Dungeon Chapter 13 (Patreon)

“So you didn’t see anything unusual during your dive?” Katie had been scribbling down notes as I told the story of our dive. “Just ignored an order from the UG.”

We were seated across three couches, Katie on one by herself while I sat with Charlotte and Des kept Harley under control on another.

Mostly, Harley nibbled at crackers anxiously looking to go chase down her priestly beauty.

“Eh. Was it really an order?” I hedged. “’Advised’ isn’t the strongest language.”

Katie smirked. “No. As most things in the dungeon are, it was a strong suggestion.”

“Don’t try to scare us like that.” Harley crossed her arms.

“So, now that we got that over with, can I ask you about my inability to level my stats?” I asked lifting my CID and showing her as I pushed the button for dexterity and got another error warning.

“What do you all know about the dungeon and how it works with humans?” She asked getting off the couch and looking at the bookshelf.

“When we enter the dungeon there is a burst of special magical energy called experience that opens up pathways in the human body.” I said remembering plenty of the topic from high school.

Dungeons were a huge part of our world, and everyone got a basic education on them.

“The CID uses magical crystals to help focus the improvements. As we gain more experience in the dungeon, it pressurizes these channels.” Charlotte added helpfully.

“Correct. It is a whole field of study squarely between the medical sciences and magical practices.” Katie explained as she found the book she was looking for and brought it back over to the table. “These are diagrams of a fresh level one for several classes.”

She was on a page with a fighter on one side and a mage on the other.

The diagrams were completely different.

The fighters stretched far across their body in thin little filaments while the mages’ focused mostly around the mind and a little down around a person’s core.

“We still don’t know exactly why certain people get certain classes, though there are theories both with hereditary and with physical predispositions. Someone who was very active in sports tends to lead to physical classes. Either way, everyone get a class.” She picked the book back up and flipped through a few pages.

“When you level up, it is because the CID senses a certain pressure achieved in your pathways. You can then hit the buttons and it will send a pulse, aided by the pressure in your pathways to grow them further in an area or direction.” She flipped to a new page.

This one had a developed rogues pathways compared to a level one.

The magical pathways were highly focused in the joints and around a lot of smaller muscle groups. “By selecting dexterity, it can use that pressure to aid their growth and give a desired effect. But there is a problem in your case. It doesn’t know what your pathways look like, so…” She flipped back to the fighter and mage level one pathways.

“Say you press for dexterity, and your pathways are like a mage, but it tries as if you are a fighter.” Her finger drew my attention to the dissimilarities in the two.

“It could miss?” Charlotte frowned at my side. “If it tries to grow around his wrists with a mage that doesn’t have pathways that go that far at first, what happens?”

“Best case? Nothing.” Katie closed the book. “Worst case? It blows out the channels and you are forever unable to accumulate enough experience to level your stats, not to mention equip higher level gear or cast higher level spells.”

I swallowed.

That was a hell of a worst case.

“Then maybe I could get a diagram like these?” I asked.

“They only perform them on the dead and even then they are wildly expensive.” Katie put the book back. “I’m sorry Ken. But if you get a second known class, it will go a lot easier.”

Nodding my head, I sighed. “Thank you for explaining that. I didn’t quite realize how complicated it was. We all just hit a button.”

She smiled. “We all have our specialties. It is one of the more complicated sciences out there, but the UG spends billions a year to understand how they work and develop the CID’s further.”

“How did people level before CIDs?” Desmonda asked.

I blinked. It was a great question and focused back on Katie.

She stuck her tongue out. “Not easily. They dove into the dungeon without a sense for levels, the experience built up within their channels until it became painful and they were required to continue to train vigorously through said pain. Their stats then grew more naturally. It was those pathways that became the guides for early CIDs. Even then, they grew at a much slower pace than we do today with the help of the CID technology. As they operated with completely full channels, there was a lot of waste while they were trying to encourage the growth.”

At least it was something.

If I had to put in two hundred percent the effort of the others, I would do it to keep on the path of an adventurer.

“It’ll be okay.” Charlotte rubbed my back. “I’m here for you and so are Des and Harley.”

“Of course!” Harley pumped a fist in the air.

Des looked distracted though until Harley nudged her. “Right Dessy? You are here to support Ken?”

“Yeah. Here to support him.” She said distractedly.

“We should all go out. Have a little party celebration.” Harley said excitedly, turning to Katie. “We are free to go?”

“Yes, you are.”

Harley was jumping out of her seat and grabbing my arm. “Come on. Let’s go have some fun. It’ll cheer you up.”

I shook my head at her exuberance. “And miss out on your priestly beauty?”

“Yeah. Our party is more important.” She smiled so widely it was infectious.

“Come on, Ken.” Charlotte looked up at me. “We’ll go cheer you up.”

Harley gave me an intense stare, like I shouldn’t be disappointing Charlotte.

But if I was honest, I wasn’t in the mood.

Besides, Crimson had said to meet up with her after.

“Thanks guys, but I have a meeting with Crimson after this.” I used our teacher as an out. “Go get your priestly beauty. I’ll be fine, Crimson is on the case.” I tried to put as much pep as I could into my tone.

“Go.” Des shooed Harley away. “It’ll be fine.”

“You okay, Des?” I asked her. She was acting funny.

“I need to go ask my father something. If Crimson can’t help, maybe he can.” She said cryptically.

But it made me smile.

“Aww, you are worried about him.” Harley teased Desmonda, only to narrowly dodge a chop from the serious woman. “Bye!” She dashed out.

Des nodded to all of us, her hair falling back into place over one of her eyes despite her constantly trying to comb back her purple hair. “I’ll catch up with you all tomorrow. Excuse me.” She left as Charlotte pulled at my shirt.

“Come on. I’ll walk you back.” The adorable druid gave me a brilliant smile as she tried to cheer me up.

“Thanks. I’ll see you later, Katie.” I waved at our rep as I walked with Charlotte.

Bun-bun must have been tired because the rabbit was sleeping soundly on Charlotte’s head, even if it made the druid walk a little like she was balancing something.

“You know, it’ll all be okay, Ken.” Charlotte tried to encourage me as we walked.

“I know.” I said, but didn’t necessarily have that much strength behind my words. “It just sucks to be singled out like that.”

There was an awkward pause as we walked down the hall.

Charlotte spoke to break it. “I wonder what’ll happen tomorrow? If the dungeon is going to be closed, what do you think Crimson will come up with?”

“Something wild and extremely dangerous.” I joked as a few thoughts of what their teacher could do. “Maybe she’ll bring up monsters from the twentieth floor and make us fight them as a class.”

“The boss.” Charlotte added with a look of mock horror. “We’d all die.”

I nodded. “She wants to push us extremely hard, but she doesn’t want to kill us.” I reasoned.

Crimson was a very cruel taskmaster, but she was trying to help us all improve. Soon we’d have the elven envoy’s daughter in our class. They would have to be protected to some extent, otherwise relations between the two races would be put at risk all over her safety.

At least that was the logic in my head.

“Maybe she’ll just put us into rigorous physical training.” I said.

Charlotte paled and looked at me for help. “I don’t want that.”

I laughed.

The green-haired druid was a sweet girl, but I’d seen her stats. She certainly wasn’t a pushover. She had to have done some training in the past.

“What do you think she’ll do?” I asked to talk about something other than my oddities.

“Maybe challenge the entire class to land a hit on her, while she beats us all with that whip and secretly tries to train us into bettering ourselves.” She tapped her lips with a thoughtful expression.

I glared at her. “That’s the plot of an anime show, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” She stuck a tongue out at me. “Maybe I like to watch TV.”

We walked out of the dungeon building and I was already back at the visitor’s center next door.

I paused, taking in a breath, about to invite Charlotte back to see it, but then hesitated.

“Yes?” she asked hopefully.

“Nothing. Have a good day Charlotte. I’m just nervous.” I played it off and pat her on the shoulder as a goodbye.

“Good luck, Ken. I’m sure it’ll be okay.” She smiled sweetly with the sun setting behind her. She was a lovely sight.

Gosh, Charlotte was so damn cute.

I tried to be cool and waved over my shoulder as I headed inside to the kitchen area where I expected to find Crimson, but she was pointedly absent, likely not finished with the staff meeting she had said she’d need to attend.

Sitting down on a stool, I opened up my CID, having a new respect for the piece of technology. I knew there was a lot of science to make something that I’d grown so used to using every day, but you never really appreciated it until it affected you personally.

Going into Katie’s list of classes and their starting spells, I searched for Earth Stomp.

Three results came up. Earthen Warden, Shaman and Elemental Summoner.

I shook my head. That clarified nothing.

A tank, a dps and a support.

Part of me had hoped for a hint in the skill as to what my class could be, but either way I picked out their secondary skills and tried them one by one, but with no luck.

I wasn’t secretly any of those classes.

The front door opened, and I turned to see Crimson walking in with a sour look on her face.

Instantly, my hopes shattered and scattered into the wind.

“Bad news?” I asked.

“No good news.” She sat down next to me. “You are triggering a safety warning when you try to level your stat. Even if I could get them to disable it, I wouldn’t because it would be too dangerous.”

“Thanks for trying.” I couldn’t look at her and just focused on my hands.

“Cheer up. I’m going to make dinner again.” Crimson pat me on the back. “Maybe we could get you some easy secondary class.”

I looked up, a little hopeful she had one she could pull out of her CID inventory, but she shook her head.

“Okay, how do I get a secondary class?” I asked.

“Well. Most classes override the first. The ones that can exist alongside an exiting class are a little different. Things like becoming a lich or a vampire are secondary classes. But they are well documented and should enable you to increase your stats if you get them. They layer over your existing class.” She explained.

“What floor are vampires on?”

She squinted in thought as she paused mid pulling things out of the fridge. “Floor twenty eight? I think that’s when you see vampire thralls in one dungeon.”

I deflated. Floor twenty eight.

“Anything sooner than that?” I asked.

Crimson quietly contemplated it while she went about making another mash of everything in the fridge. “Maybe, but I’d need to talk to someone.”

At least there was a little hope.

“What about classes?” I changed the subject.

Crimson grinned like she was having far too much fun. “Oh. You are going to love tomorrow.”

***

We had been going over normal material without addressing the giant elephant in the class of the closed dungeon, but we were done with what would normally be when we all had time to enter the dungeon.

Crimson stood in front of the class, her hands on the lecture as she smiled over the class. “As many of you have heard, the dungeon is closed to first years. You are all too low level to get past the current situation on the second floor.

“But we need to keep you all sharp. That is why the three first year classrooms are going to enter a competition.” The way she smiled made my skin crawl and I even already knew what was coming.

“There will also be mandatory combat training sessions. Later in the dungeon, many monsters are humanoid in form. Learning to fight with your classmates is a valuable exercise. So we will do a tournament style competition where you will fight your classmates. Winners will get various prizes provided by the teachers and staff. The first prize will be a day of power leveling by me.”

The class went into an uproar.

A day in the dungeon with Crimson.

Just the image of her using her whip during the second floor invasion was firing me up. The amount of loot and experience she could generate if you were in a party with her would be absolutely insane.

Hell, you might not even be able to pick up a fraction of the loot with how quickly she could destroy the monsters.

Another thought occurred to me.

I could ask her to bring me low enough in the dungeon that I might have a chance at earning a second class.

That made my heart skip and beat and my knuckles when white with how hard I was suddenly gripping the desk.

“Good.” Crimson cut through the chatter. “I’m glad to see how motivated you all are by it. Because…” She drew out the word as she pulled a box with a hole in the top and put it on the lecturn. “… you will all be drawing your lots to prepare for the tournament that will start tomorrow. The rest of today, I’ll be running you through combat drills.”

Charlotte wilted next to me and Bun-bun started hopping on her, trying to revive her.

“It’ll be alright. I can be your partner for training.” I offered her.

She perked up, peeping over her arm. “Really?”

“Yep. But you can’t go easy on me.” I teased her.

She puffed out her cheeks. “I’ll make you regret that.”

Harley darted to the front of the class to escape Desmonda and drew her lot. “Thirty two. Hey, there are only twenty-five students.” She frowned at it.

“Sit down. There are seventy-five students in the first year.” Crimson rolled her eyes. “Next.”

“If there is an odd number, is there a by in the first round?” I asked.

“Yes, but the teachers already selected who gets it.” Crimson answered quickly.

Another girl in class was quick to argue. “That’s not fair.”

“She’s in class 1-B and level four.” Crimson smiled. “Better learn quick that almost nothing about being an adventurer is about fairness.”

“Level four?!” several people in the class shouted.

I had to even lean back and consider it.

That gave her fifteen stats from leveling and maybe another five if she had the right gear. Twenty stats gave her about a forty percent advantage in stats alone, not to mention she might have skills with more power than any of us could have.

I blew out a breath, suddenly feeling far more pressure on winning the day with Crimson in the dungeon.

“Ken, you’re up.” Charlotte reminded me and I shook my head out of my worries and went up to draw my lot.

Thirteen. Not an ill omen at all.