[Rare Accomplishment] Defeat [1] Elite enemy within [Beastden] dungeon. [Reward - Rare Dungeon Diver’s Token] “What happened to the whole no bombs thing? Do you have a death wish, Seraphel? I’m just teasing… That was great. Next time, I think you should start with one of those fancy bomb arrows to the thing’s chest. Just blow it up a little sooner, and nobody will get too hurt. Right?

“Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t backseat fight for you this time around. You used to get so mad at me for that. You did great. Ignore me! Well, please don’t ignore me. I get lonely. But good job!”

Hell yeah. I guessed that thing was an elite, and getting a unique reward for killing it was a big bonus. I only wished all those little rats had counted as enemies, too. If they had, I bet we would’ve earned the rare or even epic token for killing regular enemies within the dungeon. I supposed that wouldn’t have been fair, though. The rats hadn’t seemed anywhere near as strong as nightmaws.

I also noted that Lyria, Zahra, Ramzi, Thorn, and Sylara should have earned the same accomplishment, even though they didn’t have Voidgaze helmets to tell them about it.

My thoughts shifted to the words in the message. The messenger had said, “this time around.” The words lined up with something I remembered from one of its first messages when I arrived. It had spoken like we knew each other somehow when I was Seraphel.

I had two leading theories about the messenger at the moment. The first was that the entity sending the messages was somehow my helmet. If so, I would feel bad if I ever replaced the thing because it would imply the helmet was sentient. If it was, I’d have to keep it with me if I ever found something better. I could still pop Voidgaze on occasionally, just so the poor thing could have somebody to talk to.

My other best guess was that the voice was some kind of… dimensional liaison. I had already wondered if those big boxes at the furnishers were like portals to factories in another dimension. Maybe the whole thing over there was some big bureaucracy, and my secret messenger was just the dimensional secretary assigned to monitor my rewards?

I also had a handful of other theories, but none seemed quite as likely. The helmet could be some crazy version of my former self, for instance. Maybe it knew me because it was me. Or it could be an enemy of mine I trapped in the helmet as a punishment during my path to godhood. Maybe the voice spoke directly into my mind and only pretended to need the helmet to communicate, just to keep me guessing.

The possibilities were endless, and each seemed even more far-fetched than the next. Then again, I was currently in a fucking dungeon killing monsters. I supposed this whole situation was pretty much insane, so I shouldn’t really rule out possibilities based on my past definitions of what seemed sensible.

I grinned to myself, lifting one of the talking stones. It was unnaturally warm in my palm, almost like an electronic device working on overdrive. “Testing. Test, test, te—”

“I hear you,” Lyria’s voice said. Except it wasn’t quite her voice. It sounded like a creature with rocks for vocal cords was doing its best Lyria impression.

I smirked. “You don’t sound so good.”

“You sound terrible, too,” she said.

“Just making sure these things work,” I said. “I didn’t actually have a message.”

“Hi, Brynn,” Zahra’s rock voice said suddenly.

“Hello, Mr. Brynn,” Ramzi’s rock-voice said.

“Okay,” Lyria snapped. “You’re getting the sekmeti all excited. I’m putting you back in my pocket.”

“Roger that.”

“Roger what?” Lyria asked.

“Nevermind,” I said.

I tucked the rock phone in my pocket. Thanks to Ramzi’s replacement pants, I had functioning pockets again.

Woohoo.

I spent a little while assessing the situation on the map as I snacked on some tasteless rations from my slip space and sipped a little water.

The defenders at the dungeon’s entrance were currently clashing with a large wave of red dots. The defenders were mostly Woods, but two or three Irons were sprinkled in among the group. It looked like they were forming a large semi-circle and using the tunnel as a choke point to funnel the waves of attackers into a killing field. Considering I hadn’t seen any fresh “X” marks appear in a while, the strategy seemed to work well.

But for how long? The wave they currently fought was so large that red dots were clogged up in the tunnel, simply waiting their turn to emerge. If those waves kept getting bigger, they’d eventually burn dry on mana from prolonged fighting.

The purple dot was sitting alone in the room where the dungeon guardian had been. It hadn’t moved in hours.

I studied the map again, hoping it would magically present a solution to the looming situation I saw forming. It didn’t.

If the two Irons and the half-Iron turned out to be enemies, we would be cornered.

Before Thorn’s group arrived, two secret tunnels were connected to our passage. One led to another passage that we could have used to travel back to the entrance and avoid the three people entirely. But the nightmaw’s chasing Thorn’s group had collapsed the entire tunnel.

That left one secret tunnel.

The remaining tunnel was hardly an escape route because it led directly to the dungeon core room, where the murderous purple dot was still waiting.

We’d either be forced to clash with the three Irons or flee straight into the mouth of another threat.

I worked at the problem in the back of my mind, but didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to a solution. Maybe there wasn’t one.

For now, the best thing I could do was squeeze in as much fighting and training as I could while staying in one piece. As soon as the three Iron dots were on their way down our passage, I’d warn the others and double back.

Simple. Kind of. I checked the map ahead. There were quite a few red dots between myself and the end of the passage. The end of the passage widened into a slightly larger room, making me wonder if there was another elite waiting there. If I had time to make it that far, I’d have to consider whether it was worth the risk.

For now, I needed to meditate some more. I was almost to the next dot.

#

I was covered in the blood of several enemies, tired, and buzzing with lingering traces of adrenaline. In what I guessed to be only two or three hours, I had just fought and killed seven nightmaws completely solo.

I felt a rush of pride at the thought. I had come a long way from my time in the Dark Wood when I struggled to survive a few low-level, murderous cursed tomte. With my current strength, I could’ve just walked away from the thieving cursed tomte without needing to shed any blood.

It was a sour thought but also a reminder that getting stronger wasn’t just about the ability to destroy. It was the opportunity to protect. It meant being strong enough to avoid bloodshed at times.

My seven solo kills had netted me borderline insane growth. The amount of skills I had pushed from Tier 1 to Tier 2 seemed almost wrong at first. But when I thought more about it, I realized these were some of my first true solo kills earned by fighting with my abilities. Even the slaughter of the carapax had more been like the fortunate use of a powerful item, so it made sense that I hadn’t seen a flood of skills jumping up in tier level.

Until these fights, I also hadn’t been in control enough to purposefully over-use certain abilities in an attempt to push them to grow.

I looked back over the list of Tier Ups I had earned.

[Skill Tier Increased. Elemental Spike has reached (Tier 2)]

[Skill Tier Increased. Devour Mana has reached (Tier 2)]

[Skill Tier Increased. Mana Shield has reached (Tier 2)]

[Skill Tier Increased. Mana Sense has reached (Tier 2)]

[Skill Tier Increased. Chain has reached (Tier 2)]

Seeing the list made me smile.

I had experimented as much as I dared during the battles. As far as I could tell, the abilities grew much faster when I used them in combat.

I was mildly disappointed that no more abilities had made it to Tier 3. Considering how much Tier 3 of Forge Echo had boosted the ability’s power, I was hungry to see how more of them would grow at the 3rd Tier. I assumed Elemental Projection would be the next to improve. Not only did I use it during all my solo battles, I felt like I understood the ability inside and out by now. Part of me wondered if that was the key to Tier 3. Maybe it required some sort of knowledge or insight about the ability I hadn’t made yet.

Would every Tier have different requirements to advance? Or were some tiers just about using the ability, and others were about insight? I supposed there was no use wondering, because I planned to find out eventually.

I had also jumped all the way to level 49 and picked up a new accomplishment.

[Rare Accomplishment] Defeat [5] enemies within [Beastden] dungeon. [Rare - Dungeon Diver’s Token] “You and that cute little dagger and bow friend are turning into quite the team. I’m also a huge fan of Pebble. Are we calling him that officially? I noticed you are still keeping that first pebble you used to summon him, so that means you’re a little attached, right? Have you considered carving a face on the stone? Just an idea…

“I’m not sure he can hear all those compliments you’re giving him, though. But it’s still sweet you’re trying. Oh, and the bedroll is not cute. You should really stop talking to that thing when you feed it. It’s honestly kind of disgusting.

“Kidding! I love the bedroll and the adorable little bed bugs. They’re just hungry, right? Can’t be mad at them for that!”

I smirked. I could blame my trophy for my slightly irrational feelings toward the bed bugs. I wasn’t sure what my secret messenger’s excuse was.

Thankfully, the trophy’s effect seemed to stop at making me think they were cute. Seeing the bed bugs as cute was actually a blessing in disguise, though. The feeling of bugs crawling on me while I slept was a little more bearable when I thought they were cute.

But I thought the secret messenger was wrong about my Echo. It could definitely understand me.

“Right, Buddy?” I asked.

Pebble gave a small hop as he rolled by my side. It did cost mana to keep him summoned, but my natural regeneration from my bed roll’s buff was so high that I could keep him going without losing mana. If I was low on mana, putting him away and speeding up my recovery probably would’ve made sense, but keeping him around was still practice.

Okay. It was arguably not much practice. Summoning an Echo of Pebble was laughably simple because he was so small and simple, being a smooth, round stone. He was giving me experience in dividing my attention, though.

I remembered kids in school on Earth telling me one day they bet I couldn’t pat my head with one hand and rub my stomach in a circle with the other at the same time.

The joke was on them. I crushed it.

But trying to keep a Forge Echo active, summon Mana Shields, keep my Elemental Spike summoned, and occasionally use other abilities was much, much harder. Those kids would’ve spontaneously combusted if they tried the things I had been doing down here.

But there was room for improvement. I knew there was. So I continued to practice.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

In my last fight, I finally got Chain to bump to Tier 2. That meant all of my actives and passives were at least Tier 2, except for Elemental Body. And of course, Forge Echo was my only Tier 3 ability.

Improving Chain had been tricky because I could only trigger the passive with Elemental Projection. I had really pissed off the nightmaw to practice it. I had used shin-height Mana Shields to repeatedly trip it as it tried to chase me. While backing away, I spewed a combination of Dragon’s Tail and Viperlilly all over the nightmaw and the ground. By the time it finally reached me, it was so wounded from the poison, fire, and repeated falls that I was able to easily put it down with my Elemental Spike.

If I didn’t have skills to try to Tier up, the fights with these nightmaws would have honestly become so easy that I’d call them boring. However, forcing myself to try to use skills kept things interesting. Getting Devour Mana to raise a Tier, for example, had required strategically getting my ass beaten and healing the damage.

Not sure I would call that one fun.

“Hey, Pebble,” I said softly. “Want to see me test something I’ve been thinking about?”

Pebble was always enthusiastic to be included in just about anything. He gave a couple of hops.

I palmed the small stone I used as a “weapon” to Echo Pebble and held it up like a magician for the little guy to see.

He wobbled in anticipation.

I drove my focus into the rock, pushing mana through the stone as I tried to form an Elemental Spike.

To my satisfaction, a rocky dagger that gave off brown smoke materialized in my hand.

Pebble lost his shit, bouncing and rolling off in every direction.

I smirked, turning the dagger over in my hand. “That opens a lot of doors,” I said thoughtfully. I assumed the element needed to be considered a “weapon” somehow, but if my brain could define the term so loosely, what did the limits even mean? It made me wonder how much I could push the boundaries of my abilities. What if my skill descriptions were more like suggestions than hard and fast rules?

Could I dip my hand in water, think about drowning somebody in it, and form an Elemental Spike of water?

Granted, I didn’t know how scary it would be to stab somebody with water, but still. It was an interesting line of thought. Or maybe my ability to push my spells beyond their limits was the key to gaining new Tiers and evolutions.

Either way, Pebble was impressed, so I considered it a success.

The real reason I summoned the dagger was to give myself something to make a cut with. But now that I looked at the stone dagger, I was less certain it wouldn’t do something unexpected, like inject rocks into my bloodstream.

With slight regret, I released the magical weapon and produced an empty Silver Scream arrow instead. I could use the arrow head to scratch myself enough to show Pebble my skill demonstration.

He watched as I dragged a little cut across my forearm. “And…” I pushed mana to the spot and the scratch instantly closed up.

Pebble seemed to wait as if not sure he had seen what he was supposed to see.

I grinned at him. “Yeah, okay. I know you can’t really tell. But it uses less of my mana to do the same work now. If I had to guess, it’s maybe twenty or thirty percent less mana cost. Pretty huge, considering people like Lyria have mana pools the size of a teacup.”

Pebble rolled forward, then backward, almost as if he was nodding.

I thought about trying to demonstrate what I had discovered about the rest of my newly tiered-up abilities and realized Pebble would have to pretend he could spot the difference. Everything was relatively subtle but still strong enough that I was excited.

For example, Mana Shield seemed to keep its shape and position now without much thought on my end. It still took concentration to form the initial shield, but now I could stack them in greater quantities or maintain them at set positions with far less effort.

Elemental Spike had changed in two ways I could detect. One, the dagger was slightly longer, raising many interesting questions. Was this thing eventually going to be a badass greatsword? If so, hell yeah. Two, could I eventually choose the shape and form of the weapon? Could I make a bow that fired Elemental Spike arrows, for example? Also, hell yeah.

The other change was in mana cost. Just like Devour Mana, my Elemental Spike ability didn’t cost as much mana to maintain anymore, which was a huge plus, considering the number of skills I had at my disposal now and the cost of using them all.

Mana Sense had been a subtle but welcome change. Instead of having a mental pang of awareness when the nightmaws were about to use their vocal attack, I now also had a vague awareness of what type of attack was coming. If the feeling became more precise, I would probably be able to start blocking hostile magic before it even left my enemy’s hands. For now, I was mostly just going to be able to know bad shit was coming and roughly what flavor it was.

Last, Chain had tiered up, but I didn’t know what changed yet since it had just increased in the last fight. I decided I could test it with small, pinprick streams of Elemental Projection.

“Let’s see what the new Tier of Chain does,” I said to Pebble, who was waiting patiently.

I raised a finger and projected Earth from the pebble, because why the hell wouldn’t I want to find out what happened when I did that?

A fine mist of dirt sprayed out of my fingertip in a thin line.

“Hmm,” I said. At first glance, the ability to spray dirt seemed useless. But maybe… Yeah, I could think of a few ways to take advantage of that, especially if I projected greater quantities.

I kept count in my head as I projected streams of dirt from the Pebble.

Four… Five… Six…

Chain triggered on the seventh cast, sending out a second stream of dirt that exited my finger at a slight angle from the first. If mana was no issue, I realized I could just spam the ability in rapid succession until I got a Chain trigger, since Chain stayed active as long as I fed mana into the ability. The only catch was the size of the Chain proc was determined by the initial cast. In other words, I couldn’t cheat and use a tiny stream of mana until Chain triggered, then increase the size of the Projection.

I repeated the experiment, hardly draining my mana with the tiny amount I was projecting. This time, Chain triggered on the eighth cast.

I did it again, triggering Chain on the ninth.

I had done a similar experiment with Tier 1 of Chain a long time ago and decided the chance to proc was roughly ten percent. Now, it seemed better, but only slightly. If I had to guess from my small sample size, I would say the percentage chance of Chain triggering had jumped by maybe another ten percent.

“Alright,” I said, dusting off my hands and admiring the sizable pile of dirt I had created from thin air. That was a question to hurt the brains of scientists. How could somebody create dirt out of nothing? Then again, I supposed mana wasn’t “nothing.” But did that mean this dirt was somehow different? Could I reclaim the mana I had used to form it?

I reached my senses inside the dirt and thought it was maybe “mana flavored” dirt at best. I doubted I would notice it if I hadn’t known to look.

“I need to stop messing around,” I said. “We’ve got two more red dots left down here. Can you go make sure the next one is a nightmaw for me?”

Pebble hopped, then rolled off at high speeds, hitting roots and grooves in the dirt like ramps. It was all in my imagination, but I liked to think he was aiming for those on purpose.

Couldn’t blame the little guy for enjoying the thrill of a good ramp.

After the Host of Horrors, the dungeon had turned back into dirt, roots, and moss.

I worked out a scouting system with Pebble that was working pretty well so far. He’d go check out the dot ahead and return. I could ask him “yes” or “no” questions, and he seemed to be able to communicate if I kept it simple. Interestingly, my other Echoes didn’t seem capable of the same type of two-way communication. They could understand mental commands, but when I sent an Echo of my bow to scout, it had simply run away when it reached a dot. No amount of prodding convinced it to tell me what it saw.

When I tried to send an Elemental Spike to scout, it had engaged the enemy despite me asking it not to. By the time I caught up to join the fight, it had almost single-handedly won.

Not only were the weapons much less mana-efficient to use as scouts, they apparently had their own personalities.

Pebble had the energy of a golden retriever, eager to please and serve. Ironically, he also seemed like the most clever. My Elemental Spike was like a loyal but bloodthirsty berserker. He was happy to charge into battle and save my ass when needed, but also liked fighting too much to trust with subtle tasks. And my bow… Well, he was a bit of a coward. He’d take his shot, but he’d turn and run if a monster so much as looked in his direction.

It was inconvenient, but kind of hilarious.

When I had more time, I needed to experiment with it more. If I grabbed a new pebble, for example, would the Echo of it have a different personality? Was I somehow unlocking a universal secret and revealing that every inanimate object had a personality and some kind of soul trapped within?

A few moments later, Pebble rolled back.

“Nightmaw?” I asked.

Pebble gave one hop in response. Yes.

“Alright,” I said with a sigh. “Big surprise. Take a rest, Buddy. I’ll let you watch some of the fight if it’s going well, but for now I’m going to put you away.”

Pebble rolled in a quick circle, then stood still as I dismissed the spell.

After making such short work of several nightmaws, I had to remind myself to take it seriously. There was still a chance one would be enhanced like the nightmaw me and Lyria fought with the dark mana arm. But so far, the ones I soloed were all the same, run-of-the-mill nightmaw variants.

In general, there were two ways to handle these fights. One was typical, badass fantasy warrior stuff. It involved a bit of Abyssal Step, a lot of stabbing, some arrow shooting, and expert use of Mana Shields. Of course, it also involved my Echo stabbing along with me. That way was the fastest and arguably the more dangerous of the two general approaches.

The other method was admittedly a little less cool. But I was hoping to save my energy for the final dot, and feeling cool wasn’t on the top of my priority list at the moment.

I drew my Silver Scream bow, picked out an arrow infused with Viperlilly, then nocked it.

I stalked down the tunnel until I saw the large shape of a nightmaw in the distance. I hid in the shadows for a bit until it turned its back to me.

Once he turned, I drew quickly with my back muscles like Lyria had taught me instead of my arm. I let out a breath, then released.

The arrow struck it directly between the shoulder blades.

I sensed the attack coming, but already had formed plugs of Mana Shield in my ears to protect myself from the roar. I also did a casual pivot, pointing my cloak toward the attack so it could absorb a little mana from the attack. No reason to waste free mana, after all.

I dismissed the bow and quiver to my slip space as it charged toward me.

It took three or four seconds, but I wove the strongest Mana Shield I could. I made it large enough to block the entirety of the passage.

I took a step back, forming nearly instantaneous un-woven shields again and again. These took less mana, less time, and nearly no concentration.

The nightmaw slammed into the strongest shield like a bull. The sound was loud and the mana flared so brightly that the tunnel was briefly lit in pure white light.

The Mana Shield held, but I already had five more weaker shields in place between me and the first. I backpedaled without much urgency, summoning more shields as the muffled thumps of the nightmaw pounding on the first glass-like shield continued.

Meanwhile, I counted in my head.

Fifteen… Sixteen…

Once I had ten shields in place, I jogged back the way I had come for a little bit, glancing occasionally to check the shields. The nightmaw finally broke through the first and was now making quick work of the weaker shields I hadn’t enforced with a weave.

Sixty-five… Sixty-six…

I stopped to form another reinforced, woven mana shield as the nightmaw cracked through barrier after barrier, leaking more poison with each passing second.

I was burning through mana like crazy, but it was good practice for my Mana Shields. This was the method that had pushed Mana Shield to Tier 2, after all.

Once I was satisfied with the weave on my final Mana Shield, I jogged a little farther down the tunnel and rested. I sat down cross legged and summoned Pebble to my side.

“See?” I said. “I told you I’d let you watch one of these sooner or later.”

Pebble bumped into my knee, rolling as if he was trying to climb up. I cupped my hand and lifted him so he could roll to sit on top of my knee, presumably to get a better view.

I began meditating while the nightmaw struggled with the barriers.

Ninety… Ninety-one…

The nightmaw came into view, slamming into a shield as the blue light flashed, almost white.

The beast was tired, now. Its movements were sluggish as poison flooded its system. The nightmaws seemed to go about thirty seconds before the accumulating poison really began to slow them down. By ninety seconds, they were seriously crippled from it.

I closed my eyes. It helped the mana come back faster, after all.

One hundred and fifteen…

I cracked one eye just as the last shield shattered into pieces. The nightmaw roared victoriously, coughing up green as it did. Then the Silver Scream effect detonated.

Green poison sprayed out of all its orifices and leaked from its skin.

The nightmaw twitched, like it was having a seizure, then tipped sideways and fell with a wet thud among the pools of sizzling, bubbling green.

I felt a pulsing notification of its death, but waited a minute before I approached, just to be safe. One of them had lashed out in some kind of after-death revenge attack and nearly broken my leg earlier. Now, I gave them just a little bit longer before I approached to gather dark mana for my cursed bedroll.

My bedroll was pretty much full, so I knelt down and yanked a large dark mana crystal free from the nightmaw’s back. I distantly hoped these things weren’t magically radioactive, or something.

I sent the dark mana to my slip space to join my growing stash of bed food.

Ever since my bedroll had become fully fed, I was mostly stashing the dark mana in my slip space for later.

I absently rubbed Pebble’s bald head with one fingertip as I checked my notifications, crossing my fingers for Tier 3.

[New Corestone Ability Evolution. View now?]

Oh, shit. I hadn’t been expecting that.

The notification gave me equal parts excitement and trepidation. After all, if I had evolved a new active ability, it would mean I had finally bumped against the limit of only equipping five active abilities at a time. I would need to decide if the new skill was worth unequipping one of my five active spells.

If it was a passive ability, I could kick that unpleasant moment down the road a little while longer because I still only had four passives.

How the hell would I even equip a skill, anyway? So far, everything had been automatic.

With nerves bouncing in my stomach, I prompted my helmet to show me the new ability.