The beginning of the next day went a bit differently, when he had gotten up and finished getting ready to go to his dungeon run he stopped by Eric’s room and knocked on the door, at first it was a decently soft knock until eventually he was banging on it. When no one answered he gave up and went to Gabe’s room, repeating the process until eventually Eric appeared in the doorway, having clearly spent the night at Gabe’s.

“What is with the banging Shaun? Do you not know how to sleep in a bit?” He had clearly been woken up and just gotten out of bed, not happy about being interrupted.

“I have your new gear, figured you would want it now before you head out for the day. But you can just wait until I get back if you want. Sorry about waking you. You too Gabe!” He shouted into the room, receiving some inherent swearing from inside.

“Hold up a minute! Let me get dressed and I will head over.” The idea of new gear got Eric moving much quicker, now fully awake.

“Good everyone is awake, Eric get Gabe and get ready, we have training to do!” Viv had shown up behind him, looking ready to start the day like Shaun. She was also accompanied by Li, who stood lightly behind her. “Shaun, perfect timing, meet Li.” Li nodded at him and he replied in turn. “We are all going to meet tonight, after the soiree, if your free?”

“Sure, not a problem. It nice to meet you again Li.” He didn’t have anything else to say so kept it short.

“Thank you, for allowing me to join you this evening.” She said bowing her head at him.

Eric chose that moment to come back to the door, fully clothed this time. “Eric, you can’t go into a dungeon like that! Where is your armour, your weapons? We have work to do!” The exasperation coming from Viv in that moment was palpable, clearly getting frustrated that they weren’t already up and ready to go. Better them dealing with her than him.

“Come on, lets get your stuff.” Shaun said to Eric before leading him back to his apartment. They all followed him, including Li, into his apartment. When they entered, he just motioned at all of the new armour pieces he had laid out on the table. “All yours. There are two spells in the chest plate, one for reflecting damage and another for healing. You will need to channel for the healing spell but the reflecting one will work as long as the runes are intact. The gauntlets have one spell each, the left has a force spell, channel mana into it to power and it will blow back anyone or anything that is near you. The other has an explosive fire spell that can be used to direct combat, it will pack a mean punch so don’t use it on someone you want to live. Haven’t had time for the shield or sword yet, but all the armour is reinforced, even high level monsters will have a hard time getting through it.”

Eric went straight up to the new armour pieces, inspecting each one and picking them up in utter awe of what he had been given. He cradled each piece he held like it was the most precious thing he had ever been given. Viv went up and inspected each piece, as she moved around the table she couldn’t help the surprise she had written on her face.

“This armour that you made. I have seen similar pieces in the shops. The cost of them is too much for anyone to afford, but you just made them? And you are giving them all away? For nothing?” Li was staring at him, the shock clearly written on her face.

“They are my friends, why wouldn’t I help them out?” He asked back, slightly confused at the question. He wasn’t going to charge his friends for his work. Besides he hadn’t spent any money on the materials and he had gotten quite a few levels out of the crafting.

“To buy these, it would cost over a gold coin, closer to 2. And you just made them in a night.” Li bowed again, this time much lower. “The major factions were right. You are truly beyond any of us.”

“Sure.” Shaun just stood there, not any more comfortable with being shown such respect and subservience from another person from Earth than he was from any of the clans. He got it, he really did, he was overpowered for his level and his class and profession were some of the most powerful you could get at this rank, but still, it was weird to be treated the way that Li was treating him. Still it was better than dealing with idiots like Trevor.

“You out did yourself Shaun. With that armour, Eric can fight way above his level now.” Viv looked like she was in deep thought. “If we all get upgrades like that I expect we will be able to go to a much higher wave together, that will get us more experience and levels, allowing us to gain more traction with the reps.” She stopped her though process and looked directly at him. “How long until you can get all our gear done?” He had agreed to help all of them, and now that he had a plan for Viv he was more than willing to continue helping her.

Shaun thought about it, he needed to finish all of Erics gear, sword, shield and probably some greaves and boots. Leather armour for both Viv and Gabe, probably Li too. And then upgrades to arrows, maybe even bows. He needed more material for that though. “I need more materials to finish everything. More metal, good quality ore especially for Eric. I need leathers for your own armour, you will need to supply what you want it made of and then spend time standing there while I craft it to you so it fits. Same for the arrows and bows, materials if you want me to make something powerful or I can do basic upgrades. For Li, if she wants to have a store of mana, I need a proper gem to engrave into something so she can draw on a reserve. Get me what I need and I will work on it as much as I can.”

“I do not have the coin to pay you to craft such incredible items, sir.” Li said.

“Don’t call me sir, Li. Its Shaun. And I wont charge you anything, your part of their team, that means you need every advantage you can get to make yourselves stronger. If you can get the materials I can craft what you need.”

At that moment Gabe decided to show up, perfect timing too as Eric had just finished putting on his armour and Viv was looking more ready to get to the dungeon with each passing second. “Everyone, give Shaun everything you have that he could possibly use to craft with!” As soon as Viv spoke everyone started emptying their inventories of items and loot. He got some ore and various metals, Some other interesting items as well. There was some Treant roots from the nature dungeon, some rocks and other pieces. They even put down some feathers from the starling which was helpful for him. “What can you do with this Shaun?”

Looking it all over he started to shift the loot into piles. “There is enough metal here to finish off Eric, as well as make some arrows using some of the more interesting materials. What is missing though are the more unique items I need. Gems and high grade leather mostly. But anything else you get that has any properties that might work for crafting will work too.”

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“Okay.” Viv nodded. “Here is what we do. We are going to do a dungeon run and figure out where our weakest points are. Boss loot all goes to Shaun and we sell the rest. Once we figure out where we need the biggest boost we pool our funds and buy what we need for Shaun to focus there first, then we continue down the line until everyone is completely geared. Agreed?” Viv asked the rest of her team. Receiving nods and agreements from all of them. “Good then let’s go, we have a lot of dungeon runs to do!”

Walking to the dungeon was interesting, everyone they encountered quickly moved to the side or nodded down at them, showing them respect in some way. When they got to the dungeon he let the others go in first and then he quickly went in after. He cleared the first 14 waves pretty easily, and when he got to the alpha again he ended up having to spend way to much time dodging and fighting, still unable to fully get through the boss without sustaining damage. But he had fought the alpha a few times now that he was able to get through it without being completely ruined after. The worms though still gave him trouble, they were difficult to fight when they were in the ground, he attempted to kill them with the earth itself but they just ate through everything that was in there way, leaving him with no choice but to wait for them to rise from the ground and then kill them.

*Wave 20 Commencing*

He had finally made it to the 20th wave, not completely drained this time but also not any where near his peak health. As expected 15 monsters appeared, with one of them standing out a lot clearer within the earth. He didn’t know what it was but he knew once it appeared that he was going to have to assess and then come up with a plan for the boss. In the meantime though he dealt with the other worms when they came.

He had managed to kill only 3 of the Burrowing Earth Worm before the entire dungeon started to shake, he knew this was coming from the boss as he had never experienced anything like it before with the other monsters. With his echo he felt the large monster start to rise from the ground, but surprisingly it wasn’t directly underneath him, instead a few metres in front of him. Regardless he backed away from where he thought it would rise, where he watched the ground started to collapse into itself, forming a giant sink hole where everything in a radius of 10 metres was being sucked into the ground.

When the boss finally cleared the surface, he could barely describe the feeling that came with it. The worm was huge, but that was to expected, what was interesting about the boss though was it wasn’t eating the earth like that of the other worms, its mouth was like a vacuum, sucking in anything in the surrounding area straight into its mouth. But what it didn’t swallow it, no, the rows of teeth formed some kind of network of magic where anything that entered was reduced down to pure energy and sucked into its body.

Shaun was decently far away at this point, but even from where he was standing he felt the pull from that vortex starting to drag him in, this was only amplified when the worm lowered its head and directed it straight at him.

*All Consuming Worm – Level 45*

He had only a moment to identify it before his feet were swept out from beneath him and he was dragged closer to the worm’s mouth. He didn’t have time to let off his strongest attack, but he did channel all of the mana in his gauntlet into the flame orbs and let loose the strongest fire blast he could, releasing a stream of the hottest flames he could conjure straight at the monster’s mouth.

As soon as the flames got close though they were consumed by the vortex and reduced to nothing but thankfully forcing the creature to close its mouth to swallow the power he had thrown at it, apparently having some limit as to how much it could consumed before needing to start the process over.

As soon as it closed it mouth, he readied himself for another attack but before he could go on the offensive the worm just launched itself back into the ground, disappearing back into the earth within seconds. Shaun didn’t even get a moment to recover properly before the other worms started in on their own attacks, forcing him to divert his energy into killing off the worms one by one. While he did this he thought through what he had learnt about the boss, any attacks directed at its mouth were going to be pointless, it would just turn it into energy for its own attacks. That meant he needed to hit the body, something he would need to do while also dealing with not being sucked into its mouth.

He figured out a rough plan and stopped attacking the worms, focusing instead on just dodging them and powering up an attack that he hoped would work. The good thing about the boss it seemed was when it attacked the other worms fled, not wanting to be caught in the vortex themselves, which meant that when the boss appeared he only had to deal with it and not all of the other worms, something he was planning to take advantage of.

While he waited for the boss to appear again he channelled as much of his mana as he could into his lightning, the sky’s streaked with power, awakening due to the massive surge of lightning that he was channelling in the dungeon, he didn’t call it down though, he didn’t want to have that power inside of him.

It only took a few minutes before he felt the boss come back from round two, he felt the other worms run away when it rose to the surface. It immediately repeated the same process as it had last time, once free from the earth it focused purely on him. Thankfully this time he was prepared, he stabbed his sword into the ground to keep from being pulled towards the worms mouth, he then repeated the same attack he had from before using only the last bit of mana he had in the gem. It wasn’t as powerful as the last attack but it was still enough for it to close it mouth, cutting off the vortex. Without delay, he pushed all of his willpower into calling down the lightning from the sky, forcing it not at him but directly at the worm before it had time to escape a second time.

He was using the rest of his mana in this attack, so either he won, or he had to flee. The boss was just getting ready to dive underground again when the first bolt truck it in its exposed body, forcing it to lose its ability to move for only a moment, but it was enough. He threw both hands to the sky and called down all of the lightning he could, forcing it to strike the worm over and over, sending it into a convulsing mess on the ground. It tried to light its head to the sky at one point and open its mouth but before it could start the vortex a bolt of lightning shot down into its mouth, electrocuting it from the inside out.

Seconds before he was going to be truly out of mana the boss gave a final twitch and stopped moving. The strike into its exposed mouth, without the safety of the vortex, had been the final hit needed to end the monster. He didn’t even get a chance to celebrate the victory before the rest of the worms in the dungeon made their appearance known. With the boss gone they were all now free to continue their attack, and without having mana left to be able to kill the remaining monsters with magic, Shaun was left with no option but to revert back to melee.

It took much longer to kill the worms with little to no mana, and I was a lot more dangerous than he would have liked, but he managed to get through it, thankful for having focused on his blade mastery skill in the last week. By the time he was done his stamina was running on empty, his mana was truly gone and only his health was still in any decent position.

*Class: Elemental Blade Slinger has levelled up by +1 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger has reached Level 42. +3 Str, +2 Dex, +3 End, +3 Vit, +4 Soul gained*

*Wave 20 Completed – Wave 21 starting in 1 minute*

With that message he used the last of his stamina to loot the bodies, barely getting it done in the 1 minute he had between waves. Before the next wave started the dungeon shifted, with seconds he had gone from being in a plane, surrounded by nothing but packed dirt, to an icy wasteland. The moment the shift ended he was hit by a freezing cold wind, and fell to the packed snow beneath him. That was when he heard the roar, and when he looked around him he could see a group of giants approaching him, all with various weapons, all radiating a power.

*Frost Giant – Level 45*

The moment he identified the giants, he saw one of them lower their spiked club and aim it at him, the weapon started to glow blue, but before the monster got its attack off Shaun quickly thought the words that would get him out, I give up!