Synn hadn’t had the best night’s sleep as at 3am Sophie had come knocking on his door begging for an escape from the overly affectionate duo that was her sister and Lance. Unable to sleep but unwilling to accept Sophie’s offer to share a bed, Synn had plonked himself at the dining room table and thrown himself into his research doing his best not to think about Danika and her words from yesterday or Sophie and her over the top advances. Don’t get him wrong, she was attractive but even if he was drawn to her it would be too soon. He wasn’t the kind of guy to go looking for a rebound but then there had been Reagan, he had to be honest there. He had been instantly attracted to her and had felt connected at a much deeper level. It was part of why he trusted her and if he got into Armageddon as the one who sponsored him, he was more than willing to share all his secrets with her and her Master.
So that led him back to his research, while Danika said he was rubbish in class it was actually the opposite. He attended because she’d wanted him to but he’d actually gained all the necessary qualifications and graduated two years earlier before he turned 14. That had been one of his parents’ expectations but the main reason he hadn’t rebelled against the idea was because studying with his grandpa had been fun. He’d also been the one who taught him to properly research any dungeon delve so here he was analysing the delve he had planned for approximately 21 hours from now as according to his phone it had just passed 5am.
He'd picked an easier dungeon for his first delve with the newly changed syphon skill. He didn’t want to be caught unaware by it and it gave him a large margin of error. Following looking into the dungeon he then proceeded to review the details about Armageddon and its dungeons. Armageddon was one of the few places with a permanent dungeon that existed within the world. That meant that no matter when you entered you could bump into other adventurers and an area may have been over farmed so there was nothing to battle. This was the opposite of the dungeon he had his delve planned for. That dungeon had a new instance every 30 minutes. So, if you entered 30 minutes after another team you would have your own monsters to battle without interruption and could focus on yourself and your skills and no lack of opponents.
This was why dungeon crystals were so lucrative to the guilds. If they had an instance every 30 minutes that was 48 slots per day. While they would keep around 70% for themselves and their members as it was a great sales tool when trying to entice people to join their guild the other 30% would be offered up for sale. The price for the dungeon Synn was delving tomorrow was 20 silvers, and that was only cheap because 2am was a time slot nobody else wanted. Still the time of day didn’t matter to Synn as the beasts and experience gain was the same no matter which instance he ran. To stop the guilds completely monopolising the dungeon instances the Rift Office policed their sales to ensure that a minimum of 20% was offered for sale. Their members could however queue up and take the instance if nobody showed 30 minutes prior to the slot initializing. No point having wasted experience for delvers.
After reviewing Armageddon, he was amazed to find that the deepest level anybody had reached and fully mapped to date was floor 36 where the beasts hit level 56. Each floor had beasts and monsters increasing in level incrementally meaning that more and more power was required for each new floor. Synn was definitely looking forward to exploring that one and part of the academic curriculum included a monthly expedition into the dungeon in teams with teams being capped at 8 members based on the founding delvers team, ‘The Armageddon Legion’.
Synn continued to research the Academy until long after the sun came up and only stopped when he heard stirring in the bedroom before the shower fired up. Deciding he’d done enough he made a large breakfast for himself and Sophie knowing that Lance and Susan would no doubt appear shortly after. He wasn’t wrong and soon enough the four of them sat devouring stacks of pancakes coated in syrup with a small mountain of bacon.
Following breakfast and shipping everyone out of the apartment Synn moved all his belongings down to Lance’s and then gave it a final clean before handing the keys into the landlord. The landlord was happy to be done with Synn until he discovered that he was actually crashing at Lance’s for 10 days before they both left in the hopes of joining Armageddon.
With everything that he had planned ticked off for the day Synn went and took a nap, a good long seven hour nap. He woke up feeling much more refreshed and ready to take on the dungeon. He packed and repacked his rucksack three times just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten any of his delving essentials, not that he expected any trouble. Belted on his twin sword scabbards and borrowed Lance’s car to drive over.
Inside the dungeon it was exactly as Synn had expected. Open plains of grasslands that had waves of mutated boars, it started with a single boar at level 1 and over the first ten waves it would increase to 10 mutated boars at a time where it would then hold at 10 through to the end of the fifteenth wave. The opponents also gradually increased in power from level 1 to level 3.
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It was definitely a change of pace for Synn, in the past he had been able to become super powered in an instance and borrow fight ending skills however, that had all gone away now. Now he was able to steal stats and skills on a regular basis and keep them after the fight. On top of that he would also gain levels and could further upgrade his skills in the future.
The first mutated boar had charged him, and he had dropped into a combat ready stance immediately, he only drew a single sword as he wanted to gauge how syphon calculated his gains from each fight.
As the mutated boar closed in, he briefly held position and then, at the last minute, he quickly stepped to the left his sword raking down the side of the mutated boars toughened skin.
Not being able to boost his stats from their former state was liberating but it meant victory was going to be even harder.
The mutated boar was back alongside him as he sliced downwards with all his might, delivering a shallow cut to the neck.
Realising that a single cut wasn’t going to be sufficient he aimed for the same cut on the mutated boar’s next pass. While he once again struck the neck the wound was slightly off from the first and insufficient to slow the mutated boar.
Whilst his training had given him an advantage against the boar it still had the greater stats, and he was sure that even being clipped in the slightest by one of the tusks would leave him with a terrible wound he’d struggle to recover from while in the dungeon therefore he was even more cautious when the mutated boar showed signs of becoming enraged. In total it takes 5 sword cuts and one evasive roll, which only served to look silly as the boar wouldn’t have gotten him even if he sidestepped once more. But the mutated boar was finally no more, and he rushed to pull up the notifications before the next wave appeared. He wasn’t used to seeing notifications like this as it was an experience formerly denied him, but he changed it around to show an updated summary of all his notifications whenever he reviewed them.
Level 1 Mutated Boar Defeated: 5 Exp Gained.
Syphoned Stats:
0.2 Strength; 0.2 Vitality; 0.2 Dexterity.
Syphoned Skill Points:
Tough Skin (Passive) 1/100.
Elation ran through him, and he had to resist the urge to jump around as the next wave of two boars had just appeared. Ah well, there would be time for celebrations later.
He methodically worked his way through the numerous waves and his footwork became well practiced as he faced more and more mutated boars with each wave. Luckily as they became stronger, he did so too, the slight increments in stats slowly building up to something bigger.
Laying down on the ground to recover he pulled up his notification summary. As he hadn’t removed the first notification it was included in his summary for the entire dungeon delve.
Level 1 Mutated Boar Defeated: 45*5 = 225 Exp.
Level 2 Mutated Boar Defeated: 30*10 = 300 Exp.
Level 3 Mutated Boar Defeated: 30*20 = 600 Exp.
Syphoned Stats:
17.5 Strength; 14.9 Vitality; 10.1 Dexterity; 6.3 Agility
Syphoned Skill Points:
Tough Skin (Passive) 105/100 = Lvl 1 - 5/200.
A passive skill that boosts physique making it slightly more impervious.
Being under levelled certainly had its perks as each level between him and his opponents doubled the amount of experience he gained. Most people would see their xp points automatically set them off levelling, but Synn seemed to have to do it manually meaning he could choose when he levelled up. A great boon for circumstances like these where the reward could be increased. Especially as he got the stat points without levelling. Most people would gain 3-4 stat points per level, so he was already ahead of the curve after a single dungeon. He looked at what it would take for him to level up his syphon skill and was shocked to discover that it was tied to his actual level. He had to level them both together and it came at a cost of xp and stat points.
To Level Up:
Lvl1 = 100xp (base level) & 100xp + 1 stat points
Lvl2 = 200xp (base level) & 200xp + 2 stat points
Lvl3 = 300xp (base level) & 300xp + 3 stat points
‘Maybe hitting level ten ready for Armageddon will take a bit more effort on my part after all’ he decided after realising that he didn’t even gain enough experience from this run to go from level 3 to level 4.