I woke up to find a yellow scaly face looking at me. I blinked at Deus, sitting on my chest, and slowly rose on the bed.

“What are you doing on top of me?” I asked, petting his rough head. He was nowhere similar to a puppy, but Deus still looked cute in his own reptile way.

“You seemed to be having a nightmare. Guess the Fayde did a number on you.” He had a look of concern on his face.

“Don’t worry. I buried that memory a long time ago. It will get better soon.”

I got up from my bed to freshen up in the bathroom. Deus slithered off me and went out of the room. After washing up my face, I went to the dining room. Jacob was behind the kitchen counter.

“Good morning, Ray.” Jacob greeted me as he set up a plate of sandwiches in front of me.

“I have to say, you are an excellent cook.” I praised his skills as I bit into the bread.

I had been eating his food for two days now. When I first tasted his dishes, I regretted it so much for not staying back at his church that I almost began to wrack my brain for any time travelling Artifacts.

I just have to say that Jacob's cooking skills were out of this world. I won't be surprised if he turned out to be the retired owner of a three Michelin stars restaurant.

As I ate my sandwiches, I could see Mike practicing in the garden. The house didn’t have any training facility, so he was left to practice his swordsmanship in the large garden and doing an occasional swim in the pool. Beside him, Deus was giving out instructions on how to better his posture and slashes. For a being with no appendages, he knew quite a lot about swordsmanship.

As I finished my meal, Mike and Deus came in.

“Ah, great timing. Deus, come on.” At my command, Deus slithered up my leg and wrapped himself around my right arm.

“Ray, are you going somewhere?” Jacob asked as he took away my empty plate.

“Deus and I are gonna go do some training of our own.” I replied. “I might not be back for a few days, but you can ask Miranda if you need anything.”

The Miranda I had just mentioned, was a sweet lady in her early 50s and the caretaker of my mansion. She used to come twice a week to clean the house and restock the fridge, but now that I had people living in this previously empty mansion, I had asked her to come every alternate day, which she was more than glad to do.

“All right, you take care.”

“But, wait. What about my training?” Mike asked me.

“You just work on your mana control for now. When I get back, I will give you some proper training.” I promised Mike before I left the mansion.

The Academy had been kind enough to give me a holiday since I got injured protecting the students. I wasn’t gonna waste this precious time cramped in my room. Especially since I knew about the disasters that were going to shatter the fragile peace of Earth very soon.

I also needed to get Mike a new Spirit Egg, so he can begin his Spiritualist training soon. I didn’t remember the locations of any Spirit Eggs, but I remembered that in the early parts of the novel they were all found in Dungeons outside the cities. Since not many people knew of their existence till now except for the handful of Heroes who defeated the Boss monsters of the Dungeons outside the city, I would surely find a few good ones.

We took a subway to get to the outskirts of the Capital City. I soon found myself at the northern edge of the barrier that protected the city. The residents of Capital City were kept safe from the monsters by a single thick translucent wall of mana that was in front of me. This area was deserted, consisting only of trees since nobody wanted to live anywhere close to the barrier, because of the danger that monsters would attack this area first if the barrier failed to function.

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

Beyond the barrier, a jungle was running wild, a habitat for many dangerous creatures.

Although Dungeons opened up in the Capital City from time to time, they were nothing compared to the monsters that lurked in the woods outside the barrier. The forests, mutated by the high concentrations of mana, had turned as deadly as their residents.

You can find many different Dungeons, each one having a different ecosystem inside. Some Dungeons were profitable, some not. The Guilds and the League took possession of all the profitable Dungeons. The monsters in there were either good for training, or the byproducts of the monster carcasses were very beneficial. I remembered one scene in the novel where it was mentioned that one of the Dungeons owned by the League had monsters inside, whose meat can increase you Mana simply upon ingestion. To gain profits, the League opened up a restaurant in the Capital city, selling dishes made from the meat of these monsters, each one made by a five star chef. The average cost of a single dish here was about 1 million R and there was a waiting list of upto 6 months.

I thought about going here once, but then gave up on the idea. My palate wouldn't be able to appreciate all the exotic flavours. It would be no more than a waste of money. And I am pretty sure Jacob's food tastes much better than that restaurant.

"Roar!" The screams of a monster echoed out of the trees. I decided to think about the food later and focus on getting Mike a Spirit Egg. As soon as I stepped foot out of the mana barrier, I could feel a sense of bloodlust around me. The flora around me looked quite normal, but I knew it had mutated long ago.

As I walked through the woods, I could feel many gazes pointed at me from the shadows. They must be a lot weaker than me, considering I hadn’t been attacked as of yet. Or the monsters had gotten more intelligent as they ranked up, and were now judging my worth as prey.

“So, what are we doing now?” Deus asked.

“No idea. Let’s explore around for a bit until we come across a Dungeon.”

We started our exploration. On the way, we took out a few wolf monsters that were E~D Rank. I stored them in the ring since Deus said he wanted a meal later.

"I find it weird that so many monsters are running around this place. Don't the Guild do anything to stop the Dungeon Bursts releasing the monsters outside?"

"There are many different Heroes patrolling around here, since we are still close to the barrier. But the only monsters they have been ordered to take out are ones that are strong enough to damage to the city barrier. Normal E and D Rank monsters are not strong enough to do any damage. As for the other Heroes, they probably go hunt further away from the city barrier, where the Guild-owned Dungeons are, since they get half of the profits on selling the monsters."

"Humans are such greedy people."

"Well I won't deny that. Now let's go resume our search."

“You know, with this many monsters roaming around, one would at least expect a Dungeon to pop up. It's been hours.”

That's true. We had been exploring for hours, but not a single Dungeon has come in our path. Since only weak monsters approached us, we weren’t physically drained but the mental fatigue was accumulating.

Finally, I decided to use my trump card.

“Appraisal!"

My mana erupted from my eyes and spread on a 15-kilometer radius before returning and solidifying into a 3-dimensional map in front of me. Since I have been using this skill a lot, the mana efficiency had increased significantly. But it was still a big blow to my mana pool. A third of my mana had been used up in scanning the area.

“You should have done that from the beginning.” Deus complained on seeing the map.

“Shut it. You are not the one using your mana.” I shot back, as I examined the map. “Hmm, the map recorded ten Dungeons in our vicinity.”

“Let’s go to that one.” The one Deus pointed to, was a Rank C Dungeon inside a cave on a mountain nearby. It also had the least number of monsters nearby, so I had no complaints.

With a clear destination on hand, the two of us began our journey toward the mountains. On our way up, we came across a Hero party, who were returning from a Dungeon Raid. Deus hid his presence with Fade.

“Hey.” I waved at the approaching group. They were a group of seven people. Two of them seemed to be injured and were leaning against their friends. There were a total of two women and four men, all in their mid-twenties. Another woman, much older and more mature than the other six, trailed behind them with a stoic expression on her face. She had a considerable amount of muscle on her biceps, meaning she had gone through a lot of training.

I used Appraisal at the party. All of them were C or C+ Ranks with the older man being a B+ Rank.

‘From their Stats and fighting jobs, they seem like a strong party. I find it hard to believe they got so injured in a mere C Rank Dungeon.’ Deus spoke in my mind.

‘I agree.’ I had fought through a Rank C Dungeon just recently. Yes, I didn’t kill the boss monster and had my Appraisal Map to avoid needless fights but they still had so many great fighters including a B+ Rank Hero. It's hard to imagine they got injured to this extent.

I slowly approached them.

“Are you alright?” I asked one of them.

“Ah. Hello.” He greeted me.

I raised my hand forward. “My name is Ray.”

I didn’t feel the need to announce I was from the Laxon family, considering I was gonna leave the family soon.

He shook my hand in response, “I am Jake. From the Sabertooth Mercenaries.”

“Did you just come from that Dungeon in the caves just now?”

Jake nodded. “If you are planning to go to the ‘Snow Forest’ Dungeon, I would advise you against it. We are the fifth group to be coming out of there today. Almost everyone who goes inside gets ambushed by some unseen assailants.”

“Assailants?”

“Yes. We are not even sure if they are human or a new type of monster. Though they don’t seem to be killing anyone. Just driving away.” He explained. “You should really not go there.”

“Well, I would still like to try my luck.”

“Suit yourself.”

Saying our goodbyes, we parted ways. The Dungeon entrance wasn’t too high and the mountain wasn’t steep either, so it didn’t take much time to reach it.

The cave was quite normal looking except for the Aura that was coming from inside it. It was pitch black inside, so I couldn’t see how long it was.

“I am a bit concerned about those assailants that the mercenary group told us about.” Deus voiced out, as I got ready to step foot inside.

“Well, as long as we have the Appraisal Map, they atleast wouldn’t be ambushing us.”

Ready to face our first Dungeon together, Deus and I stepped inside.

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