Chapter 54

Michael wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was a hot day, heading into the thick of the summer heat, and the late hour had done nothing to diminish the discomfort. If anything, it seemed to have gotten more humid, the heat stickier and even more uncomfortable.

He had been doing multiple dungeon runs. After a while, the dungeon had given up on cleaning his clothes and sweat after each run, probably out of spite, increasing his discomfort. Michael didn’t care much. If the dungeon allowed for power-levelling, then he would do it regardless of what the snickering voice coming from the depths said about it. The gains were positively miser for sure, but perhaps that had more to do with the situation rather than the dungeon actively hampering his growth.

Actively interfering was not something it had ever done, and Michael doubted it even could.

His thoughts went to the what he had to do. More precisely: to the situation he knew he was going to find down in the second floor.

The blue humanoid soldiers from the castle were many, and they were undoubtedly strong. Strong enough to have utterly defeated all other regions of the valley in a matter of hours rather than days, all more or less at the same time. Given the level of threat of even the Ice King, and given Michael’s suspicion that the other regions hosted stronger monsters and bosses…

Yeah, they are a problem.

Most of all, according to his scouts the enemy seemed to be organized in ranks with soldiers and elites. The soldiers had already been scary enough when they had encircled him, towering over him with their superior height and covered in metal armor. What of their elites then? What of their leader, the boss of the castle? It was supposed the be the last region, Michael suspected, and thus the hardest.

Without Drullkrin…

He shook his head, heading into the dungeon once again. Whether he was ready or not, tomorrow he would challenge the second floor.

***

Why is the second floor so hard?

Michael mulled over the question as he hiked once again to the dungeon. His mind was too preoccupied with what he would find there to do any real work in the outside world today, and thus he had elected to skip his duties for once and head to the dungeon directly. He had his supply of coins smartly concealed in many hiding places all over his body, clothing and backpack, and he felt as ready as he ever could.

The hike felt longer than usual. It had been a while since he hiked in the morning, and the shadows looked all wrong. They were facing the wrong way, because the sun was still in its early arc in the sky rather than heading down towards the horizon.

The eeriness crept up on him as his mind wandered. He wondered: did other people also experience a challenging second floor, or was he special? Surely the rewards would be worth the pain, assuming he managed to come out alive. But what of other people?

How would a steady and constant difficulty ramp-up compare to the sharp increase he was experiencing?

In the end, he did not have answers. Travis’ men were crawling the web, among other things they were doing to help him, and Old Dave was working hard to build an intelligence division they could call their own so that they would not have to use Travis’ resources anymore. With the billionaire CEO’s help, of course. Take what you can.

Still, there wasn’t much. And what little there was, they were still in the process of figuring out whether it was made up role-play stuff or real stuff. It was a harder job than Michael initially thought. Funny enough, it seemed that building a temporary headquarters for a pseudo military security force in his new property was a quicker deal than verifying internet rumours.

With that, his thoughts gravitated towards his talk with Old Dave and Travis. About the company. The name and the vision for the company. What he wanted to do with it and with the world.

Something magical? Blue flame enterprises? Black flame? Roaring dragon? They all feel so cheap and cringy… and what about the vision? What do I want to do?

He thought about it harder than ever before. He couldn’t procrastinate it for much longer. Adult responsibilities were creeping up on his adolescent life, after all. Dungeon diving? Slaying monsters? That’s video game stuff, turned real. Managing a company? Now that was a real boss fight.

He wanted to dismiss his mentors’ claims that he could influence the world. He wanted to tell them that he was just a nobody. But that wasn’t true, was it?

A fresh breath of mana-rich air told Michael that he was approaching his destination. Nature was thriving despite the little rain, the grass green and rich compared to the yellowing strands he saw on his way here. The influence of mana, perhaps? The shapes were more tangible and real than usual today, the little creatures moving in and out of reality. Blobs of mana they were, and now that he had a new skill to commune with spirits he could almost feel their presence through it. But they weren’t the same spirits that his skill called to, just similar.

He checked his GPS and noted that he could feel mana from exactly 2 miles away from the cave. A sharp increase over the 1.6 miles of a few days ago, one that refused to fit any curve he could come up with.

In the end, he put all of that aside when he reached the cave. Inside the dungeon, none of this mattered. Not the ever-expanding cloud of mana around it. Not the company. Not the world. He could, for a while, forget about adult business.

It was Michael against whatever dangers and challenges the dungeon threw at him. Michael had wondered about why the dungeon was doing this. Why it existed. Why it tried to kill him while at the same time granting him the power to survive.

But none of it mattered when he was inside either. They were all thoughts that kept him up at night at his shitty apartment, but never as he camped in the forest of the second floor of the dungeon. Go figure out why.

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The usual message about skipping floors appeared. Unlike in his training runs, he pressed yes. The glyph fragment he held in his Skill Sanctum dimmed, and he was transported to his usual spot by the mountain.

A single ogre was there, waiting for him. He bowed as soon as he saw Michael appear, and it might have been all that saved the monster from certain death as Michael cautiously withdrew his magic and the many weapons he had brought with him, already loaded and ready. He holstered his gun, and looked around to see that nobody was nearby save for the lone ogre, who was waiting for Michael to speak.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“I am, my king.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Trallavor’t, my king. I am the new general.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the situation? Did the blue men attack? Explain.”

“At once, my king. The situation is stable, for now. Camp is secured.”

“I see,” Michael said as he started walking towards where he knew his troops made camp. “How did you come to be the new general, then?”

“I felt the authority of the ice king falter, and indeed all of the ice monsters he had sent to attack us scattered and fled, so I commanded our army to return to the forest like Drullkrin had instructed me to. When neither you nor the commander emerged… I knew that you were alive, my king, as I could still feel our connection to the glyph you carry. All of the Fae on our side could. But, I had orders from Drullkrin about what to do in this situation. He called it a, uh… last contingency plan. I am the new commander, at least until he returns. However, I admit I have been having difficulties.”

“What sort?”

“The blue people from the castle. While they have not moved against us, they demanded to meet you, my lord. Their might cannot be ignored, I fear.”

That is how, after resting at camp and eating a quick meal, he and his aides found themselves staring at a row of armored blue humanoid. Michael didn’t feel as safe as he would have with Drullkrin, but he did his best to project strength as he stood at one side of a chokepoint in the mountain leading up to the castle. Learning from the general, he had several contingencies ready, although he hoped he would not have to use them.

There was a bridge over a river, and it was raised as to not allow anyone to pass, but the strangely tall humanoid guards confirmed what the ogre had told Michael: the king wanted an audience with him.

They agreed to meet on neutral grounds, right on that very same bridge with the respective armies on either side. A tent was raised in the middle, where the king of the castle was waiting for him.

The tent was more spacious on the inside than it was on the outside. A moment of disorientation hit Michael as he experienced spatial manipulation for the first time—if one did not count all the times the dungeon had used the same element on him to transport him. This time the usage of the element was cruder, and wisps of violet energy could be seen dancing in the air.

It was not, however, what Michael focused on. In front of him was the king of the castle: a menacing presence that somehow did not manage to quite fit what Michael had expected to see.

He was a slender man, impossibly tall, with deep blue skin that looked almost violet. He was so thin he was sickening to look at, like he could fall over and die at any moment. He was barely clothed, bones visible poking out of his body and stretching his taut skin. His movements, however, betrayed grace and strength.

He rose from his simple wooden seat as Michael entered, towering over the human.

“I greet you, adventurer,” he said.

Michael tried to match the bow he was given, but it was hard with his lesser stature. “I greet you, king of the castle.”

The king grimaced, immediately triggering Michael’s sense of danger. “Ah, to be reduced to such.” He said, and there was pain in his voice. Anger too, but Michael realized that it was not directed at him, and he relaxed a fraction. “I can see your magic,” he said. “Unlike the creatures of this place, I can see mana quite clearly. You can relax, however. I have no desire to harm you.”

Michael found it hard to relax, but he did release his grip on magic. What he did not release his grip on was the gun he was holding. By how the king was looking at it, he must have figured out that it was a weapon, but it was clearly not one he was familiar with.

“Thank you. I see that calling you king of the castle doesn’t please you,” Michael said diplomatically. “How should I address you?”

“We shall drop our formalities, if you would allow. One king to the other, even though all we really are is kings of nothing.”

“Of course. My name is Michael. From where I’m from, we greet each other by shaking hands.”

He offered a hand. The king studied him for a moment, amusement on his face for a brief instant before its alien features washed it away.

“I am called Theobond, wise king of the Allurans. It is a strange custom to shake hands. Why would anyone ever allow someone else to touch their magic so easily?”

Indeed, Michael could see that the king’s hand was shrouded in his aura, like the rest of him. Apart from the strange man at the diner, this was the first time Michael had come across an aura other than his own.

Despite saying that, the king took Michael’s hand. Their auras touched, and for the first time Michael experienced what it meant when such a thing happened. The difference in their strength was soon apparent. Michael felt as if his own aura was as thin as paper, as weak as crumbling dirt compared to Theobond’s.

He tried to not let it show on his face. The king had done nothing other than let the two auras touch, after all, with no attempt at doing anything harmful with it. If anything, this handshake was more significant than any other handshake ever done. It was a moment of vulnerability where one could take advantage of the other, as well as a show of restraint where the king had prevented his superior aura from suppressing Michael’s own.

Now I know how a Silver aura looks like.

It was a safe assumption. Like the coins, he assumed that the auras followed the Copper-Silver-Gold ranking. His mana pool was measured in the coppers, and his aura reflected that. Theobond’s aura was stronger, better, qualitatively different. It felt like the silver coins. Had it been gold-rank, Michael suspected he would have been utterly destroyed by it.

So, to shake hands and to touch auras was a dangerous affair unless the two parties were almost equal in strength. That the king had allowed Michael to do so meant that he was offering Michael a great deal of face.

“With the formalities over,” the king said, and if he felt anything by touching Michael’s aura, he did not say. “Let me give you back when you forgot to take with you when you took your leave from the ice caves. As a measure of goodwill.”

He pointed at a stack of coins, skill stones and a single slip of paper. If there was any malice in what the king said, any attempt at undermining Michael’s position, he could not tell. Not only were the king’s eyes orbs of pure black, they were set in an eerie face that barely moved, showing not the faintest hint of emotion. Even when it did, it was fleeting and too alien to understand. The king’s voice was silk, but monotone, barely passing as human.

If the king looked so alien, he must have even more alien ways of thinking. It was not lost on Michael that the monsters of the dungeon were less alien to him than Theobond, less uncanny.

“I did not, as you say, take my leave.” Michael made the loot vanish in his bag before turning to stare at the king. If Theobond’s eyes and face betrayed nothing, Michael could never hope to beat the king at his own game. But he could bet on the opposite, trying to throw Theobond off by showing many and conflicting emotions. “Your men surrounded me.”

“Ah, that.” Theobond said, voice still monotone. “My troops were ill-advised. We did not expect to find you deep in the ice king’s territory, after all.”

Which was a blatant lie, as Michael knew for a fact that Theobond’s men had waited until the last moment to make their entrance. That the king had lied with a straight face told Michael things about how the blue humanoid functioned. Not good things.

“Please,” the king continued, and this time there was emotion, “all I ask is that you hear me out. I have questions for you, as you no doubt have for me. I will go as far as admit that what happened in the ice cave was a… tactical error, on my part. I had thought you not an adventurer, but a monster like the others.”