> Soul Eater, demon’s fang

> Description: As a powerful weapon created by legendary beings, Soul Eater is a living weapon made of an extremely rare and incredibly durable material. Although the weapon’s true capabilities are still a mystery, one thing is certain: it needs to be constantly fed. Take lives and consume their essence to sustain Soul Eater! Side effects may include hallucination, emotional instability, lowered inhibitions, schizophrenia, mental instability, loss of self.

> Perk – Ever-consuming: level 2

> Soul Eater grows as you feed it. This perk doesn’t have a level cap.

> Perk – Free Form: level 3

> You can change Soul Eater’s shape.

> Perk – Autonomous: level 4

> Being a living weapon, Soul Eater can make decisions on its own.

“Living weapon, is it?” I muttered. There was a small locket icon next to the Weapon slot, which indicated that I couldn’t unequip the item.

After last day’s events, one thing became obvious; I was either actually a badass ninja, or Soul Eater’s Autonomous perk worked more subtly than I had thought. My heart leaned toward me being a ninja, but perhaps I had just been listening to Imaya a bit too much. Soul Eater’s Autonomous perk had reached level 4 and I still didn’t know what it did, which started to worry me.

Shaking my head, I closed the Equipment panel and stared at the 3D image of myself on the main screen, slouching by the cavern’s wall. The dark green cloak on my shoulders would have looked much cooler if they weren’t so dirty from rolling around on the floor. With my tangled hair and the stubble on my chin, I looked like a homeless hobo with a hangover.

“What is Randel doing?” Imaya asked, her head appearing on the other side of my screen.

“Randel is being deep and philosophical,” I replied. “Sorry, you wouldn’t understand. He has so many brilliant thoughts in his head—”

“Yeah, dude,” Imaya cut me off. “You’re a genius, I know the drill. Listen, I’ve been thinking some more about which Ability you should pick, but I gotta ask first about the attributes you’re focusing on.”

That was the problem with Imaya; after seeing Devi’s miniature portals, it didn’t take long for her to zone in on me. No matter how many times I had told her that I wasn’t choosing an Ability right away, she remained undeterred in her quest to help me.

“Ah, yes, focusing on attributes,” I said. “I’m focusing on my attributes like a hawk on its prey.”

There was a moment of awkward silence while Imaya stared blankly at me.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean by attributes?” I tiredly asked. “I’m not that familiar with these gamer terms.”

“Oh, you know, stats? Those five little numbers on your main screen?”

Humming thoughtfully, I looked at the small list on the right side of my screen.

> Attributes

> [+] Tenacity: 0

> [+] Strength: 0

> [+] Dexterity: 0

> [+] Magic: 0

> [+] Spirit: 0

> Unspent attribute points: 5

“Ah, yes, those attributes,” I said, nodding knowingly. “I have no idea what those attributes are good for.”

Imaya swayed as if she was about to faint.

“Y-Y-You really don’t know what they are? Really?!”

Her voice was shrill enough to echo in the cave several times. I scratched my head, thinking about what to say.

“Uh, no, I really don’t know what they are,” I admitted. “This small list has kinda slipped my attention.”

“What?!” Imaya said. “Why haven’t you noticed it? It’s right there, on your main page!”

I shrugged. “Well, what can I say? Whenever I looked at the screen, I always got distracted by how good-looking my image in the middle was.”

“Argh!” Imaya groaned, pulling at her hair. “Unbelievable! How could a noob like you kill that boar?! Are you telling me that you have four unspent points still?!”

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“No, of course I don’t,” I said, pointing at the projection. “See, it says here that I have five.”

“What?! How can you be level five already, when we are all level four? How?! Tell me, you cheater!”

She punctuated her outrage by reaching through my screen and shaking me by my shoulders. I endured it in a very valiant manner, noting absently that the rest of the group were watching us. It was annoying, but hey—at least Imaya wasn’t beating my head with a spoon yet.

“What am I going to do with you, Randel?” she asked, releasing me. “You don’t make any sense!”

She began pacing left and right, muttering under her breath. I used this happy little respite to poke my finger at one of my attributes, prompting a popup to appear.

> Tenacity

> Increases the maximum amount of your Stamina Points and enhances your SP regeneration.

> Increases your poise while using Weapon Skills.

It benefited only Weapon Skills, which wasn’t good news. I had never used Weapon Skills—and if it was up to me, I would never use them in the future either. Hoping to find something good for my aching muscles, I dismissed the window and clicked on Strength.

> Strength

> Increases the power of your strength-based Weapon Skills.

Attributes were seriously disappointing.

“What are you doing?” Imaya asked. “Oh, reading their description. Good! Well, they aren’t really descriptive, but I can fill you in on the rest. I’ve been experimenting with Spirit a bit, you know. Our collar doesn’t indicate how much mana we have, but from the mana consumption of my Arcane Sight I calculated that we started with a hundred points of mana. After placing one point on Spirit this number went up to 110, but my second point on it boosted up only to 119, which led me to believe that some diminishing returns effect is in place. As for mana regeneration—”

She went on and on, explaining stuff about her attributes while I nodded along as if I was listening. I really liked the way the light of her collar illuminated Imaya’s face from below, painting eerie shadows over her eyes. She kind of looked like a member of an evil cult, conspiring secretly and preparing to do some demon-summoning rituals. If I could get her to wear the hood of my cloak and have Teva’ryn loom behind her with his ivory horns, it would make for the perfect portrait.

“—so unless your new Ability consumes a lot of mana, I’d go for Dexterity as the primary and Spirit as the secondary attribute.”

“Cool,” I said, then closed my screen. Now that looked even better! With less light, the shadows on Imaya’s face grew even darker.

“Huh?” Imaya said, squinting at me. “Randel, why did you dismiss your window? Please don’t tell me you already assigned those points. You can’t undo them if you choose incorrectly!”

“Nah, I didn’t choose anything,” I said. “In fact, I’m not planning to choose any attribute ever.”

Imaya gaped like a fish. “B-But—”

“No one has told me that I had to play this game properly,” I said, then turned my head at the sound of approaching footsteps. “Ah, Simon, perfect timing! Are we ready to depart?”

“Hey, don’t change the subject!” Imaya said.

“Yes, we’ve decided,” Simon said, nodding solemnly. “The plan remains; we’ll face this Dungeon. We have to risk it, even if we don’t precisely know what it entails.”

“Monsters and traps, probably,” Imaya said, and I breathed a quiet sigh that she was so easily distracted. “Don’t worry Simon, I’ll be super-focused on spotting any danger. My Arcane Sight will truly shine here!”

“We’re playing into the Inspector’s hands by going deeper in,” I reminded them. Dungeons were typical for role-playing games, places where the game’s master could artificially set any kind of obstacle in front of the players. It didn’t seem to be a wise choice to give that opportunity to our Inspector.

“I understand your concern,” Simon said. “But this seems to be our safest option for now. If this cave proves to be too dangerous, we can still decide to turn back and face the spider giants instead.”

Truthfully, I didn’t expect any other answer. Not long after Teva’ryn had discovered the Dungeon, we found a slab of stone at the side of the tunnel with a crude map of this Dungeon carved into it. According to that conveniently-placed tourist guide, Swellers of the Deep was a cave system consisting of eight entrance corridors, all of them converging at a hub in the middle. The structure of the Dungeon resembled a spider quite blatantly.

This had sparked some debate about what we should do, of course. I would have rather faced the giants than some unknown threat deep inside a cave, but sadly I was the only one thinking so. The second option was to move deeper into the Dungeon until we reached the spider’s body, so to speak, then escape through one of the seven other tunnels that led there. This was the most popular plan by far, with Simon, Pell, Tamara, and Teva’ryn supporting it. The third idea came from Imaya, which was to clear the Dungeon and hope for an escape portal to pop up at the end—a plan that was quickly dismissed by everyone other than Devi. Yeah, I had made a mistake there by telling her that Imaya’s plan would involve lots more fighting.

“We can do this,” Imaya said. “This is a controlled environment. It cannot be more dangerous than those high-level monsters outside!”

“Don’t jinx it, please,” Simon said with a frown. “And Randel, tell your blue chick to stop swinging that sword around and follow us.”

He was in a bad mood. He was always in a bad mood, I mused as I watched him leave. To be fair, we were jumping from one danger to the next so I could understand the sentiment—I missed my comfy bed too. It still didn’t explain why Simon treated our Sylven companions as if they weren’t part of our group, just an appendage tagging along.