Walking back and forth, Aki looked at the benefits he'd obtained from being summoned, which were apparently tailored from his own fears and desires.
[Lesser Luck Halo: You gain a small luck correction on how events play around you.]
[Adapting constitution: You gain a minuscule correction for obtaining resistance skills.]
[Sealing resistance Lv 1: You are slightly harder to seal or slow down. Effect rises with level.]
[Ego Lv 3: You are more.]
The first was something every 'hero' was granted, the normal and greater variant generally considered indicators for heroes destined to accomplish more, the second was his desire and the third his fear.
The last one, however, was special. It was supposed to be his 'super power', coming from who he was.
Granted it's name was a bit insulting, but even if he didn't get as good a feel for what this skill did, he understood why it had already leveled up.
From what he could tell, it was certainly something that raised his willpower, the stat itself being his second highest despite how little he considered himself actually having, but it also helped him obtain the control over the dungeon in such overwhelming manner because he was just 'more' than the newly born core.
It had first leveled after he obtained the dungeon, his soul apparently being directly refined by the experience in his perception before his body formed itself through a complex energy construct.
He was fairly certain that during his animalistic rage he'd absorbed much more than just one thing. He knew what four of them were, the men he'd killed before passing, but he could only guess who from the living he'd attacked.
Looking back, there were a lot of cut red strings around, which he could now identify as karma threads. The strange looking goth loli with tan skin was likely a 'shinigami' or the like, sent because he refused to allow things to allow things to flow naturaly. Maybe some other people had already tried to eat the souls around them postmortem, but that didn't actually do anything for their essence. No, it was likely because of how he used his insides like a washing machine rotating in two circles of oposite directions to grind the assaltants before absorbing the remains.
It was anyone's guess if he'd later tried to mawl away at the other three bank robbers or at the hostages. He already had gotten his revenge, so it really didn't mater. They could all go to whatever actually passed as hell for all he cared.
Maybe it was that incompetent jap that was supposed to be here and he just snatched his thunder?
'Let's go with that. He couldn't even die correctly, he didn't deserve the chance.' He thought, touching the scar on his left collarbone. The shallow knife cut went to the right side of his hip, but he didn't really know how close to just dissapearing he actually was, the weapon that little girl had ussed hurting way more than it seemed to actually damage him.
Despite his abilities, however, he'd not gained any pain resistance skill or the like. He could look at his soul with dungeon 'sight', so he knew it was actually healing well enough, barely visible compared to the leaking gash from before. No, this seemed to be something akin to psicological trauma.
The bullet wounds were mere pinpricks compared to the this. The worst part was that instead of making his muscles contract or something, remenbering it just had him passing through what he could only describe as the pure essence of ending and loneliness.
Even now he could feel that if he just reached for it, his soul would simply disperse... Maybe it wasn't really pain that he felt, but something like 'wrongness' instead.
He was quite proud to have left the reaper in the dust, screaming curses as he flipped her and the pillar of light took him away. After an untold amount of time where his rage refused to simmer down, he finally came to this place.
Which he didn't even know the name of. The fairy would only be able to tell him after he leveled up the dungeon once, aparently unlocking a lot of options.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Aren't you tired? You just used the equivalent of twice you mana pool in mere moments." Asked the floating assistant as he cotinued pacing from one side of the cave to the other.
"Of course i am. But how am I supposed to train body reinforcement without moving? Besides, this is clearly making my maximun amount of mana rise, so i just have to keep my curent mana above a hundred twenty percent of my total to do it while also leveling several skills. I need more distractions, so how are the wolves dealing with the new mana everything?" He asked, his legs already feeling like lead as his body burned with the continuos effort to powerwalk his first lap around the small circular room he'd sculpted for the dungeon core.
"Better. I still think you should summon some monsters to defend the dungeon while they are resting or scouting though." She pointed out.
"If it is something that can pass through my simple traps, then there's no diference anything weaker than the wolves would be able to do. No, the pits, wires, rocks and drowned rooms will have to do." He answered before sitting down and seeing that his strenght had increased by one decimal point according to his overlay.
His 'gamble' had really paid off. He could have just chosen a casting or magic crafting class, but he was a fucking dungeon master, he had other ways to obtain destructive power and items. Instead, he chose the basic bitch option of 'warrior'. To which he barely qualified thanks to his conjured body, body enhancement skill and killing the wolves to defend his 'home'. The class had imediatly evolved from 'Warrior (C)' to 'Battle Sorcerer (R)'.
Normal people would have considered him completly crazy from betting on a life-changing decision like that, but he could have done with the shity class till he really needed to change it through the dungeon since he didn't plan to get many levels in it if the evolution didn't happen.
Ultimately, it fused his highest ranking class available with the class that would help his phisical stats the most. His mana was almost double his hitpoints and almost triple his strenght and dexterity scores after all, so he really needed to see some development there.
How had that happened?
Same reason he'd unlocked a rare class so easily, aparently people didn't normally have a magic creature as a teacher of the arcane arts and a hero's benefits. Or flooded their own body and soul with enough mana that they literally damaged themselves in the process. He'd even gained both soul and arcane resistance.
The goal was to get his scores to twenty all around, though he'd likely need to develop some kind of mana manipulation exercises to get dexterity to follow through with the rest. Maybe he'd be forced to buy some exoteric cultivation manual to proceed even farther, but the notion was not worth it.
Neither did he have the patience to try and do more of such tiring training, nor did his class have enough integrity to handle whatever torture he'd pass his soul through in such methods. The amount of development he planned was already close to the limit he could attain without some kind of treasure potion helping him or reaching the second tier.
Aparently people reached platteus at level 20, 50, 100 and 200, though it was clear there were further levels from than on. It was at those points that people either stumped or evolded however. One needed achievements to obtain class evolutions, so some people were unable to even pass the first threshold.
From such information on the usser system, Aki had made several deductions already. He'd been able to infer he was in the human realm through several options available in the dungeon shop, and with such, he could already tell that he had a great chance in front of him.
Humans are cowards made to endure and survive through things with smarts. Finding an outlier to such would be hard even before societal values took root on people. That translated to the lonely him having the chance to dominate the whole place were he to reach level five hundred or so, which would likely need way more than just killing forest critters.
Aki was quite familiar with protagonistic progression, the higher he went the higher he'd need to go in order to keep his superiority. Talent would be something completly unreliable even with his luck bonus if he didn't put hard work in starting from now.
His own training routine would at max let him handle a normal guard of a town, nevermind one in a city. He'd need levels eventually, but his percentage increase through body reinforcement was increasing as he trained, his push up now needing more and more concentration so he'd not dislodge his shoulders on accident.
Thinking people would not have at least this much finesse would be insulting no matter how underdeveloped he estimated actual society to be, so he just needed to reach a height where their own manipulation was simply redundant in his eyes.
If people didn't have inate ability to use magic, then monsters would certainly have, and those would be the one's he'd be hunting, so he needed to push above even them too.
"....Eleven, twelve, thirteen, look elsewhere if my smile is so ugly, fourteen..." Aki told his fairy while begining his sit ups. He'd never been the most atletic or the most motivated, but there was already something great and hungry burning inside of him that made him finally WANT to change that.
"That's not a smile." Pointed out the fairy, though she stayed as there wasn't anything else to do but see her new master hurt himself and let the regenerative field repair him while trying to stimulate his body to heal with blood magic.
*****
"What do you mean someone denied my purchases?!" Asked the booming voice coming out of green wall.
"S... sir, i didn't even know it was possible to attach conditions to purchases." Stammered the pale man.
"BECAUSE YOU ARE AN IDIOT!" Screamed the god at his subordinate, the small man trembling in place. "What you should be looking into is this new dungeon master. If he considers his knowledge to be more dangerous than the points they are worth, then it is even more reason i need to know what this 'Aki' knows." He said, scorn and spit audible through the voice transmission.
"I understand that sir, but..."
"No excuses. Find him. Get me the books. Say i am a Vanir or something." Interrupted the Aesir before hanging up.