Kelsey arrived at the North gate about 30 minutes after receiving the letter and saw that Owen and Lisa were waiting for her. They were both wearing large backpacks filled to the brim with supplies and equipment. She could see pots, pans, and poles for setting a tent. There was a third bag at their feet which Owen threw at Kelsey. “Wear this. No vault.”
She put on the backpack and no more words were said as Owen and Lisa both turned on their heels and began walking north.
The backpack they were making her carry wasn’t particularly heavy for someone with her strength, but it certainly affected her balance. Kelsey felt as if one wrong step would send her tumbling down to the ground, so to make it easier, she started using Telekinesis to stabilize herself, making the walk much easier. She was able to cancel out the weight of the pack, letting their journey feel like a normal stroll.
About 15 minutes later, Owen glanced back and noticed Kelsey was using Telekinesis. He narrowed his eyes seriously. “No skills.”
She frowned deeply at Owen as she deactivated her Telekinesis. She immediately toppled over, falling backwards onto the ground, landing on her backpack. Oh god I look like a turtle stuck on its shell. Kelsey thought as she saw herself within her domain.
She slowly struggled to her feet and a few seconds later continued walking.
Four hours later and no one in the group had made any conversation other than to warn people of precarious steps or calling out monster sounds. Every time Kelsey had tried to initiate conversation, she had been brushed off or ignored by the older adventurers.
They’re like different people out here. I guess they’re going to be taking the training really seriously. That's probably good; I want the best training possible after all.
She wanted good training, but Kelsey had finally had enough and broke the silence. “Hey, Owen, Lisa, where are we going anyways? Answer me... please." she asked pleadingly.
“Dungeon. It’s on the west side of the mountain you saw when you were in the Mageblood forest. We have about six days of travel north to get there.” Owen answered sternly.
“Why are you guys being so quiet, what the hell is going on?” Kelsey asked, feeling frustrated. “Is this some kind of test or something?”
“No. A bet.” Owen answered simply.
The moment he finished answering the question Lisa reached into her pouch and pulled out a few gold coins and handed them to Owen. “You couldn’t have lasted 2 more hours Kel?
Kelsey looked between Lisa and Owen, pure bewilderment on her face.
Owen burst out laughing. “We had a bet on how long it would be before you asked where we were going and why we were being so weird. We tried to be gruff to make you think you weren’t supposed to talk or something... I bet you wouldn’t last 6 hours.”
Kelsey stopped moving and stared at them, “You two are such assholes.” she said as a huge grin split her face. "You know, not talking for four hours is basically torture for me. Really should bet lower next time."
After that moment had broken the ice, the group continued on, chatting and talking about her training. They taught her how to set up camp, how to unpack her bag, how to repack it, and how to set up a proper cooking fire. They taught her the basics of trapping game, fishing, and most importantly, how to prepare what she killed properly. They explained everything she would need to know in order to survive in the wilderness if she somehow lost her powers tomorrow.
They began explaining what common types of monsters existed, what their cores could be used for, and what kinds of signs that tell you it’s a creature you should avoid. They explained that in general water, fire, and light cores were the most useful for survival. You could use them to create an unlimited amount of water and fire just by activating them with mana. Light cores could be used to create… well, light. It was all pretty self-explanatory.
They acknowledged that she likely wouldn’t use some of the survival skills they taught, like packing backpacks and properly storing food since her abilities could cover those things, but if she were ever with a group that didn’t know about her skills, it would be odd if she didn’t know the basics. She would also need to pretend she was using mundane methods if she was worried about who she was around. They recommended that she keep those kinds of skills sharp, just in case.
The six days of travel flew by in a breeze. During this time Kelsey learned more than she could have anticipated from them. They were both incredibly knowledgeable and had clearly survived in the wilderness for years at a time. Her head was also filled with new information about monsters, their habitats, their tendencies, and most importantly, their elements. She was very familiar with Thorn Wolves, which used earth magic, but now she at least had an idea what creatures with different elements could do. She was most nervous to fight something that had a strong shadow element affinity. She didn’t think she would even be able to damage it. They were generally completely immune to physical attacks and despite her using magic, the wires of spacetime she manipulated were actually physical objects.
Finally, they arrived at the dungeon, which she learned on the way was called The Bunker. It was a medium sized military installation from a few hundred years ago that was built as a strategic asset in a territory war. It was closed off and abandoned until a few explorers stumbled across it about a century ago. Based on the creatures she’d seen the average level around here was 35 - 55. That meant that the dungeon would have creatures in the fifties at minimum.
Once they arrived at the entrance to the dungeon, they spent a few hours setting up a more permanent camp site. “We’re going to be here for a month and a half. You will spend every waking minute in that dungeon from this moment forward. Lisa and I will be taking shifts mentoring you in the dungeon. We both specialize in different things, and it would be best if you learned from both of us independently. We expect that you will complete the Dungeon within this timeframe. You may now use your powers in their entirety.” Owen said formally.
“Owen is going to go in with you first, okay Kel? Don’t get sloppy in there and stay on your toes.” Lisa moved over to Kelsey and gave her a quick hug. “I’ll see you in 48 hours when I come to switch with Owen.”
With that, Kelsey nodded her head and entered The Bunker.
*ding* Warning! You are entering a dungeon - The Bunker
Convenient that the system can tell us stuff like that. So, dungeons are real things, not just a concept created by people? Why? What is a dungeon to the system?
Putting her thoughts out of her mind, she focused on the dungeon itself. The Bunker’s entrance was a circular hole with a metal gate in front of it. The metal gate, however, was caved in and dented leaving an opening wide enough for four people to walk in side by side. Inside the bunker was mostly carved stone. There were dozens of rooms on each side that looked to have once been offices. Based on the metal hinges rusting on the door frames, she assumed there must have at one point been wooden doors keeping the rooms closed off.
Thanks to her domain, she was able to scout over 100 meters all around her, and because of that, was aware of groups of monsters scattered throughout the first floor. The largest group was in a medium sized room that looked like it had been used for meetings. Not only could she scout with her domain, but it was the only reason she could maneuver around The Bunker at all. It was pitch-black inside. She wasn’t able to see her hand waving in front of her face.
This will be good training on how to rely on my domain more.
“Hey Kel, I can’t see anything. I’m going to need to make some light here in the main room.” Owen said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a few monster cores.
Or not...
“Not a problem, I’ll get prepared and bring them back here after I engage.” she said.
Nodding in agreement, Owen began activating the cores and placing them around the room.
Kelsey refocused on scouting and saw that the creatures themselves were strange, not at all what she had expected. They were large, hairy, humanoid bat monsters with leathery skin. They stood on two legs, had no eyes, and had wings attached to their arms. Their most stand out feature, however, was their enormous ears. They were clearly sound based creatures. They’re going to be useless underground though, they’re way too big to fly in here.
She could tell they hadn’t noticed her, so instead of attacking right away, she surveyed the complex's first floor, scouting the entire area. In total she counted over 65 of the bat creatures. I’ll need to do this carefully. Too much noise and they’ll all react.
Thinking to warn him before she made her first move, Kelsey went back to the main room and whispered to Owen. “Hey. I’m about to make my first move. There are sixty-five bat-like creatures around the first floor. I just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to hide. I wouldn’t want them to attack you and make it easier on myself.”
Making her preparations, she found the room with the fewest number of creatures in it and slowly made her way close enough to Identify one of them.
[Dhampir - lvl XX]
Above level 52 then. There's only three in this room. I’ll make my opening strike and then lure them back to the main room.
Preparing herself Kelsey activated her two primary physical buffs, Telekinetic Enhancement and Telekinetic Armory. She felt her body vibrate with energy and she could see a plane of energy appear around her body as her armory activated. God, I’ve missed having these skills on at all times.
Using her domain, she began creating wires to form a telekinetic ring around one of the bats, but the moment she did, the bats in the room reacted instantly, their heads whipping in Kelsey's direction.
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Shit. That danger sense of theirs is incredible.
The bats were fast. They burst out of the room and began charging at Kelsey before she fully realized what had happened. Sensing there was danger, she dialed up her mental speed to its maximum.
I’m an idiot, I should have already done that.
Seeing the Dhampirs charging at her, she created waves of small blades and launched them at the incoming monsters as she began backing away towards the main room. The blades weren’t doing much damage, and the damage they were doing seemed to be healed more quickly than she would have liked. But it did slow them down. If she got to the main room, she would have more space to fight, but unfortunately, so would the bats.
Making her way through the tight corridors of The Bunker, it was everything she could do to stay ahead of the charging bats. They were incredibly quick, and even more maneuverable than Kelsey was in the narrow halls. The only way she could stay ahead of them was her frequent use of her teleport skill.
As she arrived at the main room, she did a quick check of the surrounding Dhampirs to ensure they hadn’t been made aware of the commotion outside yet, and then, once she was feeling slightly more secure, she stopped creating the blades and switched to telekinetic spears to launch at the bats. The spears were larger and would impact with more force as they hit but she could only create and launch a half dozen of them every second due to how much of her control making them, and then maintaining their integrity took.
She put all of her focus into the creation and launching process, ensuring to maintain a safe distance between her and the three attacking Dhampirs. When one of them would get close, she would either block with her saber, or use her Teleport to create distance. Several minutes later she confirmed that this method of killing them was working. They were unable to reach her, and she was able to steadily inflict damage to them faster than they could regenerate. As long as she stayed on her toes, they were completely unable to catch up to her, which meant that as long as she had stamina remaining, she would be able to keep up her attack.
The problem, however, was that each time she hit one of them with a spear they were crying in pain, and as they received more damage the screams were getting louder. If she continued fighting this way, the other Dhampirs nearby would certainly be made aware of her presence.
Formulating a plan, she stopped making spears. She realized that these bats were quite dumb and simply kept charging her directly in order to bite or claw her. So, instead of creating a spear, she teleported and waited for one of them to charge directly at her.
The moment one of them leapt in her direction, she deactivated her armor and Telekinetic Enhancement to dump her entire mana output into creating a large and strong telekinetic blade right in the Dhampirs path. In the half second it took for the blade to form Kelsey spent roughly 1,500 mana out of her 4,800 total.
But it worked. The Dhampir slammed into the telekinetic blade at full speed, causing it to cut itself in half. She heard a ding ring off in her mind, but the fight wasn’t over yet. The moment she killed the first Dhampir, one of the bat’s companions screeched in horror, loud enough that Kelsey could feel blood leaking from her ears as her eardrums ruptured.
Thanks to Mageblood Regeneration, she was able to heal the damage nearly instantly, but she knew that kind of attack would have been crippling to someone without her abilities.
But more importantly, 15 more of the Dhampirs began making their way towards the noise of their enraged comrade. That meant that soon she would be fighting 17 of them at the same time.
Thankfully, I now have a plan to deal with them. She thought as she teleported back to the center of the room and prepared herself.
She put her plan into action. Using her armory, enhancement, creation skills, and saber, she would slowly recharge her mana while distracting the Dhampirs with telekinetic projectiles. And then once she had regenerated enough mana, she would find a safe moment to deactivate her other skills and use her entire mana output to create the strongest and sharpest blade she could in the path of a charging Dhampir. Each cycle of charging mana and creating a blade took around 10 minutes when she began. As she became more comfortable with the technique, the time between cycles dropped all the way down to 6 minutes.
Two hours and twenty-seven minutes after the fight with the original three Dhampirs began, Kelsey was victorious. She was nearly out of stamina and was completely exhausted. During the fight she thankfully didn’t take too many hits from the Dhampirs, but she did make mistakes during the fight that left her with a few nasty wounds. With so many Dhampirs, she was simply unable to dodge every single one of them while staying offensive. She hadn’t been willing to waste the mana on healing herself during the fight for anything except her eardrums, and none of the other wounds were bad enough to affect her ability to move, so she waited until after the fight to slip into mediation and activate her Mageblood regeneration.
Several long, refreshing seconds of regeneration later, she heard a voice ring out through the main hall.
“Good job Kelsey. You handled that wonderfully.” Owen said as he exited the room he was hiding in. “Now that you’ve had your first real dungeon fight, how are you feeling?”
“Tired. But, good. That was a long fight. I think that took longer than the exam with you.” Kelsey answered as her breathing began to slow.
“You just killed 18 monsters that were over twice your level in a little over two hours, I’d call that a massive success. Very few people can do what you just did, even if it is generally a bit easier to punch up in the lower levels.” he said proudly.
“You should go ahead and manage your notifications now; you never know when something unexpected could happen in a dungeon. All it would take would be a roof giving out in here and every single one of those Dhampirs would be all over you.” he added as he began walking away.
Deciding to take his advice, Kelsey opened her notifications.
There were 18 kill notifications in total.
*ding* You have defeated a [Dhampir - lvl 61].
*ding* You have defeated a [Dhampir - lvl 55].
*ding* You have defeated a [Dhampir - lvl 59].
*ding* You have defeated a [Dhampir - lvl 60].
…
*ding* You have defeated a [Dhampir - lvl 53].
*ding* Meditation has reached lvl 9 -> 10
*ding* Pain Tolerance has reached lvl 12 -> 14
*ding* Telekinesis has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Spatial Armory has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Teleport has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Magesight has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Spatial Domain has reached lvl 1 -> 3
*ding* Telekinetic Enhancement has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Telekinetic Creation has reached lvl 1 -> 3
*ding* Mageblood Arcanist has reached level 28 -> 37 +90 free stat points have been awarded!
A rush of power unlike anything she had felt before exploded into Kelsey as she gained 900 attribute points in the span of one moment. She felt her body tense and her muscles expand. Her mind burst into a splitting headache, and she began feeling nauseous. She doubled over in gut wrenching pain as these effects lasted for over a full minute before her body's changes were complete and her regeneration was able to reactivate.
“Holy shit Kel, what just happened? Are you okay?” Owen asked, concern evident in his voice as he knelt down next to her.
“Leveled up 9 times at once. Body had to equalize. Didn’t feel great.” she groaned in answer.
It took over twenty minutes, but once she was feeling better, she opened up her status screen and spent her free points.
Name: Kelsey Kain
Primary Class: Mageblood Arcanist - lvl 37
Health: 4950/4950
Stamina: 4950/4950
Mana: 7500/7500
Constitution: 495
Endurance: 495
Strength: 400
Dexterity: 400
Intelligence: 750
Willpower: 750
Free Points: 3
“Okay finished distributing too... That single battle increased all of my attributes by over 35 percent.” Kelsey said as she stood up and began getting used to her new attributes. She found that the most obvious change was in her magic abilities. As she was getting 30 attribute points in both Intelligence and Wisdom every level, that single fight increased those two by over 50 percent. With some quick testing, she found that she was able to create more objects, faster than before. She could now create telekinetic spears at the same speed she used to create daggers, roughly a dozen per second. “Should be good to go now.”
After her first fight against the first 18 Dhampirs, there were 47 left in the dungeon. While it took her a little over two hours to finish the first fight, she knew that the second fight would be much simpler with her new strength.
She was right. She was able to kill the other 47 in less than an hour and a half. These fights were much easier with her new attributes and skill levels. She was able to systematically dismantle any resistance they attempted to put up. About 5 minutes into the beginning of the second fight, she stopped worrying about the number of Dhampirs she was facing and actively enraged all of them so she could fight them all at once.
She mostly used the same tactic she had in the previous fight, but she did begin to mix it up, adding in some use of her sword and a variety of other weapons. She found that she was able to use a spear in basically the same way she had been using the giant telekinetic blades. She could teleport away and then make the Dhampirs charge directly into her spear. She found that the worst weapons to use against them were the slow ones, like great hammers. The Dhampirs were just too fast for her to hit them.
By the end of the fight, she had settled on the new method of using her spear. It meant that she was able to use much less mana, as well as get in practice using a melee weapon.
After finishing off the rest of the Dhampirs, she checked her notifications and saw that she had gained another 7 levels and a few skill levels spread between all of her skills. She was now level 44 and had become another 20 percent stronger. Experience really slows down when you get close to the monster's level... people actually level like that? Always fighting monsters at their level? Ugh it would take forever...
After that fight, she decided to call it quits for the day. Her body was mostly fine, a little sore, but her brain was fried. She had been in near constant battle for over four hours straight and her body and mind had gone through some big changes. The first floor was totally clear, so she went around and carefully gathered each and every monster core from the Dhampirs, found a room that was in a secure location, and began to set up her camp.
“Hey Owen, you there?” she asked the darkness.
A few seconds later Owen walked into the room from the hallway while holding a light core. “Yeah, what can I do for you Kel?”
“Do you wanna stay in the room with me, or be outside? I’m going to create a telekinetic wall to fill in the gap so nothing can get to me in my sleep without breaking it first.”
“I’ll stay outside, thanks. I’m going to spend tonight talking with Lisa about some stuff. We may need to make a change of plans.” he said a bit distractedly.
“Alright no problem, see you tomorrow morning.” she said as she excused herself and began finishing the work to set up camp.
Change of plans... I can guess what he means by that.
Kelsey spent the rest of the night setting up camp, cooking food, and reading one of the books about monsters that Owen and Lisa had brought her. Much of the book told her things she already knew, but she did find some new information, like the fact that monsters actually could reproduce, it just wasn’t necessary since they manifested from mana. She also found that monster cores could be used in something akin to magical spells. It was apparently possible to arrange monster cores in a specific pattern and channel mana into them in a certain order to produce any number of effects depending on what the monster cores themselves were. It was a fascinating topic and Kelsey spent the rest of the evening reading about it.
As she was contemplating her next steps for taking on the dungeon, one thought kept repeating through her mind over and over again.
This dungeon doesn’t stand a chance.