Ishani had been in tens of dungeons, all category three and below, but she felt she wasn't exactly new to this whole thing. She expected the category four, or six or eight or whatever it was, to be the same, but more so. She was both right and wrong in this assumption. The flux through the Gate as the dungeon spewed magic and took entropy was actually only slightly higher than that around the strongest category three she'd been to. The feeling on her skin and through her less mundane senses told her this. She could easily see why it was officially classified as a category four.
But the scale was off, a category three had a Gate that was at most a couple of metres tall and wide. This dungeon had a Gate that was easily four times that in each dimension. She stared at it for a few minutes while around her the attendants attended to the things that needed attending to. Largely unpacking the pocket dungeon and securing the base outside the dungeon. There was no shortage of people who wouldn't hesitate to try and steal the portable bridge which was even now as close to the Dungeon as was safely possible. Two stable trans-planar portals in close proximity could very easily become two unstable portals. The Malaysian army was continuing to arrive, setting up a secondary perimeter around the primary one that the attendants were creating. This was largely lost on Ishani though, there was a lot for her to process, she was about to spend the next half a year in a high magic zone, which may or may not have an exit on to her home realm. There was a fifty percent chance, as she saw it, that she'd end up as an infant on the other side of that portal. Infantilism wasn't a state she sought, she would keep her memories, her experience, but would lose so much in the realms of self-control and measured responses. The brains of young elves were radically different to those of adult humans after all.
She was still absorbed in thought and worry when she was interrupted in her brooding by a heavy paw on her shoulder.
"Close the eyes. Relax the body. Inhale the strength of the Earth and stretch up. Breath out the tension and let your body hang off your spine. You are here now. Don't be in the future borrowing trouble you might not even have." Chris' voice echoed the teachings of her parents, who even now were just the other side of the bridge. They came over from time to time, but not regularly since she'd hit adolescence. It was hard for them. In their life experience, their daughter would just about be potty-trained, but she was already heading into an unknown dungeon as the best Diver of her generation. Humans lived faster, and that was hard for her people to accept.
"You follow the teachings of the Fallen Empire? I didn't think anyone here even really knew they existed." She said as she followed his instruction.
"Hah! No, I follow some MP3s I've had for centuries. Meditation techniques are pretty uniform across both realities. Which makes me think that there's something fundamental about our neurology that necessitates it. Why would both of our civilisations have people with anxiety, depression, mania? I don't believe it's a co-incidence. Is the susceptibility to these issues a prerequisite for civilisation as we know it? Honestly I don't know. If you want though, I wrote a book about it, oh a hundred and sixty years ago? It was my PhD thesis. Pretty sure if you read it, that would make two of us though."
"You're a doctor? What in? Why do that, when you're a Diver?"
"Boredom mainly. I've been alive for about three centuries now, let me tell you something, it's boring. If you don't learn and grow, you're dying. It doesn't matter what you learn, honestly doesn't. I've done degrees in, oh maths, geography, anthropology, biology, magical biology, the System... actually I have two doctorates in that properly, and I don't know how many honorary ones, neurology. I'm a qualified medical doctor in human medicine, Elven medicine, Dwarven medicine, I'm currently working on my PhD and MD in elemental medicine. Wolfgang might be our healer and a damn good one he is too, but we don't always have him around, or if he gets injured. I can step in. You're on my team now, that means that your well-being is also my responsibility. I've gone over your file now, properly. I'd also like to run some tests inside the Dungeon too. See how your soul and magic meld. Your scores are excellent, far above those of baseline humans or the transformed elves we turn into. But I've no basis for a born elf in their natural environment. The fact we nearly never have saturated mana out here means we're magically starved. I assume you've noticed that you feel more awake, faster, stronger in the high magic zones? In a dungeon? Well, it's because you're actually feeding your soul in there. I'll be interested to see you after six months in such an environment. If it takes us that long. Never know, we might just step inside, core's in the next room, we smash it, grab the loot and get out!"
He laughed at his own joke once it was evident that Ishani certainly wasn't going to. "Anyway, time to gear up. We need to secure a beachhead before we can set up our forward base. Your locker's over there and you can have your pick of the spare gear if yours is a bit out of date."
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Magically enhanced gear wasn't cheap, it either had to be created by a crafter with the requisite skills in both magic and the manufacture of the item, or looted from a dungeon. No one was quite sure how or why the dungeons created items that Divers could use. Often they seemed to be tailored to the Divers in the dungeon at the time. Which seemed completely against the self-interest of the dungeons themselves. So Ishani took this chance to go and see what she had that was out-levelled or lower quality and upgrade it for free.
In preparation, she pulled up her character sheet and looked at her raw statistics without any equipment. She'd worked hard over the years to enhance her basic strength, constitution and dexterity, so even without putting any hard points into them, they sat at fifteen, fourteen and seventeen. Her racial bonuses were elven, even if she was biologically human. The area she'd really focused on was the mental characteristics. Wisdom could be earnt, intelligence somewhat gained, charisma too, but for the price of one point she could raise her parallel processing power and her awareness of magic by the equivalent of a human lifetime's study and practice. The same held true of her wisdom and charisma. She'd invested all of her points into these three statistics. Which had left her slightly behind the cream of her peers in constitution, but massively ahead in intelligence where she had invested the bulk of her points. She had an intelligence score of twenty-three, a wisdom score of twenty and a charisma of seventeen, her Elven heritage again granting her a slight edge here. Every level she'd had, the point had gone into one of these three statistics. She was smart, her mana pool was immense for her level and her charisma allowed her to lead people well.
This was all great for her as she stood, but she desperately wanted to be more. She had exemplars to look at now, study and learn how to grow to be as powerful as they were. She didn't intend to waste this chance.
Turning to her equipment, the items she retrieved from the locker were of excellent quality, all at the higher end of what was available at those level brackets. However, some of them were a little long in the tooth by now. Her main armour was a set, comprising a sleeveless vest of wyvern skin, light breeches of wyvern wing reinforced with the heavier skin from its neck and head, bracers of the same material as the vest and some boots which appeared to be simply hollowed out wyvern feet. They did nothing for her stealth, but she could stand steady in them on treacherous ground. The whole set was rife with bonuses to intellect, wisdom and dexterity, with the set literally capped by the wyvern's head, the skull hollowed out for a helmet and the jaw set as a chin guard.
Replacing any part of this would be difficult. The wyvern had taken down most of her party, leaving her alone to use her magic, her sword and her wits to kill it alone. The Divers association had allowed her to keep the whole carcass as a reward for bringing her companions out alive. She'd invested every last rupee she had into getting it made into this masterwork. The chances of anything being able to replace it before she had a level in the fifties was slight. Though with six months of probably constant combat, that could be sooner than she'd expected.
Her sword was decent for a level twenty, adequate for a level twenty-five and honestly a bit disappointing for a level twenty-seven. She replaced it without hesitation with a rapier which had some truly magnificent scroll work and had a required level of twenty-seven. It wasn't a truly legendary weapon that would grow with her, but it was easily the finest piece of smithing she'd ever seen.
On the other hand, pun intended, she had her staff, which was a legendary growing weapon. Gifted to her by per parents and crafted by some of the finest artisans on the other side, this was a twig of the primal trees and it could not be replaced. Nothing like her birth had ever happened before and after it had occurred steps were taken to ensure it never did again. Her people had given her this to strengthen and support her as she grew absurdly fast in a world where magic was rare and enemies would be plentiful.
Her jewelery was fairly good, nothing exceptional, but nothing less than high quality. However, a set of matched rings, bracelets, necklace and tragus bars were in the spare equipment brought. They also had a minimum level of twenty-seven and granted a frankly ridiculous bonus to her charisma and intellect, while the complete set would give her a nearly impossible twelve point bonus to her wisdom. Hurriedly she claimed this prize and checked her character sheet once more.
Where a normal, adult, baseline human had about ten in each statistic, she was now sitting on fifteen strength, twenty-nine dexterity, constitution of nineteen, intellect of a dizzying thirty-seven, wisdom of thirty-eight thanks to the jewelery set, and she now cut a rather dashing figure with a charisma of twenty-nine.
She was as ready as she'd ever be, and frankly better equipped than anyone of her age or level had a right to be.
She walked over to where Lin was still complaining about eating rocks for the next half a year, while Adili and Wolfgang finished tightening their armour before they all stepped into the unknown.
With an expectant air, they formed up with Chris and Lin at the fore, Adili in the middle and Wolfgang and Ishani at the rear and walked through the portal that was the Dungeon gate.