Chapter 2

Getting up from bed the next day turned out to be a harder feat than expected, not only had I slept in my gear my muscles were also aching and rigid from an entire day of activity, for someone who had spent most of the previous year without physical activity even the increase in physique from my Faulna wasn’t enough to heal completely in only a single night.

With a groan of pain I managed to push myself away from the bed, my entire body stiff like an old man’s, and sat down at the wooden chair, slowly moving my muscles to heat them up I started thinking about my first dungeon dive, the danger, the heavy smell of blood, the different monsters and flora, I couldn’t help myself I started to laugh, this was what I had been missing, this was the kind of thing I had always wanted to do.

Well I could do with less pain but it was a small price to pay.

Pulling the mirror I had borrowed yesterday I let a drop of blood from my finger fall on my back and used it to read my new faulna

Roland Synclair – level 1

Strength – I - 11

Endurance – I - 8

Dexterity – I - 12

Agility – I - 13

Magic – I - 55

Skills:

- Chosen of an Outer God.

- Mangekyou Sharingan (Shisui).

Hmm, it was a fairly large growth for a single day of work, I had no delusions that I could match Bell’s rate of growth so the large increase must have come from surviving the 19th floor and several level 2 monsters on my first try

Taking some time to recover I slowly walk down the stairs towards the ground floor with a newfound resolution, no more conforming myself to other expectations, I’d been given a new lease on life, time to live it as I want.

“Aw, aw, aw” I said after each step and glared at the snickering Villy looking up at me, I never had an impressive glare in my previous life but glowing red eyes were great for intimidation.

I had just sat down in front of Villi when Mord poked his head on the door and smirked at my rigid body “there you are come on!” he waved me over with a bag filled with coins.

Releasing another groan I swore in my mind, couldn’t the damn guy have waited a little to show up? grabbing at my chair I sighed and pushed myself back up “aw, aw, aw”

“Come on stop being a pussy” Mord called from outside, gritting my teeth I increased my pace as my muscles finally started to come loose from my movements.

Getting out of the building I almost jumped as a trunk like arm wrapped itself around my neck and pulled me closer “Hurry up newbie drinks are on me” Mord said at my ear forcing me to try and push the bastard away from my face with another groan at the physical strain, the asshole didn’t even budge.

“The hell, why the sudden generosity?”

“Heh, it’s not every day we make such a killing newbie” he laughed and let me finally break free from his arm, starting to lead me towards the only pub in the town “Not having to use the magic bombs let us earn far more than usual”

“How much?”

“For you? about 9 000 valis” he threw a little pouch at my chest which I almost didn’t catch “For us, almost a week of work in the upper floors”

“Ugh, at least I can pay for my stay until someone kills the damn Goliath” I said and let the man lead me inside the pub, the place was almost empty so early in the day but Scott and Guile were already seated on a table with two extra mugs of beer.

“Ah don’t worry, if someone doesn’t kill it in about a week Bors will probably form a party to hunt it down” Scott said from the table “He just doesn’t want to have to pay people to do it”

“Yep that's Bors alright, always looking out for number one” Mord laughed and sat down, I took a little more time before I managed to lower myself to the chair and take a swing of the beer, it was terrible.

“Ugh what is this shit?” I asked when I managed to swallow the horrible thing

“It is shit.” Scott said with a perfectly serious face, then burst out laughing when I spit it out on the floor and tried to wipe my mouth clean. “Just kidding, we all know it tastes terrible but with the path to the surface cut off the pub can’t resupply so people start getting… creative”

Looking at the ale in my hand I frowned “Ugh, do I wanna know where this comes from?”

“No, you really don’t” Guile told me with a resigned voice before taking another swing of the mystery liquid.

I continued to look at the thing at my hand with suspicious, it didn’t exactly taste like piss but it was close, what the hell it’s free I’ll drink it anyway, taking another swing to the cheers of my companions I swallowed and stretched my back before asking “So why have I received so little coin?”

“What, you expected equal share?” Mord mocked then started enumerating things on his fingers “first we had to pay Bors for using his monster farm, then we had to pay for the supplies and everything we used, then Bors take a share from the remaining and THEN you get your 10%”

“Well, you also had to pay Bors his finders fee and for lending you gear so…” Said Scott with a laugh “In Rivira the elder always wins”

All three of them took lifted their mugs and sighed at the same time “Greedy bastard”

“Why don’t you just… use the spot?”

“Several reasons really, want some meat?” Mord told me and flagged a servant over to order breakfast when I shook my head “first, someone has to maintain the farming spots and Bors make you pay ten times if he finds out you used it without his say so, then a lot of the gear we used, especially the monster bait, isn’t exactly legal so it's hard to aquire”

“Plus its expensive” Scott added with a sigh while Mord ordered some bread “Bors gives us all the equipment we need and takes his cut when we return, in the off chance we don’t break even he takes the loss instead of us”

“Ugh” i said and finished my beer “I guess that's fair”

“You think Bors’ is gonna send us out again?” Asked Guile with his mouth full when the breakfast finally arrived.

“Well probably one other time, his usual adventure parties are stuck on the middle floors so he doesn’t have many options” Mord said and released a huge belch before slamming his mug on the table “Ah, getting stuck here may turn out to be very lucky for us”

“So, you guys still need a supporter?” I asked knowing that even with my eyes I wouldn’t survive an encounter with even a single monster on the 19th floor much less the large groups we often meet

“What the hell sure, you weren’t a complete waste of space like our last two supporters” throwing some valis on the table Mord laid back and relaxed “We’re planning on a shorter delve later after lunch you can tag along for the usual 10% if you want”

Finishing my bread with eggs I nodded my head, not like I was gonna miss another chance to grow and watch level 2 adventurers to steal their moves, plus I hadn’t had that much fun in… ever. Leaving the pub with the three of them I asked “Is there a place to wash myself here?”

“Take the town’s northern exit. There's a small lake there that's not too close to any of the entrances to the 19th floor so it’s mostly safe” Scott pointed out to me.

Tying my new fortune to my waits I thanked them and followed the directions, when I woke up I hadn’t noticed but, after sweating so much while fighting and sleeping in my clothes I had started to smell.

Looking around as I walked I saw dozens of adventurers walking around with a variety of gear from full plate to barely any clothes, most were humans but there were a few pallum and animal people all around, all of them looking annoyed and some even fighting on the streets, thankfully I managed to sneak away without grabbing any attention.

Outside the small town there were quite a few people guarding or putting up tents to wait for the Goliath to be slain, in truth there was nothing stopping people from trying to sneak through the monster rex or run away from it but most didn’t want to risk it, as Mord had explained yesterday while hunting, the beast wasn’t the fastest but had enough power that a single bad hit could kill a fleeing level two adventurer so people who could afford it prefered to wait.

Stolen novel; please report.

I reached the small lake to see there were nobody around so I spent 15 minutes making sure there weren’t any monsters close by before taking off my clothes and washing myself as best as I could without soap, I managed to get myself clean and get rid of most of the blood on my gear before another party joined me making me hurry up since I didn’t trust the others to keep their hands away from my gear.

Wearing wet but clean clothes I started exploring the safe floor making sure to keep an eye out for anything I couldn’t handle.

The Dungeon really was a marvel, this floor’s ceiling must have been at least half a kilometer high and the colorful glowing crystals made for a relaxing atmosphere almost making me forget how dangerous this place was, thankfully movement at the edge of my vision quickly snapped me out of it and I ducked as a stone hatchet flew over my head to bury itself on a tree.

With a loud ‘squee’ a large bipedal rabbit with red eyes tried to headbut me with its small horns, on pure reflex I managed to kick the little bastard away and took some distance until it recovered.

Twisting my head I smiled, the bloodthirsty little thing looked really cute as it crouched down and grabbed at the ground then pulled a second stone ax and puffing itself up to appear more threatening.

“You know what, you’ll make for a great test subject” I told the monster as it tried to hack at my leg.

From what I remembered from the show Almiraj were somewhat weak level 1 monsters and my eyes gave me a huge advantage over the beast even if it was a little faster than me, pulling out the hard sheat of my sword I waited for the little beast to attack again before dodging aside and delivering a strong blow against its side sending it thumbling away.

The little guy recovered fast grabbing it’s ax it used it’s powerful legs to jump at me preparing for an overhead swing, lifting my weapon I tried to block the blow with a single hand but it had far more strength than I thought possible blowing right through my block and making me desperately jump back to avoid getting hacked in half, my heart beating hard against my chest at the excitement I started to smile, it seems the beast was a middle floor monster after all.

Reading myself for a fight I narrowed my eyes at the rabbit, I swore it was sneering at me for getting pushed back while pulling a second stone ax from the ground to hold in his left hand “Why you little… you know what, why the hell am I even fighting you right now?”

Staring at its smug little eyes I quickly composed an illusion and then took a few steps back to watch its effects, with an angry squeak the rabbit attacked the ground where I had been standing then took a large leap away before releasing a gasp of pain and dropping his right ax.

Looking around himself in confusion the almiraj moved it’s intact arm before grabbing its weapon back and screeching in anger, its red eyes shining with rage at me before it launched the ax, it was far enough away that I managed to sidestep without problem, my second ilusion was better composed, in it I charged the rabbit and completely ignored any attack before grabbing it by the face and smashing it into the ground, I used the pain from getting smashed by the centipede as a base for the monster and it was much, MUCH more effective than just hitting it with a stick leaving it keening on the ground.

I had to confess watching a monster angrily swinging at empty air before falling to the ground by itself was amusing but the lament of pain made me feel bad for the little thing.

The monster took long enough to recover that I looked around and, seeing no other adventurer, decided to start testing things out with my illusions, I didn’t pull out the mangekyou so I wouldn’t risk my eyesight but there were plenty of things to test with illusions before I could really use them in a fight.

Good thing too since it turns out using illusions was hard, much harder than it seemed in naruto.

Creating an illusion didn’t happen instantly like when I had watched anime, no I had to be able to picture in my mind what I wanted to project as perfectly as I could and anything I wasn’t able to imagine was missing from the ilusion making it easier to break out of.

Projecting a single static picture for a few seconds was easy and barely took any effort or mind. I could make the almiraj see me standing around him without moving for hours but a more intelligent opponent would easily see through the illusion and ignore it.

Another thing to note was that the more senses I tried to fool the harder it became, creating visual illusions was made extremely easy by my sharingan since I was able to perfectly remember anything I had seen but the second I tried to project something I hadn’t seen or worse, affect scent, hearing and tact, it became a thousand times harder and more expensive.

Creating the best and longest illusion I could I made the little rabbit start running in circles after a screaming copy of me, hitting the copy would feel like hitting a wall and it smelled mostly like me, then I stopped to consider, yeah I could make a stupid monster confused and helpless but another adventurer would never fall for it.

Despite my best efforts I had failed to consider a lot of things, the effect of wind on the clothes, some of the shades, the way my clothes looked from the back which I hadn’t seen with the sharingan, the footprints I left in my path, how I’d sweat after running so much… there were thousands of little mistakes which could give the game away against a more cunning being.

Thankfully it seemed I could train my illusions, the more I tried to project something the faster and better I could do it, not because of the simple repetition but because I could remember it better, correct things that were missing as if I were creating a picture inside my mind and every time I remembered it I could put on a little more detail, make it a little closer to reality.

It seems like big and fantastical illusions could work very well on monsters but I’d have to rely more on subterfuge against human opponents.

Taking out my sword I walked towards the tired rabbit who had finally given up on following my illusion I sent it a vision of the dungeon without me in it so, although the beast turned around when it heard me approach and started sniffing at the air in confusion it remained in place as I grabbed my sword with both hands and split its head in half with an overhead swing.

Cleaning my blade I pocketed its crystal and sighed, my head was already aching from using too much mind and I’d have to support Mord’s party in another two hours so I just went back to the town.

“Hey newbie! good work yesterday” Bors waved at me as I was entering the town, by his side was a redhead amazoness in real life bikini armor.

Thank you ROB for giving me the sharingan so I may never forget this view.

I mean, the adventurer woman I had already seen in Rivira were hot but they were mostly wearing full armor so I hadn’t been able to truly enjoy the view, the woman had the body of a fitness model and an extremely cute face, she had a six pack together with visible muscles in her arms and legs but was still completely feminine, without the bulk of a bodybuilder.

Yep that confirms it, the gods were perverts and falna actively made people hotter, damn I used to live in a tropical country so I wasn’t exactly a stranger to women wearing very little clothes but I had never seen anyone with a better body even on TV.

Bors seemed to almost be trying to escape from the amazon as he quickly finished his talk and hurried over to me, he kept glancing over his shoulder until the woman left the town completely and only then relaxed throwing himself on my shoulders and almost causing me to fall.

“Phew! How I hate first class adventurers” he said with a tired voice “Always wanting discounts and I can’t even pressure them”

I facepalmed at his sheer shamelessness before curiosity got the best of me and I started to talk “So, who was she?”

Bors raised an eyebrow at me “Ah look at you, barely an adventurer and already trying to pick up women, I’m so proud!” he mocked “Farna’s too much for you though, she’s the vice captain of the Ganesha familia, they’re bringing up a strong beast and wanted to know the Goliath situation” he finally allowed me to push his large body away and righted himself before smiling widely “I managed to get them to kill the damn thing and even pay for support from our strongest adventurers”

“Hmm, You think I can hitch a hide to the surface?”

“Probably, hell Ganesha is the god of the masses so they may even do it for free if you don’t piss them off” He slapped my back twice and smirked “anyways congratulations newbie, you didn’t die good job, Mord said you did alright”

“You’re just happy cuz you got your 30%” I accused and had to dodge another painful slap to the back as Bors smirked.

“Heh, I can’t really deny that’s part of it” The large man said while we walked back towards the center of the little town “So… wanna watch the goliath fight? Since you saved me from that harpy I can find someone to protect you for only 5 thousand”

“Fuck off” I gave him the middle finger but he just messed up my hair and walked away, probably to try and scam someone else.

A nap later and my mind was mostly recovered, my muscles were back to giving me trouble though so I waited for Mord’s party at the town’s entrance while stretching and moving my limbs to try and get rid of their rigidness.

I waved Guile over when I caught sight of him carrying a large backpack and soon all three of them were waiting for me to put everything on my back and start walking again, I was thinking about ways to maximize my ilusion’s effects when I noticed we weren’t on the same patch “hey aren’t we going the wrong way?”

“Nope, we’re going to the 19th floor the proper way this time, the shortcut we took yesterday was great to reach Bors farm but if we aren’t after that it has too much risk of getting us caught in a monster party” explained Scott by my side, the skinny man seemed to be the tactician of the party.

“Catch” said Mord without warning and I almost missed the small, square leather bag he threw my way, opening it I saw two small red vials and four green ones nested safely between some kind of foam “the green ones are weak antidotes, yesterday we avoided them but the 19th floor is full of poisonous things so it’s better that everyone has at least four of those things before going down”

“Thanks”

“Oh you’re giving those back when we return, don't worry about that newbie” he said and we finally reached the entrance to the next floor, a huge cave leading down illuminated by a mixture of crystals and moss.

Midway down we faced a bugbear and, later, a mad beetle, the beetle was the first single monster to give the party some trouble, mainly because the tunnel wasn’t large and the creature had an extremely hard carapace, I kept my distance since I could barely see the movement of its arms even with my eyes, Scott finally had to take one of the spears and pierce its magic crystal when Mord got a deep slash to his tight, at least the thing dropped an antenna as a consolation prize.

The entrance to the large tree labyrinth looked like a jungle for giants, roots taller than me spread through the wooden floor and maxive trees climbed towards the ceiling with limbs spread over our heads in twisting paths so large they could easily support a battle boar on top of them and everything illuminated by the strange moss leaving almost no shadows anywhere.

Our first encounter was a group of lizardman, six of them without weapons charged at us jumping over a root but, without defenses or weapons they were easily picked off, three falling to guile’s daggers before even reaching us and the rest getting cut down or clubbed to death by Mord and Guile.

I can’t say I’ll ever get used to the sight of smashed brains all over the floor when harvesting the lizardman but I did manage not to throw up and, I guess it did incentivise me to work faster so they would dissolve into dust.

The man sized fire birds were harder to take down but we only found one that Guile had to lure down while Scott and Mord climbed trees to ambush it.

Together the party had to take some large detours to avoid any bright colored or too large flower unwilling to risk getting poisoned but we were all forced to drink antidotes after dozens of small, bipedal mushrooms burst out of the ground all around us, thankfully the little nuisances were very weak level 1 monsters and even I managed to kill them with ease but we all grew more and more sluggish with every one killed, our blows losing strength until, by the end of the fight I couldn’t hold my own weapon and was barely keeping myself up with Scott and Guile only a little better.

Thankfully no other monster attacked at the same time and we all recovered after taking the antidote and waiting 10 minutes, wrapping some clothes over my face I put on some gloves and harvested their crystals while trying to hold my breath and it either worked or they were no longer releasing poison because I didn’t have to use another dose.

A few hours later I noticed I had started to see faint shadows over the movements of the lizardman and centipedes, by far the most common monsters we fought.

“Hey Mord, can I try to fight one of the lizards next time?” I suddenly asked as I was harvesting another bugbear, this one pretty badly hurt since Mord and Guile had gone to town on it after it had thrown Scott at a tree and made him pass out.

“You sure? they’re far weaker than minotaurs but they’re still considered a level 2 monster you know”

“Yeah but that's because of the weapons isn’t it? they don’t seem as fast as the other level 2 I have seen” I told him unable to mask the eagerness in my voice “If one shows up without weapons again can I fight him?”

“You know what, sure, try and not lose a limb or something and you should have made enough to buy a better healing potion” he said as I tied up another full pouch to my bag and got up from the bugbear’s dust “Scott can you spot the little madman?”

“Sure, I’m fast enough to keep him from dying immediately”

Seeing all three of them agree I smiled “Thanks, I have been watching them and think I can handle one if I don’t have to worry about other things”

Then we heard the screaming, we looked at each other for a second before everyone turned to Mord, a second scream of pain started and didn’t stop as some unlucky adventurer started to suffer, Mord swallowed before meeting each of our eyes and sighing.

“Alright we’re gonna check it out but safely! If it’s a monster party or an irregular we’re not gonna be able to help you understand?” When I nodded he motioned for Scott to scout ahead while we followed as fast as we could without making much noise with me copying their movements, walking besides Guile we traded amused glances as we both were able to hear Mord’s soft grumbling voice “Godsdamnit my soft heart, you don’t run towards the screaming Mord, never run towards the screaming…”

Nearly a minute latter the screaming stopped and I heard a loud roar of rage take its place almost causing me to stumble, the closer we came to our target the more we started to hear of the struggle as something large smashed against the trees, then Scott dropped from a tree near Mord and we all stopped.

“get the fucking spears out, we’re fighting it” he told everyone and hurried towards me as I took of my bag and took out his bow before stringing it.

“what is it?” Mord asked as he dropped any extra weight he held and readied himself.

“A Vouivre”

Another loud roar with a distinctly feminine tone rattled the trees around us and sent a shiver down my spine.