My eyes snapped open and my heart started beating as if it was trying to escape my chest, but I instantly calmed down when I figured out Arabella was approaching me. She had a water skin and a bowl of some sort of food which she offered me, and I gratefully accepted.

I downed the water in large gulps until everything was gone and then started to eat the food. I wasn’t back to 100% yet, but I was close and the small headache wouldn’t slow me down. "Thanks for the food and water," I said to Arabella when I was half finished with my bowl.

"The others wanted to wait longer, but I was quite certain that you only needed 8 hours to get back up on your feet. At least they needed to take the watch this time. You really should let them do it more often, otherwise later in the dungeon they might not be use it when it will truly count," she said before leaving.

I soon followed; it was time for the morning meeting. Apparently, we had made excellent time as we were 10 days ahead of schedule and should be able to keep this or extend it during the next four floors as we will reach the halfway mark of the 50th floor.

The food and water helped quite a lot and I felt my headache slowly going away. "Oh yes, before I forget, we got this ring from the boss. None of us could figure out what it does so could you test it out?" Horus asked and at the same time handed me a ring.

It wasn't much trouble to get my armor off my hand and after I’d done it, I should have figured that the ring was too small to fit any of my fingers, but as soon as I got it close, it resized instantly and I slipped it on.

"Nothing seems to have happened. Yeah, I don’t think it does anything," I told them. At that moment, glowing runic patterns appeared on the ring. I saw questioning faces as they could all see it glowing.

"Well, this is quaint. I like the aesthetics, but anyone who has learned the intricate art of the mind wouldn't have any problems here," I heard someone say. I instantly looked around but didn’t see anyone, but I kept hearing running commentary. "Did you guys just hear someone speak?" I asked, but they all shook their heads.

I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from until one of the comments enlightened me. "This wall needs repairing, but why someone wouldn't just go over it is beyond me." Instantly, I jumped into my mind palace and saw someone flying around. It kind of looked like a baby-sized bumblebee, but without the fat body that they could use to stand upright. They still looked like insect ones the same with its hands which it had two pairs of.

As soon as I manifested, it flew towards me at incredible speeds. I took a defensive position, but it stopped in an instant, far enough away that getting to it fast would be troublesome. But even if I could get to it, I didn’t know what I could do.

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"You look a lot more impressive than I thought. My name is, well, I don’t actually have a name. That's weird. But I guess it makes sense. Would you like to name me? It’s your right as my master," it said, answering its own questions, which was a bit off-putting.

"I don’t want to be your master," I told him, to which he started to giggle, which would be the best term as he flew up and down and made a weird noise. "Well, too bad because I chose you and anyways I will serve you excellently and from the looks of it, you are in dire need of it."

Well, there was a lot to unpack there and I absolutely didn’t know how to feel about that. I focused back on the real world. "There’s someone talking inside my mind and I’m pretty sure it’s the ring," I said.

What followed were mixed reactions. Adam and Luana cursed, Horus said that I was lucky, and Arabella was thoroughly confused. "How in the hell did the mind companion choose you over the rest of us?" At least I now knew what to call it, but I guess I should try to get some of those answers as I brought my focus back into my mind palace.

"So, are you my mind companion?" I asked it and it immediately started to bob up and down. "That I am and I would have to say I’m quite brilliant, especially because I have a lot of knowledge about everything related to the mind and a few other topics." Well, this was starting to sound a lot better. "My companions also tried you on, why didn’t you pick one of them?" It didn't answer immediately, but eventually, it did answer after flying slowly in a circle.

"Ah yes, now I remember. One was completely unsuitable, two others I didn’t like their defense. They were so boring and besides that, they wouldn’t have been able to keep up with my upkeep anyways. One was more promising, but that one also didn’t have the upkeep I required." Now that didn't sound so good.

"What upkeep?" I asked it, hoping it wouldn't be something bad. "I require energy power. The more I get, the more I can do to defend your mind. The amount I can get depends on your soul strength and I felt you were strong so you could feed me a lot and I could be very strong and make sure nothing can mess with your mind the way I feel like you desire it to be."

I focused on my energy and I did notice a new connection to the ring but the energy draw wasn’t that bad. But I did feel a different kind of connection as well. When I pulled up my achievement page, I found under my Bonds not just Goose but also Mind Companion.

Well, I guess this was a lot more official now. It wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of it, but honestly, I didn’t think that I wanted to. "I’m keeping the ring," I said to the others. I could see reluctance in their eyes, but none of them objected.

I tripled the ring's energy connection and I could feel how it buzzed around happily while starting to fix everything that had been broken. I would need more time to speak with it, but currently, we were on a tight schedule so I indicated that I was done and we headed towards the staircase and headed downwards where we found an above-ground ruin and we all sighed out in relief. There seemed to be plenty of room for us all to fight properly and we all smiled at each other and then rushed towards the closest enemies we could detect so we could alleviate our frustrations.

We rushed through the remaining floors incredibly fast as it seemed that the environments were quite kind to us and the monsters weren't mind-bending assholes and would die without trying to break our minds. When we had defeated the last boss, a triple-headed Arctic wolf, before we entered the 50th floor, Horus announced a longer break so we could take the time and properly solidify our gains as much as we can.

From our casual talks up until this point, I’ve been able to learn quite a lot about stats and I now know why free points were so valued and it was not because they would help you reach milestones to get trades, although that was important. The main reason why people valued them so much was because quite often you were just a bit shy from reaching the next energy rank and if you have maxed out your classes, that will be your last chance at reaching the next rank. While some can fight people above their rank, you would obviously want the huge power boost as that is always the correct choice.

I now kind of regretted that I was putting so many free points into energy storage, but I also feel like it helped me reach this far which was a good compromise. It also seems that my training plan ability was quite clever to use my adventure class to boost my energy storage. I decided currently not to use my free points as my adventure class level up were helping me close in on the milestone. The rest of my stats have also been boosted up quite a lot with the level ups I have gotten, but none of them were close to a milestone.