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: 19
Endurance: 24
Dexterity: 14
Intelligence: 8
Willpower: 23
Wisdom: 9
Charisma: 3
Personality: 27
Perception: 13
Talents
Average Rage
Petty Ice Magic
Monster Talents
Average Troll Regeneration
Minor Tough Hide
Skills
Workout: 6
Study: 4
Spearmanship: 5
Shield: 6
Shield Bash: 3
Use Magic Item: 2
Throwing: 1
I sat at the table, mug of ale in my hand, and my Status screen open and focused on the ale getting colder. I had managed to lower its temperature slightly, but it was barely noticeable. So far I hadn’t gotten a new skill, but I really wanted to learn magic. The ring was so much fun. Dave said he would meet me here at sunset, but it was already dark outside and he wasn’t here yet. So I was keeping busy by trying out the Ice Magic I took from the wolf. After focusing on it really hard for over a minute I saw a tiny bit of ice start to form in the middle and checked my status. There was a new section at the bottom.
Magic Skills
Freeze Touch: 1
“Yes!” I called out, and several of the other people looked at me. “Oh, I just learned a magic skill.” I said. The people gave me a disbelieving look, but I shrugged. I wasn’t lying to them.
“Forget about them.” said a woman in her forties that sat down across from me. “They’ve never seen real magic, and I doubt most of them would believe it if they saw it.” She held out her hand as Dave sat down beside me and another man sat beside her. “Martha. Ex military scout.”
I shook her hand. “Michael. Current construction worker.”
She smiled and laughed a bit. “Dave tells us you are looking for two other people to help you in a dungeon.” She pointed to the other guy who introduced himself as Barry, a hunter.
“Yes, we could use some extra people. We got attacked by a pack of wolves during the night, and I’d prefer to have more people. We both got hurt.” My wound was just scars now, thanks to my regeneration, but Dave would still have broken ribs if we hadn’t used DP to heal him.
“Dave told me that, and about how his broken ribs were instantly fixed. I had heard of DP from some adventurers that joined a goblin hunt I was part of, but I didn’t know they could do that. I know several soldiers that would love to have a leg or arm regrown.” She took a swig of her ale. “So, I take it we’ll be heading out first thing sixth-day morn?”
“We left yesterday at sunrise at the east gate. That should be fine for next week too.”
She and Barry looked at each other and nodded. “In that case, we’ll see you then.”
As I only had the two silver from the deer and not much else, I could only afford to buy a bag of five javelins. The smith normally didn’t make them, but they were mostly just tiny spears so they weren’t that hard to make. After I picked them up on the fourth day, I spent the next two nights practicing with them. No one else used the training fields at night, so the guards just checked to make sure it was me before continuing their rounds. I did get about four hours of sleep on the fifth day of the week, as we would be setting out the next morning and I would need to keep watch tomorrow night, but I wasn’t that tired.
We set out first thing in the morning and the first thing I noticed was that Martha was the only one of us that had armor. I thought about getting some, but didn’t really have the money for a set, so I didn’t. “I got this when I was in military, so I didn’t have to pay for it.” she said. “Armor can be pretty expensive, and the local smith doesn’t know how to make a proper set of metal armor, so I suggest you just get some thick boiled leather from the tanner and make your own armor if you want a descent set you can afford. I can show you how, since that’s what the military hands out to recruits and I used to have to wear it.”
When we got close, Martha insisted on staying in the front, or as she put it ‘taking point’. We didn’t see any monsters before we got to the dungeon, however, so, after a short break where everyone double-checked their weapons, we went inside.
The second we stepped inside we were attacked by five wild boars, one of which could breath fire. The four of us were able to kill them all, but thanks to the surprise Barry was knocked down and sprained his ankle trying to run to a better shooting position, as he was an archer. We bandaged his ankle and, after collecting the stones from the animals, we kept going. Soon it was night, but Barry’s ankle felt good enough that we decided to copy the adventurers and take out the bears.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I told Martha how the Adventurers had done it, but she just called them idiots and started cutting down green trees and branches, including some toxic plants like poison ivy, and making a pile at the mouth of the cave. Once she finished the pile, she handed us all pine boughs, held her hand near the pile, and it caught on fire, mostly smoking. I asked her about her magic, as this was the first time I had heard of her having any, but she just told me to wave the bough at the pile and watch the fire to make sure it didn’t spread. Soon we heard the bears inside coughing and roaring, but only one of them came running at us. Just before it crashed through the pile of branches, Martha drew her sword. As soon as it broke through and could breath again, breathing heavily as it stood on all four paws, she swung her sword down, severing its spine. She then threw most of the branches back on the pile and started fanning it again.
An hour later the fire had almost stopped, so we threw some dirt on it and went inside. There were seven other bears, but it looked like they were all smaller than the one outside and had died from the smoke. We each took two bears, including the one outside, and cut out their cores, then drug their bodies outside so that they wouldn’t rot in the cave. We made camp inside the cave. I told her that the ivy at the back of the cave hid the dungeon core for this floor and she shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get to it tomorrow.”
I kept watch again that night, practicing my throwing and ice magic on the bear corpses that were nearby. By the time the sun rose I was pretty good at hitting my target when throwing the javelins, and was able to freeze a spot bigger than I was. Wolves did come by to eat the bear corpses, but when that happened I just went inside the cave and let them do it. There were ten of them, so without the others the only way I could beat them would be if they were funneled through the mouth of the cave. At least, that’s what Martha said.
The next morning at breakfast Martha and I got to talking about magic, and she told me that she picked up the Petty Fire Magic talent when she was in the military because she got tired of trying to start a fire with flint and steel. Using magic was much easier once you learned how. She also told me about how she knew a guy in the army that could put frost on the edge of any weapon he used to freeze the enemy anywhere he stabbed them. I would have to figure out how he did that. It sounded useful.
After breakfast we spent the rest of the day wondering around killing random animals and collecting their crystals. Dave and I mostly used our spears, though sometimes I would throw the javelins, Barry used a bow, and Martha would usually use a dagger to kill the smaller ones quickly or a short sword on the bigger ones. I didn’t catch any new skills, and no one else in our group had any crystals for the purpose, though Martha had used them before, so we didn’t have any bonus skills this time around.
As the sun started to go down, we went back to the cave, grabbed our stuff, mugged the core, and left. While it was dark inside the cave, when we left it was still an hour before sunset on the outside, so we returned to town, Martha and myself carrying boars and Dave and Barry carrying deer. Even though it was nighttime by a few hours when we got back, we knocked on the door of the butcher’s house and sold him all of the animals we brought back for ten silver, three each for the boars and two each for the deer. We then went to the tavern, split the crystals up 282 points each, and the silver based on who carried what, and after a celebratory drink agreed to meet up next week at the same time.
Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason
Race: Human
Age: 18
DP: 505
Common Talents
Strength: Petty
Endurance: Major
Dexterity: Petty
Intelligence: Petty
Willpower: Average
Wisdom: Petty
Charisma: Petty
Personality: Major
Perception: Minor
Stats
Strength: 20
Endurance: 26
Dexterity: 16
Intelligence: 8
Willpower: 24
Wisdom: 10
Charisma: 4
Personality: 27
Perception: 13
Talents
Average Rage
Petty Ice Magic
Monster Talents
Average Troll Regeneration
Minor Tough Hide
Skills
Workout: 6
Study: 4
Spearmanship: 6
Shield: 7
Shield Bash: 4
Use Magic Item: 2
Throwing: 3
Magic Skills
Freeze Touch: 3
I spent the next week practicing my spear and ice skills, alternating between seeing how much of the river that went by the town I could freeze and stabbing a test dummy. The second day, however, one of the town guards saw me at the training field and gave me some pointers, after which some of them offered to spar with me using wooden weapons. One of them even came up with a game where they would throw mud balls at me and I had to cut them in half to not get hit. Over the week I got good enough to block up to three incoming mud balls at a time, with the local kids joining in one rainy day to throw mud as well. I even managed to block a few that the kids snuck rocks in to make it harder. I would let them throw rocks next week and block them with my shield. At night, though, no one was there, so I was forced to throw rocks or mud up in the air and split it by myself, or to swing at rocks and mud that we on a fence, or box, or the shoulders of the training dummy. They weren’t moving, so they were easy to hit.
I also stood across the field and threw my javelins at the training dummy. Every time I managed to hit inside the red circle with every throw I would take a step back and start throwing them again. It was easy to do with a stationary target. I would need to practice on a moving target.
One day I started freezing my javelins before throwing them. It didn’t really do anything to them, but it let me practice Freeze touch, which was fun. It would probably be best if I stacked training, after all. I had an idea while doing that; could I just throw the freezing power? I knew I could freeze ice into certain shapes, and sometimes tried to make ice sculptures in a bucket of water, but without water I couldn’t just make ice. I would have to carry water in order to make icicles, and even then I could just throw them like javelins. But I had heard stories of people shooting a Freeze beam out of their hands, and wanted to try it.
When we met at the gate to leave I asked Martha about it. She showed me a spell she had called ‘firebolt’ that she used to start fires, usually for cooking. She said that ice could do the same. You just needed to make a cold fire, though that didn’t make sense. Was there a kind of fire that took heat instead of giving it?
We managed to fight our way to the cave by the time sunset had properly set outside, but this time when we got there the cave had a hole in the top of it to let the smoke out. After figuring that out we left our pile of smoking branches in front of the exit, mixing a few bits of dry wood in so that they would burn properly. We then poured all of our cooking oil down the hole onto the sleeping boss below and Martha threw a fire bolt through the hole at him as he roared in annoyance at having oil on him. This caught him on fire and, while he tried to roll around to put out the flame, he only spread it. Several bears managed to break through the front of the cave, attacking Barry and Dave, but I just threw javelins into them from above as Dave blocked them, Martha threw fire bolts at them, and Barry dodged.
Most of the work was dragging the bodies out of the cave, then cutting out the crystals as we waited for the fire and smoke to stop within the cave. Eleven bears this time, five of which were way too big, and several of which showed signs of having other powers. One even had iron claws, so we cut them off to sell them to the smith in town.
That night over two dozen wolves attacked the cave slightly after they went to sleep, these also being bigger than normal and some having special powers, but I didn’t try to capture any of their talents. Martha had told me that the enemies in the dungeon would keep getting stronger until the dungeon decided to start a second floor, and that, as I only had one candy with which to catch a talent, I should wait until one of them had a really good talent to try and catch it. Otherwise we might end up with another Headbutt, which Dave still hadn’t been able to sell.
I woke up the others when I saw the first wolf, though, and we made quick work of them as they were being funneled through a narrow opening a few at a time. After taking their crystals, they went back to sleep and I practiced trying to shoot cold fire out of my hands. A few hours after everyone went back to sleep I managed to shoot a small burst of blue light out of my hand, which used a bit of mana and left the wall slightly cold. I remembered the feeling and tried it again, but failed. Still, I kept trying and by the time they were awake I could fire the spell over five times between failures.
Nothing else had attacked us during the night and, while we couldn’t deep fry anything as we had used all of our oil defeating the bears, we managed to use a bit of the fat from the bears outside to cook.
We left our stuff in the cave and spent the day wondering around killing random animals. There were a lot more wolves now, and fewer deer and rabbits. Barry wondered if maybe the dungeon was getting mad at us for attacking its animals and wasn’t bothering with a balanced ecosystem in order to defeat us. Martha wasn’t sure if the dungeon needed a balanced ecosystem, as she had heard an adventurer once say that dungeon animals only needed DP to survive, but no one was sure.
As the sun set inside we grabbed our stuff. I went into the core room, which gave me all of the crystals without having to threaten it, and we set off for town. This time Martha and I grabbed the body of a stray bear and Dave and Barry each grabbed a deer. Bear fat was actually worth a lot of money, as were other parts of their body, so Martha figured we should take it with us to see if it was worth bringing back. Strangely, though, the bear didn’t have a stone in its chest, nor did it have any special features or even attack us. Barry’s guess was that it was just a stray bear that happened to wonder into the dungeon.
The butcher was only willing to pay five silver for it, however, which was a silver less than we would have made if we brought back two of the boar we killed, so we decided not to do that again. Next time we would just bring boars back.
While we were at the dungeon, several beginner adventurers had shown up in town and would be going to the dungeon too. As they were weak, though, they would only attack a few monsters every day and bring back the bodies to the butcher. The price of meat was probably going to drop.
I went to work for the next few days, using the nights that I didn’t sleep as a time to let the local kids throw rocks at me to practice blocking, then when they went home I would practice shooting ‘Freeze Beams’ out of my hands, as that was what my status called them. Shortly after sunset on fourth-day I was walking towards the training field, planning out what I would do at the dungeon that weekend when the town bell started to ring.
“Goblins!” the man yelled, and pointed towards the woods. Surely that wasn’t the dungeon’s doing. After all, it had wild animals, not goblins. I found Martha gathering at the gates along with the city guards and she agreed that it probably wasn’t the dungeon. If the dungeon forced a break to attack us, something you usually only saw larger dungeons doing, it would be wolves, bears, and wild boars attacking, not goblins. There was probably another dungeon in the woods that we didn’t know about which the goblins had come from. Either that or the goblins had somehow built a village up there. Either way, we would need more adventurers to win this battle.