It was now Sunday. That meant he had five nights left before the dungeon reopened. Now was not the time to dawdle, and Zack got to work immediately.

The commotion about the wild animal attacks died down quickly as the attacks ceased mysteriously, and the next few days went by with uneasy peace. Zack had always been resourceful, not one to waste his precious energy, and the new challenges he faced forced him to be even more so. He spent the time learning about how to train his new body and its limitations.

After his short summer academy lectures during the day, he jogged nonstop around town for several hours at a time every day while simultaneously studying–yes, studying! Zack had discovered a particularly nifty aspect of the inventory system. He could store his notes within the inventory and then read them as they floated in front of him, and the screen followed him wherever he went, even if he was running downhill or rolling around on the floor or even taking a bubble bath.

This increased his study-time efficiency to dizzying heights, and also allowed him to level up his stats at the same time. For someone like Zack who was both a study-a-holic and a train-a-holic, it was like heaven on earth.

During his exam on Monday, he was also able to use his inventory during the test. He’d studied most of the material already so cheating wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it certainly did not hurt. Two days later, he found out that he received top marks for his summer midterm I exam, even better than he normally performed, all thanks to the new studying time obtained through his new inventory system.

Running for four hours in a row was just barely enough to push his Endurance up by one point, even though he felt like death after each running session. Seriously, this was the equivalent of the monkey pose in terms of physical pain. Even his regeneration was not enough to ease the toll on his knees and feet from pounding concrete for hours on end. Still, he stuck with it. Zack was stubborn as a mule when it came to pushing himself, and he did far more running than any reasonable person would’ve done.

Then, even at the limits of his exertion, he made sure to lift heavy weights every day. Zack knew how important the Strength stat was. At this stage in time where magic powers hadn’t shown up at all yet in the dungeon, strength was king in terms of increasing raw damage. But a single day’s worth of heavy lifting, hell, even a week’s worth wasn’t enough to satisfy him. If he wanted to level up enough additional stat points to make a real tangible difference, he needed to train as much as possible over a long period of time.

Luckily, he didn’t necessarily have to go to the gym anymore because of how resilient his new body was. He could chafe his hands lifting rocks at the park and be totally fine with that.

Thankfully, the park directly to the east of Central Plaza was safe during these days as the wild animal did not attack any further, and the special military task force patrolled Central Plaza every day.

Dexterity would come with each yoga session, so Zack patiently waited for the weekend to train that. He tried to do some poses he learned at home, but without proper guidance it was a lot less efficient than just doing what he did best–running and lifting.

A few days into his routine, he realized a major problem with his training. He was neglecting Vitality, which determined both his health pool and his regeneration rate. If he had to rank the stats he had so far in terms of immediate usefulness, vitality would come as second most important after strength.

But how could he train Vitality? Since it was something that helped him heal from injuries received and increase the maximum amount of damage that he could take before he died, then… oh no.

He must have subconsciously realized this, then placed it into a forgotten cardboard box in his mental compartment to collect dust because of how morbid the idea was. But he had to face the truth. If stretching increased dexterity, lifting increased strength, and running increased endurance, then obviously… getting injured increased vitality.

Yeah. So he needed to intentionally hurt himself to increase this incredibly important statistic. Zack started cautiously, dropping furniture on his toes and punching tree trunks. He watched as he healed, which was quite gratifying and cathartic to see, but it wasn’t enough to give him an additional stat. He needed to push himself even more.

He began to bleed himself first, wondering if the regeneration would kick in. It did, but unfortunately he found blood loss to be a weakness–the rate at which he replenished blood through his magic rejuvenation was not that much faster than natural means. Blood loss left him feeling dizzy and disoriented, not to mention it caused him to lose a lot of valuable nutrients that went from his fridge into his stomach and finally his bloodstream. He wasn’t sure if protein hung around in the blood, but it sure as hell felt like it did after a blood letting session.

It took three bloodletting sessions to finally get a single point of vitality, and that left him feeling weak throughout the day.

In the end, he decided that bleeding was not worth it.

Naturally, he tried stabbing himself next. First, he did it lightly, and then he got more reckless with it, stabbing anywhere on his body that didn’t involve critical organs. It hurt like hell. The wounds would seal and disinfect themselves like magic, which was great, but the process was slow, not to mention excruciatingly painful. In addition, he started to notice that his regeneration magic ran out of juice after a while.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

To put it in video game terms, it felt like he had a personal healer bot with him at all times, but the healer ran out of mana if he got injured too frequently, and would need to recharge over the course of the day. That recharge time left him awfully vulnerable, and Zack quickly learned that he needed to be conservative with expending his healer bot’s mana pool.

By the end of the week, he had gained 4 points in endurance, 3 points in strength, 1 point in dexterity, and 2 points in vitality. He could have probably squeezed out a few more points if he hadn’t weakened himself so much with the bloodletting sessions, but it was good to know the limitations of his stats and abilities. This information was valuable for future training sessions.

As for the M. Affinity and M. Regen stats… it was safe to say that he genuinely had no idea where to get started. He didn’t even have a mana pool yet. He decided to worry about those stats later.

The training days passed quickly. Soon, it was Friday afternoon, which meant that the long awaited time had arrived.

It was time to enter the dungeon once more.

Zack met up with Hugo by the Wharf Street subway entrance. Hugo did not mess around–he brought with him what appeared to be a second hand golf bag that he probably thrifted from somewhere, and by thrifted he meant stolen, with an assortment of weapons and other supplies sticking out of it. Slung across his chest was a water canteen.

They had met several times during the weekend to visit Central Plaza and La Minot Department store again to do some shopping–a.k.a. shoplifting–, but Zack did his training separately from Hugo, who generally slept during the day so that he could work his night shift at the bar.

Hugo groaned. “This is so unfair.” He pointed at Zack, then to himself. “You don’t have to bring a single thing because of your inventory, and look at me! This is cheating!”

Zack smiled smugly, reveling in his fortune blessed superiority. “Too bad, buddy. The inventory’s only for certified dungeon crawlers like myself, not plebeians like you.”

They sat underneath a flickering street light, chatting while waiting for the dungeon entrance to reopen.

Dark clouds began to gather above, reminiscent of the first day that Zack entered the dungeon. It started to rain.

As soon as the rain began to fall, the subway entrance began to transform. A shimmering black ooze coated the walls of the subway entrance as the rain continued to fall.

Zack furrowed his brows, raising his palm to collect some rainwater. He examined it, not noticing anything in the clear puddle in his hand.

“I have to say,” Zack said. “There must be some relationship between rain and the entrance opening. It was raining pretty badly when the dungeon opened last week too.”

Hugo yawned. “Why does it matter man, it’s just a bit of rain.”

Maybe Hugo was right, but he felt like there was something more to it. Hugo could be a bit dense at times, even though Zack appreciated him as his childhood friend. Between the two of them, Zack was the brains and Hugo was the brawn–nah, just the carefree schmoozer.

“So what now?” Hugo asked, walking over to the subway entrance and peering inside. “What is all this black stuff?”

Zack shrugged. “The black stuff was there last time too. It disappeared when I left.”

“Is it poisonous?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we try it?” Hugo asked, casually sticking his finger onto the ooze. He made a loud gasp, recoiling. “Ow!!!!”

As Zack turned to help him, Hugo’s pained expression turned into laughter. “Ha, gotcha.”

“Don’t scare me like that…”

Hugo chuckled. “Come on, loosen up a bit. Now how do we get into this entrance? It’s getting close to 9pm.”

“I’m not sure. Last time, the ground pretty much swallowed me whole… I guess we can walk down.”

“Alright then.”

As they walked down the stairs, Zack felt a horrible sense of deja vu now that he was going down. As he passed the third to last step, he felt as if he just passed through some kind of barrier. The air itself rippled as if it were made of liquid.

He looked back. “Hey, did you see that as well? It’s as if we just passed some kind of magic membrane–”

He froze on the last step of the stairs. Hugo was no longer behind him.

“Hugo?” he said loudly. “Dude, that’s not funny.”

He didn’t like this at all. Hugo could be a bit of a prankster at times, but not to this extent. This felt like the beginning of a horror movie, for fuck’s sake. He tried to walk back up the stairs, only to find himself encountering what appeared to be an invisible barrier of some sort.

The barrier was not solid like a wall, but rather it stopped his movement with increasing resistance as he reached his hand towards it. This was completely different from last time, but in the end, one thing remained the same–the only way out was forward.

Wharf Street Station Passenger 001 [Zack Baker] has entered the Underground.

The next train will arrive in thirty minutes.

Welcome to the Initiation, passenger. You have entered into the assimilation process for the 174th cycle. The first stage has been prepared for tonight.

Have you enjoyed your vacation, little one?

A familiar voice spoke directly into his head, causing Zack to experience a strange sense of deja vu. He felt like he’d heard that line before.

“Hello, Fool,” he replied. “Mind explaining why my friend just vanished all of a sudden?”