Chapter 110

As Michael and Stephan crossed the threshold, they were catapulted into the dark and foreboding space of the dungeon. The Time element was abundant here, clearly visible to Michael, hinting at a strong time dilation. He mentioned as much to Stephan, who already knew. He was surprised to learn, however, that the Time element was thinning—at least at shallow levels of the dungeon—and it was happening at a much faster rate now that it wasn’t just Michael delving its depths.

“We should still be in and out in ten minutes or so,” Michael stated, “unless we decide to spend a few months in the Valley. Which I wouldn’t be against, just so you know.”

Stephan was quick to refuse. “No, thanks,” he declined. “I don’t think I’m ready to spend months away from civilization.”

Michael shrugged. “Your call. If you ever feel like you need a vacation, come to me.”

They looked around the room. The only reason Stephan could chat so freely, Michael mused, was due to his presence. Now that he was beginning to understand the Truth facet of his [Unity] skill, rocky starts notwithstanding, he could see how the dungeon’s Gaze seemed to soften and slide around his aura, protecting the people who were with him from its harsher effects.

He could also see something else, as if echoes or shadows or ghosts. He wasn’t sure what they were, or who, but they were vaguely human-shaped blobs at the edge of his perception. They appeared one at a time, but already in the few moments they had been there he had seen at least three of them, doing mundane things like walking around or crouching. They reminded him of Dark Souls and its ghostly apparition system, but it surely couldn’t be that.

“What do I do now?” Stephan inquired.

The dungeon was beginning to deviate from the norm lately, and today was one of its quirkier days. There were three pedestals at the center of the room, each of them with an item that glowed with second-tier magic.

“This is the antechamber,” Michael explained. “You get to choose a starting magic.”

They approached the pedestals. On the leftmost pedestal, there was a cloak, shimmering with threads that seemed woven out of smoke. A faint whisper of air came from within, like a hidden gust of wind trapped within the fabric.

The second, and central, pedestal held a heart carved out of pure obsidian. It was pitch black with a faint hint of purple, reflecting the orange light of the torches that lit the antechamber of the dungeon.

The third item was a pair of glasses.

“The cloak is full of Air element. I don’t know it very well, but I’d say it will give you an ability to gain bursts of speed in a fight. Not bad,” Michael elaborated. “The second is filled with Life and its opposite, Death. More than that, it’s also much denser in Qi than the cloak. I would say some sort of vampiric ability? The glasses, or should I say spectacles? They are garbage.”

While interesting to him, Michael made no move to take the items for himself. He knew that the dungeon would never let him take them: they were there for the new delver, not for him.

Stephan hummed. “Alright, I see.”

He walked towards the pedestals, examining the items. They were both mundane and special, in that to his eyes they looked like very finely made pieces of unfathomable craftsmanship, but their deeper magical traits were hidden to him. Michael imagined what it would be like for a lone delver to be presented with such a choice, where only trusting your gut and blind luck would allow you to triumph. Compared to it, his own experience had been different, with the dungeon testing him first and only then giving him tools to survive the struggle.

“I should also mention that you can also get magic through skill stones, like I do,” Michael added. “These items seem incompatible with such an approach, though, so it’s either this or that.”

“What do you suggest?” Stephan asked.

Michael shrugged. “The dungeon never gives you dead-end paths,” he replied. “Well, apart from the spectacles, it seems. The items are untrodden ground, while the skill stones are what we use for most of our operators.”

Stephan nodded, the sheer scale of Michael’s operation and knowledge about the dungeon clearly making him think.

“I think I’ll go with the tried and true method,” he decided after a few moments. “I have no ambition to become the next great mage or anything.”

“Okay,” Michael acknowledged. “I saw you looking at the cloak, though. Did you find it interesting, perhaps?”

Stephan nodded.

“Give me a sec,” Michael said. He left the antechamber, through a door only he could see. Only after he was out did he realize that he had never been able to leave before, and looking back at the dungeon he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Except for a slight tingle in his skill sanctum telling him that his [Unity] skill had activated.

“Huh,” he muttered.

When he returned, Stephan was sitting on the ground. “Was I out for long?” he asked him.

Stephan slowly got up. “A few minutes,” he answered. “Didn’t you say that the dungeon has a time dilation factor? I worried I’d be here for a long time.”

Michael didn’t really have an answer for that. He just followed his gut and left to fetch the skill stones. Outwardly, he didn’t show any of this, instead playing it cool with a shrug.

“I brought you gifts. I’d start with just one at time not to overwhelm you. This is a similar ability to what the cloak would have given you. It’s called [Wind Rush], Air element and a touch of Qi making it Uncommon rank. It should help you with this floor’s enemies. Well, that and a sword.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He gave the man the skill stone first, watching as Stephan gingerly studied it before absorbing it. The sensei gasped, the power flowing into him stretching his understanding of the world in a radical way for the first time in his life.

“This…” the man murmured, “this is magic?”

Michael resisted the urge to laugh. This was not magic. This was just the appetizer. And yet, long ago, he would have been the same. Besides, he thought he had a decent grasp of his sensei’s personality by now. For some people, this appetizer was all they would be able to get if they were to challenge the dungeon alone, without help. That he could help them get more put him in a position of power.

He shook his head. He was starting to think like Travis.

There was a ghost that phased into the wall, and close to it was their own doorway into the dungeon. Turning on the many lights they brought with them, which had gone through multiple rounds of improvements and were now mostly based on magical stones, and on another level altogether compared to Michael’s early delving equipment, he turned to Stephan.

“Ready?” he asked.

The man steeled himself. “Ready.”

They stepped through the door and into the very first chamber. Immediately, Stephan’s lack of real-world experience showed. The customary welcome message to the dungeon appeared in his vision right as the first of the goblins attacked him. Distracted, he could not react.

Had it not been for Michael, he would have been grievously injured. Instead, what happened was that the goblin and the skeleton right behind it simply died on the spot. The skeleton took a few moments longer than the goblin, protected as it was by a powerful magic shield, but in mere moments the shield fizzled out and the skeleton simply fell to the floor as a mass of bones.

Stephan was thoroughly rattled, but as adrenaline flooded his system, he quickly regained his wits. Michael had joked about giving him a sword to fight the monsters but had not actually done so. A sword would have been of little benefit to a karate teacher. Instead, when he returned with the skill stones, he had given Stephan a Tekko, a traditional Okinawan knuckle duster.

Together with his movement skill, it should be enough for his karate teacher to fight some goblins. Especially since, unlike with the others, his goal was not to power-level Stephan but to show him the place. Michael could join the fight, and only let his sensei deal with the weakest mobs.

He did just that. Letting loose felt awesome, and after a while, the two fell into a rhythm. Michael only used his raw physical stats to deal with the monsters, which were high enough that—coupled with the passive protection of his aura—nothing could hurt him. At the same time, a single strike was enough to overpower a skeleton’s shield, go through it and shatter its bones.

As he fought, Michael always kept his attention on Stephan. The sensei was a newly made Copper-tier user, barely any tougher than a regular human. But besides saving him a couple of times at the beginning, Michael’s intervention was largely unneeded. Soon his sensei got into the zone, and was flowing from one technique to the next. Half a dozen goblins later, he was using his [Wind Rush] to augment his speed, adding power to his strikes and finding new ways to evade.

Watching him, Michael realized that had it not been for Stephan’s meek personality, he would have made for a very competent fighter. Right now, he was in the zone, only him and the monster existing in his mind. But as soon as he was out of it, he returned to normal.

“Sheesh,” Stephan exclaimed, cringing as he saw the mangled corpses disappear in puffs of magic. “This place is hell!”

Michael nodded solemnly.

“I am beginning to understand now,” the sensei continued. “This place really is something else. I’d never come here on my own volition, but I understand why some people would.”

Michael just nodded again, hiding his disappointment. For a moment, he had hoped Stephan would begin to love the thrill, but it had been a tall order to even hope. Perhaps it was for the best. He didn’t need another psycho monster around him.

“I can’t deny its use, though. I have seen some violence, out there in the real world, but this feels different. It’s raw and primal just like it is out there, but there is a layer of disconnect I can’t explain. It feels like a game, maybe.”

Michael’s gaze suddenly locked onto Stephan. “Don’t make that mistake,” he warned, his voice suddenly serious and its presence overbearing.

Stephan shrunk under it, but not due to any Truth shenanigans or Aura power. It was just that Michael had become someone who could cower others just by looking at them.

“What do you mean?” the sensei asked.

“It only feels like this to you thanks to my intervention. Let me give you a taste of how it would feel to be here if I wasn’t here.”

Michael withdrew his protection. Stephan gasped, unable to draw breath as if the air itself had become hostile to him. The cave was a stifling place, threatening to make him fall into a panic just by its sheer hostility. It was cramped, the dark was alive. The very stone its walls were made of wanted him dead. And the monsters… he knew what awaited him in the next room—

Then Michael restored his protection over him. Stephan breathed. Mere seconds had passed, and yet he had felt such dread that he knew in his heart he would never step in here by himself, even if someone were to threaten his family over it.

“You understand now?” Michael questioned.

Stephan looked at him like he was someone out of this world.

“I do,” he confirmed. “I don’t know if you were like this already, or if this place made you like this. I suspect both are possible. I know one thing: I don’t want to. I am fine living my life. Sure, we can come down here like we did now, if you keep shielding me like you did. I have no problem admitting my limits. If you can turn this hellish place into a summer karate camp for me, I will gladly polish my skills. The moment you ask me to do more, I’m out.”

“Okay,” Michael agreed.

“Don’t be disappointed,” Stephan advised. “Most people would react like I did. No, they would be even worse off. That much I can guarantee. I am a coward, but I have seen more shit than most. You must realize just how far away from normal you and the people around you are.”

They didn’t say much after that. In the next room, the extent of what Stephan had said sunk in. With Michael there, indeed it was like his teacher was at a karate summer camp, polishing his skills against goblins that were nothing more than sophisticated dummies. Michael had absolute control of anything within the room, as was natural for someone of his power on the first floor, and would never let Stephan even get a single scratch. To up the challenge, he decided to polish his own skills instead of fighting like a brute.

Here and there, he spotted more ghosts. Now they were fighting the very same goblins he was facing, some of them head-on, others rolling on the ground, others with ranged skills. The Truth facet of [Unity] was ringing like background noise, always there, attempting to warn him of something.

He knew what it was trying to tell him. He had suspected it in the antechamber, but now he knew. These he was seeing were delvers from other dungeons. On Earth.

Why was he only seeing it now? Perhaps he was more attuned to Truth now, with it being a recent addition to his power set. But also, he felt as if it was the dungeon itself that was showing him the visions, using the Truth facet as a conduit. Was it trying to push him to work harder? Because it sure had an effect. If there were other delvers, who were presented with a similar scenario as him, he knew they could be as powerful as he was, if not more so, and with the same breadth of powers he had.

A frightening possibility appeared in his mind. Up until now, he had operated under the assumption that the Misty Valley was his and his alone. But what if this wasn’t the case? Perhaps there were other copies of the valley that other delvers could access, or perhaps it was like it was with his own operators challenging the dungeon—those who were offered the challenge version of the second floor at least. The challenge was different and the reward was different, but it was always something powerful.

That’s what distinguished the elites like Team Welles and Team Locke from the rabble after all.