The whole affair had shifted from a ritual to a celebration in an instant. Or at least that was what it felt like.

Jaclyn had been to plenty of formal events in the past, both as an attendee and as security, and she was more than familiar with how those normally went. Even once the scripted, “ritualistic” portion was over and done with, things remained stiff and rigid for a long time, only slowly coming to life. And even then, most of what happened was just shmoozing and glad-handing, the old boys’ network in action.

This, though, went from having an air of mysticism and gravitas akin to that of Victoria Cross being awarded to a college party in an instant. Mostly. The people involved weren’t immature idiots with no concept of “know your limit”, but the energy was there. That energized atmosphere, the cheering, and the boasting.

“You’re the new Anima Monk, right?” a male orc rumbled behind her, his voice so deep she thought he was deliberately making him sound so rough. She swiftly remembered that orcs in general had extremely deep voices, Gula also sounded as though she were speaking from the bottom of a well, but she’d only ever talked to the tribe’s leader so far. Everything else had just been her overhearing conversations.

She turned around to face the man who’d addressed her and nodded.

“I’m Harjaz,” he he introduced himself. “What did you pick? I heard that it was some kind of indestructible cat that scares off everything that tries to get at it?”

What on Earth had Granger been telling everyone?

“Something like that,” Jaclyn said. “Honey Badgers aren’t quite that strong, but they never back down from a fight and do whatever they have to to win, so nothing wants to fight them.”

“Apparently, even cultivators can learn that lesson,” Harjaz commented dryly. “And they’re usually stupid as bricks when it comes to everything except their advancement."

That certainly described the one cultivator she’s met so far. Minimal people skills, minimal strategic planning, even minimal martial skill beyond the techniques themselves.

“What’s your bond?” Jaclyn asked.

“Steelborne,” he said, holding out his forearm, back of his hand facing her, as dark grey armored hide briefly covered it.

He’d chosen transformation for his E-Rank ability, between that and the name of his bond, she assumed he was borrowing power from some kind of heavy armored beast. Something like a rhino, or an elephant, maybe.

“Wow, that’s cool,” Jaclyn said, holding out her right hand in a mirror of his stance and manifested Honey Badger claws above her knuckles.

The orc cocked his hand to the side. “Don’t you have ‘Demonstration’ yet?”

Jaclyn raised an eyebrow.

“All Spirit Projection users are able to show their full projection potential just by thinking about it. It will not let you do anything on its own, but appear impressive,” he said.

Oh, that was cool. Not something she’d learned of before. But it seemed worth trying out.

And it was exactly as simple as Harjaz had indicated. A flimsy, ethereal, shell manifested a few centimeters above her skin, but when she moved her left hand towards a nearby hit, the shell phased straight through. Purely demonstrative, no real effect outside maybe intimidation, but it looked damn cool.

“A fierce beast,” Harjaz commented. “If you are ever free, your fellow Anima Monks will be available for train- …”

It was a nice offer, but it was cut short as a small explosion sounded out from behind him, causing him to flinch, whirl around, and bring up his arms in their transformed state.

At the same time, Jaclyn had ducked behind the nearest hut while manifesting solid projections around the arms she raised into a guard position in front of her face.

Then, laughter started to echo out from right where the explosion had come from, and Harjaz joined in soon. He dropped his hands back to his side and glanced back at her over his shoulder with a massive grin on his face.

“You are taking that little mage into a Dungeon later, yes? How good are you at ducking?”

***

They were late. Very late. They’d wanted to be on the road over three hours ago.

But it had been very important for Granger to gain some measure of control over his magic and he had basically no magic, currently. He’d thrown all the Stat points he’d gotten with his Class into magic, but that only gave him as much magic as she had, which was barely enough for two fireballs and would take an hour to fully regenerate. So training had been … tedious. Long. Lots of waiting around for a few seconds of excitement.

However, the simple fact that he was able to use two streams of consciousness to form a simple offensive spell instead of just the usual one meant that he was able to cast Fireball far more quickly than a normal person. Add the multitasking and knowledge acquisition Skills he’d trained up to absurd levels before getting the System and he’d managed to get to a passable level in less than a day.

That didn’t stop her from nervously glancing his way every so often, though.

In fact, their current Dungeon group was 50% Level 1 newbies. They’d taken Harper along, Frye had been very open to lending him out so he could grow.

The specifics of his Healer of Nature Class were simultaneously simple, and endlessly complex. He could use his mana to enhance and guide the effects of “natural” medicine, and would work better the more involved he was in the process of its creation, such as harvesting, drying, grinding, etc.

In essence, it made him a bargain-bin alchemist.

At the same time, though, the Class was incapable of properly working with modern medicines.

And yet, somehow, he’d managed to munchkin his singular power into something that could, theoretically, let him cure cancer.

Munchkin. That was a funny word. Though sometimes, when speaking to younger people, Jaclyn felt like they were talking different languages.

But the point was that Harper and Granger had gotten together at some point and found something theoretically viable, though, in practice, no one had allowed him to experiment just yet.

The trick was simple. There was this plant called an “Autumn Crocus” that contained a dangerous toxin called colchicine that worked similarly to some chemo drugs, though this particular compound had been deemed too dangerous to be used. However, that was under normal circumstances.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Harper could, in theory, pluck the plant, flood it with mana, then keep preparing and refining it, all the while pouring more mana into it until he finally fed it to the patient, at which point he could use even more mana to make sure the colchicine was almost exclusively affecting the cancer cells.

“What does ‘logos’ mean?” she finally asked Granger.

“It’s Ancient Greek, it means something like ‘logic’, and its a part of a lot of sciences. Psychology is the ‘logos’ of the psyche, bios means life, so biology is the ‘logos’ of life, that sort of thing,” he explained.

“And you’re a mage who studies the fundamentals of magic,” Jaclyn nodded.

“Yep,” he nodded before staring off into the distance, clearly digging through his status again. And another moment after that, he pulled out a small notebook and began messing around with it.

That really was a very interesting Class he had, but despite its name and power description, Jaclyn was pretty sure it was mostly about his mind, not magic. He might have gotten his magic Skills high enough with the System’s help that they’d affected his Class creation, but they couldn’t possibly have gotten high enough to reach the same Level as everything else he did.

He’d told her his main hobbies were reading, watching TV, and video games, often two at once. Hence, the high-Level multitasking. “Reading” would also be folded into his learning-related Skills, watching TV didn’t grant Skills, and individual video games likely only had specific, low-level Skills attached. One each.

And general, catch-all Skills were likely something like “reflexes” and “planning”.

A combination of luck and a marathon magic study session driven by the System had allowed him to create a workable Class. But if he’d gone deeper into a hobby with an individual Skill holding it, or he hadn’t brought up some of his mental Skills to almost the human limit, he wouldn’t have been able to make something like this.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized how impressive creating a Class that anyone could draw on was. How impactful.

It was something to be damn proud of even if all one was doing was crystallizing one’s life experience into the singular concept known as a Class.

But that train of thought directed her onto something else.

Just how much effort had to have gone into her own Class? The one she’d just grabbed from the Village Nexus?

Even just creating something that gave the wielder the power to fight like a Honey Badger had to be complicated in the extreme.

One would have to start by creating an appropriate martial art, something like her Fist of the Indomitable Badger, but they wouldn’t have the advantage of supernatural stats and a whole bunch of martial arts experience to transform into the new Skill-slash-combat-style.

But would that really be enough? Would that just produce something like “badger imitator”?

Or would the creator have had to also learn martial arts, pugilism, and a truckload of other supporting skills too, just to provide a broad basis for everything?

And no matter what the exact requirements were, the creator would have barely been able to have any hobbies, as anything that got gained high a level would interfere. Even with a couple of the desired skills at a time being leveled at an accelerated pace and hobbies only growing at the normal learning speed, that would be tricky.

Not to mention cooking, cleaning, and all the other Skills acquired just by living one’s life … and there was far more to Anima Monk than just the ability to fight like a specific animal. No, it was the ability to pick any animal and use its abilities to beat powerful enemies.

How would she create something like that? Learn the five traditional animal styles of Chinese martial arts, which, depending on who you asked, were either leopard, tiger, crane, snake, and dragon, or mantis, tiger, crane, monkey, and snake. Maybe all seven of these styles?

Or every animal style ever created? Because there were quite a few more.

And yet, wouldn’t that just produce something like “Kung Fu Master”, rather than something solely about animal fighting?

Had the original creator of her Class created their own animal-style martial arts and combined the Skills of the martial arts themselves with the Skills they’d gotten for creating martial styles based on animals?

What kind of freakish dedication had they had?

These kinds of questions kept Jaclyn’s mind busy until she was rudely shocked out of her deep contemplation when they reached the museum and were greeted with a pile of bloody meat big enough that giant sloths were literally shoveling into the building for processing. Well, they were using their hands instead of tools, but still … she was interested in hearing the story behind this mess.

And then, a small black monkey with a white patch on its chest peeked out from the head of one of the giant sloths.

***

“So, there was this dragon …” Thomas began, only to be met with a flat stare from Inspector Abrams. An “I’ve literally caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, there are crumbs on your shirt and there’s chocolate smeared all over your face, how on earth could you possibly explain this” kind of stare. But she didn’t respond. She didn’t have to.

Thomas had Jan turn his head back towards the entrance and teleport a plain manilla file folder into his hand, then leap off his “ride” to land in front of the Inspector.

“So, there was a dragon and I really needed to make my third champion with a power that let me send him to talk to you guys.”

“We’re talking right now,” a young man standing behind the Inspector said.

“And I wouldn’t have been able to do that an hour ago because we’re not inside my Dungeon. I can’t really control my critters out here, and I can’t talk through them no matter what. But now I can talk through Jan here.”

Then, he had Jan point at the folder Abrams was currently leafing through.

“Like I said, there was a dragon, and there’s an even bigger dragon out there we need to stop because she’s a tyrant from another world who’s recovering her strength with every passing day. I’d love to help with that, by the way, if you can get her in here somehow. Or find her for me, so I can do the luring myself.”

Thomas then gestured towards the convoy.

“And I have to insist, you can’t all come in here. Even if the worst happens, someone needs to be there to tell everyone else about the threat.”

Inspector Abrams raised an eyebrow at that.

“Look, this is a Dungeon. It’s dangerous. Even if you’re careful, stuff happens.”

She nodded. “Do you know anything else about this dragon?”

“Nope, it’s all there in that file,” Thomas announced, using Jan to pull another folder from the “visitor information desk” he’d set up just inside the door.

“That’s the same as the Dungeon information packet on the door, but you can read it without having to wait for me to clean up the mess.”

Thomas was really hopeful that they would go into the Dungeon, but his main priority was making sure he gained allies for the fight against Alaxia Mystscale.

***

“Hey, is the reward for informing the authorities still available?” Granger asked the talking monkey after looking up from his dungeon booklet.

“We already know about the Dragon,” Jaclyn reminded him.

“Can I borrow that file?” he asked and snatched the file out of her hands, then handed it right back. Then, he looked at the monkey Daedalus was inhabiting. “So, I just gave a high-ranking member of the police force the file on the enemy. Does that count?”

She glared at him, but the monkey just started laughing. Literally rolling around, to the point where she wasn’t sure if it was still amused, or just plain dying.

“The balls on you, kid,” the little critter wheezed out before straightening in an attempt to regain its dignity. “So, what do you want? A backpack’s worth of monster materials, any animal in my menagerie as a pet, or a magical monster? Monster’s gonna have to be within reason. Pet tokens give you pets that’ll listen to you and won’t hurt you on purpose, but you’re still going to have to feed them and make sure they don’t accidentally burn down your apartment.”

“Burn down?” Granger asked in an eager way that made Jaclyn cringe.

“Velociraptor with a dragon template. They look badass and spit fire. Look at the door,” Daedalus explained, yerking a thumb up towards the museum’s entrance.

Jaclyn glanced up as well, seeing a surprisingly tiny creature standing there, barely larger than a chicken, with heavy, dark green, armored plates covering any part of its body that didn’t have any feathers.

“Ok, that thing would be awesome, but I was just trying to see what you’d do if I asked,” Granger shook his head. “I really don’t have the space for a pet. But if I ever move, how could I get one later?”

“Check the loot tables,” Daedalus announced via the monkey, pointing at the young man’s folder.

Granger did so, but then suddenly slapped it closed and stared at the monkey.

“Do you really have a panacea?”

“For your Ranks, yes,” Daedalus nodded, then gestured behind him. “So, the mess is almost gone. Do you know where you want to go? Do you want the old Dungeon? I expanded it, but there is an end with a warning sign on it because at that point, you’d be entering my personal space. Or do you want the new wing, with the prize that can fix literally anything?”

Oh, that was a difficult choice.

Sure, the panacea was attractive, but that place was going to be hard as all get out, wouldn’t it?