Finding information on the history of the Arena Spiral or even the Spiral incorporation itself was nearly impossible. I went to the sections the librarians sent me, but they warned me there wouldn’t be much. There were laws that restricted what information about the Arena was allowed in worlds without current representation within it, and the Archives of Gortrin had never bothered with it as a whole. All I really learned was that the Arena was made up of an unspecified number of floors, and active challengers fought through them for any number of reasons, from glory to poverty.

The little I was able to learn about the Arena may as well have been a mountain of information when it was compared to the totality of what I managed to gleam about the history of the spiral. There was nothing about its creation, how the System tied into it, or anything at all, really. I found some historical breakdown of multiversal federations, and factions, but even that was several hundred years old. How much information had already been lost to people like the Triox?

Now I did find a reasonable history of the Archives of Gortrin themselves. Scholars had found this universe entirely devoid of life and mana two hundred years ago. They decided to build a repository of knowledge free and independent of the many regimes out there. It had been a political hot button since the moment the doors opened. Elody, it seemed, was not the first master librarian to resign.

After what felt like a giant waste of my first day trying to learn anything, I decided to pay Mel a visit and pick his brain, assuming he had one. How did his body work? Did his mana channels just fluctuate the same as his cloud form? It probably wasn’t considered okay to just demand someone explain the inner workings of their body so I decided against that in favor of my original questions once our usual greetings were over with.

“So what brings ya down here today anyway? I thought you’d spend yer whole time healing with the books,” Mel asked.

“I had as well, honestly, but after my search for information about the history of the Arena or the Spiral in general, or even just generalized knowledge about the Arena turned up nothing, I figured I’d come poke your brain and see what had to say on the topic,” I explained. It certainly wasn’t because I missed a friendly face in my daily studies now that Elody was gone.

“Ah, yeah, you wouldn’t know about that, would ya? So, just to cut off any questions you might be thinking before you interrupt me, I also can’t tell ya anything about the Arena or Spiral for the most part. I do know plenty; I’ve fought in it and even managed teams, but that was a lifetime ago. No, close your mouth. I see you opening it!” Mel stopped his reminiscence to yell at me, and he was right. I had, in fact, been about to ask a question despite his earlier wish. “In order to enter the Arena and become a combatant, you have to declare a core oath. That seals all the stuff you’ll learn throughout your time there. You can only talk about it with those who share the oath.”

“What happens if you try anyway?” I asked. This was the first I had heard about core oaths. Were they binding in some fashion or just a matter of respecting a tradition?

“Nothing, well at first at least, the harder you try, the worse the pain will get. No matter what you do, you won’t succeed, but you might accidentally kill yerself in the process. It’s happened before, and it’ll probably happen again,” Mel answered. I felt a bit guilty about having tried to press him on the topic. Was this conversation enough to hurt him?

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it worked like that. Did talking about like this hurt you?” I said, my voice full of worry.

“No, I know where the line is, and I ain’t gonna cross it. Most learn that pretty quickly.” Relief washed over me at Mel’s answer.

“Well I really don’t think the Arena is in my future, so I guess that’s a topic I’m done with for today. You wouldn’t happen to know how the Dungeon Simulation skill worked, would you? I wanted to test it out, but I think I might still be too broken for that,” I said. There hadn’t been any real information on that skill in the archives either.

“Never heard of it. Yer gonna get a lot of weird skills tied to the way you think that may be entirely unique to you or rare enough that they may as well be. You’re a strange guy, Dave, and for whatever reason, the System seems to be pushing you somewhere. You need to be real careful with that. Just because the System wants you to do something doesn’t mean it’ll protect you.” Mel gave me a stern look alongside this warning.

“Yeah, I’ve started to figure that first part out a bit. It seems with the advancements that were made on my world to compensate for our total lack of magic, the way I think about things and processes is a lot different than the way most people here do, but shouldn’t there be others like me? Every time a new universe is conquered without any native mana, shouldn’t they also enter the Spiral at a similar technological level?” I asked. This part had been confusing since I first considered the idea of why branches of technology had seemed to stall here in favor of magic.

Stolen story; please report.

“My best guess there is that the vast majority of worlds don’t get the chance to grow like yers did. You had a prisoner that made it off limits until someone screwed something up, and now yer here, and the System wants you to upend a lot of things, and I bet that your core layout is just the start,” Mel’s said. His explanation made some sense. Since there was no real history of the Spiral here, I had no way of seeing when worlds were generally invaded.

“Well, thanks for everything you could tell me,” I said, intending to head back to my room and try out the Dungeon Simulation skill.

“Hey, you can’t just tell me about some wacky named skill like that without giving me some more details. What’s it do?” Mel asked.

“Supposedly, it lets me recreate any dungeon I’ve been in and tweak the difficulty. No idea if that means I get experience or anything like that, though,” I answered.

“Oh, it most likely does. Well, I ain’t ever heard of that exact one. I know of some very powerful skills that let people recreate events and places, it’s a very useful way to train. Between your core and that skill, you may have hit the motherlode, Dave. Let me know how it goes. I wanna know how far you can alter them,” Mel explained.

“I can do that, Mel. Thanks again. Now I really want to check this thing,” I said. Mel returned my words with one of his standard nods, and I took my leave, back to my room, to the full System interface, ready to give this skill a whirl.

I had a total of two dungeons on the list that I could choose from: Slimy Slithering Depths and Basements of Shadow. Basements of Shadow was still a terrible name for the dungeon at the bottom of the archives that we had cleared. Well, Elody had done most of the clearing, but the brothers and I had been there too.

I selected the first dungeon, and the next screen just said modifiers, with nothing listed other than a next button. I selected that and felt my perception become for lack of a better word, fuzzy. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes, unsure how that would help with a System interface, but I tried nonetheless. When I opened them I was no longer in my room, but instead, I was back in that first dungeon, where the core had almost taken my body, only this time I was entirely alone.

I could easily see the four slugs down the pathway this time. Had I grown that much since this dungeon already? I took a step and realized my body was whole. The simulation apparently also removed my injuries. That was handy. In theory, that meant any time I had to spend in recovery. I could instead run through these dungeons for more experience.

As I walked towards the slugs, it occurred to me I was still unarmed, and this time, there was no hoe to borrow from Cecile. I stopped to lean down and gather enough rocks to fill my pockets, took a few steps closer to where I thought I could aim perfectly, and started whipping the rocks at the slugs as fast as I could. With the changes to my attributes, I was able to take down three of them with no real effort. The last one began firing its electric blasts at me just like it had before.

One hit me, and it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I had been expecting. While I tossed several more rocks at it, I felt sharp needles on my ankle. I had forgotten about the bitey worm swarm. With nothing else I could think of to do to them, I just started stomping my feet over and over until the biting stopped. I looked back to the last slug just in time to take another lightning blast, this time to the face. It hurt marginally more than the last.

I had an idea. I knew where the rock snail boss was hiding, and I waited for the snail to charge another shot. Just as it did, I leaped behind the camouflaged snail and let the energy find a new home in its body. The snail roared to life, and instead of giving it any time to attack me, I grabbed its neck in both of my hands and ripped as hard as I could, pulling it free from the shell in a sickening, squelching sound.

Throwing the head to the ground, I walked back to where the last slug was and finished it off before it could recharge for another shot. A popup similar to the first time I was here swam into my vision.

Monsters Defeated

Giant Slug x3

5 Experience

Giant Slug, Electric x1

20 Experience

Bitey Worm Swarm x1

10 Experience

Rock Snail x1

30 Experience

Experience Gained

75 Points

Multipliers Applied

No Armor

x1.1

No Weapon

x1.1

No Magic

x1.1

I Stand Alone

x1.5

All At Once

x1.5

Total Experience Gained

225 Points

I was sent back to the Dungeon Simulation starting screen as soon as the box disappeared, but the good news was that the experience was real. I had leveled up to forty-three and had three new skill points. I put them all into my Dungeon Simulator skill to see what had changed. I was going to have a very productive day after all.