Fare accepted.
Quest complete! Collect ten iron coins.
Reward: You will receive the privilege of returning to your home world. If you have a first class ticket, please proceed to the first class car at the front of the vehicle.
“So does that mean I’m in third class?” Zack scoffed. He joked, but the existence of first class showed how incredibly elaborate and test-ran this process was in previous cycles. He may be the first to sit here in this world, but he certainly wasn’t the first person to experience all of this judging by how streamlined the process was.
Anyway, he took a seat, feeling more comfortable now that he was heading back. “Guess we all have to work our way up to first class. Well, it’s not all bad. Third class is pretty nice and clean.”
Right after he sat down, his butt felt the cool and smooth curved surface of the bright orange seat through his gym shorts. He also noticed that the car did not look the same as what it did on the way here.
The most prominent difference stood directly across from him–a translucent glass screen the size of a television screen jutting from the wall on the side of the room. Upon further inspection, it didn’t look like anything made of material from Zack’s world.
He stood up and touched the glass curiously, which felt silky and polished like marble. Odd.
He was promptly interrupted from his discovery by several more notifications popping up in front of him.
Experience will now be distributed. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Level up! You are now level 2.
Level up! You are now level 3.
Level up! You are now level 4.
Level up! You are now level 5.
Level up! You are now level 6.
A bit late, but not bad at all. Now let’s see how much stronger that made me.
Before Zack opened his status screen, he wanted to just feel the changes first. Walking to the open door that led out into the dark, he withdrew a ragged machete from his inventory, gripped it with both hands, and slammed it against the cement floor right outside the car with as much strength as he could muster.
The ragged machete shattered upon contact, but he expected that due to its ragged quality.
The impact was a bit more than before. He felt noticeably stronger, but not by a mind blowing amount. More strength would be needed for the days to come. Remembering that hellhound from his first vision sent chills down his spine.
He needed to get stronger.
With that in mind, Zack opened up his status screen.
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 9
Endurance: 12
Vitality: 11
Magic Affinity: 13
Mana Regen: 10
Luck: 1
Well, strength definitely went up a bit. So did the others.
An explanatory tooltip appeared in a blue runic text box.
Baseline humans receive +1 to all stats upon each level up. However, these increases are considered additional stats, and operate differently from base stats.
Your base stats represent your natural talents, and are inherent to you as a person. They will generally not change except during special circumstances, or during ascension. You may view your base stats on your status screen.
Your additional stats represent the results of your training and experience, and can be increased during level up. They may also be trained in special training zones. Additional stats are not as impactful as base stats.
All classes will add additional stats during level up.
Certain professions will add additional stats during level up.
All factors will be taken into account during ascension. Please do your best to increase your stats to further your ascension possibilities.
So I was both right and wrong. I guess this system for stats is pretty fair. Let me check my base stats again.
He touched the screen and his stats switched to display differently, with the base stats highlighted in blue, and the additional stats in green and in parentheses.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Strength: 6 (+5)
Dexterity: 4 (+5)
Endurance: 7 (+5)
Vitality: 6 (+5)
Magic Affinity: 8 (+5)
Man Regen: 5 (+5)
Luck: 1 (+0)
Touching the screen again, only the base stats in blue remained.
Strength: 6
Dexterity: 4
Endurance: 7
Vitality: 6
Magic Affinity: 8
Mana Regen: 5
Luck: 1
Touching it a third time made it go back to the original version.
“Alright, I’m getting the hang of this,” he said with a big, dumb grin on his face.
Zack continued to fiddle with his status screen, playing with the holographic display with childlike wonder. It wasn’t every day that he got to play with magical holographic text boxes.
Unfortunately, his enjoyment got cut short by the doors closing with a pshhh sound.
The train lurched forward, and the screen made of that weird translucent material blinked into life like a television.
♫ Delver’s Tube is what you need ♫
♫ We're the best show around indeed ♫
An upbeat jingle that sounded like it came from a kid’s saturday morning cartoon played from the television, showing an animated background of a city rolling from right to left. All of the buildings were bobbing up and down like a cartoon, followed by a dancing round cartoon bear animal with white fur and red horns.
The horned bear’s cute white fur silhouette and happy face combined with the hypnotic catchy jingle led viewers to let down their guard before it revealed disturbing flashes of its vicious fanged teeth that were far too numerous when it smiled. The jingle and upbeat theme felt absurd and out of place compared to the gritty reality that Zack had just come from, but he didn’t mind it.
“Welcome to Delver’s Tube, your premier source for all dungeon related news and information!” the horned bear said after taking a pause in its dancing routine, its voice squeaky. “My name is Oni, and I’m here to deliver the weekly scoop to all fresh faced initiates. Now I’d like to jump right into the juicy parts like usual, but it looks like our sponsors are limiting our programming to the bare essentials because of some investigation about an improper start to the initiation.”
“Aaaand I was told that there’s only one of you right now. I sure hope you aren’t involved in this whole investigation, are you? The sponsors won’t like that one bit, oh no. I’d watch out if I were you, they might make your next challenge extra challenging!”
The television screen flashed to a new scene. Now, the horned bear called Oni had sunglasses and a martini in its hand, lounging under a sun umbrella on a beach as the waves crashed in the background.
The horned bear put its martini down on the table beside it and began to speak, its teeth appearing normal. “Here I was, enjoying my hard earned vacation after a spectacular 173rd cycle, just to get dragged back to work like usual. And for one initiate? One lousy progenitor, who’s probably going to get killed by his third night?”
“Well, a job’s a job, so I gotta deliver the goods you know?”
Oni raised his hand and swept down, the entire television background changing with the sweeping motion alongside his clothes. He was now dressed in a white labcoat with safety goggles on, a measuring stick in his hand that he pointed at a black chalkboard.
“A-hem. I’ll start this lesson for real when the initiation actually begins and not for this emergency early start. So for now, my sponsors are telling me to keep it simple, and teach you about entrances and the train schedule.”
The horned bear in a labcoat raised a piece of chalk and began to scribble madly, dust kicking up like a cartoon. A moment later, it revealed a crude drawing of several entrances leading down into a common below surface level area.
“As you can see here, when an initiation begins, we open up a bunch of entrances all across your world. We hide them in lots of great places– in alleyways behind bars and restaurants, public restroom stalls, empty parking lots, basements, you name it! A group of you will discover these and enter them, where you get transported here–”
Oni’s measuring stick traced down to the scribbling of the rectangular area underneath the surface. “To the underground. That’s where you’ll find the metro, which is your entrance into our world. I’m sure you’re familiar with that already.”
Oni grabbed an eraser and entered into a flurry of erasing, leaving the board completely blank. He then wrote the word Friday on the blackboard.
“The underground will be open every Friday night. Our 174th cycle research team tells us that this is an ideal time for you humans to have some free time. The trains will arrive at 9 pm sharp, so don’t be late.
The horned bear cleared his throat. “Now I’m sure you’re thinking this–why come back to the underground after barely surviving? What’s the point? Well, I hate to break it to you, but your world is not going to be quite the same from this point onward. Let’s just say that there might be some leakage from the dungeon into the surface world, if you catch my drift. Entering the underground is a privilege to help you prepare for what’s to come and get stronger.
Oni chuckled. “You don’t have to come back, but we highly encourage you to take advantage of your privilege.”
“As the assimilation continues, more entrances will be opened across the world. But it’s a first-come-first-serve basis. Anyone who joins earlier is undoubtedly at an advantage. So you’re certainly a lucky progenitor, getting here an entire night earlier than anyone else hoho.”
Oni snapped his fingers, and his clothing instantly transformed into that of a showman’s with a cape. He was now standing on a red curtained theater stage.
“That concludes Delver’s Tube for tonight. Remember, you’ll find a television at every subway car or safe room.”
Oni took a bow, dipping his tophat down to the floor.
“Until next time, stay tuned and adios!”