“Stone Wall!”
My teammate shouts this while also casting with Empower Tier 1, Thicken Stone Tier 1, Strengthen Stone Tier 1, and Duration Increase Tier 1 all also adding to the spell. The result is a foot thick of solid stone materializing in the hallway in front of me.
My team and I have been fighting for close to 3 hours on and off. We’ve finally managed to get past the first floor of the Starter Village Dungeon. And if that name sounds weird, that’s because we didn’t name it. When the first team of Explorers found a giant boulder with a tunnel and stairs leading into the ground they were surprised. When it had a small placard on it with the name they were even more surprised. We didn’t bother trying to change it because it’s pretty accurate. We had already known that a dungeon would exist here because the guy that kidnapped us told us we had to get to level 100 of the world dungeon. We’re still not sure how dungeons work really because we’ve only just gotten to the third floor of this one.
The Explorers that found it went in of course, and it seemed very much like a standard dungeon from a game or something. There were a lot more monsters in a small amount of space and so they were able to gather a lot of resources right away. But the difficulty of the monsters increased drastically when they found and went down to the second floor. There was a new monster that they lost a member to, and after killing it, they advanced a short distance to see if it was protecting anything.
They had found a couple of these large bubble-like things. When you touch them they pop and something is left on the ground where they were. They had found some pretty good stuff in the couple they found on the first floor. One contained an actual steel short sword, and the other contained 20 experience shards.
Unfortunately, when they found the bubble on the second floor they didn’t notice the trap. Another member of their team died when they were impaled by a dozen spears that shot out of the ceiling. They retreated rather than risk any more people and a large funeral was held for the dead.
Until that point we had only lost one other person when a monster ambushed someone that was just gathering water. After that is when we got the distinction between settlers and explorers. We made sure that the walls we built included the nearby river and had some small farms inside the walls as well as our houses and workshops.
Anyways, the 2 people that died were given a large funeral that everyone attended. We mourned their loss and swore that we’d be more careful in the future. Every death here was irreplaceable so we had to prioritize keeping everyone alive. Luckily the Body Energy that was included with the System was incredible. Most Explorers had put at least a decent amount of experience into BE regeneration rate and max BE capacity. That was we could not only heal faster, but also survive hits that would kill a normal person.
After the spear trap had killed one of our members we did some experimentation. The Body Energy is diffused within the body and previously it had seemed to be able to travel instantly in our body. It turns out that BE does actually take some time to travel from one part of the body to another though. It’s very fast even without putting experience into it, but it seems likely that large and powerful strikes that are very focused can out-damage our baseline BE. That means that someone could die even if they weren’t completely out.
It was suggested that some of the Explorers should take trap disarming and spotting skills as well as improve stats that have to deal with sight and other senses. At least one person per Explorer team should be a trap specialist to help prevent any future deaths from that reason. There were also spells that could help detect traps, so that was also included as a suggestion. On top of that there was a class that seemed relevant, the Rogue. Nobody had saved up enough experience yet to actually get a class so we weren’t really sure how they would help. But it might actually be possible now with the dungeon.
We’d all clearly seen the danger involved, but the other members of the team that survived had had a significant boost in strength. They had been a middle tier Explorer team, and now they were nearly as powerful as the top teams. We all agreed that we should take turns at the dungeon. Teams or individuals didn’t have to take a turn in them, but no one person or team was supposed to spend all their time there. We had a lot of other responsibilities as a group that couldn’t be ignored, so we tried to be fair about it.
Some of the things we were now doing was continuing to hunt monsters for their experience shards and meat. They continued to be some of the best tasting things around. We also discovered that some of the monsters had other useful material. The bones tended to be stronger than normal, and the skin could be used as high quality leather once it was tanned. We also found that one of the monsters was a source of iron.
One of the relatively easy monsters had a large number of quills like a gigantic porcupine. The quills turned out to be about 30 percent iron and we found that we could burn them in a fire which would remove the biological part of the quill, and then put what remained in a forge with some charcoal to create steel.
That was one of the most lucrative things we could collect in the wilds. We didn’t find any magical metals or plants or anything like that, which was a little disappointing.
We also established a simple economy. We elected two leaders, one for the Explorers and one for the Settlers. Between the 2 they directed our entire group at a very high level. We still believed highly in individual freedom and choice and so we prioritized that, but we also had certain jobs that nobody wanted to do. We implemented a tax of one experience shard per week. Then we had jobs that were undesirable that were posted and given a payment. Things like digging latrines and cleaning the old ones were paid highly. Additionally everyone had to contribute 10 hours a week to the group as a whole. These jobs were usually working toward maintaining the whole settlement, or building towards the goals that the leaders set. Things like guard duty, patrolling close to the settlement, construction duty, cooking for everyone, cleaning, and collecting water were all jobs that everyone had to contribute towards.
You could also choose to pay extra tax to get out of this work at a rate of one experience shard per 5 hours less of work. A team of explorers could usually pull in about ten to fifteen experience shards a day, which was then split between the party. Then they’d have the monster bodies and materials that they could sell. The Settlers tended to take less combat related spells and stats and instead focused on other things. As I’d mentioned before they had all sorts of jobs that you’d recognize on Earth. But with the inclusion of magic, even mundane skills and tasks were exciting.
There was a group of three Settlers that ended up opening a restaurant. They would usually cook for their community service, but outside of that time they made food for people to enjoy. The cost of a single experience shard was still pretty high so you’d pay and then portions of that were used to pay for your meals. They had skills from the System that were mundane like cooking, butchering, food prep and cleaning. But they also took skills and spells that allowed them to do incredible things. They could make the food magically taste better, as well as create spices and flavorings that we hadn’t found before. They even had dishes that were very expensive, but could temporarily increase your stats. One of their best sellers was a nutrition bar like food that would increase most of your strength and agility oriented stats by 2, and your BE and mana regen and capacity for about 2 hours. This probably saved some lives because teams were able to boost themselves before a big fight if they needed to.
Another small group of people took spells and skills related to enchanting. They could enchant a sword for example with any number of effects. One of the other most successful groups turning into alchemists. They took skills and spells to create things like health and mana potions. Most of the Settlers chose a specialty and were able to make a good amount of experience as well. The System recognized and rewarded making things, but it was much slower than fighting monsters. Most people would only get two or three from their daily crafting and work. But they exchanged experience shards for their products with the Explorers.
There was always the cost sink of people using experience to make themselves stronger, but you could also use it in the System store. An unexpected but interesting thing was that some of the strongest crafted things we could make as a group required experience shards to create them. This made sense, but it always seemed like there was never enough.
That’s why the dungeon was an incredible find. We finally had a much higher density of monsters to hunt and harvest from. Additionally the bubbles in the dungeon that turned into treasure was an added bonus. We discovered that the first floor was much larger than we initially expected. It seemed to be many miles in diameter, and the monsters within it were very dense. You’d regularly have to fight a dozen at a time, and they usually had the upper hand when it came to the terrain. I don’t know if it was fortunate or unfortunate, but the monsters didn’t come back after being killed. After we cleared the entire first floor as a group we decided to post a guard team, and the rest of us went back to the settlement. We were going to give it time to repopulate or respawn or whatever monsters did. We also were supposed to escort a number of Settlers to the dungeon and they would create a small settlement there. There were only going to be ten of them at first, but more might come later.
The escort mission was super boring because they were so slow, but none of them took any injuries on the way there. We also worked to create the walls and provide a safe place for them until the walls were up. They ended up probably making more money than any Explorer team, but having to pay a premium for something that could save your life was worth it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
This continued for a few months, Explorer teams slowly clearing the dungeon. People got stronger, and we didn’t have any more deaths during this time. There were of course injuries, and some of them were really bad. One guy got cut in literal half, like everything from his wait down. A hurried healing potion saved his life and he recovered in the dungeon settlement for most of that time. Luckily BE would literally regrow your entire body given enough time.
We finally cleared the second floor and our team was the first ones down to the third floor. There was a huge jump in monster lethality from the first to the second floor. As well as introducing traps, so we were expecting this to be really difficult. We had our original seven man team from the final test back on Earth, and we had added another four people as well. We had a dedicated healer, three people were focused heavily on dealing damage from range with either bows or magic. There were four melee people that were focused on holding the monsters back and attacking at closer ranges, and then we had a leader, who could attack in melee or at range. A trap specialist, and a utility specialist. The utility woman was added because we needed someone extra that wasn’t involved in most of our fights, but could create a safer place for us after the fight so we could recover. They also carried a lot of extra gear and supplies so we could stay lighter and faster as a group during a fight. I was one of the melee fighters. I had taken lessons on medieval style weapons and now fought with a longsword. The sword had enchantments to make it lighter for me, but as heavy as normal when it hit something else. I also wore medium armor that was leather on the limbs, but metal on my torso. The chestpiece had an enchantment as well that increased durability and strength so that it was harder to hurt me. Lastly I carried a glass orb that was enchanted to increase my fire magic strength and control, as well as acting as a mana battery. I had a half a dozen spells of various kinds just for fun or utility, but most of my magic was centered around elemental style magic. The System didn’t recognize elemental magic as a thing, but we had all come up with the concept based on fiction from Earth. Things like fire, water, air, and earth. Additionally it could include more oriental themes for elements like blood, wood, metal or lightning.
I focused pretty heavily on fire. I could shoot a decent fireball at this point, which was strong enough to melt the outermost inch of a rock and hit everything within 10 meters of the blast. I also had a fire beam like spell that would create a really hot line of fire that I could sweep around. I had a fire blast-like spell that would use me as the center of a fireball, but I could actually make it avoid hurting me or my allies, and a spell that could coat my sword in fire that would stick to enemies that I hit and continue to burn them like some sort of magical napalm. The last important spell that I had was a haste spell. It wasn’t actually called haste, but it let me speed up my local perception of time so I could perceive the world at about one third of real time, which let me cast spells super quickly, or allow me to make much more precise attacks or blocks.
My team and I woke up early one morning and we saw the first snow since we had arrived here. It was only a light dusting and it was still falling. I decided to take that as a good sign, we were advancing in strength and although it was slower than any of us would have liked, we were getting better. We got a large breakfast at the new restaurant in the dungeon settlement and headed down. As we traveled we continued to follow the chalk marks that we’d all left over time. It navigated us to the stairwell for the second floor, and then we navigated through there to the third floor.
We had more gear than we’d ever had before. Everything from extra food, some of it magical, and water. We had spare weapons, potions of various kinds. Some one use magic tools that would perform pre prescribed spells. We got to the entrance to the third floor and took a collective deep breath.
“We’re ready for this. We’ve trained, we spent all our experience. We’re the strongest we’ve ever been, and we were clearing the last rooms of this floor like they were easy. It won’t be easy down there, and we need to stay alert, but we’ve got this.” Our leader Harold told us, infusing a spell into it to boost our morale, confidence, and stats.
I led the team down the stairways. Some areas of the dungeon had torches or glowing moss, but most of it was dark, and so I had a boosted light spell hovering over my shoulder that would shine forward into the darkness and stay out of my eyes. It was a super small and simple magic tool that only took a trickle of mana, much less than my regen rate.
I see the floor of the next level below me, and I slow to signal the rest of the team. We stay quiet as I sneak a little farther ahead of the group, trusting the trap specialist on our team to warn me of any traps. They have a spell that allows them to perceive through my senses at the expense of their own. It allows our fighters to lead the way without risking falling into a trap as much. We’ve found that monsters sometimes hide right behind traps, and so the squishier trap specialist sometimes gets attacked because they’re usually at the front.
As I reach the bottom of the stairs I can see the room is much larger than any on the higher floors. I can’t see all of the walls, but it’s at least a few thousand feet forward, and I only see the wall the stairs came out of and another wall to my right a few feet away.
I sweep my light ahead of me and don’t see anything so I call the rest of the team down.
“Looks like we won’t be able to cover the entire room at once unless we spread out. I think we should stick together pretty close still. Two melee fighters at the front, one on the outside, and one behind. The rest of us in the center. Keep an eye out. We’ll stick to the wall and do a perimeter.” Harold tells us the plan.
We spread out a little bit and I take one of the forward positions again. We’ve just gotten far enough away that we can’t see the stairs anymore, when a monster charges from the darkness to my right. I can tell it’s moving much faster than any other monster we’ve seen so I cast haste as quickly as I can while I’m turning towards it.
By the time haste takes effect it has already reached our outside melee fighter. Because of the extra time to see more clearly I finally get a decent look at it. It’s a tall thin creature, with long front limbs that seem like a convex blade. They shine with a muted red glow that just covers the sharp edge. The rest of the creature is a tall thin torso that ends in four dagger-like legs that allow it to run at incredible speeds. The legs are also probably deadly if we get too close to it. I can also see the mouth of the creature is overfilled with needle teeth. I’d just bet that if it grows them constantly like a shark.
I swipes at my teammate with one of its sword arms and connects before they can block. The man flies back into the center of our formation and bowls over another person. While this happens the creature charges the lone melee fighter at the back of the group. Most of us are casting spells or attacking at range by now and I’m no different. While I’m running towards the center of the formation to try to protect our less defensive members, I also chant a quicken fire beam spell. It drains quite a bit more to make it this much faster, but I need to prevent it from taking out a second one of us. My spell shoots out and misses behind the monster because it’s so fast. Luckily I can correct it and soon I’m blasting the back of the creature's legs. I’m trying to slow it down to let the rest of my team have an easier time hitting it.
I don’t think it’s doing much damage, but I think it slowed it down a little bit. A few other spells take effect and one of our members’ bow twangs and an arrow flies out and pieces straight through its body. I also see a spell that quickly grows vines from the ground and tries to entangle it. Luckily, Leslie, the melee fighter at the back of the group can get ready. The monster and her exchange a flurry of attacks with us continuing to pour on the damage. I arrive for the end of the battle and between the two of us we keep it off balance and distracted. Finally burying a burning sword in its head I finish it off. We all reset and get back in position to make sure there are no more of them. After a few minutes nothing else attacks, and while we’re watching out the healer is attending to the melee fighter Lance. His armor took a nasty hit and his BE was half drained from that one hit, but he was back up to full strength, with damaged armor soon after.
We ended up dragging the monster into our circle and started dissecting it looking for interesting materials. The sword arms were pretty obviously dangerous so they were removed and stored for when we made the trip back. It had a few bizarrely colored organs, and other things that the Settlers would probably find fascinating. We also found the experience shard inside it, and it wasn’t normal. This one was much larger than normal, so we took great care in storing it as well.
We ended up only clearing the rest of the room and another room. The first room had 3 more of those monsters, and we were actually really lucky with the first one because it didn’t employ their signature strategy for some reason. The rest of them were a pain because they would dash in from the darkness and strike hard and fast, then retreat before we could do much back to it. The saving grace was that they didn’t team up and only one attacked at a time.
The second room contained a monster that was almost anticlimactic in comparison. It was a large slow monster with a really hard shell that could open and allow these tentacles to come out. The tentacles had spines on them that they could swing and hit you with, or they could throw the spines and impale you. Our team just had a much easier time with that one because we set up materialized walls and could peek out and hit it back. It turned into an endurance match, but we outlasted and out hit the monster until it layed broken on the ground.
It also had a number of interesting things. Unfortunately we had to destroy most of the shell just to kill it. It also contained a larger than normal experience shard. When we were about to leave we spotted one of the treasure bubbles.
We remembered the cautionary tale of the first bubble and first trap so we took extra care to check for traps. It was a good thing too because it had two traps, one that was hard to spot, but possible. There was a second trap that activated after the first one, and luckily the tankiest melee fighter was right there to step in front of the trap specialist and block the hit. It did significant damage to his shield, but we finally had our first look at the treasure.
When the bubble popped we were all stunned. It was a pile of the larger experience shards, and scattered in the pile was another 3 crystals that were blue instead of the usual translucent purple. We'd have to go back to the System Crystal to see what they were probably.
We finally packed up and made our way back up to the surface. We had prepared for a long journey, but it turned out to be only for most of the day. We told all the other Explorer teams what we had found, and hopefully that would mean they would be better prepared. We slept the night in the dungeon settlement and headed back to the home settlement. We also divided up the loot and I ended up taking one of the blue crystals as well as a few of the larger experience shards.
I touched the System Crystal after we arrived. Like normal, it welcomed me and presented the menus to spend my experience. I went to the menu where I could turn experience shards into experience. The first thing surprised me, the larger crystals were all worth 20 experience each! The more surprising thing was what the blue crystal was. It gave me a level 1 class!