Chapter 75

“The laptop?” Michael said with a chuckle, “I had Bob help me bring a setup down here. Yep, he was given access to this floor before you all did.”

He took momentary pleasure in the shocked reactions.

“No,” he then said, predicting the question that was coming from Travis, “I did not have him come in here alone to see what prompt the dungeon would give him after the first floor. He’s too much of an asset.”

“Making him into a Level 2 operator stat.” Muttered Travis, head buried into his phone.

“Right,” Michael said, already used to the man’s antics. Ever since the foundation of Candle Light, Travis was like a changed man. “Anyway, see that cable there? It goes all the way to the top where I put some solar panels. Turns out that the sun here is real enough to provide electricity.”

After that, Michael treated his guests to a modest snack break. He had stocked the pantry with some human snacks, as well as Fae delicacies. It turned out that he could make a makeshift fridge by taking Frost elemental stones and placing them into a cupboard, although the insulation left to be desired. It made a whole corner of the pantry bone-chilling cold. At least it ran off of ambient mana.

It had been Johanne’s idea to make a fridge like this after she learned of the concept of using cold temperatures for preservation. Lacking a Time elemental stone to freeze the food in time or something of the like, Frost was the next best thing she had thought of so far, although she had even more ideas. She was experimenting with them at the warehouse back on Earth where they kept the other stones, only bringing them to the mana-rich air of the so-called “Area of Influence” around the dungeon when she needed them. Ever since the Mustang incident, which was this morning in real-earth time although it felt like ages ago to him due to time dilation, she had been in charge of the warehouse and its security, taking things away and back into the dungeon until she could refit the warehouse into a secure lab.

“Alright,” said Travis after they had eaten and relaxed enough. “I know we have infinite time, but I’d like to talk about our plans before we move on to other things.”

“Of course,” said Michael. “Took me a while to get used to taking it easy in the valley, I can see why you would be uncomfortable waiting around too much.”

“It’s not that,” said Trevor, “what Mr Tyrell says is correct. If we relax too much, we risk losing our edge. The sense of hurry disappears, making all situations look simpler than they actually are.”

Michael grinned. “That’s not a problem, trust me. You all are going to train. Let’s begin with that. Travis and I are going to run back up on the first floor so he can get his hands on a second Silver card. Since there is no way to know how much time that will take, and there is no time dilation between floors, I’ll keep you busy in the meantime. Old Dave, you are willing to train up your new skills? You have [Stone Skin], [Night Vision], [Water Bullet] and [Stone Wall], which you can train with Johanne until you can use them effectively. It will also expand your mana pool into something you can use to fight the first floor at its current level of difficulty.”

The old man nodded, keeping composed, but Michael saw that he was excited.

He then turned to Jennifer and Trevor. “You two, I’m going to give you skill stones as well.”

Trevor nodded, but Jennifer shook her head. “I think I want to see what the dungeon gives me before taking a stone from you. If that’s alright with you. You are the boss.”

Michael nodded. “Not a bad idea. What about you, Trevor?”

“I’ll take what you have.”

“Good. What do you think about this one?”

“[Ghost Market]? What does it do?”

Absorb it and tell me.

The man did as told. Gradually, his expression changed as he read through the description of the skill.

“Wait,” he said, “let me see if I understand it correctly.”

He touched a rather large log that was sitting on the ground, doing nothing. After a moment during which his face was scrunched up in concentration, the log vanished with the sound of rushing air displaced by its sudden absence, while Trevor’s mouth morphed into a grin. “Damn. This is nuts.”

“Drullkrin thinks the skill can do much more than you’d think at first. I happen to agree. You will need more offensive and defensive capabilities, of course, but trust me when I say that the [Ghost Market] could become your most powerful asset once you level it up enough.”

“Wait,” Travis interjected, “what can it do?”

“It can sell anything through a magic interface. And I mean anything. It makes whatever he touches vanish and it puts it up for sale in a magical marketplace. I don’t know much else because I didn’t bond with it nor did I use it outside the dungeon much, but even if it did never upgrade beyond this it would already be extremely useful.”

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“I can see that,” said the head of Candle Light, “If the stone could literally make fortifications vanish… that’s at least Gold-ranked danger.”

“Fly down. I say it’s Copper for now. It doesn’t multiply the danger of the user by much yet, it’s too reliant on touch and mana cost.”

“It will still be very useful for Candle Light and Unity as a whole.”

“I’ll run tests with him,” Johanne said, “so that Travis can make his little file for Candle Light. Shall we move on?”

“Of course. Here, take these. [Water Whip] and [Mana Shield], both common-rank. You and Jennifer will train with Drullkrin until he thinks you are ready to run the first floor alone. This is the plan for now, does everyone agree?”

There was a series of nods.

“I have a feeling you won’t think we are wasting time anymore by the time I come and get you for your own run.”

***

“This time dilation thing is really messing with my head.”

Travis was on his eighth run of the dungeon’s first floor. He had been resting between runs to make sure he was at peak capacity whenever he fought the monsters, because despite Michael always watching over him, mistakes could still prove to be fatal. In fact, the more time he spent in the magical depths of this place, the more he appreciated Michael’s grit and determination. The dungeon took a lot from you. Between runs, he had been drilling with the others, figuring out their strengths and weaknesses as the current spearhead power force of Candle Light. In time, others would come to either replace them or bolster their forces, but they were the absolute first team of magically powered individuals.

Jennifer was having a rough time waiting to get magic, but Travis could see why Michael wanted to keep her for last despite the possible advantages of training. She wanted to run the first floor alone, and even though she was a badass fighter who could probably take ten of him unarmed if not for his Card, this place was just something else. They had also been running tests with [Ghost Market], but the time dilation kept them from really making use of the skill. It was pretty clear that its reach was not multiversal, limited to Earth only for the moment. Otherwise stuff would disappear in the blink of an eye regardless of how utter garbage it was. It lingered instead, as most items were not good enough to be sold within the ten minute window the dungeon granted them. He made notes for someone to check listings of particular items he put for sale once he left the dungeon, and to buy a few of them to run some tests.

Michael hummed pensively. “Feel like a lot of time, doesn’t it? Then you go back to the surface and find out only minutes have passed. Even then, progress with the whole Unity thing has been quicker than I thought.”

“Yeah,” said Travis, “I’ve been working the men to the bone to get this far. And I know for a fact that Johanne is an even worse taskmistress than I am. I think Doctor Kavins both loves and hates her guts at the same time with how hard she’s been working the poor man. In his perspective, it’s barely been a few days.”

“It’s a boon as much as it is a curse. Take the Carmela situation, for example.”

Travis nodded right as he vanished in a cloud of sparks. An arc of lightning beheaded one of the goblins, while another took out the shield protecting a skeleton. His mastery of the Silver card had improved by leaps and bounds as of late, thanks to the mana-rich environment constantly supplying him with free new charges for his ability, and he was discovering new depths to the Card. He had also gotten to see more than a few Copper cards, of which he had seen none before today, and got to see just how limited they were in their scope. He was temporarily using a couple of them to supplement his fighting style until he got another Silver card as a drop, and he was coming to hate how rigid they were. According to the experts, who currently were Michael and Johanne, the difference between ranks was a hundredfold increase in power, but it was only a rough estimate.

It was much more than just raw power. It was about flexibility, breadth of scope, his ability to influence what the card did, and a lot of other little things that made a silver card that much better than a copper one. To think that Michael had rare skills, the equivalent of Gold-rank cards. Sure, skills were different in the way that the dungeon assigned rarity based on how rare it was to find them as a drop and not based off of raw power, and a skill had to grow in level before it could compare to a similarly ranked card but… he still had rare shit he could use.

“Carmela?” Travis forced himself back to the present, “we will deal with her, man. After we are done here, we’ll be a power to be reckoned with.”

“No,” Michael shook his head, “what I mean is that I feel so detached from it, man. I’ve been thinking about what Trevor said, and I think he’s right. It’s driving me a little bit nuts, to be honest. It’s like one moment it’s impending doom, and the next it’s nothing to worry about. I feel like a pendulum.”

“Ah, I get it.”

Michael waited for a moment, “…and?”

“Deal with it,” Travis said with a grin, all the while he was pulverizing monster bones. Cards did not make him stronger, unlike a certain cheat skill Michael happened to possess, but he had benefited immensely from training hard, being healed and eating like a madman between his runs, and he was quickly approaching his genetic potential.

“Right. You do the bosses alone this run, then. See if you get a silver card this time.”

***

“Old Dave, you’re up. How are you feeling with your new abilities?”

“I trained for a week, man. I am sick of training. This is torture.”

Travis laughed. “Be glad you don’t have to grind loot in the dungeon. That is the real torture.”

“Oh right! What did you get?”

“You know Cards have no names, right? Well, I call it “Elemental Weapon” and it’s Silver-rank!”

“What does it do?”

“I think of a weapon and an element, and a weapon made of that element appears in my hand. Works with any element I can think of and any weapon I can think of. Look.”

A flaming rifle appeared in his hands with a pop. Then it vanished, replaced by a rocket launcher made of shadow. It was gone in moments, and this time Travis was holding a mace whose tip seemed to float in the air, moving erratically and occasionally teleporting.

“Both ancient and modern weapons are supported. This is good. The damage is insane.”

“Alright, enough chit-chat. Old Dave, let’s go.”

“Man, this is going to be torture.”

***

“Man, that was awesome!”

Old Dave was practically jumping around, telling everyone of his exploits and fights in the dungeon. Of all the people presence, the most captive elements of the audience were Trevor and Jennifer, the only ones who had yet to experience the dungeon as delvers rather than just watchers.

“It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, mind you,” said the energetic old man, “but Michael was there when I fucked up, and I managed. His continuous healing must have shaved another decade off my old bones. I reckon you youngsters will be done rather quickly.”

GHOST MARKET SKILL STONE