I passed by the entrance of the dungeon and I made my way back to where it all began. I stood before the stone shrine -- a bright metallic sigil featured at its top. There's no doubt about it; it was a symbol from the game. I ran through all five of the deific symbols in my head, trying to recall which one it belonged to. After some cajoling I came up with the most certain possibility.

"It's Congeria, God of Chaos."

Congeria was one of the five player deities alongside Amicietia, Animo, Amare, and Lex. They each represented respectively chaos, friendship, courage, love, and law. Congeria sounded more malevolent than the others, but the gods were neither good nor evil. Chaos was typically used to represented freedom, for example. In practice, there was no difference between each of the gods. Well, except for the minor differences in the stats boosts each gave you, I suppose. I rarely chose Congeria when I played, as its bonus was focused on luck, while I normally favored vitality. Outside of specialty builds a power-gamer would rarely choose it.

I knelt before the shrine and assumed the pose I previously tried in the town. This time I attempted to keep the symbol and image of Congeria in my mind. It was different this time; it felts like my consciousness drifted away. I could "see" myself, but not with my eyes. What was it? It was aether. I could see the aether within my own body, and its division in my body parts. There were different concentrations in my head, heart, muscles, nervous system. The vision is so precise it's quantifiable. I realized that this was my "stat menu." These are the divisions and the make-up of my own self. If I had to put it into numbers, I'd be something like:

Vitality 10

Strength 10

Dexterity 10

Intelligence 11

Luck 12

By adding my collected aether to my body, I should be able to level-up. I could tell from the amount that I had enough to increase a single attribute by one. This reminded me of my Spirit of Darkness days, where I could spend half an hour indecidedly wondering how to allocate my points most efficiently.

In this case it appears my body did not make much progress before I got it. A player typically started with stats around 10. 18 was considered the peak of humanity, and 25 was the realm of monsters and superhumans. That's only for the lore, of course, as the player was able to go much further than that. It's needless to say that leveling up required more and more aether as one grew stronger, so even early on making a bad investment would be costly.

My preferred playstyle in the game was melee-only. I normally pumped vitality, with some amount of strength and dexterity dependent on the primary weapon I chose. In this context, however, it would likely be suboptimal. I want to keep my options open and experiment with everything this world has to offer. If I had a single point to spend, there is indeed an optimal choice: put it into intelligence. An intelligence of 12 was an important breakpoint; it allowed you to memorize a single spell. Even for pure melee specialists, it was a good idea to pack at least one spell.

I transferred the aether and slowly opened my eyes. I was the same place as before, in front of the shrine. The skull looked on curiously.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"I'm a wizard now." I said.

"....what?"

I reached into my bag and picked out a blank book and a pen. In Spirit of Darkness, learning spells was a rather laborious process. You had to venture the land and pick up mystical runes. Then you had to purchase recipes, which represented a sequence to put those runes in. Once you wrote down the sequence of runes in your spellbook, you memorized them and were able to cast them, with the amount and complexity dependent on the player's intelligence.

But I had an idea. What if you already knew the runes, and the sequence they went in for each spell? The player couldn't sequence-break like that, since as a video game character, they had to follow the intended script. But what if a player used those runes so often, he could recall and draw from memory? It would have to be somebody incredibly dedicated, obsessive and stupid even. These are meaningless runes that have no value outside of this context we're talking about. Well, it just so happens I'm that kind of stupid and obsessive guy. It's there's one thing I'm confident in, it's my skills as a Spirit of Darkness player. Of course, even I can't recall the more complex spells, but the most basic ones should be a piece of cake.

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I opened the book and wrote down the first line. It was a sequence of three runes, representing the most basic spell in the game: "Mana Bolt". I carefully looked it over and memorized it, closing my eyes for a good measure. Then I brought my outstretched palm forward and recalled the runes.

"Mana bolt."

As I chanted the words, a speedy blue ball of light shot out of my hand and hit the stone wall. Dust was blown off the wall, leaving slight char marks. It wasn't the strongest spell, but it was quick and versatile.

"Holy moley, you are a wizard! But question: why did you yell out the spell's name? Wizards don't usually do that," he asked.

"Oh, I just thought it would look cooler."

With this new tool I felt renewed confidence. This might be enough to continue exploring this dungeon.

"Calvar, do you know what further enemies this dungeon contains? Are there only undead, or perhaps some kobolds too?"

The skull clunked its jaw.

"How am I supposed to know? I spent all my time here stuck behind a boulder. You're the wizard here, so you should be telling me!"

As usual, he was not very helped. The reason I asked is that depending on the enemy type, a different spell might be more useful. Lacking any advance knowledge I have no choice but to make my way forward and adapt to what I encounter.

I made my way to the room with the boulder. The corpse of the zombie I killed was easily seen, and the second of the zombies was still engaged in its monotonous routine. This seemed like an excellent opportunity to gather more aether.

"Calvar, is it okay if I practice my combat skills on Stacey?"

"Who?"

"...Stacey. You know, her." I pointed at the nearby zombie.

"Oh, Stacey! Sure, whatever. Nobody is gonna miss a brain-dead zombie. What kind of loser would get attached to one of those?"

The skull stayed silent for a moment, before it put on a puzzled face.

"Man, this is giving me deja-vu. I wonder why?" he said.

Since he did not mind, I began my assault with a mana bolt. It made the zombie take notice and chase after me. As I thought, magic projectiles weren't especially effective on bare fleshy targets like these. Magic damage was most useful against hard armor or scales, wherever melee weapons had a difficult time piercing their target. With that in mind, I finished it off with my spear. As with the previous zombie, it was far too dumb to counter it, and quickly fell by my hands.

"Wow, you're an unstoppable beast! We should call you Eren the Zombie Slayer! Or Eren the Skeleton Decapitator! I think that fits you best."

"Are you still mad about that?"

"Mad? No, of course not. What kind of person would be mad just for getting their head chopped off? You need to be more open-minded, Eren. Not everybody is as petty as you."

The comment was likely promoted by his nearby skeletal body. I passed by it to descend the stairs to the second floor of the dungeon. As I did, it reminded me of an important fact: this dungeon has traps. Unless I wanted to end up the same as Calvar, I needed to watch out for any hidden contraption.

The second floor before me was a straight hallway. Immediately warning flags went off in my head. I explored enough of these dungeons to know where dangers and traps could be laid, and this hallway was just one location. I made my way forward, carefully tiptoeing along. Then I found the culprit: a trigger rope stretched across at foot level. I looked for any possible locations for a boulder, and found one as well: a hole in the ceiling up ahead. Any reckless adventurer would trigger this rope and be mercilessly crushed by the boulder trap!

I stealthily made my way forward past the hallway and reached an open room. This seemed to be the penultimate room of this dungeon, as just up ahead there was was large double door. Guarding it were two figures. They were skeletons, armed with swords, their eyeless sockets glowing red. I knew a dreadful fight was awaiting me.