Chapter 14

  Michael returned to the dungeon as quickly as humanly possible. Actually, he was now quicker than a human, his improved reflexes from training and from the bonuses his passive skill gave him allowing him to basically sprint the whole way from the car to the dungeon without having to worry about falling on the uneven terrain. If he could see his stats like in a game, he knew he would be proud of his growth. His stamina had increased by leaps and bounds, as had his strength and his reflexes.

  If only he could gain levels himself, and not just his skills, it would all be much easier.

  Today was a skeleton day in the dungeon, assuming it kept its normal rotation, and Michael had every intention to squeeze all the training he could out of the first room before moving onto defeating the boss.

  He spent several hours in the first room, juggling not one but two skeletons he left alive for training purposes, before he got the message he was waiting for. As soon as he saw it, he quickly killed the skeletons, executing the last one with a very satisfying [Shield Bash].

  He grinned, gathering his scattered lights and getting ready to move to the next room. Checking his equipment, he shook his head when he saw the poor state of his shield. His dagger was also chipped in places, not really a good weapon against animated bones. Unlike in the stories, here equipment broke down and required maintenance, but Michael didn’t know the first thing about caring for daggers and antiquated shields.

  There was nothing to be done about it now. He would worry about it later.

  Moving onto the second room, he was surprised at what he saw. Instead of a greater number of normal skeletons like he expected, he found himself face to face with a single skeleton boss and two normal skeletons.

  “The dungeon is mixing things up, I see. Upping the difficulty.”

  Still, the surprise was not enough to stun him into motionlessness. In fact, by the time his brain was done speculating, he was already moving, having discarded the shield now that [Distortion Field] had become automatic. The skeletons, even the boss, were slow enough that as long as he kept them all within his field of view, there would be no problems.

  The repulsion bubble was also strong enough to deal with all the attacks, making the shield redundant for this fight. It was still a good tool, he had gotten used to its reassuring weight and [Shield Bash] was a strong ability, but until he got a better shield he was probably better off without.

  The fight didn’t take much time at all. Despite the increase in difficulty, Michael was much stronger than he was even in the last delve, the improvement to his [Distortion Field] making disposing of the brittle skeletons easy work.

  The reward for clearing the room appeared, coins clinking against the hard stones of the floor, the same as what he had gotten in the previous room.

  “If the dungeon ups the difficulty every time I beat a certain floor,” Michael thought while counting the coins, “then it means that I’m on a timer. For now I’ve been staying ahead of the curve, but I’m already seeing diminishing returns from only fighting on the first floor. Soon enough I’ll be forced to descend down to the second floor, and I need to be ready.”

  To that end, he needed to make every single run through the first floor count. He could not afford to waste a run, as the difficulty would increase regardless of how profitable the run had been, and he didn’t want to be forced to descend deeper down unless he felt ready for a sharp difficulty increase.

  He felt like the dungeon was a constant source of headaches, not the easy path to power everyone dreamed of. At least if one wanted to optimize things, act smart, which Michael felt like he had an obligation to do. If anything, he had to because this was his life he was playing with, both in the literal sense of the danger he faced when he delved but also of the repercussions in the real world.

  The boss room had three skeletons, the dungeon returning to the usual pattern. Michael made quick work of them, using his new [Presence] skill to slow them down when he used it in bursts, and after the fight was over he was rewarded with enough coins to bring the total to 130, but no skill stones or items.

  After he put the coins in his backpack, he saw that he still had a lot of food and water packed for the trip. His earlier worries dissipated a little when he realized that he had barely even needed to heal himself through the whole run, and even though the dungeon was getting harder to beat, so he was getting stronger with each passing day.

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  He was about to turn around and leave, when he stopped in his tracks. He had food, and his healing skill was, in his mind, his most important skill. It was the key to his survival in the dungeon, and increasing its level was a priority.

  What better place to do it than the mana-dense boss room of the dungeon, with plenty of food and water? All he needed to do was harm himself in all sorts of strange ways and see how the skill healed him, trying to gain insights with his mana sense while he was at it.

  He took out the dagger and began the grueling work. By the time he was done suffering he was panting, covered in sweat, grime and dried blood, his head hurt fiercely, and he was out of food. His skill had not gained a single level, but he had managed to improve his mana sense by looking at how the skill directed the flow of mana to heal his wounds. Small gains for such big suffering.

  Another discovery was that his healing skill didn’t seem to have any limit, as long as it had mana and food to work with. It could regenerate limbs, it could fix a stabbed eye, it could regenerate vast amounts of tissue, muscle, bone and even set complex joints. Like the wrist, Michael learned after he smashed it with a rock.

  He still wasn’t sure if it could deal with stuff like cancer or poisons, and he surely wasn’t going to try that on himself. Thinking about it, there had to be some sort of difference there because unlike normal wounds, cancer and poisons would require the skill to know that there was something wrong with the body it was trying to heal, something not as obvious as a broken bone. But then again, if the skill knew that a sore muscle was something to be fixed, removing the lactic acid and rebuilding the fibers, then perhaps removing the cancerous cells and rebuilding the damaged tissues was not that much of a stretch.

  All this, and the skill was only a level one, uncommon rarity ability. Unless Michael had misunderstood what rarity ratings were, then he had to wonder just what wonders rarer skills could accomplish.

  Leaving the dungeon, Michael was pretty happy with his gains. The gains he got from true delving were much diminished, it was true, although the large supply of coins was nothing to scoff at, but he was starting to see the true best way to use the dungeon.

  It was not to wait for it to grant rewards. They were commensurate to risk and not actual effort, which meant that counting on them to grow was no different than gambling with his life at stake.

  No, the good gains came from abusing the absurd mana density of the dungeon, training like he did today and grinding out skill levels. Delving would always have a place, no way to get more coins otherwise, and he doubted he could get any skill beyond common and uncommon ones without skill stones any time soon, but a good balance between delving and abusing the dungeon mechanics to train was probably the best way to go.

  He idly wondered how the other delvers who had found other dungeons on earth were doing. Did they just do a one-off, coming out powered up but scared to ever go back again? Would they be cautious, like he was, slowly gaining power without putting their lives recklessly at risk? Or would they be battle junkies, most of them succumbing to their hubris, but some of them managing to rise to power much quicker than the others? He could not tell with certainty, but he had some data.

  So far, nobody had managed to make a mess so big it was impossible to cover up. Michael had been delving for barely a couple of weeks and was already at the point where, if he wanted, he could make a real mess that would make it the news. Therefore he had to assume that either there were no other delvers, or that they were all cautious, inducted in some secret worldwide plot that kept them away from the spotlight, or dead.

  Perhaps he was ahead of the curve, the first pioneer before a wave of others followed.

  If the world was about to change, then it was better to be the herald of change rather than just a victim of it.

  ***

  Michael returned home right in time for karate class, quickly grabbing his gi, belt and shoes and hopping back on his truck to drive to the dojo. Phillip wasn’t there today, making the two hours pass much more smoothly than usual, although Michael had to admit to himself that he was a little disappointed that his rival was absent.

  The others gave him strange looks when they thought he wasn’t looking, talking behind his back, pointing fingers, but when it came to training they were all like perfect gentlemen, as if all their resentment and hatred was nothing at all, a mirage.

  Michael, left alone, wondered if it was even worth coming here anymore. No amount of training or katas would ever match what he could do in the dungeon, while time was finite resource. Or was it? In the dungeon, he could spend hours upon hours training and come out after barely ten real-life minutes. If that was the case, then was time really an issue?

  His train of thought was interrupted by sensei Stephan coming up to him. He talked loud enough for everyone to hear, but he was clearly talking to him.

  “Listen, Master Taiko is coming to the US in September. I pulled some strings, and we are the first dojo he comes to. You know, Michael, he still remembers you. He asked about you, he wants you to take the belt exam again, and hinted that maybe, if you impress him, he might let you skip another belt. I know you are up to it, but you still need to train hard, and no more skipping classes until the exam!”

  Michael wanted to refuse, to claim that he was very busy and that he couldn’t really do it when he was scrambling for money, and his focus was elsewhere. All of it was true, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Instead, a question burned in his mind: what if Master Taiko has magic?

  A strange master, coming from Japan once a year, living up in the mountains and tending to a shrine. Or some shit like that. He was prime candidate.

  “Sure sensei,” Michael said with a smile that was tense and full of anticipation, as if he had not been considering quitting up until five seconds ago. “I’ll try my best to not skip class, but it might happen from time to time. I got a new job that’s quite far away from here, and you know I need the cash.”