“So, basically what you are saying is that he has multiple women, and the ones he has he gets to keep forever?” Stacy asked.

  “No, what I’m saying is that anyone who breaks his heart will die.”

  “You’d kill me?” Stacy asked.

  “I thought you weren’t interested… but yes, I would kill anyone who hurts him in that way. You don’t know what it's like being connected to him like I am. To feel someone else's emotions so keenly, to know how every shake of my hips and word that I speak feels to him. He is not just my deity, we are as much each other as we are ourselves.”

  “That sounds pretty intense, I’m not sure I’m ready for that.” Stacy said. She was surprised that she felt a little ashamed of herself at admitting she wasn’t ready.

  “Nothing to worry about, you are young, and with magic and vitality, you will look young for decades. Especially if he trains you and we get you caught up to us.”

  “Do you think I have a chance of convincing him to train me?” Stacy asked.

  “To train you, sure we will train you for a little while regardless. But if you want him to take you as an apprentice, that's not something he will take lightly, I won’t let him. It would have to be like a fifty year commitment at least.” Bethany explained.

  “Fifty years! That's insane!” Stacy yelled while standing up and starting to pace.

  “He is the strongest being on this planet, what do you think is going to happen when people find out? Twenty percent will want to worship him, twenty percent will want to kill him, the rest won't care, but it's that first twenty percent you will be competing with. Hell, I’ll be competing with them as well.”

  “How would people find out?”

  “I think the system is going to guarantee that they do, I don’t know how but it will.”

  “Still, fifty years? I’m not even 25 yet.”

  “It’s not that long, even as you are now you’ll live to 200. If we get you trained up, you’ll be over a thousand before getting old.”

  Stacy sat down with a stunned look on her face, “That’s a long time, I can’t even get my head around living that long.”

  “How do you think he feels,” Bethany said pointing to Eli, “He’s probably got tens of thousands of years at a minimum.”

  They stopped talking when he stuck out his hand and conjured another root avatar, but this one was different. The first one had been one that Bethany recognized from previous ones she had seen, a humanoid shape made of roots and vines with a sharp wooden sword and a shield. The first one he summoned had been bigger and bulkier than what she had seen in the past but she just chalked that up to him being stronger. But this one, the one he was conjuring now, was eight feet tall and a pale white color, its shield was just as tall as it was and its sword was replaced by a dense looking wooden mace covered in small thorns. The magic coming from it felt wrong, like it shouldn’t be something that exists, but it did and it stormed off in the same direction as the last one.

  “Love,” Bethany called to Eli, she chose to call him that so she didn’t slip up and call him Eli. “That one is much slower, they will be close by the time it reaches them.”

  Eli responded in a cold and deep voice, “We can go inside now, I’ll finish recovering later.”

  Stacy was shocked that he would rather face the raid dungeon than the people coming, but she was starting to see more of the kind of man he was and realized that he didn’t want to have to kill them. They took off at a jog around the sink-hole until they got to a spot that Bethany recognized and then led Eli away from it to a small hole in the ground.

  “This leads to a tunnel that takes us down, jumping is not a good idea, the trees down there have razor leaves and are magically reinforced.” She explained as they went in.

  After the tunnel they came to the entrance to the forest, it was not like any he had seen before. The trees were in neat rows equally spaced apart, which made it feel man made, but then there was a tremendous amount of underbrush that grew wild and random. There were vines with thorns, bushes with thorns, even some moss with thorns in some places and all the leaves looked as sharp as razors. Bethany began cutting a path through the brush.

  “This grows back in minutes so stay close.” Bethany said.

  “Return to me Umber,” Eli said. Umber turned into a puff of smoke and it all collected around Eli until it formed a massive tattoo on his body. It looked like an artistic depiction of Umber, with the tails wrapped around his left leg going up his body, her head was on his chest and the wings went down his left arm.

  “Damn, now who's Umber making too attractive,” Bethany said.

  He smiled at her at the comment, but she could see pain in his eyes and decided to speed up so they could get inside faster. It was another 20 minutes before they heard a large crash of stone and what sounded like a roar mixed with the cracking of tree branches. The avatar was still alive, but it was close, which meant what it was fighting was close as well. They kept going, occasionally hearing the roaring noise and the sound of spells going off. Just as they reached the entrance to the raid dungeon, there was silence suggesting that the fight had ended up above. The dungeon was called “Endless Waves” and they didn’t read anything else as they all put their hands on the entrance stone, Bethany grabbing Stacy’s hand and forcing her to join, then they vanished.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  They appeared in a similar forest but they were in the center of a large clearing about the size of a baseball stadium. There was a ring of stones around them with one stone podium in the middle that had instructions on it.

  “This is the Dungeon of Endless Waves.”

  “Every hour after arrival, a wave of monsters will spawn and attack those outside the stone ring”

  “If no one is outside the stone ring they will attack those on the inside.”

  “Each wave will be harder than the last.”

  “You must complete 100 waves to leave the dungeon.”

  “Staying longer will increase experience multiplier and loot rewards.”

  Bethany read the instructions aloud then looked at Stacy, “We are going to have to do the first 25 or so on our own while Eli continues to rest.”

  “Eli?” Stacy asked.

  “Shit, yes that's his real name, Ash is the name he picked for his titles and public stuff. Don’t make me regret telling you.” Bethany said as she looked over to Eli who was sitting with his back up against the podium and his eyes closed. “We can do the first wave together, if it's easy enough, then we can take turns, but we need to hold out as long as we can so he can recover.”

  Bethany gave Stacy a couple armor items that would help her, nothing fancy just some uncommon rarity stuff that will help her take a hit better and increase regeneration. They stretched and paced waiting for the first wave.

  Bethany knelt down next to Eli and put a hand on his cheek while whispering, “I’ll give you as much time as I can, I’m counting on you to save me when I get overwhelmed.” Then she kissed him on the cheek and stood next to Stacy outside of the stone ring.

  The first wave came by appearing to walk out of the trees as if they were a hologram in front of a door. They were plant monsters with sunflower faces and vine whips for arms, they were only about 4 feet tall, but their whip arms were at least eight feet long. Twenty of them appeared at once, each one out of a different tree. Following that fact Bethany had a thought that made her spine twitch, if there were over 200 trees surrounding them, did that mean that the number would increase to 200 at a time, spawning at the same time. That didn’t seem like something she would be able to handle, but with 100 waves to do, hopefully they would be easy enough in the beginning.

  When they started fighting, Bethany and Stacy quickly realized that the plant monsters were not pushovers. They died easily enough with a good slice through them, but they were very dexterous and kept wiggling out of the way of a strike. The result was a victory without injury, but they had used far more energy and magic than they needed to. Stacy seemed happy that it went well, but Bethany saw it for the trap that it was. These waves aren’t meant to hurt us, at least not at first, they are going to be designed to wear them down.

  “Think you can handle the next wave alone?” Bethany asked Stacy.

  “Probably, are you already tired?”

  “No but we used more energy and magic than we should have, we need to start taking turns so that we can last as long as possible.”

  “Smart, doing this 100 times seems like it's going to be awful.” Stacy said. She had a mixture of fear and excitement that was running her adrenaline through the roof, but she never felt more alive. Crazy challenge, facing crazy magic, with her life on the line. Not to mention fighting for and with two amazing people who have taken this chance at a new life and ran with it at top speed refusing to let any obstacle slow them down. She still didn’t know where she wanted to end up, but she now knew how she wanted to get there, by following these people and sharing in the adventure.

  The fighting had lasted less than ten minutes, so they had a bit before the next wave, Bethany pulled out some expensive cooked monster meat that she had bought. Food that is cooked with the actual system cooking profession not only is guaranteed to taste amazing, but gives small buffs for 24 hours. This particular dish they were about to share was to boost regeneration by a small amount. It was a large steak from a regenerage bear, a level 60 monster, with high defense and regeneration, and some herb potatoes with all of it covered in butter. The butter and potatoes were bought from the system store, she had seen them as options, but the herbs probably had something to do with healing or health to add to the effect.

  The best part of these plates of perfectly preserved food is that they can be stored in inventory for months and stay hot and fresh, and they have two servings per plate. They dug into the food, eating with their hands and generally not bothering with any kind of manners. There was a lot of moaning at how good the food tastes, Stacy had not had anything but bread, jerky, and water since this all started. She had already made her decision but getting to eat something this amazing solidified her choice entirely.

  “This is the life I want to live, I actually feel alive. Experiencing adventure and wondrous magic with my life on the line, I’m sold. I want in!” Stacy said.

  “You want in to what?” Bethany said with a snicker.

  “I want to follow you two, I don’t really care about belonging to a group, I want to be with you two.” She emphasized the word ‘you two’ heavily. “Go on adventures, actually live a life worth experiencing.” Stacy said with stars in her eyes.

  “Slow down girly, at a minimum you can follow us until we are confident that you can make it on your own. Anything beyond that is up to him.” Bethany said, pointing a thumb at Eli over her shoulder.

  “What can I do to improve my chances?” Stacy asked with more eagerness and vulnerability than Bethany thought the girl was capable of.

  Bethany sighed heavily, “huuuh, I can tell he likes the way you think, he isn’t usually so captivated by conversation, so just keep that up. Be honest and true to yourself, even if it contradicts him. Follow his lead, don’t wait for instructions or orders. If you really want him to like you, make sure your words, actions and facial expressions match your true feelings. His magical senses will feel your real feelings, so just let them show because it's off-putting to him when the things don’t match what he feels.”

  “So just no emotional filter, express what I feel and say what I really believe.” Stacy said as a recap, “that seems pretty simple.”

  “It can be, but it also means that no feelings are hidden from him. He will know so just act it out.” Bethany got a whimsical glint in her eye, “I remember when I first met him, it was barely a few days after the tutorial. Some bad guys were chasing us and he was just there. He flexed a portion of his strength and broke my arm and the everything of the bad guys. I couldn’t even wear underwear after that, I would just soak right through them every time he looked at me.”

  Stacy shook her head, that had been a more graphic recounting than she was expecting, but then she thought she understood the point. “So you just acted horny around him, being true to how you felt and he accepted you?”

  “Well, yes and no, I don’t think he loved me until recently. Or at least he didn’t let himself love me. He experiences the world so much deeper than we do it can take him a while to process things.”