"The Treasure Angel? What's that? A God?"

Lucien shrugged. "Depends on what you mean by God.," he said. "It's quite a nebulous term to begin with"

"Well," Cameron said. "To keep things simple, it's just a representative for the Treasure God. You'll understand more when we get there."

Even if it was just a representative, getting to be able to see a being so close to being a God sent chills down his spine. "Why haven't we been dungeon diving the last few months?" Ryan asked. "Isn't it more efficient at gathering XP than meditation?"

"It's because Countess Gladine's supply of Golden Apples were robbed a few days before you were summoned."

"Golden Apples? Do they taste good?"

Cameron snorted.

"No," Natalia said. "They taste amazing."

"What does food have to do with dungeon diving?" Ryan asked.

"It's not really a food," Cameron said. "I'll explain it later, but let's just say you can't dungeon dive without a Golden Apple."

Ryan nodded, pretending that he was satisfied, but he wasn't. The more he learned, the more questions he had. "Did she find out who robbed her?"

"She caught some of the thieves as they escaped. After torturing them for ages, she found out a week ago that they were hired by her brother, Franocles."

That made Ryan a bit concerned. Not only did Franocles blackmail Zack out of Countess Gladine's grasp, but he was willing to play dirty enough to rob his own sister. Who's to say he wouldn't try and assassinate her gladiators? If he got too strong wouldn't he try to assassinate him? He'd just have to get strong enough to protect himself from assassins.

Speaking of the devil, Countess Gladine approached them along with a group of soldiers who carried crates filled with armour, weaponry, and sacks filled with food and general travel supplies over to Ryan's group.

"How're you fairing, Ryan?" Countess Gladine asked, face blank and stony. Even with her resting bitch face and the fact that she was a slave-owning piece of shit, he hated to admit it after the many times he saw her, but she was jaw-droppingly beautiful. "Your catching up to the rest of your team is impressive."

Whilst Ryan picked out some armour and weaponry from the crate labelled with his name, he smiled down at himself, gazing at his System Screen.

Level 5 Race Human Class Warrior (Foundation) Mana 100% Blessing None Blood Skill Infernal Meditation Skill (1) Aegis Rush Enchantment (1) None Strength 20 Defense 20 Agility

20 Magic

15

His hard work certainly paid off. Despite being there half the time as everyone on his team, except for Cameron, he nearly caught up to them. Dennis, Natalia, and Lucien were Level 6. Marissa was still Level 5, but he caught up to her. One more left and he'd be on the same level as the other three.

"I'm doing as well as a slave forced to eat rotten food every day and sleep next to a pit filled with rancid piss and shit every night could, your grace," Ryan said with a smirk. "Better than soft and pampered elves like you could if you were in our circumstances."

Cameron sighed. Marrissa gasped. Dennis snorted, and Natalia chuckled. The soldiers surrounding Countess Gladine scowled at Ryan and stepped towards him, but she held up her hand, gesturing for them to stop.

"It's alright," she said. "In fact, his anger is more than alright. As long as it's channelled towards winning the tournament and not slicing my throat in my sleep, then I consider it splendid."

Her soldiers clicked their tongues and pulled their hands away from the shafts of their spears.

"Unlike Cameron, Zack, and a few others you don't have much combat experience," she said to Ryan. "Are you still comfortable about joining the tournament?"

"No, I want to spend my days scrubbing your floors, cooking your food, and wiping your ass. What do you think?"

She snorted. "Good to hear. How about the dungeon diving you'll be participating in from now on? You might've heard, they can be quite dangerous. Any worries?"

"Other than how I'll manage to survive in the Continent of Mana as a fugitive after escaping from you and your soldiers in the chaos of a dungeon dive, no, I don't think there's much I'm worried about."

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She sighed. "Do you want me to start cutting out tongues?"

"Do you want the gladiator who'll become the next Zack be unable to communicate with his team during the tournament?" He didn't believe he would, but he thought it'd be a good idea to sound as confident as he possibly could to her. It's not like she was gonna pick all her gladiators to enter the tournament. He was gonna have to compete with the others in some kind of selection process. The more sure of himself he appeared to her, the more favourable her judgement of him would be.

She shrugged. "Your spot in the tournament isn't guaranteed. You might have to begin spending your life digging shit out of latrines, dusting my paintings, and wiping my behind quite soon."

"What do you mean?"

"I've got a lot of gladiators, but you can only enter five into a tournament. As a result, just before the tournament's qualifiers in eight months, I'll host a mini-tournament of my own amongst the dozen teams of gladiators that I have. The winning team will be the one I enter into the tournament."

Ryan shrugged. "Is that all? I'll be winning that, you know?"

"We'll see." She turned away from him and walked away. "Good luck in the dungeons. I hope to see you come back with at least one arm and a leg. I'll be impressed if you come back with more than seven fingers."

Ryan snorted as he turned away from her, grabbed the helmet from the armour set, and shoved it on his head.

The rest of his team chuckled as they watched him. He looked at them, puzzled. "What're you all laughing at?" He asked. "How else do you put on a helmet?"

"These aren't just regular pieces of armour," Cameron said, picking up his breastplate from the crate labelled with his name. It shined bronze. He turned it to show a piece of writing scribed onto it in this world's System Language. Now that he thought of it, he noticed that all of the armour and weaponry in all of the crates had stuff scribed onto them. "System Heralds with Enchanter classes have scribed enchantments onto them."

Cameron traced his fingers across the writings on his breastplate whilst chanting, "Cohronna thi kappa undaraya." The carvings lit up white. The glow spread across the entire breastplate. Even the rest of the set of armour shone. The same light sparked around Cameron's body. The light dimmed. The entire armour set vanished. The light surrounding Cameron dimmed to then reveal the armour appearing on him.

"If you equip the armour and your weapons like this," Cameron said. "Then the stat increases and skills that come from the enchantments will apply to you."

"If you don't," Dennis said. "Then they'll just be regular scraps of metal."

"That's also false," Cameron said. "Enchanted weapons and armour are more durable than regular weapons and armour. The degree of that difference correlates with the rank of the Enchantment. The weakest Enchantments have the rank of White, and the strongest is Black. So if you don't have any available Enchantment slots, then you may as well wear or wield an enchanted armour set or weapon without equipping it in the special way."

Ryan nodded. He pulled the helmet off and stared at the carving written on its crown. Its stat screen appeared before him.

Enchantment Fortify (White) Class (Restrictions) Warrior | Guardian Effect (Continuous) +10 Defense Equip (Incantation) Fallaka thi kappa undaraya.

Ryan chanted the incantation. Everything went white. The light gradually dimmed. He looked down at himself and the iron armour appeared around him. He looked at his stat screen and saw his Defence increase to 20 points.

He grabbed his iron spear, and stared at the incantation scribed onto its shaft.

Enchantment Sharpen (White) Class (Restrictions) Warrior | Rogue | Archer Effect (Continuous) +10 Strength Equip (Incantation) Fallaka rum kappa undaraya

It'd be nice to equip this spear as well and get some extra strength stats, but they didn't have a Guardian on their team and he only had one Enchantment slot at the moment. Once he reached level 10 then he'd equip it. But for now, he had to settle for just the Fortify Enchantment.

Level 5 Race Human Class Warrior (Foundation) Mana 100% Blessing None Blood Skill Infernal Meditation Skill (1) Aegis Rush Enchantment (1) Fortify Strength 20 Defense 30 Agility

20 Magic

15

Ryan looked at the others. Cameron wore a set of bronze armour, and wielded a spear with bronze heads.

White robes drooped across Marissa. She fidgeted with a wooden staff nearly as tall as her within her hands. It was a twisted, and uneven piece of wood, as if it was just a branch ripped off a tree.

Lucien's white robes billowed in the wind. He also had a similarly crooked wooden staff that he leaned against whilst staring over the keeps' walls and at the city beyond.

Rough and brown leather armour gleamed around Natalia. She twirled and fiddled with a simple wooden bow between her hands. A leather quiver filled with arrows was strapped to her back.

They were all ready to go. So each of them picked up a sack filled with travel supplies, and let an elven soldier lead them into a carriage, each one allocated for a specific team.

Once all of the gladiators piled into their respective carriages, the horses pulling the carriages trotted down the courtyard, through the fancy gates, across the city streets, out the gates, and into the wide, open, and hill-covered wilderness. They rode towards Manris City, the Empire's northernmost port city.

And with that, their journey to the Continent of Mana's dungeons began.