"I'm looting a dead body. He won't need the weapon and the food anymore." Daniel responded while he stood up with the dagger in his hand.
"Good, it looked like you wanted to fuck a corpse." The red haired woman replied.
Human - Level 4
The woman was young and looked tired. Her clothes were almost more bloody than his own. However, her direct way of talking was reassuring. A person who was manipulative or backstabbing was normally a lot more polite. She looked familiar to him. A pale face with some freckles and long red hair bound into a pony tail. Then it hit him.
"Did you play Ygritte in Game of Thrones?" Daniel asked with a smile.
"No, I did not! I am only 19, and was only twelve or so when that season was made. But, you aren't the first one to ask." She answered annoyed.
"You look like you could use a break. The cave behind me and the surrounding ones are clear of enemies. My name is Daniel Krieger by the way." Daniel grinned and extended his hand to her.
She shook it.
"Anna O'Leary"
You have met another dungeon traveler. You can create a party and all XP will be split to each party member.
"So Ms. O'Leary, any objection against teaming up? I don't know about you, but the largest group of goblins I face until now was 13. There are probably even larger groups out there. Fighting them alone would be a bit risky." Daniel suggested.
Anna O'Leary wants to enter your party.
Accept/Decline
He accepted and they made their way back to the cave Daniel had come from. When they arrived, Daniel saw that Anna was focusing on using an elemental spell. He was on edge for a moment until he noticed that she wasn't looking in his direction.
Water condensed out of the air and started to gather around her. It started to spin around her body and it took all of the blood, dirt and grime with it. Anna smiled when she was finished and clean again. Daniel was a bit jealous. He hadn't washed for almost six days and with all the sweat and blood he felt really disgusted by his own appearance. He decided to take a risk.
"Nice spell - Water magic. I thought about getting it myself in hope for healing magic, but decided against it because I didn't think you could create water from nothing and wasn't sure if there was enough humidity in the air everywhere in the dungeon."
"Smart, I didn't think about that. But, up to now I was lucky to find enough water in the air and in an emergency, I can use water out of bottles. I didn't get a healing spell, but I have one to clean and disinfect your wounds." Anna replied.
"Would you care to use that cleaning shower on me and to disinfect the wounds on my arm and leg?" Daniel pointed at his injuries.
"You are very trusting. I could use a spell to kill you instead of cleaning you." She responded with a mischievous smile.
Daniel hesitated for a moment. Then he smiled back.
"I don't think so. While you might get some experience for my head, there is probably a penalty for killing party members. In addition, you are level 4, that means you have seen a bit of the dungeon and should know that our chances are a lot better together than alone.
"You really think things through don't you?" She responded while shaking her head. She then started her spell.
"Yes, sometimes I'm annoyed by it myself and wish to be more spontaneous. But I guess, with the system and life or death situations everywhere, it's better than acting on impulse." Daniel responded with a shrug of his shoulders.
The water spell hit him and it felt good. A few moments later he was clean and felt like a human again.
"Thank you." He said while his mood had improved a lot.
"You're welcome, but we're not finished, yet. The spell for the wounds is a different one and it needs to be applied directly to the wound." She explained.
Daniel nodded and started to remove his fencing gear.
"You know, you are really lucky to come here with all those protection and a saber. I was chopping wood for my mom and only have this hatchet." she showed him an old looking hatchet she'd removed from her inventory.
"Well you know, you could've been worse off. I encountered a dead body that only had a baseball bat." Daniel responded while not mentioning the fact that he was responsible for the man being dead.
After removing his gear, Daniel removed his shirt to give her better access to the wounds and to show off a bit.
"Nice abs. Yes, you are right. I found a poor girl that only had a tennis racket. It seems like this system randomly summoned people from earth who had a weapon or something that could be used as a weapon in the proximity." Anna explained.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Daniel thought about this for a moment while she looked after his wounds and concluded that she was right.
"Seems that way. I found a man with a knife and pistol, a woman with a bow, the man with the baseball bat, another man with a large knife and the man with the long dagger where you found me." Daniel summarized his encounters, while leaving out a few important details.
"Shit, five dead people. I encountered only the tennis girl and a man with a chainsaw." Anna said.
"A chainsaw?" Daniel coughed.
"Yes, sounds awesome, but in reality it sucks. I almost died when I used it on a small group of goblins. While I killed the first one, it got stuck and the others wounded me. After that fight, my health was down to 30% and I needed two days to recover. Thankfully I still had the safe zone." Anna explained.
"Yeah, that sucks. My saber was blunt at first and I wasn't careful so it too got stuck. But thankfully I had my gear and the goblins didn't do much damage because of that." Daniel agreed.
"So you have a sharpening tool? Can you give it to me, my axe could use it." Anna asked hopefully.
He gave it to her, thought for a moment and then asked:
"Any interest in one of the other weapons I mentioned?" Daniel asked.
"A pistol sounds nice, but I guess it's like the chainsaw. These goblins are small and hard to hit and you only have so much ammo. I don't think I'm good with a bow and I got a skill that supports me in fighting with slashing weapon." Anna answered.
"Yeah, I got one of these for sword fighting. Probably a good idea to stick to one weapon type in the long run and to not fill all the skill slots with weapon skills. Do you have any other skill that could be useful for me? I just reached level 5 and got a new skill slot." Daniel inquired.
"I only have one other skill that reduces cost and casting of my fixed mana spells. It doesn't help with channeled spells where the amount of mana used is variable with the duration or power of the spell though."
"I have only created spells that aren't that specialized and need to be channeled. But, the idea has merit. I should probably try to create a skill that improves the speed and efficiency of my mana channeling. If you want a suggestion for a third skill I can recommend self improvement and meditation to you." Daniel suggested and then explained her his thought process behind his skill selection.
"You are right. Our dungeon traveler perk can probably make us very powerful in the long run, if we survive. Without the safe zone, self improvement is not very useful right now. But, I think meditation sounds good. I achieved most of my kills with magic anyway." Anna decided.
With that they sat down and both of them concentrated to create the skill they wanted. Daniel created a Windshield around him and kept it active. When he ran out of mana, he started to meditate to refill. Anna emptied her mana supply by shooting thin water jets at the wall. Where they impacted, they left small holes a few centimeters deep.
They were interrupted by a group of five goblins entering the room. The goblins were like most of the rest they'd encountered at level 3. Daniel and Anna didn't even stand up. They just used a water jet and an Air bomb to kill the goblins.
"Nice spell. Makes a mess though." Anna observed.
"Yeah and it takes a bit to cast. Yours is good it's faster and probably cheaper." Daniel explained.
After that, they had no more visitors until both of them finished creating their new skills.
Skill gained: Channeller (passive) - Rank Novice 0%
Increases speed when channeling mana, reduces costs, makes channeling multiple spells at the same time easier
After the training, Daniel explained their situation and the prompt he got when he tried to leave the dungeon.
"So it said dungeon level. That means there is a high chance that there are more than one. Do you think some people were summoned to lower levels?" Anna summarized their situation.
"Shit. Yes, probably. Nothing I've seen here led me to believe that fairness plays any role in the decisions of the system. Look at me for example, I have full gear while the girl you've met had only a tennis racket." Daniel cursed.
"Maybe, they got a longer safe zone period. Anyway, we can't do anything about it and they are strangers. We should focus on our own survival. In every story I've read, each dungeon level had a boss. Probably some monster goblin or something. How much food do you have?" She asked
"I think it should be enough for 30 days for one person. I've gained a lot from the corpses I found." Daniel answered after checked his inventory.
"I have food for around 20 days. I think we should keep going. If something is too strong, we run and maybe train a few days." Anna suggested.
Daniel agreed after thinking about it.
"The alternative would be to look for a quiet place and train our attributes. But, we don't know how much food we need when we leave the dungeon and another traveler or group could reach a higher level than us while we trained. Then we would have to depend on their goodwill. I prefer to control my fate with my own hands." Daniel declared with conviction.
With that said, they started to keep exploring the dungeon. When they encountered the first enemies, Anna showed him another spell. She condensed the water in the air around the goblin group and turned it into acid. While it didn't kill the goblins, it hurt them a lot and most of them couldn't focus enough to put on a serious resistance.
Their battle tactic against larger groups developed to Daniel opening the fight with an Air bomb, then Anna used her Acid Cloud. After that Daniel word enter the melee first with his left to the tunnel walls, while he cut down goblins with his saber his right hand. Anna fought two meter behind him on his right side. She picked out goblins that tried to flank Daniel with Water Jets while Daniel used Air wave to throw goblins onto the ground if too many gathered to attack Anna. With the narrow tunnels, this tactic worked very well. They killed over a hundred goblins in the next hours, only pausing to meditate and regenerate their mana pool and to grab a bite.
While they've encountered some caves that looked like they'd been safe zones, with parts of modern furniture still in them, they only found two dead human bodies that had already been looted. The good news was that they both leveled up and some of his attributes increased from all the fighting.
"Let us call it a day. I'm exhausted and I need to decide what skill to create after the level up. How long did it take you to create self improvement? It won't be useful immediately, but the next skill is only at level 15 and that is a long time away with level 3 goblins as opponents."
"Hmm, maybe two hours? It wasn't very long and you are right. The amount of goblins we have to kill for a level up has grown a lot. You're right, let's call it a day. We can share guard duty and the one on guard can keep training."
Anna looked a bit nervous when he suggested sharing guard duty. They were still strangers and it was a large risk for a young woman as beautiful as her to trust a man she didn't know very well.
"Ok, you can take the first guard and if you decide that you can't trust me, you can murder me instead of waking me up." Daniel suggested in a joking manner to calm her down.
Anna blushed, it seemed like he was right and she didn't fully trust him. Daniel didn't feel much different, but logically there was nothing to gain and a lot to lose for her if she attacked him in his sleep. He was not afraid that she would jump on him and steal his virginity. On the one hand, he had lost that some time ago and on the other he would welcome an advance from her. Well, as long as she didn't have some weird and disgusting sex fetishes.
"Thank you for your trust. I will not disappoint it." she responded to his joke in a serious tone.