“So, like I said,” Maxwell began as he moved the last of his ramen around in the bowl, “you two are going to want to take a moment to get used to all of this before you go back out there.”
“What even is all this?” Ranma asked, taking one of the seats around the table. He was still dirty and covered in gore and desperately wanted a shower but he needed to figure this stuff out first. Shampoo nodded her head vigorously in agreement as she took the one next to him and casually locked his arm with her own while leaning against his body, not caring about the gore since she herself wasn’t spared either during the chase through the tunnel.
Maxwell eyed the interaction for a moment before he just shrugged and continued, “This is what is known to the wider universe as ‘The Crawl’. Specifically, it’s the World Dungeon version of the wider series known as Dungeon Crawler World run by this season’s current producer the Borant Corporation. I am a former crawler turned non-combatant NPC after I had taken a deal at the end of my run of the crawl and my job is to give new Crawlers like yourselves what information I am allowed to share so that you can continue through the dungeon as informed and prepared as possible. Mostly, though, all they actually expect me to do is to tell you guys how to use your Crawler Interface. Everything else is all me, though my indentureship reduces a little if you manage to make it to the fourth floor and beyond.”
Ranma and Shampoo stared at the dragon-man for a while, trying to take this all in. Eventually, Shampoo said, “This… I don’t know where to even begin with this.”
“I do!” Ranma shouted as he slapped a hand on the table, he scowled in anger and glared at the man across from them. Though his anger wasn’t necessarily directed at him he had nobody else to direct it to, “Who the hell do these guys think they are?! Comin’ to our planet and killin’ who knows how many people! The hell do these assholes even get outta this?!”
Maxwell looked nervously upward as he held his hands up in a placating manner. He swallowed and licked around his mouth with his long snake-like tongue before he spoke, “Look, kid, I understand what you’re feeling, I really do. But let me give you a bit of advice before we continue.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” Ranma asked, huffing but crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.
“The corporation in control of whatever current season of the crawl are not the kind of people you want to piss off. The AI running this dungeon monitors, records, and reviews every mention of the current showrunners and The Syndicate, who is the ruling government in the galaxy,” Maxwell explained. “So, if you badmouth the people above you’ll quickly find your experience in the dungeon accelerated and that will most likely, and very rarely doesn’t, lead to your death. You don’t quite understand just how much these people control in the systems they govern over and the lengths they will go to to maintain that control. And all this becomes even more important when you move to the second floor and viewers are able to tune in and watch your trek through the dungeon live. Right now, for this first floor, it is fine to do a little bit of grumbling, and they even expect it, but try to keep it in your head from the second floor on. Do not go mouthing off when viewers can hear you do so, it will lead to you having a very bad time.”
Ranma bit his lip and Shampoo grimaced, neither pleased at what they had been told. They basically had to suck it up and just accept that this alien corporation could just upturn their entire world and not even be able to curse them out loud. The two glanced at each other before Shampoo turned back to face Maxwell and asked, “So, what is it that they get from this? You didn’t say.”
Maxwell scoffed, “What do you think? Credits, money. It’s all about the money. Borant mines for specific rare elements when they take over a world and leaves the more common minerals and stuff behind. What they mine fits in a single transport and they are still able to make a profit off of it. The real money is here, though, with the Dungeon. Advertisements, merchandise, sponsorships, patron loot boxes, fan boxes, just about everything and anything they can squeeze out of the season in order to make more money.”
Ranma’s jaw dropped and he soon found himself standing up to slam his hands on the table in anger once again and shouting, “That’s it? Money?! They kill off most of our planet…for money?!” At Maxwell’s slow nod he simply dropped back in his seat, unable to fully grasp the reality of it all. Shampoo just silently patted Ranma on his arm and leaned into him, trying to comfort him.
After several moments of silence Maxwell clasped his hands and broke the silence, “Well, let’s try not to focus on this stuff too much right now. We still need to go through the tutorial and get you two properly ready for the first floor.”
Ranma took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly as he centered himself and placed himself into the mentality he’d use when doing the Hiryū Shōten Ha technique. He’d have time later to let out his anger but now was not the time for being hot. Once his state of mind was nice and cool he replied, “Alright, man. Lay it on us.”
Maxwell waved his hand at them, “We only have a couple minutes until the announcement so let me first formally activate your expanded HUD, miss.”
You have been granted access to the Crawler Menu.
Shampoo blinked as many things manifested in her vision, Maxwell explained to the two that the blinking folder is their notification folder where all game and status notifications go if they haven’t been acknowledged because of combat or something else. In the top right was a green health bar and under that was their mana bar. Below the mana bar was the countdown timer until the floor collapsed which now read as 4 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes. In the bottom right was a minimap that Ranma and Shampoo could expand and contract at will by just thinking of moving it around. They found that they could also move every other part of their HUDs around at will.
“So, for the minimap, the gist is that the green dot is you, the blue dots are other Crawlers, white dots are NPCs like me, mobs are red, and anything with an X over it is dead. Focusing on an icon will mentally click it and explain what or who it represents. That’s the basic stuff, there are other map icons that represent different things but you won’t need to worry about those right now,” Maxwell explained, he was really hurrying with the explanation.
After that he gave a brief overview of what the rest of the menus the two could now access did. Maxwell promised that he’d go over them in more detail after the announcement but he wanted them to first know what it is they had access to and what were the most important parts for their immediate survival. Once the last three minutes went by a male voice spoke out loud and not inside their head like most of the messages had been.
Welcome, Crawlers! The first hour since the dungeon opened is officially over and the dungeon is now closed off from all future participants. I want to take this moment to say how thrilled I am to see you all here with us. Our total turnout for participation this season is higher than we initially expected as a whole 15 million of you have joined us today and we here at Borant are excited to see how this will turn out now that the number of Crawlers has already been reduced to just over 11 million. I understand that this planet in particular has had some peculiar and stronger than normal human specimens living on its surface but be rest assured that we want a fair yet competitive crawl this season and are happy to say that we have done our best to even the playing field. These people still have a leg up in these initial two floors but it isn’t insurmountable if you have the drive to put yourselves out there. So, those of you that weren’t exceptional on the surface must work extra hard to catch up! But don’t worry, I’m sure it will pay you dividends! Now, the entrances to the second floor will not open until the introductory episode of Dungeon Crawler World tunnels, which will be in thirty of your Earth hours. So, I encourage you all to work hard, kill mobs, and try to get as much loot and experience as possible! Now go and have yourselves a happy crawl!
“Four million people?” Ranma muttered, not fully believing what the guy who just spoke had said. Ranma couldn’t believe that four million people had already died in just the first hour of this place. As a martial artist he was used to being in danger and fighting but he knew that most people in the world weren’t. Most people didn’t have the skills or mentality to really fight in these kinds of dangerous situations but even still, only an hour had passed since the dungeon opened and that was far too much death for such a short amount of time. The initial collapse of the world and its buildings was far higher but Ranma couldn’t even truly grasp the sheer scale of death those first few seconds had caused.
“Mmm,” Maxwell hummed as he glanced across the room at the TV in sadness. “When you find a Safe Room you’ll often find monitors that show how many Crawlers are left in the dungeon. I could show it over there on my TV but I don’t like to bring that stuff up this early in the crawl. Too depressing.”
He seemed to shake himself out of his sadness and clapped his scaly hands to get their attention, “Now, how about we distract ourselves from that nonsense. Pull up your stat page and let's go over it.”
Ranma and Shampoo did so. Ranma’s initial stats were:
Strength: 12
Intelligence: 3
Constitution: 12
Dexterity: 12
Charisma: 6
Shampoo’s were:
Strength: 10
Intelligence: 3
Constitution: 10
Dexterity: 11
Charisma: 8
“Hey,” Ranma said, indignant, “Why’s my intelligence so low?!” Shampoo just rubbed her chin in thought as she stared at her own menu.
Maxwell glanced over at the pair and they watched as his eyes went a little out of focus as he examined their stat pages. They figured that was just what happened when he did whatever it was that tutorial guides did. Maxwell just grunted after a moment, “Each stat is actually a total combined stat of a bunch of different other similar ones. Your intelligence is actually pretty average for your species overall, it’s not something to worry about unless you want to focus on a magic build. Speaking of magic, my Guide Interface tells me that you two have Jusenkyo curses? That’s interesting and something to take note of for your future in the dungeon.”
Ranma and Shampoo blinked, glanced at each other for a moment, then looked back at Maxwell.
“You know about Jusenkyo?” Shampoo asked.
Maxwell nodded, “Yeah, it was in a Borant newsletter when we began the preparation for the crawl a few decades ago. It’s a broken down illegal transformative liquid factory that was built underground and accidentally connected itself to a local water supply. It broke down a long time ago and became too much a part of the local human legends to just get rid of, not when so many people have already used it and are running around. The liquid from the factory basically comes into contact with someone and that connects with their already installed Syndicate wetware so that the process occurs whenever it detects that the body of the affected person is in contact with water. Luckily, the transformative liquid has a rather short life when it’s too far away from the factory and not already affecting someone so it wasn’t too big a deal. But the whole thing was still kinda big news when it was found out, things like that can really fuck up the whole crawl process if it’s not handled correctly. I think that when the planet was taken over the place was promptly absorbed and reprocessed by the AI.”
“So… Jusenkyo is gone?” Ranma gulped, dreading the answer.
“Yup,” Maxwell simply stated. Ranma and Shampoo were floored by this sudden development. The cure to their Jusenkyo curses was now gone for good. Maxwell noticed their reactions, sighed, and held a hand up, “Don’t worry. There are several ways to deal with this curse of yours provided you make the right choices.”
The two perked up at that and Ranma shouted, “Really?!”
Maxwell nodded, “Yeah, the AI could probably just generate an item to fix it, but that’s highly unlikely, or you could choose a race that lets you change appearances or genders. Actually, now that I think about it, just changing your race alone should be enough. The source of the transformation should be similar. You could also, if you make enough money, just outright buy a cure out in the wider galaxy if you make it out of here.”
For a moment Ranma had hope that at the very least something was going right. It just sucked that it had to come at the expense of so many other things. Shampoo was simply just happy and she glomped onto Ranma, “I can’t wait! No more cat form obstacle for me, we can be even happier together now, Ranma!”
“O-Oh, uh, I mean…” Ranma stammered as Shampoo wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face more and more against his.
Maxwell cleared his throat, “Ahem, try not to get too comfortable there. This is still my living space, you know?” Shampoo reluctantly broke away from Ranma but still kept herself sitting down next to him once the initial excitement faded. Maxwell continued, “Now, I think we got a bit off track. Those stats of yours are very good for the first two floors. Most humans have an average of three to five in a stat and ten is considered the peak of human ability. Intelligence is your mana points and you each have three mana points in total. Unless you’re going for a magic class you probably don’t need to worry about it but I suggest you invest a few points here and there if only to have enough to cast a few healing spells without needing to drink a potion all the time.”
“I think I got it,” Ranma stated, nodding his head.
“Same,” Shampoo added.
“Good,” Maxwell said. “Now, let’s talk about skills and spells.”
Spells were both simple and complicated for the two. Simple because their intelligence dictated how many mana points they had and how fast they regenerated and their spells consumed this resource. Most of the stuff practically flew over their heads but they managed to boil it down to mana points and spells costing a certain amount of them. Ranma and Shampoo already had a healing spell, though Ranma also had a spell for his Moko Takabisha and even the Shishi Hōkōdan though he apparently didn’t have enough mana to cast them now.
Ranma gritted his teeth, he didn’t like how some of his own learned techniques were no longer available for him to use when he needed or wanted them.
Skills were another matter. The list of them was massive and long. Ranma and Shampoo wouldn’t have been able to look through the entire list of them in any sort of timely manner if they had to go page by page. Maxwell instructed them on how to narrow the list down to skills they actually had and then further into skills that were actually useful rather than useless or incredibly mundane skills like shoelace tying. Skills like their martial arts styles and even techniques like the Hiryū Shōten Ha or the Tenshin Amaguriken. It was an expansive list of every skill they had ever acquired in their life, even useless ones like shoe lacing.
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Most of Ranma’s skills involved fighting and his martial arts, which wasn’t surprising. His own style of it, the Saotome School of Martial Arts, even showed itself as its own skill and came with bonuses to damage using unarmed damage, melee weapons, and even monk skills. Unarmed damage and monk skills increased their damage by 15% for each level of the skill, while melee weapons increased by 10%. What sucked was that the skill started at level 1 when he knew it should have been higher since he had been training in it his whole life. The only thing that kept him from grumbling too much was the fact that he still knew all of the forms and moves so the level 1 designation was simply a wound to his pride and not a complete destruction of his skills.
Shampoo’s skills were much the same though she had a slightly wider range of them outside of combat. Her Amazon Chinese Martial Arts skill worked much like Ranma’s own style except that it reversed the damage of unarmed and melee weapon damage as well as adding an additional 10% damage boost to range weapons. Her skills involved a lot more weapons than Ranma’s did which Maxwell informed that it was a good indication of how their builds may become similar yet still be unique between them.
“Now,” Maxwell started, “with your list of skills and abilities, plus your stats, the two of you are very compatible with monk-type classes. But, we can’t really discuss that kind of stuff until we hit the third floor. Now, though, before the two of you open that blinking folder in your interface I want to talk about the most important part of your time here in the dungeon.”
“What’s that?” Ranma and Shampoo asked at the same time.
“It’s your ratings menu,” Maxwell replied, his tone turning serious. He held a hand up to stall Ranma’s question, already seeing the incredulity on the young man’s face, “I’m serious. These stats are what can be what either kills you or saves your life. Open your ratings menu and look at it.”
They did so, both of their menus showing the same thing:
Views: 0
Followers: 0
Favorites: 0
Patrons: 0
As Maxwell explained, these numbers were important for crawlers. The people in the galaxy only had a certain number of favorites they could use and the more a crawler obtained of favorites, views, and followers the more important they became. This came with several benefits like patrons that can send them loot boxes and even some mild protection from being simply killed off early as popular crawlers can bring in a lot more money. Essentially, the better they perform the better stuff they can obtain and their chances of survival gets higher.
Ranma and Shampoo didn’t like the idea of becoming a dancing monkey for this circus but they knew they didn’t have much of a choice. After that, Maxwell continued with the final part of their tutorial.
“In the blinking folder you’ll see all the missed notifications and achievements you’ve earned plus any loot boxes gained from them. After seeing that you’ll go to your inventory and open those loot boxes. This season Borant is giving you crawlers a dimensional inventory and AI cataloging. It can basically be boiled down to having infinite storage for just about everything, the only exception is living creatures as you can’t just store a living creature inside your inventory. Also, food doesn’t spoil in there so feel free to put any you have inside. Things like scrolls, potions, and like items stack up to 999 for each inventory slot. Always make sure you have important scrolls, spells, skills, and potions in your hotlist. Also, remember, you can only open loot boxes while in a Safe Room, got it?” Maxwell asked.
“Got it,” Ranma and Shampoo said as they did as he said.
Ranma was blasted with notifications and achievements.
New achievement! Vicious and unnecessary assault!
You inflicted damage on a mob for the first time and nearly killed it with only one attack! Woah! Wow! Much damage!
Reward: You made it angry, you wouldn’t like it when it’s angry.
New achievement! Murderer!
You just killed a living being inside the dungeon! You’re a murderer and just a terrible person overall.
Reward: You’ve gained the ability to receive experience! Keep this up and you might just make it out alive.
New achievement! You killed a mob without using a weapon!
That was pretty brutal, dude. Not gonna lie.
Reward: We’ve already gone over this, you don’t get a reward for killing using something you have ample experience with.
New achievement! Carried!
You managed to get yourself covered in enough blood to paint yourself red! I gotta say dude, that was pretty gross. Look, we can’t have the viewers watch you dance around the dungeon in those shitty rags no matter how funny it is. Take this.
Reward: You’ve received a Gold Apparel Box!
New achievement! You killed a mob that was a higher level than you!
Alright buddy, this isn’t really an achievement for you since you’re such a tough guy but I guess you can still get something since you’re such a good little dancing monkey.
Reward: You receive a Bronze Adventurer Box!
New achievement! It’s just a cold sore!
You’ve been infected by a mob with a disease! Take this as a good lesson in using protection, you don’t want to deal with any future lifelong consequences now do you? Anyway, you’re about to have a bad time.
Reward: You received a Silver Antibiotics Box!
New achievement! Get on my level, bitch!
You managed to level up multiple times before even setting foot in a Tutorial Guild! Wow! Go ahead and pat yourself on the back, stud.
Reward: You’ve received a Silver Adventurer Box!
New achievement! You’ve entered a Guild Hall!
Congratulations, you can open a do- oh, no, you couldn’t even do that could you?
Reward: Disappointment. That’s your reward.
“We got a lot of the same kind of achievements, huh?” Ranma said to Shampoo as they shared their notifications with each other. He didn’t know what to think about them all but they were awfully snarky. Snark and banter wasn’t new to him but he could usually do something about it.
Shampoo nodded, “We did do the same things, I guess. Though given what we’ve fought so far I wish I had brought my Chuí with me.” She sighed wistfully, “They would have been so useful.”
Ranma just nodded as the notifications came and finally went, “Heck, I almost miss Mousse.”
“Alright, it’s time to open those boxes and equip yourselves,” Maxwell said after they finished reading their notifications. “Before you equip anything I’ll let you use my shower facilities. Most shower facilities have an inbuilt cleaner for your equipment. Your stuff can’t be stolen inside them and it’s all automatic. Make sure you clean yourself regularly, it's fine if you’re covered in gore and blood when out there in the middle of fighting but the audience doesn’t want to watch you when you’re constantly covered in grime. Plus, it’s gross.”
“Oh good, I really need to clean all this crap off o’ me,'' Ranma shuddered as he remembered he was still covered in the sickly gore of the birds. He had put it out of his mind for a while but it was coming back to him now and he could feel it all caked and crusty over his body and clothes. And the smell, it wasn’t great after so long. Shampoo reflected his sentiment and they quickly opened their boxes.
Ranma observed as nine boxes left his inventory and appeared in front of him. They floated in the air single file, each with a label over it and having a different design for each type of box. The first box opened, it was the gold skill box and it looked like it had an image of a couple of people doing some type of hobby or martial art stenciled on the top of the gold-colored box.
Gold Skill Box (1/9)
The top popped off with a spray of confetti as the contents were dropped onto the table. Once emptied the box did a little spin before turning into a puff of smoke. A potion clinked and rolled around a little on the table before Ranma stopped it and looked at some text that appeared over it before it disappeared into his inventory.
Potion of Increase Skill.
Before Ranma could comment on that the next box moved forward and opened on its own. This time it was the legendary mystic box. It was a mix of silver and gold with an image of a man in robes holding a staff. The box itself was also quite large, taking up a third of the table.
Legendary Mystic Box (2/9)
This box was accompanied by musical fanfare along with the confetti as the contents revealed themselves.
Mana Potion x50
Hair String of the Cloud Jumper
Bracers of the Chunky Mountain
Ranma didn’t have the chance to look at the new stuff so he just let the rest of the boxes open before he looked through everything.
Bronze Adventurer Box (3/9)
Potion of Healing x2
Bandages x10
Bronze Adventurer Box (4/9)
Crawler Biscuit x 50
Torch x 10
Silver Adventurer Box (5/9)
Crawler Biscuit x 100
Poison Antidote x2
Ring of Strength
Silver Adventurer Box (6/9)
Sash of Dexterity
Torch x20
Potion of Healing x10
Silver Savage Box (7/9)
Savage Ticket x1
Scroll of Find Crawler x5
Gold Apparel Box (8/9)
Dragon Scale Shirt of the Divine Wind
Robust Enchanted Pants of Hardiness
Silver Antibiotics Box (9/9)
Ring of Immunity
Maxwell whistled as he saw what Ranma had received from his boxes, “Wow, you got a lot of equipment from those. The AI must be investing in you. I’d suggest trying to get some resistances for less physical stuff like magic. Also, don’t go anywhere near a dragon if you can help it, those things are powerful enough as it is and you don’t want to make them even more powerful by berserking them with that shirt of yours. Won’t be a fun day for you.”
Ranma nodded as he took out each of his newly acquired gear and inspected each one.
Hair String of the Cloud Jumper
This special thread of spun gold is perfect for your hair accessory needs. Besides making the wearer stylish it also gives +2 Dexterity, +1 to the Air Jump Skill, and +3 to the Light on Your Feet Skill.
“Huh,” Ranma simply said as he looked at the length of golden thread in his hand. It was the exact length of the dragon whisker he still used for his pigtail even though the hair curse was gone now. He went back to examining his other items.
Bracers of the Chunky Mountain
These leather bracers give +3 Con and +4 to the Rooted in Place skill. Careful now, physics is still a thing here even if it can still be twisted around.
They were a pair of brownish-red leather bracers but they otherwise didn’t look all that special.
Ring of Immunity
Gives the wearer of this ring immunity to Disease debuffs and resistance to Poison debuffs. Hey, maybe now you won’t have to wrap it up with this nifty thing on your finger!
This ring was golden with a ruby on top that looked like a red cross. Jewelry wasn’t Ranma’s style but he’d wear it if it meant he didn’t suffer from diseases like that Super Bird Flu again. Plus, resisting poison sounded great. If only he’d have super resistance to that stuff Kodachi wouldn’t have caught him off guard when she first appeared that night.
Dragon Scale Shirt of the Divine Wind
Oh, this is a good one. This shirt gives immunity to wind skills and debuffs from anything other than gods. It also grants the wearer the ability to freely control themselves in the air when falling. Additionally, when fighting reptile mobs, attacks on them may cause the fear debuff to appear and when fighting dragons the mere sight of you in this will automatically make them berserk. Aaand it gives +2 to constitution, why the hell not.
It was a red short-sleeved shirt with the image of a golden dragon on the back, the red areas were tiny scales that move around like regular cloth. It was reminiscent of some other shirts Ranma had. He hummed in approval, it was surprisingly nice looking all things considered. Plus, he was already thinking of ways he could use that wind immunity stuff and being able to control himself easily in the air with his martial arts.
Robust Enchanted Pants of Hardiness
These pants fit for the rigorous movement necessary for martial artists gives resistance to blunt damage, resistance to slashing damage, and resistance to piercing damage to these pants and all other equipped equipment. When you wear these you can now say with complete truth that there are now two things below your waist that are as hard as steel.
These pants looked like his usual black pants but had a soft almost unnoticeable shine to them like metal. They still moved like cloth so Ranma was certain that he’d be able to move around well in them. The last two items he got were rather simple. One was a simple black waist sash that gave +2 dexterity and a plain silver ring that gave +1 strength.
Lastly, Ranma pulled out the potion he got and examined it.
Potion of Increase Skill
This potion increases a random skill up to level 10. This item has a short shelf life, it will expire in 1 hour.
Maxwell gave him an appreciative nod and said, “That is a good potion. A short shelf life means that it will disappear soon after obtaining it. So, you better drink it soon as it’s not worth saving but wait until you have cleaned up and equipped your gear. You might get one of those skills to level 10 that way, some can be quite hard to train to higher levels. When you’re ready to drink it I recommend putting it in your hotlist and drinking it that way, some potions taste like shit.”
“Got it,” Ranma said, putting the potion in an empty space in his hotbar.
Shampoo went to work opening her own boxes soon after. Besides things like mana potions, bandages, healing potions, poison antidotes, crawler biscuits, and torches she also got her own set of enchanted gear. Her Cheongsam of the Amazonian Princess gave her +4 Con, +2 to the Regeneration skill, and +2 to the Revenge Strike skill. The Regeneration skill basically increased healing, which was always good, and the Revenge Strike skill basically meant that any mob that hit Shampoo would then let her hit them back for a lot more damage provided that they were the next mob she attacked. The cheongsam itself was a short white dress of the style that reached just past her hips with pink and golden flowers decorating it. Shampoo also got a pair of pink pants to go with the cheongsam from one of the bronze adventurer boxes but they didn’t come with any enchantments on them.
Shampoo’s next piece of equipment, the Slippers of the Fleet Foot, gave her +4 Dexterity, +2 to the Light on Your Feet Skill, and immunity to movement impairing effects. Ranma and Shampoo both had bonuses to the Light on Your Feet skill, the skill basically let them do what they had done back on the surface which was jumping higher than what people were normally able to. The slippers themselves were a simple red pair of a design the two were familiar with.
Her Necklace of Power gave a simple +3 to her strength stat. From her mystic box she then got a pair of bracelets. Both looked to be made of gold but one had a chinese style dragon etched onto it while the other had a tiger. The dragon bracelet gave her +4 to a skill called Meteor Strike while the tiger bracelet gave her +4 to the Smash skill.
“The Meteor Strike skill is a skill that increases your damage the longer you are in the air,” Maxwell informed. “Smash is just what it says, it increases damage with fists and blunt weapons. Also, Ranma, that Air Jump skill is very useful. Right now it’s more like a double jump in video games but if you get it high enough with some training it can be similar to flying for short distances.”
“Pretty interestin’ stuff,” Ranma said, still thinking of ways to use all of this as he carefully studied the crawler menus in front of him.
“Indeed, these skills would be very useful with my style,” Shampoo agreed, adjusting her hotbar and going over her skills.
“Alright, get yourselves cleaned up,” Maxwell said. “After that go back out there and train, train, train. Find a good Safe Room to base yourselves in while training but be sure to find a stairwell down before you get too committed to anything. They won’t open for a while yet but they’ll still be visible and it’s better to have an exit strategy on hand. All the training in the world won’t matter if you die before going down to the second floor. Also, feel free to come by to any Tutorial Guild you see if you have any other questions. The doors will always connect here to my place no matter where you enter from and you will exit right back out the way you came.”
“Right, thanks man,” Ranma replied, waving casually as he sauntered into the bathroom.
“Thank you,” Shampoo bowed formally at Maxwell in thanks before getting a playful grin on her face as she bolted into the showers after Ranma. Maxwell just shook his head at the youths before his face grew somber as memories from a distant past came back to haunt him.