BOOM!

A zombie's skull exploded as it was crushed by Lydia’s mace. An undead horde was shambling towards us… slowly. Lydia showed off her skill, alternating between dodging, blocking, and striking. In that manner, she mowed down wave after wave. I stayed off to the side, intervening only to prevent the swarm from surrounding her. Lydia’s ability had grown considerably since we met, both in technique and confidence.

Finally, when there was a single zombie left, Lydia performed an exaggerated swing across her body, catching it in the side of its face. The zombie’s head popped off, flew across the room, and collided with a supporting pillar, shattering into a million pieces.

She hunched over, hands on her knees to catch her breath.

My Ephemeral Sense caught a now familiar sight. Green energy rushed out of the corpses toward us. Instead of going through any specific channel, the energy penetrated our entire surface and spread evenly before vanishing.

However, this time, I witnessed something new—Lydia leveling. Green energy rushed out of her mana core (a small blue pebble located at the center of her mass), enveloping her whole body. Then, it erupted into a sphere that swelled outward until it turned purple and imploded back to her core.

‘Interesting… It looks like the purple energy provides the upgrade, not the green… does that mean the green energy is just a counting mechanism for the system or does the green energy transform into the purple energy when it reaches critical mass?

‘Either way, why doesn’t yellow essence energy manifest when a skill is used? Does it just come when her skill levels, rather than being absorbed as she fights? Does the system just decide when to inject it or is my Ephemeral Sense missing something?

There were just more and more questions. Although some were mentioned in my reading, others were completely unaddressed.

‘Is Ephemeral Sense so rare that no one noticed the energy conversion that occurs when someone levels… or are the texts purposefully not discussing it?’

My mind drifted to rumors on Earth in which viral researchers discovered nasty gene modifications that skyrocketed the lethality of common diseases. Sometimes the information was published, sometimes it was classified, and sometimes the scientists burned the files and pretended it never happened. I put that thought aside and turned to Lydia.

“Do these monsters seem… easy?

Hunched over, hands on her knees, between pants, Lydia said, “First of all, shut up. Second, it depends on what you mean by easy. They are E ranked, so yes, monsters don’t get easier, but I had to deal with a massive horde of them. At my level, that’s manageable, especially with you preventing encirclement, but a lower level adventurer attempting this would have been torn to shreds.

“Ah.”

I used my inventory skill to autoloot the cores, before transferring them to my declared spatial bag—I felt no need to antagonize the guards by having an awkward core count.

“If this is a C rank dungeon, why are we only seeing E rank monsters?” I asked.

“Dungeon levels are determined by the highest ranked monster that can be found in it. Even if there is only 1 C rank monster, it's a C rank dungeon. Other hazards are ignored entirely”

“That seems… fatal.”

“Eh, it's not hard to find out what to expect in a dungeon. If you go in blind, that's on you.”

“Like we did here?”

“Who is this we you speak of? I did my homework.”

“Yes, yes, you’re so wonderful. So, what should we find here?”

“Straight forward crawl. E level undead monsters that you bash until they’re dust. Final boss is a C level Bonelord.”

“Ah yes… the dreaded Bonelord.” I said, chuckling.

“Are you twelve?”

‘I guess certain puns transcend worlds.’

“Depends on how long it takes to revolve around the sun.” I said.

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“What?”

“Is age measured based on revolutions around the sun here?”

“Sure… but-”

“Yeah, so that may be different here than it is where I’m from. It's very convenient for when the Japanese need to retcon ages for western audiences.”

“I did not understand any of the words in your last sentence, but I feel like you implied something gross.”

“Just be glad we aren’t in a light novel. You’d totally be a tsundere.”

“You're tacky, and I hate you.”

“Wait, you know what a tsundere is?”

“Goddess damn it! This is not an entire planet of cave dwellers! We have fiction books.”

“Total tsundere,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

Lydia said nothing and headed for the door.

********************************

Lydia and I fell into a rhythm. We would enter a room or hall, and, if not immediately attacked by monsters, I would set up diagnostic equipment. Next, I would kite monsters to the equipment. Finally, Lydia would step in and fight while I took data. I had attached all manner of devices to her, measuring energy levels, muscle movement, sounds emitted, and everything else that I had the tools for. Finally, while those machines worked in the background, I watched with Ephemeral Sense, taking careful notes.

Eventually, she leveled her Mace Mastery. As I suspected, at the moment she leveled up, yellow energy manifested into the air itself and flowed into her channels.

Continued fights yielded even more exciting data. An unexpected finding was evidence that tended to support the leading theory on dungeon growth. In one fight, Lydia slipped when trying to dodge and took a sword to her arm. The monster was too weak for it to do significant damage, but it did penetrate her skin, drawing blood. When that happened, a black energy manifested near, but did not come out of, Lydia’s body. It shot through the skeleton and into the floor beneath it.

‘Interesting.’

The correlation between adventurer death rates and dungeon growth was so strong that its truth was assumed by the research. However, no mechanism for this connection had been discovered. No matter what tests were performed, scholars could not identify any energy transfer.

‘Ephemeral Sense has to be unique. There is no way academics could have possibly missed this if any had the ability.

I need to find a way to measure the black energy.’

Unfortunately, Lydia declined my request to take one for the team and let the skeletons pummel her. Further, slicing open my own arm accomplished nothing. I tried letting the skeletons beat me… but their attacks ineffectually bounced off my skin. Depressed, I set aside that avenue of inquiry and continued to move through the dungeon. Eventually, we arrived at the boss room.

The room itself was bare with gray brick enclosing it on all sides. As we entered, the door slammed behind us. Then, a circular carving in the center of the room slid open, and a platform containing a seven foot tall skeleton armed with a massive two handed sword slowly rose from a chamber below.

‘Is the dungeon… trying to build dramatic tension?’

I opened my mouth to ask Lydia a question, but the fight had already begun.

She sprinted towards the Bonelord, dodging when its giant sword crashed down at her. Without breaking stride, she closed the remaining distance, lept into the air and caved in its skull with an overhead strike. The skeleton didn’t fall. Instead, it began to stagger around in a circle. Taking advantage of its disorientation, Lydia delivered a completely one sided beating. Pow! A dismembered arm. Bam! A broken femur. She beat the poor thing without hesitation or mercy. My jaw dropped at the scene. In short order, the skeleton had ceased moving, but Lydia continued to smash its bones into paste. Once she was content that it was dead, she turned and saw my face.

“You should hit it some more, I’m not sure you finished it off.”

“Should I-” Lydia began to turn.

“No, you psycho.”

A ceiling panel opened up and a chest dropped out of it onto the floor.

‘Seriously?!’

***************************

Hajim sighed heavily.

“So, there has been no progress in finding Goliath?”

“None, Master,” Creed replied. “I followed his trail through the slums for several miles before it stopped abruptly. It would appear that Mr. Goliath does not wish to be found. Furthermore, I observed several other teams searching for him as well. They all lost him around the halfway point, except the Takedas who got almost as far as I did.”

“Leave it to those Gifarians to be right on his heels.”

'It looks like another player has joined the game. Was this his way of announcing his presence? But why so openly… It must have been a warning. But was it to me or to someone else? Someone else… if it was to me, then he would have made sure I’d known. Perhaps… is someone targeting orphans…'

Hajim snapped back to the present, remembering that Creed was still standing in front of him.

“Good work, Creed. Send some people to investigate the city's orphan population. There may be a clue to Mr. Goliath's identity there.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Now, more importantly, the auction is this Friday, and there is an extraordinarily rare specimen for sale: the soul of an elder demon bound and trapped in this dimension. I’m allocating guild funds. You must acquire it at all costs. Understood?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Excellent. You may go.”

Hajim watched Creed walk out with a sense of satisfaction. He continued to be grateful he had been able to snatch Creed’s services away from the assassins guild. Good help was so hard to find these days.