Charles limped up to his teammates still fuming. His last injury had resisted healing as had the others. Only both healers were far closer to being out of mana than any of the others had suspected. The wounds left by that assassin had been ridiculously hard to heal. If the healers had let John or Sam know just how close they had come to dying. One or both of them might have retreated from the fight.

“Where is he? Did you get him?” He snarled, almost hoping that they hadn’t yet killed the assassin.

“He went into the dungeon.” Sam said.

“What?” Charles glared at the decrepit stone building and realized where they were. The level fifteen dungeon their scouts had found. “He is still alive?” Anger tinted his voice as he spoke.

“Maybe. I hit him right as he went in with my Eagle Arrow. But I haven’t gotten any kill notifications. Not sure if I would while he was in the dungeon.” John stated, his eyes still on the entrance to the dungeon. An arrow notched and ready.

“Fine. We wait. He has to come out. There is no way he can survive the dungeon for long.” Charles finally said as he shifted his stance trying to relieve the pain in his groin.

*****

Groaning Dren dragged himself over to the wall and pulled himself up. His body felt weak. Checking his status he gulped hard. His Life Surge wouldn’t refill any until he was once again at full health. His potion timer was still on cooldown. And he only had a measly two health. Arrows jutted from his body, frostbitten holes filled his flesh, and the worst of them all were the rotten wounds. He couldn’t even move to sit back without risking pushing one of the arrows in deeper. Nor could he risk pulling them out. When he saw his health tick up to three he relaxed slightly.

For a moment he was almost overwhelmed by it all. The fact that he was alone on another planet. That he was expected to fight and kill the natives. That he had betrayed Mike, Jen, and even Sara before murdering two of the three. But before despair could swallow him up a chime sounded in his mind. Willing to grasp at any distraction he opened the system message.

Enchanter Quest: Aquire the five profane runes.

Dren eyed the quest and then closed his eyes. Even tho it didn’t remove the system message from his view. That sounded like a good enough goal for now. But first. He needed to get at least a little bit of his health back.

For a while he watched the slow tick of his health going up. Just counting each point that slowly dripped in. It moved into the double digits and slowly continued to creep up. Dren wasn’t sure how much health was enough to be safe to remove the arrows. Time passed and his potion cooldown ended. He considered taking a health potion but decided not to. For the moment, here huddled in the small entrance room he seemed safe. Better to save it. A bit more health and he would start trying to remove arrows. Then if he needed he could drink his potion. It ticked up to forty then slowly continued on. When it hit forty-three tho he got an unexpected system chime.

Skill Gained: Calm Respite.

You have allowed your natural healing to take you from one percent to five percent. Remaining calm while clinging to life is a feat worthy of respect.

Dren blinked and checked the skill. To his surprise, it was a skill similar to the mage’s meditation. But for healing. Like meditation, there weren’t actually any special requirements to activate it. Only sitting still and resting. Those tiny ticks of health restoration came just a bit faster. Soon enough he was at eighty health and felt safe to pull out one of the arrows. It caused five damage to yank it out and he paused to nervously watch his health. It ticked up not long after he grew still and Dren let out a relieved breath.

Soon enough he looked less like a porcupine and was able to sit with his back against the wall. ASs he rested more comfortably he placed one of the survival biscuits in his mouth. They were hard and tasted bitter as hell at first. Soon tho they softened to just being as hard as tough leather while tasting less bitter and more just bland. Finally, it melted into a mouthful of a very slimy and yet tasteless goop that he choked down. Since it had no taste at that point it wasn’t that. But the slimy consistency was disgusting. Still, it kept him alive as well as removing his hunger and thirst.

Time passed as Dren sat there letting his body slowly mend. Even with his Calm Respite skill his mana filled up faster than his health. Pulling out his last dagger, the Life Bane dagger, he started testing his new enchanter skill on it. Item refinement consumed mana greedily but allowed him to effectively narrow and make more consistent the mana veins in an item. Several hundred mana later he found that the dagger’s capacity had increased from four hundred to four hundred and eight.

“A hundred mana per 1% increase. My entire mana pool won't even give me ten percent.” He sighed but didn’t stop. Emptying out the rest of his mana before letting it start refilling again.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

When his health was nearing seven hundred there was another system message. Truly surprised by that he checked and his eye went wide in surprise.

Calm Respite has restored one thousand health. Skill level up.

Shaking the confusion off he checked his skill. Had there been levels to skills before?

Next to the skill was now a star after it. Squinting he thought he could make out the outlines of nine more. Looking at other skills closer he was pretty sure they all had them. “So skills can rank up? Wait. I haven’t recovered a thousand health yet.” Dren’s mind raced. Did it count regeneration from before he got the skill? No, he didn’t think that was it. The message specifically said the skill had restored the health. Was his dungeon competency increasing the skill gains by ten percent? Maybe? But it still wouldn’t be enough. The only other thing he could think of was the heal-resistant wounds were taking extra healing to restore. Or it could have been a combination of both of them. Or something else. In the end, Dren just didn’t have enough information. Still, he was happy to have not only gotten the skill to level up but also to have learned that skills can level up. “I’ll definitely have to use more skills now.”

With the skill leveled up he made it to full health faster than he expected. His mana wasn’t fully topped off but he didn’t use it for much in combat so he stood up. Glancing at the exit he chewed on his lip. “They are definitely waiting on me.” Then he glanced into the dungeon. “But this place is a level fifteen dungeon, right? The other one was level three and that was just the level it started at.” Dren sucked in a deep breath. His options were to go outside and try fighting the natives again. By now they probably have more help. He could go into the dungeon and see if he could handle monsters even higher level than the troll. Or he could sit right here and just wait.

Option one was out of the question. Option three wasn’t much better. So despite his concerns, Dren settled on option two. He considered stopping to enchant his dagger but really wanted to see what the limits of the new refinement skill were. Plus the quest mentioned some profane runes. Maybe he could find something better to enchant his dagger with? He did stop to strap on Mike’s stolen short sword. After a bit of practice, he decided to put the short sword in his main hand. It was awkward enough fighting with a weapon in both hands still. Even if he was getting better at it.

Activating his stealth he crept ever so slowly into the dungeon. No roots came to life to glow over him. Instead, torches burned in sconces on the walls. Filling the old stone ruins with flickering light. Dren actually wondered if the room he had spawned in was part of this dungeon. The decaying brickwork looked familiar. But since that room had disappeared it was just as likely the system had reused it. Was that a sign it was lazy?

Movement caught his attention just as he thought that and he felt his heart leap into his throat. Had the system read his mind and gotten pissed again? It definitely wasn’t a completely neutral entity. That had been confirmed after that sudden timed quest. Shifting into the darkest patch of shadows he grew still. Even holding his breath. Further down he could just make out a crossroads of halls. A creature’s head came into view. The scaled head of a lizard was visible in the torchlight. IA forked tongue darted out to flicker before being sucked back in. Its color was a pale gray. Based on the size of the head it was the size of the tarantulas from the previous dungeon.

Identifying it gave him the name. Ruin Lizard Level Ten.

Dren was pleasantly surprised by the level. It was less than he expected and he felt it might be doable. The beast shuffled further into the crossroads and as it did the rest of its body came into view. So did its rider. Sitting on its back was a more than two-meter tall humanoid creature. Its flesh was pale, even paler than the lizard it rode on. It was completely naked but luckily had no features. As in it looked almost like a lump of clay shaped roughly into a human form but with no details. Its legs just widened slightly into thicker stumps with no actual feet. Its hands did end in fingers but they were attached oddly. In a circular fashion around the roundish cylinders of its limbs that seemed to have no joints.

It held onto a spear made of some white material with a stone tip. It did have a head but it had no features at all. No ears, nose, mouth, or eyes. Dren used Identify.

Musklin Rider Level Fifteen.

‘Fuck.’ Dren mentally swore as he watched the lizard pause in the center of the crossroads to taste the air. Activating Assassin’s eyes Dren was confused. The lizard had many glowing spots as he expected. But not the Musklin Rider creature. In fact. As he looked the only spot that glowed was low on its stomach area.

While he did that the lizard turned to look down his hallway, tongue flicking wildly. Even as Dren mentally yelled for the thing to go the other way. It started shuffling forward. The rider on its back sat still, swaying slightly as it moved but otherwise didn’t react.

Tightening his grip on both his weapons. Dren mentally ran through his options before coming to the conclusion his only chance was to fight. Watching the lizard as it slowly shuffled down the hallway towards him he felt his heart thundering again. His gaze was sharpening even tho he had yet to activate his battle focus. Each thud of his heart seemed to cause flashes of light at the edge of his vision as his entire body tingled with the flush of adrenaline.

When the two monsters grew closer he activated his Battle Focus taking him to a new level of intensity before bursting out of his dark hiding place. He was already on them before they seemed able to react. Ignoring the lizard he slashed the shortsword out, attempting to slash the Muskin across the throat. His blade struck and it felt like he was cutting through wood. It still cut a decently deep gash but no blood flowed and the thing didn’t seem all that affected. But when he slammed his dagger into the glowing spot of its weakness the thing went wild. Its tube arms flailing around, not even trying to use its spear. Dren’s dagger was wrenched out from the monster's body and this time something gushed out. But it wasn’t blood. Instead, a fine bright blue powder exploded out to cover all three of them.

Toxic Spores (Blue) resisted.

Asphyxiation Resisted.