After explaining what he had found to Einherjar, and getting an explanation, Shaun sighed as he leaned back into his office chair…

So he and his team had faced a copy. The Demon Lord was well and truly dead, given that Einherjar’s version of the being was capable of speech, while his own version was not.

It was strong, admittedly…

For most people it would be. To Shaun, it was weak, as it didn’t have the intelligence that made it so dangerous in the first place, and anything without intelligence would never defeat him.

“Are they gone?” Shaun sighed as he listened to Grey. Grey was his… protégé? So to speak, he was one of the six members of Shaun’s Dungeon team, including Dante, Ellie, Shaun’s own brother and a Magic Tool Crafter.

The latter was a rare Class, giving them the ability to shape Soul Stones into devices and power sources for other things, they were usually eccentric though… the one in Shaun’s team wanted to make magic guns, and one of the ones in Japan seemed determine to tame Dungeon monsters and carry six around in red and white spherical containers.

As stated, they were usually eccentric, but at least they weren’t as eccentric as Seers and Oracles.

Finding a sane person there was like finding hen teeth.

Don’t hurt yourself, they don’t exist.

“Sir?” Shaun snapped back to attention as he sighed, hearing Grey as he nodded, hearing the man enter the room from his hidden door.

There was a door in Shaun’s room one wouldn’t see unless they sat where he did, because it was hidden from view by the nearby cupboard, so Grey entered from there…

It was usually filled with files, but when Einherjar popped up Grey usually jumped in there to hide.

It’s not like Einherjar knew he was around, it’s just he had a strange relationship with four of them, namely the Grave siblings, their cousin, and Arthur.

Arthur and Michael were best friends, and through Michael he knew Matt and Alice.

And he had kind of vanished from their lives a few years ago due to wanting to figure out things in his own life. Grey had been into partying and doing ‘mild’ drugs, and had nearly fallen into the wrong crowd.

“Whew, they’re gone… I don’t really want them to see me just yet…” Vincent Grey complained as Shaun sighed once more, not wanting to deal with one of the stranger people he knew.

“Grey, I don’t care. Are we ready to go down into the Dungeon?” Shaun asked, and Grey’s embarrassed look vanished as he nodded, all serious now.

“Yes sir, I contacted Roy, he’s on his way here. Dante and Ellie are in the building and waiting the command… and Oliver is at a nearby restaurant with some friends.” Grey looked irritated at that last bit and Shaun didn’t blame him.

Grey, back before he had become a ‘good guy’ was found by Shaun’s wife and Shaun’s brother Oliver. His wife had given Grey a stern talking to, and then dumped Oliver on him saying that if Oliver was corrupted she would arrest Grey.

Grey was unaware that Shaun’s wife did not technically have that authority, but he had listened to the woman based on her sheer aura.

But Oliver, even to Shaun, was an annoying sibling. He cared for him, but he was annoying. He also happened to be a pretty good archer unfortunately.

“Go get everyone ready, I’ll be by the Access Panel checking some things.” Grey rolled his eyes, hoping that Shaun didn’t catch him doing so as he walked away.

Shaun liked to act ‘in the know’ and ‘above it all’ but the truth was that Shaun was giddy like a child on Christmas when he realized that there were levels, stats, skills and magic.

He was major player of RPG’s and he quite enjoyed his Anime and other stuff. He was basically a nerd.

A nerd that went to the military and succeeded in joining special forces and stayed with them for almost four years before ‘retiring’ to the FBI.

Shaun was scary in his own right, and so Grey left hoping that Shaun would be sufficiently stuck looking at his stats and forget that Grey did the ‘eye’ roll thing.

Shaun was already at the access panel at this point, considering his stats… and his two Animae. Like Arthur said, one needed a cracked soul for two… and Shaun thought he understood why.

Shaun Fife

Level: 21

Class: Storm Warrior- Grants one stat point to Strength and Intelligence per level

Gives Elemental Storm (Unique) Skill

Anima

Hunter Eyes

Sword of Light

Primary Elements: Light and Lightning

Personal Skills

Hero’s Strength II (28/100)- increases Strength by 15%

Quick Reflexes II (25/100)- Increases Dexterity by 15%

Elemental Storm II (7/300)- Able to combine Elements, grants spells

Computation I (6/50)- Increases Intelligence by 10%

Stats

Strength: 36 (41)

Dexterity: 25 (28)

Intelligence: 36 (39)

Wisdom: 25

Endurance: 25

Vitality: 25

Shaun had a strange Skill set, literally. He was the only one he knew of with three stat boosting skills, but then again, because of that he had no skills for anything else except his Unique Skill.

He had down-played his own abilities to Einherjar, as he had a Unique class similar to Arthur’s. The difference being that Shaun’s Unique skill was unfair.

He had two elements, unlike others, and he assumed this was because of his Sword of Light influencing him or something, but combining elements was not something normally considered possible unless two people were doing it.

Shaun could do so alone, without assistance. And Elemental Storm provided attack spells for every element he possessed, and one for the elements being combined.

They were pitifully weak though, and the only worthwhile one was the combined spell which was called Photon Spark, the rank two version of Jolting Light.

It was alright, despite how weak it sounded… but Shaun didn’t actually like his class.

It felt like he was a magician instead of a warrior, he felt magic was another tool to use sure, but he preferred melee combat inside the Dungeon. Outside of it, he was a good marksman, but guns couldn’t be taken inside the Dungeon.

And yet his Unique Skill was based on the idea of combining magic in different ways. It was annoying, but he didn’t deny its usefulness. He’d rather have something else, but it was useful.

Soon the rest of Shaun’s teammates had arrived and he was done internally complaining as their team was linked through their LEV’s.

Like most adventurers, they no longer felt the burning sensation of their LEV’s connecting to each other, sharing the ‘experience points’ between them.

It was known to precious few people that what most adventurers were calling experience points were actually shavings of a soul… and Shaun had only found that out because of Arthur.

“Alright, we’ve gotten a report from Einherjar. Floor eleven is filled nearly to the brim with Goblins, and they now possess intelligence. They claimed that Goblins would not be all the enemies on the floor, but they hadn’t encountered another.” Shaun explained as everyone nodded, checking their equipment.

“So they’re smart now? Any idea on how smart they are?” Shaun’s younger brother, barely out of high school asked as Grey walked up.

“From what I heard, the Goblins are cowardly, and they act with the idea of ‘better some other Goblin’ when in a fight. They are selfish and seem to enjoy trying to aim for women.” He looked a bit angry at his own words, even as Ellie frowned and looked to her brother.

“So they’re similar to the media interpretation. And that describes them as savages who are disgusting and need to die.” Roy, their sixth member stated with an intrigued look on his face as Shaun scanned his team.

Dante, tanned skin and muscled wearing leather armour, he refused to wear the metal versions because he didn’t have the stamina to be wearing them all the time, and carrying a large hammer, his class was Warrior Smith.

Ellie, lighter skin than her brother, her figure was hidden due to her clothing, she had on minimal armour and a robe with a staff, having a dagger strapped to her side, her class was Scout Healer.

Vincent (Grey), he had brown hair and his skin was just a bit darker than white and he was more slender compared to Dante, he wore gauntlets and greaves, with leather armour everywhere else, he carried two knives and a short sword as well as a shield in his inventory, his class was Nimble Thief… didn’t help his argument of being a good guy now.

Oliver, hair of a similar shade to his brother Shaun and white with a cheeky grin, he wore the most armour in the group despite being the shortest male. His class was Stout Guardian.

Roy was the final member of their team and their long-range specialist, with red hair, thin stubble and lanky limbs, he wore a similar getup to Vincent, the gauntlet on his right hand looking odd compared to his left, and he was a Crafter Archer.

The five of them were all level nineteen, a similar group in power to Einherjar, except their group was more magically focused.

“Listen. With the exception of Oliver and Vincent, you’ve all been with me through battlefields. So we’ll treat this like any other one, except this one comprises only of cannibalistic rapist children.” His words, despite their odd nature, were not said jokingly, and no one laughed.

“There is another reason we’re going now instead of earlier though.” Shaun said as he opened the fast travel option on the access panel.

“Why… oh, to see if the new area is affected by outside time?” Vincent asked as Shaun nodded, and with that they were all teleported onto the tenth floor.

They all looked worried at first, recalling what they encountered when they first arrived at the area, the Demon Lord Blade.

He was dead, killed by Einherjar, but for some reason Shaun’s team encountered the Demon Lord as well…

A notable difference was that the Demon Lord did not speak, and his movements weren’t as fluid as Einherjar claimed they were.

Shaun could only logically assume that the Demon Lord had turned into something similar to the creatures in the previous nine floors, with clear souls and little to no intelligence.

If that happened to all the other Demon Lords, they wouldn’t have to worry too much… but Shaun also had no doubt that they had received much less experience for killing a Demon Lord with no intelligence or personality.

He’d discuss that with Arthur the next time they saw each other, which would probably be in a few hours.

Now, they did not encounter the Demon Lord, letting them know there had to be conditions to the appearance of the Demon Lord, and that teleporting probably didn’t let one find the Demon Lord…

Made sense, the fast travel panel was in the centre of the battle field, appearing there and suddenly getting attacked would be unfair.

Not only that, but there was a second issue, the fact that the moon was shining down upon them, showing that the new Area of the Dungeon mimicked the outside schedule of day and night.

“Okay, now that we’ve confirmed that… we’re going to the ninth floor and then coming back down.” Shaun commanded his soldiers, and they all nodded, willing to follow as they moved to the stairs.

Their Animae were all activated if they were equip Anima, and if they were a combat skill of some kind they were ready to activate them at any time.

For Shaun, his own armour was notably entirely comprised of leather, unwilling to even take a hit, he figured having minimal armour would do for him, but his Anima was not just his Hunter Eyes but also his Sword of Light.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

He believed that the sword was why he had two elements for his magic instead of one, but he wasn’t going to complain about having multiple elements in comparison to other people…

He would complain about his class though.

His sword was a one handed long-sword with no adornments beyond the edge not being silver but instead a light blue, as if made of crystal.

Shaun loved his weapon, because like all other Anima, it grew in strength with him.

His armour would need replacing as they continued in the Dungeon, but his sword would never need replacing as it would grow in strength with its user, a ‘levelling weapon’ so to speak.

They soon came out to the ninth floor, back into the caverns, and Shaun raised his closed fist, signifying a halt.

“Now we go back down, see if Blade has re-spawned.” Shaun’s words got worry from his teammates, but they continued down anyway…

Besides, While Dante and Oliver had both taken hits in that fight, Shaun had ended it when he resorted to melding his elements together.

He would complain, but his class was powerful in its own right.

They arrived back to the tenth floor, and there was no enemy, just the access panel acting as a beacon in the darkness.

“Right, so we can assume that fighting a Demon Lord requires one to not teleport to their floor… so we must go from the beginning of their Area to the end to fight them.” Shaun’s statement was not factual, but an estimation, they had no idea if fighting a Demon Lord was a ‘once per team’ thing, which would invalidate his statement.

They didn’t care though, just letting their leader make his observations before they looked to the stairs heading to the eleventh floor.

“Okay, we know our enemies, they’ll probably have the advantage in the dark, so we have two options.” Shaun said as they gathered in a circle.

“One, we trust our Dexterity enhanced eyesight and reflexes and survive any ambushes in the dark… or I attract enemies using Light magic.” Shaun’s offer was considered by the team, this was their decision.

“The unseen enemy is scarier than the seen, I vote we use the magic.” Roy said, trying to sound needlessly smart… they knew he was, but he didn’t need to act snobbish about it.

“It would be easier for me to block enemies I could see, so I agree on that.” Oliver said, his votes were typically ignored actually, due to his childish nature…

But if a tie-breaker occurred then his vote tipped the scales obviously.

“I’d rather not fight a horde of monsters and then have to heal you all… I see the advantages of the Light magic option, but I’d rather we use stealth.” Ellie’s vote made it one to two for the Light magic use.

“We’re fighting a crowd of Goblins. They’re slightly stronger, slightly faster, and much smarter than the previous ones we fought, but we’re already much stronger. I vote we use the magic.” Vincent’s statement ended the vote, regardless of Dante’s decision, the majority had already voted on the magic.

“Very well, I’ve already tested this on myself so I know it works, but everyone come here.” One by one Shaun placed his hands on their eyes, and once he removed his hands their eyes would flash momentarily, now capable of seeing in the dark.

This was pure manipulation of an element, creating a film around their eyes which accepted light more easily, giving them impromptu night vision.

Shaun would never admit to having invented it on the fly when looking for his keys in the morning, before the sun was up.

When it came to manipulation of an element, a person’s Intelligence and Wisdom stats determined both the strength and control over the element, as well as how much mana someone possessed and how fast they recovered.

But for proper Spells Intelligence determined the effectiveness of the spell and Wisdom determined how many uses it had a day.

Shaun had checked, the casts renewed exactly at midnight based on the time zone he was in, it helped a lot considering he and his team usually went into the Dungeon at night like now.

“Alright, those drain my mana slowly, so I won’t be as useful when it comes to magic. That’s fine though, I rarely use it anyway.” The team smiled wryly to each other as they agreed…

Shaun admired physical warriors from his days of playing RPG’s. He usually played with those characters, not because of how powerful they were…

But because playing with those characters were simple.

They moved down the stairs, once more feeling that the stairs between ‘floors’ were beautiful, in this case moonlight streamed through branches and leaves, glittering in the darkness almost.

When they exited the stairs, they found themselves within a forested area, glowing runes lining the path making Shaun nod…

Einherjar’s words on the runes were correct, they wouldn’t be able to cross, but any creature they find beyond the runes wouldn’t be able to enter either…

Though they should pay attention to those creatures, they might be enemies in a later ‘floor’.

Do they still refer to them as floors when technically there were only ninety nine floors?

…Yeah, it still worked for them. Especially if you ended up using stairs and still ended up in the same area.

That was one of those things that hurt the brain to think about…

You walk up stairs from floor two to find yourself on floor two. And vice versa for going down?

They would rather just continue calling them floors then.

But for now, their enemies were Goblins, and while the moonlight kept the path illuminated to an extent, there were parts where the trees grew past that ward-line.

Einherjar had warned Shaun that those trees occasionally held Goblin Assassin’s in them…

The warning was wasted on Shaun though.

His Anima Hunter Sight and Arthur’s Soul Sight were similar in effect in how they helped their users find out the abilities of their enemies, but the difference between the two was obvious when you realized one was an Anima and one was a skill.

Arthur had his senses dull when he used Soul Sight, but Shaun had the opposite happen, using Hunter Sight actually heightened his senses.

There was a trade off in that he couldn’t keep it active for as long as Arthur could keep Soul Sight on though.

The world wasn’t fair, but the LEV’s and the Dungeon so far were fair to an extent.

Shaun wondered if he could coin the phrase ‘even the devil is fair’ and get money every time it was said.

Nope, it wouldn’t work, but Shaun wished it would though.

They soon encountered their first Goblin group, comprising of mostly Warriors, one Archer and a Magician.

It was notably different from the day time group in that it was clearly lop-sided to favour Warriors, when in the day the grouping was slightly more even.

This was likely because, despite being able to see in the dark, shooting arrows in the dark was different than swinging a sword in the dark.

Shaun’s team took advantage of this with relish, because despite their team being comprised of three magic users, an archer and two melee fighters…

All six of them were capable of fighting up close and killing their opponent, as shown when even Ellie broke the neck of a Goblin with her staff.

The entirety of their team, with the exception of Oliver, were trained in hand-to-hand combat, what styles didn’t really matter to them.

Most people extolled how amazing a fighting style must be to defeat their enemy, but that just wasn’t the reality of the situation in a life and death fight.

It was something that made Shaun give a tired sigh every time he found more and more proof that it was true.

Fighting someone, and killing someone, are two different things.

Shaun himself knew that all too well, having experienced time in Iraq, where a little girl tried to give him water.

She was stopped though, and at the time, Shaun was new to the place and didn’t know why the stopped a little girl from providing water.

Then the bomb under her clothes went off, and Shaun realized the insanity of the world.

Fighting and killing. Two different things.

The proof of that difference shone inside the Dungeon, where the only solution was killing your enemy, not defeating them.

Oliver, their tank, wasn’t capable of attacking like the rest of the team, but he didn’t need to, he was a defender, he just had to stand there and take the hit.

Shaun wondered if Oliver ended up like that because of how Oliver would piss off everyone around him…

It had to be why he had the taunt skill upon Awakening.

So while Oliver couldn’t fight as well as the rest of the team, he just had to protect them from outside attacks such as the spells and arrows.

Vincent and Shaun were especially powerful amongst the group, though Dante was nominally the second in command, his abilities weren’t suited for their enemies who were only around one metre tall.

Vincent’s ability as a Thief gave him good boosts to Dexterity and Vitality, his Anima even boosted his Dexterity further, called Cheetah Focus, it momentarily multiplied his Dexterity stat.

At level twenty, it multiplied the stat by three, originally multiplying the stat by one point five times.

Using his Anima, Vincent was capable of weaving around the Goblins as if they weren’t there, slitting their throats as he passed, leaving corpses in his wake.

On the other end of the spectrum was Shaun, who had notably less finesse to his movements, and yet was killing the Goblins just as fast, due to his Animae.

Hunter Sight allowed him to learn the weaknesses of his enemies, he learnt even more if he killed beings of that race before, meaning the more Goblins he killed, the more weaknesses he’d see, until eventually he learnt common movement patterns of the race itself.

A Goblin attempted to stab him in the stomach with its sword, only for Shaun to step back, his eyes flashing green as the sword in his hand, his other Anima the Sword of Light, flashed out, gouging out a hole in the Goblin’s chest, killing it as it faded away.

It was mentioned that the Goblins possessed intelligence now, so they didn’t move in set patterns anymore… but that didn’t mean  that they could move beyond their biology, much in the same way human beings couldn’t bend their joints backwards.

These limits were what Shaun learnt when it came to the ‘common movement patterns’.

For example, Goblins joints were slightly more flexible than a humans, but they were more brittle as a result as well, meaning that a Goblin could pull off some attacks humans couldn’t do, but their arms could break while doing so, meaning most Goblins would be hesitant to do so.

They limited their own ability out of fear of pain, but like most cornered animals, when it came to a choice between pain and death, they’d pick the first option every time.

Shaun warned his team about this after they killed most of the Goblin group, the rest running away in fear after realizing that Shaun’s team was not injured and destroying them.

Such a situation had not happened to Einherjar, not because Einherjar were weaker than Shaun’s team, but because Michael had been injured.

That one injury got the Goblins to try and attack, and made them more reluctant to run away because Michael might heal in the time they ran away.

A wounded prey was easier to hunt than a healthy one, so would you let something you want to kill run away when it was already injured? Or would you run away from it?

It was simplistic logic that resulted in the huge amount of Goblins that Einherjar killed. Were Michael to have not been injured, they would have maybe killed only two thirds or a half of the Goblins, the rest all escaping into the paths.

“No one hurt?” Shaun asked, a rhetorical question, but he’d nonetheless appreciate an answer, as shown when his team all nodded, except for Oliver who was picking up the Soul Stones.

“Hey Shaun, I got a question.” Oliver said as the Stones vanished into his inventory, leaving Shaun with a raised eyebrow, motioning for Oliver to continue speaking.

“Floor eleven had Goblins, just like floor one and two. So why is it that we get less experience here?” Oliver’s question was relevant, and had Shaun thinking to Arthur.

Shaun’s eyes did not work on abstract things other than skills and levels, so he didn’t know much about the soul like Arthur did, considering his eyes were made for that.

“We do actually get more experience from the Goblins here, but compared to the effort we put in, the experience is less, is that what you mean?” Shaun asked to clarify, having Oliver nod.

With the original Goblins, they put in an effort of one and got experience of ten.

With these intelligent ones, they put in an effort of five and got fifteen, to put it into perspective.

Until recently, the effort required to defeat a monster usually matched how much experience one would receive, but now it seemed a bit mismatched.

“According to Arthur, our Soul expert, the souls of the original Goblins were clear, meaning they had no personality, no knowledge, and no life experiences so to speak.” Shaun said as they stood still, not daring to walk around while speaking, lest they attract enemies.

“Souls like those are easier for ours to absorb.” Shaun tried to think of a way to better explain, comparisons worked best to explain things like this.

“Okay, let’s take this to be your soul.” Shaun found a solution and removed from his inventory a plastic bottle of grape flavoured drink.

“Your soul has colour and flavour. Then there are clear souls, which can be considered water.” Shaun then removed a bottle of water and placed it next to the grape one.

“Water is the basis of all flavoured drinks, and so can easily connect to all of them.” And then he began to remove a few differently coloured drinks…

No one bothered to ask why he had so many. With how often he drank alcohol, they could be chasers or even just something to sip on before he got to ‘properly’ drinking.

“Now there are the new monsters, which have coloured souls. Their souls have colour and flavour of their own.” Shaun said, taking a red one, the water, and the purple grape bottles, separating them from the others.

“Now taking in experience is like mixing the drinks to make more. You can add water to any drink… the result would literally be watered down, but let’s pretend, for the sake of the explanation, that it became whatever it was mixed with.” Shaun said with a sigh as Oliver stared with interest.

Everyone was, but they all knew the concept already… the explanation was still interesting though.

“But mixing two very different drinks is different from mixing in water, isn’t it? There’s a limit before the result begins to no longer look the same colour, or begins to taste bad.” Shaun said, pouring the drinks into different bottles and showing the mixtures for the example.

“And then you remember Soul Stones, which, according to Arthur, are the left over remnants of a soul after whatever it had was absorbed into us?” Shaun smirked as he pointed.

They followed his pointing finger to the bottles.

Ignoring the grape flavoured drink, the water was nearly completely gone while the red drink had way more left.

He had used two purple bottles, and mixed the red with one of them, and the water with the other.

Both were still purple if a bit different in hue, but still notably purple… but the amounts were all different.

“Huh?” Oliver looked to the water, then the purple bottle with water mixed in. Then he looked to the red bottle and finally the purple bottle with red mixed in.

“Wait… so the purple is us… we need to keep it purple. The other stuff is the souls of the monsters we fight… Oh, I get it.” Oliver said finally, leaving the rest of the team sighing.

Shaun’s brother wasn’t stupid, but he had his areas where he needed a bit of assistance, usually involving abstract thoughts.

“When we kill a clear soul Goblin, we absorb more of its soul, and get tiny Soul Stones. But when we kill an intelligent Goblin we absorb less of its soul and get bigger Soul Stones.” His explanation was met with a nod from Shaun.

“Yes. It isn’t quite as simple, but that explains it quickly.” Shaun left out the ‘weight’ of a soul having a factor on experience gained as well.

A soul with colour gave more power for less so to speak.

It was the same way that a piece of gold and a piece of plastic the same size would weigh differently.

But that would take quite a bit longer to explain, and Shaun didn’t feel like continuing the explanation.

They kept moving, not daring to venture too far into the floor due to the night time, the light making it harder to see and easier for their enemies.

And yet, in spite of that, Shaun’s team was still much more powerful.

“Photon Spark!” Shaun was glad no one could see his face due to the brightness of the spell, a metaphorical star in the night as it shot towards three Goblins grouped together.

Having to say the name of a spell aloud to use it was annoying and embarrassing… he liked anime, but the idea of calling out your attacks screamed idiocy to him.

Needless to say, Shaun was hoping to one day find out how to shoot off spells without speaking, or at least increase his elemental manipulation to the point it was indistinguishable from proper spells.

The spell impacted the front-most Goblin barely a second after it shot off, and Shaun didn’t bother to check the results as he attacked a closer Goblin with a knee to the face, cracking its skull as he stabbed another.

The reason he didn’t check the result was because the combined spell was explosive, to put it lightly.

And because it was so bright that the light would temporarily blind everyone that looked at it.

Huh… that actually meant that the spell being called aloud was necessary, because if Shaun didn’t say it, his comrades wouldn’t know what he was about to do, as most of his spells looked the same until impact.

It had to do with the strangeness of his unique skill, which made all his spells colour coded by rank.

Rank one spells were all white until impact.

Rank two spells like Photon Spark were light green, despite it not being a wind or wood spell.

But yes, the result of the spell hitting the front-most Goblin was that it died, a hole punched through it and then the spell exploded into a ball of light and sparks burning the Goblins into nothing.

It was awesome, adding effects to the spells beyond their basic ability. This one exploded on contact, but then Shaun controlled his magic to make it so that it first punched through one, and then exploded.

He did this by generating the spell and coating it inside a shell of elemental manipulated light, the shell pierced while the interior spell registered the hit, but can’t explode.

Then as the combined attack exits, the outer shell fades, allowing the spell to finally explode.

If Shaun were to actually explain how he did such a thing, there was no doubt that everyone in the world would tell him that his magician class was well deserved if he could come up with that.

Of course, he didn’t explain the idea; everyone else in the group just thought it was a trait of his combinable elements.

And despite treading the path of a magician now, Arthur would find no use for such a concept because his Spells were not offensive or defensive, but supplementary.

Shaun’s powers were growing to become destructive, while Arthur’s were growing to make his body faster and stronger.

“Every magic user has a path they walk on, and it is theirs alone.” Shaun considered, though none in his team heard him as the final group of Goblins died.

“Let’s go back. We won’t be levelling up tonight.” Shaun’s statement was met with nods as they moved back to the stairs, meeting a stray Goblin occasionally, said Goblins looking slightly injured showing that they were Goblins that ran away during the fights.

Without a group assisting them, they were even less prepared to fight Shaun’s team, and were vanquished with little fanfare.

It was in such a quiet, moonlit forest, that Shaun’s day ended, for midnight had arrived.

They left the Dungeon and Shaun went to his room, the Guild-master’s office…

His ‘day’ was over. Now it was Einherjar’s, as it will be until the death of either Chronos… or Einherjar.

Shaun hoped the latter was the survivor of that conflict.