Dungeons are some of the most dangerous and rewarding places in existence. Their halls are infested with monsters and treasure both, and in rare cases it is even possible to gain new skills by fulfilling challenges and trials set by the Dungeon Master or god who owns the dungeon. As such, there is no such thing as a civilization on our world that has not had adventurers. Risking one's life in a dungeon is rarely worth it if you can't keep what you earned inside, and nations that have tried to restrict or control access to dungeons have always failed, even if it takes time for it to happen.

There are certain rules all dungeons - regardless of their maker - must follow. One is that there must be access from the surface. The second is that the core must always be accessible, even if it difficult. The third is that the weakest challenges always exist at the beginning and accelerate the deeper inside you go. However, there is no rule about how rewards may be given, so it is often the case that a Dungeon Master will protect the core by giving out the best rewards at a shallower part of the dungeon...

~Excerpt from a Lecture to New Adventurers, origin unknown

Six Years Later, City of Da’nold

I woke up to the usual sensation of female flesh pressing against me from all directions. Looking down, I saw my mistress, the dragon I knew as Tatha, as nude as the day she was born. When I looked to the right and the left I saw the twins, and when I craned my neck to look up I saw Ris.

All four were sleeping peacefully, though I didn’t really appreciate the way Tatha was gripping my tail and running her claws through my fur. Ris was practically wrapped around my head, and the twins had both taken an arm.

Ris had mostly gotten over her dependence on me over the past half-decade, but that didn’t mean she was willing to be separated from me. Tatha was surprisingly generous, letting Ris and the twins occasionally have alone time with me between training bouts and playing various games with her.

A lot of that was that I’d basically reproduced every board game Tajiri’s memories held, giving Tatha a great number of different ways to play with and against me. As such, I’d managed to avoid her increasingly passionate approaches in the bedroom, but Ris and the other two girls were growing insistent.

At some point, I was going to give in at this rate, and I didn’t like where that thought went. I was fairly sure that me getting into a real relationship with any of them would give my ‘patron’ a lever he could use against me. The only one I couldn’t conceive of him using against me was Tatha… and I had a feeling accepting Tatha’s advances would mean I spent the rest of my life in her palace, being coddled and protected instead of being trained and played with.

Ris… some instinct told me that it wasn’t time yet. Her dependence had eased, but I had a feeling that going down that route before I managed to worm out of the geas would be a disaster for me, though I was oddly certain it wouldn’t harm her beyond losing me.

The twins, however… if I attached myself too strongly to them, I had a horrible feeling that I would be dooming them that only grew every time they made any kind of real attempt to get me into bed.

A lot of that was one of the skills I’d learned from Tatha…

Name: Iryun Liodosia

Age: 16

Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Disruption Qi), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts

Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 7, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 6, Danger Sense (Precognitive) 3

Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4

My weapon and barehanded skills had merged into Martial Arts, as I expected, and I’d advanced significantly in the three powers in the past half-decade. However, the two biggest differences were the Draconic Arts and Danger Sense, both of which were taught to me (beaten into me) by Tatha in her spare time.

Draconic Arts was a unique approach to the three powers normally only used by dragons and Dragonnewts, and it was almost impossible to explain to someone who hadn’t had it beaten into them like I had. It combined magic, sage arts, and qigong in a way that felt entirely natural to me now, but was agonizingly painful when I first started (which was why my pain resistance went up by one, despite the relative ease of my life outside of training).

Danger Sense was the skill that kept alerting me to the danger of getting sexually involved with any of the women in my life. It sent a chill down my spine, and occasionally it sent me dreams that were full of scraps of potential futures that made me want to vomit.

That skill I had ‘learned’ by drinking Tatha’s blood daily for a month, until draconic vital energy infused every inch of my flesh and forced a minor evolution. The skill gained from the process was different for everyone, but I’d apparently gained a skill that let me sense trouble through the river of time. Though, it was a passive skill, so I had no control over it. It increased on its own, probably because there were so many hidden dangers in my current situation.

Tatha… was a problem. The little ‘errands’ she sent me out on weren’t that onerous (mostly involving killing adventurers who intruded on her personal territory), and she was generous with the training and education I wanted so badly.

… on the other hand, it was increasingly clear she wanted me to mate with her, and I had no desire to spend the rest of my life producing dragonnewts in hope of her birthing a full dragon to do her duty to her race. The dragonnewt servants were nice and many of them were nearly friends. However, they were still ‘lesser’ in the eyes of their full-dragon siblings. The strange mix of shame and pride they all seemed to feel about their heritage killed any desire I might have had to see my own blood mixed with hers.

Moreover, it was obvious the dragons didn’t consider the dragonnewts to be their siblings or children. To them, they were failures, only one step above the kobolds who served them so abjectly.

Tatha was a beautiful woman that I found both emotionally and physically attractive. She was also a trap that would lead to a dull life void of adventure, whose joys would like only in luxury and physical pleasure.

The remnants of Tajiri within my soul rebelled against the very idea of that kind of life, and I couldn’t really say I disagreed with how he would have felt. Iryun’s remnants also felt displeased… probably because he wanted to become an adventurer just as much as I did.

I gently pulled myself free from the pile of limbs, patting each of the girls on the head softly before putting my bare feet down on the cold marble floor. I was wearing a light blue linen robe, just as I always did when I went to bed. My tail poked through the hole near my rear end, and was waving back and forth slowly as I headed for the stand near the door to the baths. I used the cold water in the basin to wash my face, drying it off with a towel before calling forth a tortoiseshell comb and a horse-hair brush from my inventory.

I began to slowly comb the tangles formed by Tatha’s careless grip on it during the night, then brushed it to bring back some of the gloss and fluff it normally had. I then did the same with my hair and ears before returning them to my inventory and beginning my combined qigong, sage arts, and magic exercises.

I took in a breath, circulating my vital energy even as I sent out threads of spiritual energy in specific patterns and formed numerous first-tier spellforms in the air around me. I deliberately kept the spellforms one step from completion as I moved my body through a simple barehanded kata designed to help compress my qi and ease its flow through its channels.

Slowly, I added to the spellforms, taking them up to the second tier. At the same time, I expanded the range and complexity of my spiritual energy threads, impressing each of them with a different shade of emotion. I worked to compress my qi a little further with every movement through my system, a maelstrom forming in the invisible core I recently managed to form below my belly button.

All my movements were slow, flowing, deliberate. They were nothing like the incomplete motions I’d once used solely for mastering qigong. Draconic Arts required the individual to be able to utilize the three powers as naturally as breathing, together and in the correct proportions. This required me to train my control, which was different from aiming to increase my skill level. With the three powers, skill levels meant raw power more than true skill or control, so there was a huge qualitative difference between individuals at the same level if one learned control properly and the other didn’t.

I knew that the silver and black of my fur was glowing faintly and a phantasmal second tail had formed in the air behind me. I saw my claws glow silver and begin to extend, my canines growing longer as the nature of Draconic Arts enhanced the feral side of my nature, drawing out the spirit fox and suppressing the elven bloodline.

At the same time, I enforced absolute control on the increasingly fierce instincts that wanted to draw me away from anything resembling humanity. I ruthlessly took hold of those emotions, channeling that same energy into my focus on controlling the three powers at the same time.

I knew that if I allowed the instincts precedence, my atavism would get worse, though in the Empire, that would have been desirable, as it was a sign of a bloodline awakening. In my case, it was a sign of imbalance. My elven bloodline simply wasn’t as strengthened by practicing the Draconic Arts as my spirit fox one, so I found that I became closer to my father’s race than my mother’s the more I practiced them.

I was fairly sure there was a way to even out how I was effected, but there was a strong synchronicity between the natures of dragons and spirit foxes that made it more difficult than I would have thought.

The key seemed to be in increasing the degree of focus I had on magic, as spiritual energy and vital energy used in Draconic Arts seemed to enhance my spirit fox bloodline.

I increased the complexity of the spellforms, bring them up to the third tier… but I felt myself straining to hold things together. To be frank, Draconic Arts were exponentially more difficult to master than any of the three powers on their own, and the training to do so was equally exhausting.

I could use all three at the third tier while practicing at the same time, which was the key to gaining the Draconic Arts Skill in the first place. However, I was pretty sure it would be years before I managed the fourth tier. The sheer concentration it took me to do this much gave me lingering headaches afterward.

It didn’t make things easier that this training required every strand of spiritual energy and every spellform to be for a differing purpose. Even though the equations for third-tier spells came to me easily after mastering the sixth and seventh tiers, that didn’t meant holding so many different ones at the same time would get much easier. Sage arts were… strange. They couldn’t really be separated into tiers like spells could be. It was more that range and effectiveness increased with each level. Qigong was more straightforward. The higher your level, the more you could do with less qi, the more qi you could channel at once, and it became denser.

I’d become more and more conscious of how the three powers were intertwined as time went on. It would be impossible for me to be whole if I didn’t master all three, though magic didn’t come to me as easily as the other two. To ignore the mind in favor of the body and spirit would weaken me in the long run, just as my grandfather and mother had warned.

When I started mastering the seventh tier, the equations involved became four-dimensional, and I understood why it was one of the three ‘walls’. The more I practiced it, the more I felt my mind expanding and extending itself in directions it wouldn’t have been able to on its own. If it weren’t for the basic understanding that came to anyone upon reaching a certain level in magic, I would never have been able to conceive of the true form of a seventh-tier spell, much less actually cast one.

Through the sixth tier, most spells, while they involved complex equations, had straightforward effects. However, in the seventh tier, spells began to take on what the books Tatha gave me called ‘aspects’. These aspects were similar to the elemental base that existed for the previous tiers, but the difference was that, instead of one aspect, every spell required at least three, with four or five being common with the more advanced seventh-tier spells.

I could see why people spent decades or even centuries stuck at the seventh tier of magic. I could also see why a single seventh tier magic-user could obliterate a thousand fifth-tier magic users with little effort. It was possible to create a counter-spell using seventh tier magic that could completely nullify any and all single-element spells. Moreover, it was possible to create spells that the standard magic shield couldn’t defend against by adding aspects such as ‘penetration’ or ‘manifestation’ to the more standard elemental aspects.

I shuddered when I recalled what I’d read on eight and ninth tier spells. The difference was exponential for every level beyond seven, which was why it took so long to gain each level. Even with my unique skill, it would probably take me years to even hit the eighth tier… if I even managed that.

My intuition seemed to get better with every level of sage arts I mastered, even if I wasn’t utilizing my spiritual energy. Unlike magic, sage arts came quite naturally to me, so I felt I would reach level eight significantly faster than magic or qigong. However, I also had a feeling that I needed to avoid letting it get too far ahead of the other two at the higher levels. The sense of detachment I got when practicing sage arts got worse the higher my level got, though circulating vital energy slowly through my body seemed to counter the effect to some degree.

Qigong… was getting strangely esoteric as it went up in level. I’d known from reading the books Tatha handed me that everyone who wanted to master qigong beyond level 7 had to find their own path, but I hadn’t imagined it would be so… strange.

Intuitively, it felt like something that should have been required to evolve sage arts, rather than qigong, as it was essentially creating a path that aligned with how you thought and felt and matching your vital energy to the invisible wavelength that accompanied that alignment. Every step on the path of mastering qigong from then on was essentially adjusting that alignment or evolving it.

In my case, I’d incorporated the concept of disruption into my qi, allowing me to disable an opponent’s defenses and disrupt their train of thought through my barehanded and weapon attacks. It was a somewhat odd choice, compared to the Ris, who had chosen to incorporate rage and fire into her qi, and the twins, who had chosen shadow and wind respectively. Tatha had approved of my choice, though she had mentioned it was aligned with the greater alignment of Chaos, so my nature was probably somehow related to that force.

My companions’ current stat pages looked like this:

Name: Risaria

Age: 20

Race: Spirit Fox

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Raging Flame), Magic 7, Sage Arts 4, Swords 4, Axes 6, Spears 2, Shield 2, Evasion 5, Leadership 2, Berserk 3, Farming 1, Weaving 2

Passive Skills: Pain Tolerance 6, Disease Resistance 1, Magic Resistance 5

Unique Skills: Wrathful Flame (Blessing of Change)

Name: Naia

Age: 27

Race: Elf

Common Skills: Qigong 5, Magic 6, Sage Arts 7, Archery 8, Swords 4, Spears 3, Hunting 4

Passive Skills: Mana Well 4, Spiritual Energy Regeneration 4, Magic Resistance 3, Disease Resistance 1

Unique Skills: Mark of the Gods: Trul’enea

Name: Neid

Age: 27

Race: Elf

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Shadow), Magic 5, Sage Arts 7, Archery 6, Swords 3, Daggers 7, Spears 3, Hunting 6, Stealth 4, Herbalism 2

Passive Skills: Pain Tolerance 3, Disease Resistance 1, Magic Resistance 3, Poison Resistance 5, Spiritual Energy Regeneration 3

Unique Skills: Mark of the Gods: Trul’enea

Their skills were all a bit more lopsided compared to mine, though it would be more appropriate to call them specialized. For some reason, Ris had become something of a firebrand in recent years, obsessing over ending slavery in the homeland she had left behind. She kept trying to convince me to go back with her so she could strike down the nobility and raise up the slaves and common people being harmed by the endless feuds between the nobility.

This was reflected in her skills, which were all based around anger, destruction, and resisting pain. That new unique skill she had gained, which was apparently a divine blessing, was powerful, allowing her to convert her rage into flaming qi and emit it from anywhere on her body, even enveloping herself with it when her berserk skill activated.

Tatha seemed to find her amusing, which was probably why she’d taught her the berserk skill in the first place. She even encouraged her by showing her political treatises from the scholars in the Fendarian Republic across the sea.

Naia was leaning into her natural elven affinity for archery, being the only one of us with a common skill over 7. Her ability to place arrows into people and creatures at unbelievable distances and angles was downright frightening, and I shuddered to imagine what would happen when her qigong reached 7 and she could start using it to manipulate the wind.

Neid… was going in a rather odd direction. She had trained furiously with dual daggers and qigong over the past six years, working past the elven disadvantages to gain the strength she desired. She had also gained the stealth skill, which was impossible to gain unless you had a natural affinity for it. Tatha had had her eating poisonous herbs and mushrooms to increase her poison resistance, and she had picked up basic herbalism to let her make toxins of her own. To be honest, if she wasn’t mostly using her skills to hunt meat and play tricks on us, I would have been a bit scared of her.

Tatha was apparently training Neid to serve as a spy and assassin, with an eye to keeping me alive if I left the mountain range, which she seemed to be sure I would, despite her constant attempts to bind me to herself permanently. She also continuously tried to get a binding promise out of me to return if I left, and I was definitely weakening on that front. Tatha could be surprisingly convincing when she wanted something badly enough.

Naia apparently had no intention of leaving the mountains, as she was currently working with Tatha’s dragonnewt rangers to keep foreigners from trespassing on the restricted parts of the range. In a way, it was little different from the apparent choice Neid had made, as I was fairly sure they’d sworn loyalty to Tatha at some point.

I’d had the ‘pleasure’ of meeting Tatha’s mother, the absolute ruler of the mountain range precisely once in the last six years… and I understood just how terrifying she was at a glance. To be blunt, the pressure from her presence – despite the fact that she was apparently holding back most of her power – had been enough to drive me to my knees before I got within three football fields of her throne. All the servants working in her palace were either dragons or Masters, making things even worse.

Surprisingly, she had welcomed us, giving us permission to stay without much in the way of comment.

Another surprise was that a solid population of dwarves continued to live in the mountains, though they were all in lifelong service to the dragons. Apparently their ancestors had agreed to create ‘shinies’ for the dragons into perpetuity in exchange for the right to remain within their ancestral homeland. It was essentially a slave contract, but I’d yet to encounter a dwarf that was dissatisfied with their lot. Apparently, not needing to worry about anything other than mastering their art or pursuing the traditional dwarven ‘hobby’ of mining ore was pretty close to an ideal way of life for them. With kobolds doing all the farming and husbandry, the survivors’ descendants actually had an easier life than their ancestors at the height of the dwarven kingdom’s prosperity.

Not to mention that dragons and dwarves both shared an absolute adoration for hard liquor that made for a lot of joint projects to create ‘the perfect batch’ between the races.

I’d found it odd at first when I discovered the degree to which the dragons, dragonnewts, dwarves, and kobolds had an inter-reliant relationship. However, it made a great deal of sense once I read through the histories.

The Queen originally lived deep beneath the mountains, beneath even the dwarven cities, in a massive cavern where her brood was raised to maturity before being sent into the world through small caves leading to the outside. However, a group of dwarven explorers raided her horde, killing two of her children in their humanoid forms.

Driven by rage, she rose from the depths and destroyed the great dwarven kingdoms, filling their massive caverns with black fire and laying to waste their surface settlements. Those who survived and didn’t flee were given the choice between submission and death, and most of them chose the former.

It made sense that she slew any who came uninvited. She wasn’t interested in trade, and all the treasures of the ruined cities belonged to her. The dwarves and kobolds produced all the products she could possibly want, and the dragonnewts were ideal guardians and body servants for the true dragons.

She had created a society where everyone knew their place and kept to it, with dragons at the top and her ruling over the dragons. It was impossible not to admire her for her intelligence and wisdom, as, while she was a tyrant, she was far more benevolent to her subjects than the monarchs of the outside.

There was the issue that most of the dragons saw humanoids as insects, but it was unlikely to ever become an issue as long as she ruled.

Tatha had definitely fallen into that particular draconic archetype when we first met, but the last few years had led her to see us as individuals instead of toys… for the most part. A dragon is a dragon, after all.

I was fairly sure that she still saw outsiders and the servants as insects, though.

“Iryun,” Tatha’s smooth and rich voice caressed my ears, causing them to twitch in startlement. However, I kept going through the motions of my exercise, even as I turned my attention to our host and mistress.

“Good morning, Lady Tatha,” I said, giving her a gentle smile as she stretched, rising from the bed with her lavender eyes fixed on me. She was completely nude, not bothering to hide anything. The scales ran down her flanks, and a solid plate of scales lay over the center of her chest, protecting her heart. I knew from her anatomy lessons that both dragons in humanoid form and dragonnewts had several layers of steel-hard ribs surrounding their heart, as it was both the source of their power and one the few vulnerabilities they possessed.

Nonetheless, she was excruciatingly beautiful. Perhaps it was because it was evident that she was meant to look that way, but I had no problems finding her body attractive.

“Iryun, you could have waited until midday to get up, you know. We got back from the feast fairly late,” She said with some concern as she looked me over worriedly.

For the last few days, the harvest festival had been going on, and we had moved from feast to feast, ‘blessing’ the kobolds with her presence and devouring heaps of food to keep the little lizardmen happy. However, Tatha was surprisingly indulgent with the kobolds, unwilling to hurt their feelings by leaving too early. As a result, we kept coming back late into the night.

For some reason, dragons seemed to see kobolds as cute pets as much as servants. I had to admit that I’d grown to see the attraction, as their kids were as cute as kittens (scaled kittens, but still kittens) with big green eyes and friendly as a Pomeranian.

Unlike the others, I didn’t drink much. Tatha usually put down a barrel or two of whatever was offered, and the twins were almost as bad. Ris had developed a taste for dwarven fire water, as well. As a result, the girls were usually drunk by the time we returned to the palace. I was fairly sure that was the reason they kept sneaking into my bed after I went to sleep, but I was not so stupid as to try to confirm that with them.

Tatha examined my kata critically, pointing out areas where a small adjustment would make a difference or where the flow of my energies wasn’t quite right. When I first began training under her, her ‘adjustments’ mostly consisted of her tripping me or blasting me with raw energy when I made a mistake, but since I’d gained the skill, she’d become a lot easier on me. I had a few scars from when she went a little too far early on.

Neid and Naia woke up an hour later and joined my exercises. They were significantly more awkward, as they didn’t have the skill yet, but they were still better than I was before the system gave it to me. The main reason why they were awkward was because their energies were too far out of balance, which was in opposition to the basic concepts behind the Draconic Arts.

We were chatting and eating breakfast on the balcony when Ris finally stumbled out, grabbing the tea pot and pouring the contents into a gigantic mug before slurping it down in seconds. This was one of the many little rituals I’d become accustomed to over the last six years, as she was always the last to wake up and she needed a large amount of tea just to stop herself from going back to bed.

She tore into the breakfast of cream soup and boiled eggs furiously, devouring everything we had yet to put on our own plates in a third of the time it had taken for us to eat. It was only afterward that something approaching sanity appeared in her eyes and she flushed, looking embarrassed at her lack of restraint. Despite her embarrassment, she had yet to even make a serious attempt to fix her bad habits, so I had no sympathy whatsoever.

Ris had filled out in the past six years, her body becoming lush and well-formed, her scars fading to faint white lines that were barely visible against the darker colored skin around them. In addition, her long legs rippled with lithe muscles when she moved, showing the results of her training with Tatha’s personal guard.

The twins had grown taller, but otherwise their proportions were unchanged. The biggest change in their appearance was a gradual sharpening of the lines of their faces, as the last of their baby fat fell away and left behind two beautiful young women.

They were both immensely popular amongst the (mostly male) rangers and guardsmen, and it wasn’t uncommon to see them getting extras from stall owners when they walked the small market near the gate leading deeper into the mountain range.

As a result, I was rather unpopular amongst the male denizens of the palace, and I had to endure their jealous stares on mornings like this one. The women were also a bit hard on me, but that was because I hadn’t accepted the girls’ advances, despite the fact that I was aware of their feelings.

Tatha grinned, and I knew she was reading my thoughts from my spiritual energy. She hadn’t been able to do that at first, but for the last year or so, I hadn’t been able to hide anything from her.

Once my exercise was over, she immediately picked me up like I was a child and placed me on her knee, where she began combing her hands through my hair and massaging my ears, sending chills down my spine every time her clawed fingers delicately moved along my scalp or tickled at my ears.

This was another little ritual that she knew I hated. However, she was a dragon, so my dislike for the situation meant nothing to her… well beyond being a source of amusement, anyway.

“You are about to leave, aren’t you Iryun?” She said softly, her expression suddenly becoming serious as she let me down from her knee.

I nodded guiltily. I knew I was something of a coward for not answering any of their feelings toward me, but all I saw in her eyes was a calm acceptance of my decision, which was not a feeling I’d ever expected to see in a dragon’s eyes. I knew she saw me as hers, above all other things, and dragons weren’t known for letting their possessions go. Heck, it was well-known that a dragon would rather go to war than give up any of their shinies when they didn’t have to.

“You will come back to me, in time. Kill anyone you need to, destroy anything you must, but you will return to my side,” She commanded ferociously. I felt Tatha’s intensity in her spiritual energy as it caressed my senses.

“Leave now, Iryun. I will send Neid after you once Risaria settles down. I do not know why, precisely, but my mother says that it would be a mistake to keep you here. I have struggled to accept that reality, despite my trust in her wisdom, but I have chosen to believe that it is for the best,” She explained, obviously pained by the admission.

I bowed my head and said quietly, “Thank you, Tatha. I am fortunate to have met you. I… will return to you when I am free of my obligations.”

I wasn’t lying. I intended to return to her side, once the chains of slavery binding my soul were broken. However, I had no idea when that would be… or if it would be.

I rose and departed, a set of fur armor appearing on my shoulders, thick boots on my feet as I left her behind, regretting the lost opportunities I had ignored out of fear for the past few years.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Tathais’al’tragichar of six years past would never have imagined she would find herself crying while being embraced by two elven girls and a spirit fox who were her rivals as well as friends. The very idea of being comforted by insects would have been alien to her, and the idea of falling in love with an insect would have been even more outside her ability to comprehend.

Tears streaked her perfectly-formed cheeks as the elves patted her head between the horns and Risaria’s tail brushed against her comfortingly.

Risaria had grown more than Iryun imagined in the past six years, enough that she cared as much about their host as she did about the boy who had taken her heart in hand during their escape from slavery. Her own loss wrenched at her heart, for she knew that she was unlikely to meet Iryun again in this life. The driving impulse that came from her blessing from Change was driving her mad with the need to destroy and rebuild her homeland, and she knew that it was likely that impulse would consume her life in the process.

She had studied politics, strategy, and tactics over the past six years, preparing for what was to come next, even if she didn’t gain any skills from merely absorbing knowledge. She was as ready as she could be, and she had forced herself to accept that her path was incompatible with Iryun’s, even if she didn’t know what it was.

Naia sorrowed for her friends, knowing that their loss was far heavier than her own. Neid was fortunate, in that she would be guarding Iryun’s life from the shadows, but the rest of them might never see him again. Naia knew that Tatha was far more fragile than she’d been when they first met, her feelings for Iryun creating a vulnerability that few dragons would ever experience.

She would protect Tatha’s heart and await Iryun’s return, even if it took centuries or longer. It pained her to separate from her twin, but she knew Neid needed to protect Iryun more than she needed her sister. In a way, Naia was the wisest of their small circle by far.

Neid felt guilty as she comforted Tatha and Ris, knowing she would not be separated from Iryun for long, while the others might not see him again in this life. It pained her to separate from her twin, for they had managed to remain together throughout their lives, even the time of hardship as sex slaves and later as probationers.

Her priorities had shifted at some point to focus on Iryun, something she never would have expected when they first met. It wasn’t love… or rather, it wasn’t just love. Rather, it was a need to protect the member of their group she instinctively knew was the most likely to fall to harm.

While he seemed to be the strongest of the four of them, the fear he showed at odd times had tickled at her protective instincts constantly. The fact that he showed it the most when they tried to be intimate with him said everything to her, so she’d chosen a role where she could protect him without needing to be in close contact.

His utter rejection of any of them accompanying him when he left had only solidified her certainty that his fear was that they would get caught up in whatever mess had dragged him into Diandra’s orbit in the first place. Unlike the rest of them, he’d just appeared one day, was dragged into the probationers camp by Diandra himself, and then left to fend for himself.

For that reason, when the squad leaders had their pick of the new probationers, they always shoved the rejects onto him, as they didn’t want to waste resources on someone who didn’t share the same experiences. By the time the longer-term survivors had grown to accept him, it had just become a half-assed sort of tradition to give him the dregs.

Tatha seemed utterly certain he would return to her, but Neid wasn’t nearly as sure. She hoped his future wasn’t as dark as she feared it would be.

They comforted each other well into the night and past dawn, drinking their way through Tatha’s personal wine cellar.

___________________________________________________________________________

Two Weeks Later

Dravesta was once the most important trade city along the route leading to the south through the mountains. However, after the dwarven homelands were lost and the pass forbidden to most, the city began to rot on the branch.

Once a grand city with white stone walls and homes of painted brick, it was now a city in name only. The central keep, once the city hall, was surrounded by a grim set of gray walls, with a second wall around a quarter of a mile out that contained what little of the city was still inhabited. The outer wall of the old city had long since crumbled from neglect, weathering, and assaults by monsters, and most of the old construction of the city was collapsed or crumbling at best.

There were no longer brightly-colored shops or a flower-decorated pleasure district. What remained of the city’s population existed solely to support the garrison, whose duty was watching the mountains. Unlike most of Gaveria’s military, only the garrison’s higher-ranked officers were oni, while the rest were a mix of elves, spirit foxes and even a few werewolves who had somehow managed to worm their way into a position in Gaveria’s oni-supremacist military.

The average citizen was destitute, most of them being physical laborers whose only jobs involved dealing with sanitation or moving supplies and materials for the garrison. There were only a few inns, but a rather large number of taverns relative to the population that doubled as brothels. Most of the women in the ‘city’ were prostitutes, many of those slaves who had failed to gain a position in a better part of the country.

There was a distinct lack of discipline amongst the garrison, which was why no one was standing at the gates when I walked through, the hood of my dark brown fur mantle concealing my face, the cloak concealing my tail. I already knew there was no Adventurers Guild in Dravesta. There simply wasn’t enough coin going around to let people pay Adventurers to clean out the undead and goblins that infested the ruins outside the gates.

Wards created through magic were set into the gates, providing a barrier that would incinerate any low-ranking monster that tried to pass through, and that had led to the already unmotivated guardsmen deciding to take unauthorized naps in the guardhouse during the day.

A young werewolf woman’s corpse was visible lying in an alley near the gates, several stab wounds surrounded by flies present on her half-naked body. It said a lot about how horrible the public order was that no one bothered to say anything, but Tatha’s spies had said as much when I asked for information about the city before I left.

Dravesta was a dead city. Every person living there was essentially waiting to die, their lives at a dead end for various reasons. Outcasts, criminals, slaves… rejects, demoted officers, corrupt sergeants… there was just no saving the people of Dravesta, simply because none of them cared about anything beyond their immediate needs.

I naturally had no intention of staying for long. I followed the directions given me by Tatha’s agent and made my way through the narrow dirt streets until I came upon a worn-down two-story brick construction with the picture of a bed and a drumstick on the sign beside the front door. It was an inn owned by the dragons, purchased so they would have a place for their agents to stay when they were scouting in Gaveria for potential problems.

I entered, and an elderly dwarf woman looked up from the book she was reading behind the wooden counter straight across from the door.

I raised my hand and made a quick series of signs, causing her to nod slightly before greeting me, “Welcome to the West Gate Inn. Lookin’ for a room, youngling?”

I nodded, “Just for the night.”

“It’ll be four copper for a single room, six if you want the room and a meal, seven if you want a bath as well,” She said.

I placed eight coppers on the counter in front of her and she swept them off the table, handing me a simple wooden key, “Third room on the left once you get upstairs. Supper will be offered in the taproom two rings of the bell from now.”

In most of the towns and cities of the continent, time was told by bells, with the town bell ringing roughly every hour and a half. That meant I had time for a quick nap, so I thanked her and headed upstairs. There was no in the corridor thankfully, and I made it to my room without incident.

The room was actually rather nice… but then, since dragonnewts disguised as oni used it on a regular basis, that was no surprise. Though they were a servant race to the dragons, that just meant they were lesser nobility in the eyes of the rest of the mountain-dwellers’ eyes. They are accustomed to a certain level of comforts.

While the drapes by the window were plain gray linen to present an appearance of humble simplicity that matched the city, the bed had a feather mattress, blue silk sheets, and a beautiful black wool blanket with an expensive silk pillow. A water stone faucet was visible on the nightstand, with a mirror set into the wall.

All of these were luxuries that would normally only be seen in an inn catering to the nobility in most lands.

With a sigh, I undid the ties of my mantle and placed it on a nearby hook, revealing my armored body. Unlike my days as a mercenary, when I wore a mix of looted armor of various types, the armor I now wore was entirely made up of hardened black wyvern leather. It was significantly lighter than metal armor, but it was just as resistant to slashing blows and piercing attacks while being better at distributing the force of blunt strikes.

I carefully removed the cuirass, followed by the leg and thigh armor, and last of all took off the vambraces and shoulder protectors. This revealed the hip-length shirt of blue steel chainmail I had on underneath. I carefully removed it and placed it over the chair next to the bed, followed by the wool gambeson I had on underneath. I then vanished everything except the mantle into my inventory, exchanging my sweat-stained undershirt for a clean undyed leather tunic and canvas trousers. I still had my weapon belt on, a tip-heavy saber sheathed on my left hip and a dagger on my right. I kept my shield in my inventory, as it couldn’t be concealed beneath the mantle when I was wearing it in any case.

I removed my boots and weapon belt before slipping under the covers of the bed to take a short nap.

___________________________________________________________________

I awakened from my shallow slumber around to the sound of the bells in the distance. With a sigh, I got down from the bed and put my boots and belt back on. I then replaced the mantle on my shoulders, leaving the armor in my inventory.

I didn’t bother to hide my sword, as I didn’t see a point in doing so now that I was on friendly ground.

I made my way into the dining room on the first floor, finding that most of the tables were occupied with werewolf men who dressed like adventurers or mercenaries. There were a few elves here and there, but no spirit foxes or oni. A human woman slave sat at her master’s feet on the floor on the other side of the room, and I quickly averted my eyes before anyone noticed the anger I felt at her slavery.

A thick-bodied dwarf was behind the counter, spooning out portions of soup while his assistants placed small loaves of black bread and tankards of ale on trays for the three waitresses (one werewolf, one dwarf, and one spirit fox) to take to the tables. I sat down at an empty spot on one of the long tables, and a few minutes later, a portion was placed before me by the rather beautiful white-furred spirit fox waitress.

She winked at me, showing some cleavage as she needlessly adjusted the positioning of the tankard, and I could see an unspoken offer in her eyes that a part of me that didn’t listen to logic very much wanted to take. However, I knew that Tatha would kill me if I cast aside the virginity I’d so vigorously protected to a random woman I’d just met.

I smiled apologetically and shook my head slightly. She pouted for a moment before moving on to another customer. I quickly ate my supper, not really bothering to taste it as I went. My experience as a mercenary had taught me not to get my hopes up when it came to food at inns, and the flavors that I experienced as I ate the soup and bread only reinforced my aversion to tasting the greasy soup as I ate it.

I washed down the last of the bread with some ale and rose to leave, heading back upstairs.

The attitudes of the men and women below had told me everything I needed to know about how bad things were. The information I’d been given on the situation in Gaveria was most likely correct.

Monster stampedes and revolution… what a mess, I thought drearily. The Gaverian Overlord, the military ruler of the country, had died without a clear heir, and as a result, the noble-born governors he had assigned to various regions of Gaveria were getting ideas about rising to become the next royal family. They were ostensibly lining up behind various candidates, but the fear and uneasiness I’d seen in the eyes of those downstairs had told me even the commoners were aware of how bad things could get.

Moreover, several dungeons were overflowing as a result of various factions conscripting adventurers, resulting in monster stampedes that had ruined a number of villages and small towns in the region. Unlike the lands to the south, Gaveria had originally united because of the need to keep the country’s more than one hundred dungeons under control. Conscripting the adventurers was supposed to be a last resort for dealing with outside invasion, so it showed just how disjointed Gaveria’s society was becoming that the governors had done so out of a lust for power.

It’s like the Three Kingdoms era in China… or rather, the beginning of that era. First the Overlord lost an entire province to the eastern werewolf tribes, then he only barely managed to put down a peasant rebellion. Now he is dead and everyone is out for themselves. I definitely don’t want to get caught up in this, I thought as I polished one of my spare weapons, a large two-handed scimitar made of adamantine that Tatha gave me for my birthday last year. The weapon didn’t really need polishing, but there was something soothing about taking care of my weapons.

I took my crossbow out of my inventory and examined it. The stock was made of petrified wood, the arms and string were made out of mithril, and the crank was made out of black steel. It was a dwarven design that used a crank placed below the stock to draw the wire string back, and it used heavy bolts made entirely out of metal. It was meant for punching through the hardened scales of lesser dragonoids like wyverns and salamanders, rather than armor. It had a range of about three hundred meters with enough force to puncture plate armor, and five hundred meters for delivering fatal wounds to a humanoid that didn’t have a high Pierce Resistance skill.

That particular one was a gift from one of the dwarven craftsmen I’d befriended in Tatha’s fief. I’d made a point of learning what I could of weapons craft from them, though it was only enough to maintain the weapons they made for me. I apparently had no talent for it, as I never managed to get the skill even at level one, despite spending over six months working under one of Tatha’s mastersmiths.

I also had a composite bow in my inventory that the twins had made for me as a present three years before, but I’d grown fond of the crossbow, mostly because I got tired of never being able to match those two with a regular bow.

Once I was done examining the crossbow, I returned it to my inventory and began cleaning my armor, piece by piece. I rubbed specialized oil into the hardened leather after brushing the dust of travel off its surface, and I carefully did the same for my chain mail, though it wasn’t really necessary given the fact that blue steel wasn’t vulnerable to rust.

The next morning, I put on my armor, returning the everyday clothes to my inventory, and I headed downstairs. When I returned the key to the owner, she slipped me a thick letter, most likely with the latest information on Gaveria’s political situation. I vanished it into my inventory before dropping a few silver coins on the counter, which she swept into a pocket in her white linen skirt.

I hurried through the streets, ignoring the lifeless gazes of the denizens as I headed for the northern gate.

Unlike the southern gate, the northern gate’s guards were active and aware, their armor well-maintained and weapons ready at hand. Also, their attention was primarily focused on the inside of the gates, rather than the outside, as their primary role was preventing desertions or attempts to return to the rest of Gaveria by the exiles inside the town.

All of these guards were pureblood oni, armed with halberds and a katana and wakizashi pair of swords at their sides. This showed they were born of the warrior caste, even though the quality of the weapons was low.

I’d chosen a saber rather than a katana because katanas were seen as a symbol of caste in Gaveria, and it was against the law for visitors or the lower castes to wear one openly.

As I approached, the guards tensed, their grips on their halberds tightening. I carefully kept my hands away from the hilts of my dagger and saber as I approached.

“Halt!” The guard on the left barked, thrusting his halberd into my path.

I came to a stop obediently and waited for him to make a decision.

“If you have a pass, present it. Otherwise, return to your home!” He said, his gaze that of a predator looking for easy prey for lunch.

I drew a silver card engraved with symbols in Gavan, the ritual tongue traditionally used by Gaveria’s upper caste. I handed it over to him, and when he finished reading it, his expression was nervous as he handed it back to me.

“You can pass!” He announced, only barely keeping a quiver out of his voice as he raised the halberd so that it was no longer blocking my passage.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I returned the card to my inventory and walked past him, the confused gaze of the other guard questioning his partner.

I was thankful that Tatha had arranged what amounted to a VIP travel pass, but I wanted to get through Gaveria before the situation degraded to the point where people were unwilling to take it.

_______________________________________________________________

“Sergeant, why did you let that fox through? The Captain’s orders said we were to keep everyone inside the walls until the press gangs arrive next week,” The younger guard questioned his partner.

“He had a diplomatic pass stamped by the Ministry of the State. If you don’t want to die, don’t question anyone carrying one of those,” The sergeant said harshly.

“But with the Overlord gone, there isn’t anyone for him to complain to…” The younger guard reasoned.

“That would work if the current head of the Ministry of State wasn’t also connected to the Governor. If we stopped him, our heads would have rolled within a month,” The sergeant replied wearily. Training new recruits was part of his job, but sometimes he wished he’d stayed in the Overlord’s Own instead of returning to his home province to join the Provincial Guard. Even if his old unit was doomed to disappear in the years to come, he could have at least avoided having to deal with so many utter incompetents.

The boy in a man’s body looked shocked at the sergeant’s quiet certainty, “But…”

“Don’t worry about it, boy. Keep your ear to the ground and you won’t need an old man like me to keep you alive in the future. We are warriors, but compared to the governor and the High Minister, we are might as well be the lowest of commoners. Keeping an eye on the situation and staying within the boundaries of our duties is the best way to keep ourselves alive,” The sergeant said firmly. While war was coming, it wasn’t there yet. Moreover, it was highly unlikely the guards placed to prevent egress from Dravesta would be dragged into the bigger conflict, given the fact that positions there were meant for training promising guards and keeping politically-troublesome ones where they couldn’t cause trouble.

Or so he hoped. His own ‘disgraceful actions’ in throwing away his position in the Overlord’s Own had resulted in him being demoted and reduced to a mere gate guard. However, if civil war really did break out and the Governor decided to make a move, there was a chance that he and the other guards would be put on the front lines to strengthen the militia and peasant conscripts that usually made up the majority of forces a governor could muster in times of war.

He wasn’t about to say that to the green youths that served under him, though. Some of them would glory in the idea of a chance to make a name for themselves in war, while others would be uneasy or even terrified of the idea. Many of the younger members of the guard were those determined by their families to be unsuitable for the frontlines of war for various reasons, mostly due to temperament or a physical disability.

Before his own thoughts could go farther down the endless abyss of his own cynicism, he cut them off by altering the course of his lecture, “Boy, when we get back to the barracks, I’m going to give you some exercises. The way you moved your halberd looked like a noodle being twined around a fork!”

The boy cringed, and his sergeant nodded with satisfaction at the absolute terror in his eyes.

All was well with the world… at least for the moment.

______________________________________________________________________

I released my breath sharply from between my lips as I brought my scimitar down and across my body, tearing through the torso of the orcish raider in front of me. The axe-like edge of the large curved sword cut through the creature’s ribs like they weren’t even there, destroying one lung on its way down to the creature’s groin.

I immediately moved past the first orc to get to the archer behind it, surging my vital energy and focusing on the surface of my skin, allowing it to deflect the crude arrow it shot at me as I approached. I chopped through the creature’s bow, severing its right hand in the process. It shrieked in rage and tried to grab me with its remaining hand, but I surged my vital energy once again, ramming it’s chest with my shoulder and knocking it onto its back. I kicked downward with my right foot, slamming the heel into the creature’s trachea, crushing it and snapping its spine.

A third orc tried to cut me down with a woodsman’s axe, probably stolen from a local village. I shifted to the side and rammed the hilt of the scimitar into its solar plexus, causing it to bend forward and drop the axe. I then raised the scimitar and brought it down on the back of the creature’s neck, severing the head.

A blast of black energy smashed me off my feet as the orc shaman at the rear finally finished forming the third-tier attack spell. With a grunt, I managed to cushion my fall with my own magic, a second-tier wind spell.

Two orcs with wooden clubs in hand rushed me to protect the shaman as I got back to my feet, and I was forced backward, growling in frustration as the creatures willingly cast aside their lives to protect it.

For the last twenty minutes, I’d been repeating the same set of movements. I would kill the first few orcs defending the shaman, then one of its spells would force me back, as more low-tier orcs came to replace the fallen. I’d already struck down twenty-seven orcs, and there was no sign of their numbers decreasing.

My body was aching from taking multiple magic attacks with only my vital energy to protect me, but there was little I could do about it. The shaman’s magic was corrosive and fed off the energy of defensive spells, making my barriers useless. Thankfully, a sufficiently strong concentration of vital energy was enough to disintegrate the low-tier spell, but that didn’t change that I was at a disadvantage.

I wasn’t skilled enough with the Draconic Arts to use them in a real battle yet, so I was reliant on using the three powers separately.

I swept my scimitar through the right leg of another club-wielding orc, jamming my elbow into its throat before drawing it in front of me to take the latest spell. I leapt to the side immediately after the impact, the stench of rotting flesh telling me that my ploy had worked, even as I ran forward, slamming my shoulder into the sword-and-board orc protecting the shaman with a surge of vital energy, tossing him back into the caster. The caster was bowled over by the weight of its heavier compatriot, and I cast the fourth-tier spell, Piercing Strike, causing a red bolt of energy to erupt from my hand and puncture both orcs in a spray of purple gore.

I kicked the warrior orc off the shaman and brought the scimitar down with both hands, severing the shaman’s head.

I looked up from their corpses to see the remaining half-dozen or so orcs – all of them ‘basic’ types without any signs of the evolutions that allowed them to keep up with the races with access to the system – slowly backing away, fear visible in their eyes. I didn’t see any reason to let them go, so I muttered a mantra for a seventh-tier spell (unlike lesser spells, those of the seventh tier or above required a verbal component in addition to the equations I had to form in my head).

“Livariant adrant (life that is heat, awaken). Dragazara ne mora (burn like dragonfire).” I said, my voice resonant with power.

In front of me, a wave of blue flames fanned outward, incinerating the orcs in an instant, not even leaving ash behind. The forest behind them was reduced to a similar state, but due to the nature of the spell, no heat was transmitted beyond the boundaries of its area of effect. There was nothing uncontrolled or incidental about spells on this level. ‘Dragonbreath’ was a spell that defined a specific area and all within it as ‘fuel’ and created heatless flames that devoured all matter within the area. It was the imposition of a concept rather than the creation of a phenomenon, which was why so few people ever managed to get magic over level 6.

I felt a headache coming on, one that was all-too-familiar to me from training with my small repertoire of tier seven spells. Seventh rank and above spells put a huge burden on the mind. To adapt to using them, the only solution was to use them constantly until your brain adapted. The first twenty-four times I used a seventh-tier spell, I collapsed and had to be carried to my room.

From the books in Tatha’s collection, I knew that there were training methods that could increase the capacity of the brain to handle higher tier magic, but those required elixirs and rare materials that someone at my level of power couldn’t hope to get their hands on. Similarly, there were elixirs and pills that could increase one’s chi output and basic physical toughness, as well as one’s natural spiritual energy capacity. However, these required access to an Alchemist, which was an extremely rare craft in this region of the world. Tatha and the dragonnewts had no need for alchemic aides of that type, so there were no Alchemists of any significant ability in the mountains.

I used my spiritual senses to search the area for more enemies, slowly spreading tendrils of spiritual energy out, extending them to three kilometers in all directions. Suddenly, I felt a massive concentration of natural energy, one that felt… both natural and twisted.

A dungeon. It has to be… but there were no reports of a dungeon in this area of Gaveria in the intelligence reports, I thought, furrowing my brow for a moment before my ears began to twitch, my tail lashing back and forth in excitement. The idea of being the first person to explore a new dungeon was incredibly attractive. So much so that I forgot entirely about the dangers building up in the region.

___________________________________________________________________

I spent almost an entire day looking for the entrance to the dungeon before I found a lever disguised as the limb of a tree a few dozen meters away from the energy source I had sensed, No wonder no one found this before.

I pulled down on the lever, and the earth over the spot in question vanished, revealing smooth marble steps leading down under the ground.

I counted the steps as I went down the stairs, and when I came to the bottom, I had descended what I estimated to be over three hundred steps… or approximately one hundred meters. The first room of the dungeon, the ‘safe zone’ was very much like a temple prayer alcove in the elven style. A statue of ebony about half the size of a man sat in one corner, and a small pool of water was in the other. The doors to the dungeon proper were made of living wood, and I knew from experience that if I placed my hand in the circle at their center, the door would open.

I didn’t recognize the god represented in the statue. In fact, it was impossible to recognize it, as it was constantly shifting its appearance. However, the shifting appearance told me which god it was despite that.

Change… the same god that blessed Ris… This couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way I would have discovered a dungeon dedicated to the same god she worshiped after a random encounter with some orcs.

Is Change the god who holds my chains? I don’t think so. I don’t sense any of the malevolence the Trickster emanates coming from this statue, I thought. I sensed amusement from the statue, and I shuddered as I realized I had the attention of the god in question.

Reach the bottom of this dungeon, and I will answer three questions and reward you with a minor blessing.

The words resonated in my soul, and I fell to my knees from the agony burning through every part of my body, my ears flattening against my skull as I struggled to remain conscious. Mortals were not meant to bear the direct attention of a god, especially not one as powerful as Change.

Supposedly, a Master could withstand the voice of a god without pain, but I was still far from that rank.

It felt like days that I lay there suffering, but it was probably only a few minutes before I was able to open my eyes once again and clear my mind enough to think.

I feel… different. Did I gain a skill level?

Name: Iryun Liodosia

Age: 16

Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Disruption Qi), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts

Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 7, Danger Sense (Precognitive) 3

Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Temporary: Trial of Change

I grimaced. My pain resistance and mental resistance had gone up again. That happened more often than I would like. Moreover, much to my distaste, my first real level 8 skill was mental resistance… I’d hoped to manage it in one of the three powers first. It figured that it would be one of the skills I disliked the most, because of how it symbolized how I’d suffered over the last decade.

If it reached level 10, it would become mental immunity, which would nullify all natural attacks on the mind and mental attacks using magic, chi, or spiritual energy below the eighth tier. However, to reach that level, I would have to endure a massive amount of mental and spiritual suffering. Most people who achieved those heights in that skill were followers of Discipline, Madness or Suffering.

At Tier 6 I was about the same rank as a commander of knights in service to a middle-ranking noble in a powerful kingdom in terms of physical and magical ability, though those commanders would most likely have at least one combat skill at 9. If I managed to get any of my combat skills to 10, I would be able to take the trial for Master, though it would cripple my future potential to do so before rank 10. As adventurers went, I was about at the top of the middle of the pack.

I went over to the pool and examined it with my spiritual senses briefly before cupping my hands and taking a sip. I felt pure natural energy enter my body with the water, healing the damage done by the god’s presence and restoring my reserves of mana, qi, and spiritual energy.

Pools like this were common in dungeon safe areas, but some of them were deliberately poisoned by the dungeon as traps for the unwary.

I still had my scimitar sheathed at my side, and it wasn’t a bad weapon for the confines of an underground dungeon. However, to be certain, I switched it out with a mithril shortsword and an iron-rimmed wooden round shield. Neither were anything special as far as enchantments went. The shortsword was made by an apprentice and the shield was the same type given to dwarven adolescents when they were sent to level their combat skills in beginner dungeons. As long as I had mithril on hand, I could use it to repair and sharpen the sword, and the shield had a minor physical resistance enchantment placed on it.

The reason I switched weapons was because I was fighting alone. Shields were valuable for solo adventurers since one could use them to block poison darts from traps and hold back one monster while they engaged another with a sword or shortspear. However, my scimitar was a weapon that was difficult to wield with a shield in the other hand, as it was a bit too heavy to constantly use one-handed.

That was different from Tajiri’s memories of movies from his time on Earth. Using long or heavy weapons one-handed was difficult at best. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the strength to wield them that way, it just was incredibly inefficient to do so if he didn’t have to. Controlling the increased weight with one hand in extended battles drained his stamina too quickly in comparison to using the lighter short sword. Similarly, the katana was a weapon that was difficult to use properly with one hand, as most of the advanced techniques required subtle utilization of both hands to utilize without shattering the relatively fragile weapons.

During his battles with the mercenary company, I’d tried using a katana a few times, as some mercenaries preferred the weapon, but unless you had an overwhelming advantage in experience and skill level, it was a weapon that was difficult to wield against those wielding heavier weapons and armor. Moreover, it just wasn’t suited for fighting in a battle line, as having a shield was pretty much a necessity in larger battles if you wanted to survive.

The scimitar was impractical as a one-handed weapon for a different reason (with the exception of those individuals who dual-wielded them with skill). It was tip-heavy and unsuited to defensive moves, requiring the wielder to move in arcs and circles to properly utilize its abilities. In an open area, this made it a fairly good choice of weapon since he was familiar with its qualities. However, in the confined spaces of a dungeon, where his maneuverability was likely to be limited…

I have too many different types of weapons in my storage… the downside of that skill is that you inevitably become something of a packrat, I thought self-derisively as I changed into a slightly heavier suit of chain armor before replacing the hardened leather chestplate I’d been wearing with a steel cuirass. I then put on a set of heavy leather trousers with plates of steel positioned over the thighs, knees, and calves that were tailor-made for me by the dwarves.

For someone of my size and age, it should have been too heavy, but the skill system made me about as strong as four Olympic bodybuilders combined. I barely noticed the weight. There were no enchantments on this armor, as they were meant to be something I wore ‘in the open’ while acting as an adventurer. Wearing heavily enchanted order-made armor would have made me a target.

My tail was left exposed, but that was not something I could do anything about. A spirit fox’s tail was heavily tied to his spiritual senses, along with his ears. If I armored it, it would dull my senses.

For that reason, the only armor I wore on my head was a hardened leather cap with holes for my ears and a headband of silk with a steel plate over my forehead. The cap was secured by a cup-like chin strap, and it had two polished steel clips at the cheek level meant to secure a breath mask if needed. I then strapped a set of hardened leather shoulder pads that fell to just above my elbow on over the cuirass.

The last bits of armor I put on were a set of vambraces with fingerless leather gloves attached made out of adamantine with a steel patina placed over them to hide the rare material. It was the one area of my ‘adventurer’s garb’ where I’d thrown caution to the winds. That was because part of my close-in fighting style involved deflecting strikes with my bracers, and using steel alone for it made me feel uneasy. In addition, having a single piece of armor made out of adamantine could be explained away as a lucky find in a set of ruins, but having all of it made out of mithril or adamantine would have been too suspicious.

Overall, it was much heavier than my traveling garb, which was designed to look inconspicuous. I could fight in a war with this gear and not look out of place in a battle line with serious soldiers, and many of the more serious adventurers would be in similar garb.

I jumped up and down twice to see if everything was properly buckled and strapped before nodding in satisfaction.

I turned to the door and placed my palm in the circle near the center. A moment later, the door turned into the limbs of a great tree and twisted out of the way to make room for me to pass. I bowed slightly as my grandfather taught me and offered up a small amount of my spiritual energy to the living wood. A pulse of warmth was returned to me, telling me that it was truly alive and coexisting with the dungeon.

Beyond the entrance was a well-lit corridor, lined with crystalline orbs that illuminated walls carved with scenes from mythology and history, Change has good taste in artwork, at least. I wonder what I could discover if I analyzed these carvings and tried to find the historic basis for them?

It was an idle thought, and I dismissed it right away. I was in a dungeon. It wasn’t time for me to be getting sidetracked by my curiosity.

A few minutes later, I came to a crossroads. I approached the meeting point of the paths carefully, extending my spiritual senses. However, the dungeon seemed to be limiting how much I could sense, as I could only get a vague feeling of things within ten meters… which was nothing compared to the several kilometers I could handle outside.

The natural energy in here is too dense… Is that how dungeons grow? They concentrate the natural energies and use them to shape the land? It was an interesting thought, but it was also yet another distraction. I shook my head and solidified my will, pushing past the resistance.

Goblins waiting in ambush from the right and left, I thought a second later. My sense of them was that they were all regular, unevolved goblins. There were no signs of evolution in their imprints, nor were there any abnormal concentrations of magical, vital, or spiritual energy.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, muttering a mantra, “Silea, ragus, arand.”

A few second later, an identical double of me appeared to my left, an illusion. It hurriedly walked forward, acting as if it didn’t even consider looking for an ambush. The moment it entered the center of the crossroads, four arrows passed through the spot where it stood, and two spears plunged into its flanks from both sides.

I finished casting a second spell, and the stone beneath the feat of the spear goblins caved in, causing them to stumble forward. I lunged at them, smashing one of them in the temple with the edge of my round shield with a crunch. A slash of my sword opened up the throat of a second goblin, and I lashed out with my foot at a third, knocking it off its feet.

I turned and thrust with my sword at the last of the spear-wielding goblins, piercing it through the eye and picking it up as I rushed the two goblin archers behind it. They fired arrows at me that plunged into its body, even as two more hit my cuirass from behind and were deflected, causing me to stumble a little before regaining my balance.

I tossed the dead goblin off my blade and into the archer goblin on the right while I smashed the one on the left in the forehead with my shield, dazing it and knocking it onto the ground. I then lunged at the goblin struggling with its comrade’s corpse and thrust my sword through the dead one’s chest and into the neck of the one holding it up.

I released the hilt of the sword and summoned a crude iron-tipped shortspear from my inventory, which I used to finish off the stunned goblin… just in time to deflect the spear of the last spear goblin to the side with my shield. I cast a second-tier lightning spell with a thought, and it blasted the spear goblin off its feet. I stomped on its throat as I passed by, running toward the last two archers, who were firing arrow after arrow in an attempt to take me down before I reached them.

This dungeon really likes to bury you in numbers! I thought with frustration as two more arrows stuck in my shield, followed by two more skimming off the plates covering my knees.

I cast a third-tier fire arrow, despite the waste of mana, and it blasted one of the archers in the chest, enveloping it in flames. The ugly little creature shrieked in agony and grabbed on to its companion, who struggled to push it away and continue to shoot at me.

Soon the second goblin’s meager clothing was on fire as well, and it’s wails of agony hurt my ears until I quickly stabbed both of them in the throat, ending the whole mess.

This is a bit annoying… I’m falling back into the habit of aiming for the throat again. Spirit fox instincts… I thought disgustedly as I watched the corpses melt into the stone walls and floor, leaving behind purple crystals around the size of my thumb.

I collected the crystals and tossed them into my inventory, along with the bronze and copper coins three of the goblins had dropped.

Dungeons in this world absorbed anything killed on their grounds, as well as all excess energy used by those who fought within. In exchange, it granted the victors rewards, most of which consisted of beast cores or magistones. In the case of the goblins, it was magistones, small orbs of crystallized mana. Animal-type monsters tended to have beast cores, which were made up of spiritual energy and pure essence.

Magistones were commonly used as power sources for magitech, such as the monster-repellent barriers set up in large cities. However, beast cores had a small chance to grant skills possessed by the monsters they originated from or empower existing passive skills when consumed. In addition, they could be used in formations, which were a method of extending the range and power of sage arts, as well as unifying the efforts of multiple users to allow for exponentially larger scaled castings.

As such, even the least of dungeon drops would earn me good coin in a city… as long as things were stable. Given the current circumstances, it was too likely that foreign adventurers would find their hard-earned dungeon drops confiscated as war materiel.

More importantly… This is definitely not a beginner dungeon. Goblins as a first-level monster is not a bad choice, but ambushing a single adventurer with eight on the first level? This has to be a mid-rank dungeon… D or C rank at the least.

Dungeons were ranked from F to S based on their difficulty, with F being the lowest and S being the highest. Generally speaking, a beginner dungeon of the F or E rank would only put adventurers up against single monsters until the lower levels.

I sighed and prepared myself for a slog, based on the stories I’d heard about middle-ranking dungeons.

_________________________________________________________________________

The younger brother of the new Overlord of Gaveria, an oni of a mere nine years of age, sat on a throne of golden wood, beautiful young women cleaning his feet and serving him fresh fruit. A fat old man in rich blue silk robes with gold-stitched dragons chasing stars on it knelt at his feet, a wide smile on his face.

“So you say the southern lords wish me to leave the seraglio and become the flag for their revolt?” He asked in a languid voice, casually fondling a young elf girl without even looking at her. He was as yet too young to truly lust after any of the women, but that didn’t stop him from taking after his father in toying with them as he wished.

Technically, the women all belonged to his brother, slaves taken during Gaveria’s conquest of the surrounding lands and their descendants, condemned to forever offer up their females to the royal family as atonement for their weakness. However, his brother preferred the young men his father had scorned, so they were left to desperately cling to the hope that he could offer them protection.

His brother taking the throne was controversial, as his weakness and sexual preferences made him a danger to the continuity of the ancient lineage. Already some of the older noble families with blood ties to the royals were considering putting their brightest forward as potential alternatives to him.

The southern lords’ offer was one made in hope of keeping what they saw as an inevitable civil war to a two-sided conflict, instead of one with many factions. If too many candidates for Overlord fought to gain the throne, Gaveria itself might crumble, leaving the military nobles with no choice but to attempt to survive on their own.

There was a sly cruelty in the young boy’s eyes as he looked upon the messenger, but he hid it behind an expression of magnanimity, “Very well, I will accept their offer.”

The messenger was well-aware of the nature of the boy. Several of the girls the boy was toying with were his spies, and his petty cruelty and greedy nature were obvious to anyone with strong ties to the royal court.

However, there was no other option. His sisters were all simpering weaklings, and his older brother had no interest in truly uniting the nation. Given his nature, the boy’s seraglio would probably start popping out potential heirs within a few months of him reaching adolescence. Enduring a few years of tyranny until an heir was born was a small price to pay for uniting the nation and preventing an age of large-scale chaos.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Change looked down at Iryun from his throne with a faint smile on his face. Arranging for Iryun to discover one of his challenge dungeons had cost him a few Intervention Points, but that was nothing compared to preparing the ground to ruin Mischief’s plans. While he had crippled Mischief’s finances, he knew the malicious godling would inevitably use the geas he had forced on the boy before his birth to force him back onto the path. Before then, he wanted to make a few… arrangements.

“I had to hand over a number of pure souls to Earth’s Creator to get the details on the other half of the boy’s soul, but it was worth it. I know exactly what the best reward will be for completing the dungeon. Don’t disappoint me, my adorable little fox. I’ve invested more in you already than I planned, and I want to balance the accounts before you get yourself killed,” He murmured.

Earth’s Creator was planning on making a new universe, so he needed an endless supply of pure, uncorrupted souls to populate it. Making souls was expensive in terms of divine essence, so it was more efficient for him to purchase them from the deities of other worlds.

He almost pitied the souls of the denizens of Earth, given what was coming. Only the purest of souls would be allowed to transfer to the new universe, stripped of identity and memory. The rest would be left to suffer as that universe rotted on the vine.

Earth’s Creator was a puritan type, though as a last bit of mercy, he’d created Hell as a place to purify one’s soul. If an individual stayed there long enough to cleanse their soul of its corruption, it was possible to be selected for transfer to a new universe, but most souls broke and got back on the Wheel instead.

Change, like most gods, created dungeons to test and empower those he took an interest in. The exceptions were gods of the Dark, such as Destruction and Corruption, who created dungeons designed to overflow and cause havoc amongst the population, weeding out the weak and raising up the strong. The dungeon in question was one he had held in reserve for a short while (in god terms), and it had been a simple matter to arrange for the boy to find it.

“Still, a polite boy, willing to bow before my statue even if he doesn’t worship me. Not to mention he showed proper respect for the living wood,” He said thoughtfully. Unlike many of the gods, Change retained much of who he had been as a mortal. His aegis made him somewhat mercurial and easily bored. However, he had a strong enough will to maintain a level head most of the time.

“The question is whether he will earn the reward or die in the attempt,” He mused. The dungeon was based on a design he’d put together early after the pantheons had shifted to the current system. He had designed it to empower those who had the will to endure its trials and the talent to get past the monsters within. If the boy failed, that was his own fault for being too weak to succeed.

While Iryun was extremely capable for his age, the dungeon would have challenged many at Tier 8 or 9. The boy was not there, not by a long shot. He was physically and mentally more capable than anyone else at his rank, but the qualitative difference between the Tiers got worse the higher they went.

Change put the boy’s chances of success at somewhere around twenty percent. If the dungeon were newer, his chances would have been around fifty percent, but the sheer number of monsters, the difficulty of the trials and challenges within, and the strength of the bosses would make survival difficult if he sought to complete the dungeon.

He popped a cherry into his mouth from a nearby bronze bowl and bit down, enjoying the sweet flavor of the fruit as he watched the boy’s struggles.

________________________________________________________________________________

Blood seeped from a number of minor wounds along my arms as I sat down in what I believed was a safe zone in between the first and second floors.

The first floor was exhausting. In total, I had been forced to fight over eighty goblins, mostly in groups of four, though twice I met groups of eight and once a group of twelve. I’d earned fifty magistones, two hundred bronze coins, twenty-six copper coins, and four silver coins. In addition, one of the goblins in the group of twelve left behind a shortsword made out of some kind of green metal that seemed to cut through goblin flesh and bone as if it wasn’t there.

A race-killer weapon. It has to be. It doesn’t seem to be especially sharp unless I’m attacking goblins, Race-killer weapons were rare drops from dungeons which allowed the wielder to easily kill monsters of the same type as long as they were within the dungeon. For those who made a living hunting the same few floors of the same dungeon on a daily basis, it was a great setup, but outside the dungeon, the weapon would be mostly useless.

If I’d gotten this in a major dungeon like the Wolf’s Labyrinth in Torneo, I would be jumping for joy, but getting it in a dungeon in the wilds just isn’t that pleasing, I thought wryly.

I may not have been able to obtain skills related to metalworking, but the dwarves were thorough about teaching me how to tell the quality of weapons. I could tell that the green metal was somewhat soft compared to the standard iron weapons I’d obtained during my mercenary days. It was also heavier than iron, which meant that it would likely be no more useful than a heavy short club except when used against goblins in the dungeon.

With a sigh, I stuffed it into my inventory and hoped I would have a chance to get some use out of it before I left the dungeon.

I ate some trail food (mostly dried fruit and meat) and washed it down with watered beer. I then closed my eyes and dozed, using a first tier sage arts technique to keep an eye out for approaching monsters with my spiritual senses.

When I awoke, the scratches and cuts on my arms had scabbed over, and I could feel that the wounds were mostly gone. Rapid healing was one of the advantages of fighting in an area as full of natural energy as a dungeon.

I took out my short sword and studied it carefully, sighing with relief when I found there were no significant nicks or scratches on its edges. I was still accustomed to using less-sturdy iron and steel weapons, so I had no gut-level feeling of how much a mithril sword could take before it started to wear down. It appeared as if the flesh and bone of the low-level goblins on the first floor was too soft to damage the blade even when I was abusing it.

The shield was another thing entirely. There were numerous divots in the surface of the wood at the center, and the iron rim was battered and dented from the rough way I used it in battle. For some reason, I always went through shields faster than anything else… probably because I used them so roughly. It didn’t matter that my composite skill Martial Arts was at 5, since I’d gotten into the habit of seeing weapons made of iron, bronze, or steel as disposable and easily replaced on the battlefield.

I really need to find someone who can teach me how to properly use a round shield… the dwarves all used tower shields, and the dragonnewts didn’t bother using them at all, I thought as I discarded the battered shield and pulled a new one out of my inventory.

The second floor was little different from the first initially. The floors and walls were still of marble illuminated by crystals. However, as I passed through the initial corridor, I gradually felt the difference. The density of the natural energy had doubled, causing it to weigh down on my body, attempting to infiltrate and pollute the channels containing my vital, spiritual, and mental energies.

Soon I had to stop and begin meditating, closing my eyes as I worked to manage the balance between my internal and the external energies. The pain only grew as I worked hard, sweat emerging all over my body as I strained to keep the polluted energies from corrupting my channels.

No wonder this is a trial… this is intense… I thought, my mind barely coherent as I struggled.

I sat there for the better part of a week, concentrating intensely, only stopping to drink water. Each time I stopped, I had to struggle to purge the invasive energy from my body once again.

However, four days after arriving at the second floor, I felt a change in how my body reacted to the invasive energies. My cells began eagerly absorbing them, shifting, changing and altering themselves in ways I could only tell because I was in such an intense state of meditation.

I could feel my bones hardening, my muscles growing tougher and more flexible at the same time, my blood and organs purging my body of corruption more quickly and thoroughly than before. I pursed my lips and considered the changes for several minutes before I made a decision I was fairly sure I would regret.

I began to pull that invasive natural energy in through all the open points on my body, circulating it through my three systems.

The pain was awful… The energy was corrosive, destructive, and I could feel my channels attempting to reject what was happening. However, I forcefully suppressed my instinctive reaction, accepting the burning pain as my channels were destroyed and rebuilt in front of my mind’s eye.

Several times, I began screaming because I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, but again and again I forced myself to endure. Eventually, my channels, expanded to almost twice their previous capacity, stabilized, and I no longer felt the need to control the flow of natural energy from outside my body.

When it was over, I found myself sprawled on the floor. At some point, my claws had extended, and I’d left grooves in the marble, despite the resistance dungeon material had to physical blows. I could feel that my hair had lengthened, and as I pushed myself to my feet, I felt the presence of two extra tails for a moment before their weight disappeared.

I examined my status page and sighed. None of my skills had increased, so there were no changes. However, I could tell that my spirit fox bloodline awakening had been forcefully accelerated as a result of the tempering – and that was what it had to be. The increase in my ability to handle more energies of all three types at once was the real ‘reward’ for surviving that baptism of fire.

Unfortunately, the way it had forced my cells to rapidly regenerate repeatedly had left my clothes and armor soaked in necrotic fluids and dried blood. I sighed and stripped, washing myself with a first-tier water-calling spell, my lips making a moue of disgust as black chunks of my own rotted flesh and molted hair dirtied the marble floor.

I looked down and I could see my ribs, and I was significantly thinner, probably because my muscles had become more efficient and all the fat had been burned away as fuel. I created a mirror of water in front of me and winced when I saw that my skin was drawn tight over my cheekbones.

I felt the need to eat, so I began to take out high-calorie foods out of my inventory, stuffing them into my mouth, barely taking time to chew before I swallowed. At the same time, I circulated my vital energy through the channels in my digestive system, accelerating the process.

I kept at it for several hours, and when I was done, I looked into the mirror to see my face had filled out somewhat. My ribs were no longer as starkly-defined when I looked down, either. Returning the luster to my dirtied hair and tail would take longer, though.

I spent several hours repeatedly dousing myself with magically-created water and scrubbing myself down, running a brush and comb through my hair and fur. I also cleaned and filed down my nails, grimacing in annoyance as I found that my steel file was being worn down by the task, My damned claws got harder again.

I gave up the idea of cleaning the inner parts of my armor and underclothing and tossed them into my inventory, taking out another set of padded underclothes and replaced the armored trousers with a skirt of scale mail. It wasn’t my preferred style, but I’d learned to fight in different styles of armor during my time as a mercenary. It would leave my calves exposed under the clean and padded linen trousers I’d put on, but I had little choice, since the armored trousers wouldn’t be wearable until I could go over them with detergent and get all the bits of rotten flesh and hair out of them.

Now you wonder why I didn’t gloss over this mess with talk of ‘impurities’ like they would in one of those cultivation novels Tajiri used to love, but the fact is, impurities are bits of mutated flesh, bone, blood, and hair that get in the way of perfecting the body. ‘Expelling impurities’ just means killing then purging oneself of all those worthless bits of flesh that can’t withstand higher levels of energy. As a result, it is a lot like the results of fighting a horde of zombies up close.

It smells worse, though.

There were apparently no monsters on the second floor. I found the stairway only a few dozen feet beyond the point where I’d been forced to endure the super-dense energies.

Upon reaching the third floor, I tensed, recognizing that the energies present had changed once again. Moreover, the marble flooring gave way to igneous rock, and I could feel waves of intense heat and fire-elemental energies radiating from in front of me.

Did Change create this place as a tempering ground or something? The energies here aren’t as dense as the floor above, but it is pure fire elemental energy. I don’t have a fire resistance skill, so this will seriously fuck up my channels if I’m not careful, I thought sourly. I had no desire to endure another round of tempering, but it seemed as if Change had no intention of letting me off the hook. The goblins on the first floor had tricked me into thinking this was a normal dungeon.

I bent down in a crouch, using my spiritual energy to mask my presence. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered using this technique, as it made it impossible to utilize my spiritual energy to search ahead, but the fire elemental energies would have made it impossible to use sage arts for enemy detection in any case.

When I came to a sharp corner in the tunnel, I bent forward just enough so I could see around the corner, and I swallowed hard at what I saw.

At the end of the tunnel was a massive lake of magma with a thin finger of hardened stone extending across it to the other end. I could see fire lizards and serpents swimming through the magma, and occasionally a bubble would form beside the ‘bridge’ and explode, sending chunks of red-hot molten rock splattering across its surface.

I also noted that there was shimmering barrier that extended about fifteen meters from the shore on this side, preventing the monsters from entering the area. Given that the appearance of the ground approaching the lake was perfectly suited for walking into it… I was fairly sure of what Change wanted me to do.

Fuck, this really is a tempering zone, I thought. If I had the speed and luck to make it to the other side without encountering one of the monsters or being hit by flying magma, I would make it to the other side… but that wasn’t likely, given the number of monsters beyond the barrier and the frequency of the magma bursts.

Anyone approaching this part of the dungeon had two options… gain the fire resistance skill and temper their body with the ambient energies and the magma… or take the risk of instant death running across the finger of stone stretching across the magma lake.

Gaining the skill under these conditions would only add half the contribution to my Tier that gaining it on my own would have. This was because all the ingredients needed to bring the skill to 10 were present. I looked to my right and caught sight of a pool of glowing blue water. I knew from my grandfather’s teachings that that water would satisfy my hunger and thirst as well as slightly accelerate my skill growth. Such pools were always present in challenges that took long periods of time to complete.

The only way I could avoid losing out on the Tier gains would be to rely only on my own supplies and never drink from the pool or consume the crimson grass near the pool of magma. I closed my eyes and brought up the ‘food’ and ‘water’ categories in my inventory, Six months worth of food and two years of water… it’s not enough. Without consuming the water, it will take at least four months for me to temper myself with fire. If I consume the water from the pool, I will be able to do it in forty to fifty days, based on the degree to which my skill enhances growth.

There was one other solution, but my mind shied away from it in horror when I considered it. Reluctantly, I considered the idea, the desire for the power to escape my fate overcoming my fear.

If I meditate inside the magma while circulating the fire energies through my channels… I can accelerate the process. However, if I lose concentration for even a moment my body will give out and I will die, By meditating inside the magma and circulating the energy in the environment, it was potentially possible to regenerate my body as quickly as it was burned away. However, it was a horrifying risk, even by Tajiri’s somewhat extreme standards.

The likelihood I would be able to maintain a meditative state while enduring the agony of having my flesh and channels burned by magma was only slightly better than one in ten. Moreover, as time went on, I would have to move further into the magma lake to endure greater amounts of fire energies to level the skill and temper my body.

The safest way would be to start with meditating by the shore while I waited for a fire resistance skill to appear. This would take many times longer, but it was certain and unlikely to result in my death. Logically and emotionally, I shouldn’t have even considered the faster method.

However, I found myself stripping off my clothes and dropping them into my inventory. I forced myself to continue walking, even as I reached the edge of the ‘beach’, my first steps into the magma making me want to scream in agony even as a flood of incredibly dense and pure fire energy invaded my channels. Somehow, I managed to sit down and cross my legs with the magma flowing over them.

I rapidly pulled the fiery energy into myself, refining it into vital energy that I used exclusively to regenerate my flesh as it was burned away. At first, my flesh was burned away faster than I could change the energy into what I needed, and I almost despaired as I felt my legs and tail turn to ash, the agony growing worse as more and more of my body melted away.

However, I felt a sudden surge of a different type of essence to the energies I’d previously encountered. A mere thread that wove its way through the energies infusing the magma. Desperate, I reached out for that energy and drew it through my channels.

The agony grew worse immediately, the fiery energy and the unknown energy combining to burn my flesh away… until I managed to combine a spark of that energy with my qi.

A moment later, a massive surge of qi flowed through my body, and I was able to begin fighting back, restoring my legs and tail gradually as I endured. I slowly incorporated the unknown energy into my system, using it without any thought to salvage myself before I could be burned away.

A cycle of my body being burned away by the magma and fiery energies and suddenly being restored continued for I don’t know how long, before the pain receded. I no longer needed to draw in that strange energy to maintain equilibrium, and I let out a steaming sigh as I rose from the magma and dragged myself to the shore, flopping over as I waited for the heat to fade, continuously using my qi to regenerate my body.

When the last of the magma stuck to my body cooled into a thin layer of igneous rock, I broke it off and lay prone on my belly, my hairless tail waving above me.

I looked at my status.

Name: Iryun Liodosia

Age: 16

Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Disruption Qi), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts

Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 7, Fire Resistance 2, Danger Sense (Precognitive)

Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Temporary: Trial of Change

All that pain for a new skill and one extra level… I thought I’d at least get it to 3… I thought with mild disappointment. A large part of me was screaming in terror at the idea of continuing with my plans, begging me to take the easy way out.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of my own slavery made me want to grasp for as much power as I could grab. I narrowed my eyes and forced myself to my feet for a moment before falling on my butt as my legs gave way beneath me. I closed my eyes and examined myself with my spiritual senses.

Ugh, that’s… The cellular structure and channels going through my legs and tail were strained to their limits. Any attempt to use qi or magic to regenerate them in this state would fail. If I tried to repeat my earlier feats now, I would die. I needed to rest and recover.

I seriously didn’t want to look at my tail. By experience (the twins sometimes set my tail on fire or shaved it as a practical joke) I knew my fur would grow back within a few days, but it just looked so… absurd without fur.

I knew I was also bald at present, but I did my best not to think about it.

Oddly, my claws hadn’t burned away during my time in the magma lake. As far as I could tell, they never seemed to take much damage unless I filed them down with the adamantine file in my inventory.

I thought about that odd energy I’d absorbed while in the lake. Without it, I would have died, but I had no idea of what it was. I was sure I’d sensed it before, but I couldn’t remember where. I sighed and rubbed my palms over my eyes, concluding I needed sleep more than I needed to figure out what had happened.

I dragged myself closer to the pool, where cool air reduced the burden of the fiery energy and superheated air from the magma lake, and I pulled out a blanket, placing it across a relatively flat plane of rock before setting a leather pillow on one end and lying down to sleep.

________________________________________________________________________

During the next few weeks, I repeatedly ‘bathed’ in the magma lake, enduring increasingly horrible waves of agony as my body was burned away and reforged in qi and that strange energy again and again. What made it worse was that it took three more sessions just to raise the skill to 3, and another seven to raise it to 4.

I realized that my original expectations were somewhat optimistic early on. I had never intentionally trained my resistance skills before, and it hadn’t occurred to me just how much I would have to endure to raise them so quickly. Moreover, even after so many agonizing sessions, my gains were relatively minimal, based on my status screen.

However, the more of that strange energy I took into myself, the greater a change I felt in how the three powers interacted with my body. So far there were only minimal effects on my mind, but I could feel my body becoming sleeker and more refined with each ‘bath’, and – while my range had not increased – the ‘force’ with which I could project my spiritual energy rose each time, if only minimally so.

It was apparent that while the first goal of this trial was to reforge the body, it was also having positive effects on the other two aspects of my existence.

During the times when my body was recovering, I practiced the Draconic Arts and barehanded kata, learning my new limits and adjusting to the changes in my energy flows. At first, this was a painful and awkward experience, as the Draconic Arts were based on balance in the powers above all other things. My channels had been expanded, but it was my vital energy channels that were expanded the most, requiring me to partially relearn how to balance them by feeling.

What bothered me was that my qi now had traces of that strange energy and fire elemental energy within it. I’m sure that Tatha would be overjoyed if I transformed my qi into a fire-variant, as it would make it easier for us to have children, but it didn’t fit in with my plans. I could feel that the fiery energies were mostly settling in my circulatory system… in particular, my blood. The rest of my body was being refined, but the fire didn’t remain within the muscles or bone, save in the marrow.

Was this part of the system, or was it a result of this particular trial? I had no idea, but I didn’t like being forced onto a path of someone else’s choosing. Even moreso because of the two remaining geases planted in my fused soul.

At the end of the first month, I had eaten through half my food stores, despite rationing. I really hoped the next floor had orcs or some other edible monster lurking its halls, since I had a feeling I would be low on food when I finished my task on this floor.

______________________________________________________________________

Another month and a half passed by, and I found myself at fire resistance 9. The pain I had endured up to this point had strangely not effected the level of my pain resistance skill, but I supposed that was to be expected, given the fact that this was a trial made by a god, not a normal dungeon.

The only part of my body that had yet to be reforged was my brain… the part I was most dreading. I had only gone in up to my neck up to now, and I knew to reach level 10, I would have to go through with it.

I knew from my grandfather’s texts on the subject that reforging the body in the elements always started with fire for a reason. The other elements were unsuited for forcefully purging the body of its flaws. However, it was also the most dangerous element to fully temper with. As a result, most fighters and adventurers never went through with a full elemental tempering.

However, the last stage of reforging the body in fire required that one have a powerful spiritual sense that could allow them to maintain something resembling consciousness while the brain was burned away and reborn. Once I had done that, the skill would reach 10 and become Fire Immunity, allowing me to ignore mundane fire entirely (though I seriously doubted I would be able to survive the heat of the sun or a nuclear reactor) and magical fire to a certain extent. The other effects were dependent on the individual’s natural talents.

The technique was essential for gaining the Draconic Arts skill, so I knew how to use it, but I still dreaded what was to come. Tajiri’s knowledge of the brain’s role as the body’s commander only made things worse. I would have been happier if I didn’t have that knowledge.

Grimly, I walked into the magma, frowning at the painful tingling sensation around my ankles as I moved forward, the sensation extending to the entirety of my body as I went deeper. By the time I reached the point from last time, I was having to circulate my qi to keep the pain at a manageable level.

Before I took the last few steps forward, I activated the sage arts technique in question, placing most of my consciousness in a bubble that rejected interference from the physical plane. I then stepped forward, my head sinking under the magma.

The agony was indescribable as I drew fiery energies and that strange otherness into the channels going through my head, my skin charring away along with my ears, leaving my skull bare. My eyes popped and melted away, and the fiery energies of the magma invaded my brain, burning it away at the edges even as I regenerated it by circulating and purifying the energies that destroyed it in the first place.

To be straight, it was only because the energy was both incredibly dense and suited for the process of tempering the body that I was able to regenerate so quickly. In addition, there seemed to be a spell field that accelerated regeneration on the floor. I had noticed this after my third session within the magma lake.

Subjectively, it took days for me to stop needing to regenerate my flesh constantly, but it was probably only an hour or so. When I was certain the process was over, I walked back to the edge of the lake and flopped down on the beach.

I no longer felt the heat from the lake, though falling in would still be painful.

I looked at my status page.

Name: Iryun Liodosia

Age: 16

Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)

Common Skills: Qigong 7 (Disruption Qi), Sage Arts 7, Magic 7, Farming 1, Acrobatics 6, Athletics 6, Martial Arts 5, Draconic Arts

Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 8, Magic Resistance 4, Blunt Resistance 4, Pierce Resistance 3, Pain Resistance 7, Danger Sense (Precognitive)

Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 2, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 4, Temporary: Trial of Change

Cultivation: Body Cultivation 1st stage (Flame)

I sighed deeply with satisfaction. It was only with completing this challenge that I was able to unlock a fourth category… Cultivation Skills. I no longer had a fire resistance skill, but it didn’t bother me that I hadn’t gained Fire Immunity in its place. Body Cultivation was a far more difficult skill to gain, and if I’d used the tools provided by the challenge, I would not have gained it. My instincts had not betrayed me, after all.

I focused, surging all three energy sources through my body, and my hair and fur grew out rapidly, my tail and ears once again becoming nice and fluffy. My claws now had crimson streaks near the tips. I could also see the black in my fur had taken the shape of flickering flames, most likely an outward symbol of my achievement.

If I focused and surged my vital energy, I could feel that I could cover my body in flames for a short time using the energies that were now a part of my blood. I could also feel that my body would quickly recover from blood loss due to the tempering of my circulatory system.

When I surged my energies, I was also satisfied to find that two fully-formed tails had joined the one that was normally present, another sign of my growth. I had yet to assign a technique or spell to the two tails, as I wanted advice from a spirit fox I could trust before I did so. Once I embedded a technique or spell in those tails, it would be permanently set that way, easily accessible but impossible to alter or manipulate. I would also have to learn to move properly with multiple tails manifested permanently at that point.

Like the stories from Tajiri’s grandfather’s homeland of Japan, spirit foxes were grew new tails when their power grew. Each tail could then be infused with an ability, technique, or spell that could then be used without the need for any complex processes. Once a tail was infused with power, it would no longer vanish and always be present unless intentionally dismissed. If it was dismissed, the tail’s ability could not be utilized until it was rematerialized.

The exception was the original tail. All spirit foxes had a hidden ability unique to them that they could potentially awaken to later in life that was attached to their original tail. I was fairly sure mine had to do with how my claws, fangs, and fur all grew when I was consumed by my darker emotions. However, it didn’t show up in my status page, so it was yet to awaken.

Change’s Side

With a grunt, Iryun got to his feet and took out a cheap iron kite shield and an iron-banded truncheon. Change imagined he thought ruining a perfectly good mithril or adamantine weapon fending off attacks from the magma would be a waste, after all.

He prepared to run across the finger of stone extending across the magma lake, stretching his limbs and taking deep breaths as he circulated his qi. When he was ready, he stood at the edge of the lake, still nude save for a pair of heavy leather sandals. He dug his sandals into the rough igneous rock and practically jumped forward, running as fast as he could with the shield and truncheon in his hands.

Immediately, a blast of magma came from within the lake, and he had to leap over it to keep his momentum. It was followed by the snapping jaws of a salamander, which he evaded by bashing the edge of the shield into its snout, digging it in, and using the leverage to keep himself moving forward.

Next two crimson-scaled lizardmen carrying spears of pure obsidian emerged from the magma in front of him, and he was forced to duck as they thrust for his chest. He slammed the truncheon into the back of one’s knee, sending it tumbling to the ground. He then leapt atop its burning chest and pushed himself past the other, wincing as a second thrust grazed his back, opening up a thin line of blood.

Two smaller fire lizards emerged onto the finger of stone and breathed fire at him. He put the shield forward and pushed through the flames, feeling them licking at his reforged body harmlessly, even as they began to melt the shield and his sandals began to char.

With a cry of anger, he sent two tier-three force strikes into each of the lizards, tossing them out of his way.

A snapping bite fell just short of taking a chunk out of the outside of his right thigh as he passed by. A casual blow of the truncheon crushed the lizard’s skull before it could become a problem.

Change watched the boy do everything he could to avoid losing momentum. If he was forced to stop and fight, he would immediately be overwhelmed by the creatures following him. Without the ability to hit their weaknesses with ice magic, he had no reliable means of quickly dealing with the creatures, and the environment’s energy would immediately destroy any ice magic he tried to manifest.

He forced himself forward, evading balls of magma that came from both sides as best he could, feeling the edges scrap his skin. If it weren’t for his efforts to reforge his body, he would have been left charred to the bone by just that glancing touch.

He saw another salamander approaching from ahead of him, its evil golden eyes glinting sadistically (to his mind) as it started to force itself up onto the causeway. Without hesitation, he sent four tier-five force spears at it, the magic blunting itself against its tough scales. However, it was enough to force the creature back into the magma, opening the way for Iryun to run past.

Wonderful! Wonderful! Change clapped his hands in glee as Iryun evaded the rather brutally-timed ambushes by monsters and the magma itself along the way. It was great fun to watch, and if the boy happened to die, well… at least Mischief would be deprived of his toy.

Change loved people who challenged themselves to be better, more powerful. The current system was as much a battle with oneself as it was a competition with others, which was how Change and the system’s other creators liked it. The old system had been too focused on immediate results, leading to boring contests and weak-minded pawns.

Change cheered on both the monsters and Iryun as the fox boy ran across the causeway… until he made it to the other end and reached the stairwell to the next floor.

When that was done, he sat back with a sigh of satisfaction and popped a handful of dried cherries into his mouth, chewing slowly and thoughtfully as he settled down.

I never imagined the boy would manage to complete the true challenge of that floor. Just hitting max on the resistance skill using the tools I granted would have earned him some rewards, but he managed to draw out the highest rewards possible for his future growth. I can see why Mischief is so attached to shaping him into a perfect pawn, Change thought musingly as the boy collapsed to the ground and immediately went to sleep, uncaring for his naked state and the half-melted shield and truncheon at his side.

Iryun’s Side

I awoke to my body aching all over. I’d been battered, bruised, and cut during my passage across the lava lake, and if I hadn’t finished the challenge, I likely would have died three steps onto the causeway.

I circulated my qi, accelerating my body’s regeneration for a few minutes, the bruising, muscle tears, and organ damage slowly vanishing as I sat there with my eyes closed. It came much easier to me than it had before the challenge, since I’d been doing it constantly for weeks.

I took a linen loincloth, a pair of leather trousers and a soft linen shirt out of my inventory and put them on, happy to be covered up now that I had no need to be naked. I didn’t see a point in putting armor on just yet, since I was technically between floors.

I took a length of dried sausage and some hard bread out of my inventory and used magic to create a globe of hot water in mid-air. I cut the bread and sausage into small pieces, and then I tossed them inside, along with a pinch of pepper and a small chunk of cheese. In a matter of minutes, it became an orb of yellow-ish soup that I directed into a wooden bowl.

I let the mixture cool a bit before taking out a wooden spoon and wolfing it down. I followed that with a small cup of watered wine before settling against the rough basalt of the walls.

I’d just gotten up, but my body still desperately desired rest. There was only so much constant use of qigong and sage arts could do to restore the spirit when the body was being abused. I closed my eyes and decided to take a nap.