting. She moved towards the nearest Graaff, but before she was able to get within a foot, the orb she had been heading to and the six orbs to either side of it shot a bolt of lightning at her. Catalysta jumped, the attack surprising her, but as with all other purely magical attacks the lightning harmlessly fizzled out. Neither Catalysta’s proximity nor the orbs attacking stopped their forward movement and after a few seconds, new and different orbs were shooting lightning at her. Her main goal for this floor was to max out the Unarmored Combat skill, so she got a little closer, increasing the number of attacks from the moving Graaffs, and sat on the floor to wait for enough lightning bolts to hit her. She figured she had a long time to wait, and the marble floor felt pleasantly cool to the touch. She actually dozed off, while the Graffs fired more than eighteen thousand bolts at her, which took around twenty minutes of the constant attacks. Upon waking, she immediately saw the flashing notification about reaching level 25 in Unarmored Combat, and stood up. It was time to work on her Lightning reflexes by snatching the cores from these Graaffs.

She worked quickly, cutting the number of Graaffs down until there were only about one hundred of them left. She backed away from them, keeping in range and then began to dodge the bolts of lighting to increase her ability. Interestingly, when the lightning bolt missed her, it didn’t dissipate, it continued on to ricochet off a mirror, and came back at her. Soon there were multiple bolts of lightning bouncing around the circular room, and one dodge to avoid an attack might land her in the path of another. Everytime she was able to avoid multiple attacks at once, it leveled both her dodge and lightning reflexes without her even knowing it--at first. She was in the zone, totally focused on avoiding the magical bolts and she didn’t notice the notification about Dodge, but the one about lightning reflexes came when she was nearing the end of her stamina and she paused in her contortions and acrobatics that not getting hit by lightning required.

She thought about her different skills and decided that for the remainder of the Graaffs she would use her mace and level up the Void Weapon skill and the Maces/Clubs skill with it. She hadn’t been sure about the other gemstones, but she knew that diamonds were supposed to be the hardest natural material on earth--maybe not on Gamdrea--and she doubted whatever common material her mace was made of would even scratch them. She killed the remaining elementals with both her Jump Strike and her Power Attack. Again a familiar message appeared when the last mob fell to her.

Congratulations! You have completed level 5 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You may proceed to the sixth level of the dungeon. You may return to the previous levels if you wish as well, but if you have not moved forward within 30 minutes, Master level for level four will be initiated.

Cat made a quick decision, turned around and went back to the fourth level. She had leveled the most important skills, or rather the skills that would take the longest to level or would be the most dangerous to level where she didn’t have such protection, and it was time to initiate a level up for her avatar. To do that though, she needed to be in an area she controlled, and she hadn’t mastered level 5 yet.

She pulled up her character screen and allocated her points. Her endurance and constitution had already increased by ten each, but she added an additional ten points to endurance since she needed stamina to utilize her skills for melee fighting. She threw a couple points into intelligence to make sure she could keep learning new skills as they came up or interested her, put eight into willpower since it was linked to her Confessor Ability, increased her strength by twenty and split the remainder between agility and dexterity. Then she put on the medium armor. She didn’t know what she would face in the Master mode of level five but she didn’t want to go in unarmored, and she didn’t want her stamina basically halved by the plate mail--even though after the stat allocation just walking around wouldn’t drain her stamina. The scale mail would cost her more stamina, but it would also offer more protection. At least she hoped it would, though she also hoped that like the previous levels, she hadn’t really needed that much protection.

She went back through the portal to the fifth level, seeing that the room timer had only decreased by ten minutes. The end of her dungeon run was in sight; it would start in a mere twenty minutes.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, took some deep breaths, and relaxed as much as possible. She hadn’t done it before, but it was a pre-battle meditation and she received a notification that she had gained the skill, Meditation. However, her eyes were closed and she didn’t see it. The new ability allowed her to relieve minor fatigue without sleep and would also help her focus.

She opened her eyes with a few minutes remaining, and stood, waiting for the boss of level five to appear. She stared towards the center of the room, where all the previous bosses had made their entrances. As the timer counted down, five sparkling swirls of energy appeared in front of the mirrors in each different colored area of the room. The energy was the same color as the floor they floated over. Cat noticed a large glowing aura in each mass of energy before they floated to the center of the room and became on large swirl of color, then coalesced into an orb that had membranous tentacles coming out of it, constantly undulating as if they were keeping the creature aloft. It moved to hover over the floor that was red, and the marble turned into the glowing embered walls of the second level. The orb itself turned an off-white that seemed to sometimes have a rainbow inside it.

Zord: Level 35. Hit Points 100,000. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Variable. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Diamond Core (Giant x1), Emerald Core (Large x1), Ruby Core (large x1), Sapphire Core (large x1), Opal Core (large x1). This elemental is a combination of five lesser elementals. If found in the wild, its weaknesses will change randomly. If found in a dungeon, the room in which it dwells will offer clues to its defeat.

If she had to guess, and if she had been able to use magic, she would have attacked the Zord with fire. It seemed counter intuitive since it started launching its own fire balls at her--fireballs that seemed twice as big as any of the previous elementals had thrown--but wind was weak to fire, and it was currently utilizing its wind to enhance its fire magic. But, she didn’t have magic; she also didn’t want to step on the sizzling floor to find out if it was magic or was considered environment, so she moved a bit away to see if she could get the elemental closer to the edge of the red slice of the room.

It worked, and before it could move away, she dashed back and performed a Void Touch, sinking her hand into the gelatin-like membrane of the Zord. It let out a wail as it lost seven hundred and twenty-three hit points. It flung its tentacles in a flailing barrage at Cat, which felt like weak slaps, but some of its tentacles attached to her, the Zord attempting to pull her onto the burning floor over which it floated. Smoke began to rise from the tentacles attached to her, and for a second she was afraid the creature was eating through her armor with acid or something, but she soon realized that the smoke was from the Zord’s tentacles taking damage from touching her. Even though her constant touch intensified the Void Touch and her Void Vortex was draining its hitpoints too, she wrenched her arm free and dashed away again.

The Zord glided across the room to hover over the blue marble, which immediately covered the slice of the room with two inches of water. The orb turned white with a blue tint--giving off the same bluish glow as the Graffs. The red slice returned to marble as Cat rushed the gelatinous Zord, pulling her mace out to take a swing at the creature. The creature shot bolts of supercharged lightning at her, which of course dissipated to nothing. She performed a jump strike combined with a void weapon and smashed the Zord from its hovering position into the wet floor, changing the trajectory of its next lightning bolt to the floor. The water crackled with electricity as Catalysta landed in it.

As soon as her foot touched the water the electricity ran up her armor and into her body, radiating throughout her whole person. Her body shook like she was having a seizure and it felt like her whole body was on fire. For the first time since entering the dungeon, Catalysta took significant damage as she lost a quarter of her hit points. How was that electrified water not considered magic?! She was about to rush to a different part of the room when the water turned back to marble. Her blow had been devastating to the Zord and it was retreating to a different colored floor--the green marble. The pain seemed to have died out in her body and it hurt a little to move at first, but she could feel her insides starting to heal.

She studied the Zord as it turned blue and the marble became the light brown dirt of a desert environment. She stood still as the monster took aim and fired a cutting stream of water directly at her. If she had to guess, that would have felt like a powerwasher hitting her bare skin if she hadn’t had VOID. Instead, her ability made the water repel from her like she was oil, beading away onto the floor and creating puddles. She walked forward, not wanting to slip, and the torrent of water continued. As she went the liquid seeped into the desert and mud started to form, slowing her. She had to strain to pull her mud covered feet out of the sucking mud with each step she took towards the Zord and she noticed her stamina was going down with each step despite not using a skill. Finally, when she was within three feet of the creature, she stopped, the torrent of water still coming, the mud deepening, and she pulled back for a Power Attack combined with a Void Weapon attack. The force of her blow sent the elemental spinning into the off-white portion of the room where it promptly turned green. The floor turned back to marble and Catalysta was no longer stuck, though remnants of the slurpy substance remained on her boots.

The floor beneath the Zord did not appear to change, but Cat could hear the wailing of wind and the elemental’s tentacles fluttered more from the air movement. Something seemed off about its rotation of elements and where it hovered in the room, but that was possibly from her battering the thing around. She thought this even as the monster spat boulders at her, boulders of all sizes--and they didn’t even come at her fast. They lobbed them like a changeup. That made sense, since wind made earth weaker. Shrugging her shoulders she took some walking swings sending the boulders away from her, some of them striking the Zord, and some of them ricocheting off the walls. This time, however, as she neared it, the elemental moved away before she could get to it; she had been enjoying her batting practice too much and had taken too much time. It moved to the only space it had not been to yet, and the marble began crackling with energy as the monster itself turned an off white color.

Cat followed, stopping just before putting her foot onto the electrified floor. Gingerly she touched the floor, while the Zord sent blasts of air at her--which she was ignoring. Her foot began to tingling and she saw her health dip by one point for every second she touched the floor. She had recovered about half the health she’d lost from being electrocuted earlier and decided that as long as she was quick, one point per second wasn’t too bad.

Backing up to get a running start, she jumped at the edge of the area to reduce her time on the shocking floor even more, and effectively combined dash, jump strike and void weapon into one attack. Again, Zord squished into the floor and rebounded back into its original shape. Catalysta on the other hand, shoulder-rolled through her momentum and took herself out of the constand damaging area, having only lost about five hit points. Zord undulated as it made its way to the center of the room once again, where it split into five different entities: Ea-Zord, Fi-Zord, Wa-Zord, Ai-Zord, and Li-Zord. They each took the shape of what appeared to be an animal and moved to their respective floor slices. The room cave became even more alive as all five elemental environments activated and lightning based elemental adds entered the arena. Cat was luckily in the off white portion of the room and sighed. The smartest thing to do would be to take out the Li-Zord first or the Wa-Zord as the combination of water and lightning had caused her the most damage, but the adds complicated matters. There were about fifty of them. A five minute timer appeared in the corner of her vision, indicating that after that time, the Zords would merge again. Quickly, she studied the new mobs.

Zappas (positive): Level 25. Lightning Elemental. Hit points 500/400. Created using 100% Wild Magic. Weak to Earth. Weak to VOID. Weak to blunt damage. Diamond Core (fractionated 1/2). Nearly invisible, these elementals toss electricity between themselves. Opposites attract. Without a negative Zappas present, the positive is defenseless and attackless, and will fizzle out on its own.

Well as long as she stayed out of the water, she didn’t think those would hurt her or cause her too much issue. And each of the Zords had different levels of health left. All of them had a maximum of 100,000 hit points but the maximum that any had was 20,000/100,000 and that was the Ea-Zord--the element she hadn’t been able to get to because she had been enjoying smashing boulders. Deciding to avoid the water and lightning areas for the time being she went at the Ai-Zord, which had taken on the form of a medium sized rabbit made of what looked like clouds. It hopped around its space flicking its ears at Cat and throwing slices of wind at her that broke apart as her ability absorbed them. The Ai-Zord had 18,619/100,000, and she had about four minutes to whittle it down. She ignored the Zappas, pulled out her second mace and went at the air elemental rabbit with dash, void weapon, and two-handed barrage. The creature had no defense against her, and every strike she landed took off a significant chunk of health. She did have to use a lot of stamina to keep up with it, but her recent increase from the stat allocation had made that possible. Before the timer even got down to zero, her flurry of blows netted her a loot bag that disappeared before she even had time to collect it--probably it would be in with the final boss loot bag. The howling noise of the the wind portion of the room ceased and Cat started towards the next closest Zord--the fire one shaped like a fox--but before she entered the fire zone, the timer vanished and the remaining Zords merged once more, its total health was only 67,113/100,000, and it was down an element. Once again, the monster went straight for the fire area first.

Ignoring the Zappas--they wouldn’t be able to hurt her unless she stepped onto the water area and they dropped lightning in it--and for the moment the Zord as well, she went straight for the fire zone to see how much health she lost just by standing on it. As with the electrical zone she slowly put her foot on the ember-like floor--testing the water so to say. She immediately lost ten hit points, and wrenched her foot backwards. Remembering her vials of heat shielding spring water, she pulled one from her inventory and gulped it down; her previous buff having long expired. The liquid decreased her damage to one point per second, just like on the other damaging environment.

She dashed forward, feeling the heat through her boots--she definitely wouldn’t want to be barefoot on this floor--and battered the red Zord with her combo attacks. It seemed that without the wind element to strengthen its attacks the elemental decided to double up on fire. It made no difference against Cat’s VOID. She only got about twenty seconds worth of hits in on the Zord before it moved to the water zone and once again turned the white color with the blue tinge. Catalysta did not follow. Instead she focused on the nearest Zappas, searching for the glow of the cores with her perception.

She only got a handful of the mob adds before the Zord continued its pattern and moved to the lightning area. Cat dashed into the area, ready for the tingling pain from the floor and let off a flurry of blows onto the Zord, which made it retreat to the earth area before its normal attack time in that element expired. Rather than wade through watery mud--especially with the Zappas throwing around electricity--Cat pushed her attack even harder, dashing and jumping the distance to strike the blue colored Zord with both her maces from above, following that up with a Void Weapon barrage. Her final blow swished through the elemental as if it wasn’t corporeal. The Zord became invulnerable for a short time as it moved to the middle of the room and split into the remaining four elements. More Zappas adds flooded the room; these were level 26.

Catalysta turned and went after the Fi-Zord shaped like a fox to get rid of one of the damaging areas. The fox element was fast, but not as fast as the wind rabbit had been. She took it out before half the five minute timer was done and quickly took one of her health potions as her health had gone down by half from all the environmental damage she had taken, despite her regeneration of some hit points. The health potion restored one hundred and twenty-two of her hit points, but she hadn’t even noticed as she was already using her dwindling stamina to get her into the lightning area before the time ran out. She wanted to get rid of the Li-Zord next because it would reduce her chances of environmental damage even more. The tiger form that the Li-Zord took was even faster than the wind rabbit, and she only got in a few hits before it and the other two Zords returned to the center of the room, returning the lightning area to the cool marble.

The reformed Zord’s health was down to 35,848/100,000 after Cat’s wild push. She was breathing hard as she walked towards the earth area to get a short rest while her stamina refilled. Zappas kept wandering into her Void Vortex zone as they tossed electricity currents back and forth. Without the fire element or the wind element, the Zord went to the water area first. Again Catalysta didn’t follow it there and waited until it began to enter the lightning zone. She didn’t even allow it to start flinging attacks at her, and attacked it as it crossed the border of the elemental zones. Her savage assault sent it straight to the earth zone before Cat had even lost fifteen hit points.

It was not time to let up but her stamina was dwindling; she took her final stamina potion and plowed through the dusty ground that was already trying to turn to muck. The Zord’s hit points were nearing twenty percent as she hammered the now blue elemental into submission until it moved back to the center again and split into its remaining three elements. Again, more Zappas entered the room from the mirrors, and again Cat ignored them, focusing on the bear shaped Ea-Zord, which barely had any hit points left. She didn’t even try to dodge its attacks, and instead crushed its attacking stone claws and head with power and void attacks. And then there were two.

Dashing back to the lightning area, she confronted the tiger, keeping an eye on the timer counting down until the last two Zords would merge again--if she allowed them to. The tiger, which still had 2,467/20,000, didn’t try to avoid her this time, and instead shot right for her. Catalysta evened out her weight and planted her feet to take the charge. As the tiger leaped at her she swung one mace upwards with her right hand, aiming for the glowing gem core in the tiger’s head, which changed the trajectory of the tiger’s attack. She followed the blow with a downward strike from her left mace, as soon as she determined which way the tiger would go. Just as if she was tracking a curveball.

And then there was one. The count down timer disappeared and only the Wa-Zord remained, hopping around in the water. She couldn’t go after the frog yet, there were still a lot of Zappas bouncing electricity everywhere and she was too close to victory to chance a more severe electrocution. Focusing on her Void Vortex skill, which had been running automatically the entire time she’d been in the dungeon, she attempted to boost its pull on mana to force the Zappas into her area of mana drain. She closed her eyes, dropping the heads of her maces to the floor, and imagined a whirlpool surrounding her, attracting and pulling the Zappas to her in bunches, her perception ability giving her some idea of how many were left in the room. Her active control of the skill ate half her Void Point gauge, which by that point was quite a substantial amount--though she hadn’t even noticed how large it had grown. After she sucked up the Zappas mana and converted it to Void Points, she regained a lot of what she lost. Plus a lot of loot.

Soon it was just her and the Wa-Zord frog elemental, her potential for taking damage reduced to zero. Sighing in relief that she was going to get to take a good long break soon, she moved into the water, going after the hopping elemental that seemed oblivious to her presence. It seemed to be ignoring her, since she had ignored it for the last two rounds. She performed a Void Weapon Jump Strike and squished the amphibian shaped elemental. The form seemed to flatten out like a jelly stress ball and then retook the form of a frog. As it turned angrily to fruitlessly attack her, Cat met if with a Void empowered two weapon barrage that didn’t end until the monster’s health was at 0.

Breathing heavily, Cat dropped to the floor in relief. She laid on the cool marble floor that was clear of any signs that the area had just been covered with water. The welcome message she had been waiting for appeared. As well as other messages she had not known would be forthcoming.

Congratulations! You have completed the Master Mode of level 5 of the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the master of this location in the dungeon. Mobs will no longer attack you in this zone unless you first attack them. Gather resources such as metals, herbs, and gems will now spawn inside level four, because it is a lower level, mostly common resources will be available, however, that does not mean rare resources cannot appear.

Congratulations! You have claimed the Divine Dungeon of Embodied Magic. You are the first Dreamwalker to have claimed a Divine level dungeon. You have received a quest item in your inventory that will help you and those around you to grow. You will receive a permanent buff in relation to this achievement and a new title. Please see your character sheet for details.

PEOPLE OF GAMDREA REJOICE, AN AGENT OF LIGHT HAS CLAIMED A DIVINE DUNGEON. TREMBLE SHADOW FOR YOUR END IS NEAR.

What the heck was that? The system of this world just told everyone about her. Catalysta had no idea that getting this dungeon would make an announcement to the entire world. It would put a target on her back. She calmed herself down before she could spiral into a panic attack. She still had the buff that hid her from other Dreamwalkers, and the announcement hadn’t said her name. The only people who knew she’d gone into the dungeon were in Fasthaven and she didn’t think they would give her away, but that didn’t mean the enemies of light wouldn’t look for her. They knew there was a dungeon in Fasthaven; it would be the first place they looked for her. That is it would be the first place if she didn’t figure out a way to protect Fasthaven.

“Mistress Catalysta Angelwing? Are you well?” It was the voice of the Spirit of the Dungeon, coming from a rainbow colored sphere that reminded Cat of Aria.

“Yes,” said Cat, “Just thinking.”

“I am quite pleased that you were triumphant, Mistress.”

“I doubt anyone but someone with my skill set would have even survived past the first level--unless they were an extremely high level.”

“That was the point, Mistress. I could not let the Dungeon of Embodied Magic fall into the hands of Shadow. An individual of level 50 or higher would have found the battles doable, but it would have been quite difficult for an Agent of Shadow that strong to move through the lands of light with ease. The likelihood of someone of that level and disposition entering the dungeon would have been very low.”

“But possible. I see. Do I need to do anything as the owner of the dungeon?”

“As you grow, so will it. If you become the patron of Fasthaven above, your link to the dungeon will solidify even more. Sending people into the dungeon will keep its maintenance up--”

“Does the dungeon feed off the people that venture inside?”

“Of course. It is an energy exchange. The challengers cast spells, use stamina, lose health, and kill monsters or die in the attempt. As a divine dungeon that last energy exchange is rare as underleveled individuals are not often allowed in the dungeon by the owner--you--because they want their friends, followers, and comrades kept safe. Of course, Dreamwalkers do not die forever, so them dying in the dungeon is moot. You can die in the dungeon as well, though it is unlikely, especially for the next fifty floors. You will need to eventually conquer all the levels of the dungeon but compared to what you faced in this run, it will be much much easier and simpler. You will only be able to enter the dungeon once a week, and that rule will apply to all those who enter. This allows me to recover and reset and grow the elementals back up.”

“I don’t need to bring you any resources?”

“No,” there was humor in the tinkling voice, “I have access to unlimited resources because of Dun and because of how far the dungeon stretches into the rock and soil and clay of Gamdrea.”

“Well that’s good,” Cat said, thinking that if she would have to supply the divine dungeon with loot to hand out it would have been a black hole for her spoils.

“But, as the dungeon master,” the Spirit said, “Your knowledge of new monsters will help in the development as well. Of course, only enemies based in magic will be used, but your exploits outside the dungeon can affect the types of monsters the dungeon will grow in various ways.” So basically even as the next several levels would be easy for her, eventually they would become a challenge as the dungeon grew with her.

“That makes sense,” said Cat, “If the dungeon got too easy for me, it wouldn’t really help me grow as a fighter.”

“Exactly, Mistress, and the Light needs you as strong as possible. You did gain levels very quickly, but if you don’t know how to properly use them, what worth are they? Now I shall continue. The room you see here will appear every ten levels within the dungeon from here on out. It is a rest room and will have no gather materials or monsters to potentially aggro. You were transported here after your victory on level 5. It happened so quickly, you may not have noticed, especially since it appears quite similar to the layout of level 5, with the addition of the hot spring revitalizing pool in its center.” Catalysta sat up quickly, her eyes searching for the aforementioned hot springs. She saw steam rising from the middle of the room where the multi-colored marble ended in a short dropoff into circular indentation about four feet deep and with a diameter of twelve feet. Cat wasn’t really listening to the Spirit as she unequipped her armor and boots until she was just in her starting clothes--rips in the back from the Catberus’ attack going through her leather armor included.

She crawled to the edge and swung her legs over the edge, dropping into the soothing waters without hesitation. It was just like a hot tub. It even had bubbles and places to sit so that the water came up over the shoulders without covering the head. Catalysta groaned in relief as her fatigue and injuries melted away.

“Mistress,” the Spirit said, annoyed because it had probably spoken a couple times before Catalysta showed she was listening, “Just as before, to move forward use the golden portal, to go back, use the silver. To leave the dungeon, the bronze. The bronze portal will only appear if you are on a floor you have defeated. You may attempt to master more levels from here on, however that act is unnecessary unless you want to use a level strictly for gather materials. And lastly, if you do not challenge the dungeon at least once a week, progression of levels through the dungeon may be lost. For example if you beat ten levels one week and then don’t enter the dungeon for two weeks, you will have to beat the ninth and tenth level you already conquered again. The only exception to that rule is the first five levels that you mastered.”

“I understand, thank you. If I want to speak with you when I’m in the dungeon and you aren’t around that I can see, do I just ask for the Spirit of the Dungeon aloud.”

“That will suffice,” said the Spirit, “I congratulate you Mistress Catalysta Angelwing on battles well fought. May your light shine into the darkness and illuminate the way to victory. I leave you with a present, my esteem for your glorious victory.” The Spirit dismissed herself, blinking out and leaving a loot bag in its place.

Cat sunk deeper into the healing waters, not wanting to get out just yet to retrieve the prize; her fatigue and injuries were already all gone but she was just enjoying the bubbling hot waters. She knew she would have to leave soon--a thirty minute timer appeared over her prize--so before she left the comforting pool to return to the outside world she took stock of all her gains--loot included. She dismissed all her notifications, she would be able to see those results on her character sheet, but first the loot. She wanted to see what piles of riches she had gained.

Pulling up her inventory screen, first she sorted it, hoping to get all the contents of her inventory organized in nice piles and rows. The first thing she noticed were the quest items and in particular the new quest item stack. She focused on the water droplet shaped gemstone and a description came to her: a star gem cut in the shape of a tear; this is the rarest of gemstones, often used in rites of the Stewards Church to the Creator.

New Quest--Tears of the Steward: Return the Tears (three meticulously carved star gems) to the Steward’s Church to the Creator in Levia. You will know who should receive them. 0/3 Reward: ??? This quest is a divine level quest and is mandatory for you.

As if she would have refused such a quest anyway. Next she looked at the five neatly organized stacks of fine gemstone dust: opal, emerald, sapphire, ruby, and diamond. These totalled 521, 303, 437, 238, and 101 respectively. She now had 273 cracked opals, 275 small flawless opals, 72 medium flawless opals, 3 large flawless opals, 79 cracked emeralds, 144 small flawless emeralds, 33 medium flawless emeralds, 5 large flawless emeralds, 1 giant flawless emerald, 728 cracked sapphires, 861 small flawless sapphires, 3 large flawless sapphires, 1 giant flawless sapphire, 60 cracked rubies, 239 small flawless rubies, 28 medium flawless rubies, 2 large flawless rubies, 208 cracked diamonds, 216 small flawless diamonds, 60 medium flawless diamond, and one giant flawless diamond. She also had 8 empty tempered glass vials--she would fill those up with the water in the previous dungeon levels and give them to Bannor. She bet the pool in the fourth level had had lightning resistance and she had missed it, wanting to rush ahead. In all likelihood she would have saved herself some pain had she examined the place more thoroughly, but the rare plant there had taken her attention and she had gone straight to the portal after gathering them all. She’d also need to ask Bannor just how much all these gems were worth. She didn’t want to destroy a market by flooding too many of them into it at once, but she also wanted to make some coin to get some higher tier gear.

Next, she pulled up her quest log and character sheet, which had definitely undergone extensive improvement since she had last seen it.

QUESTS

* An Heirloom of Love: Return this to Chittany or Hichard. Reward--50 experience points and maxed out Charisma scores for Hichard and Chittany. (common)

* The Distraught Husband: This coin purse was once full with the hopes of a man trying to save his wife’s life from a wasting sickness. The Agent of Shadow stole it when the husband was on his way to buy a cure for his wife. Find a way to help this man and his wife. They live in the city of Lebia and run an Inn called the Armored Turtle. Rewards: Variable. You have three months to complete this quest. (rare)

* Tears of the Steward: Return the Tears (three meticulously carved star gems) to the Steward’s Church to the Creator in Levia. You will know who should receive them. 0/3 Reward: ??? This quest is mandatory. (Divine)

* Slay the Shadow: Compete with other Dreamwalkers of Light to become Dun’s chosen Champion. Reward: the power to vanquish evil and liberate the good peoples of Gamdrea. Variable skills, buffs, and equipment. This quest is mandatory for all Dreamwalkers of Light. (Celestial)

Catalysta Angelwing, Level 25. Experience to next level, 4,599/4,600

Hit Points: 980/980

Stamina: 580/580

Void Points: 1,085,637/2,000,000 (You are becoming a black hole for mana)

Alignment: Chaotic Good, Agent of Light

Race: Human.

Subrace: Dreamwalker.

Innate Talent 1/1: ACADEMIC.

Innate Ability 1/5: VOID level 27. Wild Magic does not affect you; you absorb 100% of mana used in Wild Magic. You have no resistance to World Magic. You have 50% resistance to both Infernal Magic and Divine Magic and absorb half of the mana used in spells originating in Infernal or Divine Magic. The amount of mana absorbed from Mixed Mana will be variable and consistent with how much Wild, Infernal, or Divine mana used in combination for the spell. VOID supplies no resistance to Celestial Magic or Science effects. With all this in mind you may or may not be able to use certain magical items, armor, or weapons or will only be able to use them to partial effect, all depending on the Magics used to create them.

Innate Ability Skill: Void Touch Level 10. Void Points Required 175.

Innate Ability Skill: Void Vortex Level 27. You have gained enough experience using this skill that you may now actively use it or dampen it. By focusing, you may expand the radius of the area effected or you may turn the ability off entirely.

Innate Ability Skill: Void Weapon Level 10. This ability is an advanced version of Void Touch. Using it or Void Touch will help level this skill. This skill allows you to channel Void Touch through whatever weapons you are holding, no matter the grade or unorthodox nature of the weapon.

Innate Ability 2/5: Confessor. This innate ability has no levels and it strictly guided by your amount of willpower and the targets will power. Use this ability in interrogations to gain information or knowledge. To succeed you must have a willpower score higher than your target. Simply have a conversation with a target and ask a question. A target with lower willpower will have to answer truthfully and completely. If the target has a higher willpower than you, they can lie. It is not recommended to use this ability against allies. Now that you have discovered this ability you must consciously activate it when you desire to use it.

Innate Ability 3/5: ???

Innate Ability 4/5: ???

Innate Ability 5/5: ???

Class: unassigned. (Multiple classes unlocked. Please visit a Steward’s Church to the Creator to choose your class.)

Class Skills:

Celestial Barrage Level 1: (Locked. Class Change to a Celestial tier to get the skill description)

Current Buffs:

Dun’s Chosen. For being chosen of the Steward you receive a 200% increased experience boost for enemy kills, a 200% experience boost for skill and crafting levels, a 50% increase in chances to find rare materials from monster drops, chests, or to find resources in the wild, and 25% chance to trigger special effects during crafting or skill use. Additionally, you have an increased natural healing rate of 50% and will recover from wounds much faster than those around you. This buff will disappear on your first death.

Light in the Darkness: Due to the disparity in numbers between the Light and the Dark, your status as a Dreamwalker and basic information is hidden from everyone, unless you reveal yourself to them. Any Dreamwalker you kill will remember nothing of the individual that caused his death. Revealing yourself is not recommended as it will leave you vulnerable. Choose your allies wisely. This buff will disappear when you reach level 100.

Current Skills:

Find Magical Trap level 2: You might not stumble into all the magical traps.

Identify/Analyze level 4: It’s nice to know basic information about different items, monsters, and gather materials. Times used to increase the level of this skill 15/25.

Fighting Stance Level 13: You are still a novice, but you know how to set your feet.

Meditation Level 2: You are a novice and really don’t know what you’re doing but this skill can help calm you before a battle. At higher levels it can replace the need for sleep, but you are far from that.

Dodge Level 25: You are an adept. Attacks seem to come at you 5% slower, this is a trick of your eyes and your brain predicting the attack. Costs 15 stamina.

Clubs/Maces Level 13: You are still a novice, but your attacks hit harder and your grip is surer.

Ambidexterity Level 11: You are a novice but you can use a weapon in both hands equally.

Dual Wield Level 11: You are still a novice but holding two full size weapons in your hands seems to be getting easier.

Lightning Reflexes Level 25: You are an adept. It is hard to get things past you. Surprise attacks and missiles are 10% less likely to hit you.

Perception Level 25: You are an adept. Hidden doors or caches are 10% more likely to catch your eye.

Counter Level 1: You are a novice but you know that when attacked you should fight back. It’s all about timing.

Block Level 2: You are a novice but you know you are supposed to put your weapon or shield between yourself and an incoming weapon if at all possible.

Power Attack Level 5: You are a novice but if you put your whole weight and force behind your blow you can ring some bells.

Two Handed Barrage Level 6: You are a novice, though you did figure this out on your own; unleash a devastating flurry of attacks when you have a weapon in each hand.

Jump Strike Level 5: You are a novice but you figured out increasing your force from above can cause great damage to an enemy.

Unarmored Combat Level 25: You are an adept, attacks received while unarmored yield 10% less damage.

Small Blades Level 1: You are a novice but you can use blades that are less than two feet long without hurting yourself.

Bleed Level 1: You are a novice but sometimes you can pinpoint areas to attack that are more likely to continue bleeding after you remove your weapon.

Throw (adapted) Level 1: You are a novice but you are able to throw non-traditional objects at enemies to cause damage.

Stun Level 6: You are still a novice, however your ability to Stun an enemy will trigger 5% of the time, this is multiplied by 20 if used in conjunction with a Sneak Attack. Stun will last between 30 seconds and 3 minutes.

Light Armor Level 25: You are an adept. While wearing light armor attacks will cause 10% less damage.

Medium Armor Level 27: You are an adept. While wearing medium armor, attacks will cause 10% less damage, and stamina cost from the extra weight of the armor is reduced by 5%.

Heavy Armor Level 25: You are an adept. While wearing heavy armor, attacks will cause 10% less damage and stamina cost from the extra weight of the armor is reduced by 5%.

Sneak Level 2: You are a novice but you are able to sometimes move stealthily.

Dash Level 17: You are still a novice but you are finding this skill very useful in attacking or retreating in battle. Costs 20 stamina.

Gather Level 8: You are a novice, however this skill allows you to attempt to gather materials such as herbs. The higher the level the more successful the harvest will be.

You have no other skills at this time.

Titles:

Stubborn--You can be extremely focused at times. You have a 25% extra chance to be able to ignore pain and finish what you started.

Run Before You Can Walk--You’re always ready to leap ahead even when you shouldn’t. You have a 50% chance to trigger your luck when doing things it is improbable for you succeed at.

Punisher--Criminals should fear you. You do an extra 10% damage to those who break the law or hurt others.

Hero?--You have started a path on your way to the world calling you a hero. You have a 5% chance of people recognizing you as someone who can help even before you introduce yourself. This title may be upgraded as your fame grows.

No Rest for the Weary--You fight even while you sleep inside the dream. You require 10% less sleep than thos around you to feel fully rested. This title may be upgraded.

Foolhardy--You charge in when others dither because of danger. Individuals are 10% more likely or less likely to follow you into battle depending on your individual charisma score with the person.

Base Stats:

Strength: 56.

Intelligence: 18.

Willpower: 19.

Constitution: 49.

Endurance: 58.

Agility: 29.

Dexterity: 29.

Luck: 20.

Coordination: 18.

Charisma: 16.

You have reached 91 Charisma with all the residents of Fasthaven.

You have reached Maximum Charisma with Granden and Gizette of Fasthaven.

Some of the information was repeated, despite trying to minimize having to read the same thing over and over again, but it was a nice reminder of all the buffs she had from her titles and her starting buffs. She was very pleased with her progression, especially since this was just one session. Her pool of Void points was literally massive, but when she thought about how much mana she had absorbed from the thousands of elementals it made sense. Initially, each time she used a VOID ability to drain life from the element she got 75 mana for each hit point it lost and as the ability leveled that amount increased and she hadn’t even needed to use her Void Points much for special attacks. She wondered what the maximum number of Void Points she would be able to hold in the future. She doubted it would get much bigger, unless she faced a similar situation. Of course, she could make sure to duplicate the experience somehow, but that was for another time.

After reviewing her stats she pulled herself, dripping, from the natural hot tub and collected the loot bag that the Spirit of the Dungeon had left with three minutes left on the disappearance counter. The description of her prize came up instantly and seemed to be written by the Spirit itself, personally joking with her.

Protective Boots of the Elements: (No, not elementals) This rare item gives 10% resistance to the natural elements of Gamdrea--cold, heat, and electrical charges (because you seem to have some problem with that). I have made the soles of the boots rubber, the inner structure of these boots are made of fire salamander hide, and the outer layer is made from a real ice dragons tail scales. You have yet to face these monsters, but who knows maybe you will in later levels of the dungeon. This armor is considered a Medium Armor piece. It may be part of a set.

“Oh haha,” Cat mumbled, “I seem to have a problem with that? Gettin’ kinda uppity aren’t we Spirit.” She pulled the boots on, which of course fit her snugly, the soft leather interior encasing her feet in comfort at just the perfect temperature. She would say no to good loot. Tapping her toes against the marble to make sure her feet were properly situated she went back down to the lower levels to grab some vials of infused spring water, before she finally used the bronze portal to leave the dungeon a very changed adventurer.