“We found out why that Dungeon was down in the sewers.”

It had been about a month since Damien’s foray into the forest around Lamora with Leon, leaving the two with a little less than six months to get prepared for the Adventurer Trials. They had come some way in their combative Skills too, and though Damien sensed he wasn’t close to evolving his, he did feel that he was gradually getting closer to that point. Still, while it had been two months since his foray into the sewers, he could still remember the absolute fear of facing down the boss of the Dungeon, several levels higher and degrees more powerful. It was the closest he had come to death since he’d arrived on Xaunis, and he would not soon forget that fact.

Still, this wasn’t a development that he’d expected to get updated on, especially not now. He had mostly been focusing on getting stronger, preparing for the Adventurer Guild Trials, and hanging out with his friends whenever he could, though, strangely enough, he had never found a way to get Leon and Felicia to properly meet. Their schedules were just entirely out of whack, though it seemed that they were at least excited at the prospect of hanging out. But now… well, he couldn’t exactly deny the fact that the Canis had gained his full and undivided attention, his dinner now entirely forgotten.

“Who?” he asked, half scared, half angry. Though months had passed since the sewer encounter, he knew for a fact that what had happened in the Dungeon was deliberate, especially towards the end. The boss’ eyes had not been normal. It was like something had possessed the thing, driving it around like a puppet until Damien had managed to put it down for good. It was unsettling.

“While we don’t have the exact specifics, we do know the organization responsible, though we’re keeping it on the down-low, for now. I thought, since you were directly involved, that you had a right to know.” He seemed to hesitate a bit, his lip curling slightly at the thought of the perpetrators, as though in disgust. “They are known as… the Cult of the Apocalyptic Dungeon. And they are bad, bad news.”

“That… is a very try-hard name if I’ve ever heard one.”

Corbyn gave a humorless chuckle at Damien’s comment. “I know. Still, the irony of the name isn’t all that funny anymore. They are dedicated to a certain religious ideal so old that no one’s quite sure where it came from. The most widely accepted reading of it lays out that, one day, when monsters roam the world like the tide of an ocean, a certain Dungeon will appear. This dungeon is a sign of tumultuous chaos and untethered change, and it will reshape the face of Xaunis as it sees fit.

“Or at least, that’s how the story goes. No one really knows how accurate it is, since a lot of prophecies have turned out to be complete bullshit over the years, but enough of them believe it to the point that they’re willing to throw themselves on their altars for it. Still, whether it’s true or not, they’re a real threat. In fact, they’re recognized internationally as a terrorist organization.”

“… and… they spawned a Dungeon down in the sewers?” Damien asked, suddenly far more concerned than he had been just a minute ago.

“We’re not sure,” Corbyn admitted. “We think they’ve found a way to gain control of newly formed or freshly forged Dungeons, but I’m not sure they’ve come up with a way to create their own yet. Otherwise, they’d be much more of an obvious threat than the consistent but manageable one we know them as today. Anyway, be cautious. And let Leon know too. He should know what kind of danger he might be in.”

Damien nodded, smiling at the reminder of his friend. The two of them had gotten all the way to Level seven through their excursions into the forest, which usually happened every other week. Though they didn’t always find enough monsters to gain full Levels for their efforts, they still managed to find the time to push the both of them to Level seven, even if Leon had insisted on fighting a few monsters solo to get to Damien’s Level on his own.

At the thought, he pulled up his Status once more, though he focused on only bringing up his Spell, Ability and Skill lists. It was a little trick that he used every now and again, if he wanted to focus on something specific and didn’t want his vision cluttered with too much information. It wasn’t something he did too often, but it was nice to have the option nonetheless.

[Spells]

| Shadowbolt (Common) | Shadow Blast (Uncommon) | Imbue Spell (Rare) | Invocation (Epic) | Shadow of the Night Wolf (Ancient) | Chains of Tartarus (Unique)

[Abilities]

| Shade Sense (Uncommon) | Shade Strike (Uncommon) | Shade Stitch (Uncommon) | Imbue Ability (Rare) | Bloodcasting (Epic)

[Skills]

| Identify (Common) | Adept Swordsmanship (Uncommon) | Adept Unarmed Combat (Uncommon) | Mediation (Uncommon) | Acrobatics (Uncommon) | Thrown Weapons (Uncommon) | Stealth (Uncommon) | Mana Control (Rare) | Engraving (Rare) | Runic Script (Rare) | Imbue Mana (Rare) | Imbue Stamina (Rare)

He had also gained a few new Spells, Abilities and Skills, both from Corbyn and Regina. Shadow Blast was a more advanced form of using Umbra Mana in combat, though it acted a lot more like a shotgun blast than a fireball. Still, he was happy for it, since it gave him more options at close range and gave him a ‘get the fuck away from me’ option. Shade Stitch was much different, and was, perhaps, the only instance in which Damien saw Umbra healing anything. While he knew that it wasn’t possible for people with Umbra to heal, he knew that it was much harder than it was with more suitable Affinities. Still, it worked well in a pinch, and amazingly well as a mid-fight patch-up job.

Imbue Mana and its counterpart, Imbue Stamina, were two Skills that Damien particularly liked. Primarily the former, since it also helped him to make even more gains through his Mana Control Skill. He doubted he would evolve it anytime soon - it was at Rare rarity as its base, and so was Imbue Mana, but he felt the progress, slow though it was. He had also managed to use Imbue Spell on a stone, putting Shadowbolt and allowing anyone else who used the item to cast the Spell once. Granted, Regina said that it was a crappy item, but that his progress was still nothing to sneeze at.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

By contrast, Damien could barely understand Imbue Stamina on any level beyond just using it. Maybe it was because, as a Traveler, he was more inclined towards the magical side of things than the spiritual, but he had learned that there was an equivalent to his Mana Control Skill for Stamina, called Stamina Manipulation. Though he had tried to learn that one too, Corbyn had quickly told him that, at this point in his growth, it was an exercise in futility, especially since it seemed like Stamina was a much more foreign concept to him than Mana. Subsequently, he wasn’t quite as far along in Imbue Ability, being entirely unable to force Shade Strike or Shade Stitch into an object, as of yet.

“Damien? You still in there, buddy?”

The Traveler quickly snapped himself out of his funk, quickly finding himself back outside his head. Corby just chuckled at his slightly confused look. “Get lost in thought again?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Damien said with a sheepish smile. “I guess it’s become something of a compulsion for me to look at my stuff. Like it might disappear or something. I know it won’t, but it still feels like a possibility.”

“Well… can’t say I’m entirely surprised. But then again, I also don’t really know what your situation is like beyond secondhand information. So, uh… feel free to talk to me, if you need to. I can’t promise I’ll totally understand, but I can promise I’ll listen.”

“… thanks.”

The rest of the night went by in relative silence, though Damien’s thoughts always tended to come back to that Cult. He would have to read up on them at some point. Even if they hadn’t been involved in almost killing him and Leon, they just sounded like bad news. Who the hell named themselves the Cult of the Apocalyptic Dungeon and expected to not be taken at face value for a doomsday cult?

----------------------------------------

Travian Denari was incredibly bored. Ever since the incident with the Dungeon in the sewers, he had been put on the bench, so to speak. He wasn’t entirely sure why, either. He had explained the whole situation to them, and the fact that there had been a Shade Hunter trainee in there who had managed to pull out a Spell he didn’t know about, but that only seemed to make things worse. Since then, almost three months had passed, and he had only gotten occasional missives confirming that he was, indeed, still on the proverbial bench.

So, of course, he had stayed in the relative comfort of his family’s mansion in the northern part of Lamora. Truth be told, it was the only side of the city he could stand for any extended period of time. He had only gone south for so long because the Cult had commanded it of him, because it was necessary to spawn the Dungeon there, and Travian was nothing if not loyal to those who had lifted him up.

Even so, he did feel that his Level was starting to stagnate slightly. It was a part of his punishment, a part of his failure to keep the Dungeon secured, but it was one that he had gladly accepted, even if he thought that the fact that the Shade Hunter pulling out a bullshit Spell to begin with should have rendered his punishment moot.

So, of course, he trained with the sword. Travian had always been a swordsman at heart, ever since he had picked one up at the tender age of eight. Despite his inability to access the Swordsmanship Skill, he was still a natural with the blade. His instructors had named him a prodigy, and they had not been incorrect. After his Awakening had been completed, he had truly excelled, thrusting his Swordsmanship all the way to Epic rarity over the course of four long years before he had eventually learned a proper Martial Art. Even then, he had excelled, learning three of the seven techniques in only a year, though he had since come to something of a roadblock in his progression. This was expected, since he had yet to reach Level fifty, but he still felt that it was a bit too slow for him.

Of course, that was when his brother had to come into the picture. Willan was many things that Travian was not. Where he was aware of the limitations of his own strength, his brother tended to get caught up in his own little fantasies of superiority, and no one in their family seemed to have the heart to knock him down a peg. He had tried to learn a similar style of swordsmanship to Travian, but unlike him, Willan was not a natural with swords of any kind. He would know. He had tried to teach the boy, but found his lack of meaningful progress… dissatisfactory. Like he was making motions with a blade that was inherently too long for him to handle.

That was the other thing about his little brother he absolutely hated. His ability to sneak around, when he wasn’t talking out his ass, was legitimately good. If only he could shut up about himself for five minutes, he might have recognized the fact that he had such a talent for being light-footed and never bothered to make use of it.

“Good evening brother,” Willan said as he stepped onto the sparring grounds of their family estate, a dueling sword at his side. The tips and edges had been blunted, of course, since they were only meant to leave bruises, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t kill. Travian had checked. As it turned out, an object didn’t need to be particularly sharp in order to pierce through someone’s eye unless their Constitution Stat was absolutely ridiculous. Besides, it had been in self-defense. Why wouldn’t he react the way he had to someone pulling a dagger on him?

“Evening,” he said back, not bothering to fully come out of his practice. “What brings you here tonight? As you can see, I am busy at the moment.”

“… I think I may not be cut out for Swordsmanship.”

The admission gave Travian genuine pause. This was not like his little brother. Not at all. He turned to the young man, finding him glancing down at the ground in silent shame. The two were alike in looks, although Travian’s own hair was longer and his eyes slightly redder, but they weren’t much alike in terms of personality. This was odd on several levels.

“What do you mean?” Travian asked, genuinely interested, and even a little concerned, Though he had no particular love for Willan, he was still his little brother.

“When I went to the forest, I… I met someone who is similar in power to me. And he… he managed to defeat me on every pass. I never even managed to land a single blow on him. It was like… he was a shadow. And I could not find a way to strike, no matter how hard I tried.”

The vampire sighed, pitying his brother, From the sound of it, he had gone up against someone with the Umbra Affinity. A rare case, for sure, but Travian had fought their kind before, but only on a select few occasions. Though many of them preferred Dexterity as a primary Stat, the ones who chose Strength were no less slippery in their movements. Perhaps it was just the nature of their Affinity shining through despite their Stats.

“Truth be told, little brother, I would not place too much concern upon it,” Travian said. “Your defeat, at least. It happens to the best of us. Even I do not have a perfect record.”

It was true. Though he was a prodigy, Travian had not bested his master on the first day. Instead, it had taken him a scant two years, finally besting the man at age ten. A fluke to most, but a sign of his prodigal nature to Travian.

“But you also mention feeling some discomfort with your current weapon of choice?”

Willan nodded. “I feel as though this blade is too long for me. Like it’s holding me back. I know that reach with this kind of weapon is an advantage, but it just… it’s never felt quite right. I might… I think I might like to take up the dagger. It’s always felt better to me, for some reason.”

This gave Travian legitimate pause. Again, though he held no particular love for Willan, he would still protect his little brother from any that sought to harm him. Even their own parents. That was his role, after all. Their parents wouldn’t like it. The family was meant to be seen as perfect in every way, and the fact that Willan’s defeat hadn’t reached their ears yet was a miracle. Still, this would not sit well with them. But…

“Would you mind if I assisted you in that endeavor?”

“… I would be honored.”

It was always more fun to fight someone at their full strength.