I had a hard time understanding why the dungeon was back. We had cleared it and the System even acknowledged it. Lebil said that it would take a while to become normal again, but maybe there was enough corruption to reform?

Looking at the bright side, me coming here had been a good thing. If it was a dungeon once more, the risk of someone finding me had become almost none.

After stepping inside, I found a quiet neck of the woods and took the opportunity to finally go over all the System alerts that I had been ignoring. Turned out, most of them were unanswered messages from Claudia.

I filtered out all her messages, and I was left with only four alerts left.

Claudia had send the payment for my services; 3 Lup. I'd have to discover how much that was worth. What worried me was the next message up.

[[Corrupted Divinator] has been terminated]

“What?”

I stared at the message for a bit too long, trying to draw my own conclusions of what had happened. It did open a pocket dimension to some other place, which should have been a great feat and not a punishment. Corrupting something that was already corrupted; it was extraordinary, wasn’t it?

Dejected, I went to the next message.

[Corrupted Divinator] functionalities do not account for the given use.

The System has decided to terminate the contractual obligations to uphold the class.

*Error, class cannot be removed.*

My breath accelerated with my pulse. I knew I still had a second class. I somehow knew it was there, as if it made me complete. I could have spoiled the fun by looking at my status, but I decided to check the last message and find out whatever had happened.

[Corrupted Class Book] readjustment in progress.

[Corrupted Divinator] -> {The Third Eye of Corruption}

I couldn't hold anymore from looking at my status and expanding the information I had available.

{The Third Eye of Corruption}

The System is unable to provide information about user-created classes.

After some initial confusion, I broke into a state of pure ecstasy. I jumped into the air, flipping at wherever Bob was looking from, and I laughed like a madman.

It took me some minutes to regain control over myself, but I eventually managed to do the only next logical step.

“Summon [Corrupted Class Book].”

I browsed through the pages, soon realizing that [Corrupted Divinator] was still there but greyed out and stricken over.

The class was now unavailable. Lost forever. I kept on reading, and it didn't take much longer to find what I needed. The bright gold color of the page was an impossible to miss hint.

{The Third Eye of Corruption}

Your attunement to corruption has breached the first threshold. You are the embodiment of corruption, and you can spread and magnify it.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Your third eye can now sense sources of corruption.

Whether you clean them or empower them is a choice that only you can make.

Skills merged

  - [Advanced Corrupted Bloodshaper] :: [passive] Enemy Sense

  - [Corrupted Divinator] :: [Area Divination] 

And upgraded to:

[Third Eye]

Corruption, enemies, System information, environment. To you, all of it is the same: a manifestation of power and magic.

Passively pulses around you every one second to gather all System and non-System information.

Can willingly spend energy to increase frequency and/or range.

I brought my hand to my forehead and felt my skin. The sigh of relief when I didn't find any real third eye was immense. Just picturing the abomination I would have become sent a cold sweat all over my body.

A golden page. User-created class. Non-System information.

I was shacking from pure emotion and excitement. I had to try it—all of it. Immediately.

I spent close to 200 energy just for a pulse. The longest I had ever sent. And, by a huge margin, the hardest to both control and analyze. I covered barely enough to reach the main building’s entrance. Everything between me and it flashed in my head. I felt every speckle of corruption eating at the world.

Like bugs, they were gnawing on animals and objects alike. A type of biting and fiddling that could only be described as fascinating. Bob had told me that corruption was a weird adjective that this word attached to this phenomenon. I had dismissed it without even considering it.

But he had a point.

Material, immaterial, live, dead, everything affected by the bugs was being changed. They danced on a fine line between improving and disappearing. Seeing the line was easy; as was observing the consequences. A monster being born or the animal combusting into dust.

But seeing one thing does not mean comprehending it. Turning a living being into a monster was completely out of my reach. Through hard work and training, my future me would; I was sure.

Right after I am done with the [Oracle], when my debt to Yasmin is paid, I will master it.

I saw everything. Including the packs of disarranged wolves studying me from far away.

“I am not the prey here, you are!”

I gave myself impulse with my energy and darted towards the nearest group of five. I knew how they acted and what they did, so I was going to gain the upper hand.

The first howls came as soon as they sensed something wrong. I had disappeared from their sight and now they could smell me. Agitation was clear.

I landed in front of the biggest wolf, an [Ignis Wolf], and sent a thin blade of solid energy crashing down towards its neck.

I was running already to the next one when I heard the thud of its head bouncing on the cold stone.

I ignored the System message as I used [Fusion] to cast a bullet of compressed energy to my left—right were a wolf was sneaking to me.

I crashed into the third wolf with a drill-shaped cone of energy I had prepared while running, tearing it open in an agonizing cry of pain.

The remaining two were pushing forward in a reckless attempt to kill me.

“That won't happen.”

I sent two solid arms of energy right towards them. While they tried to evade, and up to a certain point they did, it didn't stop them from coming crashing down.

I quickly finished them with accurate strikes to their hearts.

Definitely much easier this time around!

The whole point of the exercise was to try out new things. I had come to realize—admittedly a bit late—that my class was supposed to create shapes. Complex shapes.

My crude solid chunks of energy didn't even begin to classify as a shape. I called them arms, but that didn’t make them any more real. I needed finer control. Blades. Drills. Energy weaponized into shapes that could kill.

I went deeper into the dungeon, killing as many wolves as I encountered; which was surprisingly in the hundreds. If it was the same dungeon as before, why was there such an abysmal difference in numbers?

Many unchecked notifications after, I was standing in front of the building. For a while, I had been suspicious that whatever was wrong had to be there. The source had been inside the first time, so it made sense that it still was.

I sent a big pulse; my suspicions quickly confirmed. There was something wrong, besides the fact that the dungeon was back.

And the reason was inside.