Neterin watched over Ambrose as he slept, contemplating her next steps. She didn’t really have any choice other than going all in on the Sponsored despite the fact that he was the reason she was in this mess in the first place. She knew that placing the blame on the human’s shoulders was somewhat unfair, he didn’t ask to be dumped here after all.
She recalled the memories of her raging when she had first awoken after becoming a dungeon core, having been trapped on a small island to be of use to the locals. The memories were long worn out, layered with centuries of her own bias and interpretation of the events that happened, all hiding what had truly happened from her mind. Despite the centuries the general gist had always stuck, the hatred and rage had embedded the memories within her consciousness permanently. She too had raged against the world for what had been done to her, though it was a little less pathetic and much more murder-y than Ambrose had been.
Neterin had suspicions as to why Ambrose had been placed here after all the discussions he had had with his Nightlight, but couldn’t quite understand what Mundane was actually trying to get out of this.
Hours passed as Ambrose slept and Neterin planned out how to manage her resources to best supplement his growth. He had shown great aptitude for crafting and would likely need to rely on an outrageous amount of explosives to deal with the final boss, unless he could figure out the trick of course. Bound by the pact there was only so much she could do to assist, they would need a substantial amount of the potential mana within the dungeon currently in order to form a stable exit plan.
Neterin began modelling the next year or so. Measuring the mana that killing each of the creatures would gain, against the cost of creating an exit. Ambrose’s tendency to get creatures to die from indirect methods reduced the amount of mana that was turned into experience for him, but he would still need to gather enough to break through again. She looked over his Skills, predicting which ones he would be able to evolve. She accounted for the upkeep he would likely inflict, air, water, food and light were all things she had to keep running in the dungeon.
As the numbers came into view Neterin grew concerned, it was absolutely possible for Ambrose to do enough to beat the dungeon, but the timeline was fairly tight, she would have to find a way to subtly encourage him into certain discoveries, and ensure that he would maintain her predicted kill schedule. Failure simply wasn’t an option, she had her own revenge to get after all, and who wanted to die in a hole in the middle of nowhere.
Ambrose finally awoke after sleeping for fourteen hours. His body was still sore from the internal damage he had caused from stressing his soul, though it already felt better than the week-long recovery he had needed after his breakthrough, believing that he should be fully recovered within another day or so. Ambrose slipped mentally back into the clearing of fire, finding it flickering, a candle’s worth of flame all that was remaining after the damage he had caused. The fire's fuel was burnt and broken in places, the logs having tipped over as they burned unevenly, the fire sitting to the side, failing to reach the ready fuel of his better levelled Skills as it latched onto the small remnants of the wood representing Small Blades. Ambrose instinctively knew that the fire would be fine as it was if nothing changed, but he would be unable to reactivate the boosting Ability until he righted the flames location, reconnecting it with the remaining Skills by restoring the pile.
As Ambrose returned to the physical world and opened his eyes he knew what needed to be done, but was unsure of how to accomplish the task. He needed to train his Skills quickly, namely he needed to level up Small Blades. It was a shame that he had used that Skill in the founding of his Character, he had lost the only knife he had that would deal actual damage and had since found out that many of the creatures of the dungeon were simply weaker to bludgeoning damage. Madness was also something that would be difficult to raise in level but because of the reduced damage it took from his fire, Ambrose wasn’t overly concerned with it. No, he needed to get all of the common rarities to evolve as soon as possible. He quickly went over the updates from the night before.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE MANIFESTED A SKILL
You have gained the skill Unarmed Combat at Level 3 (Common): Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind, and your opponent's face!
* Increased proficiency when handling your physical body.
* Increased effect when using Unarmed Combat Abilities in combat.
* Increased damage when using Unarmed Combat Abilities.
By gaining Unarmed Combat you have gained the following Abilities.
* Melee Attack: Punch in the face.
* Throwing Attack: Get rid of an enemy.
* Block: Stop a stab, but this time it’ll hurt.
* Deflect: Yeah you really shouldn’t block a stab with your body unless absolutely necessary, I just thought I should point that out just in case you took the Block blurb as instructions.
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CONGRATULATIONS OUTWORLDER, YOU HAVE NURTURED YOUR SKILLS
* Your Assessing Skill has increased in level: 11 -> 15
* Your Climbing Skill has increased in level: 3 -> 5
* Your Identifying Skill has increased in level: 9 -> 30
* Your Improvised Crafting Skill has increased in level: 3 -> 4
* Your Inspecting Skill has increased in level: 13 -> 27
* Your Perception Skill has increased in level: 32 -> 34
* Your Slapstick Trickery Skill has increased in level: 1 -> 6
* Your Stealth Skill has increased in level: 3 -> 10
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CONGRATULATIONS FLAME AGAINST THE STORM, YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 11
3 Attribute points have been gained.
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His first level in the first threshold, Ambrose tried to remember exactly when he had his breakthrough and all that had happened in the time since. It... it wasn’t all that much, he had mostly focused on Skills afterwards due to his soul damage from breaking the process a little bit. After that was when he had died and been thrown into the dungeon once more. While he had killed a bunch of things in the time since, most of the kills were in a critically low ambient mana environment, which had at a minimum made the punishment fight far easier, lowering any experience he had gained from the fight, many of the others were assisted or indirect kills also greatly lowering his gains.
Ambrose did feel ripped off of course, he had been the reason for all of the Gabrawl deaths had occurred the previous night, easily over a hundred of the creatures had perished yet he only gained a single level he had already made significant progress on. He knew that you could gain levels without killing things, even if it was significantly slower, otherwise there was simply no way that everyone in the village had reached the levels they had. Unless Berta the baker had secretly been a serial killer, there was simply no way she was approaching her third threshold if you could only gain experience from killing.
Ambrose decided that it had to do with why people only ever did the one thing, it still rubbed Ambrose the wrong way that the town hadn’t had a tailor of any kind within its walls despite a Sewing Skill book being cheaply available for locals. He was pretty certain that it was their Characters, the system was largely built around them, it only made sense that it became the way to gain experience, especially as everyone reached level ten for free aside from the Sponsored. It was only because his Character was focused around surviving combat and beating the odds that he hadn’t noticed or though about it earlier. Mariella had even told him that her Character was tied to the tavern and she had an Ability based on it, and she had passed the second threshold. If Ambrose wanted to gain more experience from indirect kills, he would need to build his Character around that fact, making it a part of himself. Ambrose stared at his newest Rare Skill as plans began to form.
It was soon to be time for a training montage, he just needed to decide on exercises to do for each of his Skills. His current character was formed from Dodging at level two uncommon, Madness at level five rare, Perception at level thirty-two common, Running at level thirteen common, Small Blades at level one common, and Stealth at level ten common. Overall it was abysmal, the Skills formed a huge part of who he was in this world and most of them were low level commons.
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It was most important for Ambrose to raise his Small Blades and Dodging Skills back up to a reasonable level, not that Dodging had ever been above level five, before he could go into any real fights. He could train his Perception at the same time as Dodging and Madness if he just found an opponent and fought them with his eyes closed. Even if the opponent was a Loobin he didn’t currently have the ability to do such a thing safely and another death was a genuine possibility if he took a bad enough hit, easily meeting the trigger for his experience boosting Skill.
Running was something Ambrose just needed to improve, he wasn’t incorporating any other concept into the Skill and just wanted a better version of it, unsure if he should even bring it up to the next rarity or just leaving it at a high level for use in his flames. Levelling the Skill should just be a matter of running faster and further. Stealth was similar, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do to train the Skill other than not be seen, in the future Ambrose wanted to incorporate the ability to hide his Character sheet but was near certain it was something he would need someone to teach him, or at least someone that could Assess him so he could learn to feel the Ability being used on him. Without methods to train the other aspects of stealth such as blending into a crowd, Ambrose only had the ‘don’t get seen idiot’ aspect to level with. This meant that his best bet was simply to try and sneak past enemies. If he got spotted it would then be an ideal time to train Running.
The obvious place would be the fort, the intelligence of the Gabrawls would make things more difficult than the oblivious Dungeonese Sheep or Loobins, avoiding traps would also help him with Perception. Largely Ambrose just wanted more chances to steal from the creatures, and if they learned his goals they would heighten security, further increasing the difficulty as they got more and more annoyed.
As the image of running from an army of bumbling guards chasing after a street rat ran through his mind, Ambrose realised there was a more specialised version of running that he could potentially go for, parkour. He had noticed that running through the complicated environment of the forest had granted him great experience, he also couldn’t deny how useful it would be to quickly move through any kind of environment, especially as he was rewarded for going into stupid situations, being able to bail if things got bad would certainly enable him to do stupider things with less overall risk.
That just left behind the problematic Small Blades, without respawning creatures he would need to be careful of what he killed and when in order to have creatures to train against, wanting to be able to use the sceptre in the final fight if needed. He also couldn’t kill anything considered weaker than him unless he was going to make use of most of its body, further lowering the amount of enemies he could actually kill. The current glaring issue was that he didn’t have access to any real knives. In an ideal world he would want several different types of blades, practising with the different types would be an easy way to increase the level of his Skill and was the intended way to level such Skills, only getting the gist of using that all of the category of weapon before specialising it into a specific type at uncommon or rare. Instead Ambrose would need to focus on getting actually good with the basic skinning knife he had and whatever weapons he could steal from the Gabrawls. He knew they had metal and metal items, the guards being armed with swords and armour of various sizes and shapes, though he hadn’t seen any at the market he had robbed, only the ones on the guards which while not exactly matching, were clearly all the same type of weapon. Fortunately Ambrose was fairly certain they were short swords.
With the basics out of the way, Ambrose began plotting out a more solid plan. In the end he decided that to begin with he was going to sneak into the fort during the day, from there he would look for a single Gabrawl guard and try to kill them with a small blade weapon while focusing on dodging, he would keep the fight going for longer by only going for hard to hit weak points, like in between armour joints. If at any point he got seen, he would begin running through the city, escaping through the main exit furthest from his current location. If he managed to kill the guard without before getting discovered he would then attempt to return to the marketplace by heading through the middle of the fort where he would allow himself to take something before going for the exit. This would basically be one loop that Ambrose could then repeat until he got caught and got tired.
Ambrose wasn’t in the condition needed to start this training just yet, instead it was time to go over the items he had stolen and work on some crafting while he regained his strength. He would also practise some knife throws just so he would be out of the danger zone, it wasn’t like he could hit a specific spot reliably at even close range on a still target, so he had plenty of room to grow.
He had already used the consumable items he had stolen, leaving him with the object he had used to set the oil aflame as the only real item left.
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Gabrawlian Spark Shooter (Common)
A small device with a ripcord sticking out. When pulled, a spark will shoot out of the front of the device capable of lighting fuses or other flammable objects and substances.
Durability: Normal
Quality: Normal
Properties: Fuelled (This item uses an internal fuel as a power source and will fail to function if the fuel runs out, it is currently at 99% capacity.)
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The item was a small disk that you were meant to hold in one hand, the middle of the device would then point out from your palm. You then hooked your thumb into the cord and flicked it outwards to yank on the cord, causing a tiny ball of flame or ‘spark’ to shoot forward that would light anything particularly flammable. Ambrose had even tested the spark on himself, curious as to how effective it might be. The result was lacklustre though, even with the Items as Weapons Skill the spark simply felt like someone tapping on his hand, leaving nothing but a small patch of warmed skin with some residue left behind. Ambrose was unsure if it was a property of the substance kept within the device, or if there was some kind of enchantment placed within the device that transferred a property that allowed the projectile to light things on fire.
Other than items, Ambrose had grabbed several different materials that had grabbed his eye. Most of them he wasn’t currently able to get a read on as they were not raw materials, nor were they considered a usable item on their own, small gears, igniters, and other parts that were used in Engineering items he had grabbed to study as he worked towards the Skill himself.
For a similar reason he had also grabbed a pile of metal, most of it in the form of thin sheets that he could then cut into parts. The sheets, to his surprise, he was able to Identify/Inspect though each of them had given him the same information, the name was whatever metal sheet and the description was ‘A thin sheet of x metal, formed to be made into parts.’ with most of their durabilities and quality being normal. Despite the lack of information provided on the sheets themselves, Ambrose actually knew about the three different metals from his Mining and Metallurgy Skill book.
The first and most plentiful had been a metal called steel, a very mystical metal that could clearly only exist in a world with lots of magic. The second and third metals were at least somewhat interesting, the first was Maerum, an alloy metal made from silver and powdered mana of some kind which was usually turned into a thin wire and used in forming enchantments. The Maerum he had was just the basic unattuned version, but there were methods to create specialised versions of Maerun tied to the type of powdered mana mixed in, these would then hold enchantments that matched better, increasing their strength or lowering their cost.
Ambrose only had a single plate of the last metal, it was also the only plate that had a durability of Tough. The metal was called Osterum, it was a higher rarity metal that came naturally in ore form. It was naturally tougher than basic steel, making it harder to work with, but it also had an added bonus of slightly warping gravity. This made it harder to use in normal applications but you could affect how it affected gravity through various techniques that his book unfortunately didn’t cover, it wasn't a Smithing or Forging book. A shield made of the stuff could be made to increase the pull in the near vicinity, making it slightly more likely that something would hit the shield rather than the user, at the cost of it hitting slightly harder. You could also have it repel things to a specific direction, making blows slide off to the side away from you for example. It could also just increase or decrease its own mass, leaving you with something more durable and lighter than steel or a heavier weapon to deal more damage.
The final material he had taken was also the most immediately useful, and similar to his Somniferum power he had, it was a usable material having a information sheet he could access with his current Skills and Abilities.
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Verdant Blue Echinacea powder
A powdered form of the Verdant Blue Echinacea flower. The powder is used as the most common basis for healing potions throughout Eramen but can be used on its own to a lesser effect when applied as a paste or consumed.
Quality: Refined.
Properties: Healing (Contains minor healing ability, increasing the rate of regeneration when consumed or applied directly to a wound.)
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While the powder wouldn’t fix his current issues it was obviously valuable. It also outright told him that the plant existed within the dungeon and was something he should be looking out for.
Current loot dealt with Ambrose went back to the Tailoring room and got back to work, he had time to kill while his body recovered so he went back to creating items from his remaining Dungeonese Sheep wool, starting with some backup clothes.