We located the Matron easily enough; well Fiona did. I was more curious about the market since I didn't look it over the previous day. The woman was in the same spot we found her yesterday.

"What do you two want? Did you get lost and need help finding your mommy?" the irritable old woman said.

Of course, the old lady focused all her vitriol at me and I smartly kept my mouth shut, letting Fiona answer.

"Greetings Matron Gertrude, we were wondering if you could point us to either the town leader or someone who might know of any local dungeons."

"I might be able to do that, what's in it for me, hmmm?"

"We can certainly pay for the information."

"Bah, I have little use for credits. I did hear an interesting story; stop me if you've heard it. About five dead men in a house to the east and one of them happened to be a Black Dragon member," she said, whispering the last part, "See the thing is they are a weed that needs to be plucked if you follow. Pluck five weeds from my garden and I'll get you your information."

Now I had no qualms about knocking off five more Black Dragons, but this seemed like a big risk just to get information.

"I even have a location you can find the five, you two should be more than enough to deal with the problem."

Fiona and I discussed the proposition quickly before agreeing to the task.

"Good, take this and leave it in the building when you are done," she said, handing me a playing card with a queen on it.

All this cloak and dagger nonsense made my head hurt, so I let Fiona get the map information, and off we went to slay some dragons.

The building turned out to be a small warehouse with a large garage door that was closed, with a single entry door off to the side. What really surprised me was the fact there were no guards, my guess was they were trying to keep a low profile. It probably meant they were up to no good. I had an idea of how to easily deal with the men inside and shared it with Fiona.

"That's suicidal, and with your spell, I won't be able to get in there to help you before some recover."

I winked at the woman, "Trust me you haven't seen all my tricks yet."

She groaned in response replying, "Fine."

I activated all my buffs and waited for my mana to refill. Pulling my new war staff from my inventory I gave it an easy twirl testing the balance. It was perfect, I smiled evilly.

"Time to rock and roll."

I started for the door at a walk, then a jog, and then I burst into a run. Just as I would have hit the door I cast Area of Denial. The door slammed open with a resounding boom as my spell took effect forcing the flimsy metal out of the way, the metal wall around the door tearing away as well from my spell. The startled looks of nine Black Dragon members awaited me inside the room.

"God dammit!" I said, quickly surveying the room. Nothing is ever easy.

Their shock wore off quickly but I was faster, casting Seismic Strike, the room was small enough that the skill's effects covered everyone inside. I rushed towards the closest person that was staggered by my spell, which happened to be a woman carrying a huge two-handed sword. My staff's bladed end blurred out slicing across her neck. She had been unable to dodge or parry my blow as she was using her sword as a crutch to stay upright. Blood spurted from her jugular, but I was already moving onto the next man as they were beginning to recover from the stagger effects of my spell.

The next man tried to raise a crossbow towards me but I hit him with Earth Fist, causing him to fire off the weapon prematurely, the bolt ricocheting off the ground and through the thin metal wall.

'I hope Fiona avoided the wildly fired projectile,' I thought, running full force into the archer. The blunt end of my staff coming around from my first swing, cracking him across the ribs, as he bounced away from the impact against my shield. There was a loud grunt and the man went down to the ground, his breath being knocked from his lungs as my Impact skill activated.

I took this opportunity to hit him with a Stunning Gust for good measure. It didn't stun him but it was enough to take him out of the fight.

Looking at my flagging mana pool, I decided to pop one of my mana injectors and cast Flurry running at the next man. I ignored his slashing attack, the edge of his blade glowing red. When the attack bounced off my shell it left him open for a full barrage from Flurry. His corpse flopped to the ground, looking like ground meat from the bladed end of my war staff. I looked up and saw four men running towards me. I held out my staff horizontally and cast Blink Step draining the last of my mana.

"Choo choo!" I said, slamming into the group of four at high speed. The one I hit head-on was turned into a pulpy mess as my Area of Denial absorbed the impact. I broke the arm of another, and a third took a belly slash. The fourth one had enough dexterity to dodge my charge.

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I continued my forward run until I was near the opposite wall from the entrance. I still had ten seconds left on my skill and I used the time to clear my head from the mana withdrawal headache and the use of Blink Step. The remaining members started approaching me, smiles on their faces, realizing I had blown my wad and would soon fall.

That was if I didn't have backup. Fiona chose that time to come in from behind them and easily killed the large sword-wielding woman, who had yet to die from her neck wound. A few of the enemies started to turn towards her and I popped another mana booster. The rest of the fight was a bloody blur of slashing and bashing.

As the last two tried to flee Fiona cut them off with an ability I called Shackle. I used the sharp end of my staff to finish them off before her spell effect ended. Even though the fight had been chaotic and fast-paced I had found time to use Identify. The enemy varied in levels between 8 and 10. If it wasn't for my ability to heal and the initial charge into the building we probably would have died.

You have reached level 10, modifiers increased by 1, 2 free skill slots available

5 free attribute points available

At first, I was put off not seeing the upgrade for my staff skill, but then I remembered that I filtered my passive skills. A quick check of my full skill list showed it at the bottom.

I put two of the stat points in intelligence, one in agility, and two in perception to try and reduce the effects of Blink Step.

We quickly looted the bodies getting a bunch of weapons and armor. No storage items or magical gear, unfortunately. It seemed that this lot was rather poor as we only collected 300 credits from the nine of them. I found one downside to the war staff; blood and lots of it covered me. While I tried to wipe off as much as I could Fiona took a look outside.

"It's clear we should go before someone comes looking to see what the noise was about."

"Coming, oh wait almost forgot," I said, stopping to pull the card Gertrude had given us from my storage. I set it down on one of the corpses and followed Fiona outside.

We made our way quickly to another empty building, we located earlier to change out of our blood-soaked clothes.

"Going to have to get these washed," I grumbled in disgust. It was almost like this new world hated people being clean. Without thinking I turned around getting an eyeful of Fiona, naked from the waist up. I was so surprised I didn't look away immediately. When my brain finally kicked back in I averted my gaze. 'She must not have seen me looking,' I thought hearing no rebuke from the austere woman, not knowing why she just didn't change in the other room.

Not that she had anything to be ashamed about. She was fit, with just a hint of muscle showing in her lithe physique. And she had ample enough assets up top, without being burdensome, at least they looked that way from the side. 'Oh god my face is bright red, wasn't it?' Sure as hell felt like it was.

"You ready to go?" Fiona said a few minutes later now sporting a sundress.

My face had finally returned to normal after I got a bit of fresh air, gotta say, she looked good in a sundress.

"One minute, I leveled up and need to pick my skills."

She just nodded.

I looked at my available skill options.

Elemental Defense: Boosts elemental resistance by 20% for 30min for an ally within 20m, Cost 75 mana, cooldown 15min

Godly Might: Increases your strength by 100% for 30sec, Cost 100 mana, cooldown 1day

Eye of the Storm: 'Staff Only' You spin your staff causing howling winds to surround you in a 10m area dealing 15 damage per second, Cost 50 mana to activate, 25 mana to maintain spell past the first second, cooldown 1hour

The system sure did want me to take elemental attacks and defense but I had yet to run into anything magical that dealt elemental damage other than that one staff I looked at or that mage.

No, I was skipping that spell for now and taking Godly Might, and Eye of the Storm despite the long cooldown that Godly Might had. With Multicast it wasn't a big deal if I needed to double down on the spell in a short time. Thinking about that I decided to see what my stats were at now.

Strength: 12(+2) modifier x11

Endurance: 16 modifier x29

Agility: 15(+2) modifier x11

Perception: 15 modifier x11

Intelligence: 19 modifier x29

Wisdom: 14 modifier x11

Charisma: 11 modifier x11

Luck: 14 modifier x11

HP: 464(510)

Mana: 551

Mana Regen(M): 154

I was glad to finally have my mana above 500. That last battle had shown me just how fast I could burn through my mana pool, and I didn't even use multicast. I made a mental note to get even more mana restoration items. Maybe even an improved one that restored more than the 100 that my original ones did.

After changing we made our way back to the Matron for our reward. 'It better be worth it,' I silently grumbled.

"Back so soon, were the weeds too much for you?" the decrepit old hag said, poking at my soul with each barbed word.

Each time I spoke with this woman, I liked her a little less. So, I made one little faux pas, is she never going to forgive me.

"We finished weeding, but there were more weeds than you said there should have been. It almost cost us dearly." Fiona said, even her tone was starting to be less enthusiastic with the old woman.

"Hmm, well all the better, my garden will be free from weeds longer. As promised," she said, handing Fiona a rolled-up paper, "Go talk to Sergeant Cunningham at the army headquarters, if you could call that building a headquarters. Now be off with you, I have other pressing matters to attend to."

Fiona bid her a good day and we quickly left the crotchety old hag behind. We found a place to sit, away from the crowds to go over the map. It was rough with an estimated distance and general direction for two dungeons. One was level 9 and the other was level 14, there was no other information on them.

"She fleeced us," I said in indignation, ready to get back up and give that old prude a piece of my mind, but Fiona held me back.

"Please sit down and stop making a scene. We got more than she promised us. Remember we only asked if she knew someone who knew about dungeons. Instead, we got locations, even if they aren't exact. So do you want to go meet with this Sergeant or go monster hunting first?"

"First, I need to resupply, that fight drained my resources. Then let's go talk to the Sergeant since we're in town."

It didn't take me long to find a local vendor that sold improved mana potions. They were even cheaper than the Bazaar ones since they came from locally sourced ingredients. Apparently, the local flora had mutated as well and one enterprising alchemist managed to come up with a workable potion. I hadn't even noticed the change in plants. To be fair I wasn't much of an outdoorsman prior. I only knew a few basic trees and plants, mostly ones to stay away from.

I purchased six of the improved potions for 50 each and the three mana injectors she had for another 85. The improved mana potions could restore 175 mana vs. the 100 of the injector. They weren't ideal for most combat situations but I think I could make them work.