"Do we go for the chest or nah?" I ask.

We're looking at the vine-root path that leads down off of the starting island, to the one which I couldn't see during my chest yesterday. It's a seventy-foot bridge that leads to another island, which is fairly small in size.

At an estimate, I'd say the connected island is only around fifty feet in width. At the very center of it is a wooden chest with metal trim. Other than that, there's just a single vine-root arch to one side of the island and nothing else. I can see that there's a waterfall on the opposite side of it, though I'm guessing the water flows out of the side since there's no visible water on the surface.

No monsters are visible from here even with me looking closely, so there probably aren't any.

The slope of the vine-root bridge makes traveling down to that pretty risky when compared to others we can see, which is why I want to know if Lucas and Wyatt are okay with checking it out. If it's like in video games, a chest that's risky to reach has better loot rewards in it.

"I say go for it," Wyatt says. "But I don't think we'd be able to get back up here easily. Might need rope or something. Maybe shoes that spike into the ground? I think they make that for ice."

Lucas looks nervous as hell about the trip down the vine-root bridge, too. It does look pretty sketchy, after all.

"Alright," I say. "What about if you two go back to the gate and I take it on? Lucas, know how the breezestep deer were boosting their speed?"

"Y-yeah," he turns pale and starts shaking.

"I played around with that spell last night," I tell him. "It's not a speed boost, it's a spell called [Air Jet]. If I cast that, I can boost myself up into the air a bit. By the time the jet ends, I can get [Air Mastery] cast and use it to finish bringing me back onto the path. My control isn't good enough to bring me from one end to the other and while I don't think I'd have enough Mana for that, the spell should still save me."

"Not if you fall," Wyatt says.

"I was doing some testing last night," I say. "During my watch shift. Creating stones and dropping them off the edge, dropping some blades of grass, some flowers… I've got time. Plenty of time."

One of the objects I created was a stone as big as I am and dropped it. That was the first object I actually saw go poof since it was the only one big enough to still be in my vision by the time it met the void.

"You looked over here during your watch, didn't you?" Wyatt asks.

"Y-y-you left us a-a-alone?"

"I was keeping an eye on things," I say. "And no, I wasn't leaving you guys alone. I stayed within fifty feet of our camp. It was something I was checking just in case. If there's even one vote against going for the chest, I won't."

Lucas thinks about it for a few moments, then gives a shaky nod.

"G-g-get the chest."

"Alright," I say. "If all is in favor, I'll go down."

"I'll stay with Lucas," Wyatt wraps an arm across Lucas's shoulders. "We'll wait here for you. My [Air Bullet]s will make sure nothing hurts us!"

"You can make him wait a little if he gets hurt," I tell Lucas, who nods in response.

"Hey!" Wyatt exclaims. "No!"

I start descending the vine-root bridge and as much as I'd like to try sliding down it, I know that would be risky for more reasons than just me not having done such a thing before. Lucas would probably freak out as well and the last thing he needs is to see me potentially die. Leaving him with Wyatt unsupervised would be an even worse torture for him than that, too.

Once I reach the other island, I hop off of the vine-root bridge and make my way over to the chest. There aren't any monsters on this island at all, just as I thought, so reaching the chest is easy now that I'm here.

For the first few minutes I'm at the chest, I examine it to see if there's any form of lock or trick or trap that isn't obvious at first sight. Looking for this sort of thing isn't something I'm familiar with but I can at least tell that the chest looks perfectly normal. It's two feet long and a foot and a half in height, including the arched lid. No lock on it that I can see and nothing which might stand out as a trap.

Just in case there's a trap that activates when the chest is opened, I still open it carefully. The chest opens without issue, so I examine the loot with less caution. While I didn't read through the full guidebook for Dungeons which came with the incentive, I did learn from it that the chests found scattered throughout them contain more than one item. I'm still surprised by how much is in here, however, as I was expecting just a few items.

Five eight-ounce bottles of [Crude Mana Potion]s (they restore 5 Mana per dose), five bottles of [Crude Healing Potion]s, a [Wand of [Air Bullet]], a pair of [[Wind Edge] Dagger]s, three quarter-inch pieces of greyish-white air maginiite, and a quarter-inch piece of pale blue mana crystal.

That last one is curious and I examine it after pulling it out.

[Mana Crystal] A piece of crystallized magical energy, containing 25 Mana.

This is something I've found mentioned in some of the tomes back home and the directions for creating the air-blocking seal for abuilding claims it can be used to strengthen the magics within it, enhancing its resiliency. The Dungeon guidebook also talked about mana crystals and stated that they can be found in both chests and growing naturally throughout all Dungeons.

I didn't expect to find a piece of it so fast, not with how valuable it was made out to be by the tomes.

Once all of the loot is in my ring, I make my way back up the vine-root as carefully as possible. As I do, I notice that Lucas is holding Wyatt and not in the way that says something has spooked him. In fact, Lucas has dug in his heels and is trying to keep Wyatt from moving forward. Well, not really "dug in" his heels as he's taking a bunch of steps back in the effort, but close enough.

"Having fun?" I ask when I reach them.

"He keeps trying to spit over the edge!" Lucas exclaims.

"Wyatt, stop struggling so he can let go without you falling over the edge," I say and Wyatt stops. "Let's get going."

We begin navigating our way across the floating islands. Crossing the vine-root bridges is a bit tricky at first since none of us are used to such a thing. Lucas struggles the most while Wyatt quickly learns not to try and goof around on them.

Once we get the hang of walking on the vine-root bridges, however, they're pretty easy to cross. We just have to treat them like bridges without edges and a lethal drop. Their arches aren't too steep and they're decently wide, so keeping balance is easier than we initially thought.

At least, that's true for the bridges between the bigger islands. For the smaller ones with the chests, crossing them is a lot more risky due to steeper slopes. Those ones, only I cross.

Most of the Dungeon is more of the same, with some islands smaller and some bigger than the starting one. Some have ponds, some don't, and most have streams flowing out of them. One has a decent-sized lake. All of the really small islands are riskier to reach, but they all have a chest with loot in their centers. Every island is roughly circular regardless of size, which ranges anywhere from twenty feet to six hundred feet in width.

Only three types of monsters challenge us during our travel: the swiftwing falcons we encountered on the first island, some horned rabbits found on a few of the islands, and ten-foot-long sea serpents which die pretty easily to an [Air Bullet] from myself or Wyatt.

It's a rather easy Dungeon, and something I notice is that nothing attacks us unless we attack first.

Wyatt wants some Levels, though, so he provokes a lot of fights. Since I have a higher Constitution and more Aura, I take on the role of tank to let him get hits in, and Lucas heals me if something manages to wound me or if something wounds Wyatt. Just having more Constitution and Aura doesn't guarantee I won't take damage, it just means it takes more force and power to hurt me, and Aura only mitigates damage, not neutralizes it completely unless the attack is weak enough.

I make sure we collect a bit of everything. All monster corpses, more wood harvested from the vine-roots, flowers from the ground, rocks with magic crystals, and anything in the chests.

"Guys," I say at what I estimate to be around two-thirty in the afternoon. "Look there."

Lucas and Wyatt look over to where I'm pointing.

It's an island with the lower edge about thirty feet higher than the upper edge of the one we're currently on, and decent in size. Maybe around four hundred or so feet in diameter.

It's still a few islands' worth of navigation away, but there are a few notable features on it.

First and most obvious of those is the actual grove on it – trees. Because of its distance from us, we can make them out more easily than if we were further away. I'd estimate them to be toward the center of the island rather than the edges.

We've yet to encounter actual trees here so that island having them is a bit interesting. They look fairly tall, maybe eighty or ninety feet in height with branches only at their upper quarter.

Second and less-obvious than the trees is the number of waterfalls. So far, every island we've been on has had one or two waterfalls flowing off of it. Not something someone would notice unless they were taking in all of the details or counted waterfalls or something like that.

That island, however, has three of them based on what I can see from here. I'm not entirely sure, but it looks like they're spaced evenly apart, suggesting the island may be split into three sections.

Third and most importantly but probably the less-obvious is the Dungeon Gate on the island. It's barely in my vision and I could be wrong as all I can see is the canopy. However, seeing the canopy alone makes me suspect that it is a Dungeon Gate.

"Ooh, trees!" Wyatt exclaims.

"Is that a Dungeon Gate?" Lucas asks.

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His stutter has gotten better the longer we've been in here, no doubt a direct result of him getting more comfortable. When we're ultimately still able to handle every fight without a problem even as they grow tougher the further in we travel, it's easy to start not seeing the danger anymore.

"Where?" Wyatt asks.

"The flowers there," I step behind him and point. "Right there. That looks like the canopy for the gate. Combined with the trees and having three waterfalls when no other island has had more than two, that's probably our destination. The way out."

"How do we get there?" Lucas asks.

"We go over to that island," I point to another one. "And based on what I can see and assume, I think we have to go to another island past that, then that one, and finally, the one with a grove. The sad thing is, we could've done this at least an hour earlier."

"Why do you say that?" Wyatt asks.

"See that island there?" I point to one which connects to the next one we have to go to. "We were on that an hour ago but we went off to that path instead of the one which leads to our next island. Since that one obscured the view of the trees, we couldn't have known about them."

"Oh, damn," he says. "Alright! I'm all for getting out of here before dinner! You guys?"

"Same," Lucas says.

"Let's get going," I say.

We cross over to the next island we need to be on and find that it has four total paths off. There's the one we came from, the one that led to the other island we were on earlier, the one which leads to the island that I said would be after this, and one leading to a higher but tiny island. That last one was obscured from view from both of our previous two islands by this one, though I'll probably go to it to grab the chest loot. Lucas and Wyatt have approved all of those trips so far and they've all been pretty worth it.

However, this island has a new monster for us to face: slimes. They're new for us to encounter in this Dungeon, and they're not water slimes like the one I fought outside of here. These ones are greyish-white, though still somewhat transparent.

"Those look so squishy!" Wyatt exclaims. "Hey, I want to bounce on them!"

"Don't," I say. "I should be able to handle them fine. We'll have to take on a few before we can get to either of the other paths we can take."

There are slimes close to both the vine-root bridge leading to the next island and the one leading to the small island with treasure. Making it out of this Dungeon without fighting any of the slimes will be next to impossible.

"E-e-earth magics," Lucas's stutter is back, no doubt from him flashing back to the injuries I took outside of here. "A-a-air should b-b-be w-w-weak t-t-to t-t-that."

"Yeah," I say. "You two stay here, I'll handle the slimes. Air magic might only heal them and you don't have earth, Wyatt. Even with the Levels you've gained, you won't have enough Mana to take them on."

Despite how long we've been in here, Wyatt has only gained 5 Levels to [Elemental Wizard]. It's disappointed him but I'm not surprised since I have to step in to help for the tougher fights. That most likely reduces the progress to the next Level or whatever. We aren't exactly sure how the gains are determined.

Lucas has a decent amount of Mana as he did reach Status Level 1 due to how much he's had to heal Wyatt today, but he doesn't have earth magic, just [Air Bullet].

I could teach them both [Earth Bullet], but Lucas doesn't want to fight and Wyatt still doesn't have an immense amount of Mana. And with 80 Mana, Wyatt technically has plenty of it – except that we don't know the difference between the water slimes outside and the air slimes in here in terms of strength.

It took me quite a lot just to get through one, and that was with taking a lot of hits. Even with these air slimes no doubt going to be weaker than the water slime I faced off against outside, Wyatt would probably burn through most of his Mana while still taking plenty of hits. He'd constantly need to use a potion.

Meanwhile, it likely wouldn't take me more than one or two hits to kill the slimes.

"Going to take on just the ones in our path?" Wyatt asks. "Or go for as much goo as possible?"

"Going to get some goo," I start pulling things out of my storage space. "The incentive gave us jar sets, so while I take on the first few slimes, why don't you two clean the jars and dry them out?"

The [Jars and Bottles Pack]s each come with ten five-gallon glass jars. From their boxes, I pull out only the tokens for those, which come in groups of five.

"If you guys start collecting the goo," I return the boxes to my storage. "Only use twenty of the jars. I want to save the rest just in case. If we don't find something for them in here, we can put some goo from the water slimes outside into them."

"Got it," Wyatt says.

"C-c-can we get something to s-s-scoop with?" Lucas asks.

"Sure," I pull out a coking supply kit and remove both of the ladles from it.

Iput the boxes away and create some cleaning stations for them to use. They get started on that and I pull off my shirt. I'm sure I'll take at least one hit from each slime and there's no reason to let them damage my shirt when that's avoidable.

"B-b-be careful," Lucas tells me.

"Will do," I tell him, then make my way to the nearest slime.

Unlike the other monsters we've encountered so far in the Dungeon, the slime attacks once I'm close to it – even before I begin casting a spell. It also starts off with two [Air Bullet] spell circles. Based on the formation speed, they're Level 4 spells, only one lower than the water slime had.

I still can't cast two spells at once but I can cast a [Stone Bullet] with 52 Magic behind it. Both of the [Air Bullet]s from the slime slam into me, breaking skin a little, then my [Stone Bullet] punches into its own body. The membrane doesn't just break from the force but bursts, goo flying out of the monster in the same moment my attack strikes the core.

With 52 Magic in its strength and speed, the [Stone Bullet] doesn't just strike the monster's core but punches through it, flying all the way through the monster and slamming into the ground on the other side of it.

The monster didn't stand much of a chance against me.

I bring my right hand up to my chest and use [Lesser Heal] on the wounds. Even with it being at only Level 2 and only having a two-second duration, my Magic is high enough to fully heal the slight wounds from the slimes.

Now that I know that these monsters are pretty easy, I continue walking through the island, taking out slime after slime, as well as the occasional group of birds that were hiding on the vine-roots. The birds are sent into my storage, while Wyatt starts collecting the slime goo in jars.

When I finish killing everything on this island, I start storing the slimes' cores into my storage while making my way back. Lucas has finished cleaning the jars by that point and is helping Wyatt gather the goo.

"That was easy," I say when I rejoin them and start putting the jars into my storage. "See, Lucas? Nothing to worry about."

"Y-y-you still got hurt," he says. "T-t-took a hit f-f-from every s-s-slime. S-s-sometimes two."

"Yeah, but nothing [Lesser Heal] couldn't fix up," I tell him. "Even net me a Level to [Holy Mage]."

"T-t-t-that's not a g-g-g-good thing!"

"I'm fine," I tell him. "Trust me, the attacks were basically just skin breaks and nothing more. I don't want to take hits, but I'm fine with doing so if it's easier than alternatives. By the way, I'm collecting the cores as well. We might be able to use them, but they also have maginiite in them. At least, if we consider those to be 'heart equivalents'. I haven't checked."

We finish looting the island, then Lucas and Wyatt rest up while I travel to the treasure island. It's higher than this one by about twenty feet and has a hundred-foot-long bridge leading to it. I loot the chest without a problem since none of the treasure islands have had monsters, then make my way back to the others.

"I saw the boss while I was up there," I tell Lucas when I return. "It's a breezestep deer. Since this is a Rank 0 Dungeon, it's probably weaker than the ones outside. Just wanted to give you a heads-up since you're a bit affected from that one a couple of days ago."

"T-thanks," he says.

"I didn't see deer monsters otuside," Wyatt says as we begin making our way to the next island. "What are they like?"

"They wield three spells that we know of," I tell him. "[Air Blast], [Air Jet], and one I don't know the name of as I haven't tried to learn it yet. It creates blades of compressed air around its body as both defense and an offense. They're fast and dangerous, and I'm pretty sure they count as Rank 1. Unless a Dungeon's final boss is of the next Rank, this one's going to be weaker."

Wyatt decides to grill me on everything I know about breezestep deer, which isn't much more than I already told him. That disappoints him a lot but he stops when I offer to let him be the one to take on the boss so he can see if there's anything new I haven't learned yet.

Lucas freaks out a little until he realizes I was just messing with Wyatt, then we finish gathering goo and cores.

Traveling to the final island isn't a problem for us as there aren't anymore treasure islands and all of the monsters are just more of the same, except with slimes showing up as well. The next island we step onto has those rather than air slimes, so we fill up another twenty jars with that. The last island before the boss island has a mixture of the two, so we just collect the cores and move on.

"This Dungeon was ridiculously easy," Wyatt says after the deer dies, a single [Stone Bullet] from me to its head ending its life before it can summon its defenses. "I was actually pretty bored by it."

"I mean," I walk up to the breezestep deer and place a hand on it, the deer entering into my storage ring when I activate it. "If you want, we can let you try running it on your own. You're Level 6 now, right? Might hit Status Level 1 by the end if you run it alone."

"Nope," Wyatt quickly responds. "Not a chance. No way am I coming into this place again without both a healer and a tank unless I'm as strong as you are. What do you think a Rank 1 Dungeon would be like?"

"Probably more of a challenge than this," I tell him, then pull out an axe. "Let's cut down some trees."

"Why?"

"Why not?" I ask. "It's free wood and the Dungeon will replenish it for the next entry."

I locate another axe and set Wyatt to work on helping me with that. Once the first tree is felled, I give Lucas a saw so that he can cut it down to size so it'll fit into my storage. Branches are removed as well, then I use [Water Mastery] to dry out the trees.

"Better to do this here than in the cold outside," I tell Wyatt. "Which reminds me that we'll need to change clothes before heading out unless we want to freeze our asses off."

Chopping down, cutting down to size, and drying out the trees without splitting them takes us a couple of hours, but we get plenty of wood from doing this. This should let us have a wooden door for any houses we build, more wood for fire, and even wood for furniture. At least, some furniture. Basic stuff that we can assemble without too much struggle, nothing fancy.

"There we go," I say once the storage in my ring is filled. "Can't get any more in here, so let's just leave the last couple of trees."

"What?" Wyatt asks. "But I chopped them!"

"I did tell you I didn't think they'd fit," I snort. "You just kept going. We're all sore and exhausted from this, anyway. Especially Lucas. Let's just get out of here."

"Aw," Wyatt pouts. "Alright! Let's go."

We change into warmer clothes (Lucas and me into what we came in wearing, Wyatt into a new outfit), then exit through the portal. Lucas and Wyatt both get portal sickness so while they deal with that, I examine the notification in my vision.

For being a part of the first team to conquer the Rank 0 Standard Dungeon [Ezrelnim Island Grove], you have received the [Dungeon Pioneer] (Tier 0) Perk!

There was an immediate and noticeable increase to my Mana capacity when I received that so it's easy to tell that went up. I can't sense Aura so I don't know if that rose from the Perk as well, but it's easy to check. One method is just checking the Perk information, but I choose to check my Stats instead.

Name: Carter Leif Elm Age: 19 years Species: Human Sex: Male Level: 1 Experience: 6/28 Aura: 60/147 Aura Regen: 0.0024/second Mana: 237/342 Mana Regen: 0.075/second Strength: 16 Constitution: 21 Agility: 14 Dexterity: 15 Magic: 59 Mind: 36 Vitality: 20 Soul: 20 Skill Points: 1 Attribute Points: 0

"Uh…"

It boosted my Aura and Mana by 50, my Aura Regen by 0.0010, my Mana Regen by 0.010, and all other stats by 5. And this is a Perk which only gives a bigger reward as it goes up in tier and applies retroactively. That's going to be pretty useful if I can be a part of the first team to clear other Dungeons of higher Ranks.

Fortunately, the golem was pretty clear that it's not the first team to ever clear any Dungeon of that Rank, but for that specific one. I won't get locked out just because someone somewhere else in the world clears a Rank 1 Dungeon before me.

Something which concerns me, however, is how much Aura I lost in the roughly six or seven seconds I've been out of the Dungeon. Assuming it works the same way as Mana does and I gain only capacity and not actual Aura, I'm still losing around 5-6 Aura per second thanks to the damage caused by the ambient Mana in the air.

Despite me having both a lot more Aura and a lot more Constitution. Then there's also my shiny little [Mana-Infused Body] Perk.

Either the ambient Mana in the area has increased in the day since Lucas and I entered the Dungeon or the resistance to it provided by my stats, my body's built-up resistance, and Perk isn't very much.

Regardless of which it is, the next six months may be a little bit more annoying than I originally anticipated.