The increasing darkness wasn’t much of a problem with my Perception as high as it was. I remained alert as I made my way through the forest, using Manasight to peer into any shadows my powerful eyes couldn’t pierce. Whether it was luck or the smell of recently inflicted death I carried, nothing else attacked me while I trotted to my sanctuary. I was glad for the reprieve. While I kept a watchful eye, the calm let my mind wander.
The System. Carrying the lump of a Sundercat over my shoulder, still passed out from the strange effects of my newest skill, I faced the dilemma head on. Merownis had tried to kill me, like nearly everything else I met in the dungeon, but I didn’t hold a grudge against him. How could I? His race, perhaps his whole planet, had been subsumed in some way by the System and was now doomed to appear as mind-controlled monsters within dungeons and possibly without. No, my ire was easily directed elsewhere, and the reservoir of anger was growing ever deeper as my thoughts circled the facts of the matter.
Despite the magic it delivered into my veins, the System had attacked my planet. Even within this dungeon, over a dozen human lives had been lost. One hand free while carrying the catman, I look at my palm. Even now, days later, I could see the bloodstains. They were tattooed to my hands by the incinerating power of the memory. Those first minutes and hours were the worst of my life.
Upon arriving at the scene of my greatest trauma, I dumped Merownis’ softly snoring self into one of the booths against the wall. It was clean here. Naea had been around, returning the room to pristine before flitting off somewhere. Probably gorging on the Sundercat massacre I had left behind. A small guilt tried to gnaw at me but I redirected it into the growing pool of malice which was festering in my psyche.
Not only had the group attacked me with lethal force before I had any way of solving the issue non-violently, it was neither myself nor the monsters of the dungeon who were to blame for the hostilities. Each time a denizen of the dungeon was able to talk to me, we had become allies. Naea had done more than save my life. She had given me the tools to survive in this death game. Merownis was basically a very strong newborn who had been taken advantage of by a different slave to the System.
None of them were inherently evil.
I almost smashed my tailoring workbench in a frustrated moment, my hands slamming towards the top but I stopped myself. Instead, I let my hands work while my mind continued to wander philosophical paths.
Did “evil” matter, or was the word just a childish veneer over the top of a baser choice? Fighting within the dungeon was a matter of survival. It was a nice ideal to offer my hand to every creature I came across but I would soon find myself with no fingers. Not everything had the impulse or the intelligence to play nice. Merownis even having the opportunity to throw his lot in with me instead of playing the role the System had placed upon him was essentially pure luck.
Whatever the System had planned with the sword, Severance, did not go as expected. Of course, when dealing with potential omniscience, even a supposed loss would likely be a victory in the end. If destiny really was ordained, and even my rebellion against it when I felt its threads touching my skin, then the point was all moot anyway. I couldn’t think like that or my own choices would start to become muddy, the motives unclear.
I wanted to survive. For my base instincts, but also for the lives I had already taken. That meant killing more, ironically, now that the System had come to Earth and brought its dangers. I made my peace with that macabre fact. My hands were moving to create something right now, but they just as easily destroyed, too. It was startling how quickly the change had occurred. I wasn’t even the type to kill bugs before all this. The System had forced that alteration upon me, and likely the whole world beyond.
If I did beat this dungeon, what then?
Looking at my skill page, I couldn’t deny that a path to survival was being opened to me. A path to greatness, even.
Skills
Mana Savant (Max)
Unique
Party Leader (Max)
Epic
Mana Bolt (Level 2)
Common
Manasight (Level 2)
Common
Heavy Blow (Level 3)
Common
Haste (Level 1)
Common
Meditate (Level 4)
Common
Stealth (Level 2)
Common
Tracking (Level 3)
Common
Mental Fortress (Level 1)
Uncommon
Dragonburn (Level 1)
Rare
Construction (Level 2)
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Common
Tailoring (Level 3)
Common
The list was so long my eyes started to glaze as I looked at the growing collection. Heavy Blow had levelled up, while Manabolt, Manasight and Stealth were all on the edge of growing. I hadn’t been able to watch the changes during the battle, but Heavy Blow was a very simple skill. There was more definition in the pattern, perhaps, but the skill itself was the same.
Mana Savant and Party Leader both said they were at maximum level, but I could feel them make progress in the same way my lesser skills did. Brushing against the pair of ornate skills, I could only shake my head. Heavy Blow was one thing, all the skill did was take mana and turn it into force on the other end of the attack. Powerful, but straightforward. Mana Bolt worked as a condenser, changing the formless mana into a more volatile expression of itself.
Mana Savant basically turned mana into knowledge and skill growth. The process was like watching someone turn a cup of water into a treehouse. It clearly was technically possible, but there were so many steps in the recipe which I couldn’t follow or seemed to be skipped entirely that it made my head hurt in my attempts to understand more. The same was true for Party Leader, which took not only mana but Willpower, and through the skill patterns transformed them into a semi-permanent connection.
There didn’t seem to be anything draining from me, but I could feel something through my connection to Merownis’ unconscious self. I finished the busy work with my hands and pulled on the newest pair of shoes I made. My last pair had disintegrated at some point in the desert, and had been a bit of a failure before falling apart. A nice, durable pair of canvas shoes now adorned my feet and I stretched before getting up to look out of the window.
There was too much to do for me to keep stopping whenever something new or strange happened. Being surprised wasn’t just an everyday occurrence at this point, it was every time I turned around. My goals were still clearly defined by the System which trapped me. Skills were interesting, but I could focus on them later. Unwilling to let myself return to the dour thoughts either, I checked on the sleeping tigerman one more time before leaving him to rest. There was no telling when he would wake up and I wasn’t going to wait around here forever.
As I left the building, a glimmer of magic in the corner of my eye made me smile. “Welcome back,” I nodded to her invisible self. With my Regeneration only increasing, and my control of the skills and mana within myself coming on leaps and bounds, Manasight was nearly always active at this point. Her presence no longer gave me experience towards levelling the skill up but I could feel it sitting on the cusp already. With an audible huff at being spotted so easily, Naea appeared.
“You smell like a wet cat,” Naea complained, waving her fingers at me. The feeling of being air dried all over my body made me sigh with comfort, almost forgetting where I was. When I looked down at myself, I was cleaner than I had been in many days.
My eye twitched. “You could have done that at any point?” I asked, gesturing to my clean self. Naea nodded. “And is it a costly ability?” I continued, my teeth clenched. Naea shook her head, smiling happily. “So, why was I walking around covered in filth for days?”
“I thought that’s how you wanted to go around,” Naea said, shaking her head in solemn regret. “Crazy, wild men living in the woods should smell of blood and death, shouldn’t they?”
“So why,” I kept my voice as measured as possible, “did you do it now?”
“Because until now, I liked the smells, silly.” Naea’s smile was beaming and I pinched the bridge of my nose. Ignoring that she liked the smells I hated most, I weighed up trying to smush the stupid fairy and decided against it. I might have gotten stronger but Naea was still a complete unknown to me. Her level didn’t appear, even if I sometimes felt the tug of the System’s analysis attempting to connect to something. I could never actually spend the mana, though I tried. “Whatcha doing?” She asked, oblivious to my murderous thoughts.
“I think I adopted a cat, but we’ll see whether it's feral when it wakes up.” I pointed my thumb towards the café. Naea raised an eyebrow before checking inside. She came out with a tilted head and I ignored the obvious question she was asking with her eyes. “I was planning to go have a look at the ratman again,” I told her, “do you want to come?”
“First of all, who’s that? Why are you keeping living monsters around and what did you do to it? It barely reads as a monster.” Naea looked shaken by whatever magical changes had happened to Merownis, and I delighted in her discomfort a little. She certainly enjoyed mine enough. After telling a few lies about the situation, I eventually gave Naea the truth of what happened after she left. She didn’t seem less troubled after the explanation. “A party skill? Rare but not unheard of. They’re usually whole Aspect skills though…”
“That’s just how good Mana Savant is, I guess. Ask and I shall receive.” The only part I left out was the strange reverse tug-of-war I had played with the System. I still didn’t understand what actually happened in the creation of the skill, the weight of that infinite potential over my head threatening to crush me if I moved the wrong way. It was better not to dwell on it, and hope I could avoid such moments in the future.
“So, do you want to watch me fight a really angry rat, or not?” Naea couldn’t help herself from nodding and the pair of us set off in the direction of the first Claimant I had encountered, and the first boss monster I was going to defeat.
———————————————————
From its seat of power, the first Claimant watched the fluctuations in the Spirit of the world. The dungeon in which its seat was set shuddered as the Greater Connection was stretched within its bounds. Thorn doubted the others were as receptive to such things, being uncaring to anything and unsympathetic to the Tree respectively. Yet, for the pensive master, it was an ominous sign.
The challenger would be coming soon.
Despite the danger it suggested, Thorn grinned at the tightening weave of karma. Spirit danced through the energy of the dungeon and suggested impossible things. When Thorn had cast the challenger away, it had been because they were nothing to Thorn. The boy had been too early, and Thorn himself was not prepared for the fallout of such a victory.
Yet, in less than a day since the System arrived on this new planet outside the dungeon, the boy would return. The echoes of power suggested it would not be as a supplicant. Chuckling to himself, Master Thorn refocused his attention on the artefact the System had graced him with to protect his claim. Should he defeat the challenger, the dungeon’s boundaries would fade and Thorn would be free.
As long as he could defeat the other claimants. This was why he had refrained from crushing the child when it had stumbled into Thorn’s range the first time. The Scorpion was powerful, and its growth was the most explosive. Already it would be too strong for Thorn to defeat on his own, and the other claimant would never work with him. Proudly, it would let them both die before it lowered itself.
There was a moment, however. As Thorn’s time training with the artefact extended, his abilities grew massively. He would get his chance, as the foolish human would arrive soon. The timing was perfect. The Scorpion’s children were not yet ready, and the other was lazy. Fate, it seemed, would happily give Thorn the chance to seize its golden flow for himself.
Swinging the Jingu Bang casually, enjoying the weight of its momentum, Thorn went to greet his guest.