The next day I shielded my eyes from the rising sun as the others set out. I needed to be at work in two hours and had a bad hangover from drinking all night. As I waved goodbye at them and checked my Status again. Did my Troll Regeneration really not help with hangovers?

Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason

Race: Human

Age: 18

DP: 217

Common Talents

Strength: Petty

Endurance: Major

Dexterity: Petty

Intelligence: Petty

Willpower: Average

Wisdom: Petty

Charisma: Petty

Personality: Major

Perception: Minor

Stats

Strength: 18

Endurance: 24

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 7

Willpower: 17

Wisdom: 7

Charisma: 2

Personality: 27

Perception: 11

Talents

Average Rage

Monster Talents

Average Troll Regeneration

Tough Hide

Skills

Workout: 6

Study: 4

Spearmanship: 4

Shield: 5

Shield Bash: 2

Use Magic Item: 2

Nope, nothing there to help me. I’d just have to deal with it. Unless… I focused on the word “DP”, and a menu showed up. Everything I could do with DP was there divided into sections. Recovery covered healing wounds, restoring mental and physical fatigue, and removing status effects, which also used the ranks from Talents to say how bad they were. There was also a Talent section where you could buy upgrades to your Common talents, or buy or update skill and magic talents. I didn’t see any way to upgrade my Monster talents, and when I tried to select them, the word “anathema” just appeared. You could also spend DP to improve your stats directly, but it cost as much as the new level in points so it seemed like a waste to me. While I was sure there was ‘pain resistance’ in there somewhere, just looking at the screen was making my headache worse. There was also a section for miscellaneous options, but the only one that really made sense was “Status Screen (Hereditary)”. I had seen the word “Hereditary” on my Common Talents as well. Not sure what it meant. I could add it to talents other than my Monster talents if I was willing to add a zero onto the end of their cost, but decided not to. I really should figure out what that meant.

With no other option, I drank at least four liters of water, ate a loaf of bread, and left for work. With all of the piles of supplies being low from my absence, I got to work moving boards and stones. As I worked through the day, though, my brain kept remembering all of the cool things I could get with DP. If I could get enough, I wouldn’t need to buy talents in cities, I could just buy them from wherever the DP things come from. Maybe I bought them from a dungeon? I just knew that I needed to go back.

After work I asked Dave if he wanted to go hunting again. I told him that the adventurers had shown me a secret area we could hunt in with tons of animals. For the first few days he wasn’t sure, but when I told him I had got skill crystals there, he agreed to go. Those were worth a good bit of money, and even if we didn’t get one, the meat we would definitely get would be enough to earn some more money and fill up the butcher’s stock.

That weekend, on the sixth day, the one before Holy Day, we set off in the morning. He had a little bit of camping gear, since he hunted a lot, so we didn’t need to get any more equipment. I had found a nice young oak tree over the week and replaced my spear shaft, but I also bought a butcher’s knife with me, just in case I needed it. It would also make collecting the DP stones easier.

I lead him out to the cave, and he looked at it in shock. “There’s a dungeon this close to town?” Dave asked. “We need to tell the mayor.”

“It’s fine. The Adventurers know about it, and I’m pretty sure they told him about it before they left. I don’t think they claimed it, though, so we can still hunt here.”

“You don’t understand. Dungeons are major attractions. This will attract more people to the town, and before long, we won’t be able to even come near here.”

“Then it sounds like we should hunt now, before they get back.” If the dungeon was a ‘first come, first serve’ kind of place, and we came first, doesn’t that mean we should get served first?

“You’re right. We should hunt here before the outsiders come to ruin the area.” He nodded, breathed deeply, and asked a question. “So, how do you get skills?” I handed him one of the skill candies, explaining the weird feeling he would get if he filled it, and he put it in a waste pouch. Now that I had two and he had one, we went into the cave.

In the forest there was a heavy fog that covered everything, but from the background sounds there probably weren’t as many animals as when we first got here. I remember Brie had told me that the dungeon before had so many animals because it was about to ‘break’, and that the giant boar I found managed to break through the exit and leave. Still, it had far more animals than a forest normally would, so it was easy for us to find animals to hunt, even if squirrels, jackalopes, horned rabbits, and deer were the only animals that attacked us before the sun started to set. As we weren’t near the bear cave, we found a clearing and built a fire, then cooked two rabbits, a jackalope and a horned one. The jackalope was faster, but the horned one was larger and stronger and liked to headbutt you it order to stab you. Dave actually caught the “headbutt” talent of one, but neither Dave nor I wanted the skill so I just put it back in my backpack. We would both much rather get the jackalope’s ability to dodge or its ability to parry with its antlers, but we hadn’t gotten that one yet.

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After supper I started looking through the DP menu. Dave had no idea what I was doing, so I had him hold all of the blue crystals we got so far in his mouth. They dissolved quickly, making him feel like he was eating something extremely sweet and juicy, and he was surprised when he got access to the menu and twenty seven point four DP. We spent the next hour or so looking over the skills before Dave pointed out a pattern. The costs of things seemed to be based on their category and rating. Temporary status effects and injuries were times ten, Common talents, skill talents, and permanent status effects were times one hundred, magic talents were times a thousand, and to make something Hereditary, which would give your children a 50% chance of inheriting it, you put an extra zero on the end. Which meant that non-hereditary stats/common talents should be times ten. Based on level, petty was one, minor was three, average was ten, major was thirty, excellent was one hundred, and master was one thousand. So an average talent for a skill should cost one thousand DP, but so would a petty magic talent. And if you wanted your kids to be mages, that would cost a minimum of ten thousand DP. If our entire group only got around nine hundred and seventy last time, and that was considered a good payout, it would take a long time farming this dungeon before we could greatly improve ourselves. He suggested that our best bet would be to buy talent crystals and hope a monster dropped something we wanted.

I kept watch that night, since I didn’t have to sleep, and exercised or practiced with my spear. Before the sun came up, though, I heard a howl. I went over to Dave to wake him up, but he had already climbed out of his bedroll and was putting on his shoes. As he grabbed his spear I saw eyes coming from the darkness around us. “Get near the fire.” said Dave. “It should keep them away.”

I turned to obey, only to see a wolf jump at me. As I swung my spear I saw that it was much larger than a normal wolf. I blocked with my shield but its weight knocked me down. Dave started to run over to help, but three other wolves attacked him and he was forced to fight them.

As the wolf bit my shield, something inside of me snapped. “Stupid dog!” I yelled, stabbing my knife into its neck up to the hilt. I heard a pop as I twisted the blade and it collapsed, then I stood up, picked it up by its neck, and threw it at its friends. One of them was already attacking Dave, but the other two were knocked over by the weight of their friend. I picked up my spear and screamed as I threw it a few meters at the wolf that was attacking Dave. I went over and pulled my spear from the dead wolf, then waved it at the other two.

I heard movement behind us and swung my spear just in time to slice a fifth wolf across the chest. Leaving the two in front to Dave, I stabbed at the new one several times, but it dodged every time. Behind me, Dave was keeping the other two wolves at bay, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before he let one through and was injured. The one I was facing had fog coming out of its mouth, like its breath was super cold. It jumped at me and I held up my shield, blocking its bite, but it just fell to the ground and snapped at my legs instead.

It managed to grab on and bite my thigh, and I could feel an incredibly cold ice forming there. As long as it was clamped onto me, though, it couldn’t dodge my attacks. I lifted my spear and, gathering all of my anger, ran it through the wolf’s eye and into his brain. A rush of energy flew into me as it released me, but I ignored it and spun around just in time to see Dave run a wolf through. Seeing its dead friends, the last wolf ran away. I threw my spear at it but the spear fell short and it got away.

We both started panting, but soon Dave was the only one still doing so. “Well.” he said between heavy breaths. “You’re injured, and I’m not sure we can continue.”

“They attacked us at night.” I responded. “This is a lot harder than last time.”

“Maybe the Dungeon doesn’t like us attacking its pets.” said Dave, and I looked at him. “Well, it’s alive, right? Not sure if it’s as smart as a person, but even an animal is going to be on guard after you attack it and steal its stuff.”

That sounded right. “The adventurers expected it to understand what they were saying, so at least some dungeons are as smart as people.”

Dave shrugged and pointed at me. “The ice on your leg is melting, so you’ll start bleeding soon.”

“Oh, right.” I said. The pain was changing from a dull pain to a burning pain, so I grabbed a bandage from my bag and wrapped it.

“I think we need to leave, in case they come back.”

I nodded. “The sun should come up in two hours. Can we wait until then so that we aren’t moving in the dark?”

Dave shook his head. “I’d prefer not to, but if you want, we can keep watch until then. We probably wiped out the pack, but if they come back, we don’t want to be caught off guard.”

I nodded, and went to pick up my spear. We spent the next two hours keeping watch. As that was boring, however, I spent the time exercising, listening as I did pushups and situps, and looking and listening while doing squats. Dave didn’t exactly like the fact that I wasn’t spending all of my time looking around, but I would still catch most things that happened. “You’re going to overlook something.” he said after thirty minutes of me working out, looking around nervously.

“Fine.” I said with a sigh after finishing a set of situps. I stood up and looked around. Once again, I got bored, so I started counting anything I could see. I counted small insects. Thirty seven. I counted leaves. One thousand and sixty two. I counted pine cones on the ground. Seventeen. I counted eyes. Four. Wait, why were their eyes out there? Then I realized that meant there was an animal out there. “Animal.” I said and readied my spear.

The wolf that ran away heard me and ran at me, but I just swung my spear down and sliced its face. On the other side of the circle two wild boars came out of the darkness. Dave stuck his spear in one as it charged, but the other headbutted him and I heard something crack. Dave laid on the ground and screamed, and the boar tried to stab him with his tusks. Seeing this I got really angry and screamed, then threw my spear into the boar’s side. It fell over, but was still alive, so I ran the edge of my shield and beat its head in, hitting it over and over until it stopped moving. The wood of the shield started cracking despite the metal band around the edge, and, seeing that there was little left of the boar’s head, I stopped and pulled my spear out of it. I turned around to finish the wolf as the sun started to rise, but it had already ran away.

“If I see that stupid wolf again, I’m killing it.” I said. “That’s twice it’s escaped.” Now that I was no longer angry, I got tired and sat down on the ground beside Dave. Dave nodded as he grit his teeth. “You ok?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Ribs broke.”

“Oh.” I said, “I don’t have a way to fix that.” I thought about it as my energy returned, and when I pulled the crystals out of the wolves from earlier and the two boars. Then I realized something. “Hey, can’t you fix broken bones with DP?”

Dave nodded and I saw him concentrate on something. “One hundred.”

I wiped off all of the crystals and handed them to him. “Well, here’s all of the crystals we have. Absorb them and see if it’s enough.”

He looked at the crystals with a look of disgust for a few seconds, then nodded and held out his hand. I put them in his hand, making it a bit bloody as my hand touched his, and he put them all in his mouth. After a minute or so, he looked a bit sad. “Only at ninety three.”

“Well, then I need to get you… uh, seven more?” He nodded and I helped him up. Once I wrapped his chest we packed up and set out. The fire had already burned out, but Dave made sure to throw some dirt on it.

The injured wolf had ran in the general direction of the exit, so we followed the trail of broken limbs and blood it left behind. After about a kilometer I heard a wolf whining, so I walked into the clearing. Seeing me, it tried to stand up and run, but stumbled. Apparently the damage it had taken from our two battles had weakened it. I lifted my spear and threw it about five meters. It hit a bit lower than I expected, but still went through its stomach, pinning it to the ground. As it was unable to move from that spot and couldn’t even stand up anymore, I drew my chef knife and grabbed the back of its neck, then slit its throat. Once it was dead, I pulled the spear out and cut its chest open to take its crystal. After that was done I wiped most of the blood off of it and handed it to Dave.

“That was pretty cold blooded.” Said Dave, taking the crystal and wiping more of the blood off of it.

“Actually its blood was pretty warm, since it was still alive.”

“No, I mean… Oh, never mind.” Now that he’d gotten almost all of the blood off, he put the crystal in his mouth and got a look of disgust on his face. A few seconds later he shook his head. “Ninety nine.”

I nodded. “Should be some squirrels around here.” Then I set off towards the exit one more time.

By the time we got out of the forest dungeon we had killed many other small animals, taking their stones, but the only large animals to attack us were a group of three deer, which we could easily handle once Dave’s ribs were fixed. As they were killed close to the exit, we pulled out their crystals and carried their bodies out with us, with me carrying two and Dave carrying one.

The sun was just rising as we left the cave, so we immediately left for town. When we got back we took the three deer to the butcher, letting him keep one to pay for the preservation of Dave’s deer, and selling mine to him for two silver, as I had plenty of boar meat from before.

Following what the adventurers did, we went to the tavern to split the loot. We didn’t have much, though. We had the two full talent candies and a handful of DP crystals, as well as the deer we already dealt with, but that was it. “We need to find some help for next time.” said Dave, looking at the few things we got from the trip. “You only have one of those candies left, and no one in town sells them, so we can’t use the possibility of getting more skills to recruit people. I say we use the DP crystals.” He picked them up and dropped them in a glass of water, rinsing them off with a swirl before pulling them out.

“Well, the adventurers had four people. So we would need two more. Any ideas?”

Dave thought for a few seconds and nodded. “I know just the people.” He picked up the small blue crystals. “Just meet me here tonight at sunset. I’ll have us some people for next time.” We each took the talent candy we filled and I went home. While I was pretty sure he would just sell ‘headbutt’, I needed to think about what to do with mine.