"Dungeons are natural pocket dimensions that form when a dungeon core reaches maturity, and while dungeon cores can be claimed before they activate to give the rare class of Dungeon Master, finding an unactivated dungeon core is near impossible, as they tend to form among rocks and give off no traceable signal until the dungeon is formed, thus making the class it grants extremely rare. It should also be noted that while dungeon cores do form sentience after an amount of time ranging from weeks to decades, cores that have been used to acquire the dungeon master class do not form their own sentience no matter how much time passes."
-'On Dungeons' By renowned explorer Nigel Spikeberry.
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Blessed by having a roof for the first time in what feels like months, it was finally something other than the sunrise that woke me up. Unfortunately, my quick adaptation to sleep schedules meant that even without the sun's rays forcefully waking me, I wasn't too far behind them. Being the first one awake of our group, I took a look around the cave we had slept in now, as we had only given it a cursory glance the night before due to tiredness and lack of light from the setting sun.
The cave itself was fairly large, with the 'door' being around 4 meters tall and maybe 2 wide, leading to a large open area that was semi-circular but tapered towards the back, being easily six meters at its widest. There was also an eerie black vortex at the end of the tapered part of the cave, but that's just a trick of the light.
Probably.
Dungeon - The Crystal Cavern Level: 5-10
Or maybe not.
From what I knew about dungeons, or rather what Jason and Jackson had told us, I knew that the entrance to dungeons could come in all shapes and sizes, with the portal type that I am looking at now being one of the more uncommon types. I also knew that a dungeons level showed the level range of all the creatures in the dungeon, including the boss, and that dungeon monsters could not leave the dungeon unless it remained uncleared for multiple months. Also, monsters in the dungeon did not leave corpses behind, their bodies either dissapaiting entirely or condensing into various types of loot, and that the first people to enter a dungeon got largely increased rewards for the first delve and lesser increased rewards for a period of time after. Knowing how big of a deal this was, I quickly woke up the others so that we could discuss what to do.
"First of all, we shouldn't even consider entering until we are all level 5."(Leo)
"Shouldn't we wait until we are level 10?"(Jackson)
"Nah, we should enter around level 5 and only go shallowly and use it to grind to level 10, otherwise we'll spend the whole month grinding turkeys unless we risk going further for higher levels and losing the dungeon."(Jason)
"Yeah, the first time rewards aren't worth the time it would take to get to a high enough level to reliably clear it, we only have 22 days left and given the density of turkeys and the harsh penalties for hunting lower level creatures, we might not even reach level 10 if we stay in the area without delving,"(Mason)
"Fine, but we will run at the first sign of actual danger once we are inside."(Jackson)
With the begrudging approval of Jackson, we quickly made a levelling plan so we could get in the dungeon as soon as possible, although we did have a break in our discussion to start a fire and roast the turkeys that we had from the previous day. Full of anticipation for the first food that wasn't berries or nuts in over a week, we were quickly disappointed from the tastelessness of unseasoned meat, even if it was more filling that what we could forage from the forest, but it was still nice to be actually full for the first time in over a week rather than just barely satiated.
The plan for levelling was about as complicated as all the other plans that we had made, which is to say that it was pretty simple. As the only monsters that we knew were nearby were turkeys, we all assumed that they would be the only things we hunt for a while so we made the plan with that in mind. From our recent fights, we knew that the turkeys were both fast and strong, but they weren't particularly tough and they were very dumb.
As such, Jason and I would have an easy time levelling, as both of us could attack from far enough away for them to die before noticing and getting to us, with me being able to guarantee a one shot kill so long as I invest a large amount of mana while Jason could throw cards fast and quiet enough to get two or three tries at slitting their throat before they can close the distance. Jackson and Leo however, both lacked any kind of ranged skill so they would actually need to fight them.
Since me and Jason were pretty confident in our abilities to take them alone, it was decided that we would attempt to solo the turkeys until we hit level 5 before helping Jackson and Leo do the same. Since it was still fairly early in the day, we decided to set out immediately to try and level me up first due to me being the closest to level 5 out of all of us.
After leaving our cave, being careful to keep the sun at our backs so that we wouldn't get lost, we found a group of two turkeys mindlessly picking at the ground. As this was likely the only fight I would participate in today, I decided to not to hold back and use 100 mana on one attack for each turkey, which would hopefully kill them outright, but would definitely stun them if not.
Carefully approaching the turkeys while making as little noise as possible, I got to the maximum range I could, which was around nine meters at this point, I channeled 100 points of mana while envisioning the lightning bolt that I would shoot, closing my eyes before I willed it into reality to avoid flashbanging myself.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
*KRACKAKOOM*
Seeing a bright flash through my closed eyelids, I opened my eyes and looked towards the last turkey who stared at me after a brief moment of disorientation. Not wanting to give it any more time than necessary, I quickly fired off my second shot towards it, which was noticeably weaker despite using the same amount of mana before running back to where the others were waiting in case any of them had survived, ignoring the developing headache from the rapid use of mana.
After a few tense seconds of waiting for a charge that never came, we approached the turkeys while I checked the system notification that I got after my first attack.
Congratulations, you have defeated a level 5 Turkey X2, you have gained 400 EXP Congratulations, you have levelled up! You have 6 free points to assign Congratulations, for reaching level 5 you have earned the skill [Elemental Meditation]
With the system message confirming my victory, I went towards the now smoking corpses while nursing my head.
"Well, Guess those won't be dinner."(Jason)
The corpses of the turkeys were still distinguishable, but they were undeniably burnt beyond edibility, which was slightly unfortunate. But my level more than made up for it, and while I was expecting to gain a skill, as the AI had said that almost every class will gain a skill or trait at levels 1, 5, and 10, with you immediately gaining all three if you obtain the class after level 10, I was still excited to see what the skill did even if it sounded unsuitable for combat. But reading and testing the skill could wait until later, preferably once I don't have a throbbing headache that made me want to put reading anything on the bottom of my to-do list.
"Alright, now that I am essentially useless in a fight, I am going to head back and test out my new skill."(Mason)
"Ok, be careful on your way back."(Leo)
Giving Leo a dismissive wave as I started heading back, I was nonetheless extremely careful on my way back, as any fight would likely result in my death at the moment, slightly regretting leaving the group but not wanting to go back and embarrass myself. Slowed by both my headache and my caution, it took double the amount of time to get back to the cave as it had to find the turkeys, and while I had regenerated some mana by that point I was still below half and my headache had yet to fully go away.
With nothing else to do, I examined my status sheet, putting my free points into DEX and STR to round them both up to 15 where they would likely stay for a while, and looked at the description for my new skill.
Name: Mason King Race: Human(+6 free points per level) Level: 5 SP: 5 Classes: Elementalist(Rare) Titles: N/A Attunements [Lightning I] EXP: 0 EXP to next level: 1150 Mana: 230/220 Stamina: 150/150 STR: 15 INT: 20 DEX: 15 WIL: 27 END: 15 WIS: 21(+2) Skills: [Elemental Channeling 1/10] [Elemental Meditation 1/10] Traits: [Elementalist]
Skill: [Elemental Meditation 1/10] Through meditation, you can sense the surrounding natural elemental energies and pull them into yourself to raise your affinity with the corresponding element(Range and efficiency increase with level).
The skill was actually something that I had been hoping to get as soon as possible. That is because the way to attune to other elements, or any elements at all if you don't cheat by being given one for free, as well as upgrading current attunements was to have a high enough affinity and/or understanding of said element before bonding or strengthening your bond with it, which supposedly came intuitively once you reach the prerequisites. And as I wasn't going to be understanding the intricacies of the elements in the world around me without several years of experience or study, affinity was the only feasible way to upgrade my lightning attunement or to gain any new ones for the foreseeable future.
With my excitement overwhelming my headache, I quickly sat down in a lotus position to meditate. Thankfully, contrary to popular belief, it was not clearing my mind but rather focusing on the world around me that was the requirement for this particular brand of meditation, and after a few minutes of trying to focus I could feel a new sense open up as the skill activated.
The feeling was hard to describe, it was like seeing without seeing, and while I couldn't make out my surroundings or anything like that I could feel energy flowing around me, kind of like sitting at the bottom of a pool with your eyes closed where you could feel various currents, but each current had a distinct feel to it. My range wasn't very far, but I could make out two distinct energies in it, all emanating from various points in the world and then spreading to their surroundings. While both of the ones I could actually make out were somewhat similar in their feel they were still very distinct so I wanted to absorb both to see what they were, the thicker of the two seemed to emanate from under me and pulling it towards my body it felt stable and rough. Once it was inside of my body and I began the process of absorbing the small sliver that I was able to free from the ground, I got the instinctual understanding that this was Earth.
Absorbing the sliver that I had led to no noticeable change in my body or system, so I moved on to the other energy that was slowly leaking from the end of the cave in small enough amounts that I would've missed it had I not paid close attention. This energy felt smooth and hard, and absorbing it revealed to me that the element it belonged to was Crystal.
Curious about the origins of the crystal element, I broke out of my meditation while facing where it was coming from to find myself facing the dungeon. Which was obvious in hindsight, as the dungeon was named the crystal cavern, nonetheless a little experimentation revealed that the closer to the dungeon I was, though I stayed at least 1 meter away at all times to avoid falling in on accident, the denser the crystal energy was.
Since the skill stipulated that the energy had to be natural, and some experimentation showed that the lightning energy I made wasn't natural, so my choices for which energy to meditate on was between earth and crystal, of course I could always look for areas with other energies, but the chances of finding another safe area nearby was slim. That said, the choice was fairly clear, as even at its densest the earth energy was barely above the crystal energy that leaked out of the dungeon, and since the dungeon presumably had denser energy inside than what leaked out of its entrance, it would be much better to go for crystal as who knew how long it would take me to reach the required affinity with how thin the energy was in this cave, plus I had a gut feeling that crystal would probably be harder to find once the tutorial ended than earth so it was best to take advantage of it while I can.
The fact that I thought that the crystal element was cooler than the earth element was totally not a factor.