《Dungeons Online》


 Techinicalities and Q/A

    Techinicalities and Q/A

    First of all, hello everyone, Slothy here.

    I''m writing this aux chapter like in any other novel of mine in order to rify the technical side of this piece along with answering some of the more or less pressing questions.

    So, without further ado, let''s drop right into it.

    1. What''s the basic update rate:

    - I will update at the very least, 1 chapter 1k words+ a day. That''s the rate I will do my absolute best to never cross.

    2. What''s the intended update rate:

    - Now that the novel is premium, I will aim to update at least 2 chapters a day (that is, once I''m done with moving and all, shouldn''t take more than a few days up to a week)

    3. What''s the bonus update rate:

    - In case of some events, huge gifts, or this novel just being profitable enough on its own, I will aim to publish 3 chapters a day. This is the upper limit of what I want to release regrly.

    4. What are bonus chapters?

    - In case of my self-organized events (like, for a certain amount of votes/golden tickets I will add bonus chapters) I can create a bonus count. This count will work on a weekly basis, with the gathered bonus chapters all being released on the week''s change. The caveat here is, writing this novel is pretty exhausting as I''m doing my absolute best with it (and that means a lot for someone used to just speed-write stuff) those events will be pretty rare (unless I somehow regain the motivation I had as a newbie author)

    5. What are premium chapters?

    Basically, every novel starts as a free novel but turns into a premium (Payable, paylocked) stuff once it reaches a certain threshold. While there surely are other ways of mizing my work, I find webnovel to be the easiest and one I''m mostfortable with. And for that reason, once you guys reach chapter 50, for every following chapter you will have to pay. But how?

    6. How do I buy premium chapters?

    - The first option is the free one. Every day, you receive a certain amount of fast passes. Those can be used to unlock any premium chapter for free. Keep in mind, that means it won''t bring me any ie either. (something that''s easy to overlook in the short term, but if the novel doesn''t perform well enough, I won''t be able to continue it for as long as I have ns to do)

    - The other option is to use coins. The rule of thumb is, you can use your coins (those actually makes me eat and pay my electricity bills) to unlock every premium chapter. It''s that simple, but coins generally need to be bought with real cash (you can get some by purchasing the membership, but be sure to check yourself whether it''s worth it for you)

    7. Why are the chapters priced so low/high/weirdly?

    - The cost of each chapter is derived from a single thing. It''s length. Basically, for every 200 words in a chapter, its cost increases by 1 coin. That means a chapter 1500 words long would cost 8 coins, while a chapter 3000 words long would cost 16.

    8. There are privileged chapters that I cannot just unlock. What''s going on?

    - Privilege is a bonus feature for those readers that don''t mind splurging a bit. Basically, you can pay an additional fee to read ahead of the ongoing daily releases. Purchasing any given tier of privilege gives you ess to the respective number of privileged chapters.

    To put it into an example, if the story has 50 free chapters, 30 premium chapters, and 10 priv chapters, the situation will look like that:

    - Everyone can read up to chapter 50 for free

    - To read chapters 51-80 you need to either use your fast passes or coins

    - To reach chapters 81-90, you need to first pay a fee rted to the tier of priv (here, 10 chapters tier), then you need to use your coins to buy the chapters.

    KEEP IN MIND THAT THE PRIVILEGE EXPIRES AT THE END OF THE MONTH!!!

    9. How do we help? What can a perfect, dreamed-off reader do?

    - This is aplicated question. First off, I''m already happy being able to write something that others will enjoy. But obviously, I''m not a hippie and I cannot live off my own imagination alone. That''s why:

    - Comments and reviews make me acknowledge that people actually do read the story. This is the most tangible proof that it''s interesting and worth continuing. What''s more, I do my best to respond to every interestingment (I read them all).

    - Votes (power stones and golden tickets) - those make the novel go up in the rankings. This is also a great way to motivate me, and the main way to get more chapters during the events I will organize. While I know it''s stupid, being able topare my novel in rankings with other novels is a great source for bragging material, something that Authors live for and die for.

    - Obviously, coins. As money-grabbing as it might sound, spending coins on this novel is the only way for you, a reader, to truly help me out in the most basic stuff. As manyments and votes as this novel can potentially get, if it won''t earn, I will have no other choice but to ax it and try something else. Ultimately, I cannot work if I cannot provide electricity for my writing equipment. I cannot write if I have food to keep my fingers going. I cannot think about writing and future events if the only thing I can think about is food. By using your coins, you are propelling my dream of being an author, something I spent thest two years learning and mastering so that with every novel I publish, its quality will only continue to go up.

    Q/A

    1. Is this story a harem?

    - HECK NO. But it''s not a single female in the entire story either. I like to keep the character''s rtionship realistic, so the fact that I spent two paragraphs writing about a female character doesn''t mean MC will sleep with her in the next five chapters or so. While I can''t promise a linear romance (something I hate to the bone) it won''t turn into a mindless harem and smutfest either.

    2. Does this story have smut?

    - Not as of the moment I''m writing it. Just like I said above, I hate putting romance just to dangle the smut scenes in the reader''s eyes, enticing them to read by making them horny. I believe smut in the novels can allow one to connect way better than porn or asmr not because it''s easier to digest, but because it allows the readers to connect to the characters,e to love and understand them, and only then reach the pinnacle WITH them. This isn''t a story for me to project my sexual fantasies on nor a story you will project your horniness on either. This is a story where smut will be an oue of a situation leading to it, not something I will do to make you read and for that sake alone. If that''s what you are here for, just go and jerk yourself off on Phub or something.

    3. How long do you intend this story to be?

    - Just like with all my novels, I have great ns. If everything will work out, I have enough material to go for roughly 1k chapters without doing the rinse and repeat of "got to another level, now I''m trash once again so let''s start everything from the scratch." The power limit of the world of this story is defined within the first chapter of it (something you won''t notice no matter how much you search for, sorry for that) and I will stick to it. That''s why, no continent wille crushing from the sky, no heavenly realm does exist for MC to conveniently ascend there and be at the bottom once again.

    With what I already plotted, I can easily go for 1k chapters. But how long the story will end up being all depends on whether or not I will be able to afford writing it.

    4. What kind of story is it?

    - Its a mix of fantasy, VR, gentle sci-fi (because the action takes ce in the near future and in a world only SIMILIAR to earth, not earth itself), romance (because it''s my novel, I can be reasonable with smut but you won''t take away my right to create love :3), action, strategy... While it might sound packed and convoluted, I will be taking my time to explore each of those themes to give you the time and space to adjust to each of them. It''s pretty hard to pick a single genre for it because of how deep the story is once it unravels some of its secrets.

    5. Does your fridge run?

    - Then make sure it won''t escape!

    6. Who is the best girl?

    - Nanashi Mumei from Hololive EN 2gen cuz she forgor :3

    7. Why there is no "XXXXXXX" question here?

    - because I wrote everything above from the top of my head. If you want some questions to be answered here, feel free toment on them.

    PS: I just realized this AUX chapter is as long as the longer chapters I write... To think I could have another chapter out by now if I wrote it instead of this technical rambling...

 Chapter 1: First paid raid

    Chapter 1: First paid raid

    "Wee to Dungeons Online!"

    A huge sign floating in the middle of the hallway shone upon Tom''s face. He saw it many times; he had many chances to get used to it but he never did. The sight was just too magnificent.

    "New yers, please head to the briefing room!" Tom''s ears rang with the metallic voice of the AI as soon as he made his way inside.

    ''Thank God I don''t need to bother with it now,'' Tom thought while looking at his former ssmates lining up before the room mentioned by the AI.

    "Tom! Wait!" An unpleasant voice rang in the young man''s ears. Its authoritarian tone was enough to repulse anyone who heard it.

    "What the hell do you want?" Tom turned around to face the owner of the voice. "We are no longer on the school grounds. If you think," before Tom could finish, he saw a fist flying towards his face.

    Woosh!

    Tom replied with a strike of his own. Yet, it didn''t turn into a brawl at all. Tom allowed the attack to slide off his own arm. Then, Tom struck his opponent squarely in the middle of his chest.

    "Who do you think you are- ARGH!" Tom''s opponent started his routine speech, but he wasn''t given the chance to finish it. At first, with his sr plexus smashed, he lost all the air in his lungs, rendering him unable to finish his words. Then, as the bully finally regained his breath, his face twisted and his hand rested on his chest.

    ''Broken ribs can be painful, can''t they??'' Tom thought while smiling at his own thoughts. Then his smile soured as the reality dawned back on him.

    Tom pulled out his membership card. "Emergency, low priority call, the main hallway," he said directly to the small device before hiding it back in his pocket.

    "We are not on the school grounds anymore, babe." Tom kneeled on one knee in front of the face of his former bully. "Your bitch of a mother won''t help you out here," said Tom, while gracing the bastard with an ironic smile.

    Wheew! Wheew!

    The siren of the emergency services forced Tom out of his moment of entertainment. He stood up before looking towards the approaching paramedic and raising his hand.

    "Sir, are you?" started the medic, before stealing a nce at the man on the floor. At this point, Tom could see various onlookers gathering around and forming a sizable crowd.

    "Everything is recorded on my card. Will report to the officeter on," Tom said while pulling out his card once again. The medic noticed his action and grabbed Tom''s card before touching it to his own. The doctor nodded his head when both cards shed with a dim light before returning Tom''s property to his hands. "You are free to go, sir."

    ''Now that I think about it, isn''t today the first time I can earn?'' Tom asked himself while moving a few steps away and pressing his card to open the doors to the yroom.

    It was a huge, brightly illuminated room, filled with nothing but stationary capsules. Outside of its gentle, curved edges, every capsule bore a striking resemnce to a coffin. ''And to a degree, they are coffins,'' thought Tom while falling into a philosophical mood.

    But it didn''t prevail for long.

    Tom moved forward in long strides. He couldn''t even bother to look at the markings of each row and column, reaching his usual spot in just under a minute.

    ''I wonder if I should reveal my level,'' Tom questioned himself. ''While there are certainly many drawbacks, I would kill for a personal capsule,'' thought Tom as determination filled his eyes Only to fade away in the very next moment.

    ''As if that would ever happen.'' Tom''s mood improved a little as he inserted the card to the interface beside his station. With a silent noise of the hydraulics, the lid of the coffin slid open, revealing the interior of theplex machine.

    Taking his entire outer outfit out, Tom slid inside, quickly reaching for the special handle of the lid. He then closed it with one swift move before grabbing a special mouthpiece and pressing it against his face. One more press of a button and the lights filled Tom''s vision while a thick, warm liquid poured inside the coffin-like usual.

    ''A burial of the yer, what a lovely sight to be'' Tom smiled as his vision wavered and washed away while singing a popr tune under his nose. Reced with nothing but nothingness, he was now primed for connection.

    "Link connect," said Tom to the mouthpiece, losing his consciousness afterward.

    By the time he woke up, the whiteness didn''t cease, but reformed itself into a spacious hall. Filled to the brim with androgynous, naked people with exactly the same features, a lobby of the Dungeon''s Online presented itself to Tom''s eyes.

    ''Maybe I should finally enter some party?'' Tom pondered while making his way towards the enormous gate at the opposite end of the lobby. ''Now that both of my reasons for not doing so are null, maybe it''s not that bad of an idea after all,'' Tom encouraged himself just as he reached the gate.

    There were no servants to open it up. Yet, as Tom made a step that would force his leg against the massive doors, they pried open. Another step, and Tom''s vision faltered once again, only to re-establish itself with a brand fresh sight.

    Tom stood right in the middle of a long, stone corridor. The only light came from rows of candles hanging from the walls and creating an eerie atmosphere in this ce.

    "I hate this light." Tom softly muttered. He squinted his eyes before taking a deep breath and gradually releasing it. For each bit of air leaving Tom''s lungs, one of his avatar''s muscles rxed. By the time his routine was over, Tom was perfectly aware of the state of his avatar.

    "Well, let''s not waste time," said Tom while pushing his body forward. He focused his full attention on his hand, snapped his pinky against his thumb and then shouted, "Everze!"

    All at once, his body covered in mes.

    For a moment, Tom couldn''t even see what was in front of him because of fires covering his eyes. In the end, it took only a moment for the fires to settle.

    Once Tom regained his vision, his skin and clothes continued to burn, producing a liquid fire that spilt into a huge pond wherever Tom ced his feet.

    And with this rtively weak passive skill activated, Tom pushed forward with confidence.

    *You have in a slime!*

    "..."

    *You have in a slime!*

    "..."

    "..."

    *You have in a slime!*

    "..."

    Tom moved through the dungeon, basing on his memory alone. Because of the nature of the dungeon, every time he would go to exp on lower floors, he would pass through each floor in between. And right now, the path to the boss'' room was already ingrained in Tom''s soul.

    *You have in a slime!*

    ''What a pity,'' thought Tom while watching at the burning remains of the monster. ''In every game so far, there would be some loot or reward for killing the mobs, but here?'' Tom whined in his thoughts before looking forward.

    *You have in a squire slime!*

    ''Pre-boss is done, so now for the cutscene'' thought Tom while resting his back against the wall. And a few momentster, a giant slime made its appearance.

    Its body dripped down from the ceiling. From long, pointy stctites above Tom, thick droplets of fluid continued to fall, only adding to the monster''s mass. Yet, even in its ultimate form, it wouldn''t pose any threat to Tom''s avatar.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' snapping his middle finger, Tom shouted, "Explosion!"

    A gigantic ball of mes materialized before Tom''s hand before exploding away. It didn''t even need to burn the smile it rushed towards. By the time it was near the monster, the fireball simply evaporated Tom''s opponent out of existence.

    "The biggest they managed to grow it, was around the seventh level?" Tom asked himself while attempting to recall the recent exploit of one of the noticeable guilds. ''It took them like, I don''t know, two weeks?'' Tom shook his head in amazement. ''Two weeks of constantly swapping aggro and keeping it safe... Such an insane feat,'' Tom thought while finishing as the notification window opened up.

    *The rewards will now appear*

    Once again, a message appeared on Tom''s feed in the corner of his eye.

    "Now then, should I celebrate my first ie, or should I grind some more?"

 Chapter 2: Lets bet

    Chapter 2: Let''s bet

    ****One hourter****

    ''Well, that''s one thing off the list,'' Tom thought whilezily lowering his eyelids. He then brought yet another piece of the delicious meat to his lips. ''At least, now I know it was worth the wait,'' Tom thought while the juicy piece melted in his mouth.

    Gran Appolino. A famous, high-ss restaurant right by the entrance of the Online Hub. Its prices and grandeur made it so no one dined her on a regr basis. There were too many cheaper alternatives with an even better offer. In the society of the Dungeon''s Online yers, one would visit this ce only upon achieving something big in their life.

    ''Still,'' Tom thought, lowering his eyes on his phone to check his bnce, ''it''s quite pricey.''

    Only a spare change was left on his primary ount. That was the reality of the prices in the restaurant in which an exquisite meal would sink so much money. On his secondary ount, Tom still had a few hundred bucks left from when he sold his properties.

    ''It''s still hard to believe I nailed it so perfectly,'' Tom thought while bringing a tissue to clean his mouth.

    ''It feels great.'' Tom took a sip of the whiskey remaining in his crystal. With a slick of his hand, a cigarette appeared between his lips. He then lit the smoke while resting back on thefortable chair at the outdoor''s table. "Dang, I don''t want to move yet," Tom whined, leaning his head back.

    "Hello!" The bastard who Tom perturbed a few moments earlier was now smiling at him. And with a smile on his face, his fist went flying.

    ''FUCK!'' Tom allowed his instincts to get the better of him. He pushed his upper body on top of the table in front. His hips swayed on the edge of the table, allowing his legs to kick the chair against the attacker.

    "FUCK!" Tom''s opponent didn''t bother to hold his thoughts back. In one instant, the silent noise of the silverware was reced with a brawl. If it was the insides of the restaurant, the security would never allow for such a thing to happen.

    But Tom just had to insist on bringing the greatness of this moment to the maximum! If not for his desire to take a smoke, nothing would happen in the first ce!

    ''No, that''s not it.'' Tom''s thoughts took a turn. ''It''s not my fault I went in for the smoke!'' Tom snapped back to reality. And it was dire.

    Tom''s school bully wasn''t the only enemy. ''He brought an entire damned group.'' Tom''s eyebrows skyrocketed. He fixed his posture and pped himself on the forehead. "I didn''t know this kind of idiot still exists!" Tom eximed.

    The bully failed his initial attack. Not even because of his injuries. With the advent of nano-medicine, even his broken bones could heal in just a few minutes. Sadly for him, Tom''s instinctive retaliation likely caused some of those freshly mended bones to break again.

    The restaurant security was already rushing forward to deal with themotion.

    "What''s going on here?!" Suddenly, a girl appeared on the scene. Even though she was rtively short, her step was full of self-confidence, nearing the limits of arrogance.

    "Excuse me, mydy," a butler said as he appeared out of nowhere, ''it would be best to let our staff deal with this.'' he then added while respectfully lowering his head.

    "Boys," the butler said as he turned his head to the security, "handle the intruders." There was no malice in the man''s words. It was as if this man in a suit ordered someone to swat away some bugs that dirtied the marble staircase in his enormous mansion.

    "This man once again attacked me on the Online Hub ground. And that''s today only." Tom announced without a shred of hesitation or doubt while pointing his hand to the back. "As a member of the acimed yers I can demand their removal from the registry, am I right?"

    Tom smiled. ''That was unexpected, but nothing''s bad that ends well, isn''t that right?'' Satisfaction filled Tom''s mind.

    "That''s indeed true." the butler said while nodding his head.

    "Guys, wait a moment." the girl from before interfered. She brushed her long, golden hair aside as she stood between Tom and his idiotic opponents. "Isn''t there a better way to solve disputes in this ce?"

    Those words worked wonders. In an instant, the entire ce stalled. From Tom''s enemies, through the security and all the onlookers watching the show, everyone froze in ce.

    "Let me guess." Tom lowered his head while hiding his face in his hand. "You are udia, am I right?" Tom''s words were far weaker than they were when he was facing his former bully.

    "Eh? How do you know my name?" udia jumped in surprise before lowering her eyes on her chest. "Oh, that''s how!" she said while brushing a small, decorative pin with her thumb.

    "I''m sorry, but I do not care about the challenges," Tom said while shrugging his arms. "This man attacked me twice, breaking the code of conduct. I don''t have a single reason to ept his challenge. What then, miss boxer?"

    For someone who frequented the online hall as Tom did over the past few years, miss Boxer, or rather udia, would be a pretty well-known figure. While not a global top-ranker, she still held a prideful spot somewhere in the eighth ranking list. But rather than being known for her achievements, she was popr because of how she acted outside the game.

    ''A head of the Goblin Club, vice leader of the Burning Fang guild'' Tom shook his head while recalling the various titles that referred to the girl. ''And a boxing enthusiast who often made use of her skills in the real world.''

    "If you say that he cannot challenge you, then you arepletely right," udia replied while putting a huge smirk on her face. "But I heard you im to be an acimed yer. And that means I can challenge you whenever I find it interesting enough to do so!" she eximed while putting a triumphant look on her face.

    "Oh? And what kind of bet would miss Boxer''s offer for the challenge?" Tom asked. ''I can''t just ignore her, so the question is,'' Tom squinted his eyes, ''how do I make the most out of the situation?''

    "A bet?" udia asked, leaning her head to the side. "Ah, right!" In a sh, the look of confusion on her face changed to excitement. "From my side, it would be a pity to see a fresh newbie be barred from the game like that. If I win the challenge, I want you to forgive that man."

    ''So you are going to y like that, huh?'' Tom thought. His lips curled upwards. "This man is dangerous. He attempted to destroy my health twice already. That means the punishment for losing the bet will be enormous. On the other hand," Layn smiled, looking the girl directly in the eye, "what can you offer if I were to win?"

 Chapter 3: An invasion

    Chapter 3: An invasion

    "Nothing perverted, that''s for sure!" udia protested, covering her cleavage with her arms. She squinted her eyes. "I know this is a huge bet, but on that, I won''tpromise!" the girl added in a definitive tone.

    "I''m not sure what men you meet so far," Tom said while shaking his head in disbelief. "But I''m not interested in your charms. You might be pretty, but that''s it."

    Tom turned his head to the security. A group of three burly men in suits were watching the situation, awaiting its oue. As for Tom''s school bully?

    He was lying on the ground, whining because not only of his injuries but also the handcuffs eating into his thick wrists.

    "Stop trying to tter me and just tell me what you want," udia said. She squinted her eyes as she looked at Tom''s face with suspicion.

    "Sure. If I win, you will be my ve for a single raid," Tom announced while putting an empty smile on his face. "I think that''s a reasonable bet to have."

    "Its," udia said as she looked away, hesitating for a moment before she regained her wits. "It''s fair. Gentlemen, since the membership of that man is in my hands now, bring him to the hospital and keep his card." Turning around, udia instructed the security before looking at Tom once again. "Let''s go."

    From there on, the events took a faster turn. Tom was lucky to finish his meal before the entire ordeal started, as udia didn''t waste any time bringing him to the yroom''s counter.

    "We wish to register a challenge party." udia ced her own membership card on the table before giving Tom a meaningful look.

    "Don''t worry, I know the procedures," Tom answered while rolling his eyes and passing his own card up the counter.

    The entire desk shed with dim light as soon as both cards touched it.

    "Party registration nowpleted. Challenge epted and scheduled. Please proceed." The AI''s said in its metallic, monotone voice.

    "Good. See you in the lobby," Tom said, turning around and leaving for his capsule. Their cards were now locked on the counter. ''If I recall right, there is even a funny animation over it,'' Tom thought, sinking into his memories for a bit.

    Without further ado, he repeated the lengthy process of logging in. One animationter, he was standing in the same white room as before.

    But this time, amidst the sea of naked, sexless mannequins, a colorful character stood.

    "You are here," udia''s avatar said, quickly noticing Tom''s appearance.

    "Let''s cut the small talk," Tom replied, turning his steps towards the gate.

    "What''s the type this time?" udia asked as she rolled her eyes. Crossing her arms on her chest, she stopped before the gate.

    "An invasion," Tom said in a bored voice.

    The two of them then pushed through the gate.

    Tom went in first. As soon as his legs touched the floor of the specific dungeon, he rocketed forward.

    ''Hasten,'' Tom whispered in his thoughts. The skill took effect in an instant, pushing Tom''s avatar beyond its natural limits. His body, covered in a grey, tight robe, fluttered through the emptiness of the enormous cave.

    ''With the entrance to the back,'' Tom thought, looking around in search of the clues. ''Oh,'' he thought when he saw a small tunnel leading to yet another cave. ''Most likely, it''s an entire system!'' This discovery was greater than it sounded.

    Tom pushed his avatar to its limits. Despite dashing forward at a break-neck speed, he forced his breath down. Tom thennded on a huge stctite protruding from the floor, looking to learn more about this ce.

    Contrary to the normal dungeon that remained the same, as long as one would stay in the same Online Hub that is, the invasion-type dungeon was never the same.

    Dropping yers in a randomndscape, it would then fill the ce with waves of monsters of different levels. In this kind of world, one could pick between easy areas and those who would be attacked by powerful opponents. In the end, though, not only there was a limit to how strong a monster would be, the dungeon itself would stop the invasion in case of the yers losing.

    That''s why it was used as grounds for the challenges. Its random nature and optional difficulty turned it into the dueling grounds between the yers.

    ''Nothinges without a cost, though,'' Tom thought, finally reaching a desirable location. He turned his eyes towards the passages leading to this particr cave. ''Even when dealing with this level of the enemy, the rewards are pretty measly,'' Tom thought.

    Standing in the middle of the cave, it was pretty simple to sense the amount of energy hanging in the air. Thanks to that, even before the invasion started, Tom knew what level of monsters he would meet here.

    ''It''s starting.'' Suddenly, the quality of the air changed. As if the air turned much heavier, Tom''s breathing turned haggard. The momentary difort passed after only a moment.

    ''Everze, Casino, Guard,'' Tom invoked all three of his avatar''s passive skills. Fire exploded around him, covering the surroundings with a liquid ze. He lowered his body on his knees, pushing his chest forward.

    His gray clothing made him near-invisible in the dim lighting of the ce.

    ''Here theye,'' Tom noticed, pulling out a dagger and conjuring yet another spell in his other hand.

    "Incinerate!" Tom shouted, adding the attribute to his standard explosion spell. The small wisp of fire dancing on his head vanished. Then, a ball of sma nearly the size of the entire passage dawned at the swaths of goblins rushing Tom''s way!

    The ball of raging heat blocked nearly the entire passage. But some goblins slipped past it. With his haste still active, Tom took a step forward.

    Out of all his wondrous skills, it was the ordinary haste that turned him so strong.

    Especially in this type of dungeon.

    Tom followed his instincts. He pushed through the dense air as if he was swimming. The world around him slowed down.

    Tom aimed his knife. He floated forward in the still air.

    The necks of his enemies didn''t slow the advance of Tom''s knife at all. Offering no resistance, all those who stood in his path died in a sh.

    ''I still can''t believe how unlucky I am,'' Tom whined in his mind, when a surge of power suddenly filled the cells of his body.

    The rapid part of the Casino spell was Tom''s greatest treasure. Not only it allowed him to temporarily steal a huge portion of the power of anyone or anything that his avatar would ughter, but it would also assimte a small part of that power. Just by killing monsters in the dungeon, even without raising its level, Tom''s avatar was growing stronger!

    ''So unlucky If only the rewards of this ce were better,'' Tomined as he rushed forward.

    ''Reinforce!'' Tom thought. For an agile avatar like his, he had a surprising amount of self-protecting spells. But it wasn''t a problem. Tom''s right hand exploded with light, before said light condensed into a massive glove.

    Then, Tom struck the ball of sma that still blocked the entrance of the tunnel to the cave!

    As if he was in an arcade, Tom could swear he heard the sound effect of a jackpot. But no such thing happened. Even with an entire army of goblins annihted by this micro sun passing right through their dense ranks, it was only the beginning of the invasion.

    Because it would never end. Not until one of the yers would drop out.

    In this perspective, choosing potent opponents as Tom did didn''t seem to be in the best interest of the betting yers.

    And that was because one rule decided the oue of the challenge.

    ''Let''s see how many points you will get!'' Tom encouraged himself, finally pushing through to the other side of the tunnel. It was surprisingly empty.

    ''I guess I need to go to the higher areas.'' Tom turned around, traversing through the ce as if its time was stopped.

    "What a quick fellow!" udia said, stomping hard on the dungeon''s floor. ''Nowhere near, huh?'' she thought as she squinted her eyes, before opening them up with a new determination brimming in them.

    "Let''s go!" By the time udia shouted, Tom wiped a single drop of sweat from his avatar''s body, clearing the seventh cave full of monsters.

 Chapter 4: The challenge

    Chapter 4: The challenge

    "So that''s how it is," Tom said to himself, staring at the animation of the dead monsters disappearing. The bodies of wargs, orcs and battle-caterpirs littered the floor of the cave. And one by one, they were diffusing into a mist of particles, before disappearing altogether.

    "Well, I should be far ahead," Tom muttered, resting his back against the wall. For others, an invasion type of dungeon was a contest of endurance. The longer one would hold against the monsters, the more points he or she could rack. For Tom, though, this was a race.

    ''Even with the penalty, I can hardly imagine a brawler like her scoring so much so quickly,'' Tom thought. His eyes wandered over the clean floor of the cave, devoid of any corpses.

    ''It would be dangerous to keep going,'' Tom thought before turning around. For the very first time since he entered the dungeon, Tom withdrew.

    ''Still, I really pushed myself to the limits here,'' Tom thought as his lips trembled, creating a small smirk. "It would be too dangerous to keep going. Let''s call it a day." Tom said to himself, starting his retreat.

    Right now, he already scored all the points he wanted. His challenge nowid in breaking out of the dungeon before the other party would make up by still fighting. ''And then there is the penalty,'' Tom whined in his thoughts.

    The young man didn''t belong to any guild. He didn''t have a dedicated ss for that very reason. Or, to be more precise, Tom never joined the guild because he couldn''t afford to lose the ssless status of his avatar.

    But in the current scenario, hisck of ss forced him to use this specific tactic to win against his opponent.

    "I should be near the exit," Tom muttered under his breath, continuing his jog. He saw the system of the caves only once, but that didn''t stop him from finding his way back without fail.

    Tom reached the third cave he cleared before. It was the first intersection, with over two caves connected by tunnels. And it was here, where udia''s avatar continued to bash the low-level monsters to their deaths.

    "Ha! Get some!" The girl merrily rushed from one monster to another. Her armor-covered gloves wreaked havoc among the invading monsters.

    ''Huh?'' Tom thought mindlessly, standing in the entrance''s shadow. ''She cleared the caves ahead? Or?'' Tom thought before a wave of surprise and relief shook his body.

    ''Or is this where she was going toplete the entire challenge?'' Tom posed the daring question. His hand involuntary traveled upwards. His body knew before Tom epted the reality with his mind.

    Tom''s palm covered his face. ''And that''s what I was worried about?'' Tom thought with disappointment. ''With how much I heard about her,'' Tom recounted before his lips pursed.

    "Oh, hey!" udia suddenly shouted. "What are you doing here?" She asked, burying her fist into yet another monster.

    "Eh?" Tom sighed in response, before making his way towards the tunnel in the back of the cave. "I''m finishing the challenge?" Tom answered the girl''s question, not bothering to stop in his tracks.

    Tom sank into the passage. It seemed like the girl attempted to say something back, but the thick stone of the tunnel didn''t allow the sound to spread properly.

    ''Well, even if she wanted to say something,'' Tom thought while turning his head around and shaking it, ''it doesn''t matter at all.''

    Soon, the young man reached the entrance of the cave. Then he stood right in the middle, stretching his hands as he went.

    "Recover," Tom said lightly. And in a sh, the surrounding caves disappeared, reced by the familiar whiteness of the lobby. And right beside Tom, udia stood in her fighting stance.

    "Huh?" This time, it was udia''s turn to breathe in and out in an attempt to control her reaction. "So you didn''t joke back then," she said, staring daggers at Tom.

    "And why would I joke?" Tom asked, shrugging his arms. He rolled his eyes before raising his head. "See you on the other side." Tom bid his farewells, not waiting for the response of the girl at all.

    "This guy," udia muttered in a soft voice, as strange energy manifested in her eyes. She then tightened her knuckles in an empty attempt at letting her rage out.

    "Well, there is no point in getting angry," udia said, releasing all the air from her lungs. "Recover." udia used the standardmand to log out of the game. ording to the lore, a godly force was recovering their avatars and bringing them back to the heavens where they resided while the yers were offline.

    Flush.

    The sound of the liquid escaping the container was the first thing udia heard. She pushed her eyelids open before shaking her head to get rid of the liquid remaining on her face.

    She slid out of the coffin, quickly dressing her outer clothes up. Even though she had a morally proper suit for the ying, she never got used to it, opting for the typical pajamas approach.

    "Let''s see the results!" udia encouraged herself, pulling her secondary card from the machine. Once the connection between the two was lost, the entire connecting station went offline.

    By the time udia reached the counter, her opponent was already there. His face looked bored as if he already knew the oue. But that was impossible, as both their cards still rested on the counter!

    "Please, take your cards. The funds are already added to your ounts." The metallic voice of the AI said.

    udia quickly grabbed her card before silently watching the counter. Whenpared to her, Tom didn''t appear to be in a hurry at all. Lazily picking his card, he then smiled at udia.

    "User five-five-four has won." The AI announced as soon as both of the cards disappeared from the counter.

    "Huh?!" udia couldn''t hold her shout of surprise. As if expecting it, the young man who she challenged turned his card in his fingers, tapping at the number engraved at its bottom.

    554.

    The exact serial number of his card.

    The five hundred fifty-fourth yer to ever enter Dungeons Online.

    "I will bring you to the raid tomorrow. Be here at eleven in the morning." The man hid his card before walking away.

    For a few more moments, udia stood still by the counter.

    ''He is a beta?'' The girl forced herself to ept this reality. Because with such a low number, there was no way he wasn''t one of them. It was better to leave it at that.

    Because udia wasn''t prepared to ept the possibility that she dared to challenge a damned alpha-version tester!

 Chapter 5: Slaving away

    Chapter 5: ving away

    Tom spent the rest of his day eating away at the measly profits that his challenge raid brought him. For the amount of effort and sweat he spent on killing all those monsters, he earned just five thousand bucks.

    It was just a droplet in what he wanted to earn, and what he would earn if he killed the same amount of monsters in the standard dungeon.

    ''If everything goes right, I should be able to buy myself a nice, small house with today''s earnings.'' Tom thought, actively hyping himself up.

    "Burp!" Tom''s stomach released a sound of satisfaction after Tom stuffed it with a plethora of fast food and sugary, carbonated drinks. It was bad for his body, for sure, but it also just so happened that this kind of simple, fatty food was exactly what the yers needed to stay longer within the game.

    ''No, I can''t think of it like that,'' Tom protested against his own thoughts, eradicating thezy yet unhealthy possibility of the future from his mind.

    "Hey," udia greeted as soon as Tom entered the yroom. Her face was full of anxiety as if her fate was about to be decided.

    "Sup," Tom greeted the girl, not paying much mind to her mental state. ''Whatever she thinks I''m about to make her do, doesn''t matter. As long as she ves properly, we will be done.'' Tom thought as he moved past the girl and ced his card on the registry once again.

    "Come on, we don''t have an entire day." He hurried the girl up. udia followed his order, cing her own card beside Tom''s. Their party was all set up after a brief talk with the AI.

    "Hey, can you promise me one thing?" udia asked, breaking her otherwise silent front.

    "It depends on what you will ask for," Tom replied, picking up his card. His eyes didn''t skim at the girl''s face even once.

    "Tell me you won''t dump my avatar. Promise me you won''t try to get this kind of revenge on me." udia asked with a serious expression on her face before her disposition broke apart. "Please, this avatar means everything to me. Please, just"

    "Who do you take me for?" Tom grumbled, rolling his eyes. "I''m not petty like that. As long as you clear the middle floors for me, I will be happy." He added, shrugging his arms.

    "See you in the lobby," Tom said his farewells to the girl, marching towards his usual connecting spot.

    A private spot to y at was the minimum the Online Hub could offer for veterans like him.

    One lengthy connection procedureter, Tom appeared in the familiar white room, in the middle of the crowd of sexless mannequins.

    "What do you mean, as long as I clear the middle floors you will be happy?!" udia''s avatar asked at the same time as itunched at Tom''s character. udia''s armored fists struck Tom squarely in the chest

    Rather than inflicting an injury, they only turned into mist, reassembling itself back into the mirage of udia''s avatar when she pulled her hand back.

    ''Does her character change while she''s in her avatar?'' Tom asked himself, leaning his head as he watched the girl.

    "What are you looking like that at me, for?! Do I look like a damned puppy?" udia instantly went on a rampage.

    ''Thank God for the privacy use,'' Tom praised the thoughtfulness of the creators of the game. Because while in other lobbies, they would appear just like everyone else appeared to Tom right now.

    As boring, expressionless mannequins.

    "Now, now, calm down," Tom said in a soft voice before moving forward and pretending to pat the girl''s head. His hand would turn into mist as soon as the projections of their avatars would intersect, so Tom stopped his palm right above the girl''s hair.

    "Are you for real?!" udia muttered through her tightened lips, already turning red from agitation.

    "I will clear all the floors up to the twenty-fifth one," Tom said, moving towards the gate. "Make sure to keep roughly ten to twenty meters behind me. I don''t want you to burn yourself for no reason." He added, pushing through the illusory gate.

    A sh and the white lobby was reced with the familiar structure of the dungeon. Tom breathed a sigh of relief. ''Why do I feel at home here rather than in my actual ce?'' He despaired over his addiction to the game before shaking his head. ''No good, I can''t be distracted here!''

    There was only one rule everyone was aware of in this game. Once your avatar dies, it''s game over.

    ''And I don''t want to hold the gegewepe party yet,'' Tom thought as his lips formed a small smirk.

    Gegewepe party. A name created from the phrase popr amongst the gamers across the entire world. Good game, well yed. The shortened version of this post-match salute turned into something far grimmer once Dungeons Online conquered the gaming industry.

    What used to be a pleasant phrase one would use to praise his teammates and opponents alike turned into an announcement of one losing all his progress. And with one''s earnings from the game tied closely to how strong their avatar was, there were even cases of people inflicting self-harm during gegewepe parties!

    "Hey, can''t you stop leaving me behind just one damned time?" udia yelled as soon as she appeared in the dungeon. Her face was flushed red from all those times when Tom either ignored or in-out disregarded her.

    "I told you, keep ten to twenty meters away," Tom said, not even bothering to look around. "Everze." He cast the usual spell of his. A fire covered his clothes, once again generating a pool of liquid ze around every step he made.

    "Auch!" udia shouted lightly, jumping away from the heated element of Tom''s spell.

    "So that''s your cleaving spell," udia said as a small smirk appeared on her face. "That''s why you don''t need my help on the low floors, right?" She added, allowing her smirk to grow evenrger.

    "I''m a solo yer," Tom replied, shrugging his arms. "With a brawler like you, I won''t waste most of my ytime dealing with the middle-tier monsters," Tom informed the girl.

    The game itself had many ws. Developers keeping every single piece of information about the game to themselves was a splendid example. All that people knew about Dungeons Online so far came from the sole discretion of yers.

    It was amidst this process of discovery and sharing that a certain ng was invented.

    "So that''s the case," udia silently noted, nodding her head in appreciation of Tom''s honesty.

    "Well, since you are so high on saving time, let''s stop wasting it," she added, following right after Tom''s avatar.

 Chapter 6: First raid

    Chapter 6: First raid

    "Okay, you will take over now," Tom said, turning his everze skill off. The corpse of the floor''s boss was disintegrating on the floor, marking the end of the easiest part of the raid.

    "Sure," udia replied as a smile of relief blossomed on her face. "I was getting bored, so it will make up for a delightful change of pace!" She added once her smile reached its peak.

    Ever since the beginning of the raid, the girl silently followed Tom, watching how he dealt with entire floors all on his own. The doors that lead to the twenty-sixth floor were the barrier separating her from where she could finally score some achievements on her own.

    The two of them didn''t hesitate to push through the doors. Neither of them attempted to pry them open. They walked forward, and just when they were about to crash their faces into the massive gate, they appeared on the lower floor.

    "Now, just watch how it''s done!" udia shouted haughtily, rushing towards the group of monsters she spotted.

    ''That''s quite a pose,'' Tom thought, observing the girl''s moves. udia''s way of fighting wasn''t pleasant to watch for an amateur. She was making wide swings of her arms and bncing at the edge of losing her footing. She would allow the ws and weapons alike to swoosh inches away from her avatar''s skin.

    ''Is she dancing or what?'' Tom asked himself, barely stopping his hand from smacking his own face. ''Or maybe she is just trying to impress me?''

    Tom didn''t belong to any guild, but that didn''t mean he was unaware of their whereabouts. ''Still, for a brawler, she is quite nimble,'' he thought, keenly watching every move of the girl.

    "Okay, the path is clear. Follow me," udia cheerfully ordered, pushing deeper into the dim corridor. She appeared to be aware of Tom''s curious eyes, but she was less likely to know why he was staring so intently at her.

    ''Well, that''s the loss of joining a guild for you,'' Tommented to himself, adjusting his pace to the rate of the girl''s progress.

    Soon, only a single monster was left on the entire floor. Obviously, that was only a half-truth. Some monsters were bound to lurk in the corridors and dead-ended paths that Tom and udia ignored. In the end though, they matter in the grand scheme of things.

    "Okay, now it''s your turn," udia said, taking a step back and using the momentary pause to calm her breathing.

    "Sure," Tom spoke little, but that didn''t mean he wasn''t using his mouth at all. "Hasten," he cast his spell, rushing recklessly towards his opponent.

    This time, it was a battle orc. Its looks were simple. It appeared as if someone graced a massive pig with the ability to walk on just its hind legs. That, and its skin was of a slightly greyish green color.

    The thick fur armor on its body and a massive cleaver in its hand were the only elements differentiating him from standard orcs. As long as one was taking only the appearances into consideration.

    Because in terms of power, it was several grades higher than your usual orc!

    Tomnded several feet behind the orc''s back. At first, nothing changed.

    "Shall we go?" Tom asked, turning his head toward the girl.

    "Huh?" udia twitched. Then the orc''s head slid down its neck. With the center of its weight shifted, its massive body fell lifelessly to the ground.

    "Are youing?" Tom turned his head towards the girl before asking.

    "Ah, sure!" udia shook her head before rushing forward. "Just what the hell was that?" She muttered while passing by the beheaded corpse. Her eyes turned into slits for a split of a second before her face did a hard-reset, returning to a neutral expression.

    From then on, the rest of the raid was pretty repetitive. udia would clear the path to the boss, Tom would get rid of the boss with a single strike.

    The same procedure continued for two more hours before Tom introduced a slight change. Once they reached the fiftieth floor, they started collecting the mana stones embedded into the walls of the boss'' room.

    The first genuine change happened on the fifty-seventh floor. The monsters there turned out to be a little too much for the girl.

    "I can handle this!" udia protested when Tom involved himself in the fight. ''If I''m right, he is bound to be a veteran. I can''t let him look down on me!'' She thought, tightening her lips.

    "No, you can''t. I brought you here to save time, not to build your pride." Tom shook his head. "I guess we have only about an hour or two more before we will have to head back. It''s not about showing off. It''s about time efficiency."

    Time was the only constraint that the game ced on the yers. Not by the game itself but by how the connecting capsule worked.

    ording to the official information released by the developers, the capsule augmented all sorts of physical states one''s body was going through. If angered, one would turn furious once logged in. When saddened, one could even contract depression.

    Obviously, some people were using this quirk for their own purposes. It took several tens if not hundreds of drunkards and junkies... for nothing to happen. It took a yer almost starving out for thepany to implement special securities that forcefully disconnected anyone incapable of continuing the game.

    But as great as a step it was, it ended up with what yers grew to call a hunger game. Because once one''s nutrients would run out, the capsule would forcefully eject the yer''s consciousness back into reality. Needless to say, it ignored how dangerous it could be for his avatar to be left alone in the middle of the dungeon.

    "Let''s stick to an hour," udia said while nodding her head. The momentary hype caused by the challenging fight ran out, reced by logical reasoning.

    And it was pretty simple too.

    What would be the use of showing off the strength of one''s avatar... If one were to lose said avatar because of that?

 Chapter 7: Spoils and invitation

    Chapter 7: Spoils and invitation

    "Let''s get this boss and call it a day," Tom proposed, starting at the massive bull-like monster from across the corridor.

    "Doesn''t it look kinda... strong?" udia squinted her eyes. "Didn''t we earn enough already? With what we earned, you could live the rest of your days without working for a single day!"

    As ridiculous as it sounded, that was the truth. The value of the data stones that one could mine after dealing with the boss of any given floor was constantly on the rise.

    Grade one stones could be found from the first level all the way up to the neenth. What''s more, ever since the tenth floor, grade two stones would start appearing in small quantities as well.

    And the same procedure would repeat for every twenty floors.

    "You are overestimating our earnings. So far, we have forty-three grade three stones and a hundred and ten grade four stones." Tom said, pointing his finger at a sizeable bag he was carrying to house all their loot. "There is no way one could live their entire life with that sum."

    ''To be fair, with the current prices, one could,'' Tom thought. The rapid pace of development and technology sparked by the rise of a new source of energy was behind his current dilemma.

    Just one year ago, two thousand bucks were sufficient for one to live through a single month. Stacking all the rent, cost of media, food, and many other necessary costs, the two thousand were the sweet spot for living infort.

    But as of today, one wouldn''t be even considered a middle-ss with such measly earnings. The current price for living infort already managed to rise to twice that amount.

    "But well, you might have a point," Tom said after releasing all the air from his lungs. "Right. There is no need to be hasty at all. Let''s just return." He added.

    ''It''s just a pity to waste all the time we spent clearing the floor,'' Tom thought, turning around and casting a nce at the clean floor of the dungeon''s level.

    ''So all the corpses already disappeared,'' Tom thought, instantly spinning his mind into an analytic state. ''I forgot to take the timer with me again.'' He bashed his own carelessness.

    It wasmonly agreed upon that the deeper one would venture, the faster monsters'' corpses would dpose into nothingness. Yet, as it was still just a theory, confirming that as a fact could one a nice, additional reward.

    "Let''s not dwindle here, then," udia said in a decisive voice before a bashful look flourished on her face. "I mean, how about we go back?" The girl changed the phrasing of her words from a decision to a suggestion.

    ''Was I too soft on her?'' Tom pondered. In the end, this girl was acting like a ve for this raid. Outside of the full authority tomand her as he seemed fit, it also meant that the split of their earnings would be entirely in Tom''s hands.

    ''Well, not like it matters at all,'' Tom decided to drop the topic, directing his steps back to where the two of them came from.

    The journey to the dungeon depths was riddled with monsters, ready to take a piece of the yer''s avatar at any time. Thankfully, the same couldn''t be said about returning.

    With no monsters to hamper their return, Tom fully rxed. By the time the monsters started to spawn in the dungeon once again, the two of them already reached the twentieth floor.

    "Hold on to this," Tom ordered udia, throwing the bag with stones her way before casting his cleaving skill. The fires covered his body, as usual, instantly melting down all the weak monsters that dared to attack him.

    "Ah, that was boring!" udiained just fewteen minutester when they finally reached the exit of the dungeon.

    "Try to imagine how it feels when you are all alone," Tom replied with a tiny smirk on his face.

    "Take that!" udia suddenly shouted, throwing the sizeable bag back into Tom''s arms. "I don''t even want to imagine this kind of thing," she then replied to Tom''s suggestion, averting her eyes. "I wouldn''t be able to y like that," the girl added before moving her eyes back on Tom''s face. "That''s right, I never asked why you didn''t join any guild!" udia noticed.

    "Let''s talk about this sometimeter," Tom replied, pushing through the exit.

    His surroundings changed, but Tom experienced it too many times to be astonished by it. The bag of energy stones on his back was the only thing he didn''t experience beforehand.

    "Later?" udia asked as soon as she appeared in the lobby as well. "Later, but when?" She insisted on getting the answer.

    "How about this? Once we cash out our earnings and split them, care to join me for a small celebration?" Tom proposed out of nowhere.

    udia opened her mouth to answer, only for her words to be left stuck in her throat when she noticed that Tom already moved on.

    "You little..." she murmured as she caught up to the man, already busy with pulling the stones one by one from the back and dropping them on the counter.

    "Hmm?" Tom turned his head around, sending the girl a jolly smile.

    "Nevermind," udia quickly replied, turning her eyes away.

    "Okay, okay, don''t sulk like that," Tomughed out loud when seeing the dejected expression on the face of udia''s avatar. "How about we go for a meal once we log out? I know a fancy ce in the hub," Tom proposed.

    "Sounds good to me!" udia replied cheerfully.

    "Ny million, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand dors got transferred to your ount," the mundane voice of the AI announced the exact value of their earnings.

 Chapter 8: Meal with Claudia

    Chapter 8: Meal with udia

    "So, why didn''t you join any guild?" udia asked after wiping her lips with a napkin. She cleared the tiny drops of the meat juice from her mouth before wetting her throat by sipping on her wine.

    "Straight for the goal, huh?" Tom asked, stretching himself back on the chair. The restaurant he picked wasn''t as fancy as the one where he celebrated his first paid raid. Its delicious food and absolutefort made it one of the less-known sweet spots of the Online Hub.

    "You see, joining a guild once effectively binds you to their structures forever," Tom said after a moment of thought. The topic might be simple, but that didn''t mean it was easy to exin it.

    "What do you mean by that?" udia asked, leaning her head to the side a bit. "Ah, avatar''s preference, right?"

    "Yeah." Tom nodded his head. "Once in a guild, you will get a role. Once you have a role, you will wish to get better at it, plotting the nature of your next skills." He exined, taking a huge sip of his dark beer.

    "Is there something wrong with ying like that?" udia asked, squinting her eyes as she fell into deep thought. "I know being versatile might be fun, but isn''t it more efficient to work in a group?"

    "Well," Tom sighed, "this entire talk is all based on the assumption that this theory is right in the first ce." He moved his eyes on his ss, admiring the intricate crafting of it.

    "Yeah, I''m aware of that," udia replied, leaning forward with interest beaming in her eyes.

    "Tell me, then. What would happen if your guild were to disband?" Tom asked as he stopped admiring the ss, using it as intended instead.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged in surprise. "I would join another one. It''s not that much of a big deal." She shook her shoulders before cing her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her cupped hands.

    "What if the tactics of the other guild will be different? What if you decide that being a brawler is not really your style?" Tom continued to poise his questions.

    "I think I get your point," udia replied, with her interest dying out. ''In the end, it was something so simple,'' she thought to herself, slightly disappointed by how straightforward this little mystery was.

    "Right." After a moment of silence, Tom suddenly recalled something. He pulled out his card before looking up at udia''s face. "Can you pass me your card for a moment?"

    "Ah, sure!" She replied, shaken awake from her momentary, absent-minded state.

    The membership cards were the most prized possession of every yer. Or at least, that''s what every new yer was told while joining themunity. The truth was slightly different, though.

    "Here, five million for you," Tom announced while pressing his card against udia''s. Tom only needed to prepare the transfer beforehand. Once the two devices were brought together, a local connection was established, allowing the funds to move over.

    "Wait, are you for real?" udia protested, raising her widened eyes at the man. "You won the bet fair and square. I ved that raid, so there is no need for that," she said, reaching forth to snatch her card back.

    "Don''t mention it. Thanks to you, I went far further than usual without putting an immense strain on my body," Tom rebuked, pressing the confirm button and sealing the transfer. "I got a favorable split, and that''s more than enough for me."

    Tom couldn''t be bothered by such a small amount of money. He still had roughly fifteen million left on his ount, amounting to several times the funds he received for his entire upbringing.

    ''The set that I wanted goes for around three mil. A studio should go for somewhere around one mil.'' Tom calcted in his thoughts. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn''t find a way to spend the rest of his money.

    For someone not finding pleasure in extravagance, this amount was more than enough to live how he wanted for years. ''With how easy it was to earn it,'' Tom shrugged from the anticipation that overwhelmed his soul, ''I should neverck money again for the rest of my life!''

    Tom didn''t prioritize earning fat stacks of money in his life, but he was more than aware of the value behind it. Living off the military rent of his lost father, he had no other choice but to learn how to appreciate every penny he had.

    "Eh, if you insist, I won''t say no to free money." udia smiled as she gave up her attempts to persuade Tom. "On another note," she suddenly changed the topic, "what would you say about going to raid together again?" udia asked. "This time, a fair split, though!" She quickly added.

    "That might not be a bad idea," Tom replied calmly, even though his mind went slightly awry. He had no problems talking to the girls or interacting with them. That didn''t mean that he wasfortable when doing so, though.

    ''So far, I only paired up with other guys,'' Tom thought, considering the proposition. ''Well, there is nothing wrong with abandoning the sausage party, is there?'' He ultimately decided, raising his head and smiling at the girl.

    "Well, I will take you up on your offer," Tom said, raising his cup in a cheer.

    "For our next raid, then!" udia raised her ss to Tom''s cup before lightly striking one against the other.

    "For our next raid!" Tom echoed udia''s toast before downing the rest of the beer in his mug.

    "Now then," udia said, putting her ss away, "how about we go somewhere peaceful to discuss the strategy for our raid tomorrow?"

 Chapter 9: Professional raid

    Chapter 9: Professional raid

    "Okay, let''s rehearse," Tom said, taking a seat on a small bench at the wall of the yroom.

    "Sure. You will push up to the twenty-fifth floor, then I will take over until the fiftieth one. Then, I will take an hour-long break. Once I return, we will swap. After exactly an hour, we will continue until the sixty-fifth floor." udia repeated the short version of the tactic the two of them figured outst night.

    ''I can already see how people would ridicule me for not making use of the opportunity,'' Tom thought, rolling his eyes at the idea. Such a cutie was in his room, yet all they did was to discuss their n of conquering the dungeon with the two of them.

    ''I need to be wary not to tell anyone I actually slept with her, though,'' Tom added in his mind, barely stopping a smirk from forming on his face. ''After all, they would never believe me if I were to tell that we did just that. Slept together when we both fell asleep from the exhaustion.''

    "Hey, are you even listening to me?" udia asked, noticing the absent look in Tom''s eyes.

    "Yeah, I was just thinking about the details," Tom quickly exined himself, raising both of his hands up, trying to look innocent.

    "It surely didn''t look like that," udia replied, raising one of her eyebrows. She didn''t pursue the topic, though, opting to take Tom''s words at face value.

    "Okay then, how about an emergency while the other party is out?" Tom asked. After all, everything they knew about the dungeon was nothing more but a bunch of conclusions from the prior experiences of others. ''While its unlikely something strange will happen, we cannot write such possibility off either,'' Tom thought grimly.

    "Try to defend, if impossible, attempt to retreat to the lower floor. Preferably, before going for the break, we should go back to the entry of the level." udia answered without even a shred of hesitation.

    "And what if retreat won''t be possible?" Tom asked with a light smile on his lips. "What should we do then?"

    udia didn''t answer right away. She took a deep breath before lowering her head and emptying her lungs out. Then she raised her head and looked at Tom.

    "Everyone takes care of themselves." She replied. That was the ultimate rule of the dungeon raiding. It was impossible to reach the bottom floors without taking breaks, especially with a small party.

    This popr rule was set in ce in themunity, not because of some shady moral uses, but because it was the most rational decision. Rather than managing and silencing the conflicts, it was better to prepare everyone for a potentially disastrous oue right off the bat.

    "Good, then let''s stop wasting time, and let''s go!" Tom said, standing up from the bench. He stuffed his mouth with thest piece of the caloric candy bar he had on himself, munching on it as he split with the girl.

    One logging sequenceter, they meet at the lobby, surrounded by the familiar mass of sexless mannequins.

    "Shall we?" udia said as soon as she noticed Tom. She then dropped a graceful curtsy while at it.

    "Yeah, there is no point wasting time in the lobby," Tom said, directing his steps to the gate.

    Soon, the boring part of the dungeon''s raid begun. Tom covered himself in mes, cleaning up the way. udia followed fewteen steps behind, taking care of all the stragglers that somehow survived the liquid fire of Tom''s spell.

    The first change happened just like nned. Tom turned his everze spell off as soon as the tall body of the floor''s boss fell to the ground. udia prepared herself for her turn.

    Floor by floor, the two of them continued to push deeper into the dungeon. Their speed slowed down the deeper they went, as more and more powerful monsters continued to fill the corridors.

    On the forty-fifth floor, udia asked for her first pause. Synonymous to a break in the dictionary, it had a different meaning during the raid. Because rather than logging off, udia sat down on the stone floor and closed her eyes.

    "Why are you sitting down?" Tom leaned his head over his shoulder in curiosity.

    "To recover stamina. Isn''t it obvious?" udia answered with her own question, cutely leaning her head to the side as she embraced her knees close to her chest.

    "Wait, you are not using mana?" Tom asked, startled by the sudden discovery.

    "Huh? You didn''t know?" udia almost jumped when hearing Tom''s question. "I''m a brawler. Why would I use mana for in the first ce?" she asked as she rubbed her chin.

    "Well, that makes sense. Our skills are distributed in line with what we consider crucial to the rise of our strength, right?" udia asked after a moment of thought. "Since I never used mana, having stamina seems like a logical oue." She added with a smile.

    "Well, yeah..." Tom said, to dodge the topic. ''Her words make sense, but why I have this feeling that I''m missing something?'' he asked himself, refusing to ept udia''s logic.

    ''I know it''s just a hunch,'' Tom thought, closing his eyes for a moment. ''Or is it?''

    A sudden idea popped up in Tom''s mind. His mouth twitched, almost making him utter the reckless question right away.

    "I can see you still want to say something," udia said as she put a small smile on her lips. "There is no need to hold back. Just ask away." She encouraged Tom, unknowingly only making it harder for the man to pose his question.

    ''Fuck it, I held back enough in the school.'' Tom decided, raising his eyes on the girl. "Would you mind telling me how does it feel to run out of stamina?" He asked.

    "Isn''t it obvious?" udia replied with a question on her own, sending a curious stare on Tom''s face. "Just like in real life. My avatar turns heavy, my movement slows down." udia shrugged her shoulders. "Only the pain of exhaustion is missing."

    "Huh?" Tom involuntarily left a small shout of surprise. "I see." He added after a moment, pretending to be satisfied with the answer.

    ''Just like running out of mana?'' he asked himself. ''But even if I run dry, my movements won''t be impaired at all!'' Tom''s mind spun in confusion. ''Is this just a matter of perception? Or...?''

    The other exnation was so startling that Tom didn''t even dare to voice it out in his thoughts.

    "Okay then," Tom suddenly spoke up. "Let''s start the real break right now," Tom announced.

    "Excuse me?" udia''s eyes turned wide open. She froze for a moment. "If you think I can''t go on," her avatar spoke up, instantly burning through all the stamina she recovered.

    "Don''t waste your strength." Tom shook his head. "You can recover quicker. It seems to work the same way as mana." He shrugged his arms and rolled his eyes.

    "In the worst-case scenario, we will learn something new," Tom said, revealing a charming smile. A smile unbefitting his avatar''s cloaked face. "Girl, just take some rest," he added after a moment.

    "Fine, I get it." udia shook her arms before sitting on her knees by the corridor''s wall. Before long, her eyelids fell down. Her entire body went lumpy in a sh.

    ''Still,'' just in case, Tom hid his worries by keeping them in his thoughts rather than voicing them out. Just in case the girl has yet to disconnect. ''The idea of this game actually being real...''

    "No," Tom said against his own wishes, "it''s too terrifying to think about that."

    The young graduate took onest look at the lifeless body of udia''s avatar before focusing on his own state.

    He didn''t use this during the invasion dungeon. His tactic was too rapid for that. But now, going for a fully fledged raid?

    Tom didn''t have any interest in holding back.

    ''Focus on every muscle.'' Standing still, Tom familiarised himself with the avatar.

    As if it was his original body.

 Chapter 10: Ray and crumble

    Chapter 10: Ray and crumble

    "Hit it!" udia shouted. She then smashed her fist into the side of a massive, wolf-like monster before using the recoil of the attack to jump away.

    "Coming!" Tom shouted back, pushing his muscles to their limits. Quite restrictive limits, considering how he invoked his haste with an additional limiting attribute.

    "Release," he whispered when his long knife surged forward. In an instant, Tom''s attack sped up rtive to the speed of everything around him. Neither the fur nor the flesh of the monster could hold Tom''s knife back.

    "Restrict," Tom whispered after the deed was done. He killed off his own momentum by bending his knees once hended on the ground.

    "Phew!" udia sighed, wiping the drops of sweat from her avatar''s forehead. Or rather, wiping the clean forehead of hers out of the natural habit. "That was tiring," she added, looking at the corpse of the monster.

    "Yeah. But what else did you expect?" Tom asked, while checking on the condition of his knife. "We are already on the sixty-fifth floor. The monsters are bound to be stronger than they were before."

    Tom''s avatar reached level sixty-seventh. With eight skills to his name, experience, and all the passive abilities that sneakily increased his avatar''s strength, Tom knew his limits pretty well.

    And a sixty-fifth floor was about as deep as he would usually go during his solo raids. Yet, even during those rare times when he partied up with someone else, he never dared to go beyond the seventieth floor.

    "How about we stop for another break?" udia suggested, dusting off her clothes. "The floor monsters are no longer small fries. It would be a disaster if we were to run out of energy before the boss fight," she added, looking at the doors to the next floor with hesitation.

    "Actually, that might not be a bad idea," Tom replied, nodding his head. ''I''m slightly tired already. Even though it was only fifteen floors since west took the break,'' Tom thought before shaking his head. ''No, I can''t think like that. Those fifteen floors were far more taxing than the first fifty.''

    "Sure, would you like to go first, then?" udia proposed. She didn''t even bother to look at Tom as she asked, opting to stretch herself instead.

    "Don''t mind if I do. I will be back soon," Tom said before moving towards the wall and sitting at its feet.

    ''Disconnect.'' A single thoughtter, Tom''s vision nked out before the feeling of being surrounded by a warm liquid suddenly swarmed his mind.

    Outside of touch, all his senses were muffled. ording to the official exnation, it was to prevent the yers from sensory overload.

    ''If I recall correctly, there were hundreds of yers affected by it before they implemented this safety measure,'' Tom thought as the liquid drained from the capsule. ''Still, it is quite annoying to wait whenever one wants to disconnect...''

    Soon, all the liquid in the capsule was sucked away, allowing Tom to open his eyes. He then took off his breathing mask and pulled open the lid of his coffin, only to grab a sizeable nket and cover himself with it.

    ''I can''t make her wait long.'' Tom made this decision even before going for the break. This was the reason why, rather than taking things easy, he rushed to the small cafeteria right outside the yroom.

    "Standard bundle, please," Tom ordered as soon as he neared the counter. He pressed his card against a standard terminal embedded into the front side of the counter.

    Tom received his order barely a few minutester. A crunchy, nutritious bar, a bottle of mineral water, and a randomly picked hot snack were all packed into a small paper bag.

    Consuming everything took Tom less time than he actually had to wait for the order to be prepared. The worst part was the hot meal. Not because it wasn''t tasty. Rice on a tomato sauce with veggies was the staple of Tom''s diet. Yet, as delicious as it was, there was a limit to how hot food could be for Tom to quickly consume it.

    "Okay, let''s go back," Tom said to himself as soon as he finished his meal. Putting all the containers back into the bag, he then stuffed it into one of the many trash bins in the area before making his way back to the yroom.

    Tom wasn''t the only one to walk around in nothing but his undergarments and arge towel alone. This kind of outfit was pretty popr amongst all the yers that went beyond the first twenty floors. As such, no one paid any attention to Tom when he returned to his capsule covered in his nket.

    A few momentster, he opened his avatar''s eyes. The first thing he noticed wasn''t the sight, though, but the soothing sound of udia''s humming.

    "What''s the song?" Tom asked as a small smile appeared on his lips.

    "What? You are back?" udia jumped up when she heard Tom''s voice. Her face turned red. "That was a pretty quick break. Did you even get any rest?" she asked in an attempt to mask her embarrassment.

    "I ate something. That''s enough for me," Tom replied with a gentle smile before shaking his head. "Don''t be pressured by it though, you can take the usual break," Tom said. ''It would be bad if she shortened her rest just because I did it,'' he thought with worry.

    Ultimately, he was stronger than the girl. Not because of some chauvinistic reasons, like being a man. His avatar simply had a higher level than hers, even if he didn''t know by how much.

    "Don''t worry, I won''t work harder than necessary." udia grinned in response before scooting over to the wall and logging off.

    "Not even see you soon or go fuck yourself." Tom sighed before voicing this ironic remark. Soon, the boredom of waiting took the better of him.

    ''No!'' he shouted in his mind. ''I can''t lose focus.'' Tom''s thoughts all ceased when a sudden rumbling shook the entire room. A rumbling that Tom never experienced in a dungeon before.

    "What the hell is going..." he couldn''t even finish his sentence. As if an earthquake struck the game servers, everything shook. All of Tom''s senses screamed out on an alert.

    "udia!" he shouted, perfectly aware of how little it would do. Now that she was logged off, her avatar was as mobile as a corpse would be.

    Then the shaking stopped. All at once, as if it never happened.

    Tom''s mind was unsettled. The weird event was over, yet his instincts refused to ept it.

    PSST...

    Out of nowhere, a sh of bright light blinded Tom''s avatar. Everything in front of him evaporated. Everything that stood on the path of this godly light turned into a sizzle. Then it stopped existing altogether.

    Yet, even this sh was only momentary.

    But the hole that it left on the dungeon''s floor... It stayed.

    "What the hell is going on..." Tom asked himself as he looked down the hole. His instincts calmed down. He did not know what shot this deadly ray. But his instincts told Tom, no more stuff like that was pointed in his direction.

    For a moment, Tom could see something. An ordinary woman and a fancy-dressed warrior. Yet, it was this simple woman that held the warrior by his throat.

    Then he came to his senses.

    "udia," he whispered in panic, frantically looking around.

    Only to notice the girl''s avatar sliding down the edge.

    "FUCK!" Tom cursed, pumping all the strength he had into his muscles.

    He jumped forward, right along the edge of the hole in the floor. "Haste!" He invoked his greatest ability, now bothering to put any limiters on it. The rate at which he sped up threatened to tear his avatar in two.

    But he managed to catch the girl. His fingers enclosed on udia''s wrist, filling his soul with a wave of relief. ''I did it,'' he thought, allowing a smile to surface on his face. He promised to keep her avatar safe, and he kept his word.

    Then, the drawbacks of pushing his avatar beyond its limits struck nearly paralyzing Tom''s moves.

    Right as he realized that deprived of the support, the floor of the dungeon continued to crumble.

    And then, with udia''s avatar in his tight embrace, he fell down the hole.

 Chapter 11: Encounter

    Chapter 11: Encounter

    "... defeat you!" Layn heard when his consciousness returned to the world of the living. He pried his eyes open, only for them to be instantly blinded by an outburst of light.

    "DIE!" a man in the front shouted, taking a wide overhead swing with his axe. A fragile-looking woman in delicate robes was his opponent. Yet, despite her gentle disposition, there was no sign of fear or anxiety in her eyes.

    "Futile," the woman spoke softly, swatting her hand away. Under the immense force of this attack, the weighty head of the man''s axe broke apart, splitting into thousands of tiny metal shards.

    "I really thought you would know better after what I have shown you." She shook her head with clear disappointment. "How did you get so far if you are so set on ignoring the reality before your eyes?" The strange woman mocked her opponent.

    ''What the hell is going on?'' Tom thought, desperately attempting to free himself from the rubble without drawing the attention of either of the two ahead.

    ''F-FUCK!'' Tom barely stopped himself from shouting as soon as he attempted to move. He looked down, only to see his avatar in an insanely battered state.

    ''It seems like I took the brunt of the fall,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes over udia''s still inactive avatar. ''Well, as if it matters right now,'' Tom looked towards the fight. It was happening roughly ten meters away.

    Or rather, one-sided humiliation. The man was already deprived of his weapon. For a moment, he just stood in ce, looking at the naked handle of his long axe. Then, the determination returned to his eyes, as he plunged forward with a stick for a weapon.

    ''This is our chance,'' Tom thought, cutting off the reception of pain. It was usually a great tool for the yers to check whether there was something wrong with their avatars. ''But now, it''s just a noise,'' Tom thought, tuning the functionality off.

    ''Aaaah...'' The wave of relief spread through his entire sense of self. But there was no time to rejoice. ''It looks like we feel quite a few floors down,'' Tom thought grimly before securing his hold over udia''s avatar.

    And then, bit by bit, he started to drag the two of them towards the corridor. ''The further away from this monster, the better,'' Tom thought grimly, sending worried looks towards that seemingly fragile woman.

    "I wouldn''t advise leaving this room." A simple statement. There was no hidden threat in it. It was the fact that it was directed at Tom that was horrifying.

    "Because that would make your job harder?" Tom asked, no longer capable of exerting any strength.

    His avatar fell at least forty meters. To top it off, he shouldered most of the impact, stemming from the weight of udia''s avatar as well. With his avatar in such a tattered state, Tom no longer boasted any real fighting power.

    And the woman in front of him...

    ''I doubt I could deal with her, even at my peak.'' Tom had no other choice but to admit.

    The man who he saw fighting with the woman before was already lying dead. His head crushed into bits. Even if the yer himself would just wake up in his capsule, all the efforts of grooming his avatar were now wasted.

    "Hah!" The womanughed. "that''s quite arrogant of you to believe it would make any difference to me." Her smile was kind and easygoing, as if she was unwilling to acknowledge what kind of situation they were in.

    Because from every hint offered by heaven and earth, this woman wasn''t a woman at all.

    "I didn''t know dungeon monsters were capable of speaking," Tom said, attempting to stall for time. There was no such thing as overwhelming power. The situation was desperate, for sure, but that didn''t mean there wasn''t any way out!

    For now, it only meant Tom was unable to see it.

    "Do I look like a monster to you?" the woman giggled. "Well, considering what I just did to one of yours, I can see where you areing from," she said before shrugging her arms with a carefree look on her face.

    "You can talk, which means you are an intelligent being," Tom said, trying to curry some sympathy with the monster. Maybe that was the hidden way to deal with this umon event? "As such, you should know that we are not here willingly..." Tom suggested before looking down at the avatar in his hands. "Just look at it! My friend isn''t even connected!"

    Tom shook udia''s avatar, only to notice her eyes opening up.

    "What''s going on?" she asked in a muffled voice as she fought off the drowsiness of the recent connection.

    "Don''t say a word," Tom''s expression soured when the girl struck down his attempts at pleading to this monster.

    "Well, I can''t really let you walk away." The woman lowered her head as if she was trying to hide her face. "And no matter how sorry I am for that, it''s just how things are."

    She raised her head. Tom only needed a single look to notice the fresh determination that shed in the woman''s eyes.

    "As such, I''m sorry, kids," the woman said before conjuring a ball of light in her hand. Exactly the same kind of light as the disaster that drilled the hole in the dungeon''s floor.

    "RUN!" Tom shouted, ramping his haste to its limits. ''Speed is a function of time and distance, so if I bring the time close to zero, the speed will rise to infinity.'' Tom repeated the simple physical principle in his thoughts, using all his remaining strength to throw udia''s avatar...

    Upwards.

    Not towards the entrance of the corridor just a few meters away. Even if the haughty attitude of this woman from earlier was nothing but a bluff, it didn''t change the fact that they were quite deep in the dungeon.

    "You little....!" the woman shouted, surprised by Tom''s sudden determination. She rushed forward, attempting to stop udia''s avatar from leaving, but it was toote.

    Tom''s arm snapped. The full might of his haste spell was too much for his avatar to handle. ''I wouldn''t be surprised if she wouldn''t survive that throw either,'' Tom thought nostalgically, ignoring the approaching woman.

    In a direct sh, he was like an ant to her. The young man could tell that just from the domineering aura that surrounded this wannabe female. The next moment, her light-engulfed hand soared forward, tightening around Tom''s avatar''s neck.

    "That was quite brave of you," shemended Tom''s behavior. "But you should be aware of how futile it was," the woman said as she looked upwards.

    The hole in the dungeon''s roof was already mending itself. In a few more moments, all the hints pointing at what happened here would be gone.

    "I believe in her," Tom said, looking straight into the eyes of the female. ''Since I already lost this avatar, maybe I will be able to sell the info on this monster?'' Tom''s thoughts went awry, attempting to find anything positive about his current situation.

    "Shended on..." the woman stopped talking for a moment before her lips curved in a charming smile. "Shended on seventy-third floor. Do you really believe she will be able to return? All on her own?"

    If not for the situation, the smile of this monster woman would be charming. Yet Tom smiled as well. ''Now that I no longer have any hopes of escaping, it''s strangely easy to ept my situation,'' he thought.

    "Well, it''s a word against word. I just hope you won''t interfere any further." Tom smiled at the woman who was currently strangling his avatar. "Don''t spit on my hopes, okay?"

    For a moment, the woman looked at Tom with a strange look on her face. Then she smiled kindly and nodded her head. "Sure. I will leave her alone."

    Then her hand tightened even further, snapping Tom''s avatar''s neck.

    "Strange..." Tom''s vision nked out, but he could still hear the woman''s voice.

    "Huh? Could it be?!" she suddenly became agitated.

    "Well, let me leave you with a parting gift, then." Out of nowhere, the woman suddenly announced. Sadly, Tom could only imagine what kind of expression she made while saying that.

    "Try to find me with your real self," she suddenly added, albeit even her voice was quickly turning too silent for Tom to hear. "That''s how you will find the answers that will appear once you wake up."

    The voice of the woman faded away.

    And so did Tom''s consciousness.

    *Connection broken*

    The oily letters appeared in front of Tom''s eyes before fading away. Then his senses returned as the top of his capsule appeared in front of his eyes.

    "So I''ve lost, huh?" Tom talked to himself more due to the momentum than anything else. Then, he fainted once again, as the memories once locked in his brain suddenly came flooding back.

    ***

    End of the prologue :3

 Chapter 12: Memories

    Chapter 12: Memories

    "I''m sorry, son. If only there could be another way."

    A voice rang in Tom''s ears. His consciousness started to return.

    "If I won''te back in two years, then you will have to be the one to find me," the voice of Tom''s father sounded in his mind. The voice which he forgot.

    ''What the hell was that,'' Tom asked himself, slowly prying his eyes open.

    ''My main avatar is gone. udia is stuck way too deep to survive on her own, and now those memories?'' Tom''s thoughts ran awry. His own issues were already overwhelming, and now this strangely hidden burden suddenly surfaced.

    Pst...

    The hydraulics of the capsule gave a noise when the lid automatically moved up. Mechanism detected the loss of the avatar and now was urging Tom to get the fuck out.

    In the end, no matter who he was before, now he was a nobody.

    ''Thankfully, I still have my other one in another hub.'' Tom forced his thoughts on the positive track. If he were to dwell on the loss he just suffered, he wouldn''t end well.

    Especially with those foreign yet familiar memories overwhelming his mind.

    Tom slowly exited the capsule. The touch of the nket he wrapped around his body was different from before.

    For thest seven years, he would cover himself with it to rest after growing his avatar even stronger than before. In thest few days, it would mean a job well done and a neat sum transferred to his ount.

    Yet now it was a goodbye.

    ''I was stuck here only because of the school,'' Tom thought, still forcing all the strange thoughts away. ''I guess a slight change of pace won''t be that bad,'' he added after a moment.

    Tom looked around as he continued his walk of silent shame towards the exit. Somewhere deeper in the room, udia was still struggling to save her avatar.

    ''No. No matter what I do, it won''t do anything,'' Tom thought grimly before pushing the doors open and leaving.

    Walking through the corridor of the Hub in just a towel wasn''t something unusual. In fact, quite a lot of yers got used to this situation. In a sense, this simple, white towel turned into a quasi-official suit for them!

    ''I know I''m not drawing any attention, but still,'' Tom thought, forcibly finding topics to hang his thoughts on. His heavy steps carried him forward.

    ''Just a little more,'' Tom encouraged himself, finally reaching the nearest lift. The doors sizzled, letting the young man in. A press of a buttonter, the quadratic cabin closed again, bringing Tom to the living quarters on the third floor of thepound.

    ''I need to lie down,'' Tom thought to himself, noticing his own fragile state of mind. He managed to push so far only due to the momentum, but his troubles were finally catching up with his psyche.

    The elevator doors opened up. Tom used the veryst of his strength to push his body forward. A few stepster, he arrived at the entrance of his rented room.

    ''Good thing I got it for the entire week beforehand,'' Tom thought, pushing the doors open. A single step more, and he fell on the bed.

    "If I won''te back, you will have to find me." His father''s voice sounded in Tom''s ears again. And then, as if the barrier finally gave up, all the memories that Tom was trying to keep at bay came flooding.

    "Faster!" His father shouted. Tom''s muscles were burning as if they were on fire. His mouth full of filth. His eyes could no longer see from under theyer of hardened mud.

    "FASTER!" The voice of his father nagged him further. Without any other choice, Tom continued to crawl underneath the obstacles, all the while holding his rifle above the mud to keep it clean.

    ''FASTER!'' Tom thought to himself, forcing his battered body forward.

    Skip.

    "How was the school?" Tom''s father asked. They were sitting at the table back in Tom''s countryside refuge. Yet, for some reason, everything suddenly grew big.

    "Boring," Tom answered, pushing the potatoes around on the te with his fork.

    "Ha, that was to be expected," Tom''s fatherughed out before disappearing along with the entire lovely scenery.

    "Son, have you ever thought about what might be your purpose?" Tom heard his father''s voice, even though his military suit made it impossible to see his face.

    Or any part of his body in the first ce.

    "Aren''t I too long for those kinds of questions?" Tomughed in response before wiping a tear from the corner of his eyes. His heart was stifled.

    ''I made my decision,'' Tom thought, holding back the flood of tears. Only his will was stopping the young man from breaking down in tears.

    "Too young?" Tom''s father asked, leaning his head forward before cing his fists on his sides andughing up. "That''s a good one!"

    Even though his face was hidden behind the face mask of his helmet, Tom could still picture his father''s joyful expression.

    "I should be going." After a moment of silence, Tom''s father said.

    "Off you go, then," Tom replied with a fake smile.

    "Before I go though, I want to check onest time." Tom''s father''s voice turned serious, as if only now did he acknowledge the weight of the situation.

    The massive, dark mass of the portal continued to fluctuate. The lights of their farm flickered in the distance.

    "What do we do, and why do we do it?" The voice of Tom''s father changed. As if this simple question was a rite of sorts, a strange, unearthly aura surrounded Tom''s father.

    "We save, we condemn. We conquer, and we free. We maintain and uproot. All because we are sons of,"

    Tom opened his eyes. The sweat trickling down his forehead already made the pillow wet. Just those few snapshots of his memories returning were more than enough to throw a wrench in Tom''smon sense.

    He raised his eyes at the small window hidden in the corner of the room. A single question prevailed in Tom''s mind.

    "We are the sons of... who?"

 Chapter 13: You need, but you cant!

    Chapter 13: You need, but you can''t!

    Tomid on his bed for several hours. For this short period, he was allowed to think, but he wasted it on napping instead.

    The burden of all the memories that returned to him was just too great. Yet this wasteful nap was exactly what Tom needed. This nap allowed all those stranded memories to return, firmly lodging itself in Tom''s consciousness.

    "I KNOW YOU ARE INSIDE!" A loud scream woke Tom up from his healing nap.

    Thump, thump, thump.

    The noise of a fist smashing at the door filled the entire room. Whoever was invading clearly wasn''t going to give up.

    "Open those damned doors!" The shouting continued. Tom curled himself underneath his nket.

    ''Not yet, just give me a damn break,'' he wished, hiding his face in theforting darkness below his duvet.

    "Open this door right fucking..." The voice stopped abruptly.

    "Miss, we need to urge you to stop," Tom heard the officialsing to his rescue.

    ''Right, no matter how high you are in the rankings, those guys are not easy to deal with,'' he thought, allowing the relief to cascade down his entire body.

    "I''m sorry, but you are disturbing the safety of the hub. You will have to..." sounded the monotone voice of the official.

    ''Wait, miss?'' Tom suddenly asked himself. The reality dawned upon him. Because there was only one female that could seek him so soon after the disaster.

    Tom rushed to his feet, only bothering to wrap himself in the massive towel before rushing to the doors. He then snapped the door open.

    "Excuse me, it''s all okay," Tom said to the officials. They were clearly surprised by his arrival. "I actually asked her to wake me up. I didn''t expect her to go to such extremes. My apologies," Tom exined hurriedly, nodding his head in apology.

    "It''s okay, just be careful to not disturb others next time," the official said before nodding his head and leaving.

    "So you were awake..." udia looked up at Tom''s face with clear worry.

    "Did you make it out?" Tom cut her questions. His dead-tired eyes looked at the girl without any interest whatsoever.

    "I..." udia started before turning her face away. "I-I survived." Her statement brought what little relief it could in Tom''s current situation.

    "I see," Tom replied without much care, already turning around and pulling the door along.

    "Wait!" udia shouted, stepping forward and holding on to the door, preventing Tom from closing himself out again. "Listen, I don''t really understand what happens, but I''m sorry!" udia said in a single breath as her fingers tightened on the wood of the door.

    Her body shook a little.

    "It''s not your fault, nor something you should bother yourself with," Tom announced coldly. ''It will be easier if she won''t know the truth,'' Tom thought before rolling his eyes.

    "How could you say something like that!" udia shouted, not caring for her earlier promise to behave. Tears appeared in her eyes.

    "Listen, can we put that forter?" Tom asked. His body sunk in itself as if he gave up on arguing. "I''m really tired right now. I want to be alone."

    "You want to be alone," udia started before forcefully pulling the doors open and pushing herself through, "but this is the very moment when you can''t be alone!"

    Thump.

    Tom was far weaker than usual. His body reflected his state of mind, battered and torn apart. The momentum of udia''s body was more than enough to push the two of them on the floor.

    Tick, the door''s lock sounded.

    "Can you get off me?" Tom asked, too tired to spark any other reaction.

    "Come on, isn''t that the usual cliche for cheering someone up?" udia asked, proving that this tiny ident was far from being coincidental.

    "I don''t really care." Tom gave up, allowing his body to rx. The back of his head hit the floor while he covered his eyes with his arm.

    "Hey, you really are not okay," udia summed up, raising at her hips. "Even something like this won''t improve your mood?"

    She raised both of her arms above her head. She then locked her wrists together and leaned to the back, giving Tom a perfect perspective of her curves.

    "Are you done?" Tom asked, rolling his eyes yet again. ''I know where you areing from, but still,'' he thought, biting his lips.

    "I''m not really prepared to go any further than that," udia mumbled under her nose, attempting to hide her red cheeks by turning her head around.

    "Can you just let me stand up?" Tom asked in a tired voice. ''If it was only about losing the avatar, something like this would surely cheer me up,'' he thought, before closing his eyes.

    The loss of his main avatar wasn''t as tragic as it could seem. His manual skills remained the same. His ability to adapt to the dungeon, move around in it, his knowledge of the monsters...

    ''If I were to start anew, it could take me like two years?'' Tom asked himself, trying to calcte the possible scenario. ''With the use of preboosting, I could get there in three months at most,'' he thought, taking into ount the extremely expensive service of the hub.

    Its rules were simple. "For a stone''s worth, we will give you another avatar!" The biggest scam and most popr advertisement at the same time. It all started as a way for defeated yers to get back in the game. By paying just a hundred dors worth of the grade-one datastone, they could obtain a new, fresh avatar.

    Later on, when yers started to venture deeper and deeper, the offer was ramped up.

    "For a grade-two stone, you can get level ten, fresh avatar!" With the sess of the idea and swarms of yers picking their pockets clean to gain a head start, another offer soon followed. "For every rank of the stone up, your new avatar will gain ten levels!"

    Initially, people thought this offer was too good to be true. A proper yer could make up the cost of his new avatar in a single raid. The situation changed when people realized the problems that started on higher levels.

    For a character of measly thirtieth level, one would have to fork out a grade-four stone, already costing nearly two million dors. And those stones They only spawned at the fiftieth floor and below!

    "Okay, okay, I''m standing up," udia gave up, raising at her knees. Only then, Tom finally noticed that she was actually wearing the same towel as he himself!

    And now that Tom focused on this aspect, he realized that the few spots of her bare skin he could see were covered in the sticky liquid from the capsule.

    "Oh?" As soon as Tom made this observation, udia suddenly blushed, hid her mouth with her hand, and looked at him weirdly. "It seems that you are a man, after all!"

 Chapter 14: I need vacation

    Chapter 14: I need vacation

    "Excuse me!" Tom said. Anger and embracement mixed in his soul as he grabbed udia''s waist and pushed her off. ''Getting hard is one thing, but getting hard when she is basically pressing herself on it,'' Tommented in his thought when...

    ''Huh?'' Tom only managed to bring his upper body up when the realization struck him. In this unpleasant moment of his weakness getting revealed, he momentarily lost the awareness of his burden.

    For a moment, he was free of all those memories. For a moment, he could look at the world around him without the petrifying knowledge that was previously hidden.

    "Thanks," Tom said, resting his face in his hands.

    "Huh?" udia twitched. Her eyes widened a little. "My pleasure," she replied with a graceful look on her face, when her cheeks suddenly turned red. "I mean," she started, averting her eyes in panic, "I''m happy I could help!" She shouted, proving she noticed the unlucky y of her words.

    "What do you n to do from now on?" udia asked after a long moment of silence.

    "I think I will move back to my old ce," Tom opened up. He spent most of his life in this city. Yet now, this old home of his appeared to hold a lot more secrets than he knew.

    "Where is it?" udia asked, snooping closer to Tom and resting on his shoulder.

    "Far out in the sticks," Tom cut the topic, not willing to reveal the location of his refuge.

    ''It''s not that I don''t want her toe eventually, but it would be just too risky,'' Tom thought as he recalled some less pleasant bits of his newly regained memories.

    "Come on, stop being so secretive!" udia yfully protested, then she sent a nudge to Tom''s side. "I already bit on that mysterious aura of yours, so you don''t need to bait me anymore," udia spoke out of nowhere, in a monotone voice.

    "Eh?" Tom spoke out in surprise.

    "Eh?" udia raised her confusion-filled eyes to Tom. Then her pupils widened. "EEEEEH?!" udia screamed, instantly using her hands to muffle her voice.

    "Did I say it out loud just now?" udia asked with an insane look on her face.

    "Eeeh?" Tom produced a hesitant moan, turning his eyes away.

    "I can''t believe I did that!" udia suddenly twisted around, grabbed a nket from Tom''s bed, and curled herself underneath it. She then refused to leave it for a long while, trembling heavily whenever Tom attempted to turn her back to her normal state.

    ''You are not making it any easier,'' Tom whined in his thoughts. Due to how thin the nket was, it hardly covered the curves of the girl. ''Eh, let''s just get this over with,'' Tom thought, closing his eyes. When he opened them up again, his eyes were full of determination.

    "I have a mid-level avatar in the Hub out there," Tom started his exnation. "I will farm a bit, then buy myself a new, fresh avatar here," he announced while looking up to the sky... Or rather, up to the roof of the room.

    "So you are not giving up." udia released a long sigh of relief. "I was worried that this loss..." She suddenly turned silent as her eyes reddened a bit. "I was worried you would give up on this game because of me!" she shouted out.

    In an instant, tears started to flood udia''s eyes. Her body started to tremble, shaking under the spams of guilt.

    "What do you mean by that?" Tom asked, only capable of ying dumb. ''Who knows, maybe she is just trying to sound me off?'' An rm rang in Tom''s mind right before he spilled more than he wanted.

    "Don''t treat me like some kind of idiot!" udia protested in a pained voice. "I saw how you can move. If there was really something capable of drilling a hole through half of the entire dungeon... There could be only two possible oues," udia exined her train of thought, slowly calming down as if she was confessing.

    "In other words, the only element that doesn''t fit is your unconscious avatar." Tom finished the girl''s conjunction, confirming her thoughts. Given how she already hinted so far, it would do no good to hide the truth any longer.

    "I see." udia suddenly deted as if all the energy left her body. "You saved my avatar at the expense of your own, even though yours was clearly way more valuable," udia summed the situation up. She then fell to her knees before smashing her forehead against the floor.

    "I cannot thank you enough. If there is anything I can do to help, be it a farming higher grade of stones or boosting you through the early raids..." Once udia started speaking, there was no stopping her.

    ''She is likely to keep going with all sorts of ways to repay me?'' Tom thought, allowing a mischievous thought to float in his mind for a moment. ''Nah, that would be a shit thing to do!'' He then scolded himself, dropping the idea of waiting for the girl to offer her body.

    "It''s okay. I wanted to take a few weeks of holidays even before all the shit went down," Tom said as he waved his hand away. It was as if he wanted to discard all of his problems with that simple gesture.

    "That''s reasonable," udia replied with a smile. It was a strange sight. Her tears have yet to dry out, yet now she was smiling so sweetly... "So, promise me one thing," she suddenly threw a hook.

    "I''m already worried what that might be," Tom replied with reservation.

    "Once you get bored or just lonely," udia started, cing her forefinger at the exposed part of Tom''s chest, "give me a call."

 Chapter 15: Return to the farm

    Chapter 15: Return to the farm

    The scenery on the other side of the window slowly came to a stop.

    "We have arrived at the station. Please pack your belongings and ensure..." the recorded voice of some worker announced. Tom ignored the warning and continued to stare into the distance.

    ''It feels different,'' he thought to himself after a moment before standing up. The train came to aplete stop. Tom grabbed the few things he took and leisurely walked out of the wagon.

    "Ah." Tom breathed in the fresh air of the countryside. He stretched his hands up before releasing the gust of air from his lungs.

    "Let''s go home," he said to himself, fixing the straps of his backpack.

    His home was quite away from the nearest train station. Tom wasn''t in any hurry, though. With a backpack on his shoulders and perfect weather to contemte, he moved forward.

    From the small city with the train station, Tom walked roughly five kilometers to another city. This gentle stroll took him roughly an hour. From there, he took a small coach further into the farnds. Five kilometerster, he dropped off the bus, finally reaching the vicinity of his farm.

    "Home, sweet home," Tom said silently, approaching the rundown building and cing his hand on the doors.

    "What the fuck are you doing?" someone shouted. Tom has yet to even pull out the keys when an annoyance appeared.

    "Who the hell are you?" he asked, while turning around to face the intruders.

    "Oh boy, just look what kind of city filth hase here!" A young man sitting on a motorbike shouted. His face was twisted with disgust.

    A girl around the same age was sitting behind him, observing the situation with a shocked expression on her face.

    "Well, well, and here I thought that it was the city that was full of shit, color me surprised!" Tom shouted back, stepping away from the doors.

    The young man jumped off the bike, pushing forward in confident strides. Ten steps. Five steps. Close quarters.

    No hits were exchanged.

    "It''s so nice to see you!" Tom shouted joyfully, patting the back of the young man.

    "Man, it''s been ages!" the young man responded, hugging Tom tightly.

    "Don''t tell me." The girl on a bike almost lost her voice before discarding it all together and jumping forward.

    "My bike!" Tom''s old friend shouted as his twin sister assaulted Tom personally. She tightly wrapped her hands around Tom, taking a moment to let the reality sink in.

    "Marvin, Cleo, it''s great to see you again," Tom said with a huge smile on his lips. It was the very first smile that appeared on his face ever since the disaster. "But now that I think about it, what are you doing here?" Tom suddenly asked.

    "T-That''s..." Cleo hung her head low, hiding her face.

    "Well..." Marvin averted his eyes, "we kinda turned it into our refugee. I hope you don''t mind!" his tone suddenly changed. His spine bent in half as Tom''s friend bowed.

    Cleo quickly followed suit.

    "Well, I don''t really mind, but..." Tom brought his hands up, intentionally turning the atmosphere slightly tense. "I already have ns for my garden and the next hour," Tom said with a mysterious smirk on his face.

    "Eh?" Marvin moaned, clearly disappointed.

    "After all," Tom said with a smile, "this meeting calls for a grill and a beer!" he announced with glee.

    "You have grown so big, yet remained exactly the same," Cleo spoke up to Tom.

    "I could say the same about you," Tom replied, going back to the doors. This time, there was no spare celebra to this moment. Tom opened the doors as if he did it yesterday, not over three years ago.

    "Let me drop my stuff and get my bike," Tom said to his friends. He threw his backpack on the sofa without a care, leaving only the phone and wallet behind.

    "So they are still here," Tom mumbled as he smiled at his thoughts. He picked up the garage keys from the designated handle near the entrance and moved back outside.

    "Hey, we will go get the stuff. I''m sure you are empty after all this time in the city." Marvin waved at Tom, already sitting on his bike.

    "Sure, it would be lovely to get the taste of the real thing." Tom waved his friends away before turning towards the massive gate beside the farm''s entrance.

    ''I wonder if anything is left.'' Tom''s interest got piqued. With huge parts of memories returning, he understood his situation a lot better than before.

    Tom unlocked and pushed the garage door open. The insides were far from their days of glory. The skeletal structure of the small barn was pretty depressing without the stacks of hay filling the gaps.

    ''It should be somewhere, around...'' Tom thought while searching through the building, "here!"

    Tom stopped in front of a tiny, cleverly hidden hatch. The metal ting of the door made it impossible to notice it just by luck.

    Tom opened the hatch and slipped to the tunnel below. Roughly three meters high, it was both easy to climb and to descend from.

    ''Thank God.'' Tom breathed a sigh of relief. The hidden underground room was filled with all sorts of equipment. From simple rifles, through tactical HQ set, all the way to a damned bombing drone.

    ''Treasury worth the lieutenant,'' Tom thought, allowing his bitter thoughts to strike his mood down. ''Still, without a source, it won''t be of any use.'' Tom shook his head before turning around and climbing up to the hatch.

    The heirloom left by Tom''s father couldn''t be revealed. Even if unofficial one, Tom had to procure a fake origin for those treasures. Because of a single, heavy reason.

    The n that appeared in his thoughts, along with all the memories.

    The knowledge behind the n.

    The knowledge behind the reasons for the n.

    All of that continued to burn through Tom''s head for thest fewteen hours. Along with the loss of his main avatar, meeting with that unexinable monster, Tom''s entire reality crumbled under the onught of all those.

    Yet his n prevailed. The n that his father devised but failed to fulfill.

    The n to conquer the portals that appeared all over the earth. To conquer the truth behind the measly lie of the Dungeons Online game!

 Chapter 16: A beer and a favor

    Chapter 16: A beer and a favor

    "Seriously, it''s been too long," Marvin said, bringing the bottle up to his lips.

    "Yeah," Tom leisurely answered. Stretched on a portable camping chair, the young man could rx a bit.

    "Don''t forget about the meat," Cleo warned the two of them, taking a sip of her beer.

    ''Just an hour earlier, she looked like a proper schoolgirl, and look at her now,'' Tom thought, puzzled by the sudden change to the girl''s appearance.

    She moved all of her hair to one side of her head, revealing a bald patch. It wasn''t some kind of scar or birthmark, just an avantgarde style ofbing one''s hair.

    Tom brushed those thoughts off, turning his attention to the meat instead. The special goods he talked about with the twins were now frying in a pan.

    ''A true organic meat!'' Tom recalled the scene where his father would passionately utter that motto.

    "Okay, let''s eat," Tom said while sprinkling the fried pieces of meat with thest dose of spices.

    "Count me in," Cleo shouted, instantly bringing her te forward.

    "Here you go, princess," Tom said, jokingly referring to the girl per her childhood nickname.

    "A worthy tribute of a vassal!" Cleo said with a voice full of pathos, before taking a bite at her portion.

    ''It''s hard to look at her when she''s dressed like that,'' Tommented in his thoughts. With her sleeveless top that covered only half of her stomach and shorts that neared the border between pants and panties, this girl was truly a sight to behold.

    ''No wonder I fell for her back then.'' Tom couldn''t help but recall the shameful part of his newly gained memories. ''Well, what''s in the past, is in the past.'' he forced himself to think about something else.

    "Where is my share?" Marvin questioned in a threatening voice. Tom only required a single look to realize his friend noticed his moment of uneasiness.

    "Here you go," Tom said as he filled the te and passed it to Marvin. He then served himself, adding a piece of traditional countryside breed.

    "So, how was your life in the city?" Marvin dropped the bomb.

    ''Either way, this topic was inevitable,'' Tom thought, shaking his head. "As you can guess, I didn''te here without reason," Tom said as his lips twisted in an unpleasant grimace.

    "Let me guess, dungeons?" Cleo asked, resting her head on her hands. "I remember it suddenly became a big deal to you," she added, sending a curious stare on Tom''s face.

    "Yup, I lost my avatar," Tom admitted with no reservation.

    ''Strange,'' his thoughts stopped for a moment, ''why am I not disturbed by talking about it... even in the slightest?'' he asked himself. Sadly, he ended unable to answer this question.

    "Ouch." Marvin shrugged. "What was its level?" he then asked.

    "It''s hard to say..." Tom hesitated for a moment before lowering his head and mumbling, "Sixty-seven."

    "E-Excuse me?" Cleo asked, as her eyes widened.

    "Yeah, sixty-seventh level," Tom confirmed. "Well, that was quite a weird situation, but that''s only to be expected from the dungeon," he added, attempting to calm the worries of his friends down.

    "Man, that sucks," Marvin said as he patted Tom''s back. "Well, it''s not like you will have any trouble picking up the pace," he then added, shrugging his shoulders.

    "What do you mean by that?" Tom asked, raising his eyebrows. He then shook his head with a bitter smile. "I won''t deny you are right, though." Tom raised his eyes to the darkening sky above.

    "Right." Tom shrugged, pushing away the sleepiness. "I might need a favor," he added randomly.

    "If it''s about boosting, you can count on me!" Marvin said with a wide smile. "I might not be in the ranks, but I could easily get you to the soft cap in a few weeks!" he exined. He then leaned forward, clearly agitated by the idea.

    "It''s not like that," Tom exhaled through his nose, just as he would if he found a funny mem on shitposting site. "With DO, I can deal on my own. I have high hopes for it," Tom exined, gently shaking his head.

    "Lemme guess, more meat?" Cleo made her shoot, only to miss it.

    "I need to get some arms," Tom announced in a rxed tone. He raised his face to the sky. "Life in the city is different," Tom exined in a calm voice.

    "Since I''m back here, I wish to understand the things that defined my dad," he added, moving his eyes back to the twins.

    "So that''s what you want," Marvin replied, standing up. "If that''s the case, I''ll go take a piss. You two can have a talk in private," he exined, moving back into the farm.

    "What do you need?" Cleo asked in a sweet voice, leaning her head over her arm. "Personal? Rifle? Airsoft?" she proposed, taxing Tom''s face.

    "I think a hunting rifle would be a good start," Tom replied with a rxed smile before nodding his head towards the grill. "I can''t keep relying on you guys to get me fresh meat!"

    "That''s a good point," Cleo replied with her lips forming a tiny smirk. "I will take care of it," she added, raising her hands in defeat. "I really wish we could be all like back then," Cleo suddenly confessed. Her eyes were empty.

    "So, everything set?" Marvin asked as he returned from the farm.

    "Yeah." Cleo nodded her head before raising the bottle to her lips. She then drank all the beer left before standing up. "We are done for today," she announced.

    Her lips formed a sour smile as she looked at Tom. "Sorry for that, but let''s meet some other day."

    "Sure, just don''t make that face you are making ever again." Tom shook his head before lowering it in defeat.

    "Until next time, bro." Marvin sped Tom''s hand before escorting Cleo to the doors.

    "You drank a bit, so be careful on the road," Tom requested, sending the twins off. A mere momentter, they already disappeared down the road, heading back to their own ce.

    "Shit," Tom uttered, resting his back against the wall. "What the hell was that?" he asked the air. In the end, the air never gave the answer.

    "Damn it!" Tom whispered, tightening his hands into fists.

 Chapter 17: Different prizing

    Chapter 17: Different prizing

    Tom spent the night at the farm. While eager to have a trip down memoryne, he ended up too tired to do anything at all.

    The next chance to do it came the first thing in the morning. He had nothing in his schedule and absolute freedom to do anything he wanted.

    Tom went to the local hub.

    Because there was one thing, one thing he vaguely remembered and wanted to check personally.

    ''I forgot how nice it is to have a trip like that,'' Tom thought while slightly speeding on the highway. So early in the morning, this remote pass barely had any other vehicles. Seated on his old-school motorbike, Tom nearly had the entire road for himself.

    The distance between Tom''s farm and the nearby city was quiterge. Even on the bike, he still took nearly half an hour to get there.

    ''It''s still hard to believe...'' Tom muttered when he drove by the hub, aiming for the parking. ''Even in a city this small, this thing looks exactly the same.'' Grim thoughts filled Tom''s mind.

    Not too far in the past, he would just get curious about that fact before dismissing the matter. ''I changed, didn''t I?'' Tom thought to himself, leaving the bike and walking towards the building. "Now I understand," Tom said to himself, pressing the doors open.

    Silence.

    It was no wonder. Even with all the local viges included, there were hardly enough people to fill the main hall of the building. ''Most of them are somewhere else, so it only makes sense,'' Tom thought when he couldn''t spot a single living soul in the entire hall.

    Not wasting his precious time, Tom moved forward. Not to the yroom, not yet. Right now, Tom moved deeper into thepound. Soon, his destination became apparent.

    ''If I recall right, the difference in the price of the items on the auctions is insane,'' Tom thought, pushing open the doors to the auction hall. Straight away, likely half of all the yers revealed their location.

    "I will pay... two hundred!" A random yer said.

    "Two fifty!" Someone bid higher.

    "Two fifty once, twice, and sold!" the mechanic voice of the AI announced, disying the official nickname of the lucky winner of the auction.

    "Next item, Sr Shield!" the Ai announced once again, this time putting a description of the item on disy.

    ''Not bad...?'' Tom nced at the stats of the item, only to open his eyes wide. ''Something like this could easily reach several million back in the city.'' Tom struggled to ept the insanity of the situation only for a short moment.

    ''It seems I was right,'' he thought, watching how the precious shield was auctioned off for measly hundred and fifty thousand dors.

    "Stacking Bone-knife! Starting price, fifty thousand!" the AI continued its job without a moment of respite.

    "Hundred." Tom raised his card high enough for the ever-present cameras to catch its ID. It didn''t matter that he lost his avatar in another hub. All that mattered was that the money was there to pay.

    "Hundred once, hundred twice, and sold!" The AI responded quickly, while quite a few local yers turned their eyes to Tom.

    ''What the hell was that?'' He held his face steeled, doing his absolute best not to show the shock on it. Stacking bone-knife, an item worth easily half a million on the big market would go for measly hundred thousand here!

    ''Well, that confirms my theory,'' Tom thought, reading the detailed description of his newly purchased weapon. It turned out to be exactly the same knife that Tom saw in use by some of the higher-ranked rouges back in the city.

    In the dungeon, it was pretty easy to obtain any weapon one would desire. For the price of a single data stone, one could purchase a basic weapon of any kind... but it would hardly aid one inbat in any way.

    On the contrary, there were random drops. A weapon of better grade could only appear along with the data stones in roughly one out of a hundred raids.

    There was no strict rule as to what one was supposed to do with such a drop. The tradition dictated to put every drop on the auction, as there was only a tiny chance a drop would fit the ss of the yer that would get it.

    ''I don''t think I will have any use of this dagger myself, though,'' Tom thought as he discarded the status window of the item from his membership device. With how much he earned, wasting a measly hundred thousand just to confirm a theory was more than a fair price.

    Tom didn''t dwindle on the topic any longer, opting to head for the yroom instead. Soon, he made his way into the area before heading to the counter.

    Contrary to the other hub, he wasn''t an active user here, forcing him to reserve a seat in advance rather than having one permanently reserved for himself.

    ''Okay, let''s see how it feels to y from the mid-levels again,'' Tom thought to himself, fulfilling the standard procedure at the spot he received at the counter.

    A mere momentter, he was supposed to appear in the same white lobby as usual... Then the truth dawned on him.

    "Fuck, they don''t have the privacy implemented!" Tom said in shock, as the colorful inn filled with adventurers straight from some kind of isekai novel appeared in front of his eyes.

    ''Well,'' after an initial shock passed, Tom got back to his senses. "It''s not like it changes anything,'' he thought before shrugging his arms. He then moved deeper into the busy lobby and pressed the gate of the dungeon open.

 Chapter 18: Purging avatar

    Chapter 18: Purging avatar

    "Dang, it''s annoying," Tom said almost as soon as he entered the dungeon. With his secondary character having its own quirks and special attributes, it felt weird to move around in it. Even the act of feeling the avatar''s body didn''t help.

    But rather than attributing it to a state of mind, it was caused by Tom''s memories.

    ''Now that I know that it''s not a game in the first ce, it''s just hard to ept merging with an avatar like that,'' Tom thought, making his first few steps in this old avatar of his. ''I guess the different build of this avatar also makes it harder...'' Tom thought, hesitating over making a radical yet most likely a necessary step.

    "Well, let''s go through the first floor and then think about it again," Tom muttered under his nose as he finally moved forward.

    Thanks to buying the stacking knife at the auction, Tom could now invoke its code to make it appear in his avatar''s hand. The physics behind it was strange. Even with all the hidden knowledge that Tom recently unlocked, he could not make any sense out of it.

    "It was obvious back when I believed it was all just a game, but now," Tom said to himself, smashing his fist into the very first monster that appeared in the dungeon. This time, it was the simplest of the simple monsters, a slime.

    Its bodyprised a solid core the size of a ss marble that kids used to y around with back in the days, and a varying amount of liquid mass that made the exterior of its body. Just like the slime boss that Tom fought with before, in order to kill the slime, one had to crush its core.

    Yet, its thick outer body was made to prevent any damage froming to the core. Only by equipping a de, using enough strength, or just outright casting magic one could reach the core and get rid of the monster.

    "In my scenario, I could just let it munch on me for several hours before it would as much as bruise my skin," Tom sighed while shaking his arm to force all the remaining slime that stuck to his arm to fall off.

    "Well, I already know everything." Just a single fight with the slime was enough for Tom. From this single fight, he could already tell that with the current state of his avatar, there would be no future in the dungeon for him.

    "I guess that''s the only thing I can do right now," Tom said to himself in order to nail the point home. Once he did that, he turned around and moved back to the entrance of the dungeon.

    He returned to the lobby. As annoying and distracting as the colorful mass of other yers was, Tom couldn''t really do anything about it, so he decided to just in out ignore yers around him.

    Sealing off all the chaos of the lobby, Tom approached the desk where yers would usually cash out their earnings. Yet, Tom didn''t conquer a single floor of the dungeon yet.

    "I wish to purge my avatar," he announced as soon as he got to the reception desk. The character on the other side of the counter turned its eyes towards Tom''s avatar, only to nod its head.

    "Do you wish to purge your avatar?"

    "Yes/No"

    This time, the AI didn''t ask Tom personally. Rather than that, it gave him a selection window to make his choice definitive.

    ''Is it to make sure there are no mistakes when ites to purging or they just can''t afford a professional AI?'' Tom asked himself while confirming his decision.

    The next moment, a chill ran down his spine. For a moment, his vision nked out, leaving Tom''s consciousness in the familiar, white nothingness.

    But it onlysted for a short moment. In just a few seconds, Tom regained his vision and other senses. And he was still standing at the counter.

    "The purging is now finalized." The message appeared in front of his eyes, instantly shaking the young man awake.

    "I guess not even thank you or fuck you either," Tom said to himself, shaking his head over how basic the service of the online hub here was.

    But he didn''t waste his time either. With the purging, all the data rted to his avatar was now gone. All the skills that he earned in the past, all the improvements that those skills could give to Tom''s avatar.

    What was left, was a character at the same level as before, one that has yet to take a real shape. And in order for it to happen, Tom stepped towards the doors of the dungeon before pulling out the one thing that prevented him from resenting his character in the more traditional way.

    "This spear... Well, let''s see how useful it really is," Tom said to himself while invoking a code of the only item he held on this avatar so far.

    A spear of thunder, an item that even in the local auction could easily go for more than several million. An item that when sold, could provide for the next few years of Tom''s life. Or an item that could make his climb back to greatness way easier.

    With all of his progress outside of his level now voided, Tom once again entered the dungeon. This time though, he held his weapon firmly in his hand as he pushed forward to find his first opponents.

 Chapter 19: Setting up the skills

    Chapter 19: Setting up the skills

    Tom found his first enemy rather quickly. But, once again, it was a slime.

    ''Worst match-up right off the bat, huh?'' Tom thought. With a spear, the only way to kill the slime was to strike its core.

    In theory, Tom was free to kill it with his fist alone. His avatar was purged of its entire status, but the level-given strenght remained.

    ''But that won''t do,'' Tom denied this simple way out. ''If I use my fist from the very beginning, I will wreck my growth,'' Tom reminded himself, reaching out for his spear.

    Tom''s avatar alone made this fight an overkill. This fight was only a formality when adding the prowess of Tom''s spear into the picture.

    There was no grace to Tom''s attack. He stepped forward and threw his weapon forward, loosely aiming for the slime''s core. Tom wasn''t going for the kill but was trying to familiarise himself with the spear instead.

    Hit after hit, Tom continued his attempts to score the jackpot. It was the ninth attempt that finally brought some results.

    The tip of the spear struck squarely in the middle of the slime''s core. Once the first crack appeared, a thunderbolt traveled through the entire spear, exploding right where it hit a moment earlier.

    A sizzle, and then there was nothing. Then, just like that, Tom defeated a slime.

    He didn''t rejoice. Killing monsters in the dungeon already became Tom''s second nature. He moved forward, trained his spear skills before dealing the fatal hit, and moving on.

    When Tom reached the first boss, he could already strike a slime''s core one out of every three times. Thankfully, the boss finally introduced some variety to Tom''s hunt.

    "What an ugly one you are," Tom muttered, lowering the tip of his spear. Then, bending his knees, he calcted the approach before jolting forward.

    Three steeps, just like in a handball offensive. A jump aimed at closing the distance. Still mid-air, Tom threw his spear forward, striking right at the face of the goblin that opposed him.

    "Shriek!" the boss screamed out as the thin de of the spear prated its skull.

    Tssszt.

    The spear acted on its own again, sending a powerful current through the poor goblin''s body.

    "That''s a day of living necessities for you," Tom said as he pulled his spear back from the charred corpse. His eyes wandered to the crystals shining on the wall.

    ''If I recall, I wanted to go for scavenging build, didn''t I?'' Tom asked himself before shaking his head. ''I guess not,'' he added in his thoughts before moving towards the doors.

    The logic behind his choice was pretty simple. His journey to the highest dungeon level he could solo conquer would set the abilities of his new avatar. So if he wasted his efforts at digging those cash stones, some of his avatar''s potential could end up wasted on abilities rted to digging the stones out.

    ''And I know better than anyone that I can''tpromise on my strenght,'' Tom thought before clicking his tongue. ''Who would''ve thought that those memories would be such a burden.''

    Tom shook his head before delving deeper into the dungeon.

    The early floors didn''t pose any challenge to him. At first, slimes turned into goblins. Then goblins turned into its more advanced version, hobgoblin. Only around the twentieth floor Tom actually had to start paying attention to what he was doing.

    But on the twentieth floor, three of his new skills already manifested, giving Tom the edge any yer of Dungeons Online required to grow.

    First came the simplest ability. A passive skill named "Bloody Spear" allowed Tom to heal his avatar for the percentage of the damage he would deal.

    As in as it appeared to be, it was sneakily insane. Outside of the saint ss, rarely any yers would develop healing ability of any sort. Having the ability to regenerate as he fights would make Tom''s adventures way easier.

    There was a huge drawback to this ability, though. Against opponents way below Tom''s paygrade, it would be useless. Against opponents like thatdy from the bottom of the dungeon, Tom wouldn''t have a chance to injure her, making this ability just as worthless.

    The only situation where the bloody spear coulde helpful would be in closely tied match-ups. The small amount of sustainability offered would give Tom an edge over the opponents he would otherwise have trouble taking down.

    Tom''s second ability, gained as soon as he defeated the boss of the tenth floor, was far moreplicated. "Spear Mage" was its name. In theory, it was the most useless spell one could get, given how no spear user dabbled in magical arts. Tom, though, had enough experience of using active magic to facilitate the opportunities that this spell created.

    Lastly came his third spell obtained as soon as he defeated the boss of the twentieth floor. And this time, the system behind avatars skills went all out.

    "Energymancer, huh?" Tom said softly, reading the short description of the spell that appeared in his vision. ording to the status window, this spell allowed Tom to infuse additional energy into an otherwise simple attack, turning it from just a filler in thebo to a helpful technique.

    But out of the three spells that he got, neither was as valuable as the threebined.

    "If I use energymancer on my life-stealing ability, I could enhance its effects. By adding some magic to the spear, I can increase the damage and stack it on top of its discharge," Tom counted out loud, making use of the privacy of the dungeon.

    "Well, let''s test one thing out then," Tom said to encourage himself before pushing even deeper into the dungeon.

    ''If that life force is no different from the energy or mana we use for spells, would it be possible to...'' Tom thought when his mind abruptly turned into a state of focus.

    He was on the twenty-first level of the dungeon. The monsters that propagated the area were no longer too weak to pose any danger to him. But on the other note, they were also far more suitable subjects for Tom''s experiment!

    "Well, let''s see if I canbo those abilities like that," Tom shouted, jumping forward at a young centaur that just noticed him. His spear flew forward, instantly lodging itself into the flesh of the monster.

    "RAWR!" The centaur let out a growl unbing of a human-like upper body of his.

    ''Energymancer,'' Tom invoked the spell in his mind, redirecting all the life stolen from the monster with his first ability to his spear. Then, by using his spear mage ability, he added a simple alternation to its discharge ability.

    Tom''s spear shook when an electric current ran up its de only to fry the wound in the centaur''s body... But then, the true magic of Tom''s idea came to y.

    As soon as Tom''s spear discharged all its power, it started to suck the energy in rather than letting it go. Centaur''s lowered defenses made it unable to resist the suction, only to be struck by the thunderbolt as soon as the spear charged to the minimal threshold of release.

    The entire process repeated only once. After that, even the monster of the twenty-first floor was unable to survive it any longer.

    ''To kill it with just a tiny wound like that,'' Tom thought while watching how the dead monster turned into an electrified puddle at the floor of the dungeon. ''Well, the test ain''t over yet!'' Tom added in his thoughts before dipping the tip of his spear into the puddle.

    The life-stealing spell of his did the rest, absorbing all the energy that made up the matter in the puddle.

 Chapter 20: Path to the new skills

    Chapter 20: Path to the new skills

    "Here we go again," Tom muttered, slowly treading forward. Unfortunately, due to the nature of raising the strenght of one''s skills, he had no other choice but to toil ahead slowly.

    "What floor even is this? Twenty-seventh? Twenty-eight?" Tom asked the air around him. Another monster appeared from behind the corner.

    Tom no longer cared for shiness. His body moved on its own. Half-step forward to concentrate the momentum fluidly transitioning to a long stab.

    By forcing another action in the middle of another move, Tom could condense the strenght from both of them into a single attack.

    The oversized goblin had no chances.

    Tom struck with his spear right in the monster''s heart. But, unfortunately, the fight was too short and too repeatable to entertain the young man.

    ''Still, I can''t ck off,'' Tom thought, dragging the tip of his spear behind to absorb all the energy from the puddle. The puddle left by the liquified corpse of the monster.

    There were only two ways to grow the strenght of one''s skills.

    The first one relied entirely on experience. There was an urban legend about a yer who refused to level up at all, practicing his initial skill over and over again for more than two years.

    If the street rumors were true, this level one yer could stand toe to toe even with the top rankers. Despite being weaker in every regard, his sheer skill and proficiency at this single ability gave him an edge to im victory.

    ''As extreme as that story is, it has a point,'' Tom thought grimly when his new memories started to return. Tom wasn''t in the game. Instead, he was connecting to an artificial body designed to explore dungeons.

    There was one more method to improve one''s skills. It was purely game or system-based. The more one used a skill, the stronger it became. It was the ultimate truth behind all the skills and the reason why often one''s weak, early skills could be just as powerful as one''stest abilities.

    Those were the two aspects of an avatar''s skill. And there was one reason why Tom so diligently worked to improve them.

    After purging an avatar, its first run would speedrun the process of growing it naturally. Tom worked as hard as he did for this simple reason. The stronger he would be when receiving new abilities, the stronger said new abilities would be.

    Tom made his way towards the boss. This time, his opponent was a cockatrice.

    A two-legged monster the size of a camel had its long body finished with the head of a rooster. Just its looks alone screamed how fast and devious this monster was.

    "Slowly," Tom said, releasing his breath. He didn''t dare close his eyes, worried about the monster''s attack. His fingers tightened on the wood of his spear.

    "RAAAA!" the monster screamed out, leaning its entire body forward as it lunged at Tom.

    Tom pushed his left heel heavily into the ground. There was roughly forty meters between him and the cockatrice.

    Tom kicked the air with his right leg. Then, sliding on his heel, he swept around before using the momentum to lean heavily upwards. His right hand shot forward, holding Tom''s spear by its very end.

    From an outsider''s perspective, Tom appeared to pose as some ancient arch. But this strange pose allowed him to reach for the monster''s skull before he would enter its range.

    ''That''s the main reason why I wanted to test this spear out,'' Tom thought with a satisfied smile on his face.

    The tip of the spear struck the cockatrice right between its bloodied eyes. Then, the lightning shot up Tom''s arm, exploding from the end of his spear outwards.

    The twenty-seventh floor was quite challenging, but Tom was consistently getting stronger. Tom cleaned the entirety of every single room he passed through rather than taking the shortest path to the boss. He no longer was an amateur when it came to using his skills.

    "And it''s done," Tom said, watching how the cockatrice''s corpse continued to shake as the cycle of electric shock and mana absorption repeated. Before long, its body melted into a puddle of mana, allowing Tom to regenerate his strenght.

    "Well, there is no reward without the risk," he added as he moved towards the wall and sat down.

    The entire room was now fully cleared. It was the one positive of doing the things in Tom''s way. Before the dungeon would start respawning its protectors, Tom was perfectly safe to log out for a moment.

    A momentter, he pushed the lid of the capsule off before sneaking outside. He covered himself with the towel on the go, rushing to the nearby snack shop.

    After just a short while, Tom returned to his station, already munching on the sweet energy bar he bought. Downing the dry food with a chug of nutritious milkshake, he wiped his mouth and moved back into the capsule.

    "They know how to cater to yers here as well," Tom muttered under his nose. Finally, his consciousness sank into the connection, recing the visuals of the coffin with the interior of the dungeon.

    ''Safe,'' Tom thought, checking his body for injuries. There was no monster in sight indicating that Tom''s short break went without fail, but he still preferred to be sure.

    A mere momentter, Tom was back at his job, stabbing everything that dared to move within his eyesight. Each hit would add proficiency to his skill, turning it even more potent. In addition, each attack would ingrain the correct pattern of movements into his muscles, adding even more effectiveness to the attack.

    By the time Tom reached the twenty-ninth-floor boss, he no longer felt any anxiety. The sharp increase in the power of the monsters would only happen on the next floor. And once he would cross the nearest gate, Tom would obtain his fourth skill, born out of all the efforts he made so far.

    And the only thing stopping Tom from getting his new skill was a massive lizard standing guard at the gate leading to the lower level.

 Chapter 21: Origin mage

    Chapter 21: Origin mage

    "Let''s see what you''ve got," Tom muttered. His lips widened in an excited smile.

    The lizard in front lookedpletely ordinary. Sure, it was big, but nowhere at the level where its size would turn it into a threat.

    ''But it''s wrong to underestimate it,'' Tom thought, gripping his spear.

    The dungeon operated on the rule of the ten. So for every ten floors, a steep rise in difficulty would happen. And the boss of thest room of the ten was precisely the same as the monsters from the room one level lower.

    ''And that means this ugly piece of hellspawn is a notch harder.'' Tom smiled at his thoughts. The monsters so far didn''t pose any real challenge to him. Yet, the only specimen left on the entire floor could finally break his boredom.

    Tom lunged forward. Stepping with his right leg, he extended the tip of his spear all the way forward. There was still a considerable distance between Tom''s avatar and the monster.

    His stance was nothing more but a bait and a challenge.

    A challenge the monster happily took.

    The lizard rushed forward. Its massive body made each of its steps make the entire floor shake. Its long, fleshy tail tagged along, swinging to left and right.

    The speed of its attack was far beyond anything Tom met in all the floors so far. But he was more than used to monsters of this level.

    Tom raised his right leg as if he wanted to step to the back. His spear followed the movements of his body, pulling its de down.

    And then, right in the middle of his retreat, Tom reverted his motions.

    From the most unstable point where his right leg was raised, Tom pushed himself forward. Then, stepping right back where he was a moment ago, he thrust his spear right at the charging monster.

    "RAAA!" The scream of the monster pierced Tom''s ears, but he didn''t falter. Against the overwhelming pressure of the beast, he stood fast. The tip of his spear wiggled in the air.

    CLASH!

    Lizard''s massive body mmed forward. The monster attempted to diver the de to its non-lethal areas, cleverly not daring to properly dodge the attack.

    But Tom wasn''t a motionless pir.

    ''Now!'' Screaming in his mind, Tom added another step to his stance. The de of his spear already prated the monster''s flesh. In theory, all that was needed right now was to activate Tom''s skills.

    But Tom didn''t do that. Grasping the handle of his long weapon as tight as he could, he then started to rapidly move it around.

    There was no grace or technique to his movements. Just the pure desire to destroy everything about his opponent. For a moment, the struggle continued. The giant lizard attempted to twist its neck and bite at Tom''s avatar. Tom dug his spear deeper into the monster''s body, pushing it away.

    Then, everything came to an end.

    A tingle shook Tom''s muscles. A red spark shed over his hands tightened into a fist over the long wood of the spear. Then his spear exploded in a brilliant light, almost depriving Tom of his eyesight.

    ''It''s over,'' Tom thought when his temporary blindness finally started to go away. His regained vision allowed him to see the lizard''s corpse slowly turning into a puddle of mana-rich liquid.

    This time, Tom didn''t rush forward, taking his time to replenish the energy of his avatar with his spear. But just as he was about to move forward, his eyes moved to the side.

    The walls of the room were decorated with a plethora of stones. After a quick count, Tom found out nine stones embedded into the walls, a surprisingly plentiful bounty for the floor.

    But all of the stones were of grade two. So each of them could go for five grand at the counter, ramping the price tag of the floor to forty-five grand in total.

    But Layn didn''t bother to pick them up. ''With my savings, it won''t really matter at all,'' he thought to himself. For a newbie, forty-five grand was a substantial sum, one that could allow a new yer to buy everyst thing he could wish as an average person.

    Yet, for the standard of what one could earn in the dungeon, those nine stones were a spare change.

    Between this measly amount of money or experience for his avatar, Tom was far more interested in finding out just what kind of skill he would obtain.

    Tom moved forward as soon as his energy gauge reached its limit. There was no point dawdling in this ce anymore, especially with the higher floors already spawning the grade three stones.

    Tom pushed through the doors, once again marveling at how they opened up all by themselves. But then, he already stood in an empty corridor, indicating that the travel to a lower floor was sessful.

    "Let''s see what I''ve got," Tom muttered to himself while excitement filled his soul.

    He squinted his eyes in an attempt of luring out the status window of his new ability up. And as annoying as it could be from time to time, on this specific asion, Tom uncovered his new ability rather quickly.

    "Origin mage, huh?" Tom read out the name of the spell aloud, only to lean his head in curiosity to the side in the very next moment.

    "Just what the hell does an Origin mage do?"

 Chapter 22: The call

    Chapter 22: The call

    Tom opened his eyes before all the liquid in the capsule would have a chance to dry out. He took off his mask pulled the lid open, leaving the ce in a hurry.

    A few momentster, Tom was already changed and heading to the nearby parking lot where he left his bike.

    "Damn," he muttered under his nose, twisting the keys in the station to fire the engine up.

    Tom didn''t allow his disappointment to influence his driving. On the contrary, even on the empty streets of the countryside, he made sure to pay his utmost attention to the surroundings. But rather than having some principles forcing him to ride safely, he was just unwilling to let a random ident deprive him of his chance to look for his father.

    ''Just what the hell is that origin mage?'' Tom gripped his hands over the motorbike handles. He tightened them so much that the whites of his bones shoved underneath his skin.

    It was a simple question but one of great importance. If Tom could not figure out what this ability was capable of, his potential for the following skills would be severely limited.

    ''It''s powerful for sure. With how much I packed into the preceding skills, there is no way it isn''t,'' Tom thought, grabbing the handlebar of his bike even tighter.

    Prrrt.

    His sone rang, spreading its vibrations through Tom''s entire outfit. He pulled to the side of the road before picking up the call.

    "Yes?" Tom asked.

    "Tom? Great, you finally picked up," Cleo sighed a sigh of relief before changing her tone to a scolding one. "What happened, though? Usually, you are quick to pick up," she asked.

    "I was in the game," Tom cut the talk with his short response before striking right for the crux of the matter. "From the fact that you call, I assume you organized everything necessary?"

    Forcefully turning the call into a business one would put a wrench in their rtionship. After all, Tom grew up with Cleo and Marvin on his side. Reducing their childhood friendship to just the business rtionship wasn''t Tom''s intention. Still, he was too annoyed by the problem of his skill.

    It was a stopgap to his growth that he couldn''t fix by any indirect means.

    And the stall of the growth of his avatar would put a wrench in the grand n that his father left as Tom''s inheritance!

    "I don''t like how you put it," Cleo protested, only to release a short sigh and continue, "but you are right. I called about the matter we talked aboutst time, but now I''m curious. Tom, what happened?"

    ''Dang it.'' Tom tightened his hands on the handles of his bike. He then took a few breaths to calm himself down.

    "Nothing escapes your attention, does it?" Tom asked with a sigh, shaking his head.

    A car drove by, proving that the area wasn''t all that deserted.

    "Well, to put it in short words, I have some troubles in the game. Also, I think I might need some more things already." Tom escorted the car with his eyes as he spoke to the phone.

    "Sure, what else do you need?" Cleo asked as if no matter what Tom would ask, she would be capable of procuring.

    "Well, let''s say I want to dig another basement at my ce," Tom replied with a first, random lie that came to his mind.

    ''It feels bad to lie to her, but it will be better if she won''t know what I''m nning,'' Tom thought while looking in the distance. Way further than his eyes could reach, a vast dome was built. In fact, that dome was the only building visible from his farm.

    It was also the reason behind his father''s disappearance and the appearance of the online hub in the nearby city.

    Because hidden within that dome was the true form of the Dungeons Online.

    The portal connecting the earth to those very dungeons that the yers were tasked with exploring.

    "A basement, huh?" Cleo asked in a doubting tone. "If you don''t want to tell me what you are nning, then just don''t tell me anything at all." She sighed. "I don''t want you to lie to me just to protect your secrets," she added in a confident tone.

    "As always, your considerate nature makes it the most pleasant to interact with you," Tom replied, putting a slight smirk on his face.

    ''Between her looks and her attitude... I wonder if there is a single greater mismatch of character and looks than her!'' Tom shook his head, pondering over this unnatural urrence.

    From her looks, Cleo looked like a mix of a punk and a seasoned mercenary who saw death as a daily urrence. The shaved side of her head only made such an impression stronger.

    Yet, in daily life, Cleo was the fluffiest and kindest person that one could find in the entire area. Even the people she was dealing with that empowered her to organize various stuff for her clients didn''t shave away at her true nature.

    "Thanks for thepliment," Cleo replied. Then, a moment of silence ensued on the call, indicating that all the main topics were already covered.

    "Well," Tom said to the phone, not to let the silence fester for long enough to turn into an awkward situation. "We will meet at my ce, or do you want me to drive somewhere?" he asked, trying to be considerate of Cleo''s possible reservations.

    After all, he was almost like aplete stranger for someone dealing in arms and all kinds of other stuff. All those years that he spent in the city were bound to put a wall between the two of them, forcing Tom to earn the girl''s trust from scratch.

    "Let''s met at your ce," Cleo cut Tom''s doubts without a second thought. "I believe it would be inconvenient for you to drive around with a rifle at your shoulder!''

 Chapter 23: Deal at the gate

    Chapter 23: Deal at the gate

    By the time Tom reached his home, Cleo was already waiting for him at the gate. Dressed in an outfit just as suggestive as ever, Cleo didn''t seem to mind just how much skin her shorts and crop-top type of shirt revealed.

    With her partially shaved head lowered over her phone, she looked like some kind of mercenary that just came back from a mission and decided to take a short stop.

    "Thanks for getting everything on such short notice," Tom called out to the girl as soon as he killed the engine of his bike. With the noise of it running in the background, there would be no atmosphere for talking at all.

    "Sure thing," Cleo replied as she raised her head from her phone only to look at a long, metal case rested against the back wheel of her bike. "I took the freedom to upgrade the package a bit. I hope you won''t mind," she said with a wide grin through which the whites of her teeth showed up.

    "Now you got my curiosity," Tom smiled, getting off his bike and approaching the case. ''She is just as hard to deal with as ever,'' Tom thought, doing his absolute best not to stare at the exposed skin of his childhood friend.

    Once near the case, Tom kneeled and flipped its locks open. Then, pushing the lid up, he took a quick look inside before taking a quick nce at Cleo''s face.

    "Are you for real?" Tom asked in a tired tone, unable to cope with how peculiar Cleo''s improvements to his order were.

    "You seemed cranky when Ist called, so I decided on somest-minute changes," she replied with a straight face. Then, Cleo leaned her head to the side and stared daggers right into Tom''s back. "So, are you going to tell me what''s going on?"

    For a moment, Tom considered the option of just revealing his entire n to her. Even if some points made dealing with Cleo rather troublesome, Tom didn''t even have a shred of doubt about her loyalty.

    ''What the hell am I thinking about?'' Tom stopped his eyes from widening in shock only by pushing all of his willpower in this single task. ''Revealing pop''s n?'' Tom shrugged. ''I could as well put a warrant on her head myself!'' he scolded himself in his thoughts, touching the rifle in the case to calm himself down.

    "Is there something wrong with it?" Cleo asked when she noticed Tom''s unusual behavior. "Wait, did I..." Cleo suddenly stood up from her bike, all straight from the sudden shock that befell her mind.

    "No, you were not wrong," Tom didn''t even need the girl to finish her words to understand what she meant. Even though they didn''t see each other for nearly three years, their level of synchronization was just as high as always. "I... Well... I just didn''t expect you to be so direct with this," Tom summed the matter up before mming the lid of the case down.

    In the end, exposing an illegally procured weapon out in the open wasn''t the wisest idea.

    "Well, that''s one worry off my head, then," Cleo smiled before her lips once again turned into a single, thin line. "Are you going to tell me what''s wrong now?" she asked, clearly unwilling to drop the matter.

    "I''m sorry. I want to dig myself a..." Tom started only to stop when he noticed small fires in Cleo''s eyes.

    "I can understand if you can''t tell me something, but don''t try bullshiting your way out!" she warned Tom, swinging her finger at him as if Tom was some kind of small kid in need of scolding.

    "I see..." Tom turned silent for a moment. Then, the idea of revealing his n appeared in his thoughts again... Only to end up dismissed in an instant. Once Tom made up his mind, there was no changing his decision.

    "I''m sorry, but I really just need some tools to hobbystically dig myself up a basement." Tom didn''t falter when uttering this tant lie. Because rather than infringing on Cleo''s recent wish, this lie was obvious enough to carry information on itself.

    "I understand," Cleo lowered her head, skillfully hiding her expression from Tom. A momentter, there was no longer any trace of her former feelings on her face, allowing the girl to look at Tom openly again.

    "Ah, if I could specify..." Tom averted his eyes, "I would prefer no power tools." Tom turned his entire head away. "I wouldn''t want to disturb the neighbors," he said, smiling at just how ridiculous his bullshit sounded.

    There was no other building anywhere near Tom''s farm. Outside of the government hall, roughly half a kilometer away, the ce where the two of them stood was really out in the sticks.

    "Yeah, yeah, I understand. But while this rifle was a gift," this time it was Cleo who averted her eyes. The national unwillingness to talk about money with friends still held strong in both of their souls.

    "The other stuff will need to be properly paid for." Tom finished what the girl wanted to say for her. "Don''t worry about that. I don''tck money, and I don''t think it will change anytime soon," Tom reassured his friend before moving the metal case to the back of his bike.

    "Are you going to tell me why you are so cranky then?" Cleo suddenly asked, making Tom drop his hopes of fully dropping the topic. "If it''s the game, then I think I might have an idea on how I can be of help!"

 Chapter 24: Tune lesson

    Chapter 24: Tune lesson

    "To be honest, I shouldn''t really teach you that," Cleo said, putting a wry smile on her face.

    "If for whatever reason, you can''t, then you don''t need to..." Tom attempted to stop the girl, only to be stopped himself when she ced her finger on his lips.

    "Don''t speak to me like that. I doubt you will use it to flex at the girls, so there is no need for me to worry," Cleo said with a genuine smile before her eyes suddenly turned all dark. "Right?" she asked in an intense tone.

    "Yeah, yeah, I wouldn''t dare to misuse great Cleo''s trust," Tom raised his hands as if trying to shield himself from the girl''s suspicion. ''Out of all the things, I wouldn''t dare to make her my enemy,'' he thought, swallowing his momentary pride.

    "Good, then let''s not waste any time," Cleo said with a wide smile before moving into the house. A mere momentter, she walked out of ce with two antique sabers in her hands.

    "Eee... What?" Noticing the peculiarity, Tom asked to rify the situation. "What do you need those sabers for?"

    "I know you are not using saber on your new character, but the principle of what I want to teach you stays the same," Cleo smiled before tossing one of the weapons to Tom.

    "While I''m acting pretty cautious about it, it''s not like my family came up with this technique. But that doesn''t mean I will be happy if it spreads around," Cleo exined the caveat before presenting her weapon.

    She held her weapon up and sideways as if she wanted to kiss the top of her de. Then, she shed at the air, moving her hand to a resting position.

    "Normally, one would learn this trick only after getting the basics right, but given how saber is not your weapon of choice in the first ce..." Cleo stopped mid-sentence before releasing a long sigh. "In your case, you can learn it right away," she said before stepping forward.

    "Scoobie-doobie doo, where are you," Cleo started to mumble under her nose along with her progress. Each of her steps fell perfectly into the rhythm of the once-popr song.

    The distance between the two of them wasn''t that far, to begin with. Barely a few steps. Cleo only reached the second verse of her song when she swung her saber at Tom.

    "Ugh," Tom moaned in pain as he raised his weapon horizontally and took the hit on his de. However, Cleo wasn''t joking with the bout, delivering the strike at its full force.

    Bending under the immense force of the strike, Tom softened the pressure on his knees and turned the de to parry the next move...

    Only for Cleo''s saber''s side to m him in the face.

    Every single move Cleo made went ording to the music she was humming. Every step, every attack, every sh, and every dodge was perfectly aligned with the rhythm.

    Tom could recognize the rhythm but for some reason... Adjusting to it was not as easy as it would appear.

    "First, you start by figuring your own tune. It''s something you will never share with anyone," Cleo exined, changing the song she was humming to another one. This time, Tom could vaguely recognize it as an ending of one of the popr anime of recent times.

    "While a single tune will suffice early on, the better you want to get, the more different tunes you need to learn to dance," Cleo added, suddenly spinning in a pirouette andnding another hit at Tom''s side.

    This time, her attack didn''t follow her earlier tempo. Yet, knowing the principle, Tom only took a few moments to adjust to the new rhythm of the fight.

    "Good," Cleomented as soon as she noticed the improvement. "Now the important part," her lips spread out in a smile as the tip of her saber trembled. "You need to immerse yourself in tune. All the way to the point where the entire world will disappear, reced with nothing but footholds for you to keep dancing," she informed before closing her eyes.

    ''Huh?'' Tom took a long look at the motionless girl. ''Is she meditating... or something?'' he thought, trying to figure out the motives behind the sudden change of her behavior.

    And then Cleo charged forward. Her eyescked focus as if the world around her no longer existed. Yet, despite not paying attention to her surroundings, Cleo quickly showered Tom with a flurry of attacks, each harder to avoid than the previous one.

    ng, ng, ng. For a few moments, the sound of a weapon hitting against a weapon was the only thing Tom could hear. After that, he had no other choice but to entirely focus himself on the fight, desperately trying to ward off Cleo''s attack.

    But whenever Tom would reach the point of adopting Cleo''s rhythm, it would abruptly change. Whenever the chance would happen, Tom would pay the price of it with pain as he could not stop the attacks falling right on the change.

    "I give up!" Tom shouted when yet another attacknded on his body. He rapidly backed out a few steps in an attempt to escape Cleo''s range, only to see the girl follow suit while setting another series of attacks.

    Thankfully, before the two of them coulde to sh once again, Cleo regained her senses and pulled her weapon back.

    "What you saw right now was the tune immersion," she exined as she ced her saber on the window''s sill. "Once you reach the point where you can follow the rhythm of your tune perfectly, you should be able to immerse yourself in it fully," Cleo said, gracing Tom with a gentle smile.

    "To think that something like this existed," Tom replied, looking at the handle of the saber in his hand. For some reason, it felt slightly morefortable in his hand now, even though he was still far from being efficient at using it.

    "It''s a technique allegedly developed way in the past by the cossacks," Cleo smiled, happily giving some backstory to the strange trick of hers. "Although I can''t really imagine people learning how to fight to the rhythm of some religious psalms!" she added with a smile, proving that she could be pretty rxed about this topic.

    "Now that I think about it," Tom suddenly interrupted the girl, intentionally changing the topic. As interesting as the backstory of this technique could be, he wasn''t really interested in it at all.

    "You said that one should learn how to immerse himself in his song... But didn''t you say that one should learn many songs to alternate them in a fight?" Tom asked the question that was puzzling him for a while already.

    "Does that mean it''s possible to be fully immersed and yet still be able to switch the tunes while in the focused state?"

 Chapter 25: Fathers legacy

    Chapter 25: Father''s legacy

    "Well, let''s stop for today," Cleo said while lowering her saber. There were only a few drops of sweat on her forehead, indicating how used she was to this kind of exercise.

    "Ugh..." Tom moaned in response, barely able to stand on his legs.

    ''I knew she liked to be intense, but I didn''t expect her intensity to reach such degree,'' Tom thought, wiping his forehead clean from the fat drops of sweat. Soon, this action proved futile, as his body desperately attempted to cool itself down, filling his face with a fresh delivery of sweat.

    "I need to get going now," Cleo announced after taking a peek at her clock.

    "Thanks for all the help." Tom managed to gather just enough strenght to utter his thanks.

    "Oh,e on! It wasn''t that hard!" Cleo moaned in displeasure when noticing Tom''s exhausted state. "How do you expect ever to be someone if all your strenght is only virtual?" she asked with a displeased grin.

    "I guess I need to get back in shape," Tom muttered after crawling towards a bench by the side of the farm''s door. As tired as he was, Tom refused to justy down on the ground.

    ''I guess if I did that, there would be no end to her scolding and lecturing,'' he thought, casting a short nce at the girl''s half-shaved head.

    "You absolutely need to." Cleo looked at Tom meaningfully before releasing a short sigh. "But I really need to go now. I will call you once I get the tools you asked for," she imed before following her own words and taking a leave.

    She didn''t wait for Tom to bid her farewells. In fact, given his sweaty state, it would be strange for her to wish to get close to him right now. So rather than allowing Tom''s sweat to sully her clothes, Cleo got on her bike, revved her engine, and took off.

    "I guess I can''t ck on this training, can I?" Tom asked himself as he took some rest on the simple, wooden bench. In terms offort, it had nofort. Right now, though, Tom was too tired to even think about changing the location for somethingfier.

    "Well, back to work, I guess." roughly five minutester, Tom was already back on his feet. He moved back to the farmhouse to wipe his body clean of the sweat before heading to the basement.

    "As if I needed her to procure anything for me," Tom muttered as he closed the hatch above. In reality, the basement was already filled to the brim with literally any kind of weapon or tool Tom would ever want to use.

    The weapons took the central ce in the basement. The guns hung from designated stands lining up across the entire site. Roughly a meter away from every single stand, a small shelf stood, filled to thest centimeter with ammunition, attachments, and maintenance kits.

    "It would be easy to dere a war with just the content of this basement," Tom sighed before moving his eyes to one of the corners of the basement. As much as his man''s soul wished to just y around with the guns for all day long, he didn''te here for such silly sake.

    Tom moved to the corner that caught his attention before. Contrary to the rest of the ce, it was pretty messy, with all sorts of tools haphazardly resting all over the area. After a closer look, Tom realized that some of them have yet to be cleaned up!

    "I shouldn''t use the power tools, so it doesn''t matter if they are not maintained," Tom thought aloud while kneeling over the messy area, "but just where the heck did all this dirt came from?" Tom thought for a moment before he suddenly looked to the back.

    "Ah, figures..." he said while releasing all the all from his lungs, overwhelmed by his own stupidity. "I guess it would be futile to look for this basement on the n of the farm," Tom smiled at his reasoning before picking up the simplest tools he could find.

    A shovel, a pickaxe, and a basket. Those three things were all Tom needed. That and a shitload of time to dig up the tunnel from his basement to the government''s dome shielding the portal from the civilian eyes.

    "I wonder just how long it will take me," Tom thought, leaving the tools right below the hatch before climbing it up. A few momentster, he returned to the hidden basement with a small stack of papers and drawing tools.

    "Okay then, let''s work the shit out of it!" Tom encouraged himself before cing all his haul directly on the floor and starting to analyze it.

    The papers that be brought consisted of the architectural ns of the farm, its location in the greater area, and any other map that could prove helpful for his project.

    "From this basement, it should go somewhere..." Tom muttered while raising his head towards the same corner where he took his tools from. ording to the ns and drawings of the farm and its local area, that corner was just the right spot to start digging.

    "Could it be?" Tom muttered, unwilling to believe in such a convenience. He left all the papers where they were before making his way over to the corner. And surely enough, after pushing the pile of the tools aside, another hatch appeared before Tom''s eyes.

    "That guy," he smiled, thinking about his father. ''Only he could do something like that,'' Tom thought before pulling the hatch open and crawling inside.

    Tom crawled for about a minute before the tunnel turned wide enough for him to stand up. At the same ce where it suddenly widened, Tom could finally see just how much effort his father put into creating this ce.

    "Lights, rails, tools... He was so earnest when it came to this part of the n..." Something warm spread through Tom''s abdomen.

    For thest few years, Tom believed his father abandoned him. Whether it was a lover, career, or just general boredom, Tom never bothered to think about it. The fact that he was left all alone was the only thing that mattered.

    ''I guess I''m finally starting to learn the truth,'' he thought, cing his palm on the even walls of the tunnel, reinforced with the same concrete powder that Tom could see sprinkled all over the ce.

    The amount of effort required to create this kind of tunnel was insane. And Tom didn''t even begin to explore it, basing his judgment on just the first few meters of the structure.

    "I guess it won''t hurt to see how far did he go," Tom said to himself before flipping the switch embedded into the stone wall of the tunnel.

    A long line of lights suddenly turned the dark insides of the tunnel bright, allowing Tom to see just how far it went.

 Chapter 26: Call in the tunnel

    Chapter 26: Call in the tunnel

    "Damn, I never knew that digging was such a hard work," Tom whined after swinging his pickaxe for yet another time. The wall he was working at was rtively soft, making his work way easier than it could be in a less lucky scenario.

    But that didn''t mean his toil was easy in the first ce!

    "Still, without all that infrastructure," Tom muttered, looking at the rail tracks disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel. The ability to move the excavated stones and earth by rail rather than by hand was already an insane game changer. "I wonder how many years did he waste to set this entire thing," Tom said to himself as he took a break.

    It was unhealthy to push one''s body to the limits. Nearing them was undoubtedly an excellent method to grow stronger, but it didn''te without the costs. But breaking through one''s physical limitations would only lead to injuries and restraints on one''s future growth.

    ''And I no longer can ignore the fitness of my real body,'' Tom thought, cing his hand against the side of the tunnel. For some reason, rather than being insanely uneven, just like the part Tom did on his own, the wall was perfectly smooth.

    "Oh, right, he could do it before they built that dome," Tom suddenly noticed, raising his head in the direction of his thoughts.

    But his sight couldn''t prate several meters worth of stone, concrete, and earth. Stuck staring at the ceiling of the tunnel, Tom took a breath before raising to work again.

    Yet, just as the young man raised his pick to start deepening the underground path, his pocket suddenly vibrated.

    ''It catches the signal even so far below the ground?'' More surprised than startled, Tom pulled his cellphone and brought it to his ear.

    "Yeah?" Tom threw the word, unsure who was calling as he forgot to take a look.

    "Tom? Is that you?" The voice on the other end of the line asked.

    "Huh? udia?" Tom would have to be an idiot not to recognize this feminine voice of the girl. Mainly when his female contacts were limited to just two different girls.

    One of which swung the wrong way for Tom to expect her to call him outside the matters rted to the business!

    "Yeah! It''s me!" The girl shouted to through the phone, clearly agitated by the call connecting. "You wouldn''t even imagine how hard I had to try to get your number!" she added, audibly overjoyed by the situation.

    "I don''t think I even want to ask how did you get it," Tom sighed along with his response. ''As fun as it was to spend time with her, I shouldn''t pull her into my matters anymore,'' he thought, tightening his grip over his phone.

    "Either way, would you mind telling me where you are? I just finished a huge raid with my guild, and I have some free time, so I figured..." udia started, only to be interrupted by Tom.

    "No." He strictly denied the request. "Ah, sorry, but I don''t think it''s a good time right now," he added in the form of exnation, hoping that he could salvage their early friendship without letting the girl get close.

    "I understand," Cleo said, surprising Tom. ''Knowing her, shouldn''t she argue a bit more?'' he asked himself, trying to stop the disappointment from taking over his mood.

    ''Wait, why am I even disappointed? It''s not like I expected her to fight harder so that she could visit me,'' Tom thought only for a wry smile to appear on his face right after. "Who the fuck am I trying to deceive?" he whispered to his thoughts.

    "Huh? Deceive? Who are you trying to deceive?" udia instantly asked, reminding Tom that he was still on the phone.

    "Sorry for that. I was speaking to myself," Tom replied in an attempt to salvage the situation. "Either way, now it''s not a good time. To be frank, I don''t really have the time to talk right now," he added in hopes of ending this awkward call as soon as possible.

    "I see," udia replied in a disappointed voice. Tom could picture the girl shaking her head from the slight rustling sound that came from his phone. "I won''t bother you then. Just remember to give me a call when you are free!" she ordered before hanging the call.

    "That was pretty stressful," Tom said before releasing a heavy sigh. His eyes moved towards the end of the tunnel, reminding him of the work he came here to do.

    ''I guess I can''t really bother thinking about girls, huh?'' he thought as his shoulders sank in disappointment.

    Tom didn''t allow those sad thoughts to linger in his soul. Before his sadness could turn into either depression or horniness, his hand grasped the handle of the pick again.

    "Back to work, I guess," he muttered as he made three steps and started working again. With each hit of Tom''s tool, a piece of the stone would fall out of the wall. Bit by bit, he continued to deepen the tunnel.

    "Fuck," Tom muttered after just a few more minutes of work. He changed his pickaxe to a shovel before loading all the chipped bits onto a small cart. By the time the tunnel''s floor was even, almost half of the cart was filled with rubble.

    ''Any more than that, and I won''t be able to push it, huh?'' Tom noticed before leaving the pickaxe on the floor and loading the shovel atop the railcar.

    But he didn''t push the cart far. Barely a few meters prior to the current ending of the tunnel, Tom noticed a small hatch embedded into the side-wall. Given how he rushed all the way to the deepest part of the passage, it was no wonder he missed it previously.

    "This guy..." he muttered once he pushed the hatch open. And there was nothing on the other side. Literally, it was a small dug-out with no furniture, treasure, or anything at all.

    It was simply a hole in the side of the tunnel, perfect for Tom to ditch all the excavated material into!

    "I never knew he could think so far into the future!"

 Chapter 27: Marvins Friends

    Chapter 27: Marvin''s Friends

    Tom returned from the tunnel right as the sun started to shine on the face of the earth. His clothes were all dirty, giving testimony to the night he spent working hard.

    ''This tunnel alone will take at least a week or two,'' Tom thought, raising his face to the dome visible in the distance. Its ck, curvy walls threw shade at a considerable part of the farm fields attached to the farm itself.

    "Worst case scenario, that''s a motive," Tom muttered, resting his back against the doors of the farm. The cut of well between one and two hours of daylight would make for a perfect motive.

    ''If only I was a farmer who would care for such stuff.'' Tom smiled at his thoughts. He then wiped his forehead with the dirty sleeve of his shirt.

    A sound of the engine reached Tom''s ears. He slightly twitched, not prepared to hear it so early in the morning. But, it wasn''t even the day yet for most of thefortable adults across the world.

    The bike arrived at Tom''s gate roughly a minuteter.

    "Are you ready?" Marvin asked while pulling his riding helmet off. Sitting on the bike fully rxed, he didn''t give off an aura of someone who woke up recently.

    "What are you up to," Tom groaned. All he wanted right now was just a cup of warm, bitter coffee. A drink just right to wash off his exhaustion.

    "Did you forget already?" Marvin hung the helmet on the bike''s handle and then leaned on it. "I told you I would introduce you to some of my friends, didn''t I?" he asked, putting an excited smile on his face.

    "Oh," Tom jerked his head to look at his friend. "That did happen," he added before hiding his face within the palms of his hands. "Sorry, man, Ipletely forgot about that!" he shouted, genuinely troubled by the matter.

    ''I was so focused on my n, I even forgot we discussed it,'' Tom thought, gathering the strenght for the inevitable.

    "Okay then," he started after a few moments. "Give me a few minutes to clean up," Tom asked before rushing inside the farm.

    After the entire night at the mine, Tom''s clothes were in a sorry state. Tattered and dirty all over, they pretty much summed up Tom''s physical state as well.

    ''But I can''t be seen tired.'' Tom tightened his jaws as he grasped at the edge of the washbasin. He turned the faucet and flushed his face.

    Along with the streaks of cold water trickling down from his face, Tom''s exhaustion slightly subsided. Raising his head, Tom looked at the reflection of his face in the mirror.

    "Well, let''s kill it. It''s too good of an opportunity to just ignore it," Tom encouraged himself before pping his cheeks twice. Then, a momentter, he ran out of the farm while pulling out a fresh shirt down through his head.

    A few minutes after Marvin arrived, Tom already sat on his own bike while securing the helmet on his head.

    "So, I once I told them you used to be some kind of bigshot back in the city, they were more than happy to meet you," Marvin boasted as soon as the connection between the inbuiltmunicators in their helmets fired up. Without this little feature, it would be impossible to talk while driving.

    "Are you sure it was a good idea?" Tom inquired in a voice muffled by his mouthpiece. "It''s not like I''ming back home victorious," he added after a moment of consideration.

    ''It''s not hard to figure out why they are willing to meet with me,'' Tom thought to himself. ''After the show, I did of parading right into the auction and buying off the stuff without batting an eye,'' Tom thought before releasing a deep sigh.

    "Tell me, man, are you sure this is really what you want?" Marvin asked, bringing back their discussion from back at the small reunion party they had.

    "I already did my part touring the dungeons," Tom replied, putting a sad smile on his face. As ingenious as thismunication device was, it only transferred the voice, not the facial expressions. "Now it''s time for me toy down and bank on my achievements so far," he added with a smirk.

    "So you are retiring?" Marvin asked. Even though only his voice was transmitted, Tom could tell he was reluctant to believe in such a possibility. "You know, you never struck me as one who just wants toze around," he added, even though Tom didn''t express any need for an additional exnation.

    "It''s not about retiring. I consider it more of a promotion," Tom spoke softly, killing the guilt of lying to his old friend. "I did the groundwork. Now it''s time for me to move on and earn from my fame. You could say," Tom smiled to his own thoughts, "I''m only upping my game now."

    To a degree, Tom didn''t lie. He was really upping his game. The problem in the situationid in fact, that trying to get into the elite echelons of the local hub was just a way to hide his real mission.

    A mission that required Tom to have full and undetected ess to the hub near his farm.

 Chapter 28: Job at the higher floors

    Chapter 28: Job at the higher floors

    "Don''t worry about anything. They are no bullies," Marvin said, attempting to encourage Tom. The thing was, Tom was far more excited by the prospect of the meeting than Marvin could imagine.

    Even if it was for the way other reasons than what Tom allowed others to believe.

    "Man, chill," Tom said while shaking his head. "I get that you are trying to help. I really do. But I''m not worried at all," Tom said before smiling gently.

    The two of them entered the local Online Hub before directing their steps to its highest used floor. Given the industry standard, every single local hub looked exactly the same, with the only difference being the number of floors.

    And while this ce was only a third as high as the Online Hub Tom was used to, the view from the uppermost floor was still astonishing, especially when there were no other high-rise buildings blocking it.

    "Here you are!" Someone called out to the two men as soon as they stepped outside from the fully ssed-out elevator. "Allow me to apologize in advance for setting the time so early," a man said while walking out from the deeper part of what looked like an enormous vi.

    "It''s easier to apologize than to ask for permission, huh?" Marvin said with an ugly grimace forming on his lips before dropping the act andughing out. "For me, it''s whatever, but try to take my friend''s wellbeing into ount next time!" he added in a protest.

    "Right, your friend," the young man in suit moved his eyes on Tom. Then, his smile widened up a bit as the man lowered his head a bit. "Allow me to wee you to the true adventure of dungeons online," raising his head back up, the man brought his hand forward. "My name is Peter. It''s a pleasure to make your acquaintance," he introduced himself.

    "I''m Tom. The pleasure is mine." Peter shook Tom''s hand energetically before pulling him deeper into the room.

    "Listen, Marvin talked a lot about your achievements. But amidst all his stories, I can''t understand one thing," Peter started. "With all this experience, why our small location? You could easily make it to the higher floors even back in your city!" he asked, instantly exining the reason for his curiosity.

    "Higher floors?" Tom asked in a questioning voice, unsure about the meaning of this particr mix of words.

    "You know, it''s an insider saying. People work hard on the low floors where the connecting capsules are, while people earn hard on the high floors, where they get to manage the entire thing," Peter exined with no reservation.

    "Well, then the answer is pretty simple," Tom said, spreading his arms wide. "I lost my main avatar in that hub. So if I wanted to be someone important, I would have to waste a year or two to properly build it back up," Tom exined, not bothering to hide the information about his misfortune.

    "If you lost your avatar, what''s difference does it make to start in another hub?" Peter asked, clearly confused by Tom''s situation.

    "It''s just that I already had an avatar in the hub here, so I could skip on the boring part," Tom said with a smile before looking around. "Either way, I didn''t expect for those higher floors to be furnished so well. I take it this hub is not as deserted as I was worried it would be," he shook his head, amazed by the quality of furnishing.

    To be fair, the upper floor of the hub didn''t look like what was below at all. Rather than dividing the space between shops, utility rooms, and connection halls, the entire floor was fully open, with only some restrooms sitting by the wall.

    "We can manage, somehow," Peter avoided the question. He then turned around and lead Tom and Marvin to one of the massive couches decorating the room. "Please, have a seat," he invited them before following his own advice and taking a seat.

    For a short moment, the three of them just sat in ce, looking at each other. While Peter had a look of clear expectation on his face, Tom and Marvin were simply amazed by howfortable the couch was.

    "Okay then, let''s not stall for time. Tom, I invited you here because of all the stories Marvin told about your exploits." After saying his piece, Peter turned siled for a moment. He then cupped his hands together before resting his head on top of them. "Tell me, why do you think you are here right now?"

    As simple as this question is, Tom could tell it was far more critical than Peter let it appear. It wasn''t one of those tricky and stupid questions born in the minds of wicked HR staff and used in job interviews.

    "I guess it''s because you can offer me some kind of job," Tom answered without care before shrugging his arms. "Like,e on, what else could there be to it?" he asked, ncing at Peter to gauge his reaction.

    "And here goes my surprise." Peter released a deep sigh, appearing to be quite disappointed.

    "I told you, he is smarter than he looks," Marvin interjected, sending a wink to Tom.

    "And what is that supposed to mean? If Cleo was straight, I bet I could bed her more times than you saw her wash her teeth!" Tom bounced the ball back, perfectly aware of what buttons he should push to make Marvin agitated.

    "Chill, man," Marvin managed to rein his emotions back before attempting to calm the situation a bit. Sadly, he appeared to change his mind, "well, if you did something like that, then I guess I could call you a brother for more than one reason?" Marving said before falling into deep thought.

    "Either way," Peter interjected when he noticed that the discussion was falling out of the main topic. "What I can offer you, is as you guessed, a job," he announced, forcing Tom to look at him.

    ''I guess it''s time to get serious,'' Tom thought before putting a wide smile on his lips.

    "From how you told it, from how the entire meeting goes, I bet there are some caveats that will make it less than a desirable job for me." Tom brought his eyes to Peter''s face and refused to move them away. "So, just like you said, let''s stop feeding each other bullshit and get to the point. What do you want me to do, and how much will you pay me for doing it?"

    Knowing one''s value was the most important aspect of any kind of job interview. For someone like Tom, earning money was no longer a problem. Even with his main avatar gone, he was more than capable of earning his keep with his secondary one.

    ''Heck, even if you stripped me out of everything and gave me a fresh avatar, I could still easily make it work,'' Tom thought, trying to reinforce his mental support behind the decision he made.

    The decision to go all in.

    "What I will need you to do, is to manage the online hub. Not from the organizational end, but more like, be its face," Peter exined slowly, not bothered by Tom''s relentless gaze in the slightest. "Teach the new yers the tricks, have meals with higher-achieving yers..."

    "In other words," Tom stopped Peter from wasting his time on further examples. "You want someone who started from the ground to act as a middleman between the local staff and local yers of worth," Tom finished Peter''s exnation for him.

    Peter nodded his head while Marvin looked away.

    If Tom were to appear in such a situation just a week ago, he would outright refuse. ''Using my achievements to turn me into a monkey dancing for the show? No way in hell!'' Tom could even picture how the refusal would go.

    But with the reemergence of his memories, the situation changed.

    "I hate politics," Tom stated. "I hate it to the bone, but between working my brain off to grind the levels and exchanging pleasantries while feasting on a high-end food and wine?" Tom asked himself out loud, pretending to take a moment to think about it. Then, with a smile as wide as his face, he leaned his head over his shoulder and asked.

    "Is this enough, or do you need me to officially confirm my wish to take the job?"

 Chapter 29: Negotiations

    Chapter 29: Negotiations

    "It''s okay. But before we will be able to get any work done, you need to get your avatar back and running," Peter announced, resting his back against the backside of the couch.

    "That''s understandable," Tom replied, nodding his head as if in order to ept the terms offered by the other party. "But I would still like to know what is that you want me to do?"

    "First, you need to get your avatar to the level fifty," Peter said, leaning over the coffee table between their seats. "Once that''s done, I will be able to introduce you into the higher floors as an advisor properly," he added, resting himself to the back again.

    "Sure, I should be able to climb there in like..." Tom took a moment to seriously analyze the question, "about a week? Maybe two if the raids will be pretty unlucky," he added, trying toe up with the most precise answer that was possible.

    "Tom, don''t forget the most important part," Marvin advised, patting Tom''s back.

    "That''s right," Tom nodded his head, heeding Marvin''s advice. "What will be the pay of this job?" he asked.

    ''Even if it''s not like I will be in any need of money anytime soon, I can''t just work for free!'' Tom scolded himself. ''It''s those kinds of small mishaps that could lead to my cover being blown!'' he reminded himself of that simple fact before holding up his breath a bit as to appear more anxious.

    "Didn''t I say it already?" Peter asked before releasing a heavy sigh and lowering his head. "First off, you will be given free ess to this floor and all its amenities," Peter started by moving his arm around the enormous room as if trying to sell it to Tom.

    "That''s great, but I could get here in more ways than you can imagine. So let''s talk not about what you can offer, but what I expect instead," Tom smiled as he put down his own offer.

    "I''m all ears," Peter replied before putting a smile on his face. As surprising as it was to see him happy with Tom negotiating the terms of their deal, Tom wasn''t going to back out of it now.

    "First off, the ess you spoke off. It would be a pain to get it from my own sources," Tom started, leaning back on his seat before looking at the ceiling. "Then, I need my private capsule in a private room along with a dorm for the guild I will set up under the name of the Hub''s management," he added before finally lowering his eyes at Peter''s face.

    "That''s..." For a moment, the man hesitated.

    ''So he is not that dumb,'' Tom smiled to his own thoughts, not even bothering to hide it. By allowing Peter to see his smile, he made him aware that this small ploy of his was intentional.

    Getting Tom a private capsule or even an entire wing of the online hub to serve as a dorm, allowing him to create a guild under the patronage of the Online Hub itself, was an entirely different matter altogether.

    "I''m sorry. While other demands are eptable, getting you to use the hub''s brand to create your own guild under it?" Peter said before shaking his head. "That''s the one thing I will have to refuse."

    For a moment, the silence ensued between the parties. While Tom intentionally didn''t speak a word to see how the other two would cope with it, Marvin clearly didn''t want to put himself in the middle of this negotiation.

    "Ah, I guess I can only say I''m sorry," Peter said after roughly four minutes ofplete silence.

    "There is no need for you to be sorry," Tom smiled in response. "Because I ept the offer. I should be the one apologizing for testing you out like this," he added before lowering his head in an official act of an apology.

    "Dang, I didn''t expect this," Peter''s eyes widened a bit when Tom made his statement, "but I''m d we managed to sort things out. But that also means..." he left his sentence open, most likely too worried too utter it.

    "Yeah, I need to go and quickly raise my avatar''s level," Tom finished Peter''s suggestion himself before standing up. "With that said, I don''t think there is any point in staying in this ce. I will be better off just grinding the dungeon, wouldn''t I?" he asked while pushing his hand forward.

    "That''s true," Peter agreed, grabbing Tom''s hand and shaking it energetically. "I hope this will be the beginning of fruitful cooperation. I can already see all kinds of things we could do together!" he added before guiding his quests to the doors.

    "So, what do you think about it all?" Marvin asked as soon as the lift started going down. Even though he wasn''t showing it, Tom could tell he was pretty anxious about the entire situation.

    ''It is not wonder,'' Tom thought to himself. ''For an outsider, our talks didn''t appear as a negotiation but rather as an argument,'' he added in his mind before patting Marvin''s back.

    "Don''t worry about it. Everything went well," Tom said to calm his friend down. "But that also means I won''t be able to get any real meal done now. Tell me," Tom stopped his words for a moment for no apparent reason. "Could you maybe go and get me a nice, big breakfast in like two hours?" he asked. "I will be going to the dungeon right away. The sooner I get to the level fifty, the better!''

 Chapter 30: Private Capsule

    Chapter 30: Private Capsule

    "Huh? Where do you think you are going?" Marvin asked when Tom was about to leave the lift on the ground floor.

    "To the yroom?" Tom answered with a question of his own, stupefied by the question. ''Didn''t we just discuss me going to level up a bit?''

    "Then let me ask again," Marvin smiled as he pulled out a dark keycard from his pocket. "Where do you think you are going?" he asked.

    "So that''s what you mean," Tom smiled, shaking his head to get rid of the small surprise his friend served to him.

    Marvin only nodded his head to Tom before pressing the dark, rectangr piece of metal against the lift''s panel. Once the two touched, the panel turned unnaturally blue as the doors of the lift closed.

    Then, the cubicle started to move downward, proving what Tom suspected for a while already.

    ''So there are basements in the online hubs,'' he thought, watching how the ssy sides of the lift darkened once they entered the area below the ground.

    The lift''s sides didn''t turn transparent even when they arrived at their destination. Rather than that, its doors simply opened, allowing Tom to finally see just what was located in the underground parts of the massive building.

    "Huh?" Tom said, unable to believe the sight before his eyes. "Is that it?" he asked, turning his head to Marvin.

    "And where do you think those guys get all the money to live in luxury like they do?" Marvin asked in return, putting a sour smile on his face. "Without this kind of ce, this online hub would lose its meaning long ago." Marvin shook his head, clearly not bothered by the sight of all sorts of illegal business going on in the rows upon rows of stalls and shops.

    Tom looked around only to notice three shops with drugs disyed out in the open, two whorehouses, and two gunshops. And that was all with a single look.

    "I understand a need for a ck market," Tom spoke openly, following after Marvin, "but this ce is supposed to be secret, isn''t it?" he asked before following up on his question. "If it''s secret, then less for the vendors, where do the customerse from?"

    "Why ask me?" Marving countered. "I''m not interested in drugs, and I can get weapons on my own," he exined, shrugging his arms. "But if you were to ask, I believe there are no small fishes here. Those who can enter the underground levels are several levels above in the chain of distribution."

    "That would make sense," Tom said before nodding his head.

    Thankfully, the disturbing sight of the illegal trade hidden in the middle of the town didn''tst long. Before Tom could get annoyed by all the people calling out to him to offer their illegal wares or services, Marvin finally led him to one of the rooms further back the ce.

    "This will be your office from now on," he stated, pushing the light switch on. As the entire room turned bright, Tom''s heart skipped a beat.

    "This is it?" he asked, unable to believe what he was seeing.

    The entire room was enormous. In the very middle of it, an open casket type of capsule was present.

    ''If I recall, this is really the best type of connecting capsule, isn''t it?'' he thought, noticing thepany brand marked on the side of the item.

    "The canteen is directly connected to the main restaurant, so you won''t need to bother with long breaks to eat. "There is more." Marvin approached the capsule only to pull several thin cords out of it. "If you get those pipes into your system, they will slowly feed you to make longer raids possible," he exined before turning away towards the other end of the room.

    "Toilets, canteen, restroom, even a bath and smoking area?" Tom listed all kinds of convenience that were present in the room. "Wait, is that a gym?" he asked when he noticed a ss door with various kinds of machines behind.

    "Yeah. To a certain degree, you could stay here for as long as you want without evening out to the surface," Marving replied with a smile, clearly proud of how this ce was arranged.

    "Just how did you guys manage to prepare it so quickly?" Tom couldn''t help but ask. "It''s not like you could furnish it like that even if you notified Peter about my arrival when we met each other at my gate." Tom was clearly troubled to understand the situation.

    "Don''t get me wrong, but it wasn''t made just for you," Marving replied with a heavy sigh. "Peter nned to look for someone like you for over a year already. You just happened to appear at the right time," he exined while averting his eyes.

    "Man, there is no need to be worried about something like this," Tom said, patting his friend on the back. "It''s not like I believe to be some kind of snowke, entitled to all the conveniences and entertainment in the world," he added.

    "That''s good to hear," Marvin smiled in response before ncing towards the doors. "Either way, I hope this settles the matter of the food you wanted me to prepare," he said before sending Tom a wink.

    "Do you even need to ask?" Tom asked while pulling his clothes off. While doing so in front of Cleo would be problematic, he had no reason to be shy in the presence of his male friend.

    "Nah, I just wanted to confirm," Marvin replied before turning around on his heel and approaching the doors he nced at a moment before. "With that said, I won''t stop you from entering the game. Make sure to work hard. Peter isn''t known for being patient," he added as he reached for the door''s knob.

    "Don''t worry about it," Tom smiled as he raised his hand to bid his friend farewell. "Worrying about my level raising too slow is thest of the worries he should have right now!"

    ////AN: if we reach 100 PS for this novel in the next week, there will be 2 bonus chapters next week!//////

 Chapter 31: Going deep

    Chapter 31: Going deep

    "Well, what I should do right now..." Tom spoke out loud, pretending to be confused about his choices.

    In reality, though, there wasn''t that much that he could do. With the private capsule just waiting for him to enter it and get into grinding, the perspective of actually doing so was prettypelling.

    With all the snacks and automated system for ordering fresh food from the restaurant above and all kinds of other conveniences, only a madman would have any doubts about what to do now.

    "Well, I guess it''s time for me to leave then," Tom smiled before turning around on his feet and pushing the doors open. He stayed inside only for long enough to be sure that Marvin would leave the hidden basement.

    ''In the end, I wouldn''t want to exin to him why I''m not into private capsules at all,'' Tom thought, closing the doors to his private chamber and locking it.

    But leaving the room wasn''t equal to ignoring the advice of rapidly rising his avatar''s level. Once back to the level above the ground, Tom casually made his way to one of the yrooms before registering himself for one of the standard capsules at the automated counter.

    Only then did the former top yer dare to enter the game.

    "Dang, it was a while," Tom stretched his avatar''s limbs before going through his standard procedure of feeling the entirety of its body. He knew that the avatar wasn''t some kind of technological projection in an artificial world. With his memories now returned, he knew that it was nothing else but a biomechanical tool his brain would synchronize with!

    ''But to think that they would think I would be so naive,'' Tom though while shaking his head. ''Did they think I was unaware that every single personal capsule is monitored?'' he asked himself, unsure whether Peter took him to be naive or just gullible.

    "Well, it''s not like it matters," Tom said while shrugging his shoulders. Now that he connected to the so-called game through the normal capsule, there was no reason for him to bother with the potential surveince anymore.

    "Let''s not waste any time," he said to himself before pushing forward.

    With the three skills that he understood and the trusty spear to top it off, Tom didn''t need to exert almost any strenght to reach the fortieth floor of the dungeon. Yet, despite the ease of conquering those floors, it still took him over two hours to reach further than he did while setting up his skills.

    Because rather than trying to set his avatar''s abilities anew, now he had to actually level up to get another ability.

    "I''m three levels away from the new skill, and from reaching the level they asked me to reach," Tom muttered, plunging his spear into the heart of the humanoid boss of the floor.

    Yet, rather than rejoicing the end of yet another part of his journey, Tom breathed heavily. Given his experience and insane skills, conquering the floors was of no trouble for him.

    The same couldn''t be said about mining the ''data'' stones from the walls of each of the boss rooms.

    In fact, this time-consuming activity towards which Tom had no special tools or predisposition was the reason why it took him so long to reach the same level as before.

    With no other tools at his hand, Tom had no other way but to use his spear to chip away at the stone bricks.

    "Fuck this thing," Tom uttered when the first out of the seven spawned data stones finally came loose. He grabbed it and then pulled it out.

    "Just getting a single one is already harder than fighting the boss," Tomined, yet there was no one there to hear it.

    This problematic part was also the reason why Tom''s previous main avatar had a skill allowing for easier mining of those stones.

    ''From what I heard, pickaxes belong to the most expensive category of tools on the auctions. Now I see why,'' Tom thought, starting to work on the second stone.

    On the floors forty and above, there was no longer grade two stones appearing. Given his current level, there was no reason to pick them at all, as it simply wasn''t worth the time needed to mine them. Yet, being on the forty floors, Tom was now faced with stones of third grade only, forcing him to spend a considerable amount of time to mine them all.

    By the time Tom reached the forty-seventh floor, one equal to the current level of his avatar, the dungeon''s difficulty had started to spike up. While this phenomenon has yet to be explored and exined, it wasmon knowledge that levels higher than the level of one''s avatar would turn harder than they should be.

    It was as if some hidden force was stopping yers from farming the levels above their own. Most of the yers believed it was a stop-gap measure implemented to prevent people from farming the high-grade stones and quickly raising their levels.

    ''But if this dungeon isn''t a game... Then just how does this happen? Some limitation enforced on the avatars by its creator?'' Tom asked himself, puzzled by the problem.

    In the end, it was one of the many questions Tom had no hopes of answering. It simply lingered in his mind as he continued to delve deeper and deeper into the dungeon, making short work of the monsters and wasting more time than he wished on mining the stones.

    "So that''s it," Tom muttered once reaching the boss of the forty-seventh floor. Given how the floor itself corresponded to the level of his avatar and the boss had the strenght of the monsters one level lower, theing fight would no longer be as easy.

    "I need to figure out just what the hell this origin mage skill is," Tom muttered while gripping his spear harder and pushing forward. "If I don''t do that soon, who knows if I will be able to reach level fifty anytime soon!"

 Chapter 32: Conversing with a monster

    Chapter 32: Conversing with a monster

    "Let''s get this over with!" Tom shouted to encourage himself as he moved forward. But, as soon as he stepped out of the corridor, the air around him changed.

    "Just look how ugly you are," Tom said, stopping as soon as the boss monster ahead noticed him. For some reason, he could stand at the end of the corridor for hours without the boss noticing him, but as soon as he stepped inside, the monster''s attention would be drawn to him.

    "Just look at yourself," the monster replied, raising its perfectly human-looking body. Once fully on its feet, the only thing that made the boss any different from an actual human or an avatar was its height.

    The boss monster of the forty-seventh floor was as high as three adults standing on top of each other''s heads.

    ''Is that it?'' Tom thought, surprised to the end of his wits. ''How is its height going to threaten me? Heck, even thest monster had some ws, and others had some weapons! What is this thing going to do? Sit on me?'' he thought, puzzled beyond recognition.

    "You little..." the monster spoke up, clearly angered for some reason.

    "Huh? Can you read my mind or something?" Tom asked while leisurely resting his weight against his spear. With its de pushed into the stone floor of the room, his weapon could serve as a perfect support for a standing person.

    "Your face tells it all," the monster replied before stretching its arms forward. "Well, if you underestimate me, it will only make things easier," it added before sping its hands and slowly spreading them apart.

    Only for a line of pulsating fire to appear between its palms.

    "So you are using magic to fight!" Tom shouted in surprise as if he just discovered some kind of naturalw that would allow him to make billions on just the patent rights alone.

    "It would take an idiot not to realize it. What are you so happy about?" The monster asked, even going as far as to put its spell on hold rather than casting it right away.

    ''Is it interested in the conversation or something?'' Tom thought, trying to y the entire situation in a cool way.

    While it wasn''t impossible to meet with an intelligent monster, this kind of encounter was pretty rare. Outside of the strongest bosses at the very bottom of each of the dungeons, meeting an intelligent monster often meant two things.

    First, a boss monster of this kind would often leave some kind of item behind. Of course, it would be the weapon the boss used most of the time, but there were some rare instances when a skill tome would be left behind after the fight.

    Secondly, every intelligent monster was believed to be at least two to five times as strong as a normal monster of a given level!

    In other words, despite itsckluster appearance, the humanoid monster that Tom now had to face was far stronger than it should be.

    ''It wouldn''t be a bad idea to go and reset the dungeon,'' Tom thought while making sure his spear coulde out of the floor with a single pull.

    For a moment, he seriously considered the option of retreating.

    ''But I don''t really have the time to do all those floors all over again!'' Tomined in his thoughts, weighing the pros and cons of every possible decision he could take right now.

    "Hey, I know we are supposed to fight, but can you answer some of my questions?" Tom spoke up, blessing his earlier decision not to use the private capsule.

    Whether the monster would agree to his request or not, it would be pretty dangerous to engage in talks with it if anyone were to learn about such fact.

    "Huh?" the humanoid monster shook in surprise, almost losing control over the string of fire dancing between its palms. "And what kind of questions could that be?"

    "Well, the first one is obvious," Tom said as he put a wide smile on his face. "I don''t really want to fight with someone as strong as you, so how about you just let me pass?"

    As daring as this question was, it was the most important one. Given how potentially strong this boss was, Tom wasn''t happy to risk his only remaining avatar fighting it.

    "Are you out of your... No, nevermind," the monster took Tom by surprise once again by changing its mind mid-sentence. "That won''t do. Also, I''m quite interested in how strong you are. This spear of yours... It''s giving me some strange vibes. How about you tell me about it in exchange for me answering another question of yours?"

    ''What?!'' Tom froze in shock. ''Is it actually interested in conversing?'' he asked himself, trying to make any sense of the situation.

    ''Fuck, just what the hell is wrong with me,'' Tom''s mindset suddenly changed. ''I allowed the situation to sweep me along with it,'' he admitted to himself as his face darkened.

    "This is a thunder-releasing spear. If the attack is executed perfectly, it will release an electric attack that will deal massive damage to the target," Tom exined while forming a n in his head.

    "Oh, and how did you get your hands on it?" the monster added another question. But before Tom could answer, it raised both of its arms while still keeping the fire string dancing between his hands. "I''m sorry, now it''s your turn."

    "The question I will ask now will be myst," Tom announced as he pulled out the spear from the floor and stood ready for any iing attack. "What will happen if someone manages to reach the bottom floor of the dungeon? I mean, reach it and defeat the guardian that protects it?"

    Tom''s question wasn''t random. This information had a price tag attached that could easily give one a ride to the top hundred richest people on the. But Tom wasn''t interested in the mary benefits of the answer.

    After the insanity he encountered back in the dungeon managed by the other Online Hub, he already formed a guess as to what awaited people at the end of each dungeon.

    "I''m sorry, but this is a question you will need to find the answer yourself," the monster replied while shaking its head in regret. "I can''t tell you the reasons, but I would die for real if I dared to cross that man''s orders," it added after a moment. But then, rather than going in with its attack, the monster raised its head and looked at Tom. "I refused to answer your question, so how about you ask another one?"

    ''What the hell,'' Tom cursed in his thoughts. He even had to fight off the desire to just rush at the monster for betraying his expectations. ''This is too good of an opportunity to just let it go to waste because of my anger,'' he scolded himself before spitting on the ground and looking up at the monster''s handsome face.

    "Tell me then, what does it mean to be an origin mage?"

 Chapter 33: Lesson from the monster-sage

    Chapter 33: Lesson from the monster-sage

    "Origin mage?" The humanoid monster repeated Tom''s words as if unsure whether it heard them correctly. "Don''t tell me, you are one?" he added a question when Tom''s expression ascertained it that he actually heard him right.

    "Yup," Tom replied while shrugging his arms. "So? What does it mean to be one?" he asked again while making sure that the entrance to the corridor was a single step behind him.

    ''Judging from its reaction, there is something important about this spell or ss or whatever,'' Tom thought, inspecting everyst detail of the monster''s facial expression.

    "Well... While I know the answer, our fight could hardly be called a fight if I were to exin it to you," the monster replied while openly hesitating. "Hey, is the offer of just letting you go through still valid?" it asked after just a slight moment of thought.

    "As long as it will apply both to the current passage and to the moment when I will be going back, then sure," Tom replied without even a moment of thought.

    ''While there is a huge chance killing it would give me another skill from the tome that would drop out of it,'' Tom thought, fighting an inner battle to decide what he should do. ''No, unless this skill is some kind of overpowered shit, I don''t stand a chance against this monster,'' he shook his head before looking up at the monster''s face.

    "Well, we have a deal then?" the monster asked as it wobbled weakly on its feet.

    "Yeah, deal." Tom nodded his head while trying to not show just how shaken he was.

    ''To think that there would be monsters capable of negotiating such a deal.'' The current situation went against almost everything that Tom believed to know about Dungeons Online. While he was aware it wasn''t some kind of silly game, he still had a lot of experiences traversing through the dungeon.

    And right now, this monster was willing to just look away as he would pass through. This fact alone stood in opposition to everything that Tom learned about the dungeons by touring them!

    "Okay then, I guess I should hold up my part of the deal first," the monster said before clearing its throat with a cough and sitting on the stone floor. "An origin mage is someone capable of using origin magic. In other words, by being an origin mage, you are the absolute ruler of all the origin magic," the monster exined. It was clearly trying to keep its words as simple as possible.

    "You do realize how little does it help?" Tom asked, slightly annoyed by the faulty exnation. ''If that''s all, then I could figure it out all on my own just from the name of the skill!'' heined in his thoughts.

    But he didn''t allow the inner state of his mind to show up on his face.

    "Can you hear the rest of my exnation before jumping to conclusions?" the monster asked sharply, dissatisfied with Tom rushing things.

    "Sure, go on," the young man answered, once again resting his back against the wood of his spear.

    "Origin magic refers to the basic magic. I won''t exin the entire theorem of magic to you as I doubt you would understand it or be happy with that in the first ce. Let me put it in different words then," the monster announced before rubbing its chin.

    "You can consider every magic spell to be a construct made from basic building blocks," the monster started its exnation once again. "A firestorm is created bybining a storm and fire, or rather, ze building blocks. But both storm and ze consist of their own building blocks, which are also abination of even simpler spells," the monster continued.

    ''Doesn''t it have a sort of sage aura to itself?'' Tom observed the changes in the air around the monster as it continued its exnations.

    "At the very bottom of the list, there is the origin magic. In essence, every kind of magic spell that exists is formed by a sufficientlyplicated structure made out of the origin spells," the massive monster exined.

    Yet as it rubbed its chin, Tom''s vision wavered for a bit. For a moment, the monster''s entire body appeared topress and turn into the picture of how anyone would picture an old sage. Rather than rubbing its chin, it was brushing through its long, white beard. Rather than crudely squatting on the floor, the sage sat in a lotus position.

    But this image onlysted for the shortest of the moments.

    "That should summarize the basics. And I believe you should understand what mage of origin is, now," the sage-like monster finished its exnation before raising its eyes on Tom. "Do my words satisfy your curiosity?" it asked.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head before moving his back away from his spear and pulling the weapon out. But rather than moving forward to delve deeper into the dungeon, he actually bowed to the monster in the best salute he could imagine.

    "This student greets the teacher and thanks for the lesson." Tom''s words weren''t ridicule. On the contrary, he was genuinely thankful for the help. And the strange sage-like aura of the monster, even though it only appeared for a fleeting moment, was still more than enough topel him to act humbly.

    "You truly are something else," the monster smiled before standing up and moving to the far end of the room. "It''s a pity... Or nevermind," it smiled after interrupting its own sentence. "Let me leave you with onest piece of advice, just because I grew to like you," the monster announced as it approached the wall of the room.

    Then, as if it was the most natural thing to do, it mmed its massive fist into the wall. It then pulled its hand back, holding the shiny ''data'' stone in its fingers. Then, a move too fast for Tom to noticeter, the ''data'' stone went flying only tond at the young man''s feet.

    "Try dposing this mana stone with your ability. I believe it should serve as thest straw that holds you from exploring the dungeons in the way that man intended."

 Chapter 34: Dissolving the stone

    Chapter 34: Dissolving the stone

    "That man? What man?" Tom instantly pressed the issue as soon as he heard something that piqued his interest.

    "I''m sorry, but you lost your chance to ask this question," the monster shook its massive head. "I don''t have any other questions for you, so unless you want to fight, either go forward or just go away." The sage-like monster swatted the air with its massive hands, clearly signaling it had no intention of answering Tom''s inquiry.

    "Well, don''t mind if I do," Tom said while pulling out his spear from the floor and taking two steps back. With that, he was back in the corridor where the boss monster shouldn''t be able to hurt his avatar anymore.

    But rather than trusting in his experiences that constantly proved to not be as urate as he expected them to be, Tom continued to retreat all the way to the previous floor. Only there did he dare to look at the stone he was offered before sitting down on the ground and cing it before his avatar.

    "It''s good that I know what I should do now and all..." Tom muttered under his nose while looking at the stone in front of him. "But just how the heck am I supposed to use my origin magic on it?"

    That was the one tricky part about his Origin Mage skill. While he knew its name and, to a degree, its usability, he had no idea how he should invoke it.

    Whenpared to the skills of his former avatar, Tom''s current abilities required far more manual awareness. However, with skills like Casino and Everze, Tom could simply keep them active in his fights and receive their bonuses as he went.

    "Just what am I missing there," he asked while standing up and starting to walk in circles around the stone. Sadly, the cold walls of the corridor didn''t offer him any answers.

    "Fuck!" Tom shouted when his vision wavered by a tiny bit. This was the first signal of his real body reaching its limits outside of the game. Which in turn meant that his time inside the dungeon was quickly running out.

    ''Wait, let''s start from the beginning,'' Tom suddenly thought about something. Then, probed by the idea, he grabbed his spear and stood in battle-stance.

    "Firstes the Bloody spear," he spoke out the name of his most basic skill first as he poked the stone with the tip of his spear.

    But nothing happened.

    "It''s okay, just keep going," Tom said to himself to fight off the wave of disappointment. "Let''s try chaining the two of them together," he whispered before shouting, "Bloody spear! Spear mage!" and throwing his weapon forward.

    But nothing happened.

    "How about three of them?" Tom said in a determined voice before adding the energymancer skill to hisbo. With the energy coating his entire spear, his attack finally had some effects on the stone.

    That is if leaving a small cut on one of its sides could be called an effect.

    "I might as well go all in now, don''t I?" Tom said to himself before taking a step back. Unfortunately, with the three previous attacks, he came too close to the stone to actually hit it again.

    "Focus," Tom whispered, toning down all the unnecessary thoughts in his mind. In theory, the fact that he was using his avatar should make it absolutely unnecessary to focus at all. After all, it was supposed to be nothing more but a simple game of agility and wit.

    But Tom already saw what appeared to be breakingmon sense for more than one asion already. This kind of thinking was no longer something he was willing to endorse.

    Tom closed his eyes and tightened the grasp over the wood of his spear. Then, his focus reached the level at which sparks of electricity started to jump over his entire weapon. Not only did those sparks prickle his hands, but, surprisingly enough, they made his fingers tighten even further.

    ''It''s as if the weapon itself was making sure I won''t let it go,'' he thought when noticing this peculiar situation. But rather than trying to analyze the case any further, he pushed those thoughts aside for the sake of an absolute focus.

    And then it clicked.

    All the elements fell into their respective ces.

    Tom didn''t attack consciously. It was as if the body of his avatar followed some kind of weird path. His right leg kicked against the ground, elevating him to the point where the fingers of his left foot just barely kept contact with the environment.

    His left hand reached forward as if trying to grab something, while his right arm moved to the back.

    For a moment, he appeared to freeze in this position, where everyst muscle and fiber of his body kept the eagle position, tense to its limit.

    Then, as if the muscles of his avatar snapped, he swung his right arm forward and downward, pushing the de of his spear right against the ''data'' stone.

    Once the de made contact with the stone, a strange wave went through Tom''s avatar. It felt as if everyst puzzlended in its predetermined piece.

    His spear discharged the lightning it had in itself and the power that Tom unconsciously fed it with his energymancer skill. But just when this enchanted attack was about to pry into the stone, it changed.

    Everything happened too fast for Tom to take notice of it. But the feeling of it still rung within his soul, as if etching itself into who he was.

    At this particr moment, all the puzzle pieces in this attack appeared as an borate water fountain,plicated yet beautiful. But once the power finally discharged, it was as relentless and straightforward as the ocean''s wave.

    It seemed as if all the energy wasted on making the attack borate somehow dissolved and added to the raw strenght of its power.

    The stone cracked. And then, as if sucking back all the energy that it infused into the stone a moment ago, Tom''s spear channeled the energy that exploded outwards from the stone back into Tom''s avatar.

    It was the bloody spear skill at its pinnacle. Without any need to transform the damage into lifeforce, it simply consumed the raw power that the stone fed it with.

    The entire event appeared to stretch for several minutes in Tom''s mind while only taking as little as a single second in reality. But when the young man came to be from his focused state, his spear was vibrating, brimming with more energy than it could handle. But as if it wasn''t enough, his vision was blocked by interface messages.

    Messages that Tom saw for the very first time in his long experience as a veteran Dungeons Online yer.

 Chapter 35: Questions in the dungeon

    Chapter 35: Questions in the dungeon

    "That single stone brought me two levels up?" Tom stared with his eyes wide-open at the consecutive notifications. Given how he instantly recognized their form, it was the first thing that drew his attention.

    ''It shouldn''t be... Or wait, why do I still think like that?'' Tom scolded himself in his thoughts before closing his eyes and tightening his first. Then, he slowly rxed his body, allowing the feeling of the strenght to diffuse through his muscles.

    ''Not only my levels are higher, the amount of energy in the avatar... Fuck!'' Tom suddenly opened his eyes before pushing all the other notifications aside. Right now, they were only blocking his view, and he had no time to waste on reading them.

    "Faster," Tom whispered as soon as he grabbed his spear and rushed forward. While it was only a feeling, he was long past the point where he would doubt those innate worries.

    After all, what humans considered a sixth sense, was nothing else but the information gathered by their senses yet not recorded by their mind. In other words, right now, he was pushed by the animalistic instinct forward.

    Pushed into finding a situation that he could use to exin his rapid rise of levels.

    Tom only took a minute to return to the forty-seventh floor and another one to reach the boss room. Even though the outline of this dungeon''s corridors was different from what he was used to, in a state of near-panic, he just knew which turn to take to reach his destination.

    "Oh? You are back already?" the sage-monster noticed Tom even before his avatar crossed the threshold of the boss-room. ''A point to remember,'' Tom noted before nodding his head and grinning at the monster.

    "You duped me, you know this," he threw his words, passing by the monster without a single care. A momentter, he was already standing before the doors to the lower level.

    "Consider this a kick in yourzy butt," the monster smiled in response, not showing any signs of hostility. It appeared as it really was going to abide by the deal it made with Tom earlier.

    Tom stopped in his tracks, right as he was about to get to the lower level. He turned his head around and looked at the monster.

    "I don''t know who you are, but I can tell this isn''t your true body here," Tom suddenly announced, allowing his guess alone to guide his words. "One day, I will find you. And I will... maybe not kill you, but definitely pay you back for this!" he almost gave way to the desire to say the famous quote from one of the ssic movies from the distant past. Tom only managed to change it to something more diplomatic at thest possible moment.

    "Hehehe," the monster chuckled as it opened its lips in a wide smile. "Good luck," it added as Tom plunged into the lower level.

    "What the heck?" Tom muttered under his nose when he realized what the monster just said. "Was it a coincidence... or?" he thought for a moment before the monsters ahead forced him to focus on his current situation rather than analyzing everyst word uttered by the monster.

    ''Who knows, maybe it can read my thoughts to a degree? Or maybe it was a random reaction?'' Tom thought before ditching all those thoughts into the back of his mind and tightening his grip over his spear.

    The monsters ahead were no longer humanoid. This time, they appeared to be something like a mix between overgrown boar and panter. Its body looked so heavy that it was a wonder why each of its steps didn''t crush the stone floor underneath it.

    Tom didn''t need any preparations before fighting the monster off. As if his previous attack at the stone burned out some kind of circuit in his flesh, his body knew exactly what to do.

    But this time, Tom added motion to his attack. After three steps to elerate, Tom tensed his muscles once again, putting his body in the same eagle position as before. He shot his leading hand to the back before freezing in the stance for a moment, allowing his momentum to carry him forward.

    ''Dang, it''s not that easy,'' he thought just before his body snapped and curled up, sending his right hand and the spear he held in it forward. With motion added to thebo, even the tiniest unevenness of the floor made it super easy to trip, given how only his toes kept contact with the floor.

    "ROA..." the monster couldn''t even finish its cry when Tom''s spear plunged right into its skull. The bones of the monster''s head didn''t pose any threat to the weapon. As long as Tom''s senses were included, his right hand didn''t slow down even a little when his spear plunged deeply into the monster''s body before discharging the energy inside its flesh.

    Stter.

    The beast bloated up as if someone inted it from within before it suddenly stood in mes and exploded.

    But then, something strange happened.

    Just like when Tom used hisbo against the stone, only a small portion of the monster''s insides managed to stter on his avatar. Then, midway through the explosion, the bloody mess that used to be a monster suddenly stopped its outward momentum, as if some kind of circr barrier contained it.

    And then, it all condensed into a bright point at the tip of Tom''s spear before disappearing altogether. But it would be too easy for the young man if that was it. Before he could react, his entire spear shone in bright light, only for a wave of refreshing energy to surge through the wood of the spear right into Tom''s hand and then the rest of his body.

    "Fuck," Tom muttered as he recovered his position. He broke his momentum by bracing his legs against the ground. He then raised his hand to its avatar''s head and wiped the blood that sttered all over it.

    "Another level up?" Tom muttered with his anxiety growing even greater when a new notification popped up in his view. Just like that, he reached the level he was supposed to reach during this trip.

    The problem was, he did so while in the damned middle of the dungeon, rather than once cashing out all the stones he gathered in it!

    "Thisbo is too dangerous," he muttered, not daring to take another step deeper into the dungeon. ''But that begs the question if leveling up is actually that easy...'' Tom thought before looking up as if the corridor''s ceiling held some answers for him. ''Then where did all that energy required to level up go when others continued to kill the monsters?''

 Chapter 36: Desperate measures

    Chapter 36: Desperate measures

    "So annoying," Tom muttered when yet another boar-like monster charged at him. Watching how the monster rushed forward, Tom knelt on one knee and locked the bottom of his spear against the floor. ''Just like in the old days,'' he thought, recalling the few memories he had of his father while lowering his spear down.

    Tom angled his spear a split of a second before to monster charged into its range. As a result, it had no chance at all of avoiding the de.

    ''How stupid,'' Tom thought, watching how the monster impaled itself on his weapon. Yet, even when more than half of the spear''s length got stuck in its flesh, it continued to wrestle. Little to say, its attempts at freeing itself were futile.

    "Let me put you to rest," Tom said while raising back up to his feet and pulling the spear along. But rather than moving it around in the monster to make it bleed out faster, he simply infused a bit of energy into the weapon before pulling it out in a single move.

    ''So it works like that as well,'' Tom thought about his energymancer ability when he recovered his weapon. Looking up to the monster, he saw it struggling on its feet for a short moment before falling on its side and ceasing to move. ''Well, it''s good to learn something new, but I don''t really have time for that,'' he added in his thoughts before violently shaking the spear to get rid of the blood that stuck to it.

    Tom''s current situation was quite peculiar. With his unexpected level-ups, he could easily push for the deeper parts of the dungeons.

    ''That fucker,'' Tom thought, recalling the talk he had with that strange monster before. Unfortunately, the advice that this monster gave turned out to be spot-on. But as great as it was to learn something more about the ''game,'' Tom was now stuck without any idea how he was supposed to justify his sudden rise of levels.

    ''Even if they can''t observe what I do while I''m using the standard capsule, they are surely capable of checking my results.'' Tom tightened his fists in annoyance. ''And now I''m stuck trying to figure out how I can hide my level!''

    This was the real problem for Tom. If not for his grand scheme, he could just use this discovery to earn more money than he could imagine. After all, spreading the knowledge about more efficient leveling was worth an immeasurable amount of money!

    But doing so would draw way too much attention to him. The attention that could prove lethal to the true reason behind his action.

    "Another one?" Tom muttered when his ears picked up the simr noise in the distance. Yet, as great as it was to know about the monster''s presence in advance, the long corridors of the dungeon could easily falsify both the direction and the distance to it.

    Soon, Tom didn''t need to rely on his ears alone. The monster he heard before appeared beyond the corner he just took. But sadly, this wasn''t a single monster.

    ''What the hell,'' Tom thought, watching at what wasn''t a single monster but an entire herd of them. ''Do theye in packs now?'' he asked himself before retreating back behind the corner.

    ''Now, that''s a problem.'' Tom rested his back against the wall before staring at the tip of his spear. ''I could easily take them all down, but that would mean risking another level-up,'' he thought, recalling what happened when he defeated the monster with his true strenght thest time.

    ''Who could''ve known that getting stronger would have such disastrous effects,'' he thought, recalling one of the few notifications he ditched to the side earlier.

    "Spear Combinator - increases the effectiveness of all the skills used inbination." Tom obtained this skill when he reached the new level threshold. While by itself it was already a great ability, there was actually more to it.

    "Spear Combinator EX:

    - Improves spearmanship

    - Add luck factor to firing offbination effect in basic attacks."

    It wasn''t the first time Tom encountered the so-called ''EX'' skill. The knowledge about this special type of ability was quitemon in the yer wiki of the game.

    But the main reason why Tom was so concerned about it was the passive chance of firing off hisbination with normal attacks. And given how hisbination attack could quickly raise his avatar''s level even further, it was a risk Tom didn''t want to take.

    ''I don''t see any other way to go about it,'' Tom thought, gritting his teeth. But rather than chasing into the group of monsters and making short work of them with his currently overpowered set of skills, he took a step back instead.

    "There is no point risking raising my level even further," Tom said out loud for the sake of convincing himself. He took a few breaths to let this truth sink in before taking a full turn around and heading back for the entry gate of the dungeon''s level.

    Thanks to a small habit of his, he had no troubles returning. Yet, it didn''t make him feel special at all. After all, mapping out one''s path in the dungeon was the first manual ability anyone would learn once getting lost in the dungeon for the first time.

    And for Tom, it was an experience he went through several years ago.

    "You are back so quickly?" The sage-like monster asked as soon as Tom emerged back into its room.

    ''It feels strange to see a monster when going back,'' Tom thought before shrugging his shoulders. Then, he picked up the only magical item that every avatar had attached since its creation before throwing it towards the monster.

    "I don''t know why you are guarding those stones, but I believe it makes them a valuablemodity to you," he spoke up, prying his small sack open.

    As if an avnche, all the ''data'' stones that Tom collected so far, poured out of the sack. The entire haul of stones from nearly fifty floors created a huge pile directly on the floor, right under the nose of the intelligent monster.

    "What do you think you are doing?" The monster asked, rather puzzled than startled.

    "I want to buy another question." Tom looked the monster straight into its massive eyes. "How do I lower my level?"

 Chapter 37: Phonecalls

    Chapter 37: Phonecalls

    For Tom, returning from the dungeon was always the most rxing part of the experience of the game. With all monsters on the way defeated long ago, nothing was stopping him from cashing out his spoils and enjoying the effects of his hard work. Be it the increased level of his avatar or the raw money he could earn from the ''data'' stones.

    Yet, this time was different. This time, it was the return that Tom was most stressed about.

    "Would you like to cash out, or would you prefer to level up your avatar?" the mechanic voice of the AI asked when Tom approached the counter in the lobby.

    "Just log me out today," he said in a surly tone. Even if the AI couldn''t care less about the way he spoke, the operators that would potentially saw the entire scene would definitely pay attention to details like that.

    "Right away, sir," the AI voice sounded before Tom''s entire vision fluttered. The entire lobby disappeared, only to be reced by the sight of the standard capsule''s cover.

    The relief that Tom felt when the liquid started to drain away was one of the greatest he experienced in his entire life. With his consciousness back in real world, he was no longer burdened with the technique that this strange, sage-like monster taught him.

    "How could you fake your strenght?" Tom recalled the question the monster asked when he poured all the mana stones in its face.

    "Yes, that''s exactly what I need." The young man didn''t falter in the face of the question. After all, that''s exactly what he asked about.

    "And why would I tell you that?" The monster countered, looking at Tom with a weird grin.

    "Because a certain girl at the bottom of the other dungeon brought back my memories. Because the same girl invited me to reach the bottom of the dungeon with my real flesh. Because," Tom stopped his lips from moving before turning them into a wicked smile, "because I believe it is in your own interest to not push me in a situation when my... friends would ask too many questions," Tom exined his stance.

    To be fair, his words were nothing more but a gamble. ''I don''t even know if that''s really what that monstrosity back in the city wanted,'' Tom thought, lightly tightening his fists.

    A silence ensued after Tom''s question. For a short moment, which in Tom''s perception stretched to infinity, the monster refused to say a word.

    Then, with a deep sigh, it lowered its massive head on the palm of its head before shaking it to the sides.

    "Fine. In order to rein your strenght, you need to understand what the strenght really is," it started its exnation as it sat down cross-legged directly on the floor.

    ''It felt as if it was actually some sort of sage,'' Tom thought when the liquid fully drained out of his capsule, announcing the end to his leisure time.

    ''I would kill to get some time to rest.'' Tom tensed and rxed his body in session to drive away those vile thoughts. No matter how tired he was, no matter how much he wanted to just take his time to sort out all the new knowledge he obtained, he had no time for that.

    With no reason at all to stay in the capsule, Tom pulled himself out of it. ''ording to that monster, one''s power is all just a state of mind. I hope it will really work that way,'' he thought. After all, if the technique he learned only worked while he was in control of the avatar, his ruse would be exposed the moment he disconnected from the ''game''.

    Yet, before Tom could even finish dressing back up, a small alert came up on the screen beside the capsule.

    "What now," he muttered in annoyance, pressing the button and pulling his phone out of the safe shelf where he hid it previously.

    "Tom speaking," he said to the phone after confirming that the number calling wasn''t in his dialing list.

    "Hey, it''s udia again." Tom tightened his hand over his phone when he heard the melodic voice of the girl. "How was it going on your end? Any troubles adjusting to your new-old ce?" the girl inquired.

    "I''m sorry, but this isn''t really the best moment for me to talk," Tom attempted to cut the talk short, given how he was still in the middle of the yroom. Surrounded by countless rows of capsules and many people yet to log in or already logged out, he wasn''tfortable talking freely.

    "Thest time we talked, you didn''t have time either!" udia protested. While it was just a voice call, Tom could imagine her hitting her delicate hand against something in frustration.

    "I''m in the middle of the yroom right now. You should understand..." Tom stopped his exnation in the middle when his phone vibrated. One look to the screen was enough for the blood to freeze in his veins. "udia, I''m really sorry, but I have another call. Let''s catch up a bitter!" he said to the phone before ending the call and epting the new one.

    "Tom, you need to get your ass over here right now," Cleo''s voice sounded in Tom''s phone. While it appeared to be calm, the situation had to be really dire for her to use wording like this."

    "Where do I need to be?" Tom didn''t waste his precious time trying to dig out more details of the situation. If Cleo said he had to hurry up, then nothing in the entire world could stop him from rushing with all his might.

 Chapter 38: Marvins accident

    Chapter 38: Marvin''s ident

    Tom ditched his beloved motorbike in the first, random spot on the parking lot that he could find before rushing towards the hospital doors.

    "Marvin Suera, where is he?" he shouted as soon as he got to the hospital''s reception.

    "Excuse me, sir, but first, do not shout in the hospital," the clerk behind the counter attempted to calm Tom down. Yet, just like in many scenarios like that, he only managed to infuriate him even more.

    "Listen here, you little shit. You either tell me where he is at, or I will burn this fucking ce to the ground," Tom spoke in a cold and strangely calm voice.

    "I''m going to call the security if you do not leave..." the clerk attempted to threaten Tom but stopped mid-sentence. Then, with his eyes glued to the screen in front of him, cleverly hidden from anyone on the other side of the counter, his attitude suddenly turned meek.

    "Mister Tom Hubrian?" He asked, only to instantly continue speaking. "Forgive me my insolence. I wasn''t aware who I was speaking with," he spoke before furiously tapping into the keyboard. "Your friend is held at the room fifty ''a''. It''s right on the left past the staircase," the clerk was so scared by his earlier attitude that he even went as far as to stand up and point Tom to the stairs.

    "Good choice," Tom''s replied with the same, monotone voice before leaving the counter and rushing for the stairs.

    ''Hang on, brother,'' he thought, unaware of his true self seeping through his usual mask. His guts were curling in his insides as if some kind of parasite was eating him away.

    Tom didn''t even realize when he climbed the stairs. In his half-conscious state propelled by worry, his mind was too preupied with his dear friend''s wellbeing to bother with such minute details.

    "It''s here," Tom suddenly stopped when he reached the doors. Given how small the ce was, it would be too much of a needless luxury for the hospital to invest in the ss doors. As such, Tom wasn''t any wiser about awaited him on the other side of the doors.

    For a long moment, Tom just stood before those doors. The simple act of pushing them open was bound to a great reveal, one that Tom wasn''t sure he was ready for.

    ''Fuck it, nothing good wille from just standing here'' Tom finally forced himself to ce his hand on the door''s knob. Then, he pushed the doors open.

    "Yo," Marvin smiled at his friend from the hospital bed. He even went as far as to raise his hand in greeting. On the side of his bed, Cleo sat on some chair while holding her brother''s hand. Her usual, cheeky attitude was nowhere to be found, reced by the teary expression on her face.

    "Oh God," Tom said before resting his back against the doors he closed behind himself. "Cleo..." his voice turned dark when he looked towards the girl.

    "I''m sorry..." Cleo averted her eyes as a small blush appeared on her cheeks. "I kinda panicked and wasn''t in my right mind," she exined herself before lowering her head. "I really am sorry. But if you were to see his state before the doctors cleaned him up..." she cut her words, pursing her lips instead of exining what happened.

    "Marvin, are you okay? What happened?" Tom took his time before calming himself enough to be able to ask this question.

    "Nothing much," Marvin said while gently shaking his arms, only for a grimace of pain to resurface on his face. "My bike malfunctioned, and I had a..." he took a nce at Cleo sitting right beside him before finishing, "a little ident because of that."

    "An ident, you say," Tom mirrored his friend''s words while falling in deep thought. ''Could it be a message to me? Could it be that someone messed with his bike?'' he thought, instantly trying to connect the event with his own situation.

    "Malfunctioned? Don''t even joke like that," Cleo muttered in a low voice, one that was far more threatening than a shout. "Thepany we bought them from imed they are faultless," she ground her teeth against each other before raising her eyes at Tom. "Tell me, is there some kind of great conspiracy going on that we don''t know about, or should I mobilize our people to deal with thatpany?" she asked, clearly intending to follow up on her words.

    "Cleo..." Marvin attempted to intervene. It was clearly not the first time he heard this question, yet it made him cringe all the more.

    "You shut your crap!" Cleo shouted, smashing her fist into the best, right beside where Marvin''s bandaged hand was. "Tom," she moved her eyes back at their friend, "tell me!"

    "I don''t know," Tom shook his head, troubled by the situation. ''A conspiracy? If I were to tell them about it, they would believe me either way...'' he thought before noticing a single, peculiar point that disqualified such theory.

    "Marvin, when did the ident happen? Or rather, when was thest time that you left your bike unattended?" Tom asked, unwilling to just go and lie to his friends that there was no conspiracy whatsoever.

    "Huh?" Marvin looked at Tom with surprise all over his face before the light in his eyes darkened. "Tom, don''t tell me..."

    "Just answer the goddamn question," Cleo interrupted her brother once again, not surprised by Tom''s suspicious question at all.

    ''Does she know?'' Tom appeared the be the most surprised out of the three of them. While he could foresee Marvin''s reaction, theck of it from Cleo was clearly worrying. ''Or maybe she is just too worried about Marvin to notice what I just implied?'' he asked himself, yet there was no one to give him the answer.

    "Thest time I left it unattended was when..." Marving started speaking, only to suddenly raise his eyes at Tom. "It was when I brought you to the Online Hub," he said, staring at his friend intensely.

    "It''s not a conspiracy, then," Tom announced without even a shred of hesitation.

    ''It can''t have anything to do with my strange level up nor my discussion with that monster,'' he thought. ''The timelines just don''t match for that, he added in his thoughts.

    "Tom..." Cleo suddenly spoke up. While it wasn''t strange or surprising for her to speak during an open discussion like that, her weird tone was the unexpected factor. "Leaving Marvin''s ident aside for a moment, I need you to listen to me for a moment," she announced as she stood up.

    Cleo then approached Tom and sent a harsh p to his face.

    "Huh?" Tom stared at the girl with surprise, not even bothering to avoid the attack. He was more than aware that attempting to dodge would only result in real painter on.

    "I know that you still can''t believe that your father just went missing," Cleo suddenly said. "But all of his people looked into this matter. All of our families and friends did," she said, pushing Tom into a weirdly ufortable state. "And do you really believe that a group of retired spec-ops would fail to figure out what happened to him?"

    For a moment, the silence filled the room. It was as if no one dared to say the word to break it. Then, after a long moment, Cleo sighed and shook her head.

    "Well, you can take my advice on it or not. But even if you believe all those former troopers are incapable of such a simple intelligence task," Cleo''s face suddenly turned tense, "I''m more than certain that they are more than enough to deal with that fuckingpany behind those bikes!"

 Chapter 39: Toms struggle

    Chapter 39: Tom''s struggle

    "Cleo, stop it," Marvin said after gathering his guts to oppose his sister. This sibling dynamic of theirs was something Tom was quite used to. Yet, it was the first time he saw Marvin stand in opposition to Cleo''s wishes in such a simple situation.

    "Stop what? You almost died because of their own mistake!" Cleo shouted, only to retract her voice and turn silent for a moment. But it was only a trap for anyone who would dare to speak once she turned mute.

    Sadly for her, both Marvin and Tom were perfectly aware of this quirk of hers. "No, it''s not a mistake. It''s a scam! A scam that almost cost you your life!" Cleo said when she realized her small ploy wouldn''t yield any results.

    "It could be a normal malfunction. Maybe I wasn''t paying attention or just didn''t maintain it well," Marvin brought up several possible exnations for his ident. Tom, as he knew nothing of what exactly happened, could only stay and listen. "Look, mobilizing the entire group when there is even a shred of chance it wasn''t intentional is just wrong!" Marvin insisted.

    "Guys, I will just go and get some drinks," Tom spoke in a soft voice, unwilling to take part in the argument between the siblings. Or at least, that was the front he used to hide the real state of his mind.

    ''What the hell is going on,'' Tom thought as soon as he closed the doors to the room behind himself. He didn''t dare to ept this weird feeling while with others, worried that he couldn''t keep his face straight.

    ''Group? Mobilize? Troopers?'' He repeated the words that Cleo and Marvin brought. They both made sense and absolutely did not.

    Tom''s heart rate continued to skyrocket as he thought about those things, trying to figure out just what was wrong with his mental state. But then, as if something washed off him, the pace of his heart calmed down in a single instant. At the same time, a burst of pain erupted on the left side of his chest when his heart suddenly changed its momentum.

    At the same time, his thoughts seemed to fade away, as if all the doubts and questions he had suddenly became meaningless.

    ''What the hell is going on,'' Tom thought while pressing his hand against his chest and gritting his teeth. If he heard those words in a passing, he might ignore the strange feeling and go on. But right now, he was too aware of this peculiarity to just let it pass.

    Then, the process repeated itself. Tom''s heart rate grew as the intensity of his question raised, only for everything to suddenly cease. Then again. Then again and once again after that.

    With each cycle of his body clearly fighting against something, Tom felt as if he was getting closer to answer but closer to a serious heart failure at the same time. The pain in his chest didn''t subside but continued to turn greater with each passing cycle.

    ''I need to stop'' he thought, before mming the back of his head against the doors he was resting his back on. Tom just couldn''t care less about alerting his friend to his distraught right now. After all, while he pressed his back against the doors, they couldn''t open them to check on him.

    ''Wait, what about this,'' Tom suddenly came up with an idea. The cycle went through once again, almost making him vomit from the pain and tightness in his chest. But once his situation calmed down, he allowed his body to slide down to the ground. Then, he focused his entire attention on the floor beneath him as if he wanted to draw a mental picture on it.

    "Someone''s house is out in the stick, but well within the rushing range of other houses," Tom muttered under his nose, pushing all of his attention to the theoretical problem he came up with. "That someone has only two friends of his age, yet those friends are sure that all the houses in the proximity are settled by families that are close to each other," he continued his silent ramble, turning his situation into some kind of distant problem, one that didn''t apply to him personally.

    "Those families have the power of raiding businesses. That someone is unknowingly a person of great influence, just like his friends. The difference is, those friends of that someone are aware of the fact," Tom continued to build upon his theoretical situation.

    And now, every element seemed to fall into the greater picture. Tom''s mind focused on the task now produced countless situations that Tom could remember yet couldn''t understand.

    Like how Marvin could be in cahoots with the top-echelons of the local Online Hub. Like how a feisty yet rtively young girl that Cleo was could have ess to highly restricted stuff like weapons. Just like how the three of them surprisingly were all into real hunting.

    Bit by bit, pieces continued to assemble into a full picture.

    "Ah," Tom sighed when everything apparently fell in order. Yet, at the same time, it felt as if some kind of restraint that held his body back cracked, allowing him to finally think straight.

    ''What the hell was that?'' Tom''s inner question this time wasn''t directed at his situation. It didn''t apply to his scrambled memories. Instead, it was solely focused on the thing that stopped him from acknowledging the truth of his past. The truth of who he and his father were.

    "TOM!" Only now did he hear the shouts from the other side of the doors. But, in fact, outside of the loud voice, he could feel the vibrations of the door caused by someone vigorously banging on them.

    "I''m okay," Tom replied in a low voice, unable to exert a single ounce of strength. He was fully exhausted to the point he couldn''t even move away from the door to let his friends help him out. "Just give me a moment," he added when the banging on the doors didn''t cease.

    "What is happening?" A random nurse asked when she passed by. It seemed that the loud voices and the generalmotion attracted her.

    "Sister, can you help me out?" Tom asked while sending a helpless smile to the middle-aged woman.

    "Boy, what happened to you?" the nurse asked as she lifted Tom up. Simultaneously, his body no longer blocked the doors, allowing Cleo to burst through them, infuriated and worried.

    "Tom! Are you alright?!" Her face was full of tears and snot. Despite her usually cold and distant appearances, she clearly couldn''t handle to worry about the two most important men in her life at the same time.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head along with his voiced-out response before patting the nurse on her shoulder. "Thank you, sister. I should be okay now. I guess I shouldn''t be so careless with my dosages of insulin," he said,ing up with the first random lie that could somehow exin his sudden loss of strength.

    "Boy, I know that it can be annoying," the nurse smiled gently as she shook her head and allowed Tom to stand on his own, "but you need to make sure not to miss the injections! It''s clear from your state that you brought yourself to the limit! You need to get one right away!" she insisted, clearly set on fulfilling the duties of her job.

    "Sister, thank you for your care," Cleo interrupted, taking up Tom''s arm and putting it over her own shoulders. "I will make sure he takes it. Also," she winked at the nurse with a vicious smile, "I will make sure to discipline him properly."

    "Good. Diabetes might appear like a small problem, but it can be dangerous too!" the woman said before granting the two with an encouraging smile and leaving the scene.

    "Thanks for the save," Tom muttered as Cleo dragged him back to the room. Despite the airs he put on before, he was still far from being fully okay. In fact, just the act of standing on his own nearly drained all the strength he recovered.

    "Don''t even try shoving that matter aside," Cleo warned him while helping him to the chair. "Now, what happened?"

    "Well," Tom averted his eyes and rubbed his chin while trying to figure out what he should say. His head was still spinning from all the memories that he forcefully unlocked. Even though those were obviously his memories, he didn''t feel familiar with them yet. "What if I were to say I finally decided to take up the mantle and stand up to what''s worth?" he suggested, with his eyes still escaping from both Cleo''s and Marvin''s intense stares.

    "What the hell do you mean?" Marvin asked in a low voice. This was a dangerous thing to hear him do. Even though he was usually the meeker of the two siblings, he was also the prime example of mice that could roar with the strength of a lion. Or rather, a lion that was hiding its strength by pretending to be a mouse.

    "There are some things I still need to figure out myself, but." Tom started only to cut his sentence short. He then coughed to clear his throat and give himself more time. But rather than trying toe up with some kind of bullshit, he used that moment to reinforce his decision.

    "What I meant to say is that I''m finally ready to pick up my duties of the son of the major that I am."

 Chapter 40: Invoking the heritage

    Chapter 40: Invoking the heritage

    For a moment, the hospital room returned to just how silent it should usually be. Instead of shouting, banging, and lecturing, there was this pristine silence created by one confident and two shocked faces.

    "What are you" Cleo started, only to be cut short by Marvin.

    "Took you long enough, brother," he said, looking at Tom with a straight face.

    "Hey! We shouldn''t" Cleo once again attempted to say something, only for her attempt to end up the same way it did thest time.

    "Don''t. Just don''t," Marvin ordered his sister, shedding the usual kind and meek front he was using to fool everyone around him. At the same time, Cleo did the same, turning into the meek and kind girl she truly was.

    In a sense, the two of them swapped their roles. But putting it in this way was wrong. They simply returned to how they actually were. They returned to how Tom now remembered them to always be.

    "If I may ask, what did you guys think that happened to me?" Tom asked the heavy question. ''Did they think I lost my memory? Or maybe that I had a split personality or something?''

    At first, the two siblings looked at each other, clearly trying toe to some kind of a silent agreement. Ultimately it was Marvin to release a deep sigh before shaking his head and looking Tom directly in the eyes.

    "Two days before your father went missing, he came to our home," he announced in a conspiratorial tone as if he was revealing some deep, dark secret of the local society. "He imed that you fell from the tree while hunting and struck your head against a random stone. As such, you suffered from a partial loss of a memory Or rather, your memories became tangled, disordered." Marvin looked down at his own bandaged feet as if trying toe up with the proper words to continue.

    "Partial memory loss? But I remembered the two" Tom said in disbelief before suddenly realizing something. "Don''t tell me, your act" he started, only to stop his words before they could leave his lips.

    The look of awkwardness on the faces of both of his friends was more than enough for an answer.

    "When we rushed to see you, back then, something weird happened. When Cleo approached you to ask how you felt, you were clearly scared," Marvin said before looking at his sister.

    "You asked if I was scheming something. At first, I had no clue what you meant, but then you ran off to Marvin and hid behind his back as if trying to use him as a shield against me," Cleo exined the rest of the situation.

    "Don''t tell me..." Tom spoke in a soft voice, barely capable of producing any voice at all.

    "Yes," Marvin didn''t allow his friend to doubt the situation even for a moment. "At least now we can bill you a truckload of beer for what we did for you," he said while putting a wide grin on his face.

    "Stop it," Cleo bashed at her brother only to turn her head back to Tom and nod it. "We switched our acts. While it was hard at first... Now that we... Now that I''m already used to it, it''s not much of a problem."

    "But still," Tom protested, "how could you guys go so far for me? I''m aware we knew each other from when we were all in the cradle, but to do something like that," he said before shaking his head. "I still find it hard to believe it..." Tom shook his head even stronger before suddenly grinding those movements into a half. "No, that''s not it. Guys," he looked up at his friends, "thank you. That''s the first thing I should say."

    "Don''t mind us," Cleo winked at her friend before averting her eyes in a clearly joking manner, "But we will hold you ountable for that truck worth of beer, though!"

    For a moment, the room turned silent again, only for the three of them to burst outughing in the very next moment.

    "Okay, now that we are done settling up the past, let''s talk the current matters," Tom suddenly announced before looking at Marvin. "While I''m almost certain thepany behind the bikes had nothing to do with the malfunction and the ident atrge..." as he reached the point where he had to give his verdict, Tom''s face soured, "I believe we still need to trash them. I''m sorry," he said.

    "Huh?" Cleo looked at her friend as if he lost his mind from all the joy and reveals that took ce in thest few moments in the room. "Didn''t you just say that they are likely to...-"

    "Cleo," Marvin said before slowly shaking his head to the sides. "Tom, does it have something to do with what I believe you to be troubled with?" he asked, turning his happy grin into a dead-serious expression.

    "Indeed, it does," Tom confirmed Marvin''s guess while nodding his head as well.

    "Ah, I really hate to be that guy..." Marvin suddenlyined before scratching the side of his head and looking up at Tom''s face. "Tom, I''m happy that you are now fully back. But as happy as I am, I''m also sorry. I''m sorry, but I don''t believe you have neither the qualifications nor the right to make such an important decision."

    In an instant, the joyful atmosphere in the room turned still. Yet, even though Cleo was clearly driven to keep up her truly natural act, she remained silent and even went as far as to hang her head low.

    "Just like you, brother, I hate to be that kind of guy, but I don''t think our group will really have the choice this time," he announced before standing up and rolling up his sleeve. Then, he looked around the room in search of something before picking up a scrap of wood that fell out of the doors when Cleo was banging on them.

    "Don''t tell me," Cleo whispered while opening up her eyes as wide as her eye-sockets allowed.

    "That''s right," Tom said before slicing the sharp piece of wood all the way across his arm. In an instant, the shallow wound he made from his elbow all the way to his wrist turned bloody. "I hereby invoke my right of heritage. As much as I hate to do it," Tom shook his head and bit his lips, "I can''t afford you guys to get involved in this matter. Not with what''s going on right now beneath the scene."

 Chapter 41: Shops raid

    Chapter 41: Shop''s raid

    A line of cars approached a small shop sitting at the edge of the town. Give how this ce dealt with motorbikes of all sorts, its location was nothing to be confused about, given all the regtions that limited the sales and usage of those.

    For a bystander, the entire thing might look like a simple family gathering. The cars weren''t special either, ranging from autonomous electric ones at massive rovers ending.

    The local cult of the motorbikes made this kind of event pretty usual, given how big of a moment in a youngster''s life it was to get a legal bike on his own.

    The first signs that something was amiss appeared when the people started getting out of the cars. And while there was nothing strange about the group being almost entirely male, thepleteck of people young enough to be the center of such an event was surely strange.

    After all, getting a bike was a big matter only for a youngster. It meant that said youngster passed through the mandatory exams and could now embark on the new part of his life, one apanied by a trusty vehicle.

    For adults, getting a recement for their old or destroyed bike was no longer a matter big enough to organize an entire event around it.

    "Tom, are you really sure?" Cleo asked when the two exited the vehicle driven by Cleo''s dad.

    "Thanks for the lift, Uncle," Tom nodded his head to the burly man who followed right in their steps. Tom''sck of response to the girl''s inquiry didn''t escape anyone''s attention.

    "I know she already asked it, but are you really sure?" the burly man pressed the issue, looking at the small youngster beside him with a hint of worry in his eyes. In the entire group of over forty people, he was the only one who Tom filled in with how the situation looked in reality.

    "I can''t be sure or unsure about something I don''t have a choice at, to begin with," Tom countered before making his way forward, straight towards the doors of the building.

    "Wee in the Rusty Bike," an old man sitting behind the counter greeted the group as soon as Tom stepped inside. He quickly scanned the crowd outside through the ss panel beside the door before raising his head and looking at the customers with a smile. "How can I be of service?"

    Tom approached the counter while pulling out a small piece of paper from his pocket. He then brought this paper up and passed it forward.

    "Do you recognize this serial number?" he asked in a calm voice.

    "Huh?" The elder looked at Tom''s face only for his sour to smile in the next moment. He then sighed deeply and grabbed the piece before reaching underneath the corner and pulling out sses.

    "Sir... Is that about one of our bikes? If there are any troubles..." the cashier asked before trying to mediate what he believed to be the problem.

    "Do you recognize this number?" Tom repeated his question in the same, monotone voice as before.

    "Sir, if I may..." the man attempted to say something.

    "Do it," Tom didn''t even turn around. He remained just as motionless and disinterested as he was ever since he appeared before the counter.

    Yet, that didn''t stop the part of the crowd that he brought with himself from making a move.

    In an instant, the men got to work. The ss panel that the cashier used to scan the situation gave up after a single smash of a fist. Other men started kicking the bikes in the shop, pushing the shelves with lubricant and other maintenance wares to the ground.

    In a single moment, what used to be a nice and orderly shop turned into pandemonium.

    "That will suffice," Tom gave another order, instantly putting an end to the ongoing chaos. He then tapped the counter before asking again, "Do you recognize this number?"

    "Sir, yes, sir," the cashier answered in a weak voice, unwilling to even protest.

    "Who was responsible for the sale of this bike?" Tom finally moved on to another question.

    "Boss, what''s going on..." a man suddenly rushed through the doors, only to freeze in ce when he saw the chaotic interior of the shop.

    The old man hung his head low before nodding it to the side. "That''s him," his voice trembled when he ratted out his worker.

    "Guys?" Tom finally made a move. He turned his head to look at the men inside the shop before nodding his head towards the neer. His movements were still as slow as before as if the entire thing didn''t affect him at all.

    "Wha..." the middle-aged man who entered the scene in the worst time possible didn''t even finish his question. It appeared he was no idiot. He turned around and shut the door closed behind him in an attempt to run.

    Regretfully to him, those doors led to the workshop of the ce. As such, a single kick of one of Tom''s henchmen was more than enough to crack them open.

    Compared to Tom, his people didn''t bother acting cold or mighty. In just a fewteen seconds, the man was brought back to Tom''s feet before the men threw him to the young man''s feet.

    "Alpha, delta, sierra, alpha," Tom muttered in a silent voice right in the face of the trembling man. "Seven, three, six, six, eight, one," he continued, his eyes glued to the eyes of the man. "Do you recognize this number?"

    Tom didn''t wait for the man to answer the question. As soon as he asked it, he straightened his back and walked out of the shop. By the time the screams of pain reached his ears, he was already leaning on the side of Cleo''s Dad''s car.

    "Ah," Tom sighed, exhausted to no end by the situation. The guilt of pushing the guilt of the likely nned assault on the innocent employee of the shop continued to weigh on his consciousness. "Do you have a smoke?" he asked his adopted uncle.

    "I..." the man clearly hesitated before shaking his head and reaching to his pocket, "here you go."

    Tom wasn''t a big smoker. Outside of the few instances when he sneaked a cig as a kid, he never really got the pleasure of wasting his health like that.

    Yet, with the screams of the man he condemned to a pitiful fate, he just had to take his mind off the situation.

    For a moment, Tom just stood in ce, focusing on the smoke in his fingers.

    ''This had to be done,'' he attempted to convince himself in his thoughts. ''If we don''t y dumb with the Hub, they would figure out we are up to something. I had no real choice here,'' he continued his mental struggle, pushing the pained screams away bymitting all his attention to the harsh taste of the tobo in his mouth and throat.

    Then, the screams suddenly ceased. Tom raised his head and looked at the shop only to see one of his mening out of it with a weird expression on his face.

    "Boss..." the man started before averting his eyes as if something was bothering him.

    "He actually confessed."

 Chapter 42: Aftermatch of the beating

    Chapter 42: Aftermatch of the beating

    The cigarette in Tom''s mouth froze. He had to fight with all his might to keep his expression the same.

    ''Who knows who''s watching?'' he thought, taking a whiff before taking the cig to his hand.

    "That''s so..." hemented just for the sake of saying something. Cleo''s Dad looked at him with a mix of worry and curiosity.

    "What now?" he asked after giving Tom a short moment to think.

    "Exactly what we came here to do," Tom cut the discussion short as he threw the half-finished cigarette to the ground and extinguished it with a stomp of his shoe.

    There was no more reason to stand outside. Waiting for his people to interrogate - or at least pretend to do so - the man and watching them punish him for the actual crime hemitted were two different things altogether.

    "Bring him to me," Tom ordered as soon as he re-entered the shop. His face was just as still as it was before, even though he no longer had to shoulder the burden he believed himself to carry before.

    Tom''s men didn''t hesitate even a second. Before he could as much as blink, the beaten-up employee was already lying at his feet.

    "Was it worth it?" he asked, leaning over the man''s bloodied face.

    "F-fuck off," the employee spat out blood and saliva alike.

    "A valiant effort," Tom said, looking down at the small ssh of mixed liquid on the floor. It barely reached a third of the distance necessary for the man to spit at him. "But it''s futile," he moved his eyes back at the man.

    For a moment, a contest of stares ensued. Yet, before long, Tom raised his back to a straight position before looking at his men and nodding gently.

    Now that he took one more look at that man''s face, he could leave the rest to his people. But instead of leaving the ce, Tom simply stepped back.

    Once again, the beating ensued. Sadly, the bulk of Tom''s people couldn''t enter the fray. After all, only so many could beat him up at once.

    "That will be enough," Tom suddenly announced. The middle-aged man was hardly recognizable. His face turned into a swollen pulp, covered in his blood and snot.

    But he didn''t die yet.

    "Boss...?" Tom''s people stopped their beating at once. The killing aura continued to linger around them, yet they ceased the torture.

    ''That makes two points at once,'' Tom closed his eyes for a second. ''They don''t mind calling me boss, meaning I should have some control over them. And this means...'' Tom thought, startled by the notion.

    "He will pay three times the cost of Marvin''s treatment. But we can''t kill him, not yet." Tom calmly looked back into the stares of his uncles and brothers.

    It was strange to stop at such time. Tom''s currently heldmand of the family. It consisted of members from the special ops, who all retired and settled in roughly one ce.

    "We are not some thugs or, even worse, a mafia," Tom suddenly smiled and raised his hands up. "He caused our brother harm. We caused harm to him in return," he said as he lowered his hands. "But if we kill him, we will openly turn into criminals," Tom continued while catching intense stares of his people.

    ''As much as I would love to kill that bastard right here and now,'' Tom thought, tightening his fists.

    Then, something struck.

    It was something as random and natural as a stone falling down the river. Yet another element of the background music of the world.

    Tom''s vision tunneled. His body froze. Only his eyeballs retained the right of mobility.

    This feelingsted only for a short moment. Then, in what seemed like a second, Tom woke up back to reality.

    He moved his eyes towards a particr spot, one that he could barely notice from his perspective.

    High up the road, on a small hill, there was a forest.

    Yet, Tom was now absolutely sure that there was someone there, watching themotion.

    ''Wait, what if...'' a sudden thought, a passing notion.

    ''What if they bought this guy in advance to see how we would react?'' This thought struck Tom like lightning from the sky.

    He came here, hoping to direct the attention of the Online Hub away from his real n. He was ready to sacrifice an innocent man just to cover his tracks.

    As it turned now, the man was actually at fault. This could only mean that Tom''s belief that Online Hub targeted the family would be in out wrong.

    Yet, there was this third option.

    What if Online Hub bought the man? What if this was all staged?

    Tom had to use everyst ounce of his willpower to continue his cold and unbothered act.

    This was all just a feeling. Tom didn''t see anyone in that forest. It was obviously too far for human eyes. Even thispse of concentration could be something as silly as an insulin problem.

    Tom''s sudden realization all came from something elusive. Something indefinite and was nothing more but just a possibility.

    ''But that doesn''t mean I can ignore it,'' Tom whined in his thoughts.

    "Hey," Cleo said, approaching Tom from behind. "How did you know?" she asked.

    "A hunch, more or less," Tom smiled and turned his head to look at the girl. "Aren''t you going to ask..."

    "No." Cleo shook her head. "I don''t know the entire picture, I...-"

    "I have a bad feeling about right now," Tom said with a tired smile. He shook his head before looking directly at the forest. Precisely in the spot where he believed someone was watching them from. His face was ted.

    "Huh?" Cleo twitched in surprise. But she was a smart girl. Noticing Tom''s weird mix of daunting words and rxed expression, she didn''t allow herself to jump in excitement. Instead, although slightly wed, she managed to keep her face straight.

    "I see," she replied shortly, taking the same thoughtful stance as Tom.

    "I would like to just say my farewells and return silently, but... I don''t think it''s an option now," Tom smiled at the girl.

    "Okay," Cleo suddenly cheered up.

    ''No, I don''t buy it,'' Tom thought, looking at the girl. Her eyes had this sense of cold and merciless aura she once had while keeping her act.

    ''I see,'' Tom twitched. His stare melted down a bit. He didn''t expect Cleo to show her fake side anymore.

    "Let''s keep it low," Tom said, moving his hand up and rustling Cleo''s hair. Yet, even though her real self was cheeky and caring, Tom still found it weird.

    ''Maybe it''s because I''m already used to her other persona?'' he asked himself before shaking his head and looking somewhere random in the distance.

    ''But still, that doesn''t exin this feeling,'' Tom thought, squinting his eyes a little. ''It felt...''

    "It felt like the haste skill.''

 Chapter 43: Digging the hole

    Chapter 43: Digging the hole

    The monotone job of swinging his pickaxe and crushing the stone in front of him into small bits was calming Tom''s mind down.

    He escaped from the Bike shop as soon as he was capable of doing this without drawing additional attention to himself. Sadly, the time where he could travel around the ce freely was already over. Right now, Tom had no other choice but to ept thepany of several ''uncles'' of his in order to get home safely.

    After all, no one knew who could try his luck if Tom were to travel on his own.

    Despite all of that, despite how the family insisted on leaving several people at Tom''s ce, he still used all his wits and craftiness to get alone before plunging into the tunnel.

    With the loop of potential surveince over him quickly tightening, Tom didn''t dare to waste even a single second of the little time he still had.

    Thump.

    Finally, the stone gave out a different sound than it would usually do. At first, Tom simply stopped working, trying to figure out what this sound could mean. But after a while, he returned to work as before.

    After all, even if this strange sound meant that he was close, the rest of the tunnel wouldn''t dig itself out on its own.

    Roughly ten minutes more of swinging his pickaxeter, Tom finally reached the empty space that echoed his digging for a while already.

    He didn''t reach the inside of the Dome. Looking through the small scar that he made on the natural wall that separated him from the emptiness, Tom was pretty sure about it.

    From how the empty space only contained a small pipe and nothing else, it could be some kind of service tunnel, or maybe the severs.

    ''I will need some kind of drone to scan it or something,'' Tom thought while looking at the pipe before turning around and going back to a primitive station he made for himself.

    Whenpared to the early stages of the tunnel, the part that Tom dug out was of way worse quality. Putting the difference in the sheer skill aside, Tom didn''t waste his time on creatingfortable resting zones, something that the part of the tunnel dug by his father was notorious about.

    "If that''s the canalization system, then I should dig here," Tom muttered to himself while trying to figure out the paths for his further tunnels. Right now, he only needed a small drone to prate the dome and scout its insides. But if he wanted to really enter the portal hidden inside the building, his tunnel wouldn''t be enough.

    Not yet, that is.

    From that point on, Tom started to work even harder than before. Once he pinpointed several locations and calcted the amount of work approaching each of them would take, he didn''t bother wasting his time.

    A single circle around the entire tunnel allowed Tom to mark every single ce of potential interest. Then, he picked the most promising one and got back to the mundane work.

    Hit after hit, small parts of stone were chipping away from the wall ahead of Tom. With each swing, his muscles would burn as if they were on fire, proving just how tired he was.

    ''Still, don''t I have a little bit more stamina than I should?'' Tom suddenly noticed before inspecting his internal state. ''Did I grow my muscles so much in such a short amount of time, or is it something else?'' Tom asked himself, puzzled yet unable to find the answer to this question.

    Obviously, he could assume that it was the influence of the avatars. That for some reason, a part of the strenght of the avatars he was using would project on him. Or maybe it was something rted to his newly discovered method of using the ''data stone''? While there was no clues that would allow Tom to either confirm or deny this conjunction, it just felt like it would fit the picture pretty well.

    ''No, that''s another trap,'' Tom warned himself as he continued to swing his pickaxe and think at the same time. ''If I force various stuff in line just because I want them to align, it won''t mean the idea is right,'' he noticed before shaking his head in disappointment.

    Thump.

    Once again, a weird sound stopped Tom''s line of thought. He looked behind to eyeball the distance he already unearthed before moving his eyes back ahead.

    "Seems like this might be it," Tom muttered, using his gloved hand to shove the loose stones away.

    And sure enough, right underneath the deepest point he dug, a concrete wall stood. Or rather, what Tom discovered after several more swings of his tool, it was a concrete beam. Soon, Tom started to discover more and more of those. As soon as he reached the first of the pylons, his job suddenly turned a lot faster.

    It was as if the ground between each of the underground pirs never had the chance to turn hard.

    PING.

    Finally, Tom heard a metallic sound. It appeared that the tip of his pickaxe finally struck against the kind of material that Tom hoped to unearth.

    "Yes!" Tom whizzed through his mouth, not daring to use a loud voice. If his belief was correct, the metal sheet that he discovered would be thest barrier that would separate him from the insides of the Dome.

    From the ce where the portal should be. From the ce where his father diapered all those years ago.

    Ring!

    Tom''s phone suddenly rang in his pocket. Even though he was deep underground and shielded from the rest of the world by the presence of the Dome right above his head, his phone still picked up the signal.

    "Yes?" Tom picked up the phone without even looking at the recipient.

    "Tom, I need you to go to Online Hub. Peter is demanding a report of your progress," Cleo announced, clearly trying to pick on the duties Marvin had no ability to attend to.

    "Sure thing..." Tom replied with a voice as monotone as was his digging before an idea struck him. "Hey, Cleo, listen, I will need you to get me one thing..."

 Chapter 44: Meetings

    Chapter 44: Meetings

    "That''s a good wine!" Peter muttered silently, ncing at the crystal ss in his hand. The waves of crimson liquid crashed against the delicate structure.

    ''Still, there is so much work,'' Peter thought, moving his eyes back at the stack of paper lying on his desk.

    Peter scanned the remaining documents with a long stare.

    "There are supplies, weekly cargo, monthly report," Peter whispered to himself. "Right, there is that guy too," he suddenly noticed before sharply turning his head towards the clock.

    ''Dang, he will be here in a minute.'' Peter noticed, instantly lowering his head over the paper.

    "That''s... quite normal, isn''t it?" He muttered under his nose, reading into the short document.

    ''No matter how you look at it, it''s perfectly normal, huh?'' Peter entered a focused state. The numbers of the transactions, history of avatar, recorded moments... Everything was right there, in front of his eyes.

    For a Veteran like Tom, reaching level fifty could take a few days at most. So with that, everything should be self-exnatory.

    "Isn''t it a bit...-knock," a loud knocking put a stop to Peter''s thoughts. "Come in," he shouted towards the doors. He kept his eyes on the document in hopes that this strange feeling would tell him something else.

    "We brought aprehensive report of the observation. The scapegoat acted perfectly as nned," A young girl in her twenties reported as she passed a thick stack of documents right on Peter''sp.

    "Wait, who is this guy...?" Peter only nced at the front page before gasping in surprise. "A young master of an ex-military family? Heck, howe this didn''te out when we screened him before?" he asked in an irritated voice.

    "We had an error in the database," the girl answered without any hesitation. "Because he left the area right when our servers were under that massive attack, we failed to keep any records of him," the girl continued. She moved forward before sitting down in one of the guest chairs.

    "The thing is, I looked up his records from the time he was away," the girl suddenly changed her tone to a disappointed one. "He had an extraordinarily ordinary life. Just another nerd out of the mill, scheduled to make massive bucks once activated."

    "Perfectly reasonable citizen..." Peter fell into deep thought for a moment. "Heck!" He quickly shook his sleepiness away. "He is just too ordinary to be truly ordinary," Peter sat down and looked at the thick case with documents. "Can you cover for me? I need to read it before meeting him," Peter asked as he raised his eyes at the girl.

    "Why even ask?" The girl shook her head in response. There was a sense of hurt pride in her eyes.

    "Give me an hour. After that, we will see what this guy is made from.

    **** **** **** **** ****

    Tom sat in the back of a ck van as he rode towards the Online Hub. The days where he could just sit on his bike and get there alone were over. Now that he made his stance on Marvin''s problem, Tom had no other choice but to follow through with the act.

    Before long, Tom''s car stopped at its destination. Walking out of the vehicle, Tom presented his suit.

    As this was supposed to be a business meeting, there were some formal needs regarding one''s attire.

    "Good luck," said the older of the two siblings that escorted him.

    In a family structure, one could be a father, an uncle, a brother, or just a friend. This system was derived directly from the times when the uncles and Tom''s dad served together in the military.

    A father meant the leader of the family, itsmanding officer. The uncles were the people who fought in the real war together before settling down. Brothers and cousins alike belonged to the new generation who followed in their parent''s footsteps.

    ''I wonder if this will work,'' Tom thought while climbing the stairs and then taking a lift.

    He picked two ''brothers'' rather than ''uncles'' for a simple reason. People roughly the same age as him could serve as a realistic detail of a mundane scenario. So rather than bringing people looking like bodyguards, he brought people looking like his friends.

    Soon, the lift reached the topmost floor of the building, releasing Tom into the hands of Peter.

    "Wee," the officer of the Online Hub stood up and invited Tom and his entourage inside.

    "I''m sorry it took me so long," Tom bowed politely before taking a seat in one of thefy chairs.

    "So, I''m sorry for being direct, but I just don''t have the time to discuss it for long," Peter sat down and said, his smile souring. "I know it wasn''t long since I gave you the mission, and I would like a report about its progress," Peter exined, looking as if he was troubled by the matter.

    ''Strange guy.'' Tom''s eyebrow twitched a little. "It''s okay, let me exin," Tom said before taking a moment to fix his position in his seat.

    "I can get to the level fifty at any time I would like. It''s just that I''m trying to push my avatar to its limits, to enhance my chances of obtaining a strong ability," Tom exined, omitting all the unnecessary details.

    "So you are saying you are intentionally stuck?" Peter raised his nce from the papers he held to Tom''s face.

    "Yeah, that would be pretty much it," Tom nodded his head. "I''m intentionally leaving all the stones on my avatar as I log out," Tom suddenly revealed what could be pretty much heresy.

    The ultimate point of Dungeons Online was to exchange the ''data'' stones. Be it for levels for their avatars or raw cash, everyone would cash in. But for someone to purposely waste the stones away?

    "You are just letting those stones go?" Peter asked while opening his eyes wide.

    "Yeah, for quite a while already," Tom exined before shaking his head.

    "All right," Peter said after a moment. It appeared that he was pretty shaken by the revtion. "I will give you two more days to hit the fifty," he smiled as he looked at Tom and his escorts. "Now, get the hell out of my office!" he then shouted in a mild, clearly amused tone.

 Chapter 45: Reality and the microdrones

    Chapter 45: Reality and the microdrones

    Tom didn''t say a word through the entire trip back home. Noticing the thoughtful state of their boss, neither of Tom''s brothers bothered him. They just silently got into the car and drove off, bringing him away from the ce that stressed him out so much.

    ''Did he buy it?'' Tom thought, analyzing the meeting that just concluded.

    ''He was acting pretty strange,'' Tom noticed while rubbing his chin. ''It''s like... As if he knew something isn''t right but could pinpoint it.'' Tom stared into the scenery passing by the car''s window.

    Even though the city had to be quite populous to warrant the presence of an Online Hub, it took them only two minutes to get out of the urbanized area.

    Because rather than being an Online Hub dedicated to the city itself, the local gaming spot serviced all the viges and settlements around as well. Yet, even with all that territory, it was still nearly abandoned whenpared to how bustling the Online Hub could be.

    ''Still, they don''t have any trouble to live in luxury out there,'' Tom continued to analyze the situation, now moving on to the logistical discrepancies he noticed.

    ''For a big hub, it would be natural for resources to be plentiful. The game itself doesn''t make much money either...'' Tom continued his deduction when a tough reality suddenly dawned upon him. ''The money involved...'' Tom shook his head before looking through the window again. ''It has to be enormous enough for the costs of maintaining this ce to be negligible.

    "Huh?" Tom almost jumped in surprise when the extension of this thought suddenly appeared in his mind.

    ''Wait, howe no one questioned it earlier?'' He suddenly noticed, startled to the limits. ''Just where did all the moneyes from? While cryptocurrencies can be valuable, this deal happens on a scale even beyond that!'' Tom lowered his head and glued his eyes to the tips of his shoes.

    ''For every pro earnings millions and billions, there are millions of randos earning thousands. I was so focused on the earnings of the top yers before that I ignored everyone else!'' Tom sat back in his chair, powerless to stop those thoughts.

    "Boss," the brother in the driver''s seat said as he nced over at Tom. "We will be arriving shortly," he reported before moving his eyes back on the road.

    ''There has to be something behind it. And that means there is a whole load of money involved in the entire thing,'' Tom thought, slowly realizing just what was the scale of what he was attempting to topple.

    The information was always out there. Everyone knew just how massive the Online Hub Company became. There was a reason why they were called the pioneers of the new age.

    OHC dabbled in all sorts of stuff. While they had their roots in the gaming industry, within the short lifespan of Dungeons Online, they managed to spread their influence over nearly the entire economy.

    On a random vegetable field, they would be present in the AI supplied to the farming machines. They had their assets and nano-mining-bots in the vast unearthing areas. They pioneered the miniaturization of the bots, something that brought back the hopes of unmanned space exploration.

    From the tiniest and least important business, all the way to massive energetical nts in the outskirts of the world, they dabbled in everyst bit of it.

    ''And here I am, trying to go against this kind of monster?'' Tom asked himself, suddenly amused at his own arrogance.

    For a moment, this sense of powerlessness spread throughout Tom''s body and soul. For a moment, he couldn''t even think of what should be the next thing he would do.

    "Boss, we are here. Do you want us to drop you off, or maybee in and stay for a while?" The younger of the brothers asked while taking the privilege of being in the passenger''s seat to fit his gun with a silencer.

    Just this sight alone was menacing enough to throw Tom off his momentary depression.

    "It''s okay," he said, shaking his head to the sides. "It would do us no good if someone were to start paying too much attention to me. Thanks for the ride," Tom bade his farewells before moving out of the car.

    And it was right there, right at the doorstep to his farm.

    There was no one around to guard the package. With how silly the wooden fence around the ce was, anyone could just waltz in and take possession of Tom''s parcel.

    But there was no one in the near areas that would be stupid enough to infringe on Tom''s possession. For some reason, all kinds of thieves, burrs, and other troublemakers marked the entire area as a no-go zone.

    "She works fast," Tom muttered to himself as he unpacked the box. For something the size of a sofa, the content inside was ridiculously small. Just a small box fitting for a wedding ring and a pluggable add-on clearly designed to be attached to one''s phone.

    "Well, whether I''m fighting the richestpany in the world or some kind of secret government that took over the entire world, it doesn''t matter," Tom muttered as he tightened his hand over the steering console of the drone.

    ''While I didn''t expect Cleo to get it so quickly, it doesn''t mean there is any reason to waste time now,'' he thought as he sat right on the bench in front of his doors. He then pulled his phone out, plugged the additional part in, and started up the system.

    Soon the small box he noticed earlier opened itself up, with its sides suddenly caving in. Then, a slightly greyish mist escaped from the confinements of the box, only for it to return to its previous state.

    "I''m still amazed by this technology," Tom said out loud, not bothered to hide that fact. The micro-drone swarm that he was toying around with was something that some armies around the world would struggle to get their hands on. Yet, with just a single phone, Cleo managed to somehow procure it for him.

    For a moment, Tom continued to y around the console before finally getting the hang of it. ''Let''s move on to the main task at hand,'' he thought, sending the orders to the swarm.

    The swarm consisted of tens of thousands of microscopic bots. Due to their insanely small size, thews of physics that they could use were starkly different from what humans were used to interacting with.

    Just like a human couldn''t fly like that, those micro-drones could. Because they were so small and light, the air appeared like this dense, viscous fluid to them, making the spatial maneuvering rtively simple to implement despite the obvious problem, theck of space.

    And soon enough, Tom stared into the screen on his phone, with the live video feed from the drones confirming everything that he could only believe in so far. But now, that the swarm of drones continued to pass the image of the insides of the dome, Tom''s assumptions and guesses were no longer just that.

    Right now, they were facts.

    Tom took a deep breath before releasing the air back to the atmosphere. He then pressed a few buttons on his phone before unplugging the add-on for the bots.

    ''Now they should return to the box,'' he thought before ncing over at the screen of his phone. Even though he knew what he had to do, Tom still had to take some time to mentally prepare for that.

    Then, he dialed out a number.

    "Hey!" Marvin''s voice soon sounded through the speaker.

    "Hey, brother, we need to talk," Tom greeted with a cheerful smile yet dead-serious voice. "It would be for the best if you took the uncles you are sure about with you,"

 Chapter 46: Talk with Marvin

    Chapter 46: Talk with Marvin

    Marvin''s car arrived at Tom''s front porch in a matter of minutes. Even though he still had half of his body wrapped in bandages and stabilizers, Tom''s friend refused to stay in ce and clearly wasn''t going to ask anyone to carry him around.

    "You wanted to talk," Marvin started as soon as he stood above sitting Tom.

    "For now, sit down. I need to show our uncles the way," Tom stood up before looking at the three massive men exiting the car. "Come with me. I need you guys to do something," Tom gestured at the group before getting into the house.

    ''I wish I could just sit and have a talk with Marvin first,'' Tommented in his thoughts while silently showing the group the way to the tunnel.

    Tom could see the looks his uncles gave to each other when they noticed the armory. He saw the curiosity and slight worry mixing in their eyes when he led them to the dugout.

    "Guys, I wish I had the time for that, but I can''t guide you. We are really under a massive time pressure now," Tom said as soon as the group got underground. "I need you to do one thing. Use any tools you need, order anything you require, but you need to break through the outer wall of the Confinement that I tunneled up to," Tom dropped the bomb without the slightest care.

    "Boss, Confinement? Please don''t tell us that you mean the Dome!" The oldest of the three uncles slightly protested while twisting his lips.

    "That''s exactly what I mean. Use whatever tool you need and any means you find necessary. Just make your absolute best to keep it hidden from whoever and whatever might be watching from the inside," Tom ordered grimly, unwilling to take any protests.

    Going against the Dome, or the Confinement like Tom started to call it himself, was the same thing his father did.

    Tom would have to be a naive idiot not to connect the dots with all his memories unlocked.

    ''My father disappeared two days before the portals got locked. Domes appeared exactly where the portals used to be. Now no one can even get near them,'' Tom summarised the simple and undeniable facts about the event that took ce several years ago.

    As his thoughts continued to wander all over the ce, Tom left the dugout through the hidden basement before returning to Marvin. He continued to wait on the bench just like Tom asked him to. Whether it was hisck of means to move or a decision to stick with Tom''s wishes, Tom couldn''t tell.

    "So, what did you want to talk about?" Marvin asked after the two of them stared at each other in silence for a while.

    "This is rather a long story," Tom replied as he sat down beside his friend.

    "I would love to say we have all the time in the world, but I guess I can only ask you to keep it short," Marvin said and smiled. There was no hint of anxiety on his face, despite how he was clearly aware if not of the content of the ongoing conflict, but at least of its stakes.

    "Let''s start with my father then," Tom said before releasing a deep, exhausted sigh. "As you likely know, he went out to explore portals. That''s also where I believe where he disappeared," he exined the beginnings of his theory before looking at Marvin''s face.

    Just the expression of his friend could give him some clues about how close to the truth this guess of his was.

    "That''s correct if that''s what you are trying to figure out from my face," Marvin nodded his head before turning his lips into a sad smile. "Don''t get me wrong. The fact that we knew doesn''t mean we didn''t attempt the rescue. The family did its best back then but ended up forced to turn back," Marvin exined, putting his eyes low.

    It was clear that he was still troubled with how that matter ended.

    "But that''s also the main problem I have with you," Marvin suddenly revealed, raising his eyes at Tom''s face. "You derive your power tomand the family from your father''s influence. And while others are okay with it, I never believed your father to be deserving of the role in the first ce," Marvin suddenly dropped a bomb.

    For a moment, the two friends only continued to stare at each other in this tense deadlock of ideas.

    "My father," Tom started speaking, only for Marvin to interrupt him right away.

    "Your father left for the portal on his own and deprived the family of his tactical genius," Marvin said harshly, gripping his one healthy hand into a fist. "I never denied his achievements. I never denied his role. But I''m not going to acknowledge hisst bit as worthy of the person responsible for the entire family!"

    Tom silently listened to Marvin''s announcement. He wasn''t mad. He wasn''t even angry. ''He has full right to have those beliefs...'' Tom thought, waiting for Marvin''s next move.

    "My father... I can''t entirely agree with the way he did things," Tom finally finished his previous sentence once he ascertained Marvin wouldn''t stop him from doing so. "My father openly went against the organization that silently influences the entire world. He believed that making things public, showing the reality of the portals to the entire world, was the right path to take for us," Tom admitted to everything that Marvin could consider as the previous family''smander misdeeds.

    "Aren''t you going to do the same right now?" Marvin raised his eyes at Tom''s face with a doubtful look. "Come on. You don''t need to tell me everything for me to know. I''m using my eyes, you know?" Marvin got troubled over the fact that he saw through Tom''s actions.

    "In a sense, I believe my father was right," Tom suddenly countered Marvin''s revtion by going against his earlier narration. "The way in which he wanted to do things was correct. He just underestimated the opponent. And that''s why I can avoid making the same mistakes as he did," Tom continued before turning his eyes towards the Dome, clearly visible in the distance.

    "I"m not going to oppose them openly. I aim to make them unaware that I''m fighting them in the first ce," Tom finally revealed his true aim before looking down at his friend.

    "They make an imaginable amount of money from the portals through the Dungeons Online. Here, here''s the proof," Tom said as he pulled out his phone with the gallery of photos of the insides of the Dome.

    "What''s this?" Marvin calmly looked at the phone before raising his eyes at Tom''s face again.

    "The insides of the Dome."

 Chapter 47: Faking the level

    Chapter 47: Faking the level

    "And that''s how I see the entire thing," Tom said before releasing a huge sigh. ''To think that all of this happened just recently,'' he thought while shaking his head.

    "That was indeed a long story," Marvin muttered while rubbing his chin. "Now, at least I won''t regret bringing some people with me... By the way," he turned his eyes on Tom, "where did the uncles go?"

    "I can''t really tell you where they went," Tom said before forming a smile and looking towards the dome, "but I believe you can guess just where they are at right now," he added, staring nkly at the massive building.

    "You really pushed all of your actions forward, didn''t you?" Marvin chuckled before reaching with his hands towards his friend. "Help me out, will you?" he asked, instantly pushing Tom into action.

    But rather than helping Marvin to walk around, Tom only helped him get up. Marvin was too prideful to walk while resting on someone else. Even though only one-half of his body was fully functional, he still preferred to use his walking stick instead.

    "As you know, time is of the essence," Tom seemingly changed the topic before shaking his head and adding, "that''s why I had no other choice. Well, either way, you guys won''t be implicated with it. Worst case scenario, you will just copse the tunnel and y dumb," Tom actually changed the topic before looking behind himself.

    "Well, speaking of time, it seems my break is close to being over." Tom suddenly announced, sending onest nce towards the dome before looking back at his friend.

    "Marvin, over thest two days, I told you everything I know, everything I guessed, and everything I''m worried about. But I cannot stall for any longer," Tom''s face soured. It was clear that talking about this topic wasn''t easy for him.

    "Yeah. Judging from the chaos inside, I believe they should be done by now," Marvin smiled. Even though Tom wasn''t sure about this, there was still a huge chance that Tom''s friend actually figured out everything even before Tom revealed his knowledge.

    Over thest two days, Marvin just allowed Tom to do whatever he wanted without asking any questions. Whether it was his inner decision or something he came up with past their first, honest discussion, Tom didn''t know. But thanks to his silent approval, everything was now in its ce.

    And this was the one reason why Tom still decided to spare some time, sit down with Marvin, and just tell him everything.

    "Right, before I go," Tom suddenly turned around before closing in on Marvin''s ear. "I believe the abilities of our avatars... Well, I''m not really sure about it, but it seems like we can sometimes and somehow use them in real life as well," Tom dropped yet another bomb, right as he was about to move out and enter the car.

    The car was waiting for him for nearly half an hour by now.

    "I see," Marvin didn''t turn the moment into the discussion. ''I already took too much of his time,'' he thought while looking at his friend. "Well, take care, brother. We will hold the fort for you, here," Marvin smiled and changed his hold over his walking stick so that he could push his hand forward.

    "Let''s hope everything will go smoothly," Tom replied, grabbing Marvin''s hand and shaking it.

    From that point, the reality around Tom seemed to be disturbed. One moment merged into another, making him feel as if he was just floating through time.

    Moment by moment, Tom could see the images passing through the window of his car. In the next moment, he was already walking down the main hallway of the Online Hub.

    Tom managed to shake off this strange, miss-present state of his mind right as Peter walked out of his office to greet him.

    "Tom, wee again," the middle-aged man said in a cheerful voice, inviting Tom inside with a wide swing of his hand. "I have high hopes for a good show!" he added as the group entered a small room just beside Peter''s office.

    "I hope you won''t mind if we take a look at what you do?" Peter asked with a fake concern on his face.

    ''Just what does this guy know?'' Tom asked himself before sending a smile back to Peter, a smile just as fake as was Peter''s concern.

    "How could I? I just hope I won''t find my secrets and tricks spreading out on the wikiter on," Tom said in a jokingly manner. At first, only the two of his escortsughed, yet Peter and a group of his own people quickly followed suit.

    "Come on, I know the atmosphere was rather informal so far, but don''t doubt our professionalism!" Peter suddenly shouted before patting himself on his chest. "Online Hub big and small, the staff for their hardest all the same!" he announced, clearly reciting some kind of motivational slogan from thepany manual.

    Past that point, Tom''s strange lethargy returned. As if he was sleep-walking, he took off most of his clothes andid down in the open-casket type of capsule. While the liquid covered him all the same, what happened next was different.

    Instead of a lid closing off above Tom and shielding him from the light so that he could establish connection uninterrupted, it appeared as if a thin, ck veil floated on top of the liquid, cutting the supply of light all the same.

    Soon, he was back in the dungeon. And just like always, he stepped through the corridors.

    With his trusty spell and high statistics, Tom managed to clear two rooms in a matter of minutes. Given how every single monster on such a low level would fall after just a single hit, Tom didn''t really exert any of his strenght.

    Still half-conscious, Tom mined the stones from the first floor before deciding to go for the second one as well. The n was to exit the game as soon as he would clear a single floor. Sadly, the haul from the first floor turned out to be the worst out of all the possible oues.

    With a single stone embedded into the dungeon''s wall, Tom had no other choice but to go and clear one more floor. Thankfully, this kind of blunder wasn''t big enough for Tom to have any trouble exining itter on.

    With seven stones of the minimum grade in his pouch, Tom finally returned to the lobby.

    It was at this moment when he forcefully shook off his half-awake state, instantly taking the reins of his mental effort to suppress his level.

    "Sir, would you like to cash out or to raise your level?" The AI maid, the only character within the lobby that was dressed, asked.

    "I want to raise my level," Tom responded while handing over the stones. Then, a strange, thrilling feeling traveled up his spine. In an instant, Tom released his strangling hold over his own power, allowing the experience transfer to merge with his level raising.

    Those two things happened simultaneously. With his concentration pushed to its limit, Tom managed to pull his trick off wlessly.

    ''I did it...'' he thought, moving his eyes from his hand to where the skill notification window should appear. He then smiled and logged out.

    ''I did it... But why does it feel like something went wrong?''

 Chapter 48: Business trip and unexpected visit

    Chapter 48: Business trip and unexpected visit

    Tom woke up from the game without any unexpected problems. While he didn''t know whether his worry that the online hub would use his moment of powerlessness was right. Or maybe it was the presence of two burly brothers of his that forced those ideas out of Peter''s head? All in all, it didn''t matter now.

    He woke up. That was the most important point for now.

    ''Still, the stakes are too big,'' Tom thought, taking his time to open his eyes. ''I know it was just a feeling...'' he hesitated for a moment before opening his eyes up and raising to a sitting position. ''No, a feeling is more than enough. I can''t take any chances here,'' Tom made his decision as he epted a towel from one of his brothers.

    "Congrattions," Peter spoke up after giving Tom a bit of time to cater to his needs. "I''m not going to lie, I doubted your method before... But it seems you really held back a fair bit," he admitted his own mistakes before lowering his head. "I apologize for pushing you to level up so quickly. I hope you can understand that as the manager of this ce, I need to assume some degree of control over the yers, especially those destined to soar to the great heights!" he eximed, swiftly changing his tone.

    "It''s okay, I understand," Tom muttered, still pretending to have sensory overload, amon problem for a random half of the yers. After all, he just exited the game, which reced all of his senses. So it was no surprise for his brain to need some time to reestablish its proper connections.

    "Right, before anything else," Tom started as he continued to wipe his body from the liquid before using the same, massive towel to cover himself up. "I proved that I''m capable in the game, but now I will need you to excuse me for a bit," Tom finally started to act on the n he concocted just a moment ago. "There are some... No, let''s call it a business trip. I will need to leave right away, but there is one thing that might make it troublesome for you guys," Tom exined before raising his eyes at Peter.

    "Huh? What is it?" Peter instantly asked, putting his guard up.

    "The thing is..." Tom started with a troubled face, "I have no idea how long it would take," he exined as he shrugged his shoulders. "It might take a day or two, it might take a week... God forbid, but I might even be out for a year!"

    "Wait, a year?!" Peter eximed as he jumped out of his seat. "Do you really think...-" he started, only for Tom to stand up in the middle of his sentence.

    "I''m really sorry, but it''s not up to me how long it will take. But this is a matter I don''t really have a choice but to attend to," Tom exined with a sour expression on his face before casting a nce at his ''brothers''.

    While they didn''t appear to be surprised or shocked by his words at all, Tom could see that they already tensed their muscles. They were ready to spring up and fight if anything were to go wrong right now.

    "Well, I will try to keep in touch so that you won''t be stuck with a bad investment," Tom added as he turned around.

    "At least try not to make another avatar while you are out. I don''t want others to scout you while you are away." Peter lowered his head in an expression of his exasperated powerlessness.

    "Sure thing," Tom nodded to the man before moving out of the room. The two of his ''brothers'' instantly followed suit without asking a single question or voicing a single word of protest.

    As he continued past the Online Hub''s corridors, Tom''s mental state wavered once again. Now that this strange event continued, Tom could finally realize what it felt like.

    Rather than losing his awareness, it seemed as if the world around him had bepletely meaningless and t. It wasn''t as if he was going unconscious. It was as if he was controlling himself from the third-person perspective, fully free from the influences of the world around him.

    ''Is it sickness? Or some kind of Sensory overdose?'' Tom asked himself as he continued to walk at a rapid pace. ''Well, I hope it won''tst long this time,'' he thought, only for his thoughts to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    As if a breath of fresh air was all Tom needed, as soon as he got out to the open space, his mind returned to its normal state. His vision lowered back to where it should be rather than hanging above his shoulder. He could feel the crispy sun of the day on his skin, the gentle caress of the wind on his face...

    ''No, I don''t have time for mncholy like this,'' Tom lectured himself before rushing to pull out his phone. His ''business trip'' n was nothing more but an improvisation aimed at escaping the Online Hub before it would be toote. As such, he still had to make some calls to make his story and everyone else''s action stick.

    But before he could even dial a single number or bring his phone to his eyes, it started to ring.

    "Yes?" Tom answered the call out of habit, not even paying any mind to who the caller was.

    "Hello," udia spoke through the phone. But that wasn''t the problem.

    The problem was that Tom could hear her voice not only through his phone but also from behind.

    ''Don''t tell me...'' he thought as he turned around, only to see udia standing a few meters away with a wide smile on her face.

    ''Fuck, what should I do?!'' Tom froze in ce, overwhelmed by the panic. He liked the girl well enough to make sure she wouldn''t be implicated in his ns. That was the main reason why he decided to cut the contact once he left the city.

    But for her toe to visit?

    Right at this timing?

    ''Just how spoiled my luck can be?!'' Tommented in his heart before forcing himself to calm down. And in this state of emotionless calmness, he raised his eyes at the girl, made a step forward before sending a crispy p right to her face.

    ''This is the only choice,'' Tom thought, steeling himself for what he was about to do. For the only choice of action that wouldn''t spell the girl''s demise in a few days'' time.

    "What the hell do you think you are doinging here, you cheating whore?!"

 Chapter 49: Argument in the car

    Chapter 49: Argument in the car

    "I..." udia attempted to say something, yet as she brought her hand to her itching cheek, the sheer shock caused by Tom''s action made her unable to utter a word.

    "Boys," Tom said while squinting her eyes. "Get her. I need to talk with her in the car," he ordered before spitting on the ground and turning away.

    ''Why, why, fucking why?!'' Tom''s mind was in disarray. All kinds of options, possibilities, and risks continued to spin his brain around. ''Why did she came here? Why now? How should I turn this situation around? How can I protect her?'' Question after question continued to appear in Tom''s mind, almost making him stumble on his way to the car.

    Click. The mechanic sound of the doors opening sounded like an angelic choir to Tom. He sat in the back of the car, only for his brothers to forcefully throw udia on the other seat. But rather than just leaving them alone, while one of Tom''s brothers sat at the driver''s seat, the other made sure to squeeze into the back as well.

    "This will be unnece... or nevermind. We need to make sure it looks like she''s a real problem for me," Tom muttered, initially wanting to chase his brother to the other front seat before changing his mind.

    Through this entire situation, udia was too overwhelmed by shock to react, protest or fight back. But this useful state of her mind could onlyst for long.

    "Why did youe here?" Tom asked while hiding his face in his hands as soon as his brother drove out.

    "I... I just wanted to see you," udia said meekly with her head lowered as low as she could. Her body was trembling, proving that she, just like Tom''s brother, failed to notice how fake this entire situation was.

    Tom turned silent. He took a moment to sort his thoughts out while attempting to figure out a usible way out of the ditch udia''s appearance threw him and the girl herself in.

    "But what was this all about!" udia asked, already infuriated. It seems that the time Tom took to calm down, she used to turn her terror into fury.

    "Shut your crap!" Tom''s brother shouted while raising his hand to hit the girl.

    "Stop it," Tom quickly ordered before releasing a deep sigh. "Don''t take what I did back then for real. It was all just an act," he exined, still refusing to raise his head.

    ''What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?'' Tom''s thoughts continued to mess his head up. When it came to risking his own health and fortune, Tom didn''t mind at all. He was ready for all the necessary sacrifices when it came to his grand scheme.

    ''But udia has nothing to do with it!'' Tom pointed out in his thoughts as he bit his bottom lip.

    "Oh!" Tom''s brother moaned as he understood the situation. He then turned his head to the girl and lowered it in apology. "I''m sorry for how I treated you. I had no idea it was an act," he apologized while exining himself.

    "Am I the only one who has no idea what the hell is going on?!" udia red up even more. It appeared that Tom''s brother''s apology failed to calm her down and only backfired on everyone.

    "For now, please stay silent. I''m trying to figure out how we can fucking save your damned life!" Tom spoke out in a harsh tone, still refusing to move his head an inch.

    "Boss, we are being followed," the driver spoke up while making sure not to make any unnecessary movements.

    "HOLD HER!" Tom shouted while using everyst bit of his mental strenght to hold himself still.

    "AUCH!" udia moaned in pain when Tom''s brother moved his hand on her neck and tightened his fingers on her throat. But rather than choking her up, he just made it so that moving her head even a little would mean pushing his fingers even deeper into her flesh. "STOP IT!" she shouted, only for Tom''s brother''s fingers to tighten even more.

    "Just don''t look back and continue acting like that," Tom ordered as he finally brought his head up. His eyes were clear, showcasing how he managed toe to his senses in a single moment.

    ''Right now, I can''t pretend I don''t know her. The Online Hub is sure to track her now that they know I know her,'' Tom thought, forcing himself to ditch the despair and think logically. ''That means I can''t just leave her alone. But what are the other options? Keep her in the family? Send her away, somewhere safe?'' Tom suddenly chuckled, putting a weird look on both udia''s and his brother''s faces.

    ''As if there was a single ce safe from their clutches in the entire damned world,'' Tom''s chuckle vanished when he bit his lips once again.

    "Brother, once we get out of the city, speed up to the car''s limit. We need to get at least half of a minute without them watching once we arrive at my ce," Tom ryed his orders before resting the back of his head on the seat''s pillow.

    "udia, I''m sorry," Tom finally addressed the topic that everyone in the car was curious about. "I need to apologize for both for what I did and for what I''m about to push you in," he kept his head straight as he continued in a weak voice.

    "What do you mean? Wait, more importantly, you don''t hate me?" udia attempted to change the topic, showing a funnily vulnerable side to her.

    "And why would I hate you?" Tom asked as he rapidly turned his face towards the girl. He also made sure to put a wrathful expression on his face before speaking. "But you just had to pick the worst timing and worst ce possible. Now that they know about you," Tom turned silent, unable to voice out what kind of conclusion he came to.

    "I understand..." udia suddenly spoke up while following Tom''s act and looking at him as if he was the most smelly piece of garbage in the entire world. "No, I lied. I don''t understand what''s going on at all, but I can tell that it''s not a joking matter," she exined herself while acting as if she just threw a litany of insults at Tom.

    "Let''s say that you just jumped into a pool of shit bying here," Tom exined with a metaphor. "And by talking me up, you made a dive."

 Chapter 50: Race to the farm

    Chapter 50: Race to the farm

    The chase after Tom''s card was nowhere as climatic and thrilling as it would be in a movie.

    The first part yed out within the city bounds. A slightpse in one''s focus and silent attention would result in losing track of the people tailing them.

    Tom''s driver kept well within the speed limits, driving like the most proper citizen out there. He stopped at the red lights and patiently waited for the people to cross and the crossings.

    But the moment Tom''s massive, ck van broke through the city...

    Nothing changed.

    Or rather, that''s what anyone would think when looking at Tom''s brother drove his car.

    The increase in his speed was gradual yet swift. Whenever an asionalndmark would cover the car from the eyes of those following them, he would press the gas and gain a little speed.

    Most of the time, those sight breaks were too short for any serious eleration. Additionally, Tom''s driver had to be wary of attracting attention.

    "What a madman," Tom muttered, staring in disbelief at the clocks of the car. Even though he only rode bikes himself, all those numbers were more than familiar to him.

    "Huh? We are riding so fast?" udia said, losing her acting face for a moment.

    ''Thankfully, this was one of the windows,'' Tom thought, stealing a nce through the driver''s mirror. But instead of lecturing the girl, he gently poked her side instead.

    "Listen, as soon as we reach my ce, we will jump out. Forget about carrying anything. You won''t need it. But remember," Tom looked the girl in the face for a slight moment. His looksted only for the split of a second their car was covered from the view of their followers.

    Then, Tom turned his head forward to scan his surroundings. He might''ve been away for a great part of his life, but he could easily recognize localndmarks.

    "Hit it," he ordered, refusing to spare the girl as much as a nce.

    Right before Tom''s order, they were already above the speed limit by half its value. Tom''s driver pushed the car to its inbuilt limits, almost instantly rounding that number to a nice two times the limit.

    This was one of the few windows they would get near Tom''s residence.

    All the way to this point, the eleration of the car was barely noticeable. Premium-ss dampeners and seats hid most of the natural forces inside the car.

    But even those were instantly overwhelmed when the driver pulled the throttle on the engine, making it roar like some mystical beast.

    The car jumped forward. Before their pursuers could as much as react, they already reached the next corner. They gained on their shadows with every second, but that advantage would onlyst for so long.

    "Prepare to jump!" Tom shouted to the girl. This wasn''t the time for a delicate approach.

    "Jump?! Like what, from a speeding car?!" udia shouted in panic, clearly letting the heat of the moment too much to her head.

    ''Right, she''s an amateur,'' Tom suddenly recalled this obvious fact. He then shook his head with a huge dose of lenience. "No. The car will stop for a moment. That''s what we got this advantage for," he exined before patting the girl''s head. "Just make sure to run after me as fast as you can. It will be a simple, twenty meters trip," he added with a calm smile.

    ''Fuck, can she make it?'' Tom despaired in his mind. Just twenty meters. It was a short distance. Anyone could run it with ease.

    The question was, could udia run it in the few seconds they have?

    ''This entire thing is nothing but a fucking gamble,'' Tom thought while gritting his teeth.

    The premises of the building were closing in. The car would stop at any time.

    ''Not like I have many choices now, huh,'' Tom noted. He then shook his head to get rid of the doubts.

    "Make sure to call Vincent," Tom shouted to the driver. "Tell him my shadow needs to go for a little vacation ASAP," he exined before patting udia''s shoulder. "We are here," he said, refusing to add any exnations.

    And none were needed.

    The car stopped without as much as a whisper of noise. The brakes of the massive van had to be a national pride of some small country, renowned from its craftsman''s ship.

    "Now," Tom whispered. Yet, for some reason, this silent voice of his had a greater effect on Cleo than any shout could ever have.

    Tom opened the doors before the car could even fully stop. He rushed forward, pulling udia along by her hand.

    All of their belongings remained in the car. It was also a part of the n that Tom set in motion with his earlier order.

    With the help of his uncle Vincent, those two brothers of his would carry their belongings in their open hands, just as their pursuers would arrive at the scene.

    ''Small details make the picture,'' Tom thought, recalling one of his father''s maxims.

    But all those thoughts vanished from Tom''s mind as soon as the center of his weight moved across the car''s frame. In this single instant, his entire mind focused on a single task.

    Reaching the doors of the mansion and dragging udia along in the shortest time possible.

    It was just twenty meters. But with each step Tom took, the car of their pursuers was getting close. With each passing moment, the distance they so painstakingly gathered was shrinking.

    ''Almost there,'' Tom thought, just a few steps away from the doors. The car behind him already rushed forward, pretending to just ride by the farm.

    Tom reached forth with his hand, more flying than running at this point. And there it was.

    Never before have Tom enjoyed the cold touch of the metallic handle. But the rush wasn''t over yet.

    Tom intentionally tripped on the threshold, pulling udia along. As soon as he crossed the breaking point, he pushed on the doors to close them behind them.

    At the same moment as the two of them crashed into the floor, the doors mmed against their frame and closed up.

    "Did we make it?" Tom asked, allowing his emotions to take the better of him. Once he realized the small blunder hemitted, he stood up from the floor before reaching with his hand to the girl. "No, it doesn''t matter now," he said, once again holding back any exnation for this unreasonable situation.

    "Tom, what''s going on?" udia asked while Tom was helping her up. She then dusted off her light sundress and raised her eyes on the young man beside her.

    "Come with me, and you should understand a bit," he replied. ''Now that there is only one thing I can do to protect her...'' he hesitated for a moment.

    Then, Tom chased those doubts away, bringing his eyes up and grabbing udia''s hand a bit tighter.

    "What you are about to see is beyond what you would ever dare to imagine," Tom announced as he made his first step towards the basement. "And now, like it or not, you are going to go against an organization that governs the things you will see."

 Chapter 51: Into the tunnel

    Chapter 51: Into the tunnel

    "Took you a while," Marvin threw his observation out as soon as Tom entered the basement.

    "Trust me, I wish I could''vee here quicker," Tom replied with a sour face. "Cleo, I need you to go and watch the house. Likely, someone is already out there watching the premises," Tom told the girl before stepping towards the loosely hidden hole in the basement''s wall.

    "Who is she?" Marvin asked before Cleo could as much as move a single muscle. "Don''t tell me you brought an outsider to this matter!" he eximed in a jokingly manner, clearly unable to even fathom the possibility of being right.

    "Sadly, you are mostly right," Tom informed his friend with a deep, exhausted sigh. "Everyone, meet udia," he then introduced the girl to the duo in the basement.

    "I will ask again," Marvin spoke up as his face darkened. "Who is she?" The tone of this question was monotone andpletely emotionless, only hinting at the true wrath that lurked in the depths of Marvin''s soul.

    "I met her back in the city. Scored a few runs together. And she ran into me right as I had to yeet out of the hub before they would pounce on me," Tom exined without any further dy. Yet, he twisted his lips in an ugly grimace when the topic of the recent events came up.

    "So that''s the case," Cleo said, interrupting the masculine show of strenght between the two friends. "udia, was it?" she asked the girl standing meekly behind Tom.

    "Y-yeah," udia responded with a weak voice. From her lips trembled, it was clear how terrified she was.

    Not by Marvin or Cleo. Even if the former had a pretty badass sense of fashion, now she was free of her act. She ditched this chilly-cold aura of hers, which was making it hard for people to approach her. Right now, Cleo looked like the sweet cinnamon roll, which was somehow disguised into dressing her hair in a modern punk style.

    "Then I can only wish you luck," Cleo shook her head before patting udia on her arm and moving towards the exitdder.

    "Make sure toe back quickly. We are still on the clock!" Tom ryed his advice to the girl before grabbing udia''s hand and looking her in the eyes. "Let''s go," he said, trying to kill the pain in his heart caused by the girl''s trembling face.

    "Un," udia only nodded meekly before allowing Tom to pull her towards the hole.

    From then, an arduous journey began. Due to the state of his body, Marvin was unable to walk through the tunnel. As such, he ended up upying the only free cart capable of riding the rails that Tom and his fatherid down in the passage.

    "Where did all the other carts go?" Tom asked somewhere in the middle of their trip.

    "Unless took them all," Marvin replied in the same monotone manner he used to speak to Tom before. "I hope you do realize that we will be deducting all the costs from your shares in the group," he added in a lower voice, finally at least openly hostile.

    "Can you cut me some ck?" Tom asked, taking numerous attempts to quell his anger.

    Sadly, all of them ended futile.

    "You do realize what would happen to her if those bastards were to get their hands on her?" Tom suddenly asked his friend. Even though he was as angry as one could get, he continued to push the cart in which his friend sat.

    "No? Not really?" Marvin countered, unwilling to yield any ground to his friend.

    ''It doesn''t make sense,'' Tom thought, startled by how strange turn this discussion was taking. ''Normally, he wouldn''t bother arguing like that,'' he recalled before a sudden realization struck him. ''Was that just my image of him, created by his act? On the other hand, maybe he is just honest with me, something I took as a bad sign? What if this conditioned my perception to look at everything else through this warped perspective?'' he asked himself, trying to figure out the reason for his friend''s strange behavior.

    "Don''t bother thinking about it too much. It''s not like it matters anymore," Marvin shook his shoulders after a moment. Even though he didn''t say that out loud, it was clear he noticed the deep anxiety in Tom''s eyes. "Either way, the unless took all the heavy machinery. What''s more, they nearly wiped clean your ounts to order everything they needed," he added, casting a curious look at Tom.

    "It doesn''t matter," the young man replied, even going as far as to roll his eyes. "Once I get to the dungeon myself, I will be sure to find a way to bring back the stones that everyone in the online hub is so crazy about," Tom said with a smile that only continued to widen.

    "If you think that turning those stones into money will be simple." Marvin shook his head over the naivete of his friend. "Well, there is no point discussing it. We are nearing the site," he added before nodding his head forward.

    And there was truly a sight to behold just two corners away from them. Once the group finally reached the end of the dugout, Tom could finally see the insides of the Dome without the help of any artificial tools.

    Because right now, the metal sheets that covered the entirety of the building''s insides were bent out of shape and broken. This, in turn, allowed Tom a clear and unadulterated look at the mysterious portal revolving within.

    ''It''s levitating?'' Tom thought when this single detail caught his attention. ''No, it''s not like this It''s more like It''s not affected by the gravity in the first ce!'' he thought, not even bothering to hold his joy back.

    "Tom?" a small voice called him out.

    ''Now that I can enter it, I should be able to get one step closer to solving the mystery of my memories.'' Tom rejoiced, unsure how he was supposed to express his happiness.

    After all the scheming, nning, plotting, and thinking, he got one step closer to fulfilling his utmost desire.

    "TOM!" udia shouted, unable to bear with the tension any longer. As if she was some sort ofmander, everyone in the dugout directed their eyes at her. "What am I even looking at?!" she shouted, clearly done with waiting for the answers.

    "Boss, we brought the cables and everything. We are ready to connect at any moment!" one of the uncles approached Tom and said, clearly excited over the prospect of working on this particr project.

    "Great, Cleo will be here in a few moments. We can start as soon as she arrives," Tom ordered before turning his face back to udia. "Listen, what you are looking at right now, is one of those portals that appeared all over the earth several years ago." Tom shrugged and exined the most disturbing part of the situation udia suddenly found herself in.

    "Huh? You dug out a tunnel all the way to a fucking dome?!" she shouted, not from the anger, though, but due to the sheer shock of what those words would mean both for Tom and udia herself. "Are you mad? Don''t you know what can happen if the containment will be broken?" she continued her rant for a while before noticing something peculiar.

    There was a huge group of people in the room already. The containment unit of the portal was already broken. From the looks of things, it wasn''t a recent event that took this protective barrier apart.

    Yet, no one acted as if they were sentenced to death row. No one acted as if every second their bodies continued to consume a lethal dose of radiation. There were no effects to absorbing the dreaded dark mist... Because there was no mist whatsoever!

    "Yes, I dug all the way. And yes, I know what will happen if the containment breaks," Tom announced with a loud voice before spreading his arms apart and moving two steps back. Right now, he was standing as wide as he could, right below the biggest hole in the metal sheet covering the immediate surroundings of the portal. "Absolutely, fucking, nothing. What you see is not some kind of disaster distilled," Tom continued to break every belief aboutmon lies that udia could have.

    "In other words, what you are looking at is the heart of Dungeons Online," Tom announced before squinting his eyes. "In other words, this vortex is a portal to another world, the one we saw through the eyes of our avatars."

    "I''m here!" Cleo shouted as soon as she rushed through the open doors. Struggling to catch a breath and sweating all over, she was the embodiment of someone who lost all reason just for the sake of fulfilling the order.

    "Great, everyone, let''s begin!"

 Chapter 52: Peters evening

    Chapter 52: Peter''s evening

    The light of the candle flickered on the crystal in Peter''s hand. The reflection of the tiny spark cast on the still surface of light wine. With it, the entire cup appeared to take some godly attribute. This simple piece of modted crystal allowed its user to catch and trap light inside, making the cup shine with something akin to an inner brightness.

    On a table behind him, a thin folder with just a few papers awaited Peter''s attention.

    "Shush," Peter lectured the cat he held in his left arm once it started purring for no reason. ''It does strangely appears to be quite like her,'' he thought about the suggestion his coworkers gave about his personal secretary and the cat.

    "Well, they are both just as attentive. There is no point inparing," Peter muttered in a low voice. He watched nkly as his kitty snapped, cut his arms with its ws before gracefully jumping down from his hold.

    "Comparing what?" Peter''s secretary appeared like always, seemingly out of thin air. Even though Peter boasted the greatest personal strenght in the entirety of the local hub, the means of this elusive girl still baffled him.

    "It''s nothing," Peter quickly cut the topic before looking at his secretary''s unusually cute face. ''I guess she didn''t need to fight a real battle even once,'' Peter thought before moving his eyes on the scars leftover from when his own cat dared to bare its fangs against him. "Do you have anything for me?" he asked after a moment of dy, casting a quick nce at the papers he already had on the table.

    "Yeah, the analytics of the family came in. After skimming through them I believe there is really something fishy going on here," the secretary announced as she ced another file full of documents on Peter''s table.

    "Let me take a look," the man stopped his secretary in the middle of her moves, intercepting the documents right in the air.

    "Hmm," Peter hummed. "I see," Peter saw. "Woah!" Peter shouted in surprise.

    "This guy" he muttered under his nose as his eyes finished scanning the front page of the extensive report. "So? Did he really leave the country?" he asked the secretary as there was no one else in the room.

    "I don''t know...-" The secretary''s voice broke when her phone suddenly rang out its tune. The girl quickly pulled out her phone, proving to be quite a veteran of this phone-draw technique before ncing over the screen. "Theprehensive report just came in. While there was some confusion in the field, it appears he really left," the girl scrolled through the message she received before passing her phone over to Peter.

    "Huh?" he muttered as soon as he started the lecture. "Running to the chopper with a stack of dirty pants in his arms?" he whispered parts of the report out loud, feeling how the shock was slowly taking over his mind.

    "They saw one of his cronies rushing to the heli Only to pass up some kind of medal of sorts. Don''t you think it" the girl started, only to shut the hell up as soon as Peter raised his hand.

    "Don''t go any further. I believe in the reports," Peter said with a wide smile before grabbing the thin stack of papers from the desk, rolling it up, and mming the girl through her head. Strong enough to make her feel it but light enough to not cause any real pain or injury. "And that''s what we both should do," he added before distancing himself from the girl and approaching the window.

    "To think that he would run into the girl he was trying to escape from." Peter chuckled while looking out through the massive window making up the entirety of one of the office''s walls. "I wonder if he is going to visit another bitch of his," he added a few words before turning around from the window and sitting in his main chest.

    In this single moment, the air around the man changed. Once he was fully seated in hisfortable throne, all the feelings and emotions appeared to have disappeared from his face and soul alike. Only the frame of logical thinking, insane intellect and mind skill was left.

    "I said all of that But I still don''t like it," Peter announced in a calm yet cold voice. "Kira, do I need to spell out what I need you to do now?" he asked whilezily watching the girl.

    "High-manager Peter, Conservator Kira is awaiting orders," the girl obediently lowered her head. All her usual cheekiness disappeared in a single instant, reced by the same cold aura that Peter was currently full off.

    "Make sure to investigate everyst bit of this family and that Tom guy. As for udia" Peter squinted his eyes a little, "I believe we already know everything about her. But just in case Tom was going to go overboard with her Investigate that girl as well."

    "I''m a Conservator, not an Investigator," Kira protested in a cold voice while sending a hateful look to the man. "You can ask this bitch Lorene to do the spying for you," she said before sending a cold look at Peter''s face.

    "That''s right, you are a Conservator," Peter said nkly, not stressed by the situation at all. "And I''m the High Manager," Peter''s stood up from his chair. Even though the surge of his aura started when he sat down on it, he somehow still held control over it.

    Peter''s eyes shed as if a brilliant radiance exploded in Peter''s brain. He looked down at Kira with those fiery eyes of his.

    The girl trembled.

    "I''m the one who calls the shots here. So I don''t care if you are a Conservator, Investigator, or even a manager," Peter spoke softly, yet his words rung like gongs.

    This strange brilliance behind his spirit was clearly responsible for this.

    ''Fucking bastard,'' Kira bit her lips to withstand the attack of her boss. The faint, golden light in Peter''s eyes gave him more than enough power to wreak havoc in the entire area he controlled.

    Those bringing results would be rewarded. This was the one-step world conquest rule in the organization. By rewarding those who were willing to climb higher, the entire world structure was energized.

    And Peter was bringing in some good results. He rocketed through the agency and customer service stages, reaching the managerial position by his early twenties. Finally, on his twenty-fifth birthday, the organization rewarded him with an entire Centre of Distribution.

    By that time, Peter already became a local legend. Yet, everyone was aware of the numerous corpses he had to bury to get where he was at this day.

    ''You fucking bastard,'' Kira cursed, releasing the true scope of her killing intent for a moment before suddenly reining it all back.

    "Good kitty," Peter smiled perversely before bringing his hand down and returning to his usual, rxed self.

    ''Not only a murderous bastard but also an idiot,'' Kira kept her angry face, pretending to care about the situation way more than she did. ''As long as I pretend to rein myself in under your power, you feel more satisfaction than you could get by raping an entire city worth of females.'' She thought, trying to move back a step.

    "You will do what I said," Peter sat back on his chair but didn''t bring out its aura. Gracing Kira with a cheerful smile, he added, "find out everything there is about those people. I don''t think you will find anything, but there is nothing stopping us from making sure."

 Chapter 53: Cleo, you are up

    Chapter 53: Cleo, you are up

    "What are we going to do now?" udia asked, slowly getting over the confusion and terror that rampaged through her mind.

    "Right now?" Tom repeated her question before shaking his head. "We wait," he announced before finding a ce to sit at.

    But he was the only one resting. Before udia could make up her mind whether she should just stand and wait or follow the example of the only person she knew, everyone started to move.

    Some people came from the tunnel carrying heavy boxes. The group that was here by the time Tom and udia arrived was already busy working around a messy sea of cables. In the small confinement of this dug-out space, only Tom, udia, and Cleo could justze around.

    "Boss, are you going with the standard set or...?" one of the men approached Tom and asked.

    "Pack fewer guns and ammunition. Use the saved up weight and space for food and drinks," Tom ordered. ''The guns will be useful only at the first twenty to thirty floors. Past that point, the monsters will be too hard for those pea-shooters to do anything about them,'' Tom thought, making his decision on this simple reasoning alone.

    ''But that begs the question. If the Online Hub had ess to those portals all that time... Howe they didn''t use it to create powerful people? Or maybe they did?'' Tom''s thoughts were full of worries. He had no anxiety towards the ongoing scheme, but the perspective of what he was going against was still overwhelming.

    "Hey," udia spoke up as she scooted a bit closer to Tom. "Can you tell me what are we waiting for?" she asked in her still trembling tone.

    "Right now?" Tom replied with a question on his own before nodding his head towards the gathering of elders busy with cables and connectors. "We are waiting for them to..."

    "We are finished," the leader of that group announced before Tom could even finish his words.

    "That means I''m up," Cleo said as she stood up and jumped to where all the men were gathering.

    "Boss, your backpacks," one of the men said while passing a massive tourist luggage to Tom. He then looked at udia with weird fires in his eyes before passing another slightly smaller backpack to her. "Any weapons of choice?" he then asked.

    "Can you get me a spear?" Tom asked before moving his eyes on udia. "Come on, you don''t want to end up fighting bare-handed!" he lectured her, forcing the girl out of her shocked state.

    "Metal gloves then?" udia replied in a dubious tone. She acted as if she could easily piece everything that was happening in front of her eyes together but refused to acknowledge it.

    "Will do," the man replied before disappearing into the depths of the tunnel.

    After a moment of hesitation, udia epted Tom''s extended hand and allowed him to help her up. But as she did so, she raised her eyes and saw the thing that Cleo approached a moment earlier.

    "Oh my god," udia muttered, weakly pressing her back against the metal sheet behind. "You constructed your own capsule?!"

    If the trembling of udia''s voice was already dying away, now it was back in its full swing.

    "Not exactly," Tom shook his head sideways. "You can get a private capsule mounted in your house if you the exorbitant prince. We got it for one of my brother''s houses and then asked the uncles here to dismantle it before assembling here," he exined the situation. "But less with that. Can you carry that backpack?" Tom asked while looking towards the equipment one of his brothers prepared for the girl.

    "Ugh, let me try," udia replied, clearly not happy with the sudden change of topic.

    ''Well, it would be strange if she could just ept everything around her on the go,'' Tom thought, trying to downy the potentially problematic nature of this girl. After all, she was the only one uncertainty in the entire n, the only element that was forced in the scheme.

    "Yeah. It''s heavy, but I can somehow manage," udia said after testing out the weight of the backpack before putting it on her back.

    "Good," Tom nodded his head before bringing his own luggage up to his back as well.

    Soon, the same brother that brough their equipment a moment earlier reappeared in the tunnel while carrying both of the ordered weapons in his hands.

    "I don''t think I want to know where did you get those things," Tom muttered under his nose as he epted the spear from his brother''s hands.

    "Courtesy of Marvin," the young man replied while shaking his shoulders. "In the entire family, you were the only one who actually believed in your own act. So it was pretty obvious you would try to follow in your father''s footsteps," he said before putting a wild grin on his face as he turned away. "No one expected you to be so throughout with the n, though," he said as he walked back into the long corridor of the dug-out.

    "I don''t even want to know what he was expecting me to do," Tom unknowingly voiced out his thoughts.

    "Huh?" udia gasped in surprise when she heard his words, alerting Tom about the blunder he just made.

    "Nevermind that, the show is about to begin," Tom cut the topic once again before moving his eyes towards the makeshift capsule.

    Whenpared to the ones used at the online hub, the one Tom''s family prepared in the tunnel looked too scary for any sane person to go inside. Outside of thepleteck of cooling fuel, a mechanism for which was too cumbersome to carry all the way here, one was unprotected from the overheating and radiation that would umte inside the capsule...

    The best solution to theck of cooling liquid was also the simplest one. Rather than dealing with the problems that would arise by enclosing the yer within the capsule, Tom''s uncles... Just left it open.

    "udia," Tom said before casting a quick nce at his childhood friend. She didn''t say a word, but her stare was intense enough for Tom to notice her intentions. "You are up."

 Chapter 54: Swing above the abyss

    Chapter 54: Swing above the abyss

    "Good luck on the other side," Cleo said with a smile before jumping into the capsule. Even though the guidelines suggested removing all kinds of casual clothing and entering with special undies only, she couldn''t care less about such trifling matters.

    "Let''s hope we can find each other as soon as possible," Tom replied before nodding his head and turning around. He wasn''t going to watch the girl fall unconscious. After all, that would mean wasting the opportunity she was giving them.

    "Be ready to climb, run, jump and do all sorts of stuff," Tom said as he turned his eyes to udia.

    "That''s..." she hesitated in her response. "I''m pretty athletic, but doing all of that with a heavy backpack?" udia shrugged at the sheer thought of doing dangerous by itself with an additional burden.

    "You can either carry it and stop whining or starve once we are inside," Tom replied coldly, peeking through the hole in the containment sheets.

    And sure enough, at the same time as Cleo''s capsule lit up, stuff started to happen within the interior of the Dome.

    ''What a clever design,'' Tom thought when a single tile on the floor right underneath the ck vortex disappeared. Whether it slid to the side, turned around and moved down, or just vanished in thin air, he couldn''t decide.

    Thankfully, it didn''t really matter. Not like the thing that happened next.

    After some mechanical noises, a long, metal arm grew from one of the four cubes ced in even distances away from each other and the vortex itself. Once its grabbing arm reached the hole in the floor, the arm twisted and reached inside the opening.

    "This is our chance," Tom muttered as he grabbed the edges of the hole in the metal before pulling himself up. The weight of the backpack was hard to ignore, but he still managed to keep his mobility.

    Sadly, the same couldn''t be said about udia.

    "Come," Tom extended his hand to the girl while watching how the arm continued to move around within the hole.

    "Uff... Thanks." udia finally managed to pull herself up with Tom''s help from above and his brother''s help from below.

    ''From how red she is, they didn''t really mind where they were touching,'' Tom thought when noticing the hue of the girl''s cheeks.

    "What now?" udia asked after catching her breath. She then looked at the ce to which Tom''s eyes were glued.

    "We need to hurry," Tom replied before starting his descent. Even though he dug pretty far down, the hole was still roughly in the third of how deep the insides of the Dome were. As such, after the initial few steps, he just fell to his knees and slid the rest of the distance.

    As he continued down the curved wall, Tom had to fight the urge to look behind to check how udia was doing. As worried as he was for her, he was unwilling to look away from where he was going.

    ''Given the importance of this ce, it''s bound to be riddled with traps and sensors.'' So Tom thought once his slide finally stopped due to the floor getting too even with the ground. ''Some I can find out, others I can only hope will either malfunction or won''t be automated.'' Tom wished as he moved up from his knees and started to slowly approach the wiggly arm.

    "Hey..." udia said, only for Tom to instantly turn his head around and burn her with his intense stare. He then raised his finger to his lips in themon gesture ordering silence.

    With that slight mishap out of their way, the two continued towards their target.

    Once they were just several feet away, the mechanical arm stopped wiggling. Right now, judging from how the cable powering it started to retract at a worrying rate, it was clear that it found what it was looking for before.

    When the two of them reached the hole, the arm was already pulling an androgynous, naked body out.

    ''It''s just like the characters in the lobby,'' Tom noticed before shaking his head and looking over at udia. "It''s do or die right now," he said with a stern face before correcting his timing and jumping up.

    Tom reached forward in the middle of his jump, catching the lifeless avatar''s leg. Despite how stiff its entire body was, he could tell with just a touch that the avatar''s skin and insides were just like an actual human.

    For a moment, the arm trembled. Tom only nced towards the hole in the containment, almost invisible from a distance. ''This arm was fitted to lift a single avatar at a time,'' he thought grimly, but there was nothing he could do.

    ''Right now, I can only hope the uncles will do something about it,'' Tom tightened his teeth, not daring to look down. Unfortunately, the hole where the avatars were stored had to go so deeply into the ground that he could easily lose hisposture if he were to look down.

    The arm jerked a bit... But then, it continued to pull the avatar up. And then, as if sensing that it was thest moment, Cleo finally gathered her courage and jumped.

    But she missed. Her hands didn''t reach the avatar''s legs due to how slow she was to make up her mind. And in this single moment, she finally realized the situation she was in.

    With nothing to grab on to. In the middle of the air. With a seemingly endless hole underneath her feat.

    In a single instant, Tom could see the terror appearing in the girl''s eyes as she realized what was about to happen now.

    ''Fuck!'' Tom cursed in his mind as he let go of the avatar''s leg. While he was risking the entire operation by doing that, he wasn''t willing to just watch how udia would plunge into the abyss.

    "CATCH!" he shouted, pushing himself against the avatar. Then, with some kind of miracle, Cleo managed to grasp at his ankle with one of her hands, instantly driven by her momentum into a wide swing.

    The metal arm started giving out a worrying noise. With a line, three human''s heights long, the weight of udia and her backpack alone had enough leverage to overburden it.

    "Drop your back!" Tom shouted, entrusting his entire fate to his instincts. Right now, he wastching to the avatar''s body in the exact same way that udia held on to him: by holding the avatar''s ankle for his dear life.

    "I''m on it!" udia shouted back, clearly giving the panic afy spot in her head. But even though she was barely holding on to a stable mental state, she still managed to shrug off the backpack, allowing it to fall directly into the hole under them.

    ''That''s going to be a massive painter,'' Tom thought, watching how the damning evidence fell out of his reach. Then, when he shouted to the girl, he had no time to tell her to drop it anywhere but in the hole. ''Now that I think about it, she wouldn''t be able to do it either way,'' he thought, forcing himself to calm down.

    With a huge weight off its bearings, the metallic crane started to move up again.

    "Climb up!" Tom ordered the girl, worried that she wouldn''tst long just by hanging on to his ankle. ''I don''t know what will happen in the vortex, but it''s better to be close than spread out so far,'' he thought.

    For a moment, Tom was torn between the pain of holding nearly the triple worth of his weight on his hands alone and feeling udia''s hands touching him all over as she climbed up.

    "I''m here," she said before starting to hyperventte. Both the traumatic experience and the task of climbing up while having nothing underneath tired the girl out.

    "Hold on, we are about to enter the vortex," Tom said as he raised his eyes up.

    Just like he mentioned, the crane was nearing the end of its job. But rather than inserting the lifeless avatar straight into the hole, it stopped roughly three meters away from what looked like the event horizon of the vortex.

    Then, with the release of condensed air, the avatar was blown off toward the vortex.

    But instead of falling due to the excessive weight, it appeared that something pulled on it.

    ''It''s as if it fell down the gravity well,'' Tom thought as he stared into the ever-erging darkness of the vortex.

    "Where are you?!" udia''s sudden shout forced Tom to look around, only to realize that despite still holding the girl in his arms, he couldn''t see her at all. In fact, he couldn''t see anything.

    But before he could even get scared, this strange experience came to an end as the two of them fell down on the cold, stone tiles.

    "What is this ce..." after taking a moment to calm down, udia asked.

    "As if you didn''t know this already," Tom muttered as he grabbed udia''s shoulders... Only to shove her out of him, finally allowing the man to get his breath back. But rather than dawdling on the matter, Tom quickly stood up.

    After the quick check of his surroundings, he finally dropped his guard a little before reaching with his hands to the girl.

    "Wee to the real Dungeon," he said while helping the girl up. "But as much as I would like to treat you to something to celebrate our first time in here," Tom''s smile soured a little as he averted his eyes.

    "But it looks like we will need to be really careful with our supplies, don''t we?" udia finished Tom''s word for him, proving that she didn''t lose her edge despite how tense and weird the entire situation was.

 Chapter 55: First monsters

    Chapter 55: First monsters

    "So it''s actually true," udia muttered under her nose as she looked around the ce.

    "It looks exactly the same. While that reason alone isn''t sufficient proof, there is a simple way to find out whether I''m right or not," Tom shrugged his shoulders before taking his backpack off.

    Soon, the reason for why it was nearly as high as the man himself was revealed as Tom pulled out two pulse rifles from it.

    "Here, take it," he passed one of the weapons to the girl, who lost all of her equipment outside of the gloves she requested before. In fact, if she didn''t wear them in advance, she would lose them as well.

    "Seriously? A gun?" udia looked up at Tom''s face. "Aren''t we supposed to fight in the same way we did while ying?" she asked while inspecting the rifle with confusion.

    ''She never had a gun in her hands before,'' Tom thought as he noticed how awkward she was while holding the modern piece of equipment.

    "Here, this is safety. This is the mag release. You aim by coordinating the three dots in sights into a straight line," he exined the basics of handling the weapon before taking a few moments to inspect his own.

    Whenpared to thest-age mechanical guns, pulse rifles were far simpler. Rather than using the primitive technology of propelling the projectile with gunpowder, they worked on the basis of rail-gun.

    Each magazine came with a set of a hundred pellets and a batterysting just long enough to shoot them all. Thanks to this arrangement, one''s shoots could be far more urate and powerful.

    ''But that also means obtaining ammunition will be nigh impossible once we run out of it,'' Tom thought as he pulled the special belt out of the back of the gun. He then hooked it at the special hold on the front before hanging the entire thing on his neck.

    "Now that I think about it," udia started while following Tom''s example and putting the gun''s belt over her head, "where did Cleo go?"

    "Oh, so you don''t know?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the question. ''I thought it wasmon knowledge already,'' he thought to himself before looking around and making his first step forward. "Basically, you can imagine the entire dungeon as a pyramid. Starting from the bottom, you are thrown randomly into one of its tiles or channels. That''s why you never encounter other yers when you go solo for the early floors," Tom exined.

    "What about parties then?" udia asked, clearly intent on digging the topic a bit deeper. "Not only can we see each other right away, but we can also... Wait, what happened to the lobby?" udia suddenly changed her question where she realized what was missing in the process of entering the dungeon.

    "I believe it''s one of the parts that was actually created by the Online Hub," Tom exined his guesses. "Sadly, everything I believe to know is nothing more but conjunction based on what I observed and experienced. We are here to find out at least some truths in the first ce," he said as he continued to push deeper into the dungeon.

    Whenpared to exploring it through the avatar''s senses, the real dungeon appears to be far darker than Tom expected. But while he had some night-vision goggles packed at the bottom of his backpack, he opted not to pull them out so soon.

    After all, he had no idea what awaited them at deeper floors. ''Given how I aim to go as deep as I can before we run out of supplies, it wouldn''t be wise to use the batteries so lightly,'' he thought while gripping the handle of his spear a bit harder.

    "Going back to the topic, how can you know those things?" udia asked, not satisfied with what Tom exined so far.

    "Do you remember anything from the day when my main avatar died?" Tom said before releasing a deep sigh. "The hole that we fell into was made by the boss of the veryst floor of the dungeon. Before falling into it, I saw her fight with some other yer," Tom summarised the entire event while keeping silent about everything else that transpired that day.

    "So you concluded that the lower we go, the greater chance we will meet with her?" udia asked before leaning her head over to her shoulder and smiling sweetly. "Tell me, do you even think Cleo can go deep enough for that? Keep in mind that she will be all on her own!" she said, clearly not convinced by Tom''s n.

    "First off, I could reach level fifty solo without much trouble. As such, Cleo could do it even faster than me," Tom said and shrugged his shoulders in response.

    ''Well, it''s no wonder she will doubt Cleo''s abilities... But amongst the three of us, she always came out on top in sparrings,'' Tom recalled the memories from before he went to the city. While there was a slight tone of sourness in remembering his multiple losses, at least it reassured him about Cleo''s chances of fulfilling her own end of the n.

    "Hey, can you hear that?" Tom suddenly stood in ce while allowing the momentum of his walk to swing his rifle forward. He caught it as soon as it neared his hand before activating the weapon and taking aim at the direction the sound came from.

    "A monster?" udia asked, grabbing and lowering her own rifle.

    "Activate it!" Tom said with a tiny dose of annoyance when he saw the girl trying to aim with an offline weapon. Without the closed circuit to pass the energy to the railing of the gun, the entire thing was just as good as one''s average metal club. "But yeah, I believe we finally found some monsters," Tom admitted once the girl pushed the switch.

    ''Judging from the sound and how low we are, those monsters should be...'' Tom thought, only for the monsters toe out of the corner, saving him the trouble of guessing.

    "Slimes!"

 Chapter 56: Testing on the slimes

    Chapter 56: Testing on the slimes

    "Well, there is no point wasting our precious ammunition on them," Tom said, letting go of his rifle. Thanks to being strapped around his neck, it didn''t fall to the ground but dangled on his chest instead.

    "How do you intend to kill them, then?" udia asked, puzzled by Tom''s peculiar decision. "With your bare hands?" she added another question, this time filled with irony. "Remember, we are no longer just controlling our avatars! What if they have some kind of acid effect?"

    "It''s nice to see you worry about me," Tom smiled as he pulled out a military-grade knife from his backpack before unsheathing it and taking his first step towards slimes. "But we still have to kill them in one way or another, don''t we?" he posed the rhetorical question before walking towards the monsters.

    The slimes looked just like most of the games throughout the games described them. The four blue blobs of some kind of liquid unknown to mankind with a solid core inside were currently making their way towards Tom.

    ''Just how do they move?'' Now that he was in the dungeon with both his body and mind, Tom couldn''t help but ask himself this question. They didn''t appear to rotate, nor were they jumping by squishing their body and suddenly springing it up. Yet, they continued to push forward despite not having any obvious means of doing so.

    "Well, it doesn''t matter," Tom summed the situation up just as he stood his ground roughly two meters away from the monsters. And then he waited.

    And waited.

    And waited.

    A minuteter, he couldn''t be bothered anymore and made the step forward, closing the distance between him and the monsters.

    "Come here," he said as he reached with his left hand and squished the outer shell of the slime before bringing it up. Then, with the monster gently wiggling on his palm, he brought it away from the rest of the pack before dropping it on the ground.

    "What are you doing?" udia asked, puzzled by his actions even further than she was before.

    "Just some light testing," Tom replied as he sank just the tip of his knife into the monster''s outer membrane. But just as expected, it bent inwards but refused to split open.

    "Just like in the game," Tom muttered before cing his left hand on the back of the knife and then pushing it all the way in by pressing on it with most of the weight of his body.

    "Plop!" the sound of the membrane giving up was strangely close to what Tom heard many times over on the sites that always required one to confirm his age.

    "Well, that''s one thing you didn''t hear while ying," udiamented while averting her suddenly reddened face.

    "Don''t even get me started on that," Tom replied, hiding his own slight blush as well. ''Isn''t this what I always read in the recounts? The heat of battle and the feeling of being on the line between life and death always made people quite horny, didn''t it?'' Tom could easily recall that this was one of the fewmon elements in his father''s brothers'' in arms written memories from the time of war.

    ''The problem is, we didn''t really encounter any life-or-death situation yet, so I guess it''s just a matter of our age.'' So Tom concluded as he manipted the tip of his knife to finally pierce the solid core inside the monster.

    "Crack," this time, the sound of the core breaking didn''t produce any unnecessary thoughts in either of them. As soon as the tip of the knife touched it, a small rift appeared on it before the entire thing dissolved in slime''s own insides.

    "Looks like this liquid it''s made from is actually slightly corrosive," Tom said in a low voice, observing the slight marks left on his de. "Well, it would be for the best to find some kind of stick to deal with them," he added, already figuring out a way to deal with those low-level monsters without wasting away their precious weapons.

    "Wait, why do you even want to kill them?" udia asked as she brought up another smile before holding it up in her arms as if it was some kind of puppy. "Now that I think of it, couldn''t we use them as some sort of pillow?" she proposed before shrugging her arms and throwing the slime away. "All in all, they are too slow to be of any danger to us," she said, throwing a long look at the slime she just threw aside.

    And just like before, it charged forward with all its might... Which amounted to a speed that only a snail could be proud of.

    "Well, you are right here," Tom shook his head before raising from his knees. "I don''t know what made me feel like we need to get rid of all the monsters we encounter," he lied smoothly.

    ''It''s the game habits,'' he thought to himself, perfectly aware of the reason that he didn''t want to reveal to the girl. As someone who nned the entire trip to the real dungeon, it was hard for him to admit that he wasn''t all that well prepared for it.

    ''Looking at her situation, it will be better if she thinks I have everything nned out,'' Tom thought while stealing a quick nce of udia''s face. Right now, she was watching with amusement how the slime finally reached her leg before mounting it, as if it demanded some cuddles.

    "Can you kick it over?" Tom asked while readying his rifle.

    "Huh? You want to kill this one as well?" udia leaned her head over her shoulder before obediently swinging her leg forward and sending the slime flying towards Tom.

    "Didn''t I tell you earlier?" Tom shook his head. "We need to test all sorts of stuff before moving forward," he exined before kneeling on one knee and taking aim at the slime. While it was just a few centimeters away from the front of the barrel of his pulse rifle, the core was too small to just randomly shoot it without aiming.

    "Bzzt!" Small holes appeared all over the rifle''s barrel as soon as Tom pressed the trigger. With one-shot mode on, only a single pellet would leave the gun. As it was a perfect fit for the barrel''s rifling, the pellet pushed out all the air out of it.

    The inbuilt mechanism of airing the barrel was there to reduce the stress of refilling it with the atmospheric pressure after each shot.

    "Strange," Tom muttered, watching how the core dissolved in the slime''s insides. For some reason, contrary to what happened when he killed it with a knife, rather than dissolving, the slime remainedpletely stationary as if it just hibernated. "I wonder what does that means?"

 Chapter 57: Out of the loop

    Chapter 57: Out of the loop

    "Well," Tom said while rising from his knees. "There is no point dawdling on this point. Let''s move out," he ordered in a soft voice as he picked up his knife and shoved it back into its holster.

    "Is that all?" udia asked, pretty surprised by the sudden change in Tom''s ns. "Didn''t you want to test them extensively?" she added more details to make her question actually about something rather than as vague as it was initially.

    "How long do you think we will deal with slimes?" Tom asked while kicking away thest of the first three slimes that they encountered away. "Up to the fifth floor? Maybe tenth if we are unlucky?" he guessed the answer himself, basing it on his own experiences in the dungeon so far.

    "How can you be so certain about it?" udia asked while obediently following the man deeper into the dimly lit corridor. "Did you enter the dungeon for real before, or are you speaking solely from your experiences from the game?" she asked while drilling holes in Tom''s back with her eyes.

    "What''s the difference?" Tom bounced the ball back, taking a quick nce behind before moving his attention back to whatid ahead. "Be it a game or real life, we were still exploring the same dungeon nevertheless," he exined before turning silent.

    Soon, another pack of slimes came their way. But rather than wasting as much time as they did on the first one, a few kicks settled the matter. Given the speed of those weak monsters, by the time they would hike all the way to the fiftieth floor and back, they would barely move from one end of the corridor to the other.

    "What''s the rush?" udia asked after roughly ten minutes of hastened pace. "Don''t we have all the time in the world to explore this ce? How about we just take it easy?" she asked while trying hard to stabilize her breath.

    "Wait, do you really think we have a lot of time?" Tom asked, so surprised by the notion that he even stopped in his tracks and turned around to face the girl. An action that would be too reckless for him to do in the dungeon was they any higher than the very first floor.

    "Don''t we?" udia replied with a slight sulk. "Like,e on! Who can chase after us here? Or do you want to go back to that Cleo girl as soon as you can, maybe?" she continued to push needles into Tom''s soul, clearly angered by something.

    "And what does Cleo have to do with all of that?" Tom asked, more dumbfounded than shocked by udia''s problems. He then released a deep sigh before patting himself on the backpack. "Listen, while I''m not saying anything about you losing your own back, it''s an undeniable fact that we only have half the food and water than what I initially nned for us to have." Tom guided the thoughts of the girl to the real reason behind their hurry.

    "We only have so much food. We only have so much water. Don''t even get me started with the ammunition and other weapons," Tom counted out the three most important pieces that he was worried about running out. "We are here not to y around but to see what this ce is really all about. To learn why the fact that those dungeons are real was hidden from public knowledge. As such, every moment that we can spend on looking for hints is more valuable than gold." Tom lectured the girl before realizing how heated he became during this short monologue of his.

    ''I shouldn''t let my thoughts out so much,'' he thought to himself, pulling his tongue back behind his teeth. ''In the end, she''s here only because of an unlucky meeting, not because she cares about all of that,'' Tom thought grimly, easily finding fault in himself rather than trying to push the me on the girl.

    "I''m sorry," udia said after a few moments of silence between the two. "I didn''t know that you were so serious about the... Or nevermind, that sounds just inly wrong," she fixed her own words, clearly aware that what she was about to say had no sense at all.

    After all, it was hard to im that she didn''t realize how important and heavy this mission was for Tom, given that she saw how many preparations he made to make ite true and how many risks he was willing to take in order to bring it to its fruition!

    "Don''t mind it," Tom said while waving his hand away. "It''s normal that you are still quite out of the loop with everything," he replied in a calm voice. In thest few moments that udia took to gather the courage to say her piece, he managed to calm himself down.

    "What are we going to do next, then?" udia asked, clearly trying to just move forward and change the topic to something else.

    ''Nice try,'' Tom thought, perfectly aware of what she was trying to do.... ''But I guess there is nothing wrong with burying the hatchet.'' He thought after a moment, finally letting go of thest strand of annoyance that her earlier questions asked. "Right now, we are going to go as deep as we can and see what kind of effects conquering the dungeons in our real bodies will have on us," Tom exined the rough idea behind this entire trip. "That, and I want to bring back at least some of those ''data'' stones for my people to analyze them," he revealed the other major part of the n.

    "So, in the immediate future, we are going to..." udia reworded her question, leading it all the way to the point where she stopped and moved her eyes on Tom''s back.

    "Yes," Tom nodded his head before fixing the position of his rifle on his chest. "We are going to kill the boss of the floor now,"

 Chapter 58: Annoying boss monster

    Chapter 58: Annoying boss monster

    "What kind of monster do you think it will be?" udia asked while leisurely trodding behind the man.

    "A goblin?" Tom replied with a question on his own. "Maybe a slime?" he continued guessing for a while before shaking his head. "If it works just like in-game, then we can guess for an entire day, and we still might miss," he said.

    Each of the dungeon''s floors had a limited number of different monsters popting it. It was a truth that Tom learned even before discovering how the entire Dungeons Online was just a ruse to cover an actual dungeon that he was in right now. But while he couldn''t understand why the game developers didn''t share any information about the rules within the dungeon before, it turned out to be quite simple now.

    The owners of the game never shared any details of it with the yers because they never were behind the creation of the dungeon in the first ce.

    But that didn''t mean the rules that Tom discovered on his own weren''t valid. Or rather, just like with science, they were true unless proven otherwise.

    "We already saw slimes for this floor, so I believe there are little chances it will be another..." Tom was about to reveal his way of thinking when the two of them took a turn and saw the entrance to the boss area.

    And as if to humiliate Tom, thest room of the floor was upied by a massive slime. It was the size of one''s average cow and of deep, greenish color. What''s more, rather than a single solid core like in its smaller brethren, there were five different stones free-floating within the inner liquid of the monster.

    "How are we going to kill it?" udia asked, taking a stop just before the corridor could change into the boss room. ''While everything we know about this ce is more like guidelines than strict rules, I have never seen any of the bosses cross this invisible barrier.'' So udia thought while observing the slime slowly moving around its room.

    "It would be a waste of ammunition to shoot it. But it''s too big to reach its cores with my knife," Tom concluded as he dropped his backpack to the floor and grabbed the one thing that was too long to fit inside.

    His simple spear.

    "Are you seriously going to fight it with this?" udia asked as Tom took a moment to familiarize himself with the weapon. "I know this is still the first floor, bute on! Aren''t you worried it might be stronger in reality than it was in the game?" the girl protested while watching how Tom swung his spear around.

    "That should do it," Tom muttered under his nose. ''It seems that a part of my avatar''s skills is stuck in my brain,'' he thought, noticing how easy it was for him to revolve his spear around. Something that someone who got his hand on a spear for the first time would never be able to do with such ease.

    But he wasn''t going to waste time just spinning his spear around. Once Tom confirmed that he could still wield this simple weapon, he stepped inside the boss room without even a shred of hesitation.

    In an instant, the slime''s attention turned towards him. While its speed was astonishing inparison to its lesser brothers... It was still nothing to be worried about.

    ''How should I crack it,'' Tom asked himself while circling around the monster. ''The main problem is that its cores do not remain in ce,'' Tom noticed, watching how those five small stones inside the dense fluid of the slime''s body continued to move around its insides.

    "Right now, I would kill for arge sword," Tom muttered, imagining how easy it would be to just slice pieces of the slime away. ''Well, it''s not like there is any point in wishing for a sword to appear right now,'' Tom thought before finally making a step towards the monster.

    There was no need to attack in charge. In the current situation, charging would only have a bad effect on Tom''s aim. And it was the only thing that gave the young man virtually any chance at shattering the slime''s cores.

    Push!

    Tom threw his spear forward, holding it just by the very end of its handle. The wave-like de easily prated the slime''s outer shell, but it didn''t evene close to either of its cores.

    "Dang," Tom muttered as he pulled the weapon out. But Tom didn''t continue his attacks. Randomly thrusting his spear in hopes that it would just chance upon one of the slime''s cores wasn''t the way to go here.

    ''It damaged the spear already,'' Tom thought as he inspected the weapon, only to move his eyes back on the slime. Thankfully, the damage was minor, leaving Tom with some hopes of using this spear for a little longer before it would fully break apart.

    "Come on, this is a first-floor boss!" udia shouted from the safety of the corridor. "Howe you are still dealing with it? Why not just shoot it to get it over with?" she asked while crossing her arms on her chest.

    "If you are that smart, how about you go and kill it yourself?" Tom replied in an annoyed voice, not even bothered enough to look at the girl while he did so.

    ''Just how the heck should I deal with it? Chip it away without the slightest care for the spear?'' he thought, puzzled by the situation to no end.

    Then, as he looked towards the slime, he noticed that it moved towards him a bit. But while that part was obvious and unimportant, how he could notice the slime''s movement held a clue to how to defeat it.

    ''Is that small puddle... its insides?'' Tom thought when noticing a slight hue of green remaining in the ce the slime used to be just a moment ago.

    Then, an idea struck Tom. He turned his face around and looked at udia with an excited look in his eyes. "Go and open the backpack, then, throw me one of the spare barrels!"

 Chapter 59: [Bonus Chapter]Slip-up

    Chapter 59: [Bonus Chapter]Slip-up

    "Huh?" udia shrugged in surprise. "A spare barrel? What for?" she asked, puzzled by Tom''s sudden request.

    "Can you just listen to my request? Or do I need to go and get them myself?" Tom asked in an annoyed tone while rolling his eyes.

    ''I understand that you are curious, but it is me facing the boss right now, not you!'' Heined in his thoughts, trying to hold back what he would voice out as to not put a rift between the two of them so early on.

    "Okay, okay! You didn''t need to shout at me like that!" udia pouted while obediently moving towards the backpack and opening it up. "A spare barrel... How does one look like?" she asked while raising her eyes on Tom.

    "..." For a moment, Tom froze in ce, stunned by the question. ''How does a barrel look like?'' he asked himself, trying to figure out how this kind of question could be confusing. ''No, I shouldn''t antagonize her,'' he thought while lowering his eyes and taking a breath to calm himself down.

    "It looks like a pipe? Oversized drinking straw?" he suggested as he shook his head. "You know, the part that''s at the very front of your damned rifle!"

    "Can you stop being so aggressive?!" udia protested while rummaging through the backpack. "I''m not one of your militaristkeys!" she added while moving the stuff inside the bag haphazardly.

    Tom only shook his head while taking a few steps to distance himself from the slime. Even though it was pretty slow, given how long it took the girl to find the single item he asked for, the slime almost managed to catch up to him even at its slow speed.

    "Here! Is that it?!" udia shouted in a happy voice while raising her hand. In it, she had a simple metal tube, roughly twenty centimeters long.

    "Yeah, pass it on and wear your gloves!" Tom ordered the girl while stretching his hand towards her.

    udia didn''t hesitate this time. Maybe she didn''t want to receive another scolding, or maybe she had some other reasons, but she threw the barrel as soon as she saw Tom extend his hand.

    "I didn''t expect you would need my help with such a weak monster," she muttered as she rushed to wear her gloves.

    "I''m just trying to minimalize the loss of our equipment," Tom countered while catching the barrel and moving his eyes back on the slime. ''As expected, it already mended its injury,'' Tom noticed after a few moments of looking for the opening he made with his spear earlier.

    "Just one more minute!" udia shouted from the corridor, still busy trying to put her gloves on.

    "It''s okay," Tom said, not wasting any time on his end. He rushed towards the slime with a spear in his right hand and a barrel in his left. This time, he didn''t aim at any of the stones. His n was different.

    "Here we go," he muttered as he threw his spear forward, once again puncturing the outer shell of the slime. Its sticky insidestched on the de''s metal and wood of the handle, instantly trying to dissolve it.

    But Tom didn''t allow his spear to stay inside the slime for long. Rather than trying to move it around and hit one of the slime''s cores floating in its insides, he decisively pulled the weapon back and stepped aside.

    Only thanks to his innate drive to dodge did Tom avoid a sudden flush of the slime''s insides that seemingly came after him. But rather than stepping aside and away from the slime, he just moved to its side.

    It was questionable whether the slime''s actions were an intelligent act of a being trying to defend itself or just natural processes that happened due to simple physics. But as soon as the slime stopped ejecting its insides, Tom brought his left hand towards it before mming the barrel right where he injured it earlier!

    "Now, you won''t be able to close the gap," Tom muttered towards the slime before turning his head towards the girl. "It''s your turn now! Try to squish it as much as you can!"

    "On it!" udia said, rushing towards the slime. Even though she wasn''t a part of Tom''s militaristic family, she yed Dungeons Online for long enough to figure out his n.

    "Here it... GOES!" She shouted as she jumped only to drop-kick the slime. If it continued to spew out its insides before, then the small stream of those turned into a raging river when udia pushed her heel heavily into the boss. But rather than stopping, she fixed her footing before sending a barrage of heavy hits towards the slime. Every single of her attacks produced a new current in the stream of its insides flowing out.

    "That was quite smart of you," udiamented after a moment as she distanced herself from the slime to take a short break. At this point, its size already decreased by half, with half of its insides sizzling on the stone floor.

    "Thanks," Tom nodded his head while epting the praise before delivering a kick to the slime on his own. Once again, a bit of greenish glue spewed out through the barrel, putting even more dirt on the floor. "Just make sure not to..." Tom attempted to warn the girl, only to see her take a step and slip on the glue that covered most of the room''s floor.

    PAC.

    The sound of udia''s back smashing the floor was trulyical... if not for how potentially disastrous it would be. At the same time, she slid on the floor forward, reaching the exact ce that the slimes insides would discharge whenever it was hit.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed in his mind when he noticed a strange flow of the slimes insides. But just as he rushed forward to bring the girl out of the danger zone, the slime squeezed itself, sending a constant stream of its insides right towards the girl!

 Chapter 60: Fluid clothes and stone (SLIGHTLY +18)

    Chapter 60: Fluid clothes and stone (SLIGHTLY +18)

    The monster threw itsst bit before squeezing down and lying t on the ground in an instant. Unluckily, udia got soaked from feet to the tip of her head. Not only was her entire back already covered in slime''s insides from slipping on it and falling to the floor, but now even her front shared the same fate.

    ''Good thing she managed to protect her face,'' Tom thought while helping the girl up. Not minding the slime all over her arm, Tom grabbed udia''s soft hand before pulling her out of the small puddle that made up most of the slime''s remains.

    "That was close," udia muttered as she took a few breaths before looking down at her own silly state. "Now I''m all covered in it!" she protested in a disgusted voice.

    But her attention didn''tst long on this topic. Before long, her eyes moved towards the wall where the ''data'' stones were embedded with. "So that''s the price of conquering the first floor," she said in a soft voice, staring at the shiny stones.

    "Just clean yourself up," Tom said as he shook his head. He then moved towards the corridor, where udia left the backpack before joining the fight.

    "Huh? What about the stones?" the girl asked, raising her eyes at Tom in surprise.

    "Don''t worry about them," Tom replied, putting a small grin on his face as he continued to rummage through the insides of the backpack. "I thought about it in advance," he added as he pulled out a portable pickaxe.

    Just like the bikes of old, the handy tool Tom pulled out from the backpack didn''t appear like a pickaxe in the first ce. Rather than that, it consisted of three elements, two of which were straight metal tubes, while thest one was a slightly bent de.

    But rather than throwing it on air to let it assemble itself, Tom sat down and took his time to screw the parts together properly. ''Since I''m going to break the wall apart with it, it needs to be fixed as tightly as possible,'' he thought while turning the two parts of the handle in the opposite directions.

    Soon, Tom finished the preparatory part of the work before moving back to the boss room. His eyes were fixed on the wall housing four small stones, each of which shone with an innate light.

    ''So those are the stones that made the online hub crazy,'' Tom thought while tightening his hand over the handle of his portable pick. But rather than dawdling on the topic, he quickly took a swing before forcing the de of the pickaxe into the wall, right beside the first of the stones.

    At a nce, his attack did absolutely nothing to the wall. But rather than giving up, Tom swung his tool again. And then again.

    Soon, Tom entered some kind of zone, fully focusing on guiding his tool into the same exact spot, chipping away at the stone that held the loot in ce.

    ''Strange,'' Tom thought as he worked on loosening the first of the stones. ''I''m swinging this tool for a while, but rather than feeling hot... Isn''t it kinda chilly?'' he thought for a moment but ended up giving up on this problem.

    In the end, they were in the dungeon. Maybe some kind of venttion always ensured the atmospheric conditions would be perfectly suited for the explorers? Or maybe there were some strange swings in the temperature inside?

    ''There is no point thinking about it,'' Tom thought once again, forcing all those thoughts away. Even if he never noticed such a problem while in the avatar''s flesh, this kind of information didn''t seem to be important at all.

    "Hey!" udia suddenly shouted, almost managing to pull Tom out of his focused state. "Your pants!" she shouted again, this time managing to break through the mental barrier that Tom put around his mind to keep focused on the task.

    "What now?" Tom asked, turning his eyes towards the girl, only to freeze on the spot. But rather than saying anything, he just stood in ce, baffled by sight in front of his eyes.

    "Wait, my pants?" A sudden idea struck the man, forcing his eyes down towards his own legs. And just as expected, what used to be tactical pants straight out of the army surplus store, now were nothing more but tatters of cloth barely holding up together.

    ''Heck, so that''s the reason,'' Tom thought before stealing a quick nce at the girl. This time though, he didn''t take what he saw for some kind of naughty projection of his horny mind.

    Sitting directly on the floor while resting her back against the wall, udia wasn''t wearing anything, to begin with. Rather than that, her entire body seemed to be covered in some kind of ugly liquid, not hiding any of her natural charms whatsoever.

    ''Dang,'' Tom cursed himself in his mind as he turned his eyes away. ''She really is sexy,'' he thought as he grabbed the bottom of his shirt before pulling it off.

    "Huh?" udia only sighed in exasperation. "What are you doing?" she asked as she stood up in an attempt to back down.

    Then, her face froze when Tom brought his hand towards her with his very own shirt in it. ''Could it be...'' she thought when she realized what could be the reason behind the damage to Tom''s pants. And what that possibly meant for her.

    udia looked down. And rather than seeing her own clothes, she saw some strange, thick liquid of color roughly the same as her now non-existing clothes. But what was even worse was that it slowly trickled down her skin, leaving her deprived of even this illusory cover!

    "NOOO!" udia screamed as she squatted down, hiding her charms with her hands. Curling up, she attempted to make herself as small as possible so that hiding her body could be an easier task for her.

    "If it''s the slime''s fluid that did that to our clothes, I don''t think that throwing the shirt to you will be a sound idea," Tom said, keeping his eyes glued to the wall opposite to the direction where the girl was. ''As much as I want to look... I don''t think this would do us any good,'' he thought, fighting his natural desire off.

    "Don''t turn around!" udia shouted after taking a moment to gather her wits and calm herself down.

    "Don''t worry, I won''t," Tom replied, using the entirety of his willpower to keep still.

    Soon, he felt the girl pulling on the shirt, so he let go of the cloth without any reservation.

    "It''s quite small," udia said after a moment, probing Tom to turn around.

    ''This...'' he stared at the girl for a moment, unsure where he should put his eyes.

    With nothing to protect her legs, udia had no other choice but to expose them all the way to the upper part of her thighs. In fact, Tom''s shirt only barely hid her crotch from sight. But even her upper body wasn''t any better, with how the shirt barely hid either the shape or the details of her breasts from Tom''s sight.

    "How long are you going to stare at me like that?!" udia asked in a shy tone. She turned herself to the side and once again covered her breasts with her arms.

    "I''m sorry, I just couldn''t help myself," Tom apologized before turning his eyes away from the girl once again. "Now that we are in this kind of situation... I guess we can''t just hunt the monsters we encounter," he said as he returned to swinging his pick into the wall.

    As if to pull their thoughts away from what just happened, the first stone finally came loose. Worried what would happen if it were toe in contact with the slime''s inside still present on the floor, Tom hung the pickaxe on his neck. He then grabbed the loosened stone directly with his fingers.

    "Come out, you little..." Tom muttered as he tensed all of his arms and back muscles, pulling at the stone with all his might. At first, the stone still resisted, but soon, the effects of Tom''s picking finally came into y, making the wall release the valued price.

    "Ah," he sighed in surprise when at the same time, as he caught the stone, he slipped on the slippery floor.

    Crash!

    For a moment, Tom''s consciousness wavered. No matter what kind of training he had, hitting the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor would still affect him.

    "Are you okay?!" Tom heard udia shouting, but the voice reached him as if it was filtered by some kind of screen. But as he opened his eyes, he noticed three things.

    Two of them hung right above his face while udia leaned over him, while the third one was all about his hand.

    "Can you get your tits out of my face?" Tom asked politely while already focusing his attention on the third thing he saw.

    Or rather, the third thing that he expected to see, but that was nowhere to be found.

    "Ah, sorry," udia quickly noticed that in her current outfit, leaning over Tom wasn''t the best idea. But before she could as much as blush, her eyes wandered to Tom''s right hand.

    The right hand which should be holding the stone he just extracted.

    And the right hand that was nowpletely empty.

    "That''s too many thrills for one moment," Tom muttered, already guessing what could be the reason for the stone''s disappearance.

 Chapter 61: Romance in the slimy dungeon (not really +18)

    Chapter 61: Romance in the slimy dungeon (not really +18)

    "I believe it''s safe to assume that I somehow absorbed the stone," Tom said after a moment of thinking. While this was the simplest and most obvious exnation for the disappearance of the stone, Tom didn''t want to fall for this kind of facy.

    ''After all, the most obvious and straightforward exnation is often the pitfall of truth,'' Tom thought. ''Once you fall into it and take it for the actual truth, you will never be able to figure out what the truth really is,'' he recalled the saying he once saw in one of the old-style games he used to y.

    "How did you do it?" udia asked while opening her eyes wide. The shock that this message caused her made even her blush go away as if she forgot just how alluring her current outfit was for a man''s eye. "Wait, I didn''t pay any attention to it either, but does it have something to do with you hitting your head?" she suggested randomly.

    "Beats me," Tom said as he shook his head before rising from the floor and looking towards the rest of the stones shining in the wall. "Well, thankfully, we are free to test it with the other stones. This time, once I loosen it, you will have to pull it yourself," Tom ordered as he moved back to his feet before picking his tool and approaching the wall.

    Once again, his hands started to swing. As his body started to heat up, Tom could feel the familiar breeze airing both his naked back and chest but also his family jewels. But given how he already knew what was causing it, there was no longer any point in bothering with it. ''

    Bit by bit, Tom''s attacks chipped away the stone that held the precious stones in ce. ''I really need to figure out a better way to extract them,'' he thought as he continued to swing his pick. Back when it still was just a game for him, Tom didn''t feel the load of picking the wall on his muscles.

    A load that had to bepensated for with food and nutrients, something they severelycked right now.

    "Okay, it should be loose enough for you to pull it out now," Tom announced after several more moments before wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

    "Hey, are you listening?" Puzzled by theck of reaction, Tom turned around.

    Only to see udia sucking on her thumb as she glued her eyes to his naked and sweaty back.

    "AH!" She shouted as soon as she noticed Tom''s eyes. "I''m sorry, I was thinking about something," she dodged the obvious question of what she was doing and shook her head. "What did you say again?"

    "The stone should be loose enough for you to pull it," Tom repeated himself as he squinted his eyes. A strange warmth appeared in his abdomen. ''She was clearly staring at my back... But why does it make me feel good?'' he asked himself but didn''t dare to reach out for the most obvious answer.

    Not because he was worried about falling into the easy truth facy, but because he was scared of the long-reaching meaning of the obvious answer.

    "Okay," udia nodded her head as she moved towards the wall. But as she moved her hand up, causing her shirt to ride up as well, she suddenly froze before lowering her hand back to a natural position. "Hey, look away!" she ordered as she turned her head around to send a killer stare at Tom.

    "For God''s sake," Tom muttered before obediently turning around. In fact, he didn''t really need her to raise her hand or make any other mistake to see everything he wanted about her. The only reason why her naked body wasn''t imprinted on his memory yet, was just his own moral approach to the matter.

    "Dang, it''s so hard," udia muttered, either too busy trying to pull the stone out to realize what other meaning her words could have or clearly trying to give Tom a raise in his lower body. "Just let me... PLUCK YOU!"

    ''That was a quick bucket of cold water on my horniness,'' Tom thought when a shrug shook his entire body. If his imagination was running wild a moment earlier, then it now made his entire body froze with just a picture created ording to udia''sst words.

    "YES!" udia shouted with joy, almost prompting Tom to turn around. "You can look now," she added in a clearly amused voice a momentter.

    Tom turned his face around just in time to see the stone sh up before melting down in a flurry of light. The light which seemingly prated the skin of udia''s hand before merging into her flesh.

    "How do you feel?" Tom asked, approaching the girl with caution. While there didn''t seem to be any negative effects to absorbing those stones, it was better to be safe than sorry.

    "I don''t really feel any difference?" udia replied in a questioning tone, clearly unsure what she was supposed to expect. She stared at her hand as if she expected something to appear on it, only to move her eyes up at Tom''s face a momentter. "How about you? Did you feel anything?"

    "Honest answer or diplomatic one?" Tom asked while putting a smirk on his lips before moving his eyes on the wall. His hand tightened around the pick''s axe before he shook his head.

    "Honest answer," udia surprisingly answered. Looking at her, Tom could not fail to notice the blush on her cheeks. ''What''s wrong with her?'' he asked himself, but no silent whisper of the world dared to reveal the answer to him.

    "As much as I don''t want to make you feel ufortable when I came to be, I couldn''t really think about much else but your tits that you shoved right in my face," Tom replied, deciding to take a leap of faith of sorts.

    "I see..." udia muttered as her blush intensified. Her cheeks were no longer healthy pink, but they took the color of vivid red instead.

    ''I need to change the topic right now,'' Tom thought, but his usually quick wits were now unable to procure any topic to dawdle on. In the end, rather than allowing the awkward atmosphere to linger, he simply walked towards the wall before starting to swing his pick again.

    "Hey," roughly mid-way through Tom''s attempt to unlock the third of the four stones, udia approached him and ced both of her hands on his back. She then pushed her entire body forward, resting it on Tom''s broad shoulders. "If we keep this atmosphere up, we won''t be able to focus on exploring the dungeon at all," she whispered, clearly embarrassed by what she was saying.

    Tom lowered his pick while releasing a deep sigh. But he didn''t turn around, giving the girl at least this little privacy. "What do you suggest then? I won''t be able to procure any clothes before getting those stones out," he said, only to tighten his jaws and to raise his pick again.

    But rather than letting him do as he wished, udia slid her hands through his sweaty sides before locking them on his chest. At the same time, Tom could no longer pretend not to feel the two soft mounds on his back any longer.

    "Do I really need to spell it out?" udia muttered in a soft voice while slowly running her hands all over Tom''s sweaty chest.

    "If you don''t stop it now, I won''t be able to hold back," Tom warned the girl. ''As much as I want to deny it, she might be actually right,'' he thought. ''After all, it''s not like we can just pop out of the portal to ask for some clothes,'' he added in his thoughts, already imagining all sorts of problems that such idiotic action would create.

    "Do you really want to hold back, though?" udia asked before pressing her face against Tom''s back. "You know, it''s not like I hate you or anything... So you don''t really need to mind my feelings here," she added, finally breaching Tom''s defenses.

    He turned around. But rather than instantly assaulting the girl, Tom looked udia deep in the eyes. "You are trembling," he noted in a monotone voice. "Do you think that I would be interested in fucking a girl that''s scared of the act?" he asked as a hurricane of thoughts swept through his thoughts.

    ''It''s clear that she just wants the awkwardness to go away. It would be wrong to use this situation against her like that.'' Tom continued to find more and more excuses not to make this deciding step.

    In the end, he didn''t go to the dungeon to pick up the girls in it. No matter how one looked at it, it was just in wrong. He was here to uncover the secrets of the dungeon, the secrets that the online hub was so keen on keeping under the nket.

    "You coward," udia said in a low voice as she averted her eyes. But before Tom could do anything, she moved her eyes back on his face. "We are both adults. Even if it''s only because of the chance, we are both in heat right now," she summed up the situation, bravely keeping up the eye contact.

    "You don''t need to worry about it," Tom countered, still shackled by his morality. "My brain is up here," he said while tapping himself in the side of the head, "not down there," he added as he nodded his head towards his crotch.

    "Isn''t this my job to change that?" udia tightened her hold over Tom''s back as she asked. She then climbed on the tips of her toes and went for his lips.

 Chapter 62: Quick shot (smut, +18)

    Chapter 62: Quick shot (smut, +18)

    Tom wasn''t the social type to go through puberty in a magnificent fashion. He spent most of his growing-up time ying Dungeons Online. The remaining part of his school phase was split between his bullies and frantic attempts to stay afloat with the little money his father left him with.

    As such, when udia pressed her lips against his, Tom didn''t really know how to react. Thankfully, his instincts took over, making him return the favor.

    ''So warm,'' Tom thought, unable to focus on anything but the kiss. The taste of udia''s lips. Their softness. Their warmth. It all invaded his mind at once.

    "You really should show some more initiative," udiained, pulling her head down. Her eyes were glued to Tom''s lips as if that was the only thing left in the world.

    "Allow me to mend my mistake then," Tom said without even a shred of hesitation. He then put up a fake, brave front. ''Well, here goes nothing,'' he thought, putting his hands on udia''s waist before pulling her closer.

    Once again, their lips met. This time, Tom took the initiative as requested. The softness of udia''s mouth only made him more and more infatuated with the moment.

    The taste of the girl''s saliva entered Tom''s mouth, instantly probing him to seek it out more. Following nothing but his instincts, he caught udia''s upper lip with his mouth before raising it up a bit, only to open his mouth and push his tongue inside the girl''s mouth.

    udia twitched in his arms, but instead of pulling back, she pressed her body even tighter to Tom''s. At first, his tongue only scouted the situation inside her jaws, but as soon as it came in contact with udia''s, all sense of calmness and responsibility vanished from Tom''s mind.

    ''More,'' he thought greedily, coiling his mouth-muscle around udia''s tongue. Their saliva quickly started to mix, producing sweet nectar of sorts that only further pushed Tom''s buttons.

    ''What a strange thing,'' he thought. ''Spit on someone, and they will be angry,'' his mind continued to wander as he moved his right hand from udia''s side to her cheek as if he wanted to hold her head in ce. ''But mix your spit with someone of the opposite gender, and it suddenly starts turning you on,'' he thought, exploring every nook and cranny of the insides of udia''s mouth.

    Their lips parted only when both of them started to suffocate. "More," udia requested in a meek voice, using the short break to her advantage. "Touch me more," she specified her request, catching Tom''s hand on her cheek before moving it to the side of her bust.

    ''So soft,'' Tom thought. His mind almost went nk when his fingers sank in the soft flesh of the girl, protected only by the thinyer of his own shirt. Never before did Tom hated something inanimate as much as he loathed the piece of cloth right now.

    Unable to resist, Tom moved his other hand up the girl''s waist, sliding it underneath the shirt. Even though that inevitably ended with the entirety of the shirt riding up, Tom was too busy feeling up udia''s breast to take notice of what was hidden below.

    "More," udia moaned again before pushing her lips against Tom''s once again. This time she was the one to take the initiative, inviting Tom''s tongue for yet another dance.

    Her hands slid down Tom''s sweaty waist, right to the button of his ragged pants. Although clumsily, she quickly got rid of this obstacle before moving her hands down, right toward''s Tom''s manhood.

    To say that he was erect ever since a moment ago would be a huge understatement. Ever since the problematic nature of their clothing appeared, he was holding back his drive only with his mind alone.

    And now, udia got to experience just how much her body affected Tom''s rationality.

    "You are so hard," she whispered in astonishment as her fingers gently caressed Tom''s shaft.

    "Just like your nipples," Tom muttered back, moving his hand from groping the girl''s breast to pinching on its peak. "But isn''t that a good thing?" he asked as he slid his head past udia''s defenses only to shower her neck with kisses.

    "I can''t really wait for much longer," udia said in a low voice. She also turned her head away as if too shy to show just how red her face became.

    "What a lewd girl you are," Tom chuckled when he finally moved his hand down towards udia''s most important ce. "But let''s get rid of this shirt of mine before we proceed," he said, moving his hand towards the end of the cloth before pulling it up.

    Just the act of undressing the girl was nearly enough to bring Tom to his limits. No matter how hellish training he went through in his earlier days, he wasn''t resistant to this kind of stimuli at all.

    ''Seeing her tits bounce like that,'' Tommented in his thoughts when udia''s breast sprung back after being pulled up by the shirt. But before he could have his fill of this lovely sight, udia moved her hands up and loosely hid her breasts under them.

    "Don''t stare so much," she requested in a shy voice, looking at Tom with upturned eyes.

    "I''m sorry, but you are just too beautiful," Tom replied as he grabbed udia''s hands and moved them away with just a tiny bit of force. Ultimately, despite her protests, she didn''t resist his movements at all.

    Standing before him with her hands to the sides, udia presented Tom with every little detail there was to her body. From her sizeable yet not oversized breasts, through her slightly curved waist all the way to her supple bottom and long legs, she exposed her entire self to him.

    "It''s unfair," udia protested after Tom continued to just stare at her naked beauty for a while. Unwilling to hear any protests, she fell to her knees before grabbing the upper end of Tom''s pants and decisively pulling them down.

    But it didn''t go the way she expected. While Tom''s clothes moved down quite smoothly at first, his manhood seemingly locked his pants in ce. For a moment, udia continued to struggle to pull them down, only to seed a momentter.

    And to instantly receive the punishment of her harsh actions when Tom''s penis sprung up, hitting her squarely in the chin.

    "Ah, sorry, I didn''t intend..." Tom attempted to apologize, only to stop halfway when he saw the look in udia''s eyes.

    "So big," she muttered softly, grasping Tom''s manhood by its shaft while unable to move her eyes away from its tip. "It''s hot too," she added anotherment at the same time as her hand started to move up and down.

    "I... I won''tst long if you do it like that," Tom uttered through his teeth. He was desperately holding on to his sanity, trying to hold back the wave of pleasure that quickly built up in his abdomen.

    Even though udia''s movements were too slow for his fancy, and there was way too little lotion to bring up the most out of the act, it didn''t matter at all.

    ''Just the sight of a lovely girl like that jerking me off is enough for me to get off,'' Tom thought as he quickly reached the limits of his endurance.

    "Hey," he started, unable to hold his desires any longer. But even when propelled by the lust, he didn''t forget his manners. "Would you mind giving me a head?" Tom asked, reaching the limits of his civil courage.

    "Huh?" udia looked up, almost making Tom ejacte just through how lovely she looked with that. Sitting on her knees, with her thigs facing outwards, her breast all out in the open, and a slightly confused look on her face, she looked like the sluttiest porn actress there was. Adding how her face hiding behind Tom''s very own penis, penis she continued to jerk off, the sense of superiority alone almost made the man just spew his insides out all over her. "Sure," she chuckled a little before opening her mouth wide and moving it towards Tom''s ns.

    But that was already too much. The sight of the girl happily willing to put his thing in her mouth, even going as far as to open them wide and put her tongue out, brought Tom beyond his endurance limits.

    As soon as udia''s tongue as much as tickled the tip of his penis, a wave of pleasure shook his entire body. His hands moved on their own, reaching for the girl''s head.

    ''No!'' he screamed in his mind, barely able to just stop his hands on top of udia''s head, right as the thick, white fluid splurted out from his manhood.

    "Ah!" udia screamed out in surprise. She only managed to close her eyes before Tom''s sperm covered her face in white stains.

    "I''m sorry..." Tom muttered silently as his strenght left his entire body. Even though he was still more than ready to go, the mental hit to his confidence made him back off a step. Then another.

    His face darkened. ''Am I such a quick shot?'' he thought, inviting a load of depressing thoughts to his brain.

    "Wait, it''s okay," udia said as soon as she opened her eyes and noticed what was going on. A slight sense of panic appeared on her face.

    "I''m sorry," Tom said again, with his face tensing all over. Shaken by his own performance, he could longer feel any lust.

    Only the depression and angst ofmitting the gravest mistake a man could do in a moment like that.

 Chapter 63: Recovery (smut +18)

    Chapter 63: Recovery (smut +18)

    "Seriously, nothing happened!" udia protested as she saw Tom withdrawing more and more. But her panic quickly subsided when a sudden blush took over her cheeks. "But I''m not going to lie... Seeing you like that... Isn''t this what they used to call a gap-moe?" she suddenly asked.

    ''Is she trying to make fun of me or ease the situation?'' Tom thought while overwhelmed with his feeling. Between his hurt pride, lostposture, and unsightly finish, he couldn''t really act the way he always did.

    "You know, you usually act all serious andposed," udia said. She then stood up from her knees, not even bothering to wipe Tom''s cum from her face. "Seeing you be so vulnerable like that," she averted her eyes in a failed attempt to hide her blush, "well, aren''t you still good to go? I think I''m even wetter now," she added, hiding her face in the palms of her hands.

    "W-what?" Tom couldn''t really understand what udia was saying. While he couldprehend each of her words on their own, when bound in a sentence, they stopped making sense for him. "Do I really act like that in your eyes?" he asked, finally allowing his thoughts to move on from his recent blunder.

    Even if it was only for a little bit.

    "You never realized it yourself?" udia asked, so shocked that she forgot about hiding her face. She raised her head and looked at Tom with meek eyes. "While at first, I found you to be quite... overconfident?" she said, only to hang on thest word in her sentence for a little while.

    "You were clearly about to say arrogant," Tom countered in a low voice. While with each moment, it was easier to push the shame from before away, it wasn''t something he could makepletely disappear in a moment.

    And then there was udia''s face. Tom gulped his saliva down. Seeing how his cum slowly trickled down her cheeks, he wouldn''t be able to call himself a man if he didn''t get excited by that.

    "Yes, I initially thought you to be arrogant," udia confirmed Tom''s guess. But rather than looking at him with spite, her gaze quickly turnedscivious when her eyes moved down on his crotch. "But now? All I can say is how..." she took a step closer, "raring to go you are."

    udia took another step. And then yet another. Soon, she was within reach of Tom''s hand. But rather than going on to him aggressively, she ced her hands on his shoulders before looking him deeply in the eyes.

    "Listen. For you, it might feel like a shameful disy. But... I kinda feel ttered," udia announced with a straight face. With how close she was, Tom could only gulp his saliva down again. Even the little bit of hesitation that Tom found in her words couldn''t wash away one simple fact.

    ''Just a moment ago, we were about to experience the carnal pleasures for the first time,'' he thought, analyzing the recent past. ''It would be normal for both of us to be shy. I could see how shy she was back then,'' he continued his observations from thefortable position of an observer in the future. ''But now?'' Tom thought before shaking his head.

    "Now that I think about it, you are pretty brave," he said as he took a step forward and closed the distance between the two of them. Tom then raised his hand and wiped away the drop of cum that was about to fall into udia''s eye.

    "And where did that came from?" udia jumped, startled by the sudden announcement.

    "From the depths of my soul?" Tom answered with an ironic question on his own. He then shook his head only to turn it still and look deep into the girl''s eyes. "It''s easy for me to be courageous while exploring dungeons. It''s something I unknowingly trained for," Tom revealed this tiny bit of himself. "On the other hand, you managed to push forward in a situation that got mepletely defenseless," he said and shook his arm. "In a way, you are braver than me. Even if only in this specific area," he added with a glint of amusement in his voice.

    "You really are not that good of a smooth-talker," udia chuckled. She then hung her head for a second only to sharply bring it up a momentter. A lightly vicious smile appeared on her lips. "Now that we have this sorted out, let''s stop wasting our time," she said as she shook Tom''s arms from her back only to ce her own hands on his shoulders. But rather than just staying in this position, she pressed Tom''s body down.

    "Do you want me to sit?" Tom asked in confusion, easily warding off against the girl''s advance.

    "Can''t you at least cooperate a little?!" udia whined and put a pouty expression on her face. "Or do I really need to spell everything out for you?" she added another hit to Tom''s mental state.

    But the young man was no longer shaken by his previous disy. This little talk he had with the girl was more than enough to pull his mind away from that recent event.

    "Okay, okay," Tom replied in an amused voice. He then sat down directly on the slimy floor as if said slime didn''t cause so much trouble to them just a few moments earlier. "Here, I''m sitting," he said with a slight chuckle.

    At this point, Tom''s lust made its full recovery. In his new, lowered position, he couldn''t get a better view of udia''s charms. The charms that she no longer bothered to hide.

    "Now, stay still," the girl requested with her hands still on Tom''s broad shoulders. But rather than pushing him down even further, she took half a step forward before slowly squatting down.

    ''This kind of motion gives me some sick shbacks,'' Tom thought when recalling one of the vividly popr and disgusting videos he was unlucky to see back in his school days.

    There were only a few differences between that repulsing recording and what was happening right now. In opposition to what happened in the movie, it was the girl squatting down. And instead of a ss jar at the bottom, there was Tom''s erect manhood awaiting its summons to the sexual Valha.

    "Are you really sure about that?" Tom asked when he could no longer ignore the heat of udia''s body.

    He was sitting down on the floor, with his legs stretched forward and slightly apart. Tom additionally leaned back a bit, cing his hands behind his back to support this rather unstable position.

    All for the sake of letting the girl do as she wanted with him.

    ''If I''m such a quick shot, it will be better if it''s udia setting up the pace,'' Tom thought, watching with glee as the girl lowered herself over him.

    Soon, the tip of his erect penis came in contact with udia''s secret garden. Even though Tom already ejacted before, the show that the girl was giving him was more than enough to get him up the speed in just a moment. And now, with udia''s hot bottom-lips slowly eating up his manhood, he felt as if a whole new world of pleasure suddenly opened its gates for him.

    "I-is it in?" udia asked. Her voice was slightly trembling.

    Tom looked down, even though he could tell the state of their situation just by the sensations over his penis. But as he finally used his eyes as they should be used, a sudden wave of realization struck him.

    ''Right now, udia is trying to do everything for me, without caring the slightest about herself,'' he noticed, drawing the connection between her pained and tensed-up expression and the gung-ho attitude she presented him with.

    "I''m sorry," Tom said and shook his head. "Only the tip went inside," he added, breaking udia''s imaginations of how the process would look like.

    But he wasn''t going to allow udia to keep treating herself like that.

    "I''m sorry, but can you let me take the lead?" Tom suddenly asked as he moved his upper body closer to the girl before embracing her. He whispered his words to udia''s ear, instantly sending a shudder down her spine. "I don''t want to act like a coward anymore. I don''t want you to take it all on yourself," he exined his motives before angling his upper body forward.

    In a short moment, udia''s back hit the slimy floor. At this point, there was barely any slime''s inside left, as the dungeon dutifully made sure to turn it into a harmless andpletely useless mist.

    ''Wait, is it really that useless?'' a sudden thought appeared in his head, only to be discarded as soon as Tom noticed the image his eyes was giving him.

    udiaid on the floor, with her legs gently spread out. Her eyes were glued to Tom''s face. Even the slightest of his moves would make her shake with something between excitement and fear.

    "Don''t worry," Tom said. He was barely holding back with all the pleasurable caressing that udia''s insides served to the tip of his penis. Or rather than that, he was overwhelmed by the dull anticipation of what would happen if he were to go deeper. "I will do my best to be gentle," he added as he lowered his face and ced a deep kiss on udia''s lips, not carrying in the slightest about all the cum that she still had on her face.

    And then, Tom finally pushed his hips forward, allowing the girl''s insides to envelop him whole.

 Chapter 64: Release (smut, +18)

    Chapter 64: Release (smut, +18)

    "Aaah..." Tom sighed when udia''s pussy suddenly tightened all over him. The pressure all over his manhood was insane.

    But rather than focusing on his own pleasure, he lowered his head andtched on with his mouth to the girl''s neck. Holding his hips in ce, he sucked on udia''s skin, hoping that this little carres would help her fare through the obvious pain that she was going through.

    Yes, udia didn''t tense up all over because of some silly reason. The tears appeared on her face during the first push simply because, with that, Tom took something precious from her.

    "Are you okay?" Tom muttered, fighting with all his will to stop his lust from taking over.

    ''She''s trembling,'' he thought, sneaking his hands underneath her back just to gently massage it.

    "Just give me a moment," udia replied through her tightened teeth. She then pushed her head to the back as if trying to angle it in a way that would make it hard for Tom to see her face.

    ''It''s pretty hard to just wait like that,'' Tom realized when his hips slightly jerked all on their own.

    Right now, he could feel the inner wraps of the girl coiling around his penis as if trying to get a taste of every single centimeter of it. With how wet she was pre-pration, the pleasant heat of her insides made Tom feel like he was about to once again disy the shameful side.

    ''Wait, what was thatment all about?'' Tom suddenly recalled a single piece ofment that he read at one of the meme-posting sites back in his school times.

    ''Who would''ve thought that it would actuallye in handy?'' he asked himself before suddenly tensing up his buttocks.

    In itself, it made Tom thrust his thing even deeper in udia, something that instantly caused her entire body to twitch.

    "I''m sorry," Tom instantly apologized, unsure how he should read that reaction. But from his end, this method proved to be miraculous.

    While his lust remained just as powerful as it was a moment ago, for some reason, something changed. He was still full of pleasure. He could still feel approaching the limit even without moving inside the girl at all...

    But he didn''t feel like cumming yet.

    "I-I think..." udia spoke up after swallowing her tears. "I think I will be okay now, but..." she stopped her sentence in the middle, only to swallow a gulp of saliva and lower her head so that she could look at Tom''s face.

    Then, she reached her hands towards his head before asking. "Can you kiss me while we do it?"

    If there was anything that could break through the physiological barrier that Tom recently discovered, it was the defenseless and almost silly look on udia''s face. Her entire body was still trembling, proving that she wasn''t all that okay as she imed to be.

    ''Well, I guess I will need to hide her pain under pleasure,'' he thought, lowering his head for the kiss.

    This time, he didn''t twitch when their lips wrapped against each other. Even though he was already as deep as a man could be in a female, just kissing somehow managed to elevate the moment event further.

    "Mhmm..." udia muttered something through her lips, but Tom was too hungry for her taste to let her to just like that. "Ah!" she sighed when he finally forced himself to withdraw his lips.

    "Is everything all right?" Tom asked, worried once again.

    "Yes... but rather, why are you not moving?" udia asked, only to hide her face behind her hands. Thankfully for Tom, she was toote to hide the blush that exploded all over her face.

    "Ah, you are right," Tom said, noticing the problem now that it was pointed out. While the trick of tensing his buttocks was a miracle on its own, it also made him slightly more resistant to the pleasure.

    It was just a slight change, but it allowed him to drown in the pleasure of a kiss alone, making himpletely forget about what they were actually doing.

    ''I already put myself to shame once. I can''t disappoint her any further,'' he thought, putting his own pride at risk.

    And then, he slowly started to pull himself out of her.

    The pleasure that exploded all over his penis was impossible to imagine. udia''s insides stuck to him tightly, as if her inner juice turned into glue. But even with this resistance in the way, making even the slightest of moves a sea of pleasure, Tom continued to withdraw himself.

    And once just the tip remained inside udia''s hole, he started to push forward.

    This time, rather than sticking up to him, her insides gave resistance. While the feeling of being sucked back in was insane, actually forcing her wraps apart so that he would fit between them was even better.

    It was an otherworldly pleasure, one that Tom never expected to experience so randomly. And then, udia''s pussy tightened even more.

    "Oh, right!" Tom suddenly recalled what the girl requested, instantly going for a kiss. Yet, this rush didn''t pay off, as instead of sping their lips together, Tom ended up hitting his teeth against the girl''s face!

    "Oh no," instantly terrified by his mishap, Tom could feel all the blood and excitement draining away.

    "Auch!" udia released a slight moment of pain before moving her hands to her face. She held her palms over her lips for a moment... And then for a momentter. But rather than letting go, her body suddenly started to shake.

    "Hahahahha!" All at once, udia couldn''t hold herughter any longer. Revealing her face, she pulled her hands away andughed openly. Then, as if it was the most natural thing to do, she brought her legs up and coiled them around Tom''s waist, locking him in ce. "There is no need to be so anxious," she said through her tears of amusement.

    Then, she pulled on Tom''s waist with her legs, making him slide all the way in, in one swift motion.

    "Argh," Tom moaned, not expecting the sudden explosion of pleasure. Given how he wasn''t focused, he rxed his buttocks... But nothing happened.

    He didn''t instantly shoot his load inside the girl. He was so full of pleasure that he was reaching the state of nirvana, but he didn''t shoot prematurely!

    And with his bottom rxed, he could put his full focus on the girl.

    "Thank you," he muttered into udia''s ear before going in for another long and sloppy kiss. As they continued to tangle their tongues, udia brought her hands to Tom''s back, locking him even firmer in ce.

    "I don''t knAH!" udia attempted to say something, only for a moan to escape her mouth when Tom finally started to move on his own. "I don''t know what you are talking about," she said with a smile before sping her mouth down. For a moment, she only whined through her nose, as if she was actually ashamed of her moaning voice. "But you are wee," she added as she started to rub her thighs against Tom''s sides.

    ''Is she getting close?" Tom asked himself upon noticing how giddy udia became. With each movement, she was getting more responsive. She even moved her hand out of his back, only to move it on her breast!

    "You don''t need to do that," Tom said before pushing his tongue into udia''s mouth once again. But rather than limiting himself to just this action alone, he moved his hand and ced it on top of the girl''s palm. "I''m more than happy to do that to you," he said as he pulled udia''s hand away, only to rush his hand and grab her breast with his own finger.

    The soft feeling of her skin mixed with the hotness of her flesh underneath. His fingers sank into her mound, finally making the girl too weak and absentminded to release a loud moan, right into Tom''s mouth.

    But there had to be an end to everything. With more and more stimulus wreaking havoc in Tom''s body and mind alike, he felt that he was once again at the edge of finishing.

    His movements speed up. Even though she was initially super tight, at this point, udia''s pussy was so wet that Tom could just slide in and out as he wanted.

    And with each time that udia''s insides rubbed against his penis, his defenses crumbled apart.

    "I will be cumming soon," Tom informed the girl obediently, expecting her to release his waist from her hold.

    udia''s eyes suddenly shone with a strange light. And instead of letting go of him, she tightened her legs even further, pulling Tom''s entire body as close to her as she could.

    The sudden and tight hugbined with how the tip of his penis rubbed against something deep inside the girl was what broke the proverbial camel''s neck.

    Unable to hold any longer, Tom groaned under the immense weight of the pleasure that shook his body, only for it all to flush down and concentrate at the tip of his penis.

    The tip that now released all his pleasure right into udia''s core.

 Chapter 65: Conclusion (slightly r18)

    Chapter 65: Conclusion (slightly r18)

    "That was..." Tom didn''t even manage to finish his sentence as he fell down on the girl. At the same time, like the rest of his seed escaped from his penis, all the energy that was powering him vanished.

    Thankfully, udia''s soft body made for the most divine pillow that a man could ask for.

    "I can still feel you inside me," udia said in a silent voice. Her body continued to twitch and shudder for a few more moments before she managed to calm herself down as well.

    "That was insane," Tom muttered right into udia''s ear. "I really wish we could just go to bed and have some rest right now,'' he added after a moment before resting his head back on the girl''s bosom.

    Even though they were both naked and pressed against each other, with their sexual needs fulfilled, there was no longer a lusty rush in either of them. Right now, they simply enjoyed each otherpany andfort that their bodies could seek from the other.

    "Now that I think about it," Tom said after a few moments before suddenly hesitating.

    "Think about what?" udia asked, brushing her fingers through Tom''s hair. Even though his head was resting face-first on her chest, she didn''t seem to mind that at all.

    "I finished inside you, didn''t I?" Tom brought up the topic that he was too scared to tackle before. The topic that he was too aroused to think about before and then too reluctant to approach after that. "What if you will get pregnant?" He asked while refusing to lift his head from the girl''sfortable bosom.

    "You don''t need to worry about it," udia replied. From how her fingers didn''t even twitch when the topic surfaced, it was clear that she already thought about it herself. "My cycle ended just two days ago. It''s unlikely that anything will happen. But if the pushes to shove..." udia suddenly stopped her words, and so did she stop the movements of her fingers.

    "What happened?" Feeling the changes in the girl''s mood, Tom finally brought his head up from her breasts and looked udia in the eyes.

    "In the off chance that you actually managed to fertilize me... Or if we will remain in the dungeon for long enough for the risk of doing it to go up... What would you prefer me to do?" udia suddenly asked. Her face had no hint of seriousness as if she just asked for Tom''s preferred taste in candies, not something as grand as potentially making a child.

    ''You cannot fool me,'' Tom thought, looking at the girl''s eyes. Even if she mastered the art of controlling her facial expression, rarely could anyone hide their emotions from showing up in their eyes.

    ''I might not be well-versed with how to act around women in general, but I know a lot about people,'' he voiced his thoughts in his mind as he continued to stare down udia''s eyes.

    "Isn''t that up to you?" He asked before suddenly shaking his head. "No, nevermind," he quickly disapproved of his own question before sinking his face back into the softness of udia''s breasts.

    "I will hold you up to answer my question," udia said in an amused voice, either enjoying this kind of slight tease or using her tone to mask just how serious she was.

    "And here I hoped to get a little more rest," Tom muttered right into the skin of udia''s boobs before turning silent for a few more moments. But rather than keeping this avoiding attitude of his, once he regained a tiny bit of his energy, he suddenly ced his hands on the floor and prompted himself up.

    "Listen, I believe the choice is up to you because I''m willing to support it no matter what you decide," Tom said while in the nk position above the girl. "If you decide to take a pill or something like that, I will be there tofort you. If you decide to carry on with the potential pregnancy, though, then I can only hope you will be alright with the line of work I am, as this is the only thing I won''t be able to change about myself for the sake of our family life," Tom said without even a hint of hesitation in his voice.

    This was the true reason why he took so long to construct a serious answer for the girl. He wasn''t thatte because he had to think things through on his own end. He wasn''t confused as to what he was supposed to do if the scenario of pregnancy were to appear.

    The only thing that made him waste so much time was his relentless effort at gathering his wits to say something so embarrassing with a straight face.

    "You are soo sweet," udia muttered in a muffled voice as she brought one of her hands to hide her blushing face underneath it. "But I could never imagine that anyone could say something so daring with apletely straight face like you did," she chuckled before shaking her head. "Well, there is no point worrying about it right now," she said before suddenly moving her hands up towards Tom''s head, before grabbing it in between her palms and forcing it down on her chest.

    "I already know how much you like it, so make sure to get your fill now," udia ordered, for some reason taking up the duty of assuming control over the situation.

    "HmmHHMPH!" Initially startled by udia''s sudden initiative, Tom was unable to voice his surprise as her teat filled his mouth and blocked his ability to speak.

    ''It doesn''t feel bad, though,'' Tom thought, recalling how some of the primal instincts would make humans enjoy things that they would normally associate with small kids.

    ''Fuck, no!'' Tom screamed in his mind when an image of an adult male wearing diapers and sucking on a massive pacifier. But nevertheless, he continued to nibble on udia''s breast as if it was the tastiest thing in the world. ''That alone might be nice, but I need to make sure not to step over the line,'' he thought, already worried about bing the kind of pervert that he just imagined in the future.

    "Okay," Tom said after a moment as he moved his head away from the girl''s tit. While seeing it all covered in his saliva was strangely enticing, Tom reined in his desire before finally moving up to a standing position.

    "I guess we should go back and start clearing the floors, don''t we?" udia didn''t seem to be embarrassed at all. Rather than that, she brought her hand up only to let it hang in the air, clearly waiting for Tom to pick her up.

    "You are already turning to be a princess," the young manmented the girl''s behavior in an amused tone as he helped her get up.

    "Do you regret having a naked girl, covered in your juices from head to toe, act out a little?" udia countered as she looked down on her body.

    And just like she said, even outside the saliva that still remained all over her lips and tits, Tom''s sperms continued to slowly pour out from her crotch, giving testimony to what happened just a few moments earlier.

    "I never said I do not enjoy it," Tom was quick on his counter. He sent udia a wink before finally forcing himself to calm down and look towards the gate leading to the floor below. "But I guess we don''t really have the time to enjoy ourselves like that too often while in here," he said.

    In an instant, the mood turned from amused to serious. Disregarding their little, private adventure, their reason for being inside the dungeon didn''t change at all.

    And they were as far from fulfilling their mission here as they were roughly an hour ago when the entire messy thing started.

    "Well, I will count on you to get me some clothes down the line," udia said, attempting to lift up their spirits by clearing the broodish atmosphere. Given how it instantly overtook the two of them, her actions somehow managed to work out as intended.

    "Let''s take it easy on the next floor," Tom said as he approached the pile of their equipment. He picked up one of the rifles before passing it to the girl. "Since you never shoot that much, we will use the next few floors as a shooting practice for you," he said as he nced towards the stones still embedded into the wall.

    ording to the rumor, even a single stone left in the wall would greatly increase the rate of the dungeon''s monsters reappearing. Sadly, Tom never got to confirm this story, so he could only hope that it was fake.

    "Aren''t we going to pick those stones up?" udia asked when she noticed where Tom was looking.

    "No," he replied as he picked up all their baggage and locked it on his back. "We are pressed for time, so there is no point wasting it on digging the grade-one stones. Unless we won''t be able to proceed, we will only care about grade two stones and above."

 Chapter 66: Target practice

    Chapter 66: Target practice

    Tom''s decision to abandon the stones of the first floor was fully rational. While there was no limit to how many stones he wanted to bring home, there was a hard limit to how far they could go with just their firearms alone. As such, there was a pressing need for both Tom and udia to get stronger, something that could only be done with the help of said stones.

    But there was a major problem urring whenever stones came into y. While the fact that neither Tom nor udia knew exactly how to make them give up its energy for the sake of improving their bodies was a major problem, it wasn''t something that would prompt Tom to such a rash decision.

    It was all about time.

    First off, they were scheduled to meet up with Cleo''s avatar as soon as possible. Given how they was only a chance that they would both appear on the same channel of the dungeon when reaching upper floors, there was a hard limit of roughly eleven more hours before Cleo would go forth and climb to an even higher floor.

    Without any means ofmunicating with Tom''s childhood friend, that was the only possible way for them to organize their meeting.

    "Reach the floor fifty within ten hours. Wait there for two more hours and then proceed to the next floor. Rinse and repeat all the way until you reach the fifty-fifth floor. If we won''t manage to meet with each other all the way there, abandon the mission and proceed on your own," Tom ordered way back before the entire situation started to y out.

    And now, with roughly an hour of their precious time wasted on satisfying their carnal pleasures, Tom had no other choice but to pick up the pace.

    "Well, let''s go, then?" udia said, grasping Tom''s hand and intermingling her fingers with his. As she tightened her grasp, she pulled Tom forward, right towards the gate.

    "Wait!" Tom shouted right as the girl was about to press forward. "Hug me first. We don''t want to get split up at the gate," Tom warned, pulling the girl into a bear-like embrace before lifting her up a bit and taking the step forward.

    His vision flickered for a measly second before the open space of the boss'' room was reced by the same, tight corridors of the next floor.

    "We made it," Tom muttered with a huge dose of relief. Exploring the dungeon the way they did was riddled with all sorts of traps and problems that, for the most part, they weren''t even aware of. That''s why just the fact that he could still feel the soft flesh and skin of the girl in his arms proved that at the very least, crossing the barrier between floors while hugged wouldn''t split them up.

    "Yeah, we did," udia nodded her head impassively before suddenly shrugging. "I know that you like hugging me, but I think you should let me go," she said as her head moved to the side.

    ''Is she still shy?'' Tom thought before letting her go and looking in the direction she cast her ce to. ''Or not,'' he thought silently, with all his joy caused by the moment vanishing in an instant.

    udia wasn''t too embarrassed by the hug to stay like that for a little longer. She just found this kind of position way too ufortable to fight the approaching monsters at.

    And so they were, the lowest staple of monsters appearing at the bottom tier of every single world created by a human mind. While bunched together with slimes, kobolds, and several other species within the lowest rank of monsters that one could encounter, they were surprisingly a tough nut to crack for the newbie yers of the Dungeons Online.

    Not because they posed much threat to their avatars or Tom and udia personally in their current situation. It was all because of just how immersive Dungeons Online were. And as it stood, encountering the goblins was often the first time when the majority of the yers would proceed to kill something that they could consider a living being.

    And even if everyone believed those goblins to be a mere characters within the game, it didn''t change the fact that each of the yers had to push a de into the goblin''s flesh and watch it bleed out.

    "Leave them to me," Tom said, pulling up his rifle. The shape of its back made it super easy to lock the gun on one''s shoulder, improving one''s uracy by leaps and bound with that. What''s more, a special set of maized springs hidden at the bottom of the rifle made it pretty easy to sustain the recoil of the gun.

    After all, even though the rifle was shooting small pellets instead of full-fledged bullets, its shooting force was several grades greater than anything a personal firearm could ever achieve.

    And then, as if it was still a game or just a shooting range, Tom took aim before switching on the safety and pulling the trigger.

    His rifle was in a semi-automatic mode. Given the potential scarcity of the ammunition, Tom was as far from "spraying and praying" as he could be. Instead, he would slowly take an aim, pull the trigger and move the weapon towards the next target as soon as he noticed a small red rose flourishing atop the monster''s head.

    In six shots, six goblins fell to the ground without any signs of consciousness. As the weakest out of all the goblin species, they didn''t even have any weapons. As such, one could consider it a waste of six pebbles to get rid of them in this way, especially given how proficient Tom was with his spear.

    But once again, it was all about time. While ying the monsters in the way Dungeon''s Online made its yers do would be quick and easy, it would take time. And given how many encounters there were ahead of Tom and udia, if they wasted time each of them, there would be no way for them to reach the fiftieth floor within their deadline.

    "I don''t think those would make a nice rack," Tom muttered, already disappointed with the floor. ording to his experiences in the game, for the first ten floors, there would be mono-cultures of monsters on each of them. In other words, since they already spotted goblins on this floor, they would have to try their luck with another one, as even Tom wasn''t courageous enough to im he could make some clothes from the goblin''s skin.

    "It''s okay," udia replied with a lovely smile. While she had the only spare t-shirt they had on herself, she didn''t seem to mind the fact that it only pretended to hide anything from Tom''s eyes. "Didn''t we already fuck? It''s not like we will be as distracted by our bodies as we would be an hour ago," she added with an amused smile, enjoying her current situation more and more.

    "If you think that fucking you once will be enough to calm my lust down for tens of hours." Tom said before shaking his head. "Well, we will cross that bridge once we get to it," he said after a moment, averting his eyes as he decided to change the topic.

    "If you reach the point where you can''t go on any longer, just hit me up," udia smiled before sending Tom a wink. "If such situation were to ur, I wouldn''t really mind helping you out," she said with a smile only to strike up her shirt from below, making it flutter up, revealing her moist crotch for a split of a second.

    Normally, this kind of interaction would be more than enough to get Tom going. But the fact that udia did it while stepping over the bloodied bodies of the goblins that Tom just took out somehow made it less arousing than normally.

    "As I said," Tom shook his head, "we will think about it once we get to cross that bridge," he said once again before fixing his rifle on his shoulder and pushing forward.

    The rest of the floor turned out to be as simple as the first encounter on it. Whenever a pack of monsters would appear, Tom would make short work of them as if it was a low-grade shooting range. Roughly halfway through the floor, he even pushed the gun into udia''s arms, making her start her shooting training.

    After all, while there was barely any threat to their health on the second floor, the situation wouldn''t stay the same once they would reach the floor tenth and below.

    And even this estimate was nothing but Tom''s guess derived from his experiences as Dungeon''s Online yer.

    "We found it," udia shouted in joy when she finally saw the narrow corridor widen up to what could only be a boss room. And once the two of them took the corner, this guess was only confirmed.

    In the middle of the room, a massive goblin stood. It was roughly twice as high as Tom and as wide as Tom was high. To a degree, the boss monster looked like a slime that couldn''t make itself any less round but attempted to take the form of another monster to look more dangerous than it was in reality.

    "Can you take it down on your own?" Tom asked, raising his eyebrow as he threw the question at the girl.

    "Do you even need to ask?" she countered, pulling on the glove in her left hand before raising the barrel of the rifle at the monster. "Let''s see how well it will fare against this boy!"

 Chapter 67: Problem of munition

    Chapter 67: Problem of munition

    "Just like before," udia muttered under her nose as she kneeled on one knee, right at the doorstep of the boss room.

    This was one of the particrs of Dungeons Online that proved to be useful in real life as well. As long as one didn''t step into the open area where the boss resided, it wouldn''t be able to notice it nor retaliate to any of its attacks.

    This kind of limitation would prove useless once the monsters turned strong enough, given how no attack capable of hurting them could fit through the doorway. Once the bosses became a real threat, peashooters like Tom''s rifles wouldn''t even scratch them.

    But that was still way further ahead.

    Right now, udia rested the back of the rifle on her arm and leaned over the scope.

    ''She is going for a precise shot?'' Tom thought, watching the girl''s action. While it was by far the best choice, the domineering body of the monster would easily make anyone feel like a few bullets wouldn''t be enough to down it.

    "This is just a gamble," udia said when she caught Tom''s nce. "Its skull is likely too thick for those pellets to prate it. I''m trying to aim for the eye," she exined her intentions before focusing on the scope once again.

    ''That makes sense,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes on the monster ahead. It was massive... But that also meant its eyes were roughly four times as big as an eye of a human being.

    Between the size of the target and the distance, Tom judged that the girl had a fair shot.

    Click.

    The silent sound of the maic boostersing alive reached Tom''s ears at the same time as a small twitch shook the massive goblin ahead.

    For a moment, nothing happened. Still in her shooting position, udia breathed out. She then took the firing position once again... But didn''t shoot.

    "It''s dead, isn''t it?" she asked after a moment, raising her face from the rifle.

    "Yeah," Tom replied with a small smile. "For how big it is, it''s still a floor two monster," he said as he shook his shoulders. "I would be surprised if it took more than a single bullet to kill it," he added, putting udia''s achievement of one-shot one-kill down.

    Then, Tom rustled her hair. "Still, good job," he still praised the girl before taking his first step into the boss room.

    Thump!

    The sound of the goblin''s massive body falling down made the entire room shake slightly.

    ''Only three stones, huh?'' He thought, casting a nce towards the wall on the far end of the room. ''Well, it''s not like we are going to pick them up,'' he added in his thoughts before ultimately ignoring this meaninglessck of luck.

    "Shall we get going?" Tom asked with a smile, casting a quick nce at the girl.

    Even though he was more than satisfied already, his tongue licked his lips clean on its own when he saw just how lovely udia looked.

    Still on her one knee, she kept her eyes on the boss'' body. But for Tom, she could very well be posing for a lewd photoshoot with how sparsely Tom''s shirt covered her body.

    ''Begone, lewd thoughts,'' Tom scolded himself in his thoughts. He then shook his head to throw all the remaining dirty thoughts from his mind.

    "Yeah," udia replied to Tom''s suggestion after a long while. Her movements were strangely tense as if she carried a huge load on her back.

    "Minding the kill?" Tom asked, recognizing the standard symptoms of what one would go through after their first scored kill. He had it happen to himself when he went out hunting with his father. He saw it happen to Cleo. Tom never have killed a human so far, but the stories of his uncles proved that it wasn''t all that different.

    "Ah, sorry." udia shrugged. Tom''s remark clearly threw her off the loop, forcing her to suddenly resurface in reality. "I guess it''s not that easy to take it off your head," she admitted, hanging her head low.

    "It''s kill or be killed," Tom said before cing his hand on udia''s cheek and pushing her head to the side. "Look," he pointed at the body of the massive goblin that already started to melt through the stone floor of the dungeon. "It''s not a human. It''s not even an animal," he said, keeping the girl from moving her head away. "To a degree, I''m certain it''s not even alive," he added before shaking his head. "Look, nothing that''s alive would melt through stone, would it?" he asked before averting his eyes and letting go of udia''s head.

    "I''m sorry. Just give me a moment to think things through," Cleo asked, quickly moving her eyes away from the ever-growing pool of dark blood.

    "Well, she got the rope, now it''s up to her to climb it,'' Tom thought as he turned around. But just as he made this move, he grabbed udia''s hand and pulled her along.

    "You can take as much time as you want to figure it out, but we need to keep moving," Tom said while cursing himself for doing so. As much as he wanted to just cuddle with udia and tell her that everything would be alright over and over again, there was a limit to his time.

    A time limit that Tom couldn''t just abandon for the sake of getting all cuddly with the girl.

    ''Everything is easy and dandy now, but I don''t think we will be able to proceed as easily on the lower floors,'' Tom worried, pulling the girl into a hug before stepping over the gate.

    Once again, their vision wavered for a moment only to stabilize in the entry point of the third floor.

    "I wonder what kind of monsters will we meet here," Tom said out loud before pushing forward. Mindful of udia''s state of mind, he let go of her, allowing the girl to take the rear for a little longer.

    "No!" udia screamed silently as she reached forward with her hand. Then, she froze as her eyes filled with hesitation. But while she turned still, she didn''t retract her hand.

    ''I see.'' Tom blinked before breathing out slowly. He then reached out and grabbed udia''s extended hand. With no further words exchanged, they moved forward.

    Soon, the residents of the floor turned out to be giant rats. Quite agile for the monsters of the third floor, they were still way too slow to match the speed of Tom''s bullets.

    Outside of a single slip of his finger, every pebble that he shot found its target. Even the single miss that he scored somehow managed to ricochet off the wall andnd in another herd of those vile pests nearby.

    Finding the correct path turned out to be the biggest hurdle on the floor. Even though Tom never had any problems recalling the correct path while exploring the dungeon through his avatar, it appeared like this kind of ability was strictly connected to those bio-robots, rather than steeming from Tom''s ability.

    The boss of the third room... Was just as disappointingly weak as were the monsters in the corridors of the floor. With how udia proved to hold the rodents in high hate, she was more than happy to riddle both the boss with half a magazine worth of pellets.

    "Didn''t I tell you to mind your ammunition?" Tom asked. His hands weakly fell to his sides, as if he couldn''t believe the situation that just yed out.

    "I''m sorry, okay?" udia replied back in a voice that was as far from apologizing as one could imagine. It was obvious that the weight of the previous kill made her quite cranky.

    "It''s not about you being sorry or not," Tom shook his head, but rather than scolding the girl even further, he approached and hugged her.

    At first, udia attempted to resist, but soon she mellowed down and hugged Tom herself.

    "I understand why you did that, and I don''t hold the grudge," Tom silently whispered into the girl''s ear. "But I need you to understand that we cannot waste our shoots like that," he added before distancing himself at the length of an arm from the girl.

    "We still need the ammunition tost for twelve to seventeen floors," Tom informed the girl, making the count in his mind. "That gives us roughly fifty shoots per floor if we don''t waste too much of them," he added aftering up with the rough number.

    "Fifty shoots? How is that a little?" udia still attempted to protest, although she didn''t fly in rage this time. Contrary to how she was just a moment earlier, she was now looking for the answer to her questions, not something to just whine about.

    "Count all the shots we will need to spare for the small fries. Count all the shots that we will need to thest few bosses," Tom said before shaking his head. "I took as much as I could carry, but it still won''t be enough. And the sooner we ran out of the ammunition," he said before taking a short break. Tom raised his eyes at the girl before averting them and looking down. "The sooner we are out, the sooner we will have no other choice but to use the manual weapons," he said, unable to look the girl in the eyes.

    For now, this entire dungeon trip was just that, a trip. With the power of rifles, they could ovee any and all danger that came their way.

    But that wouldn''t be the truth for the lower floors. Once the power of their rifle diminishes whenpared to the rtive power of the monsters, this fun trip would turn into a hellish adventure.

 Chapter 68: Shortcut

    Chapter 68: Shortcut

    "Well, that was unexpected," Tom said, watching how the corpse of a massive rat dissolved into the nothingness.

    "I don''t think there was any rule that forbade the monsters from taking over two or more floors consecutively," udia said, expressing her own point of view. But while she didn''t seem to be influenced by this strange urrence if one were to judge her words alone, her expression told Tom that the girl was actually mindful about this strange situation.

    "Wel, it works for us," Tom said, shrugging his shoulders. ''There is no point dawdling on this topic,'' he thought, casting a quick, stealthy nce at the girl. ''The more we would talk about it, the more worried she will be,'' he told himself before shaking his head to forget about the topic himself.

    "Well, there is no point waiting like that," Tom threw his words in the air when the mass of huge rats ahead finally dissolved into nothingness. Given how udia was scared of the rodents like those, Tom didn''t even ount for the possibility of making her walk through the scene of the massacre. The scene that he created with a few short bursts from his pulse rifle.

    Their progress in the dungeon was rtively quick. Rtively, because whenever Tom checked the time, he made sure to not ount for the time he spent mingling in slime with udia. But even with that small loss of time on their side, they didn''t need long to pick up the pace.

    Passing through the fourth floor was a no-brainer. With only rodents trying to swarm them at every corner, Tom managed to repel them all at the cost of just emptying the first magazine that the weapon came with.

    The boss of the fourth room wasn''t any challenge for them either. As if there was some kind of rats infestation of this route in the dungeon, the boss turned out to be a slightly bigger rodent as well.

    But that was the end of its simrities to the normal rats, as both the agility of its movements and the strenght of its hits was abnormally high for a monster of that level.

    Thankfully, it was just as vulnerable to shoots as all its lesser brothers, freeing Tom and udia from the burden of fighting it at close quarters after just five shots to its head.

    The fifth floor... Didn''t pose much hardship either. While ording to the unspoken rule of danger spiking up considerably every fifth floor, there was hardly any difference in the difficulty of the run.

    On the fifth floor, the slimes made their second appearance. But not as the immobile blobs, free for anyone to kill. The slimes that Tom encountered as soon as they descended to the fifth floor were of green color, signaling just how much more potent the dissolvent in their inner fluid was. Outside of that, with how they continued to spit the dissolved stone ahead of them, those slimes could reach the speed of a walking adult, making them all the more dangerous.

    "Fuck," Tom cursed openly when his rifle finally proved to be useless. While the shoots could easily prate the outer shell, the acid within the smile was just too potent. Even when Tom made precise shots aimed at the slime''s core, the pellet was just small enough for it to dissolve before any danger to its core could be real.

    "How are we going to deal with them?" udia asked while jogging beside''s Tom. Given how they could no longer just walk past the slimes, they could at least outrun them in the vastbyrinth of the dungeon''s corridors.

    "You know, I think I have an idea," Tom said after a moment as a weird smile flourished on his lips. "Do you remember this piece?" he asked as he threw his backpack on the ground only to rummage through it for a bit. Then, he pulled out a slightly rusted silencer that he used to drain the insides out of the slime on the very first floor.

    "Don''t you think this is too much?" udia''s eyebrows rocketed up in surprise when she looked at what Tom brought out of his backpack. "The insides of those slimes are way more acidic. Won''t it just st through it in a second?" she asked, concerned about the situation.

    ''Well, no one said it''s going to be easy,'' Tom thought, unwilling to share this opinion with the girl. While he didn''t mind going for his sneaky tactic himself, he didn''t consider sharing the potential dangers of such endeavor with the girl.

    Tom moved into action before the girl could protest. With a gun in one hand and the rusty pipe in the other, he approached the closest slime.

    Contrary to how small the packs of the monsters were on the first floor, here, on the fifth, rather than sticking to trios and maybe quarters, the packs could no longer be counted down even if one used the fingers of both his hands.

    As such, there was no point in finding a solution to kill a single slime. Just showering it with bullets would be ultimately enough, as with every shot, it would lose a part of its inner fluids. But given how there were roughly twenty slimes blocking Tom''s path forward, he just had to find another way to deal with them.

    Once almost in close quarters, Tom raised the barrier of his gun and shot the pellet right at the thickest part of the slime. ''It would be bad if it went through, creating more than one hole,'' he thought, quickly pushing the rusty silencer into the opening created by the shot.

    Before Tom could react in any way or form, the insides of the slime started to spill out. But at the same time, the rate at which the metal of the silencer started to deteriorate was even quicker than he expected. ''I guess it was already damaged from before,'' Tom thought as he rushed to...

    Pick the slime up.

    With one of the specimens in his hands, Tom turned around and directed the pressurized stream of liquid towards the pack''s other members.

    In an instant, what was an impassable obstacle before, turned into an evergrowing puddle of melting slimes.

    "Just like I thought," Tom muttered as he threw thest slime away. With most of its fluids already gone, he crushed the core directly through its outer shell, saving his gun from the damage of the acid.

    "Who would''ve thought that they wouldn''t be resistant to their own acid from the outside," udiamented, clearly in awe of Tom''s ingenuity. "But that doesn''t mean I can approve this," she said after a moment, destroying the happy smile that she previously put on Tom''s face.

    "What did I do wrong?" Tom asked. He felt as if he was treated unjustly. ''Didn''t I just solve a huge hurdle? Without losing half of our ammunition at that!'' he protested in his mind.

    "Don''t act like a scolded puppy now," udia said as she shook her head powerlessly. "I don''t want you to do it ever again because of how dangerous it was," she said, as she looked Tom directly in the eyes.

    "But didn''t you just scold me?" Tom protested, keen on keeping up the act. Even though his feeling of unjust treatment was already gone, he couldn''t help but want to tease the girl a little.

    "Yes, I did scold you, but I did so for a reason," udia replied before releasing a long, deep sigh. "Hey, isn''t that a boss room?" She asked after a moment with a shocked voice.

    While there was no rule for how far one had to travel from the entry of the dungeon to the boss-room where the portal to another floor would be, it was pretty rare for anyone to only encounter a single pack of monsters before reaching this specific ce.

    "That would exin the massive pack earlier," Tom said, turning his head around and looking at the massive pile of dissolving fluid that just a few moments ago was a pack of slimes. "The huge number of those slimes in one ce... I was worried about it before, but now I see that we just randomly used a shortcut," he said, only to shrug his shoulders afterward.

    "A shortcut?" udia asked while raising her eyebrows. She then leaned her head over to her shoulder. "I didn''t know there were any shortcuts in the dungeons," she added, clearly wishing for an exnation.

    "In short words, it''s believed to be a feature added by the developers for the professional yers," Tom exined with a sour smile on his lips. "By taking a shorter route from the summoning room to the boss room, one will have to face a greater number of monsters. This bigger pack of monsters will reach the levels of five floors below. In other words, one can save some time by going through a fight way harder than anything one would meet on this floor otherwise," Tom exined as he looked towards the corner beyond which the room of the boss would begin.

    "But that puts my mind at ease," he added after thinking for a moment.

    "What, you are worried already?" udia asked, more shocked by what Tom just said than his earlier exnation. "If you can''t handle it while we are still on the fourth floor, do you really think we will be able to reach the fiftieth floor?"

    "You know that''s not what I meant," Tom said with his voice turning slightly darker. "I''m just d that the boss we will get to fight in a moment won''t be even stronger than that pack of slimes from before!"

 Chapter 69: Testing out a theory

    Chapter 69: Testing out a theory

    "So this is it," udia said as the two of them took a shortstop. A single step ahead, the boss room of the ninth floor would begin.

    For people armed and still well supplied with firearms, grenades, and even manual weapons, this wasn''t something to be scared of. Even when exploring the dungeons with their avatars, the tenth floor wasn''t any major obstacle to ovee at all.

    But this time, the situation was different.

    While there was a spike in the strenght of the monsters every five floors, it was only all within a certain league. It was the ten floors threshold that brought real change to the difficulty.

    That''s why whenever the levels of the avatars were discussed, every ten levels would mean another league. A yer who reached level seventy-first would be just a little weaker than someone who reached seventy-fifth. The difference between a yer on the seventy-first floor and one even at sixty-ninth was massive.

    "Well, no good wille from just waiting around," Tom muttered. He then fixed his hold over his rifle and checked whether all sorts of equipment was all ready to use. Then, he took a step forward.

    In an instant, the boss of the room proved to be worthy of the spot in the next league. As the boss room would usually keep a monster belonging to the floor above, this was the first fight for Tom with something of the tenth floor. And in an instant, he came in, the entire room filled with dense smoke.

    "What happened?!" udia asked with a slight dose of panic in her voice. ''Figures,'' Tom thought, looking towards the source of the voice. ''For an amateur like her, any deviation from the n will be taken seriously,'' he thought while gritting his teeth.

    ''I shouldn''t take her with me,'' Tom thought, bearing the guilt of this decision. While it would be pretty annoying for the girl to be held in some kind of luxurious basement, it would be a safer option for her.

    Because no amount of dungeon crawling experience would matter if it all came from ying the game. No matter how insane yer one was, that didn''t make him a soldier capable of thinking in situations where life and death would be put at stake.

    "It''s okay. This smoke only obscures our vision!" Tom shouted after casting a nce at a small diode pinned to his shoulder. It was connected with a single wire to an even smaller detector, capable of recognizing any substance harmful to a human.

    It was a simple toy, one that anyone could buy with just a few coins. Ever since the old type of wars turned obsolete, there was a huge amount of formerly military equipment circting through the market. As such, the prices of even the most convenient tools were low, while the products themselves were essible.

    ''Well, I wonder what kind of monster the boss will be,'' Tom thought to himself, finally walking out from behind the corner.

    His fingers gripped the handle of the spear a bit harder.

    And there it was. Lying right in the middle of the room.

    The boss of the ninth floor turned out to be a giant lizard. Even bigger than the Komando dragon (check the author''s notes), it took nearly a tenth of the room even when it was asleep.

    ''No, I shouldn''t get conceited like that,'' Tom forced himself to stay still. The momentary idea of taking advantage of the monster''s sleep evaporated as soon as the young man considered the possibility that it was a trap.

    "So that''s it, huh?" udia whispered when she took the corner and saw the monster. "What do you say? A weing series to the head?" she asked, griping at the handle of her rifle.

    "You know what...?" Tom asked, but his voice broke before he could finish his question. "No. I want you to prepare for now. Listen, I will attack it alone. What I need you to..." Tom attempted to exin his idea when the girl''s hand suddenly pped his cheek.

    "Don''t you dare y the fucking hero!" udia whispered, proving that she was coolheaded enough not to let her fury make her alert the boss monster. After all, if it caught the two of them off-guard, then the situation could be genuinely dire.

    "I will allow that," Tom squinted his eyes, feeling how the anger was trying to take over his actions as well. "But only this time. The next time you dare to p me, I will return the favor," Tom hissed at the girl. Then, he shook his head. "Listen, your part here is the most important. I''m not trying to be a hero, just to test something out," Tom added before moving back to the corner and stepping out of the boss room.

    "Listen, I need you to wait here. With your finger on the trigger, but still. Under no circumstances are you to enter the boss-room before I give the order. Understood?" Tom asked, even using the officer''s tone that he heard many of his uncles use whenever their kids would turn rebellious. As Tom learned many times over, this small trick of modting one''s voice worked just as well on the recruits as it did on normal people.

    "What for?" udia protested although it seemed that she was now just unhappy with the situation rather than unwilling to go through with it.

    "I will only shout one of the two orders. It will be either shoot ore. If I ask you to shoot, you will need to save my life. That means you will likely only have one stopping shot before it is toote," Tom exined as he caught the barrel of the girl''s rifle and pulled it towards himself. After a few moments of fiddling with the switches at its side, he returned the girl''s weapon.

    "Here, I turned to st shots on. Right now, every shot of yours will use fifteen shots instead of one. It also overheats the weapon for a short while, so keep the one-shot rule in mind," Tom exined as he stood up from his knees and looked towards the boss room.

    "And what if you shout toe?" udia asked resolutely, proving that she was properly listening to his orders.

    "Then, all you need to do is enter the room," Tom said with a small smile. As he did, he started to drop everyst piece of his equipment to udia''s growing panic. Seeing how her partner only allowed himself to carry the fickle spear of his, she quickly reached the levels of panic and worry that she would never expect herself to have. "Don''t shoot, don''t panic, just push your body and all those weapons inside the room as soon as possible. You won''t have more than a second or two," Tom exined his wish before charging inside.

    ''If I allowed her any time to think it over, she would likely attempt to stop me again,'' Tom thought, feeling the pain of forcing this lovely girl into this kind of unpleasant situation.

    Even if she had no feeling for him whatsoever, it would still be pretty unpleasant to worry about someone she spent quite a while with.

    ''But for the sake of this tests, this small amount of risk is eptable,'' Tom thought as he approached the motionless body of the lizard.

    ''All in all, there is something weird going on with me,'' Tom thought as he continued his march towards the monster. ''Normally, I wouldn''t put myself at such a great risk just to test a theory out, no matter how important this theory would be,'' he thought as he stopped his steps right beside''s the lizard''s body.

    "Wake up," Tom said while kicking the monster. And unexpectedly, it didn''t turn out to be an illusion of any sort, as Tom clearly felt the warmth of its flesh and the sturdiness of its scales. ''Well, the n and theory are both great,'' he thought as he jumped away only tond down and stand fast on his position, ''executing it might be a hassle,'' Tom added in his thoughts, watching how the local boss finally started to wake up.

    At first, the lizard stood up on its legs. Then, its long head turned towards Tom. The monster''s eyes were red, surrounded by a slight, crimson aura.

    Staring into those eyes, Tom couldn''t help but tremble.

    While there was a strange call deep within his soul that pushed him into this rash decision, his rationality has yet to go away. Standing head to head with this monster, he would have to be an idiot not to realize the danger he was in.

    ''Should I call udia?'' In this moment of rity of his thoughts, Tom asked himself. Should he call for the girl? No matter how personally weak, she would be of great help with all the guns and tools she had on herself.

    "No," Tom muttered, raising his head and looking into the monster''s eyes once again. "If I lose my courage here, I will never be able to move forward," Tom told himself, attempting to restore his own morale.

    And so, with nothing but a spear in his hand, he jumped at the monster.

 Chapter 70: Ninth Floor Boss

    Chapter 70: Ninth Floor Boss

    With nothing but his simple spear in his hand, Tom stared at the boss.

    Tom couldn''t know whether it wanted to set a trap by pretending to be asleep or if it was actually sleeping. After he woke the monster up with a kick, attacking it while it was asleep was no longer an option.

    In a sense, Tom deprived himself of great advantage. While that also meant not taking the potential risk of stepping into the trap, taking the chances of that happening, Tom still made quite a tactical loss.

    ''All ording to the keikaku,'' Tom thought, bringing up an ancient meme in his thoughts.

    The lizard slowly moved up, not showing any signs of a hurry. It appeared that it was aware of the vast difference in power between itself and the invader. As such, it didn''t showcase any anxiety or caution, taking its time to shake up the drowsiness.

    ''I wonder if I can pull it off,'' Tom thought, feeling how the adrenaline started to flow through his veins.

    The fight was inevitable.

    And so there was no point in wasting any more time.

    Tom rushed forward, dragging his spear along. Once just two steps away from the monster, he threw his leading hand ahead.

    Ting!

    The tip of the spear bounced off the lizard''s scales. Not even a bruise appeared, proving just how powerful the monsters could be when attacked with normal arms.

    ''No, that''s the wrong way of thinking,'' Tom noticed as he retreated a few steps. ''It''s us that are too weak,'' he realized when observing the lizard''s patterns of movements.

    This dungeon wasn''t a game at all. By entering it with their real bodies, Tom proved it beyond any doubt. But that didn''t mean his opponent didn''t have any patterns. Contrary to that, they were likely to be far simpler and more straightforward than any pattern apetent game developer woulde up with!

    After all, patterns are a pretty powerful tool. Their main downside... is that they are boring in the long term. As such, developers would often struggle to make the patterns for their bots... as unpredictable as possible. Make them tooplex for a human brain to notice the pattern. They would use any tool at their disposal to hide the fact that everything in the game was actually just a procedure.

    But this dungeon was different.

    The monster didn''t mind revealing any and all of its patterns all at once. After all, what good would knowing a pattern of one''s movement do when your opponents don''t have the strenght to exploit them?

    In the end, for a monster with no intelligence, the pattern was a great tool to improve the proficiency of its attacks and lower its energetical cost. And this attachment to patterns was the very reason why it was humans standing at the top of the food chain, not some powerful predator.

    "Come!" Tom shouted as he charged ahead once again. And with no surprise, his weapon bounced off the lizard''s scales once again.

    Its jaws opened up as Tom dodged to the back. But it didn''t even try to bite him. It simply stood with its mouth open and then started to shake its head up and down.

    ''It looks like it''s having un,'' Tom gripped his weapon even tighter, clearly driven by the rousing act of the monster. While he could handle humans insulting him, the same didn''t apply to some damned, lowlife monster!

    "DIE!" Tom charged forward, this time aiming for what could be the soft underbelly of the monster. Right as he was about to make thest step, he suddenly pushed the center of his weight to the side.

    Tom fell to the ground, but his momentum carried him forward. Sliding on his legs, he used his entire body to drive his spear into the lizard''s belly.

    But rather than protecting it, that damned lizard actually raised its upper legs as if in an attempt to give Tom even a better shot!

    Ting!

    The sound rang in Tom''s ears, announcing the failure of his attack.

    ''Now steady, let''s work it out calmly and without any mishaps,'' Tom thought as he fanned the fuel that made him appear furious.

    In reality, he was simply setting up a scenario. A scenario that would allow him to learn one crucial thing.

    "Fuck," Tom muttered openly as his slide ended. If the monster wished, it could stomp on him at least four times by this point.

    But for some reason, it didn''t.

    "COME ON!" Tom shouted while praying in his thoughts for his shouts not to affect udia. Because if she were to enter a second too early, this situation from dangerous would turn into a disaster.

    This time, the lizard reacted. Whether it was bored with letting Tom do what he wished or just wanted to get over with the ongoing annoyance, Tom couldn''t know.

    And frankly, couldn''t care less. The only important fact was that the lizard finally went on the offensive.

    "Huh!" Tom breathed out a mouthful of air when the first attack struck. He barely managed to avoid it by stepping to the side.

    The lizard, on the other hand, seemed to disobey thews of physic. With how massive it was and how slippery the floor was, there should be no way for it to move around as agile as it did. Even after its charge, it only required a few steps to lose its momentum, turn around and charge again.

    "That,'' Tom thought while dodging an attack. ''Was,'' he spoke in his thoughts, jumping away from another charge. ''Too close!'' he screamed in his mind when the lizard suddenly shook its bottom, sending Tom flying with a spinning attack of its long tail.

    "Guh!" All the air escaped from Tom''s lungs when he crashed into the wall. Falling down to the ground, he could see droplets of blood dripping out from the corner of his mouth. ''I bit my lip? Or...''

    Tom couldn''t even think for long when the lizard attacked again. While Tom managed to dodge, the injuries he suffered a moment earlier made his escape quite cranky.

    For a moment, the battle stalled. While he didn''t have any skill allowing him to talk to the monsters, somehow Tom could tell what was going on through the lizard''s head.

    Because the thought process of all the predators was roughly the same. As long as one understood its quirks, one could adapt that natural killing instinct to match how the other party would act out.

    ''The normal lizards usually just wait for their attacks to fester. With how dirty their mouths are, that filth act like a pretty potent poison,'' Tom thought, recalling some tidbits of information that he once found out while surfing through the.

    And right now, the lizard didn''t seem that keen to attack again. Rather than that, it rested down as if waiting for Tom to just keel over.

    ''It didn''t bite me or anything like that... Is it waiting for my injuries to act up?'' he asked himself, trying to calmly analyze the situation.

    ''Well, those are quite painful, I admit,'' Tom said to himself before raising his head. For a moment, he stared down the lizard''s red eyes as if throwing a challenge its way. And then, despite how painful it was, Tom rose back to his legs.

    In an instant, the lizard started paying attention again.

    Tom took a moment to stabilize himself at his position. Then, once his legs gave him firm support, he readied up his spear.

    The lizard was Tom''s opponent. There was no doubt about it. But in this short moment, the two managed to understand each other. And with respect for a fellow predator on the brink of their life, the lizard charged once again.

    It had at least the dignity to spare his opponent a prolonged and painful death.

    ''That''s what I waited for,'' Tom was barely able to keep his consciousness. With all the injuries hitting him harder than expected, acting as if he was getting weak was actually getting to his mind.

    "COME!" Tom shouted right as he forced his body into onest fit. Onest struggle. And with the tiny bit of energy he still had, he changed the position of his spear by a tiny little bit.

    The lizard was agile. It could turn almost in ce. It could kill its speed way faster than Tom initially anticipated.

    And that''s why he allowed it to charge at him so many times. That''s why he held back from pushing forth with his n until he was absolutely certain about the scope of the lizard''s capabilities.

    He shouted when the lizard was just three meters away. By the time he managed to raise his entire spear, only a meter was left.

    The lizard attempted to ward off the attack. It noticed the danger and lowered its eyelids just as the tip of the spear was about to prate into its eye.

    But it was already toote. Its eyelid, while made of scales as well, wasn''t resilient enough to withstand the sharpness of Tom''s spearbined with the lizard''s own speed.

    Just like before, the lizard stopped in its tracks after only a few meters. Carried from his initial spot by the lizard charge''s momentum, Tom could only breathe heavily while holding on to the back of the spear''s handle.

    Because the rest of the weapon was pushed deep inside the monster''s massive body.

    For a moment, Tom''s heart continued to beat hard, as if he couldn''t believe what he just did.

    "Are you okay?!" udia came out rushing from beyond the corner. She froze for a moment when she saw the bloody scene, only to shake her head and lunge towards Tom.

    "Where? Where were you hit?" she panicked a bit, taking Tom''s unresponsiveness for the sign of his potential injuries.

    "Look," Tom didn''t mind the girl at all, raising his hand towards the wall with stones. "I was right."

 Chapter 71: Morpheian Memoriam

    Chapter 71: Morpheian Memoriam

    Tom pointed his arm at the wall where the stones would appear as soon as the boss would be defeated.

    ording to the lore created by the Dungeons Online yers, the stones were always there. It was the presence of the boss monster that made them hidden, hence why they would reveal themselves after the fight.

    But now, Tom proved this theory wrong. Because a single look at the wall was more than enough for Tom to abolish several major theories about the dungeons that everyone took for granted.

    "A tier three stone?" udia asked in a whisper. Her breath got stuck in her chest as she stared at the wall, exasperated.

    One of the most important rules of the dungeon was the distribution of the stones. As the primary and almost the only form of loot that yers could obtain outside of some rare cases of items dropping, everyone knew the rules governing the appearance of the stones by their heart.

    And now, Tom had toe up with a way to exin how a tier-three stone, one that should never appear below the thirtieth floor, was shining in the wall of floor ninth.

    "Was this your bet?" udia asked in a weak voice, moving her shocked eyes at Tom''s face.

    "More or less," Tom replied, shaking his head to clear it from the meaningless thoughts. He then stood up, catching himself by his side in the process.

    As much as he didn''t want to admit it, the barehanded fight with that lizard brought him really close to the edge.

    "I was curious whether the discrepancy between our power and the power of opponents will be reflected in rewards," Tom exined as he approached the slowly vanishing corpse of the monster.

    "That''s why you wanted me to enter the room?" udia suddenly asked as her eyes shed with excitement. "To make the monster even stronger?" udia added a bit more details to her question as her eyes gravitated towards the spear still stuck in the monster''s carcass. "Let me guess, you got me to enter right when you were about to kill it?"

    udia guessed Tom''s n without trouble. Now that she saw its results and understood the process, figuring out the details was pretty straightforward.

    "That almost cost me my life," Tom confirmed the girl''s words as a sour expression appeared on his face. "It managed to close its eyelid... And I''m sure that the spear bounced off," he added, looking down at the weapon. "It shouldn''t pierce its eye like that," Tom said, openly refusing to take credit for what happened.

    "Wait, if it bounced off, how did you..." udia asked, only to cut her sentence in half. While she didn''t know Tom very well, even she was capable of understanding Tom''s confused expression.

    ''Well, let''s see how it is,'' he thought, reaching forward and grabbing the back of the spear''s handle. Then, with one swift move, Tom pulled it all out. "Huh?" A gasp of surprise escaped Tom''s mouth.

    ''This isn''t my spear,'' he thought when the reflection of some strange light suddenly blinded him. For a moment, rather than a spear, he saw a thunderbolt in his hand, formed by the same shine that blinded him a moment earlier.

    And then, everything came to an end.

    ''Huh?'' Tom thought, puzzled. ''What''s this strangely familiar feeling?'' he asked himself, looking down at the weapon in his hand.

    His first thought brought him back to the special spear he bought for his local avatar. In theory, it should still be stored somewhere. But in reality, it was just as essible as the hidden golden reserve of the strongest nation that still remained in this world.

    Yet, there was no doubt. This spear felt exactly the same as the thunder spear he wielded as his avatar. But that alone was pretty strange, given how those two weapons didn''t look alike at all.

    "Something wrong?" udia asked, casting a weird nce at Tom.

    ''Huh? Something happened?'' Tom thought, confused by the girl''s question. ''Wait, could it be?'' A sudden idea struck his mind.

    Tom raised his spear as if he wanted to flex it to the girl. "Tell me, what kind of material is this spear made off?" he asked a pretty simple question.

    "Huh?" This time it was udia''s turn to be confused. "If I were to say... Metal..."

    Hearing the response, Tom''s face twitched. ''So she sees it? Then why wouldn''t she react if it obviously changed from wood?'' he asked himself.

    "The tip should be metal. The rest is obviously made from wood... Or wait, maybe it''s some kind of stic made to look like wood?" udia finished what she originally wanted to say, putting Tom into an even greater state of shock.

    ''So she doesn''t see the difference,'' he thought, staring down at the handle of the spear.

    It was originally made out of wood and reinforced with spring-steel filling inside. In other words, it should have a brownish handle and a silver de at its top.

    But right now, what Tom was holding didn''t appear like wood at all. No matter how hard and long he looked at it, he couldn''t see it as anything else but a full metal cast. As for what kind of metal the spear was made from, Tom had no clue.

    He wasn''t a cksmith or any sort of metallurgy professional. ''But even without any real knowledge, I think I can be pretty damn sure we don''t have metals with this kind of lustrous, silver hue,'' he thought, observing the fine details that reced the original, wooden texture of the spear''s handle.

    ''Is this the rumored mithril?'' Tom thought, scurrying through his memories of themunity posts he read in his spare time.

    The item drop rate was incredibly low. What''s more, the items could hardly even make a difference, as only a small number of them grew along with its users rather than bing obsolete after just a few level-ups.

    But with the entire world on its scale, there were more than just a handful of items on the market. And various theories about what those weapons were made from arouse.

    Some came from fantasy geeks, trying to look for corrtions with other worlds, games, and genres. Other suggestions came from the cksmith guild, the major organization of hobbyists still dabbling in this ancient art. While there were several other credible sources of the so-called ''item theory,'' there was only a limited number of the point where all those theories reached consensus, converged on a fact that all could agree on.

    And it was the mysterious and legendary material, Mythril.

    "Is this some kind of protection?'' Tom thought, staring at his spear. He was so distracted with his thoughts that he didn''t even realize that he voiced those words out.

    "Protection? Do you want to go again?" udia caught his words, looking at Tom with a weird look on her face. As if happiness mixed with embarrassment and disappointment.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged when udia''s words threw him off his mental focus. "What did you ask about?" He raised his eyes at the girl.

    "Nevermind," udia didn''t dawdle on the topic. It was pretty easy to notice that Tom''s mind was somewhere else when he spoke up. ''I guess I misunderstood,'' udia thought, averting her eyes shyly.

    "Well, that reminds me," Tom said, turning his head towards the shining stone in the wall. In the ce where only stones of the first tier should appear, it stood out like a sore thumb. "What are we going to do about it?" Tom asked, pointing at the stone with his eyes.

    "You risked your life to make it appear. You seem to also be way better at utilizing your strengths in here," udia said after swallowing a gulp of her saliva. "While I hate to push you into staying as kind of my bodyguard, I think it will be better if you will be the one to absorb it," udia said, lowering her head in shame.

    "It''s okay," Tom smiled lightly, amused and genuinely happy with how honest the girl was with him. "To be honest, I can''t wait to test it out, but I didn''t want to leave you out of the fun," he said, turning around and approaching the wall.

    This time, Tom knew what to do. With the silverish spear in his hand, he simply struck the wall with all his mind, imagining all his strenght leaving him through the spear and infusing itself into the wall.

    Tac, tac, tac...

    The sound of stones crashing and bouncing off the floor filled Tom''s ears. And as he looked down, the shiny stone was amongst those that fell off after his attack.

    "Whew," Tom breathed out. "That was exhausting," he muttered as he leaned down and picked the stone up with his bare hand.

    And just like before, there was a slight sh of light, and then the stone started to meltdown and soak into Tom''s skin.

    "Granted the blessing of Morpheian Memoriam," A voice said in Tom''s head before his consciousness suddenly shut off.

 Chapter 72: Former skills

    Chapter 72: Former skills

    "Tom! Tom!" A distant voice called, filled with grief and anxiety.

    "Just let me sleep," Tom thought, feeling the overwhelming weakness of his body reaching all the way to the deepest point of his soul where his mind took refuge to enter a slumber.

    "Wake up! Please!" The voice continued, introducing a new feeling to Tom''s mind, who finally found a way to rx.

    ''Never a moment of peace, huh?'' Tom thought, shaking his head a bit... But then, he shook his head harder. And harder. And by the time he felt the tendons in his neck snapping, he finally managed to shake himself awake.

    "Ah!" Tom shouted as soon as his consciousness returned. But the pain of his neck that was behind the shout disappeared as soon as the young man opened his eyes.

    "Tom!" Once again, the voice spoke. With vision slowly reaching his mind, Tom saw a wet face of udia, filled with tears.

    "Don''t cry," Tom asked the girl, raising his hand to wipe the tears off her eyes. "You should smile instead," he added with a calm voice.

    "You are alright," udia said in a silent voice before falling on top of Tom''s chest. Her entire body shook as she cried right on his breast, appearing to be more fragile than ever.

    "Everything will be okay," Tom said, cing his hand on the girl''s back and moving it up and down. Normally, Tom wouldn''t dare to just caress the girl''s naked back like that, but this situation was quite special.

    "Morpheian Memoriam..." Tom suddenly said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "Do you have any idea what that could mean?" Tom asked, hoping to force udia''s attention onto another topic.

    "Huh?" udia raised her messed-up head up, revealing how her face was covered in tears and snot. Her reddened eyes started at Tom''s face with confusion. "Morpheian Memoriam?" She repeated Tom''s words as if unsure if she heard right.

    "Yeah, any ideas?" Tom confirmed before pulling the girl back on his chest. Even though he felt perfectly fine, the fragile body of this girl somehow called out to him to let her rx for a little longer.

    "Morpheian... Morpheian... Morpheus?" udia spoke with her voice muffled due to the girl pressing her lips against Tom''s chest. "Isn''t that a mythical god of sleep?" she suggested. Then, her body froze, only for udia to suddenly push against Tom''s chest, bringing her upper body up.

    All for the sake of staring down into Tom''s eyes.

    "Morpheus is a god of slumber and dreams. Memoriam refers to a memory of something or someone..." udia spoke, clearly voicing her thoughts out to help herself figure out the connection between them. "Wait, this is just a guess, but can you try something out for me?" udia shook her head before asking.

    Strange sparks shed in her eyes, proving just how exciting that concept of her was.

    "Sure thing?" Tom replied, confused by the girl''s sudden enthusiasm. Once udia got off him, Tom tensed his body before jumping back on his feet.

    For some reason, his body felt lighter, as if some kind of weight was cut away from it.

    Or rather, as if his strenght suddenly rose by a noticeable degree, without giving the young man time to adapt to it.

    "What now?" Standing on his feet, Tom looked at his partner and asked.

    "Do you remember any of the skills you had on your avatars?" udia asked. But while this wasn''t a direct exnation of her guess, it was a hint big enough for Tom to figure out what was going through her head.

    "Huh?" Tom breathed out in exasperation before suddenly squinting his eyes. "If that''s the case..." he said passively as he sank deeply into his thoughts.

    This momentarypse of concentrationsted only for a short moment. Tom opened his eyes again, cast a quick nce at udia before turning around and pushing his hands forward.

    "Everze," he whispered, closing his eyes for a moment.

    "Woah!" udia shouted as soon as Tom intentionally deprived himself of his vision. And her shout alone was more than enough for proof of her concept.

    Whatever this Morpheian Memorian was, Tom didn''t know. Maybe it was some kind of new ability that he simply didn''t understand and thus had no idea how to use it.

    But there was also a huge chance that this new ability unlocked ess to all the powers Tom ever had in his avatars!

    Then, he slowly pried his eyes open. For exploring the dungeon, the skills of his former avatars would be more than handy. In fact, Tom couldn''t think of any skills better for exploring the dungeon, given how they were all created and chiseled for his sake and usage.

    That was also the reason why he was so reluctant to actually open his eyes. After all, if he did so and there would be no mes, the disappointment would be worse than overwhelming.

    "Huh?" Tom exhaled the air as soon as his eyes opened up a little. Then, as if there was no time to waste, he pulled his eyelids all the way up, finally revealing the full picture to himself. "What the heck is that?!" he shouted in surprise a momentter.

    "Isn''t this fire... A bit bigger than when I first saw it?" udia asked with a hesitant voice.

    Tom turned around to cast a nce on the girl. Her face was filled with amazement as if she suddenly discovered a new side to adore in her partner.

    "I wonder if..." Tom unintentionally started to voice out an insanely important question that appeared in his mind. But as he continued to look at the girl, a devastating premonition struck him. ''I wonder if I will be able to use all those skills outside the dungeon... But if I could, what does that mean for everyone stuck in the vige?'' Tom asked himself.

    In a single sh, he saw the entire vige burning. His friends, brothers, and sisters all burning away under the intense mes created by the people of the Online hub.

    ''No, they shouldn''t go all out like that,'' Tom told himself, forcibly washing this devastating vision away. ''If they had powers like that, they would seize the control of the entire world long ago,'' he thought, trying to remain as calm as he could.

    "What''s wrong?" udia asked as she touched Tom''s shoulder. His fire was roughly three times as massive as when hest used it in his main avatar. But as this skill was nothing else but a tool to clear out the weak mobs way below one''s level, there was no danger in those mes at all.

    As such, udia didn''t risk her health by touching him like that.

    "Ah, don''t mind me," Tom quickly attempted to change the topic. "I just thought of something unpleasant," he twisted his lips into a sour smile before turning around. "How about we go and get the rest of the stones?" Tom''s smile returned to its normal, slightly cheeky nature.

    "Do you want to absorb them all?" udia asked, casting a slightly worried look at the stones still waiting for someone to pick them up by the wall.

    "I don''t really think I need to," Tom countered, shaking his head in denial. "Obviously, it would make me stronger, but since I can use my old skills..." Tom didn''t finish his sentence, but the cheerful smile that appeared on his lips did it for him.

    "So you want me to absorb those?" udia asked as if she didn''t dare to even approach the stones without a written notice of approval.

    "That''s right," Tom said as he nodded his head. "I''m already plenty strong, but I can''t help but worry about you," he exined. "It would be better if you would have the power to defend yourself in case of our rifles suddenly stopping working for some reason," Tom stated, averting his eyes towards the gate.

    What he saw as a source of insane danger and the start of the lethal part of their journey into the dungeon no longer hold any menace in Tom''s eyes. With all of his skills apparently returning, he could breeze through the floors.

    Especially if he could use the skills of all the avatars instead of his main one alone.

    "Well, here goes nothing, then," udia smiled wryly as she encouraged herself with her words. She then moved forward and grabbed one of the stones. A sh of light and several secondster, the stone disappeared, sinking into the girl''s flesh just like the tier-three one that Tom absorbed before.

    "Go on," Tom encouraged the girl when he saw her alternate her eyes between his face and the remaining stones. ''Is she shy about absorbing those stones?'' Tom thought, instantly turning around. ''I know we already fucked and should be more or lessfortable with being naked around each other... But it doesn''t have anything to do with absorbing the stones, I guess,'' Tom thought, not even attempting to figure out what the girl was thinking.

    Rather than that, while she was still busy consuming the remaining tier-two stones that he extracted from the wall, Tom pulled his spear out.

    ''The skills of myst avatar were all oriented about using the spear, weren''t they?'' he asked himself, taking a few swings and thrust with his weapon.

    And just like back in the dungeon when he first tested the ability of spearmanship, the weapon seemingly came alive in his hands.

    Each of his movements, even the tiniest ones, had a purpose. While his attacks were way slower than what he could achieve while using Haste ability, nothing stood in Tom''s way of using both his spear and that overpowered ability at once!

    "I''m done!" udia announced in a happy voice filled with relief.

    "Great," Tom replied, too excited to look away from the gate to another floor. "Let''s get going then!"

 Chapter 73: Powerful mix

    Chapter 73: Powerful mix

    "I can assume you are more than eager to test your skills out," udia pointed out with a slight smile.

    "And how did you came to such realization?" Tom asked, turning his head around. With an already bloodied spear in his hand, he didn''t seem to notice the battered carcass of a goblin still hanging from his spear''s de.

    "Just a feeling," udia grinned, ultimately not keeping the topic up.

    For Tom, the tenth floor was a liberation. After struggling to kill the monsters with the rifles and often wasting way more ammunition than he expected, his thoughts about the rest of the mission were pretty grim. With the rate at which they were using up their supplies, the furthest they could go was somewhere around the fifteenth floor.

    But now, it didn''t matter any longer.

    Just the skills of his main avatar, the one that died at the very bottom of the dungeon, were more than enough to get him through the current floors.

    All the proficiency and stacked bonuses from his skills were gone. But that didn''t matter. Given how proficiency could be easily leveled up by just using the skill while the Casino passive would grow all on its own, it was only a matter of time before Layn would be as powerful as his strongest avatar was.

    Or even stronger.

    Back in his first ythrough, Tom''s avatar was oriented at quick and stealthy y. With the Casino skills making massive fights a breeze and his haste skill giving him the speed necessary to go through the early stage of the fight, Tom could use any weapon he would like to just sh the monsters dead.

    But that was the situation back when he still used his old avatar. Now, with the spear-rted skill tree from his most recent avatar and several skills that he couldn''t even recall from all the other avatars he made in the past, Tom was more than capable of conquering the dungeon.

    Just a single floor prior, what was a challenge now turned into a feeding ground for Tom''s appetite for power.

    "Pack of goblins ahead..." udia shouted in an attempt to warn Tom against the new group of monsters. But by the time the girl moved her eyes to where her partner stood, Tom was already nowhere to be seen.

    This state of things didn''tst long either.

    Tom rushed right into the group of goblins as soon as he sensed them. Using the momentum of his charge, he pushed his spear forward.

    ''Hate,'' Tom thought right as he was about to crash into the goblins.

    Whenpared to the same kind of monster that they encountered on the early floors, the local monsters were no longer as sympathetically weak. Rather than going against Tom barehanded, each of the roughly seventeen monsters held some kind of weapon. They ranged from simple maces through clubs all the way to improvised spears and axes.

    ''I don''t see any swords,'' Tom thought, pushing his spear through the nearest goblin. With his haste going on, he felt as if he was swimming in the air while everyone else was simply frozen in ce.

    Once the de prated the monster''s body, Tom squinted his eyes.

    ''Incinerate,'' he thought, invoking yet another of his abilities... Or rather, an entire chain of them.

    While it was only a guess, Tom was quite sure that his spear''s material somehow morphed into mithril. With its magic conductivity that every geek across the world knew about mixed with Tom''s spearmage and energymancer''s abilities, Tom''s attack spell changed.

    Incinerate was originally quite a versatile, offensive fire spell. Depending on the attribute, it allowed Tom to cover a huge area with a weak fire or just concentrate all the might of the spell on a single target. It was its versatility that made this skill so useful, not the raw power itself.

    But now, mixed with all the other abilities, Tom unknowingly turned the tip of his spear into a damned cannon!

    BOOM!

    The shock of the soundwave almost threw Tom out of his haste spell. Thankfully, he somehow managed to hold on to his focus, even when his body was thrown several steps away from where he dealt his attack.

    ''Beautiful,'' Tom thought when he got to experience the explosion of his making in slow motion. The fires spread out from when his spear released them. With the ''incinerate'' attribute, the spell was aimed to reach the highest possible temperature and use the natural forces for the rest.

    But as Tom continued to fly back from the shockwave and observe the events, he realized that he overdid it... by a tiny little bit.

    At the moment where he released the spells, the monsters ahead no longer posed any problem. Even before the actual fire could reach them, the sheer energy contained in the heatwave that followed the shockwave was enough to turn them into ash. But what appeared to be problematic was how the walls of the dungeon itself started to melt!

    ''End the haste,'' Tom thought, escaping from the world of slowed-down time.

    Only to crash into the wall, roughly thirty steps away from where he executed his attack.

    "Fuck!" Tom shouted when a wave of pain exploded outwards from his sr plexus.

    "Hold on!" udia shouted, prompted by Tom''s curse. She rushed forward, grabbing him before his body could fall off to the ground. "Are you okay?" she asked. Her face was filled with worry.

    "I should be," Tom calmed the girl down, although he used her help to regain his footing. "But I guess I should focus more on limiting the power of my attack," Tom said before smiling shyly.

    In the dungeon, the power of one''s skills was the absolute measurement of how strong one really was. Given how it took only ten to twenty floors for the monster to reach levels above anything that a human could ever fight with on his own, there was no use in relying on one''s own abilities when facing powerful monsters here.

    That''s why a normal Dungeons Online yer would consider Tom''s worry to be a strange one. After all, what was the point of limiting how strong one was?

    But just as the situation before proved, Tom''s body was nowhere near powerful to withstand thebined power of all his skills. While he could offset this problem by a certain degree with his Casino passive, but it would take a long while before he could bring it up to that point.

    After all, Casino stole a part of the power from the monsters that Tom defeated and used it to permanently reinforce the skill''s user. The problem was, he only started using it on the tenth floor.

    ''Even if I went through every single monster spawn on all the floors that we still have to conquer...'' Tom thought, putting his mind into calction mode for a bit. ''Nah, it won''t work,'' he quickly arrived at a conclusion. ''Even if I were to ignore the time restraints, there are simply not enough monsters for me to kill here. Not before I would be too strong for them to...'' Tom thought, only to suddenly silence his thoughts.

    An idea struck his head.

    "What if..." he asked, only to cut his words just like he cut his line of thought a moment earlier.

    "What''s going through your mind?" udia asked. She was more than capable of noticing the fine details of Tom''s disposition. As such, she had enough clues to figure out when he was struck by an idea and when he was simply absent-minded.

    "I think I just found a way not to rely on harvesting the stones at all," Tom said, looking around the ce. In the distance, at the far-off corner of the main corridor, he spotted a monster.

    ''It''s likely within a pack as well,'' Tom thought. He already anticipated the rest of the group to be hiding behind the corner. After all, they were on the tenth floor of the dungeon, a special ce where its difficulty spiked for real for the first time.

    "Can you give me a moment?" Tom asked the girl, turning his head around to face her. "I think I know how I can get stronger pretty quickly," he added in hopes of exining the source of his idea.

    "Even stronger than you are right now?" udia asked, opening her eyes wide. "Do you want to kill yourself just by swinging your spear?" She asked out of nowhere, squinting her eyes. "Because that''s what''s going to happen if you raise your strenght even further!" udia exined, clearly anxious about such a possibility.

    "Ah, that''s not what I meant," Tom instantly replied and shook his head. "Right now, I''m powerful because of how well does my old skills mix together," he exined before looking towards the monsters in the distance once again.

    As this was the tenth floor, there was no longer just one kind of monster on the entire floor. And even though Tom just dealt with a pack of goblins, it appeared that the monsters in the distance belonged to some animal, four-legged kind.

    "What I want to do, is to raise my level," Tom said. He then lowered his upper body down and lunged forward.

 Chapter 74: Toms twofold training

    Chapter 74: Tom''s twofold training

    "We have a good pace," Tommented when the two of them reached the thirtieth floor. He took a look at his military-grade watch before raising his eyes at the depths of the corridor ahead. "At this rate, we should be able to make it," he added.

    Ever since Tom obtained the ability to use his former skills, going through the dungeon''s floors turned into nothing more but a breeze. Even though the two of them climbed by twenty more floors already, Tom has yet to encounter a single monster or even a boss of the floor that would give him any trouble.

    "How is your training going?" udia asked as the two of them moved forward.

    "Rtively good," Tom nodded his head in response before casting a look at the spear in his hand. "Or rather, it''s going even better than I expected it to," he added, changing his earlier response.

    Tom''s training constituted two things. The first one was pretty straightforward and mundane. With every kill that he would cause with his spear, Tom''s proficiency in his skills would rise.

    But that part of his training was easy and applicable by everyone, both the two of them in the dungeon and all the yers who joined in the fun through theplicated system of cables and connecting capsules.

    The thing that Tom continued to train with his utmost attention and during every sh he had so far was restraint.

    But it wasn''t that simple either. From the outside point of view, theplexity of the other part of Tom''s training was directly proportional to how easy his other kind of training was. The thing was, for how easy the proficiency training was, the skill to restrain his ability was hellishly hard.

    ''Well, there is no need to bother her with all those details,'' Tom thought, putting a small, sour smile on his lips. ''But what did I expect from an attempt of creating an ability that didn''t exist in the game in the first ce?

    Tom''s inner struggle continued as the two of them moved down the corridor. But Tom didn''t im all the monsters on the way to the next boss of the floor.

    "Die!" udia shouted, jumping forward and smashing her armored fist into the orc. Even though this pig-like, massive creature was wearing armor to bolster its already impressive defenses, the girl''s attack was more than enough for it.

    Once the two entities met, udia''s fist dug deeply into the monster''s armor. But rather than just caving in and then rebounding, the metal of the breastte kept the shape of udia''s fist.

    ''And here I thought that my skills were impressive,'' Tom thought, watching the show while swinging his spear as he went.

    The fluid strike was the name of udia''s second skill. For some reason, the transfer of abilities from the avatars didn''t apply to her. She obtained this skill as soon as her real body reached level twenty. Or rather, to be more precise, once she reached level twenty, she was granted this skill.

    ''I wish we could have some kind of system to keep track of our levels,'' Tom thought, looking at his past memories of adventuring in those dungeons in the form of his avatar.

    While it was only a convenience factor, for some reason, constantly fighting and killing all the opposing monsters was a bit simpler when one could track his or her progress. ''I know we can measure it by the floors we conquer,'' Tom thought, raising his eyes at the several corpses of monsters that udia left in her wake. ''But still, knowing what levels are, we would be fun,'' he said to himself before thrusting his spear into one of the orcs that somehow survived the onught.

    The reason behind Tom''s high opinion of udia''s skill was how realistic it was. The ability on its own didn''t belong to the domain of physics that Tom could understand. It was its physical effects that worked surprisingly well.

    Normally, when one would attack a metal breastte or any kind of other equipment, it would spring out. Once the energy of the attack would be hampered by the soft cloth under the armor and then transferred into the wide area of the body, the metal of the armor would spring back to its usual form.

    udia''s skill was powerful because it forced the armor and flesh of her enemies to remain in the state they were in when the impact reached maximum potential.

    And there were only a few life forms that could survive with their armor permanently embedded into their living flesh.

    "We will reach the boss in no time at this rate," Tom announced. With the return of his skills, it seemed as if a veil suddenly disappeared from his mind, freeing the full potential of his senses and intelligence. That sudden spike of Tom''s perception made it an insanely easy task to recall the exact pathing for the dungeons they were traversing.

    "And that means increasing the risk of discovery," udia replied, dusting off her gloves.

    ''That''s right,'' Tom confirmed udia''s words, although only in his mind. There was no need to voice this confirmation out. No matter how important it was, the one thing it could cause was anxiety.

    "Are you sure we are prepared for it?" udia asked, refusing to drop the topic.

    "There is nothing we can do to prepare ourselves for it," Tom shrugged his shoulders, once again refusing to borate. "If we meet someone on the lower floors, then so be it," he added, pushing ahead to cut the discussion.

    ''Well, it''s no wonder she''s worried about this,'' Tom thought, sending a sneaky nce behind. As expected, the girl was sulking. ''I would be worried that someone would meet and recognize me as well,'' he added in his thoughts, imagining such a scenario.

    ''Wait, just what the hell am I thinking?'' Tom suddenly stopped in his tracks, baffled by a massive discovery he made with a single, small realization.

    ''She never yed in this dungeon, and there is hardly any chance that any of her friends or rtives lives within its range,'' Tom thought, analyzing the situation bit by bit. ''As such, she can''t be worried that someone she knows will meet her in the game and recognize her real face,'' Tom continued his line of thought, feeling as if he was on the verge of discovering something important.

    ''Wait, could it be?'' He suddenly froze all over again, startled by the sudden idea. ''Is she shy around strangers or something?'' Tom asked himself, only to belittle his own stupidity a momentter. ''As if that would make her so anxious,'' he shook his head. This idea was just too ridiculous.

    But as Tom looked at the girl, the answer to his problem dawned upon the young man. It was so simple that he just couldn''t see it, even though the said answer was in front of his eye all along.

    "Right, I forgot to harvest some more furs for some better clothes," Tom said, pretending as if it was just a random topic that came to his mind.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged, surprised. "And where do you think we can get some?" she asked, clicking her tongue and waving her hand around. "Do you think any animals with fur around here?" she made her question more precise.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head, pointing the tip of his spear ahead. "That''s the boss, isn''t it?" he added, taking a look at the monster himself.

    The boss of the thirtieth room was... not much of a challenge. While it looked like an oversized rat the size of a truck, the build of its body made it clear that outside of looks, it had nothing else inmon with those pesky rodents.

    "That begs another question," udia said as she approached Tom and took a look inside thest room on the entire floor. "My attacks would deform it while your attacks... Well, do I need to spell it out loud?" udia asked with a small chuckle.

    "Well, that will make for a good test of my skills," Tom replied cheerfully, winking at the girl.

    Then, without any further wait, Tom rushed forward. On its way towards the room, Tom slightly changed the hold of his spear to make it rest firmer in his palm.

    Then, once he crossed the threshold of the room, the boss finally noticed him.

    "SCREECH!" The monster released a huge scream. Its high pitch of insane intensity made it painful to hear it, with the effect of the scream heavier the closer one got to the monster. With Tom at a point-nk range, the young man felt as if the world around him shook.

    But at the same time, he pushed his spear forward. It was a simple, elegant move. An effect of Tom''s countless attacks, retracts, lunges, and parries that he executed over thest few hours.

    Tom infused quite a bit of his energy into the attack through his energymancer and spear mage skills.

    But just as it was about to explode within the monster''s insides...

    Tom pulled all the energy out of the monster with the use of his bloody spear spell.

 Chapter 75: Burnout

    Chapter 75: Burnout

    Tom''s body exploded in pain.

    The energy that entered his body through the handle of his spear was just too powerful.

    Tom''s first reaction to the pain was to fully tense his body all over. Or rather, it''s hard to call it a reaction if it was something that his body didpletely on his own.

    But why is that important?

    Because Tom''s fingers tightened around the spear as if he would lose his life by dropping it, while it was the very reason behind the torture that nearly melted his brain.

    ''GOSH,'' Tom''s head inevitably moved to the back, as if making him look and pry to the skies... Which were hidden behind the ceiling of the corridor.

    Tom''s body was burning. Every inch of his skin turned ck. Every smallest threat of his muscles tensed up in convulsion before burning up.

    The energy that he invited into his body was just too potent. Or rather, it was already an energy-oriented at-fire attribute, which made him suffer through this inferno of pain.

    "TOM!" udia shouted, noticing the peculiar situation. Looking at it from her eye, she could see Tom standing up in a strange position as if he was posing for some kind of act. And then he froze, with a demonic aura rushing all over his surroundings. "ARE YOU OKAY?!" The girl attempted to ask the question, even though there was no noise hindering her voice whatsoever.

    But Tom didn''t react.

    ''I need to rein this power in,'' the young man thought, feeling how the fiery energy continued to consume his body from inside. Fighting off the greatest strenght he ever encountered in his life, Tom managed to lower his chin before resting it on top of his chest. ''Calm down...'' he thought, trying to rein all that wild energy in.

    Then, all at once, the torture stopped.

    The strange, maic force that kept his fingers sped on the Mythril''s spear disappeared at the same second as the torture was no longer.

    In reality, the entire event didn''tst longer than half a minute. But with his mind stretched by the immense torture, Tom couldn''t perceive it as anything less than a Millenium of suffering.

    "Tom, what happened?!" udia rushed to her partner with worry all over her face.

    "Never again," Tom muttered weakly, feeling as if his body was actually burned by some kind of fire. ''Wait,'' a sudden thought emerged in his head, forcing Tom to desperately lower his face. ''Thank god,'' he thought when he noticed that his skin was all back to normal, without a single injury from this strange experiment.

    "What did you do?" udia asked, touching Tom all over in search of an injury that could be the reason behind his earlier state.

    "Never again," Tom muttered once again, slowly forcing the remnants of the pain out of his mind. "Never again," he said once again as if these simple two words turned into a magical mantra for him.

    "TOM!" udia shouted. Her fingers tightened over Tom''s shoulders. "Snap out of it!" she added before moving her hand and pping the young man''s cheek.

    "Huh?" Tom''s head shook after the attack, proving that he wasn''t paying any attention to what was going on with him. But as he managed to stabilize its movement and look straight, there was no longer this absent look in his eyes. "Dang, that was pretty painful," he said in his normal voice before shaking his head again.

    "Uh..." udia moaned in surprise before casting a quick nce at her hand. "I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to..." she attempted to apologize, only for Tom to shake his head.

    "No, that''s not what I meant," he said, cing his hand on the top of udia''s head. "Thanks for helping me to snap out of it," he added, pulling on her head and hugging the girl for a moment.

    There was no longer any sign of the anxiety and stress the two of them experienced when seeing each other naked for the first time. Even though they took a quick stop to replenish their love meter whenever Tom concluded that they were ahead of schedule, they remained rational with it.

    Thanks to this, now that Tom hugged almost naked udia like that, he could restrain his own lust pretty easily.

    After all, those were just the instincts of his body, something that he was free from following ever since his long ancestors developed their brains below what the animal kingdom allowed.

    "Are you going to tell me what happened?" udia asked after a moment when Tom managed to calm himself down by wrapping himself in the girl''s softness.

    "A small but pretty painful mistake," Tom smiled in response, already willing tough at what he did.

    While they didn''t have enough knowledge to judge the inner workings of the abilities or how they were rted to the obvious appearance of magic, there was a degree to which Tom could understand his abilities.

    After all, understanding one''s skill was the key to unlocking theirtent potential. As such, with every bit of proficiency that Tom would harness in any of his skills, his ability toprehend their power grew stronger and wider.

    "Basically, I was training to limit the output of my power whileboing all of my spells," Tom exined, sitting down on the ground and cuddling udia to his side. "In short words, I used my newly gained power to cast an incinerate spell through my spear while reinforcing that attack with another skill of mine," Tom said, once again stretching his head to the ceiling.

    As he stared at the mundane shape of rocks that made up the wall above them, Tom gulped down his saliva.

    ''Up to this point, I never really considered how I would act after returning home,'' he thought, suddenly puzzled by this problem. ''Will I be able to live like before? Will my appearance spark a war with the online hub? Or will revealing the truth about the dungeons change the world that I know?'' he asked himself many questions, trying to see how his actions would affect his own future.

    "Hello?" A voice entered his head. Startled by its sudden appearance, Tom almost jumped to his feet before realizing who did that voice belong to. "You turned silent for a long while already. Did something happen?" udia asked, looking at Tom with renewed worry.

    "Ah, don''t worry about it," Tom said, waving his hand away. "I just got too deep into my own thoughts. But, back to the topic," Tom exined himself before putting a wide smile on his lips. "With all my offensive spells channeled through the spear, I retracted them all and attempted to suck all the energy out of the monster. In this way, I could deprive my own attacks the energy necessary for them to go out of control," Tom exined, shrugging his shoulders at his own idiocy.

    ''I still don''t really understand the underlying rules andws of the skills, yet I still dared to do something pretty risky,'' Tom thought, looking down at his hands. He stretched and closed his fingers a few times.

    There was a strange feeling in his body that he just couldn''t picture or locate.

    "So basically..." udia put the finger on her lips as if hoping that it would help her concentrate. "You sucked a powerful and additionally reinforced fire spell right into yourself, right?" she asked, leaning her head to the side in a cute manner.

    "Well, it sounds dumb when you put it in this way," Tom nodded his head, admitting to his own fault with a shy smile.

    "Gosh," udia moaned with slight annoyance mixing with helplessness in her eyes. "You really need to take better care of yourself," she said, looking Tom directly in the eyes. "Even if you don''t care about yourself, I believe you care about me a fair bit," she said before putting a wide, lovely smile on her arousing lips. "Then, if you can''t care about yourself, can you take care of your own well-being just so that you will be capable of protecting me?" udia asked with small fires of mischief igniting in her eyes. "After all, who knows what would happen to a lone girl in this kind of dark, wet dungeon..."

    "Dang you," Tom cursed the girl before breaking down in chuckles. "You really know how to turn a tense atmosphere into a rxed one," he admitted before patting the girl''s head.

    ''Huh?'' Tom suddenly shrugged. ''Why did I just do that?'' he asked himself, trying to find a reason why his hand moved on his own.

    ''Well, whatever,'' he ended up dismissing the thought. ''Now that I sucked all this magic, I cannot wait to see if I broke through any levels,'' Tom added in his thoughts. But no matter how much he focused, no system message came, nor any new skill just happened to surface.

    "Could it be that wasn''t enough?" Tom asked himself one more question, failing to realize that he spelled his thoughts out loud. "In that case..." he whispered as his eyes moved over the small stash where they held all the unused mana stones.

 Chapter 76: Reason for restraint

    Chapter 76: Reason for restraint

    "In that case... What?" udia asked, snuggling a bit closer towards Tom. Her face looked strange as if there was something important on her mind. "Or rather, what wasn''t enough?" she added another question, gently cing her hands on Tom''s shoulders.

    It was a simple act of holding her hands beside Tom''s neck. She didn''t hold her fingers down nor resisted any notion of moving away. She just stood there, halfway between hugging Tom and sping her hands on his throat.

    "This isn''t something I''m sure about," Tom shook his head. "It''s something I only guessed, so I didn''t want to bother you with it before proving I was right," he added. Tom then ced his own hands on top of udia''s. "But since you insist, allow me to exin."

    Tom sped his fingers over udia''s hands, removing them from his shoulders. He then let go of the girl''s flesh, stepping away.

    "If we take this stone with our bare hands, we will absorb it," Tom said, grabbing one of the stones they mined from the lower floors. Given how he didn''t want the stone to disappear right away, he caught it through a piece of cloth he tore apart from his pants, the only remaining piece of clothing he still used. "But does that mean we are absorbing everyst bit of its energy?" Tom asked, looking udia deep in the eyes.

    "We are absorbing it whole. It''s not like something remains once we are done," udia replied, cutely leaning her head to the side. "If there was some sort of residue, I could believe that we are doing it wrongly, but there isn''t," she continued, stressing out herst word.

    "But what if we are inefficient with absorbing the energy in this way?" Tom asked with a charming smile before throwing the stone up.

    At first, the precious loot simply flew upwards. But just as it was about to reach its apoapsis and start its descent towards the ground, the de of Tom''s spear struck it squarely in the middle.

    TSSZ!

    A sound appeared as if an electric current snapped through the air. The stone itself shed out, only to suddenly dim out. By the time it fell to the ground, it had lookedpletely different.

    "Don''t touch it yet," Tom advised, even going as far as to gently smack udia''s belly with the blunt end of his spear. "There is no problem with getting a closer look, but you don''t want to touch it. It will fall apart into dust if you do so," he exined the reasons behind his precaution.

    As the two of them kneeled and leaned over the used-up stone, the difference between how it looked before and how it looked now was obvious and great.

    Normal stone would have a gentle, blue shine. The shine would grow in intensity with every grade of the stone, making it quite simple to recognize the tiers.

    But the piece that fell to the ground not only had no shine at all. Its rtively see-through, crystalic structure was all gone. Now, it looked like some kind of porous sea-born lifeform.

    "It looks like some kind of weird sponge," udia said, quicker at finding a properparison than Tom could ever hope to be. "If not for how ck it is, I can bet it would sell nicely in the drugstores," she added. A small shine shed in her eyes.

    "Some kind of business idea exploding in your mind?" Tom asked with a smile before moving his hand up. "Either way, this is what happens once you touch it," he said, gently cing his finger on the stone.

    There was no explosion or shockwave. The dark, porous structure simply fell apart, as if someone tipped the forces holding it together off. The entire thing simply turned into dust and copsed on itself, forming a small pile on the dungeon''s floor.

    But what was interesting was how it didn''t vanish at all. Sure, it was a small and barely noticeable thing, but the dungeon didn''t seem to absorb it at all.

    ''Strange,'' Tom thought, noticing this peculiarity. While it wasn''t his first time to use his bloodsucking ability on the mana stone, it was the first time for him to pay attention to it.

    "Okay, I think I understand now," udia said, surprising Tom. Even though he knew way more about Dungeons Online and was way better prepared for the expedition. Yet, he didn''t have a single clue as to why the stone acted the way it did.

    "Am I safe to assume that you somehow dried all the energy out of it?" udia raised her eyes at Tom''s face and asked instead of revealing what was going through her head.

    "Yeah," Tom replied, nodding his head.

    "Then I think I understand everything," udia said with a reaffirmed voice. "Just keep in mind, I might be wrong. There is no way to confirm my guess without extensive testing, but..." udia took a moment to let the moment be tenser, "I think by absorbing the entire stone, we are also absorbing its impurities. So the difference between the amount of energy absorbed should be then equal to the energy our bodies use to eradicate those impurities?" udia exined her idea, although she ended it as a question to signify how unsure she was about the entire thing.

    "That would make sense," Tom replied, rubbing his chin as he thought deeply about this topic. "Also, before you ask, there is a reason why I didn''t consume all the stones that I did absorb in this... more efficient way," Tom noted. But instead of just revealing the truth, he took a step back and rested his back against the wall of the corridor.

    "Do you remember what I did when fighting with the boss of the ninth floor?" he asked instead of picking up where he left.

    "Yeah," udia nodded her head. "You made use of varying strengths within the room to exploit it into giving us better quality stones, right?" she replied. Even though that was exactly what Tom did and what he admitted to doing, she still didn''t sound sure at the end of her reply.

    "Now, what do you think would happen if I suddenly grow insanely strong while leaving you with your natural growth rate?" Tom asked with a wry smile on his face.

 Chapter 77: [Bonus Chapter]Nature of the skills

    Chapter 77: [Bonus Chapter]Nature of the skills

    "That''s in out stupid!" udia muttered under her nose only to avert her eyes the next moment. "Or wait, that actually makes sense," she changed her previous words. Then, she looked at Tom with a sour look in her eyes. "As much of a truth as it can be, it doesn''t make it any easier to ignore how much of a dead weight I am for you here," she added, revealing the reason behind her hesitation.

    "I didn''t tell you all of this to make you feel guilty," Tom replied, shaking his head. "Listen, do you know the idea of conditioning your next spells?" he asked suddenly, seemingly out of the topic.

    "The one that assumes that wishing for some kind of skill makes it more likely to actually receive it?" udia asked impassively. "Or the one that ims all the skills are rted to the things you repeat a lot?"

    "The first one," Tom said, nodding his head. "We both have yet to reach level thirty. So I can see two things to deal with that matter," Tom said, looking deeply into udia''s eyes.

    "One is surely for me to focus on wishing for a skill like yours, right?" udia smiled, perfectly guessing Tom''s thoughts.

    Even though the two of them didn''t know each other for a long time, udia''s empathy made it easy for her to see through people. While this kind of mental condition had its drawbacks, in terms of quickly forming a stable and efficient team, there was hardly any better type of character.

    "Yeah. But I don''t think this is necessary," Tom smiled, happy that the girl both guessed the first way and that she fell right into his trap. "The other way is to get me to create a derivative of my energymancer skill," he said, leaning his head upwards.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged in surprise. "Aren''t derivatives the hardest type of skills to get?" she asked before squinting her eyes and looking at her feet. "If I recall..." she said in a hesitant voice after a prolonged while, "you need to aplish something great for the derivative to develop, right?"

    "Close, but not really." Tom shook his head in denial. "While this is just a theory of mine, I believe that ultimately, skills are a manifestation of the energy we obtain in the dungeons. Rather than being an additional ability of ours, I believe the skills are simply the natural ways for us to exhibit that energy," Tom said, ignoring the fact that he just divulged one of the most important pieces of information he ever obtained.

    "I''m sorry, but I don''t really understand," udia said, leaning her head to the side in confusion.

    "Do you want the full exnation or one made out of shortcuts?" Tom asked, pushing his back against the wall to stand up on his own.

    "The short one, please," udia chuckled. "As interesting as it is, I can see how eager you are to push deeper," she added, gracing Tom with a lovely smile.

    "How thoughtful of you," Tomughed before shaking his head. Nevertheless, he properly grabbed his spear and started to slowly move forward. "The short version then. Just try to think about all the skills as universal and omnipotent magic," he smiled as he gave out the idea.

    "Don''t fuck with me," udia sneered, as surprised as she was annoyed by Tom''s idea. "Our skills are both limited and varied. How could they be universal? How could they be omnipotent?" she asked before shaking her head. "No, that''s not possible."

    Tom didn''t bother to stop the girl from speaking. ''I know how stupid that sounds. I''m perfectly aware of it,'' he said to himself while listening to the girl''s protests.

    "Look, I''m not saying that''s what the reality is all about. I just want you to think about skills like that for a moment," he exined his earlier words once udia was done with her rant. "Because if you consider that skills are just the natural ways of our bodies to exhibit magic, understanding how to obtain a derivative skill bes quite easy, isn''t it?" Tom asked with a small smile on his lips.

    "Well, if you put it in this way..." udia hesitated before finally submitting. "What are you going to do then? Shout out random words in hopes that one of them will turn into a magic spell?" she asked ironically.

    "Not really," Tom shook his head. "My energymancer skill allows me to infuse energy into my otherwise physical attacks," he said, looking at the girl with a meaningful stare.

    But even after a long moment, udia remained silent, clearly expecting him to exin rather than putting the burden of guessing the answer on her.

    "If I manage to learn how can I infuse the skills not only in my attacks but also in everything else, I will be able to infuse the energy into you," he exined his idea before averting his eyes.

    ''Why does that sound strangely erotic?'' Tom asked himself, trying to get rid of the illusory images of his imagination showcasing in detail how this energy infusion process would happen.

    "That does sound strangely erotic," udia said with a shy smile before sending Tom a wink. "But at the same time, it saves me the trouble of wasting an entire skill slot just to increase the pace of growing stronger," she said in a serious voice.

    In the end, there wasn''t a single proof that Tom''s idea about the skills was correct. After all, it was just an idea. And the number of skills one could obtain was limited. That''s why, while both Tom and udia would be happy to save her the burden of wasting her precious skill slot to allow her to consume mana stones in an efficient manner, there was no telling whether or not it wouldn''t be necessary.

    "Well, let''s say I will try to get that derivative skill before reaching the next threshold," Tom said, looking up as if he wanted to somehow see through the walls all the way to the fortieth floor. "In this way, you will still have the time to wish for a proper skill if I fail!"

 Chapter 78: NOT THIS SPEAR

    Chapter 78: NOT THIS SPEAR

    ''Well, it''s easier said than done,'' Tom thought when he failed at yet another attempt at controlling the flow of energy. Even though they managed to climb through half of the remaining floors before their meeting with Cleo, he was still at the same spot as when he revealed his n to udia.

    "I see," udia said with a small smile. "Don''t beat yourself because of it. It was all but a guess in the first ce. Who knows if it is actually possible?" she asked, trying to cheer Tom up.

    "If I failed now, I can only try harder next time," Tom countered. He then sent the girl a slightly condescending look. "And the same applies to you. Since we are both aware of how small the chances are of me obtaining that derivative, you should focus on getting that kind of skill yourself," he added, looking down on the girl.

    "So that''s what it is," udia squinted her eyes as she replied, smashing her gloved fist into another monster. "I understand that you don''t know how to tackle failing at something. But please, don''t assume I''m the same," she added with a cold look in her eyes.

    "You are free to think whatever you want," Tom sighed, aware that he was the one that summoned this kind of discussion. "Just please, don''t burden me with it. This dungeon is not some kind of yground where we should throw sand at each other," he added, refusing to as much as look at the girl.

    "Yeah, I think it will be better if we both just focus on killing the monsters," udia replied before pouting and looking away.

    ''Why is dealing with women that damned hard?'' Tom asked himself as he shook his head. ''No, there is no time for my thoughts to wander like that. I need to focus,'' he thought, moving his attention back on his spear.

    As they were now getting closer and closer to the fiftieth floor where their mission would enter its second phase, Tom couldn''t waste even a single moment. As deep in the dungeon as they already were, the monsters were no longer just small fries that one could kill with a few shoots or manual attacks.

    ''Let''s do everything from the beginning,'' Tom thought, focusing his entire attention at the tip of his spear.

    ''First, goes the Spear Mage,'' Tom thought, guiding his actions with a calm, inner voice. Even though this skill was a passive one, he still invoked it in his thoughts.

    ''Then, the energymancer,'' Tom thought, picturing himself infusing some sort of energy into the spear.

    "GUARD!" A system-like voice sounded in his mind when his body moved on its own. Reacting to something that his natural senses didn''t pick up, Layn leaned forward and struck with his spear to the back.

    SWOOSH!

    The ws of the monster scratched the skin of Tom''s back, only for Tom to feed it his spear.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed when one of the three instances of his guard skill got wasted. But while the waste of a single-use would be something that Tom could ept, the fact that it broke his flow was the truly infuriating factor.

    ''Heck, I need to calm down,'' he thought, taking a quick nce at how the girl was faring.

    Ever since their small argument, udia seemed to intentionally push forward faster than usual. While some could think that she was just relishing in the act of massacring the monster, Tom could tell that wasn''t the case.

    ''I guess I was a bit too hard on her,'' he thought, biting his lips. Then, Tom shook his head. ''No, this isn''t the time to think about it. Once again, spear mage!'' he shouted in his thoughts, forcing his mind to focus on his attempt rather than the argument he had with udia a few moments ago.

    ''Then goes the energymancer,'' Tom invoked the spell once again, slowly swinging his spear.

    This dance of his wasn''t necessary. It wasn''t any sort of skill nor an borate technique of confusing the opponents as to where the next attack would aim.

    To be perfectly honest, Tom''s dance was just a sham. It didn''t give him any advantages outside of keeping him moving. Only by the great stretch of the imagination one could consider it an attack in any way or form.

    But that was enough. Tom''s energymancer skill allowed him to infuse additional energy into his purely physical attacks. With this weird dance of his, he aimed at a continuous flow of attacks. Each of which would be enhanced with energy through that skill.

    ''Flow, as if you were a river,'' Tom thought, slowly stepping forward as he swung his spear around. ''Make it seems as if you were painting a picture in all three dimensions,'' he continued to guide himself, as if in an attempt to hypnotize himself.

    Then, it clicked.

    Tom couldn''t see it given how he danced with his eyes closed, but the tip of his spear started to give off a faint, blue shine. But while he couldn''t see it, he was more than capable of feeling it.

    "CLAUDIA!" Tom shouted, instantly shutting everything down in his mind to recover the same state of tranquil thoughts that allowed him to infuse energy into his spear without actually attacking.

    "On it!" She shouted back.

    While the two of them argued just a few moments before, they spilled enough monsters'' blood in the dungeon to put that kind of stuff aside when needed.

    ''Keep steady,'' Tom told himself, continuing his dance while waiting for the signal. With each swing of his weapon, he could feel more and more energy infusing itself into his spear. At some point, the metallic handle of the weapon started to heat up, as if electric current flew through it.

    And this rise in warmth didn''t stop. From warm, the handle of Tom''s spear turned hot. From hot, it turned into a temperature capable of scalding the skin out of Tom''s hands.

    But he continued to passively swing his spear nheless.

    "To your right!" udia finally shouted. As if some kind of trigger snapped in both of Tom''s soul and body, he finally pushed his spear forward in a proper attack.

    ''I can feel it,'' Tom thought as soon as the speed of his spear slowed down a little. This kind of resistance could only mean that there was a monster in the path that he took with his spear.

    Tom''s lips curved in a wide smile.

    "It''s on you now," he muttered at the same time as he sharply pulled the weapon back.

    ''Incinerate,'' he whispered in his thoughts. All the heat that made holding his spear feel like he was holding a white-hot piece of steel suddenly disappeared, reced by afortable coldness.

    ''Origin mage!'' Tom invoked another spell of his.

    The entire idea behind Tom''s attempts was simple, althoughplex.

    He would start by infusing energy into his spear. This part aimed at letting him learn to do it at will instead of only at the moment of the impact of his attacks.

    Then, he would convert the energy in his spear into the fuel for his only real offensive spell, the fireball. On its own, it was something that Tom was already capable of doing. Yet, he stood to learn nothing from doing it.

    Because on its own, it was only the transition phase for his attempt.

    Then, came the orign mage. ording to the words of that giant sage he once encountered in the dungeon, Tom could dpose all kinds of magic and spells into their basic form of pure energy.

    But no one ever said this skill only applied to enemy attacks. As such, with all his energy now concentrating on his offensive spell, Tom used the origin mage to dpose it back into energy.

    ''Haste,'' Tom invoked thest spell of his self-createdbo, slowing down the passage of time as to have a better shot at controlling the magic he just released.

    ''I better not open my eyes,'' Tom thought. Given how he never saw the energy in its pure form, the chances were human eyes were unable to perceive it.

    And he could sense a huge blob of energy stuck to the tip of his spear. With that, opening his eyes could cause discord in his perception, making him potentially lose the ability to sense that magic.

    "udia, I think I did it," Tom muttered, not daring to use his normal voice in fear of losing control over the magic. "It''s at the tip of my spear," he added, hoping that the girl would hurry herself up.

    "Damn you," udia replied in a strange voice. But as Tom waited for her to consume the energy from the tip of his weapon, he felt her hands pulling down his pants, only to feel the familiar sensation of her lips all over his manhood.

    "NOT THIS SPEAR!" Tom shouted, almost losing his concentration in the process.

    "Ah," udia moaned in surprise. Feeling how her lips tensed up all over his thing, Tom reached the limit of his focus. Thankfully, she pulled herself back from his crotch at the veryst moment. "My bad," she added with a chuckle.

    Tom''s vision suddenly exploded. While he still kept his eyes closed, he could somehow see himself standing motionless in a weird position. But just as quickly as this vision appeared, it vanished, leaving Tom exhausted and wobbling on his feet.

    "Are you all right?" udia rushed forward, holding Tom up before he would fall to the ground.

    "Did it work?" Tom asked, fighting off a powerful wave of drowsiness.

    "It did," udia added, gently caressing Tom''s back. "I can feel your energy inside me," she added right as Tom''s consciousness faded away.

 Chapter 79: Claudias skill

    Chapter 79: udia''s skill

    "At this point, I''m not sure if you are doing it intentionally or not," Tom said, opening his eyes. With the energy now gone from the tip of his spear, he no longer needed to hold his concentration at its maximum.

    "What''s wrong with a bit of yfulness?" udia asked, sending Tom a wink. But just as she opened her mouth to say something else, her face suddenly turned red.

    Her breathing hastened as if she was feeling hot and needed to ventte her body out.

    "Huh?" Tom was quick to notice those changes. "Are you okay?" he asked as worry exploded in his thoughts.

    ''This isn''t something that we tested or checked beforehand,'' he thought, suddenly realizing all the drawbacks of his n. All the problems that he was too excited and focused to notice before. ''What if she won''t be able to absorb this energy? What if...''

    "I''m okay," udia''s words stopped Tom from worrying any further. "I felt super hot for a moment. Thankfully, I can feel this strange energy dying off,'' she added after a moment.

    "Take some rest," Tom said, grabbing udia''s hand and pulling her towards the edge of the corridor. He then forced her to sit down and pushed her upper body back so that she would rest her back against the cold wall.

    "I told you, I''m..." udia attempted to excuse herself from this unwarranted rest, only for her words to cease in the middle of a sentence. "Huh?" she shrugged in surprise.

    "What''s going on?" Tom kneeled beside the girl, staring intensely in her eyes. ''Even if she won''t tell me what''s wrong with her, there is a chance she will somehow show it,'' he thought with hope, not daring to move his eyes even an inch away.

    "I..." udia spoke, only to turn silent once again. She then gobbled up her saliva before raising her eyes at Tom''s face. "I just broke through the third threshold," she announced with a look of surprise on her face.

    For a moment, Tom just continued to stare at the girl,pletely motionless. The news were simply too great for him to process them in the worried state he was in.

    "Ahhhh..." Tom released a long moan of relief, falling back on the floor. "What kind of skill did you get?" he asked before shaking his head as he reflected. "That is if you are willing to tell me, no pressure," he added, worried that his inquiry would be taken for a bad coin.

    "I don''t really know how it works," udia said. Her face was just as confused as Tom''s. "The skill is called Extended Fist, but I don''t really know what to make out of it," she exined, looking at Tom as if he could provide her with some kind of exnation.

    "Huh?" Tom muttered, stunned by yet another revtion. Sitting down on the corridor''s floor, he looked down on his feet while trying to figure out what could that name imply.

    ''Her arms didn''t grow, so it shouldn''t have anything to do with physical changes to her body,'' he thought before raising his eyes back at the girl. "How about you try smashing something? I mean... It will be hard to figure it out with the first guess, wouldn''t it?" he leaned his head to the side as he asked this rhetorical question.

    "Sure thing," udia replied, standing up in one swift move. She then turned towards the further part of the dungeon before taking a fighting stance.

    ''Haste,'' Tom spoke in his thoughts, invoking his most vital spell. Slowing down the passage of time could make it easier for him to notice things that would be otherwise too quick for a human to notice.

    "Here it goes," udia said. Her voice stretched out amusingly due to Tom''s haste, making it seems as if she was talking in some weird, iprehensiblenguage. ''I might be used to operating under the haste, but understanding human speech while in it isn''t as easy as I thought it would be,'' Tom thought when he guessed what the girl said from her actions.

    At first, nothing happened. Watching the girl in slow motion, Tom could see how her entire body tensed up. Then, as if by a pull of a trigger, udia pushed her fists forward, propelling it not only with the muscles of her arm but her entire back as well.

    ''Dang,'' Tom thought, unable not to notice how lovely her practically naked body moved in slow motion. ''I need to focus on the attack,'' he thought, moving his eyes from her wobbling breasts to the tip of her fist.

    But nothing happened.

    To put an end to his haste before standing up.

    "I didn''t notice anything. How about this, then," he said, grabbing the girl by her shoulders and turning her around as to make her face the wall. "Try striking it," Tom said, patting the girl''s shoulders before moving a few steps away.

    "Yyy... Okay?" udia replied with hesitation before taking a step forward so that her hands could actually reach the wall.

    "No, don''t move from the ce where you were," Tom said, shaking his head. "Did you forget the name of the skill already?" he asked. "If it''s about extending your fists, then it should have something to do with range, doesn''t it?" he suggested before pulling udia back to where she stood just a moment ago.

    "Well, it won''t hurt to try it out," she said after a moment of hesitation. She then shook her shoulders before taking the battle stance once again.

    ''Fuck my dirty brain,'' Tom thought, averting his eyes from the shapely parts of the girl that he could see from yet another perspective. ''Didn''t we hump enough? Or do I really need to keep flushing my system every few hours to remain sane?'' he used himself before averting his eyes to the floor.

    Thump.

    The dull sound of something hard hitting against something equally as hard could be heard. Surprised, Tom raised his eyes, only to see udia stand in the simr position as before.

    Just this time, rather than being ready to strike, she had her hand already extended, pressed against what seemed like an invisible wall.

    "Tom...?" udia looked at her partner with a mix of confusion and happiness in her eyes. "I can''t push my fist any further..." she said with a voice trembling under the onught of her emotions.

    "Try to pull it back a little and just push it forward. Don''t try to hit it again. Just move it ahead," Tom ordered, already forming an idea of what that skill might be.

    "Sure?" udia replied with hesitation. She then pulled her hand a bit, loosened her hand, and moved it forward... And the invisible wall was nowhere to be seen anymore.

    "Just as I thought," Tom walked towards the girl before grabbing her into his arms. "Congrattions on obtaining a new skill," he said, hugging the girl closely.

    "What are you doing?" udia replied with a slight protest, clearly unable to understand Tom''s actions.

    "If I''m right, you are now capable of hitting things outside of your range," he said before casting a quick nce at the wall. "I would say... You can hit things up to one meter away from the reach of your fists?" Tom suggested, unsure about the details himself. "I wonder whether you can attack things that are closer, or is the range of that skill fixed," he said, lowering his eyes as he thought about it himself.

    "Well," Tom said as he pushed himself away from the girl, forcing his eyes to remain on the girl''s face rather than descending towards the delicious-looking parts below her corbone. "How about you go and try to figure out the details on your own? I will take this time to bring myself up to speed as well," Tom said, decisively turning around.

    "Yeah, sure," udia replied, instantly immersing herself in a flurry of hits and pushes while Tom approached the sack where all the stones they mined were held.

    Ever since the two of them realized the problem of their potentially uneven growth, neither of them dared to absorb a single stone.

    After all, as soon as udia would get the skill or Tom would get the derivative of his own skill, the value of those stones would skyrocket.

    This was also the reason behind their slight struggle in clearing the floor they were currently at. With their levels stuck roughly around twenty, the monsters on the fortieth floor and above turned out to be quite a challenge.

    "Well, let''s see if I can get a good skill myself," Tom muttered, grabbing the side of the pouch before angling it a bit. Under the force of the gravity that still worked within the dungeon as it should, the shiny pieces of crystalized mana fell out of the sack, directly on the dungeon''s floor.

    ''Well, here goes nothing,'' Tom thought, brandishing his spear. He then invoked all the skills necessary before thrusting the tip of his spear directly at the center of one of the stones that fell out.

 Chapter 80: Its not a competition!

    Chapter 80: It''s not apetition!

    Over thest few hours, Tom continued to use his skills in a specific session. The time that he had to sacrifice to use his desired skill for the first time resulted in his ability to rather easily replicate its effects.

    Tom struck his spear against the shining surface of the stone.

    It felt as if some sort of vortex appeared at the tip of his spear. A vortex that was at the same time connected to Tom''s very own flesh. When Tom struck, the stone came into contact with that vortex.

    Tom''s spear filled with energy. As if he sucked on the straw, the mana came gushing. It washed all Tom''s exhaustion away. The burden of sharing his own energy to let udia strengthen her body was no more.

    Then, Tom felt the energy rush into his body. As if it desired to reinforce every single cell his flesh was made off. All at once, he felt his personal strenght surge on the very physical level.

    And then came thest part. Once his flesh was properly reinforced, the mana started...

    But it didn''t finish. Right as the process was about to conclude, the mana stone crumbled.

    There was no gradual decay. The stone was as shiny when Tom pulled it out from the sack as it was a second before it fell apart. There was no way to guess when thest moment of the stone woulde just by looking at its exterior.

    ''Next,'' Tom thought. He pulled his hand back in a trance before stabbing his spear at another stone.

    The feeling returned. Tom''s reinforced body took the flooding mana like a dried-out sponge finally flushed with liquid. And as his inner self seemingly bloated, Tom felt something.

    It was as if this weird perception of his inner energy, the strange image of his body massively sizing up...

    Tom somehow connected with it.

    This time, there was no announcing voice. There was no system message.

    ''I see,'' Tom thought when all the knowledge about this strange connection flooded into his mind. He didn''t need to learn it. He was free of the pains of training to notice this connection.

    It was as if he suddenly recalled how to use just another sense that everyone was born with.

    "How are you doing?" udia asked, approaching Tom. She was smiling gently. As if she was trying to hide a bright smile.

    "I can see you brimming with self-satisfaction," Tom said. A smile blossomed on his lips as he opened his eyes. "What did you find out?" he asked. ''Rather than flexing my own skill, let''s let her have her moment of glory,'' he thought, looking at the girl as if she was some kind of adorable, cute mascot.

    "I can strike anything for as far as one meter away from my body," udia said, raising her chin with pride. "While it''s easier to control this skill when striking forward, I can also move my attacks to my back or sides," she continued. Each of her words oozed with confidence.

    "Isn''t that great?" Tom asked in return, looking at the girl with honest awe.

    This wasn''t a contest of who would get a better skill. The stronger each of them would get, the easier they could conquer the dungeon.

    Tom was genuinely happy.

    "Most importantly, I''m free to use this skill or not," udia added after a moment. Her happy face turned slightly serious, proving how important that part was for the girl. "I was worried that this skill wouldpletely wreck my life, like, being unable to grab a spoon or something..." she added as she averted her eyes. For a moment, Tom couldn''t get enough of how cute the shy version of udia was.

    "Either way, I can see that you are excited as well," udia suddenly changed the topic, looking at Tom with a wide smile. She jerked her body up, making her chest wobble enticingly. "How about you share what kind of skill did you get as well?" she asked.

    "Is it really that visible?" Tom asked, surprised by the sudden question. ''I thought I wasn''t showing it,'' he thought, shaking his head before moving his eyes back at the girl. "This time, it''s a magic spear," Tom said, raising the hand he was holding his weapon with. "Look," he added, shaking his spear a little before closing his eyes.

    At first, nothing seemed to happen. Tom simply held his spear at the level of his chest as if it was some kind of muscle training.

    Then, he opened his eyes. "It''s done," he said with a satisfied smile.

    "What''s done?" udia asked, baffled by thepleteck of changes in either Tom''s disposition or the weapon he was holding.

    "Can''t you really see the difference?" Tom asked, leaning his head to the side with an amused smile. Then, with a single twitch of his hand, he made his spear disappear.

    "What?" udia could only mutter in shock when Tom''s weapon vanished. "What did you do?" she asked, raising her eyes at her partner.

    "It''s magic spear skill," Tom said, shaking his hand once again only for the spear to appear back in it. "But it has a few more uses," he added, suddenly stretching his hand to the back and throwing the spear forward.

    Even though Tom''s throw wasn''t the greatest attack he was capable of executing, the spear managed to embed itself into the dungeon''s wall either way.

    "I can recall it to my hand," Tom said, snapping his fingers. And once his middle finger made the snapping sound against his thumb, it rested on the handle of Tom''s spear that somehow made its way back to his hand.

    "I can swap positions with it," Tom added, throwing the spear again. This time, he didn''t snap his fingers. Or rather, udia couldn''t hear anything like that happening before. Instead of staring at Tom''s face, she was observing the twitching end of his spear.

    "Overall, it feels like I can now use it in a far better way than before," Tom added once he swapped ces with his spear again and then called it back to his hand. "Finally, I can make it disappear like I did before and materialize whenever I need," Tom finished his exnation before looking at the girl with a smug smile. But before she could assume that he was feeling superior, Tom suddenly shook his head.

    "Sadly, there are obvious limitations to those skills," Tom said, lowering his spear to signal that he was no longer going to showcase his new abilities. "The more my actions invade against the naturalws, the more energy the skill will consume. So while calling the spear back to my hand is rtively cheap and simple, swapping ces with it is quite taxing," Tom exined the downside of his ability so that udia wouldn''t expect more than possible from him.

    ''That, and in order to do any of that with the spear, I need to first consume it,'' Tom thought, bringing the greatest drawback of this new skill of his to his own attention.

    The reason why he stalled for so long before presenting his ability was just that. He was unable to exhibit any of his new abilities of his without having a magic spear in the first ce.

    And while it was possible and even cheaper to just create a spear out of pure magic, Tom wasn''t willing to give up on all the bonuses that his current weapon was giving him. As such, he had to fully infuse his spear with magic, register its inner structure in his mind and seemingly absorb it all into his soul, turning his simple, mechanical spear into a weapon of a spiritual level.

    "Okay, you win," udia said, raising her hands and taking a step back. Her smile soured a little, proving that she wasn''t a big fan of losing to someone else.

    "It was never apetition, to begin with," Tom countered, shaking his head. "My entire skillset is aimed at fighting with the spear, so it''s only natural those skills will be more and more versatile with each addition," he added, bringing forth one of the few well-proven rules of obtaining new skills.

    "I know this, but that doesn''t make it any easier to just ept a defeat like that," udia replied, tightening her jaws. "Still, it''s good that we are stronger now," she added as her head moved towards the deeper part of the dungeon that they had yet to explore. "Tell, do you think we should take our time to polish our ability to wield those skills? Or maybe we should use all the stones we have in hopes that we could break through and get a new set before going any further?" udia asked, bringing up an actually important question.

    Tom looked down at the rest of the stones that waited on the floor for someone to either pick up or use them. Then, his lips turned into a wide smile. "I think we should go all in and use them all!"

 Chapter 81: Amoral drawbacks of Claudias skill (+18/quickie)

    Chapter 81: Amoral drawbacks of udia''s skill (+18/quickie)

    **Single hourter**

    "On your left!" udia shouted as she smashed her fist against the ogre''s face.

    "On it!" Tom shouted back, throwing his spear to the left without even looking at the target. Right before his weapon could cause any damage to the enemy, Tom swapped ced with it before recalling it to his hand. Then, using the same momentum his spear had as he threw it, he pushed his spear forward, pushing it right through the massive body of another ogre.

    "Look up!" Tom shouted, scanning the area with his new skill. He swung his spear around before pushing it forward once again.

    Whenpared to the size of the ogres, the spear appeared not like a weapon but rather like a toothpick. Yet, even though the holes it was leaving on the ogres'' bodies amounted to as much as a mosquito bite would amount to humans, the ogres fell one after another.

    "Got it," udia replied, smashing her fist forward while moving the point of attack above her. The hellhound that attempted to jump at her from her blindspot received the hit. From the looks of things, its ribs broke apart, puncturing its internal organs severely enough to cause instant death.

    "Just five more,e on!" udia shouted, smashing her fists against each other as she hyped herself up.

    "Damn," Tom muttered, seeing how the girl pushed recklessly ahead. "Don''t get careless!" he shouted, throwing his weapon once again.

    This time, Tom didn''t recall it back. Given how cramped the corridor became with all the massive corpses of the ogres and hellhounds they defeated so far, if he attempted to put himself between the girl and the monster trying to sneak an attack on her, Tom would likely be the recipient of both udia''s and the ogre''s attack.

    "I saw him!" udia protested, smashing her void fists into thest remaining hellhound.

    Once again, the monster made a baffled expression before the me of light disappeared from its body.

    ''Who could''ve thought that monsters could act surprised like that,'' Tom thought with a small grin, using his guard for the second time to avoid the attack he had no other means of defending against. ''Just one use left, huh?'' he thought, backing up one step and recalling his spear. Then, with a half-step forward, he used the momentum of jerking his body ahead to lunge forward and strike one of the two ogres that remained on his side.

    "Just one more left!" udia shouted as he entered the fray once again.

    ''Still, we need to figure out some way tomunicate while fighting,'' Tom thought, shing open the throat of thest remaining ogre. At the same time, udia turned the head of thest of her opponents into a meat paste.

    "Ahhh," she released a long moan of pleasure before her body suddenly shrank a little, returning to how it normally was. "I still can''t get enough of this thrill," she added, raising her head as the energy gathered by her berserker skill slowly faded away. Then, she turned her head towards Tom with a suspicious grin on her lips.

    "Again?" Tom asked upon noticing the familiar expression.

    "Again." udia nodded her head as she lowered her hands and approached Tom. Then, without any form of gentle forey or preparation, she got to her knees before smashing her head against Tom''s crotch.

    "You could learn how to be gentle, you know?" Tom said, shaking his head as he surrendered his penis to the girl. Before he could say anything else, her lips were already wrapped around his manhood. Then, without giving Tom any time to prepare, at least mentally, udia started to jerk her head too, and fro all the while sucking on Tom''s thing with all the might of her lungs.

    "It should be alright now," udia said as she pulled her lips away from Tom''s penis. Even though her blowjob was quick, it did the job of getting Tom ready.

    "This skill is really making you horny," Tommented as the girl turned around and leaned forward. With her ass pointing directly at Tom''s crotch and her upper body pressed against the floor, it would be hard for him to hold back.

    "Don''t tell me you don''t like i-HIYA!" udia''s words turned into a moan when Tom mercilessly entered her soaking wet hole in one go.

    "Ah," Tom''s gentle moan was countered by udia''s loud breathing. ''Still,'' he thought, looking down at the ce where they were connected. ''As great as it is, I''m worried how she will live once we get back from the dungeon,'' he thought before starting to jerk his hips to and fro.

    With each swing of his body, udia''s wraps tightly rubbed against his manhood, sending waves upon waves of pleasures directly to his brain. Even though he was already used to the carnal pleasure of intimacy, Tom still couldn''t get enough of how soft and fleshy udia was.

    "It''s not that I don''t like it," Tom thought, leaning over the girl and reaching with his hands for her breasts. Once he secured the hold over the girl''s body in this most pleasant of ways, Tom increased the speed of his movements, hoping to get the entire thing over with as soon as possible. "But we arete already. Can''t you hold for a few hours?" he asked, trying to ignore how great it felt to have his fingers sink into the flesh of the girl''s chest.

    "Isn''t it better to get it over with now rather than with that female friend of yours watching?" udia asked. Then, she turned her head around, gracing Tom with a yful smile. "Or are you into voyeurism by chance?" she asked, openly grinning.

    "I wonder," Tom replied with a slight smile before smashing his hips against the girl''s bottom with his entire might.

    When the two of themy down together for the first time, they were gentle with each other. During their first time, they each wished to discover the hidden side of the other party so that they could bring pleasure to both of them.

    But now that changed. Tom continued to shake his hips as if there was no tomorrow, not paying any mind to be gentle himself. Over the course of conquering thest few floors, he learned that if anyone was a masochist in the wide world out there, it was udia.

    "Ah, just like that," udia moaned sweetly. Once a thrill of excitement shook her body, her pussy suddenly tightened all over Tom''s manhood.

    "Aghr," Tom groaned when the pleasure intensified. Feeling how her inner folds desperately coiled around his thing, he could understand what pushed some people into bing sex maniacs. With the warmth, closeness, softness, and wetness of udia''s insides all cumting over his most sensitive part of the body, he couldn''tst long. "I''m about to..." Tom attempted to warn the girl, but the pleasure was too strong.

    Midway in his sentence, Tom simply clenched his teeth, hugging himself to the girl''s back. His fingers tightened, sinking even deeper into the flesh of udia''s breasts. His hips shook once, then twice, and then the wave of indescribable pleasure washed through his body as a stream of sperm flushed forth from the tip of his manhood.

    "Yash..." udia muttered through her moans. Her bottom lips tightened even stronger than before, only to start pulsing as if in an attempt to guide all the seed still stuck inside Tom''s thing inside her own conception chamber.

    With her headying sideways on the floor, Tom had the prime view over her broken face, messy from all the saliva and tears that udia produced over the course of their fuck. With her lips slightly parted and her body moving along the rhythm of her breath, she looked too silly for Tom to remain calm.

    ''Fuck, I need to hide it,'' he thought, unwilling to waste even more time on something as counterproductive as fucking around.

    As he thought, Tom instantly straightened his back before pulling himself out of the girl. Just this motion alone was enough to send yet another wave of pleasure down his spine. But the worst part came moments after he managed to free his penis from the girl''s pussy, when the sperm that he unloaded right into her insides started to slowly flow out of her hole, giving testimony to the great job he did.

    "Why did you pull out so quickly?" udia protested weakly. With the pleasure still washing over her mind, she could only tremble in her position, still shing the messy pussy of hers at Tom.

    "Because we are alreadyte," Tom said before pulling his hand back and pping udia''s exposed butt with just enough strenght to sober her up without actually hurting the girl in the process.

    "Auch!" udia instantly shouted from the pain. But what was important was that her sight actually rified as she looked at Tom with a pout on her lips. "What was that for?!" she asked, sending a hateful stare at her partner.

    "Tidy up," Tom replied, not willing to bother with udia''s protests. "You might have turned into a sex maniac, but that doesn''t mean we can ck," he said, looking at the empty corridor.

    All the corpses of the monsters have long disappeared. Even though Layn didn''t take long to both satisfy himself and the girl, the dungeon worked even faster than the two of them fucked. Right now, nothing stood in their way to the boss of the forty-ninth floor.

    The boss, beyond which they were scheduled to meet with Cleo.

 Chapter 82: Unexpected encounter

    Chapter 82: Unexpected encounter

    "I''m ready," udia said, shaking her hands to warm them up for a fight.

    "Don''t be so hasty," Tom countered, shaking his head. "We still have yet to see the boss," he added, smashing the blunt end of his spear into the head of thest monster that stood in their way. "Depending on what it is, we will still take our time to figure out how to fight with it," Tom warned the girl, putting a hand on her shoulders just to make sure he would go in the corridor first.

    "Sure, sure, there is never too much caution in the dungeon," udia replied with an amused smile.

    ''She is really treating this ce too lightly,'' Tom thought with worry, heading towards the gate beyond which the boss room would start. Even though this was the floor that he only rarely visited, he was more than aware of the exactyout of it.

    Not because the floor itself had some special meaning to itself. But because this was the floor where he once met a monster that he was capable of conversing with.

    Even to this day, with everything that happened since that time, Tom still considered that meeting as one of the most important points in his life. Not the moment when he first fucked udia, losing his own virginity in the process. Not the moment when he learned of the true nature of the dungeons.

    It was the meeting with that giant monster that set his life on the track it currently was. That meeting, and the meeting he experienced back in the city when he faced the boss of the entire dungeon resting at the very bottom floor of it.

    Those two meetings with what were supposed to be his natural enemies turned out way differently than anyone could ever expect. For Tom, those two instances were like the breaking points that allowed him to wrestle himself free from the restraints of all the lies spread by the organization behind the Online Hubs and the Dungeons Online game itself.

    And now, he was about to enter the same ce where one of those massive changes to his life urred.

    "By the way, I can''t really understand why you are so wary of everything," udia said as the two followed the corridor towards the boss room of the floor. "While I believe in your idea that the dungeon will adapt the strenght of its monster to the strenght of those trying to conquer it, it''s not like our mightes from the raw strenght or skills alone," the girl said, pping her gloved fists against each other. "It''s the way that we learned to use those skills that give us the advantage. As such, I believe that we are way stronger than anything the dungeon will be capable of throwing at us!" she imed, raising her chin in the expression of her confidence.

    "This is exactly the type of confidence that gets newbie soldiers killed on the frontline," Tom said, recalling one of the stories that his uncles often fed him while he was younger. "If you underestimate the opponent or overestimate your own strenght, you won''t even know what killed you when you slip on it once," he added, shaking his head.

    But instead of keeping the topic up, Tom raised his hand. Even with how dark the interior of the dungeon was, he could finally see the light shine at the end of it. The light shine that marked the border between the normal corridor of the dungeon and the entrance to the room housing the boos of the floor.

    "I will ask again, then," Tom turned his head to the girl, looking at her with clear worry. "Are you ready?" he asked, tightening the grasp of his fingers over his spear.

    "I was born ready," udia replied cheekily. But then, instead of moving forward, she shook her head and ced her hand on Tom''s shoulder. "Seriously, I know that you are worried about me. But I''m not the weak, meek girl that you see me as when we fuck," she said with a small smile surfacing on her lips. "I''m happy that you care for me enough to be seriously worried, but I would appreciate it if you could give me some of your trust," she said, looking Tom deeply in the eyes.

    "So be it," Tom replied after a moment of hesitation, shaking his head again. ''Now that I think about it, ever since I entered this dungeon, I shook my head way more than through the former part of my life,'' he thought, shaking his head once again as if to just prove his thought.

    With everything said and done, the two of them reached the light barrier between the corridor and the boss room. The thin veil of light was the only thing that protected them from whatever was inside.

    And for some reason, they were unable to see through it. While the outline of the room was clearly visible, there wasn''t even a hint as to where the boss itself could be.

    ''Is it the time for the cutscene?'' Tom asked himself, recalling how the experience of this floor looked like back when he explored it through his avatar. But while he could ept the existence of cutscenes before the stronger bosses while he still believed the entire thing to be a game, it was hard to ept it as a part of reality.

    "Well, we won''t know unless we check it," Tom muttered to himself, shaking his head yet again before taking a step forward. "Wait for me for a moment, here," he asked the girl before fully crossing the barrier. "I will check what kind of boss we are against and then call for you," he said, pushing at the girl''s shoulder at the same time as he made another step and finally passed the barrier.

    The interior of the boss room was... not extraordinary at all. It was a spacious, circr arena. Its shape was exactly the same as all the other boss rooms so far. The only thing that set it apart from the other ces like this was apleteck of decorations that would normally set the tone of the uing fight.

    If a ce was filled with moisture and had a cave-like appearance, one could expect one kind of monster. If there was an illusion of open space embedded into it, one could expect a different kind of monster.

    But this time, the walls were in, the floor was even, and so was the ceiling. In a sense, the entire ce looked like the insides of a massive can of packed foods, with the only difference being that instead of metal surrounding Tom from every side, it was the stone that the entire dungeon was made of.

    Groan.

    Tom couldn''t waste any more of his time sightseeing. The entire room shook as soon as the noise appeared. And then, right from the seemingly t ceiling, a massive body descended.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged in surprise, watching as the giant roughly twice the size of a normal human dropped to the floor. It had two legs but four arms, all of which were bulging with muscles.

    Yet, despite its clearly physical-oriented appearance, Tom had no doubt that his opponent was more focused on skills of magical nature rather than the raw power behind its fists.

    "Wee, challenger," the giant said, putting a weirdly kind smile on its lips. "Are you ready for the fight?" it asked, instead of jumping at Tom at the first given notice.

    "No, I''m not, my friend," Tom replied, too stunned by the discovery to move for as much as an inch.

    "Huh?" This time it was the giant''s turn to be surprised. For a moment, it just stood in ce, staring at Tom as if he was an actor on a live stream who suddenly reversed the meaning of the lines he was supposed to say. "Take your time, then... I guess?" the giant replied, scratching the side of its head with a baffled expression on its face.

    "Come on, do you really not recognize me?" Tom asked before falling to his knees and then on his ass. The spear that he held tightly in his hand upon entering ended up dropping on Tom''s crossed legs.

    "What are you talking about?" the giant asked, puzzled beyond any rational measure.

    "I see, you do not," Tom muttered, with a hint of disappointment clearly hearable in his voice. "And here I treated my first meeting with you as one of the most important days in my life," heined, hiding his face in his hands.

    "Are you okay?" The giant asked with worry written all over his face along with all the confusion that Tom had already brought to its massive brain.

    "Ah, could it be that there are more of your kind in the different paths to the bottom floor?" Tom suddenly asked, voicing out the one idea that would stop him from this massive feeling of devastation that awaited him just behind the corner.

    "TOM!" udia shouted, forcing her way through the barrier to the room. Sheid her eyes on Tom''s sitting body. Her face was instantly covered in a dark hue. "What the hell did you do to him!" she screamed,unching herself at the giant.

    "Stop it," Tom raised his hand to prove that he was rtively okay. "There is no need to fight that guy," he added before shaking his head for the nth time in thest few minutes.

    "What the fuck are you talking about?" This time it was udia''s turn to act baffled by Tom''s seemingly ridiculous behavior.

    "This guy is the one who taught me what the Origin Mage skill means," Tom said, pointing his hand at the giant only to move it back and hide his face again. "He already allowed me to pass through the floor without a fight once, so I don''t think there is any reason for us to fight him now!"

 Chapter 83: Riddle and some answers

    Chapter 83: Riddle and some answers

    "Wait, what?" The giant sage shook its head in surprise. Even though he should be just a monster, his face was filled with shock. "But you looked way different thest time! Like, not only your look but also how you feel..." the giant looked at Tom as some kind of passion sparked in his eyes. "Interesting, truly, truly interesting!" he shouted, leaning to the back as it ced its hands on its sides before letting out a heartyugh.

    "Now, you look like some kind of mad scientist," Tom smiled, caressing the shaft of his spear. "Right, let me introduce you. This is udia," Tom said, pointing his hand at the girl. "A poor, straymb that ended up exploring the dungeon with me because of... certain circumstances," he said, hesitating for a moment before finishing the introductions in a vague manner.

    "It''s a pleasure to be your acquaintance," the giant said, proving that he was familiar with at least some form of etic. But that small thing actually had massive implications hidden behind it.

    "Likewise..." udia replied in a monotone voice. She did it more out of a habit rather than an intention to reply, still unable to ovee the shock caused by what Tom said and the situation itself. "Excuse me for asking... But howe a monster can converse with us like that?" she asked, not caring for any form of delicacy.

    ''Ouch,'' Tom thought, slightly biting his lips. ''While I would love to know the answer, this is not something that should be said out loud!'' he criticized the girl, slowing down the movements of his hand as to be able to grasp his weapon at any given moment.

    They were still in the dungeon. Meeting a peaceful monster didn''t change that fact. And Tom couldn''t guarantee that udia''s question wouldn''t spark some violent reaction from the giant.

    "I see," the giant said after taking a nce at Tom before shaking its massive head. "There is no need to be wary," it said, now directly looking at the young man. "I don''t believe there are any bad questions out there, just people too dumb to figure out the correct answer and thus taking the question personally," the giant replied in a surprisingly smart way.

    "You don''t say?" Tom grinned, hearing the giant''s words. "How about this, then," he started, only to turn silent for a moment. He then rubbed his chin for a few more seconds before a small sh appeared in his eyes. "If you were to have infinite power and ability to create anything out of nowhere, would you be able to create a stone so heavy that even you wouldn''t be able to carry it?" Tom questioned, bringing forth one of the funny riddles he learned as a kid.

    At a first look, there truly was no answer to this question. After all, an omnipotent being should be able to create anything and lift anything alike. For people without any scientific background, this question would forever remain without an answer.

    "Yes, I would be able to create such stone," the giant smiled with sparks of amusement shing in his eyes. "And yet, I would still be able to carry it," it added after a short moment, pushing the ball of discussion''s initiative back at Tom.

    "I see," Tom muttered softly in response, not bothering to borate. This short exchange gave him all the information that he wanted.

    And said the information had nothing to do with the giant''s ability to solve the riddles.

    "Isn''t that against the rules set in the question itself?" udia asked, missing the entire point of the question. "Since you can lift it, then you cannot create something heavy enough. As such, you wouldn''t be omnipotent," she exined, shaking her shoulders.

    "I think you are missing the point, littledy," the giant said, using the difference between his and udia''s psychiques to get a bit more familiar with her. "The trick in this question lies in the meaning of omnipotence itself," it added, smiling at the girl with curiosity.

    "Isn''t that precisely the point?" udia asked, leaning her head over her shoulder in an expression of slight confusion. "Since the omnipotence is illogical, to begin with, it has no ce in the strictly logical universe we live in," she added, shaking her shoulders once again.

    "I didn''t know you were an atheist," Tom said, stealthily attempting to change the topic. Now that he learned what he wanted to know, lingering on the topic would only make it more likely for the giant to realize just what kind of information he gave.

    ''It knows some ethics. This isn''t something one can learn through evolution. While the ability to create intellect out of this ever-present energy might certainly be usible, one can never learn the tact without social interactions on a scale big enough,'' Tom thought, analyzing the entire situation in his head.

    ''What''s more, it can understand the meaning of omnipotence and the limits that the lower beings like humans have when ites to an understanding of the infinities,'' Tom thought, raising his eyes at the giant. ''This also isn''t something one could learn randomly, without an extensive psychological or philosophical background,'' Tom counted another weird instance that made the presence of the giant in the dungeon... Highly unfitting.

    "Once again, you are wrong, little one," the giant said, looking udia in the eyes. "When we are talking about omnipotence, we are tackling a concept that doesn''t fit the frame of how you understand the world around you," it said, sitting down and crossing its legs. "That''s why there are thousands of ways to make a trick question like that. In short words, it''s a paradox. Or in an even simpler way, you cannot put limits on infinity from the very definition of what infinity is," the giant said, finishing his exnation.

    "Doesn''t that mean that the question itself is stupid, then?" udia suddenly asked as a victorious smile formed on her lips.

    "That was a nice attempt," the giant nodded its massive head to express its respect, "but it''s not that either. The question itself is smart, but one needs to understand what it truly is about," the giant added, moving its eyes on Tom.

    "Basically, the question is about the meaning of infinity. Just like our friend said a moment ago, it serves to prove that a concept outside of our scope of understanding like infinity cannot be fitted inside our limited understanding of the world," Tom revealed the true answer, moving his eyes on udia. "This question doesn''t beg any answer. In a sense, this question is a statement all on its own," he added, watching with amusement how the victorious smile washed off udia''s lips.

    ''Still, for it to be here...'' Tom thought, feeling how the hesitation started to tear him apart. ''Well, let''s risk it,'' he finally thought, bringing his head up and taking a long look at the giant''s eyes. "Do tell, were you sent to this ce to guard it against people like us passing through, or the opposite, for the sake of stopping whateverys in the lower floors from escaping?" Tom asked with a straight face.

    His hand didn''t move at all, resting peacefully on top of his spear''s shaft.

    The giant turned its head around and followed in Tom''s steps, taking a long look at the young man''s face. "That is truly a great question," it said after a moment with a mysterious smile. "Sadly, it''s a question I''m not allowed to answer," it added after a moment turning the satisfied look on its face into one of regret.

    ''So there is something imposing rules on it?'' Tom thought, trying to get as many clues from what the giant said, despite how it clearly attempted to hide as much information as it was capable of.

    "Let me guess," udia said, interrupting the tense moment between Tom and the giant sage. "If we want to learn the answers, we need to reach the bottom of the dungeon," she asked, raising her eyes at the giant. "Am I right?"

    This time, the giant didn''t bother to hold back hisughter. Exploding with a cheerful chuckle, it even went as far as to wipe a tear of joy from the corner of its eye.

    "That''s exactly it!" the giant said, mming its massive hand against the floor. "That''s the perfect question!" it added, still chuckling even after several moments had passed.

    "I guess we will be on our way, then," Tom said as he stood up. While he was relieved, he wasn''t forced into a fight with the giant,ck of answers to his questions pulled his mood heavily down. "I believe you won''t make it problematic for us to pass through?" he asked, turning his head towards the giant.

    "No, you don''t need to worry about it," the sage replied, shaking its massive head. "What''s more, I will even help you meet with that other friend of yours," it added, cing its hand on the floor and closing its eyes for a second.

    "Done," the giant announced a mere momentter. It then raised its eyes at the two before smiling gently. "I wish you the best of luck!"

    "Thanks," Tom replied, taking a quick look at his portable watch. "And we are right on time," he muttered a momentter, grabbing udia''s hand and pulling her towards the gate.

    The gate, beyond which Cleo was supposed to wait for them. And ording to Tom''s clock, the window where she would start waiting for them on the next floor opened literally three minutes ago!

 Chapter 84: Whisps

    Chapter 84: Whisps

    "Took you long enough," Cleo said through her avatar''s form as soon as the two emerged from the gate. "Gosh, just what happened to your clothes?" she then shouted when she noticed the state of Tom and udia.

    Her avatar was nothing like what Tom remembered from the few times he yed with the girl. Or rather, it was nothing like any human at all.

    ''So that''s how it works,'' Tom thought, observing yet another small detail of how the Online Hub worked. ''So our outfits and other visuals are just that, an illusion created by the system.'' Tom rubbed his chin before shaking his head.

    "Well, a lot has happened," he finally responded, marching towards the genderless shape that only vaguely looked human. The general shape was there, but nothing beyond that.

    This flesh and metal mannequin had no face. After a closer look, Tom realized it didn''t have fingers or feet either. Instead, a scimitar, Cleo''s grotesque yet trademark weapon, simply fused with the hand of her avatar. In ce of her avatar''s feet, there were some weird, triangr objects.

    ''I guess they had to optimize the structure a bit to make it able to perform the skills and all,'' Tom thought, concluding his observations.

    "Sure," Cleo said, shaking her head. "We wasted enough time on small talk," she quickly added, her avatar turning towards the entrance to the corridor. "I hope you won''t be a dead weight," she added.

    ''I bet she grinned,'' Tom rolled his eyes, following after the avatar and nodding to udia to do it as well.

    "Seriously now," Cleo was quick to turn serious. "How strong you are?" she asked, keeping her eyes at the path ahead.

    "Rtively strong," Tom instantly reported. If not for his inherited position, he would be way lower in the ranks of his family than Cleo. For him, the times when he was the brains of the real operation was over. "I fight while mobile on a hit-and-run attack basis," he exined the general path of his current development.

    "So the strenght is real?" udia stopped and turned her head around before asking Tom. "One can really turn more powerful in the dungeon? Or is your strenght nowhere near the scale of what avatars can do?" Cleo borated on her question, looking intently into Tom''s eyes.

    "I would say I''m even more powerful than I was while using my avatar," Tom replied without hesitation. There was no point humblebragging here, not when the tactician of the group was gathering the information.

    "I see," udia muttered, moving her eyes back at the corridor. "What about the girl?" she asked, back in her vignt form.

    "I strike fast and hard. While I can take on several monsters at once, I will only be able to dish out the damage when soloing them," udia didn''t bother hiding her information.

    ''So she can understand the situation,'' Tom thought, relieved. Since their trip so far was pretty rxed and, at times, intimate, he didn''t know whether udia was aware of how important this mission was.

    And now that they had the backing of a warrior that didn''t need to fear death at all, they had to hurry up.

    There would be no more time for cking, fucking, or leisurely sucking the energy of the stones.

    Right now, they were entering the rush phase.

    "Right, there are some news from back home," Cleo suddenly announced, turning her head around once again.

    The spear materialized in Tom''s hand while he was already in midair. Using the rush ability, he lunged forward. Once his weapon fully appeared, he threw it right at Cleo''s face.

    The girl didn''t move even an inch. Her eyes dted, proving that she could read Tom''s movement. But still, she didn''t even twitch.

    "SHRIEK!" A pained scream of a monster filled everyone''s ears even before Tom''s spear reached its body. But no matter how much Tom strained his eyes, he couldn''t see the enemy.

    ''What the hell is this?'' he thought, freaked out. Nevertheless, he swapped ces with his spear before calling it back to his hand. Yet, not even changing his position allowed Tom to notice any enemy.

    "What the hell was that?" udia jumped forward, covering the back of Cleo''s avatar.

    "To the right!" Cleo shouted, pointing her hand at empty air.

    ''It screamed out before my spear touched it... So that''s what it is,'' Tom thought. His body jerked into action the moment he heard Cleo''s order.

    Just like she didn''t flinch when he threw his spear seemingly at her, he also had absolute trust in her judgment. Only this line of trust allowed the two of them to be so daring.

    Once again, the air filled with a sharp scream. This time, it ate into everyone''s brain as if trying to turn their most vital organ into a mesh with its sharp sound.

    A clump of air suddenly lit afire, only to burn out like a sizzle in a literal second.

    "Can you see them?" Tom asked, remaining as vignt as he could. Even if the enemy was invisible, it didn''t mean other senses would be fooled by it as well.

    If they could see it with their eyes, they had to smell it with their noses or sense the changes in temperature. Whatever would allow them to find out where those enemies are would make for a good tactic to fight them off.

    "Only when they are close and when I look directly at them," Cleo replied, not hesitating before divulging her abilities. Even though she automatically assumed the lead over the operation, she had enough trust in Tom''s judgment to let him make independent calls.

    Before Tom could learn what Cleo meant with the news from home, the fight started. But as soon as the element of surprise was gone, all the danger also started to recede.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom swung his spear forward, following the awful stenching from his right, ''I can''t believe I didn''t feel this odor earlier!'' heshed on his own carelessness, turning yet another whisp into a small firework.

    The reason why they all shrieked even before an actual hit turned out to be pretty simple. With all his training required for developing the derivative skill before, all his attacks were now imbued with the strenght of his energymancer skill.

    This subconscious drive to keep repeating this ability, the innate wish to bring its proficiency as high as possible, now started paying off.

    Because it wasn''t the spear itself that damaged the monsters, but the energy that Tom infused in it instead!

    "How are you faring?" Tom threw his question to the back, where the two girls fought glued to each other.

    udiacked the training necessary to follow other senses than sight into the battle. On the other hand, Cleo''s avatar waspletely deprived of any attacks of magical nature. Due to her strictly physical build, she was unable to deal with those monsters at all.

    This wasn''t the case with udia. While Cleo''s ability to notice the monsters as they appeared went unused.

    Those two girls clearly didn''t like each other. It could be felt in the gazes that one would throw to the other, confusing the hell out of Tom.

    Because despite all this enmity hanging in the air between them, they cooperated better than Tom could expect in his most daring dreams.

    Cleo was hugging udia from the front while the former hung herself on Cleo''s back. While one girl was turning around and whispering the directions and timing, the other would serve her ranged punches without as much as lifting a finger.

    ''So she uses her entire body as the source of the punch?'' Tom thought, opening his eyes in awe. ''I knew this was the possibility in her skill, but I didn''t expect her to actually master it so quickly!'' he praised the girl in his thoughts, amazed by her rapid progress.

    Her ability allowed her to forward her punches roughly a meter ahead. But that begged the question, what was a punch in the first ce? Was it an attack preceded by a swing of one''s hand? Or was it just the impact?

    udia apparently found the answer to that question. And whenever a monster would appear within the range of her skill, her fist would tremble slightly.

    And the full force of the punch would burn another whisp down.

    "That was tiring," Tom said after a few moments, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead. This was one of the small details that set the avatar''s experience and the real thing apart. While using an avatar to explore the dungeon, one could never immerse him or herself in the fight as one could in reality.

    It was all in the details.

    ''Details, huh?'' Tom thought, suddenly shaken by an idea. His mind spurred into action, tranting all the memories he couldn''t understand through this new perspective he figured out.

    And something seemingly clicked.

 Chapter 85: Banter between friends

    Chapter 85: Banter between friends

    ''What''s the difference between using skills as an avatar and doing it in person?'' Tom asked, putting this question out. For an entire second, he focused his entire attention on the topic.

    But the answer was obvious.

    It was the details.

    One couldn''t feel the tickle of energy caressing his wounds whenever it augmented the body''s natural ability to heal. One wouldn''t feel the ecstasy of releasing a sea of mes nor the coldness upon casting an icy spell.

    All those small feelings would be lost when exploring the dungeon as an avatar. Obviously, that meant one could learn how to be even better at using those spells, given how he or she could feel the difference and fine-tune it.

    But the fact that one could actually feel magic was enormous. Because unless Tom and udia were to somehow lose all their abilities upon exiting the dungeon, they would be able to bring forth the magic in a world that didn''t have it in the first ce!

    And without being able to feel those abilities they were using, what other means were Tom and udia supposed to use to bring forth their skills back in their homeworld?

    "That''s quite insane," Cleo muttered as their group moved through the dungeon''s corridors. "I knew you wouldn''t ck in here, but still," she said now with a normal voice, looking up at Tom.

    "In a sense, I believe everyone can be far stronger than the avatars they otherwise control," Tom nodded his head, giving up on the opportunity to humblebrag. "It''s like... By growing our real strenght, we are able to squeeze way more power out of ourselves than from some lifeless puppets," he exined his idea, shaking his shoulders. "Still, it''s great to have someone who doesn''t need to fear death," Tom added out of nowhere. "If the worstes to y, we will be counting on you," he added.

    Tom didn''t suggest Cleo sacrifice her avatar. It was something that everyone agreed on way before the mission itself started. While originally it was Marvin that was supposed to fill the role, with his injuries, everyone decided he would be better off overseeing the situation from back home.

    For most people, losing an avatar beyond the grade, they could buy was the worst oue possible. While the online hub offered the service of artificially raising the avatar''s level, its cost was just as steep as high were the earnings that such avatar could bring.

    ''But we are not some kids ying games right now,'' Tom thought, sending a nce at Cleo''s avatar. ''What would be a loss for others, for us is just a negligible cost,'' he added in his thoughts.

    "Are you down or something?" udia asked, moving a little closer to her partner.

    "Huh? What made you think I am?" Tom asked, shrugging in surprise. ''Were my thoughts showing on my face or something?'' Tom asked himself, worried that he was lowkey losing hisposture.

    "Just a feeling,'' udia disregarded the matter despite being the one to bring it up in the first ce. She also didn''t move away now that her inquiry was satisfied. "Anyway, what is our goal right now?" she asked, leaning her head over her shoulder. "I mean, we rushed as quick as we could because we had to meet with your friend, right? But what now?"

    ''Right, she doesn''t know the entire n,'' Tom stuttered on his feet, suddenly realizing such an obvious yet important detail. "I''m sorry, I forgot to fill you in," he apologized before turning his head to Cleo. "It''s fine, isn''t it?" he asked.

    "It''s in for everyone to see that you guys slept together," Tom''s childhood friend suddenly brought up a topic no one expected. "There is hardly anything more that you could do to ensure her involvement," a chuckle followed her words.

    "Piss off," Tom cut Cleo''s fun. He then rolled his eyes before moving them back at udia on his side. "Right now, our aim is to get as deep as possible. We don''t know when and if we will be able to enter this dungeon ever again," Tom revealed the main objective of the n without even a hint of hesitation. ''After all,'' he rationalized his choice, ''with how strong she became, she is pretty much all in, in this mess.''

    "Come on, don''t be shy," Cleo continued her tease, not minding Tom''s protests at all. "Wee to the world of adults, misterte bloomer," she added with yet another chuckle.

    "As if you had the right to speak like that, you damned virgin," Tom bounced the ball back, casting a jokingly hateful stare at the girl.

    "Huh? I''m not a virgin, though?" Cleo was quick to respond with a faked surprise.

    "You are aware that stic dildos doesn''t count?" Tom replied just as quickly, keeping hold of the initiative in the conversation.

    "And how else do you think I could lose my first?" Cleo replied, this time taking a short moment to figure out how to.

    "How is that my problem? It''s up to you which way you swing!" Tom attacked once again.

    ''With that, she should be able to easily get back at me...ah?'' Tom''s thought of sacrificing himself in the discussion to kill the potential conflict,ter on, was broken when he suddenly felt a presence.

    Yes, just like with his earlier training influencing his ability to swing his spear, the fight with the invisible enemies helped Tom to sharpen his other senses. Before he could see the monster appear, he had already managed to notice its presence.

    "I appreciate the attempt, but you know I hate it," Cleo said, already looking in the same direction as Tom. Just like she could read his intention with thatst verbal shot of his, she was perfectly capable of seeing him enter the vignt stance.

    "It''s not my fault you don''t know how to ept the kindness of others," Tom said, shrugging his shoulders as he made his spear appear right within his palm. "But let''s drop it for now," he added, staring into the darkness down the corridor. "It seems that we have some guests to take care of!"

 Chapter 86: [Bonus Chapter] Toms mistake

    Chapter 86: [Bonus Chapter] Tom''s mistake

    Both the Dungeons Online game and the Dungeons itself were great. With the potential to break far away from the physical limitations of the human body, there was hardly anything else one would ask from it.

    But there was one thing that annoyed Tom to no end.

    ''They are getting bigger and bigger, huh?'' he thought, throwing his spear only to do the swap and recall, as usual, effectively dancing around the battlefield.

    The monsters this time turned out to be a slightly bigger version of the hellhounds from just a few floors before.

    And it was thisck of originality that made Tom nearly lose his mind back in the days when he still considered the Dungeons to be just a game.

    ''Hellhounds, demons and demonoids, slimes, spiders... Sure, there are many different species, but aren''t they generally the same?'' he thought, pulling the spear from another monster that threw itself at him.

    "Aren''t you taking it a little too easy?" Cleo muttered in protest as her avatar continued to slightly hyperventte. The material her androgynous and barely human body was made turned to a slightly brighter hue from all the mana she continued to move around with her spells.

    "What do you mean?" Tom broke free from the line of his thoughts, looking up at his childhood friend.

    "It''s clear that your thoughts are elsewhere," Cleo said, shing the head off another hellhound with a wide swing. Then, she changed her dominant leg and blocked a shing attack of another monster''s paw.

    "You know me just too well," Tom replied back, feeling as if he was missing something. ''Right, how can she tune with me so perfectly well if we were separated ever since I left for the city?'' Tom suddenly asked himself, shocked by the realization so much that he momentarily froze in ce.

    Another attack forced Tom''s thoughts back to reality. He made his spear disappear only to reappear in the same moment but in a different hold. Due to his mishap, the monster''s ws were too close to swing the spear manually, forcing Tom to resort to this kind of untested tactic.

    "Are you okay?!" Cleo shouted in panic, noticing the small trouble Tom found himself in.

    The attack went through. For some reason, Tom''s auto defense skill didn''t activate, even though it still had a single charge left for the run. Rather than that, the sharp ws of the massive hellhound shed with the strange material Tom''s spear was made off, pushing it heavily against his side.

    "I''m alright!" Tom shouted once the momentum of the attack passed by. ''Dang, it hurt,'' he thought, pushing his arm away from his side. While he didn''t sustain any real injuries, his smashed shoulder was temporarily out ofmission.

    Tom''s weakness didn''t stop the monsters from pressing the attack. With roughly seven enemies to go, Tom had no other choice but to throw his spear away. For a moment, he observed the approaching monsters.

    "I need to tag out for a moment," he said in a loud yet calm voice.

    "On it!" udia instantly replied, changing the path of her attack in order to make her way towards Tom.

    But the monsters were too close. The hellhound raised its paw. Its sharp ws reflected the little light there was in the corridor.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought just as the attack was about to carve a huge chunk of meat from his body.

    His earlier throw didn''t send the spear all that far. Given how he had to use his left hand, the spear flew for roughly a fewteen meters only.

    But in a ce, as confined as the dungeon''s corridor, this distance meant the difference between an active fighter and a wounded holding the back.

    The monster''s attack pped the spear away, sending it crashing towards the wall.

    ''Recall,'' Tom thought, once again using abination of turning his spear into magic before reconstructing it in his hand.

    ''Fuck!'' Tom thought when the momentum of the spear transferred to his hand, straining his wrist as well. ''Bit by bit, I''m starting to get wounds,'' Tom thought, holding back a groan of pain that desperately attempted to find a way out.

    Meanwhile, udia finally found her way towards a spot formerly upied by Tom. From how energetic her moves were, it was clear that she was determined to achieve something.

    ''Is she trying to look cool or what?'' Tom thought, annoyed by the excessive waste of energy in the girl''s performance. ''It''s not like we are in any form ofpetition here,'' he groaned in his thoughts as he started to move his arm around.

    With a strain like that, everything was in the ce it was supposed to be. As long as Tom managed to cross a certain threshold of pain endurance, he could use his hand and shoulder just like before... But it held the risk of a permanent injury down the line.

    That''s why, rather than jumping right back into action as soon as he could move his hand at all, Tom stood back. Because with the insane amount of mana roaming through his veins, he could already feel the magic slowly working its way out towards his wounds.

    "Just a few more," Tom shouted as he massaged the joint of his shoulder. Even without him at the front, the girls were making quick work of the remaining monsters.

    In the end, before Tom could rejoin the fight, Cleo and udia happily took care of the rest of the enemies. But instead of a cheerful victory, what followed was closer to scolding.

    "I told you not to get distracted!" Cleo turned around as soon as thest monster fell and shouted at Tom. "How many times do I need to repeat it for you to listen?!" her voice, although loud and angered, held a whole lot of worry.

    ''Right, with Marvin injured, she must be pretty sensitive towards seeing her close ones wounded,'' Tom realized, hanging his head. "I''m sorry, it was my mistake," he apologized properly before raising his head and looking at the girls. "Thanks for taking care of this battle for me," he added, gracing the girl and the girl''s avatar with a smile.

 Chapter 87: [Bonus Chapter] Value of the stones

    Chapter 87: [Bonus Chapter] Value of the stones

    "This will be the first boss we will conquer together," Cleo said in a silent voice as if the monster behind the gate could do anything even if it heard them.

    "To be honest, you can just leave it to us," udia replied, looking down at the massive spider inside the boss room. "It doesn''t look to be anywhere strong enough to be a challenge for me alone, not to speak, all three of us together," she added after a quick look at their next opponent.

    "While that might be true," Cleo responded by taxing both udia and Tom with her eyes, "I don''t want either of you to end up injured because of random arrogance," she said before shaking her head. "As you saw yourself, you can get injured in this dungeon. And it''s not like all you are in your avatar not to be worried about the potential loss in a fight," she added, looking deeply into udia''s eyes.

    "Tom got injured, and so what?" udia rolled her eyes instead. Clearly, she was done just sitting down and listening to this pair of friends. "People get injured all the time. By falling from the bike, by scrapping your knee," she listed out, pointing with her finger at the palm of her other hand on which she raised fingers for every element listed out. "The only difference is that here, we can heal pretty easily," she added before shaking her shoulders.

    "What do you want to say?" Cleo asked, slightly leaning her head over her shoulder.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom shrugged. While Cleo wasn''t here in person and her avatar failed to ry any form of facial expression, the tone of her voice alone was enough to make his shudder. Even without seeing the girl''s face, Tom could imagine just what kind of expression she was making.

    And this imaginary picture was more than enough to convince him to step in.

    "Cleo, let''s not push the matter," Tom asked, nodding his chin towards the boss. "Right now, we need to fight that guy, not each other," he said, even going as far as to point his spear at the boss.

    But then, something unexpected happened. The boss turned around. On its own, it was nothing to worry about. But with its face now directed straight towards the gate that separated its room from the floor''s corridor...

    The boss smiled.

    ''Huh?'' Tom felt shudder travel down his spine. ''How could a spider smile?'' he asked himself, unsure where this feeling that the spider actually smiled came from.

    "That doesn''t mean..." Cleo attempted to argue with Tom. As she spoke out, she looked at her childhood friend''s face, only to turn silent in the very next moment. "What''s wrong?" she asked, instantly turning her head towards the only source of Tom''s fright.

    "I just had this weirdest feeling," Tom said before cutting his sentence short. He raised his eyes at the spider, only to shake his head a momentter. ''No matter how much I look at it, there is just no way for it to smile!'' he groaned in his thoughts.

    It wasn''t against the nature of other beings than humans to smile. For example, dogs were known for showing their agitation by wagging their tail. Cats would show their affection, or rather, possessiveness, by rubbing themselves against someone or something.

    But this spider? While Tom wasn''t discriminatory enough to forbid spiders from smiling, there was simply no physical way for it to happen.

    Because the spider didn''t have a normal mouth, to begin with, making a smile something outside of the scope of its physical abilities!

    "Guys, this doesn''t seem to be a normal boss," Tom said. Even though this entire thing was nothing but a slight feeling, he had no qualms about reporting it.

    "Are you sure?" Cleo asked, watching how the spider continued to slowly turn around. In a few more moments, it would face away from the gate, making for a new window of opportunity to enter the boss room unnoticed.

    "Do I look sure?" Tom asked instead of replying before shaking his head. "I''m not sure at all. It was just a feeling, but it gives me bad vibes," he exined, gripping his spear a little harder.

    "Well, this is the first floor with those to loot, right?" udia suddenly said, pointing her finger seemingly at the boss. But once Tom looked closer, he realized that she was actually pointing at something behind the boss.

    "Right, Ipletely forgot about it," Tom admitted, rubbing his chin. "Right in time, wouldn''t you say?" he asked, looking at udia with small sparks appearing in his eyes.

    "Yeah, I''m already excited to see how great they will be," she grinned as she replied.

    "How about you guys fill me in?" Cleo asked, unable to follow their conversation. Given how she was at the very front of the group, she couldn''t see what exactly her femalepanion was pointing at.

    "This is the first floor with grade four stones," Tom announced, instantly making a big deal out of it. "For us, it''s a ray of hope. Ever since a while ago, the third-grade stones stopped raising our strenght. It''s as if... their purity wasn''t great enough?" Tom said in a hesitant voice, not sure if this random guess of his was correct at all.

    "There are only a few grade-four stones out there," Cleo said after a short nce towards the back wall of the room. "What''s the point of making a big deal about them?" she asked, fully confused.

    ''Right,'' Tom suddenly realized. ''She doesn''t know about it!'' he thought, putting his hand at the girl''s shoulder.

    "Cleo, listen. It''s not about their mary value," Tom said. While one hundred and seventy thousand per piece of grade four stone sounded like a good deal, it wasn''t anything much for people of Tom''s family.

    A substantial amount of cash, surely, but not a thing to go to war for.

    Not even ten times that amount would make any change to the family finances, exining why Cleo couldn''t understand their drive towards those stones. After all, even if the Online Hub only shared a tenth of those stones'' real value, they still wouldn''t amount to much at all!

    "You see, it seems that every human can absorb the stones just by holding them in his hand," Tom said before biting his lips a little. "And it just so happens that I have a way to suck even more energy from those stones than one could obtain just by absorbing them," Tom revealed the secret to his rapid surge of strenght without even the slightest hint of hesitation.

 Chapter 88: Bloody Art

    Chapter 88: Bloody Art

    "Huh?" Cleo froze as soon as she passed the barrier.

    It wasn''t a part of the n.

    ''What''s wro...'' Tom thought, stepping through the barrier as well. Cleo wouldn''t make a mistake like that. Either something already attacked her, or something bad happened. "Cleo?" Tom whispered as soon as he passed the invisible wall sealing the boss room away from the floor''s corridor.

    "Hey, Tom," Cleo turned her head away. Even though her avatar had no face at all, Tom could imagine what kind of face she wore. "Did you ever happen upon a boss marked as "Ranked type?" the girl asked. Her avatar''s body turnedpletely still.

    And then Tom felt it.

    He didn''t have any kind of system that would tell him that this boss was any special. As soon as he made his first step inside the room, a powerful aura shook his insides.

    ''This is nothing like before,'' Tom thought. He was confident in his power, yet he turned still.

    This thick, suppressing aura overwhelmed him. It felt as if he took a dip in theke. Against the water that surrounded him, he could spit all he wanted, yet it would never make a difference.

    The spider reacted instantly. udia didn''t have the time to enter the room yet when it lunged towards the friends.

    ''Guard,'' a thought exploded in Tom''s mind. It didn''te from his mind, but more like he was finally able to notice it. Not because of his own skill but from the mere influence of the aura overwhelming him.

    ''So that''s how it works,'' Tom thought passively, seeing the spider''s leg rushing towards his throat.

    His hands moved on their own.

    ''Haste,'' once again, his body appeared to have a will on its own. By invoking the spell, the mana within Tom''s flesh surged forward. It didn''t push his hands in a different direction. It bent the space with its might. Without moving an inch, Tom set his hand in a perfect counter.

    ''Come,'' his mind awoke to his power. With the momentum from his mana, he brought his spear up and supported it with his arm.

    Once the attack came, Tom gently pushed it away, once again bending the space to allow for the smooth transition of the energy.

    That''s where the spell would lift off. Tom sessfully repelled the attack he otherwise couldn''t.

    Yet, his momentum carried on. Without as much as a single thought, Tom rushed forward. ''So you can use it in that way,'' he suddenly realized.

    Or rather, he felt it.

    The sensation of his very own mana resonating with the structure of his guard spell etched itself into his brain.

    ''Well, let''s try to gamble on this,'' Tom thought, making the decision in an instant.

    He rushed forward before either of the girls could react to the attack. Instead of throwing his spear towards the monster directly, he threw it to the side...

    And started running in the opposite direction. At the same time, he closed on the spider from the left while his spear flew to the right.

    For but an instant, the spider''s attention moved away. The overwhelming presence that shocked him at the entrance disappeared.

    ''So that''s what it was.'' Tom''s eyes shed.

    The pressure returned all at once. Its weight slowed Tom down, grinding his dash nearly to a halt.

    ''And now that you forgot about the spear,'' Tom thought. The spider attacked. This time, it spat out a thick blob of acid.

    Tom didn''t have time for a single thought. His body had to react all on its own. So just like before, he pushed his mana in the same way that he felt it moving before.

    But instead of using this ability in short bursts like before, he kept the magical pressure on.

    The attack came... And went. In the distance, Cleo came to her senses, rushing forward.

    Oh, how incredibly slow. In the world of movement between Tom and the spider, she looked like a snail still learning how to move.

    udia was onlying to her senses.

    ''Figures,'' Tom thought, sliding through the space. He didn''t move at all. The distances between ces that should be fixed now turned out to be fluid.

    Tom continued to push his mana in the same way... When a sudden wave of exhaustion struck him down. It forced him to drop the act, returning to the world of normal physic.

    But it didn''t matter. ''I got you,'' Tom thought, raising his spear towards the spider''s belly.

    Tom''s body was in tatters. The mere moment when he dropped the use of the mana, its rebound came back like a shockwave. His skin was all covered in small cuts, each oozing first droplets of blood.

    But his spear was stuck inside the spider. Right as his abilities kicked in.

    Near the doors, udia finally started to move. Cleo reached the midpoint between the doors and the ce where the fight took ce.

    ''Spearbinator,'' a name of one of his skills shed through Tom''s consciousness. And all at once, hisbo-rted skills awoken.

    The bloody spear weakened the spider''s body, healing Tom in return. Next, Origin mage turned the monster''s insides into a mess, devolving them into basic tissue and a magical mess. Doing so also greatly boosted the rate of absorption.

    And then, right in this ticking mess of dense spider''s mana, Tom unloaded all the absorbed energy through his energymancer skill.

    Tom''s power only served as an ignition point. Sparked in the mess of raging mana, it instantly consumed the entirety of the spider. The explosion that ensued next warped a huge area around the spider.

    It came off right above Tom''s head.

    ''That was unexp...'' Tom thought when the crushing avnche of devastating magic shrouded his already weakened body.

    "Ugh," the pressure was insane. A thousand needles of burning pain prated every inch of Tom''s body. In a sh, he was burning alive in the raging storm of the mana.

    ''I n-need to...'' For a mere moment, Tom''s will vanished. Facing such an overwhelming strenght, all his efforts would be simply meaningless. ''HOLD!''

    Right as he was about to truly vanish along with his dying body, Tom''s will ignited.

    "Bloody spear!"

 Chapter 89: Recovery

    Chapter 89: Recovery

    Tom''s entire self shrank to just two things. Two aspects, as there was hardly any remaining piece of flesh of the young man.

    One was the pain.

    An overwhelming storm of constantly having his body rebuilt by an insane amount of mana and having it burned back by the guts of the explosion.

    Determination was second.

    Tom''s spear broke apart in this raging sea of mana. It was made of off Tom''s magic for the most part, with nothing but low-quality wood and metal underneath.

    It served him well, but now it was the definite end to Tom''s weapon.

    But he still preserved.

    Through the sheer force of will, Tom kept the connection of his skill, constantly sucking in the insane amount of magic that raged around him.

    And in this overwhelming amount of mana, his body constantly regenerated. No matter how much of his flesh sizzled away, it would grow back under the nourishing care of the same mana that was damaging it.

    But in this fiery inferno, one thing changed.

    Tom''s flesh was that of a human. Untampered, unused to the presence of magic. Even though his time in the dungeon taught him how to use certain skills that he naturally developed, it was still just an external force. A strange feeling that would drive his body whenever he would invoke a skill.

    But now, with the mass of his flesh itself constantly regenerating thanks to nothing but the sheer force of magic?

    With each cycle of burning away and regeneration, Tom''s flesh continued to grow more and more used to the presence of mana. It was the most painful of the evolutions possible, but an evolution nevertheless.

    Pain and determination. Those two aspects made up a forge where Tom''s body was reformed. It was the fuel behind his evolution and the nature of what his new form leaned towards.

    And it was all over in a mere instant.

    "TOM!" Cleo shouted. With the mes of mana scorching everyst bit of his flesh and soul, he could no longer withhold the haste spell.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom''s mind wandered as he fell to his knees, ''haste saved me once again.''

    Tired to no end after what he just went through, Tom''s body crashed into the ground. His face kissed the stone tiles of the floor in an unpleasant fashion. Yet, the pain of his nose breaking was nothing inparison to the hell Tom just escaped.

    "TOM!" udia followed with a shout on her own, rushing with all her might towards the barely conscious man.

    "You alive?!" Cleo didn''t mince her words, as if she was worried that sparring another syble would make her bete. Her voice trembled just like her hands did when she reached for Tom''s shoulders.

    "How is he?" udia slid the past few meters, asking before she could even stop.

    "He is breathing," Cleo replied in a shaken voice. Her movements were frantic, forcing her true self out instead of the calm mask she learned to wear most of her life.

    ''I''m okay,'' Tom thought, still locked within his thoughts. He survived, but he couldn''t move a muscle. The young man was just too tired to even think about opening his mouth.

    "Wait," udia said. The look in her eyes sharpened. "Isn''t he in a really..." she hesitated, "in a perfect shape?" she added, clearly unsure. She brought her hand to Tom''s back before changing her target to his wrist. "His pulse is normal," udia said, raising her eyes at Cleo.

    Strenght started to slowly return to Tom''s flesh. It felt as if his mind had to work its way out throughout his muscles to reignite the connection between the two.

    Bit by bit, he could feel his guts, bones, and finally, the skin. ''I think I can move around a little?'' Tom thought, feeling perfectly fine.

    "What should we do?" udia ended up raising her eyes at Cleo. Ultimately, she found herself out of options besides relying on Tom''s childhood friend.

    ''Should I wake up now?'' Tom thought. For a moment, a desire to keep the sleepy act wanted to take over him. He was quite interested in how the situation would develop.

    ''The fuck am I thinking?!'' Tomshed at his own stupid and childish desires. ''They think I''m on the verge of death, I can''t let them wa...'' Tom almost jumped up to announce his wellbeing when his body suddenly tingled.

    Then, his perception of the world around him exploded. In a single instant, his sight expanded, allowing him to see something... in a greater depth.

    In a sense, it felt simr to how he moved around by bending the space. This time, though, it was as if everything within half a meter distance away from him belonged to his personal domain.

    ''Just what the heck...'' Tom cut his inner curse as soon as he realized what could be the possible reason for his strange state. ''If I kept dying and reviving on mana alone, then I might be able to better feel it,'' he thought, shaken by the realization.

    It wasn''t like Tom could do anything special in his domain. It wasn''t a space that he ruled over or could even freely move around. It was just a sort of aura of mana hanging over his body.

    An aura that made Tom perfectly aware of every tiniest detail of that space.

    In other words, Cleo and udia alike were well within Tom''s aura!

    "I''m actually okay," Tom said in a drunk voice. His body was freshly formed anew many times over. Right now, it was so different than Tom''s mind had to get used to it first. ''I think I''m going to retch,'' Tom thought when the intense wave of information flooded his brain.

    Sadly, his brain had to get used to this new situation as well!

    "You are not," Cleo said in a decisive voice. Her look sharpened up. Now that she saw a ray of hope, a way out of the tragedy, her usual focus returned.

    In the end, she trained for these kinds of situations her entire life.

    "Hey," udia suddenly thought of something. Her face red up as she looked toward the wall, "do you need stones to recover?" she asked, clearly picturing it as a great idea.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged, surprised by the question. ''For what the hell would I want even more mana now?!'' he shouted in his thoughts, bending in half as torsions shook his body. He really wasn''t used to this new kind of perception. ''Or do I?''

    Tom''s face froze as he came to a certain realization.

    The amount of energy that flushed through his body during the fight with the boss was on another level. Nothing that Tom absorbed before could even begin topare.

    ''Yet, I did not level up,'' the young man thought. ''Even if most of the mana went for healing me up, as I got more and more used to it, some of it should remain,'' Tom thought, analyzing the situation. ''Some of it would remain,'' Tom repeated his thought, straightening back on his feet.

    Somehow, he was able to adapt to the new psychique in a manner of a few moments.

    ''Unless...'' Tom thought, looking at the corpse of the spider nearby. The few bits that remained were already dissolving at the floor.

 Chapter 90: Different kind of energy

    Chapter 90: Different kind of energy

    "Yes," Tom replied with difficulty, fighting against his desire to puke all over the ce. While he was getting better with every second, he was still far from returning to his crisp state.

    "On it." udia didn''t waste any time. She sprung up and ran towards the wall. She didn''t have Tom''s convenient ability to mine. This forced her to extract the vitally important stones from the wall by hand.

    She didn''t hesitate even for a moment before smashing her fists into the wall. Yet, even with all her might, udia actually took some time getting just a single stone out.

    "Here," she grabbed the stone before it even fell to the floor, jumping back to where Tom continued his attempts at standing straight.

    "Thanks," the young man replied, reaching forth with his... ''Right,'' Tom thought when his hand abruptly stopped. ''I don''t really have any weapon right now,'' he thought, unable to call forth his spear. ''Well, I guess I need to do it the less efficient way,'' Tom said in his thoughts, moving his hand forward and grabbing the stone.

    Without his weapon, he was unable to use spear-rted skills. Even though he knew the feeling of using the bloody spear, without the weapon itself, it just didn''t click.

    ''That''s a pity,'' Tom thought after a failed attempt, watching how the stone disappeared, absorbed into his flesh.

    "Here, next one," Cleo passed him the stone while udia continued to beat the hell out of the wall to force the stones to fall out. At this moment, the two girls were united by how worried they were about Tom.

    "Thanks again," Tom gently nodded his head as he reached for the stone. Once again, it was grade four stone. Ever since they reached the floor with five as its tenth''s number, they would no longer even see grade three stones and below. And past just ten more floors, they would reach the area where grade five stones would start appearing.

    A wave of energy suddenly flushed through Tom''s body when he absorbed the second stone. A strange feeling followed, as if some kind of seed, deeply hidden in the strands of his DNA, suddenly came alive.

    Following nothing but his instincts, Tom brought his hand up and created a spear out of his very of mana alone.

    ''Huh?'' he looked at the weapon with a stupified expression. ''Don''t tell me I wasted a skill''s slot just to be able to do this?'' Tom thought with disbelief.

    Sure, being able to create weapons on his own was handy, but that''s about it.

    Tom weighed the weapon in his hand. ''It''s not bad, but it isn''t good either,'' he thought. The young man wasn''t some kind of smith to know the difference between weapons just by a single look, yet, he still could tell that this magic spear was a far cry from the one he just lost.

    "This is not bad," he muttered silently, still judging the weapon in his hand. It felt light as if there was barely any weight behind it. While it could appear to be a great thing, tiring Tom less during prolonged fights, but that wasn''t necessarily the case. If this magical spear felt any lighter, Tom would have trouble properly swinging it around!

    "How are you feeling?" Cleo rushed towards him, cing the blocks that she perceived as hands on his shoulders. ''I know it''s supposed to feel good to have a girl worry about you like that,'' Tom thought, casting a nce at thepletely nk face of Cleo''s avatar, ''but this is too weird!'' he thought, before finally focusing on what Cleo asked.

    "I seem to be a bit better," Tom said, looking over his body. Then, he swung his head back and forth a few times only to look at Cleo again. "Yeah, I''m still quite dizzy, but nothing beyond that," he said with a smile, patting the head of Cleo''s avatar. "Thanks for worrying about me," Tom added, putting a gentle smile on his face.

    "Hey, where is my reward?!" udia asked while raising one of her eyebrows. Her stance was fullypetitive. But rather than hoping for Tom to do what he should, she waltzed forward, grabbed his hand, and then ced it on top of her head.

    "Here, here," Tom muttered as he moved his hand around, caressing udia''s head. This time, the feeling of having a girl fawn over him was fully in ce, even though he was the one to rub her head.

    "Well, can I get one more stone?" Tom raised his eyes at Cleo.

    "What are you even asking about?" udia''s eyes widened as she noticed Cleo hesitating slightly. "Just take it," she said, forcing the stone into Tom''s hand.

    "It''s not so simple," Tom shook his head, pulling his hand away before it would be toote. "I think Cleo already understands my point," he added, nodding his head towards the other girl.

    "Great," udia fumed, "What could be the reason important enough to prevent Tom from fully healing?" she looked at Cleo, clearly looking for a fight.

    "Calm down," Cleo said in amanding tone. From the deadly stare she sent to udia, it was clear that she wasn''t happy with Tom''s arrangement. "If you don''t understand the point of this mission, you are better off not talking at all," she said in a threatening voice before ignoring her femalepatriotpletely and turning to Tom instead. "Are you sure?"

    "Well, I will be ultimately using them all," Tom said as he shrugged his shoulders. "But the point that I wanted Cleo to make is that you two are weak," Tom spoke out bluntly, staring down at both the girls.

    "For Cleo, it''s all right to be weak. With her avatar, she is but an expendable asset that can be thrown away once no longer necessary," Tom said after giving Cleo a moment to think through what he said already. "But that cannot be said about you," he said, looking deeply into udia''s eyes.

    "How am I weak?" The girl squinted her eyes. "Do you wanna go?" she asked, already standing up.

    "You are too slow," Tom said, staring at udia in the way that made the girl sit back down. "In the fight with that spider, you were nothing but a dead weight. What''s even worse, you can''t just change your avatar for a new one. You are stuck with how you are right now," Tom added the insult to the injury, keeping his eyes right in udia''s pupils.

    "What am I supposed to do, then?!" udia finally red up. She shouted, jumping up only to turn around a momentter.

    "That''s exactly the point," Tom said, not bothering to react with the girl''s angry act. "With how I am right now, I should be able to ovee my dizziness in an hour or so," Tom said after taking a count of his internal situation.

    ''I know it''s just a guess, but it''s better to give a concrete figure than serving ambiguous statements,'' he thought in the break between his sentences. "On the other hand, you guys won''t improve by much without those stones," Tom said, putting up cloth on his hand before grabbing the stone from Cleo''s hand.

    "What if the next boss will be just as powerful?" udia asked, turning around on her heel. "If you will still be dizzy, will you be able to protect us like you did it now?" she asked, cleverly finding a way to turn the discussion around.

    "That''s right, I wouldn''t be able to," Tom nodded his head, agreeing with the girl. "But now you know why Cleo hesitated, so please, drop this tough act for now," Tom requested. "I''m grateful that you are worried like that for me, but this isn''t a school trip. This is a military mission," Tom said the obvious that the girl could still be oblivious about.

    With that said, udia didn''t protest any further. Instead, she only hummed something under her nose as she turned her back to Tom once again.

    The young man paid the girl no mind, touching the stone with the tip of his spear instead.

    The energy instantly rushed into his flesh. While it was simr to what he consumed during his constant regeneration, it was different at the same time.

    ''It''s hard to put where the differenceys,'' Tom thought as the nauseous feeling he had to fight off for the past few moments finally started to recede.

    But, before thest of the energy would be properly absorbed, Tom looked at Cleo.

    This time, the girl passed the stone to him without any further hesitation.

    "udia, prepare," Tom said, once again using his bloody spear to crack the energy free from its physical constraints. But this time, instead of absorbing it himself, he gathered it all at the very tip of his spear.

    While his weapon wasn''t as durable nor as sharp as the one he lost, this skill-made spear had one distinctive advantage.

    It could conduct magic even better than the Mythril spear from before!

    "Hey," udia suddenly spoke out as she reached with her hand for the blob of dense mana at the tip of Tom''s spear. She raised her hand but used it to point behind the young man''s back instead. "What is that shiny thing out there?" she asked, leaning her head on the side in curiosity mixing with surprise.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged, turning his head around. This moment ofck of focus caused the energy on his spear to break free from its restraints, only to flood Tom''s flesh again.

    But the reflection that he saw within the monster''s corpse made Tom ignore this mishap altogether. Or rather, the moment when he noticed just what was reflecting the sparse light of the room, the value of the aforementioned energy suddenly decreased below the scope of what Tom would pay any attention to!

 Chapter 91: Schemer behind the fight

    Chapter 91: Schemer behind the fight

    ''It''s hard to believe it,'' Tom thought, slowly approaching the spider''s carcass. While he still felt a bit nauseous, this unpleasant feeling was just an annoyance now, rather than a serious limitation to Tom''s abilities.

    Yet, he didn''t dare to get closer carelessly.

    "Shouldn''t it mostly disappear by now?" Tom asked out loud, not taking his eyes off the spider. He already had his moment of joy. Now it was time to be vignt again. ''Who knows what kind of surprises this monster has in store,'' Tom thought, tightening his fingers over the handle of his spear.

    ''Damn, at moments like that, the weight of the weapon really adds up to one''s confidence,'' Tom scorned in his thoughts, leering at his ownck of courage. ''That was a tough fight, but to think I''m still shaken by it,'' Tom thought, looking deeper into his inner state.

    Then, he shook his head. It wasn''t the time to immerse himself in his thoughts. For now, they had to inspect that spider.

    "There is something shing in the middle of it," Cleo said, noticing the same peculiarity that caught Tom''s attention a moment earlier.

    "Just remember to be careful," Tom warned the girls as the three of them approached the carcass. Or rather, approached what through all the logic and reasoning should be a carcass.

    Roughly ten steps away, Tom couldn''t even see the corpse as the spoils of war, but only as a potential threat.

    "It''s really dead," Cleo said after shortly inspecting the body. "We didn''t see it from the door side, but it doesn''t have a belly, to begin with," she added, pointing her hand at the ceiling-facing part of the monster.

    Maybe due to the explosion, the spider''s carcass ultimately rolled over to its back, with its massive yet sharp legs all pointing upwards. Given how massive it was, Tom was unable to peer into its guts earlier. Only by getting a big higher by basically climbing the monster''s side, he managed to look at the wound created by the explosion.

    ''Now that I look at it, it''s more of a spider around the wound rather than the wound in the spider,'' Tom thought. He noticed how the entire underbelly of the monster was nowhere to be seen. Instead, its empty shell was filled with a highly repulsive mass of molten flesh and guts.

    Yet, it was in the middle of that mess that the golden glint came from.

    ''Doesn''t it looks like a...'' Tom thought before shaking his head. ''No, that would be too much of a coincidence,'' he thought. Tom''s expression turned grim as the potential meanings behind such coincidence shed in his mind.

    "Aren''t you going to pull it out?" udia asked, quite naturally using the words that even slightly misheard could be taken for quite a provocation. "I mean, that shiny thing," she added with a grin, proving that she was aware of what she almost said.

    "Yeah, yeah, it just seemed a bit strange to me," Tom replied, using one of his hands to shield his mouth and nose while reaching with the other forward.

    His body was the best choice for how to pull that shiny thing out. Whatever it was, the mess inside the spider was filled to the brim with magic. While not as intense as during the explosion earlier, just like with nuclear reactors, the fact that using water serving as cont wasn''t great just because it was way less lethal than entering the core directly.

    And Tom''s flesh was currently the one most capable of withstanding huge amounts of mana, given how he was reborn from it over and over again just a few moments ago.

    "Huh?" Tom''s hand stopped just above the surface of the mess. ''I did die, alright?'' Tom thought, shaken by the sudden realization. ''Why am I not going crazy right now, then?'' he asked.

    Tom''s head exploded as if someone had hit it with a mallet. It wasn''t physical pain, one that pills could kill. It was a massive, mental scare.

    ''Am I even a human if I do not fear death?'' Tom asked himself, looking down at his extended hand.

    "Tom? Are you all right?" Cleo asked, quick to notice the change on Tom''s face.

    "Ah, sorry, got distracted again," Tom replied, shaking off this sudden, devastating thought. He bit his teeth together before pushing his hand forward.

    The instant his skin touched the magical mess, it felt as his hand would burn down. For some reason, Tom was able to see the state of his hand despite the fact of this mass not being see-through at all.

    ''It''s not burning,'' Tom thought, watching how his head reached further and further ahead. ''It''s melting,'' he added in his thoughts, holding back the scream of the torturous pain he was going through right now.

    ''Wait, does everyone go through this kind of thing when they get item drops?'' Tom thought as his fingers finally grabbed the shiny thing from the spider''s insides. ''Or am I just an idiot?'' Tom asked himself, pulling his hand back as he looked towards Cleo''s avatar.

    The item drops were insanely rare, but they still existed. With the insane number of Dungeons Online yers, one could buy them easily from literally any Online Hub. Not because it was easy to encounter a loot-dropping monster, but solely because of how many yers would constantly enter the game and grind.

    That''s why Tom not only never encountered such a monster in his long career in the game, but he also has yet to meet anyone who did. As such, it was no wonder he had no idea how to react in this situation.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom rubbed his chin. ''Isn''t the Online Hub simply controlling all the loot?'' Tom thought, analyzing this new idea. ''If they could track one''s progress inside the dungeons and filter out the item drops out of one''s vision, then proceeded to just walk in and collect them...''

    For a moment, this thought froze Tom''s mind and body alike. But then, his eyes finally wandered on the item that he pulled out of the spider''s insides.

    And just like Tom thought, it was an item. But what was suspiciously convenient, it wasn''t a sword or a bow, but a damned, golden spear!

    "Isn''t this lucky?" udia asked, noticing what was in Tom''s hand. Then, her face twisted in an ugly grimace. "Tom, your hand," she said, pointing her hand up.

    "Huh?" Tom looked away from the spear towards udia''s face. "What''s wrong with it?" he asked. But as he looked at his hand again, he realized what the problem was.

    Thanks to his earlier experience of death and rebirth, his perception of pain also shifted. And while he was constantly aware of the insane pain tearing his melted-down hand apart, he simply epted it as a part of his new self. Rather than crying in pain and despairing for it to end, he simply acknowledged it... and moved on.

    "Ah, I don''t think there is any reason to worry about it," Tom added after a short while when he noticed a small movement of his flesh. As the two of them spoke, his hand continued to slowly repair itself. The parts that were gone would simply use Tom''s mana to regenerate before mending back into a perfect shape.

    It was a slow process, but a constant one.

    "Still, isn''t it quite surprising?" Cleo asked, proving that her mind was on the same track as Tom''s.

    "Yeah," Tom replied, looking at his spear once again.

    Its golden tingle disappeared in mere moments after pulling it out of the mess of the spider''s former insides. Without magic flowing through it, the spear itself appeared to be quite ordinary.

    It was a roughly two-meter-long piece of artwork. It was made from dark, slightly reddish materials. Its entire shaft had a strange, circr pattern all over it as if someone wrapped it all with some kind of rope instead of drilling the patter into the material the spear was actually made from.

    Its tip didn''t look extraordinary either. Made out of a grey type of metal, it had small rifts along every de''s cutting edge.

    ''I wonder if I can conduct magic through it,'' Tom thought, unwilling to just assume something he believed to be a pretty basic kind of quality.

    As he thought, so he did. But as Tom channeled his mana into the weapon, it quickly started to change.

    The golden light that Tom observed previously didn''t appear this time. Rather than that, the shaft of the spear darkened to a full ck while the rifts of its de suddenly started overflowing with a greenish, almost toxic-looking aura. If not for a bit of the blue hue in color, Tom would be too scared to actually touch the product of his own magic!

    "It is too great for it to be a mere coincidence," Tom said, looking down at the magnificent weapon in his hand. "Unless someone made sure we would encounter that spider," he added, looking towards the dungeon''s corridor, which could potentially lead them to the person Tom suspected to be responsible.

    ''Still, if it was that giant''s work,'' Tom thought, shaking his head. It was almost depressing to be in the middle of the dungeon, doing exactly what some kind of other party wanted him to do. ''Then I will have to beat it up once we return,'' Tom thought, recalling how dangerous that spider was.

    And while he couldn''t be angry at the fact that the dungeon could potentially cause some injuries or even death, there was one thing that he couldn''t forgive.

    ''By setting this fight up, you endangered Cleo and udia,'' Tom thought, tightening his hand over the spear. As if responding to his emotions, its aura intensified a bit. ''If you set it up, I will be sure to make you pay for it,'' Tom thought as his face darkened.

 Chapter 92: To indulge or not to indluge

    Chapter 92: To indulge or not to indluge

    "How is the spear doing?" Cleo asked after the group cleared up the first patch of monsters on the next floor.

    "Way better than what I already expected," Tom shouted his response back, pulling his new, fancy weapon out of the corpse of the monster he just killed.

    Before, whenever he fought with another entity, he still had to use his skills to deal with the real damage. Even though spearmanship was a part of one of his skills, it wasn''t anything more but the ability to swing his spear in a proper fashion.

    As such, not only with his magical-sourced spear but even the one bathed in the blood of a monster, using simple cuts, shes, and pokes wouldn''t amount to much in a real fight.

    But that wasn''t the case anymore.

    As if forcing Tom''s mana to constantly circte through it, the spear managed to turn even the simple, skillless attacks of his into an actual source of quick, albeit low, damage.

    "To be honest, I''m quite worried about using it with skills," Tom admitted, moving his eyes at the girl in the distance.

    Ever since they left thest floor after feeding udia all the remaining stones through Tom''s freshly obtained spear, the monsters surprisingly turned out to be weaker than before.

    ''Could it be the influence of the item?'' Tom attempted to guess. ''That monster was insanely strong not only because it was a boss, but because it had way more energy to spare,'' the young man thought, trying to figure out a proper exnation for what was going on.

    "Just don''t push yourself too far!" udia requested before moving her head back towards the few monsters that she had yet to y.

    Between the two of them, udia was obviously weaker. Not only because she was only capable of dealing blunt damage but also because she had no real weapon or insanely overpowered skills like Tom did.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Layn sank in his thoughts, ''why didn''t she get memoriam like I did?'' Tom asked himself. ''Was it because I actually had so many different avatars?'' he attempted to guess.

    "Hey, udia!" Tom shouted, picking up his spear and running towards the girl. On his way in, he leaned his hand backward before throwing his fancy spear towards thest monster standing, one that was just about to unleash its ws on the girl''s back.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought, waiting with this spell of his until the spear actually prated deeply into the monster''s body. ''Recall,'' he thought as soon as the reality twisted and pulled for a single instant, announcing that the skill worked just as usual.

    "Ugh, that''s disgusting," Tommented when he realized what kind of mistake he justmitted. While it wasn''t anything dangerous, he unmistakenly severed some kind of artery in the monster''s body, causing a sea of blood to sprout out of the wound as soon as the spear was removed.

    And given how he appeared right at the monster''s wound the same moment the spear disappeared, he was the first and only target of this sudden flush of thick, red liquid.

    "That was unexpected," udiamented, putting her fists on her sides. For some reason, between that pose of hers and the look on her face, she looked extremelybatable... and sexy.

    "Tell me more," Tom said, shaking his head as former nausea suddenly returned.

    "How about you hit the floor with your face?" udia suggested while openly holding her chuckle down. Yet, despite her valiant attempts, she continued to fail at her task over and over again.

    "Is it really that funny?" Tom said, ignoring udia''s pranky suggestion.

    "No, I actually meant that for real," udia shrugged when she realized what other meaning her earlier words could have. "Isn''t the corridor''s floor supposed to consume everything monster-rted?" she asked, leaning her head over her shoulder. "Wouldn''t that make it quite easy to get rid of all this blood, then?" she asked again, finally shedding some light on her true intentions behind the suggestion.

    "Wait, that might actually be a good idea," Tom said, shaking his head in defeat. Then, without any further and unnecessary wait, he dropped to his knees before falling forward on his hands. With that done, Tom lowered himself even lower, putting his face to the cold, stone tiles of the corridor''s floor.

    For a moment, the cold texture of the stone allowed him to calm down and get a little rest. Ever since the two of them met with Cleo, this mission that was quite rxed to that point turned into a military mission.

    While it was one from the very beginning, Tom was never a stickler to the rules. Since they had a ten-hour deadline to reach the fiftieth floor, he made sure to use his time in a way that would allow him and udia to achieve that objective.

    This meant that he had both the time to conquer the floors of the dungeon but also to indulge a bit into his budding rtionship, even with how hollow it is, with udia.

    But everything changed once Cleo joined hands with them.

    ''I know that''s how everyone should act during this mission in the first ce,'' Tom thought, perfectly aware that the thoughts going through his head were nothing but a useless whining of someone weak enough to crave luxuries and rest. ''But still,'' he thought, turning from his belly toy on his back. While he didn''t use any sort of mirror to confirm that all the blood was now gone from his face, given that there was no longer this unpleasant, stinging feeling on his cheeks, he assumed that the process was done.

    "That''s what I was waiting for!" udia suddenly muttered, stepping over Tom and standing in the way that prevented any part of her scrap-clothing from fulfilling its purpose.

    She stood right above Tom''s hips, pressing her ankles into Tom''s sides as if in an attempt to prevent him from running.

    "What do you think you are doing?" Tom asked coldly. He then threw a look to the further part of the corridor. Thankfully, Cleo has yet to appear. "We don''t know when Cleo will get back. Can''t you really hold back for a few floors more?" he asked, trying to fight his own lust.

    ''Wait, am I turning into some sort of sex craze?'' Tom thought, realizing that thest time he had sex... was actually roughly just an hour ago!

    While the time seemed to pass way quicker while he was busy with things, there was no way for them to spend more than an hour on everything they did so far. From the moment of reunion with Cleo, all the way through both talking with that Giant sage and then the time they wasted to let Tom recover after his fight with the spider...

    Even by a long stretch, all that time would hardly make up a single hour!

    And that would mean the time when udia got her way with him for thest time before meeting with Cleo wasn''t all that far in the past!

    "Come on," udia protested as she bent her knees and sat directly on top of Tom''s hips. "Won''t you enjoy a little voyeur y?" she asked, smiling cheekily. Her cheeks turned red, proving that while her words were daring, she was actually just the same outgoing girl that Tom met back all that time back in the Online Hub.

    "How about you guys hold it off until we are out of the dungeon?" Cleo said, suddenly emerging from the shadows behind them.

    "That''s what I told her," Tom instantly admitted, cing his hands on udia''s hips as to move her out of his body so that he could stand up.

    "And who are you trying to excuse right now?" Cleo asked, bending her knees and squatting right above Tom''s face. "Or are you going to tell me that you just randomlyid down on the ground?" she asked, leaning her head over her shoulder. "Or maybe you suddenly got weak, making udia strong enough to tackle you like that?" Cleo continued, her voice turning darker and darker with each sentence.

    "Oh, piss off," Tom said, refusing to borate any further. "And you..." he said, moving his eyes on the girl atop him. "You better get off me. We don''t know when some kind of monster will attack, and I''m not going to make Cleo guard us while we fuck," he said, forcefully pushing the girl out of himself before standing up.

    "Here," Tom said, reaching with his hand to theying and pouting udia. "I know that fighting and overall tense situations are making everyone horny," he said, biting his lips as to not smile. ''Isn''t this what the seed of harem looks like?'' Tom thought before discarding the sphemous idea altogether. "But this isn''t the time nor the ce to indulge like that," he said before patting udia''s head.

    "Let''s just hurry up and reach the end of the dungeon, then we will be free to return and y around all we want!"

 Chapter 93: Peters headache

    Chapter 93: Peter''s headache

    **Since people are likely to get confused - The scene moves to the inner side of the Online Hub, PoV goes back to its high-manager Peter, the time doesn''t change**

    "We encountered some kind of problem, as usual," Peter reported, directly reading from the sheet of paper he had prepared. "I was informed by the manager responded that it''s some kind of local coding issue," the manager of the online hub raised his head, looking right at the lenses of the small camera in the wall.

    "Problems, problems and problems," the young girl on the other end of the call sighed. "Ever since you were assigned your post, your reports are nothing but problems," she said, fixing a small detail of her hair.

    ''That''s because I''m fulfilling my duties in the right way, you dumb whore,'' Peter thought as he put a wide smile on his face. "I would like to im it''s my own ipetence as others do, but I don''t like lying at the same time," he said, not showing any signs of defeat on his face. "If you wanted some bootlicker to run the ce, you guys would never pick me in the first ce. And to the end of my ambitions, I''m going to do my best for this Online Hub to flourish!" Peter said decisively.

    ''Did I go at her too strong?'' he asked himself in his thoughts, looking in the bright screen on which the video feed of the call yed out. ''I know it''s easy to say I will take responsibility for whatever that problem is, but with the report day tomorrow?'' Peter scoffed lightly. ''There is no way I will let them make me into a sacrificialmb!'' he thought, spitting at the corrupt system he had to operate within.

    "Still, whatever your excuses are, the fact that you keep having problems remain," the secretary of the local head, Peter''s direct superior, shook her head. "I received my orders regarding cases like yours," the girl said, raising her eyes from her own stack of notes. "Since you proved to be unable to solve the problem with your own resources, you will get to the local hub and procure forty saps from the incubator there," the girl announced the verdict before raising her eyes to the screen. "This influx of outsourced staff will also shift the ie ratios," she added before hiding her eyes away to the side. "Just saying in case you forgot," the girl added, refusing to look at the camera''s lens.

    "Isa," Peter said, his tone meeking down in but an instant. "You know that I cannot agree to that," he said in a pleading voice. "Please, just one more day. I will get saps from my own incubator, cream of the top, no questions asked," he suggested, hoping to get away from the punishment for at least this onest time.

    ''Just wait until I start bringing the score with that guy,'' Peter thought, unknowingly tightening his hands to fists. ''He reached level fifty so quickly and even found a method to absorb more energy from the stones than we do through their system,'' Peter recalled the most striking points of the man he found out. ''If only he didn''t just go and disappear like that,'' Peter shook his head, still annoyed by this obstacle to his ns.

    "Peter," Isabelle said, her tone softening. For a moment, she turned silent, thinking over the topic as hard as she could, to the point of veins popping up on her forehead. "Fine, but this already exhausts all the favors you ever had on me," she added, squinting her eyes. For a moment, anxiety mixed in her pupils with relief.

    The anxiety of abusing her position to help her childhood friend out and relief of freeing herself from the burden of his favors.

    "Thanks, I appreciate it," Peter nodded his head with gratitude. ''That was close,'' he thought, his hands tightening. ''If they forced another forty saps on me, the ratios...'' For a moment, Peter sank into his thoughts, calcting his current situation. ''Damn, the hub would lose a third of its ie!'' he shouted in his thoughts as he realized.

    "Well, that will be all for the prereport," Isabelle said, gathering her notes together. "I hope you won''t disappoint me tomorrow," she added before ending the call.

    "As if I would let that... Or wait," Peter was about to curse at the girl, or rather the system that forced her to act like that when a realization struck him. ''A third of our ie?'' he asked himself, noticing just how overbearing this kind of solution was. ''So she only intended to scare me away with this, to think I let her catch me off guard like that,'' heined about himself before shaking his head.

    "Welp, I won''t do anything from here. Let''s deal with things one by one,"

    Peter said to himself before standing from his chair and heading to the doors.

    This personalmunication array was located directly by Peter''s quarters. It was one of the predesigned features of every online hub, aimed at allowing its high-manager to always be on call of the higher brass.

    "Kira? Where are you?" Peter shouted as soon as he closed the door to themunication room.

    "Right here," the girl replied,zily raising her hand.

    ''She didn''t even bother to raise up,'' Peterined but ended up swallowing his pride and holding back a necessary lecture. "Buckle up. We are going to brute-force that bug out," he said, already heading towards the doors leading outside of the staff''s quarters.

    "What? Weren''t you going to just let it go?" Kira raised her eyebrows in surprise. "What happened?" she asked as her eyes moved to the door of themunication array. "The brass?" she changed her question, guessing the answer on her own.

    "Yeah," Peter nodded his head in response. "I got them to agree for forty saps from our own incubator," he informed before shaking his head. "Can you imagine that this bitch wanted to push forty of the outsourced ones on me?" Peter asked before biting on his lip.

    "Well, let''s not waste time, then," Kira said, jumping off the sofa on which she waszying before. "Right, I got some news about that Tom guy," the girl said, raising up another stack of papers in her hand.

    "Leave it for after the report is done," Peter ordered, already waiting at the doors. "I will deal with it once we bury this headache off," he added.

    "Well, what a waste of the resources of the Investigators faction," Kira said with a bright smile. Then, she turned her eyes to her theoretical superior. "You might''ve lost your favors with Isa, but you just got some from me."

 Chapter 94: The incubator system

    Chapter 94: The incubator system

    The soundless lift was one of the greatest inventions out of all that allowed the current build of the Online Hub. With how high those buildings would go and how massive they usually were, the number of lifts and stairs required to provide the necessary throughput of the crowd would normally turn any other building into a humming machine by mixing all the noises made by the different elevators.

    ''I wonder how good they became,'' Peter racked his brains, trying to figure out how far his local Incubator could go.

    The existence of this institution was the very reason why every single Online Hub was so massive.

    On the bottom floors, yers would indulge in either the game itself or all the other services they could make full use of and spend the money they earned in the game. ording to the official bulletin distributed amongst the high-managers, the better one was at managing the Hub, the less money would leave its first three floors.

    Next came between five to even twenty floors of what would appear to be an empty space. Most of the building''s users believed that was where the servers of the game were held. But the truth...

    The truth was greatly different.

    Above the gaming and service floors but below the staff quarters and the managerial offices were incubators. Every single Online Hub had one, and every single Incubator served the same purpose.

    To stimte the growth of ability within the Online Hub professionals.

    For the outsiders, the career path of the Online Hub started in the agency, through which they could be agency workers. They would be then tasked with menial jobs like manning the shops and service points, clearing the ce, or even cooking at the staff canteens.

    The next step of the career would be Customer Service. People working in this line of job would be employed directly by the Online Hub and work at the fronts operated by the Hub itself. Between theints management, tours, and guides all the way to taking care of the top earners of the Hub, an immense variety of jobs could be found there.

    The next step would be the manager. Most of the workers believed that by working hard and long enough in Customer Service, they could someday ascend to that point. But only managers and people of higher ranks knew that there was a single step that separated the crowd of Servicemen from the true nobility of the organization.

    And it was the very Incubator that Peter was currently heading to.

    "We have arrived," Kira said just before the lift stopped. Deep in his thoughts, Peter shook his head to wake himself up. "Thanks for the head''-up," he thanked as the doors to the lift opened up.

    Right now, they were at the lowest level of the Incubator part of the Hub, right above the topmost level of the area open to all the customers. But after taking as much as a single step outside the lift, one could see how starkly different this ce was from the rest of the building.

    There wasn''t any sign of luxury in there. The entire ce wasposed of cubicles stacked as much as threeyers up. Inside the cubicle, there was only a space for the interactive board, a small table for food and drinks, and a seat for the sap.

    The sap in this meaning referred to people called saplings by all the managers of the online Hub. Those saplings were sourced from the brightest and best workers of the customer service... Only to be put through several years-long training.

    Those people who excelled at guiding people, solving their problems, or overseeing top yers would be, in a sense, demoted. Once they would enter the topmost floor of the Incubator, they would be constantly tasked with solving various kinds of problems.

    After every session of training, they would be put to a short rest, only to start another day from a series of lectures nailing down every mistake they did the day prior. With that part finished, the sap would return to the testing part and repeat the process over and over again.

    There was no given day when a Sap would be given a chance to graduate and actually enter the ranks of managers. What was even worse, there were only two other ways to leave the Incubator.

    First was the most obvious one. It was also the path that the great majority of Saps would choose, overwhelmed by the amount of work and learning necessary to advance. People like them would receive a permanent ban to ever take any job at any other Online Hub.

    Then came the most desired route. By reaching the lowest floor of the online Hub, they could be rehired on demand by one of the already existing managers. Only the absolute cream of the top from many different Incubatorsbined could ever hope to be managers themselves.

    "Sir Peter?" the receptionists sitting at his desk raised his eyes, only to explode up and salute when he realized who just came to his ce of work. "It''s an honor and a pleasure to see you in good health," the man couldn''t stop himself from licking Peter''s ass a little before actually moving on to the actual topic. "How many people do you need today, sir?"

    "Give me forty of the technical orientation," Peter requested without even stopping at the man''s desk. "Send them all to the coding bureau," Peter said before turning around and leaving for the lift.

    "Where are we going now?" Kira asked with a wide smile. ''It''s rare to see Peter so fired up!'' she thought, enjoying the moment to its fullest.

    "You are going to the coding bureau," Peter said, looking at the girl. "Organize those saps and make them crunch the numbers," he ordered before shaking his head. "Do I need to tell you that I''m only interested in a proper report for now?" he asked.

    "Oh,e on," Kiraughed out loud. "Do I look that naive?" she asked, shaking her head. "Cream of the top. Forced in a demonic regime of constant learning, all to end up falsifying the reports for the convenience of a high manager," she summed up the current situation. "To think that''s what would be of the scheme of hiring several thousand more people than you actually need!"

 Chapter 95: Inner deals

    Chapter 95: Inner deals

    "Just what the hell is that girl?" Jason muttered with his eyes glued to a massive screen taking up most of the wall space in his office. Besides the ss barrier that separated him from the rest of the bureau, twenty of his subordinates continued to scan every line of the massive code in search for the problematic part.

    "This is either some kind of genius hacker or someone wired himself to the system directly." Jason continued his mutters, scanning the wall-full of code for the thousandth time for today.

    The numbers simply didn''t make any sense. The iteration of the code that created such a bustle in the department followed everyst protocol included in the code. And on this part, there wasn''t a single problem, ruling out the possibility of some third-rate programmist trying to topple the dominance of Online Hub.

    The problem was hidden somewhere deeper. One of the tens of thousands of numbers shing in Jason''s eyes was the seed of the error. The problem was, no one was able to figure out just which number that was.

    ''Huh?'' Jason shrugged when he caught some movement with the corner of his eye. At first, he thought that someone dared to as much as stretch, losing the insanely limited amount of time they had to fix the issue. But just as he was about to open the inte andsh at the cker through the loudspeaker, his face froze. ''Kira? The hell is she doing in here?'' he asked himself, standing up from his chair and moving towards the doors.

    Shhh.

    The gentle noise of the servomotors driving the ss door away announced Jason''s presence to Kira as well.

    "Manager Jason," she nodded her head while keeping a small, shrewd smile on her lips.

    "Conservator Kira, it''s a pleasure," Jason lowered his head. The girl''s title was special, just as was her function. While in theory, she was on the same level of authority as Jason and any other manager, in reality, her influence was on par with Peter, the high manager of the entire Hub.

    But the job that the girl fulfilled was easily capable of freezing the blood in the veins of everyone who knew the truth about it. While Investigators were responsible for discovering the problems and dealing with them before they became big, she was the one who would be called once a problem became serious.

    While an investigator in the title, she was, in fact, a force that kept all the loose ends of the organization in the palm of her hand.

    "Let''s drop the pleasantries," Kira proposed, stepping ahead and making her way inside Jason''s private office. While this ce was supposed to be off-limits to anyone but Peter himself, the girl didn''t seem to be troubled by that fact at all. "I came to inform you that you will soon receive forty saps under your care," Kira said as if she just came to talk about the weather rather than to triple Jason''s manpower.

    "Excuse me... what?" Jason asked, stunned by the sudden announcement. But before long, his face straightened up as a realization dawned upon him. "Right, the report time," he said before casting a quick look at the people obediently wasting their eyes away while staring at the screens. "But to be fair, I''m not sure if forty people will be enough," he said, trying to calcte the chances of finding the error with their increased numbers.

    "I think you misunderstood the problem here," Kira shook her head slowly as if she looked at some kind of naive child. "I''m here to make sure you understand what your job is," she said, looking at Jason with her eyes squinted.

    "To fix the bug, right?" Jason stated, pretty sure about the answer. But as Kira continued to stare at him with a wide, dangerous grin, even he could realize that that wasn''t likely to be the case. "Right?" this time, Jason asked rather than stating his opinion.

    "Whether you fix it or not, I don''t give a damn," the girl said without any reservations. "Tomorrow is the report day. If we fail to get rid of this bug, they will likely sacrifice Peter," Kira said, revealing this seemingly vital piece of information. "While I don''t think you care about him in the slightest, I went through the process of high-manager swap already," the girl stated, lowering her head. Her smile also disappeared from her lips for the first time since she entered the room. "You don''t want to experience it. It''s manughter," she said, averting her eyes.

    "Do you want me to fake the report then?" Jason asked, putting the matter directly on the table. "You know, I''m bad at all that scheming and plotting you need to do to reach for the higher ranks," he said, shaking his head to show just how powerless he felt. "I joined the hub just because I love coding, not because I care about all your inner politics," he added before raising his eyes and looking at Kira.

    "In other words, if we need you to risk your position, we need to throw you a bone as well," Kira summed up the situation. A wide smile returned to her face, this time looking for more genuine than the one she wore previously. "What would you say about a direct assistant, then?" Kira asked, moving her eyes to the ceiling.

    "As if that would ever happen," Jason scoffed. "Those are for top yers only. I won''t believe you could even run short of the yers you need to rein under your influence so waste those girls like that," Jasonughed, aware of how insanely big of favor it would be.

    "Come on, I thought you would be more enthusiastic about this idea, like the virgin you are," Kira replied, not holding her words back even by an inch. The corners of her lips twitched a little. "A girl that''s obedient, perfectly capable of all the house chores, enthusiastic in bed... Isn''t that what all virgins dream off?" Kira smiled. But then, instead of continuing the debate, she turned her eyes to the side.

    Past the ss panels, the two of them could see a massive group of people swarming at the doors of the bureau.

    "It seems that our time has run out," Kira said, standing up from her seat. "Whether it''s possible or not is up to me. If you want to cast away your virginity before you turn into a wizard, you are better off just making sure that this bug will never make it to the official report," she said before leaving the ce altogether.

 Chapter 96: Back on the surface

    Chapter 96: Back on the surface

    **At the same time**

    "How are we holding?" Kris asked, leaning over the set of monitors hastily rigged in the tunnel of Tom''s making. Even though he held the highest rank in the ce, he didn''t bother to act haughty for no reason at all.

    "So far, so good," a youth sitting by the monitor replied. He did so without even a single stop in his furious tapping on the keyboard. "It seems that they have yet to locate the leak, but they already know that something is wrong," the young man exined before tapping into his keyboard a few more times and invoking apletely new screen to the biggest of his monitors.

    "Look at those two sets of numbers," the youth said, pointing his finger at the monitor. "The ones above are how the connection usually gets reported and updated. Those below are the ones produced by our connection," he said, turning silent after he did so.

    Kris wasn''t an informatic nor someone with any real expertise in the topic. While he licked a bit of the topic back in his early days, ever since he joined the military nearly three decades ago, he had no time to polish and update his knowledge.

    But theck of IT background didn''t stop him from noticing a strange pattern in both of the numerical sets.

    "It''s like the entire thing is moved by four brackets," Kris muttered before looking at the youth. "Can we do something about it?" he asked.

    "Sir, as much as I would love to help, this isn''t a barrier. I can''t just brute-force it," the youth replied with an anxious look in his eyes. "The problem is, the protocol constantly changes the registration token of the yer. All the protocols are written into the hardware itself. And because we skipped quite a bit of it when wiring into their system..." the youth cut his sentence short. There was no need to finish it in order to pass the information he had on mind.

    "We would have to get into that ce and mess with the cables again, I presume," Kris said, raising from his leaned position. "How long do we have before the error stacks up? Or rather, is there any risk of that happening?" he asked.

    "As surprising as it is, I think this error can actually stack up," the youth said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Realizing this took me several hours, but it seems that their protocols..." the youth turned silent, swallowing his saliva.

    "Speak," Kris ordered in a calm tone. There was no reason to shout at the young man for having his reservations. ''No one wants to be the bearer of the bad news,'' Kris smiled to his thoughts, recalling how even his dearest friend would make the same face back in their early days in the military. ''Fuck, I''m getting nostalgic by thinking about him,'' Kris thought, moving his attention back to the topic at hand.

    "Their protocols work as if they were from the previous age," the young man said, turning around on his chair and cupping his hands together. He rested his head over his hands for a moment before raising his eyes at Cleo''s father. "Sir, I think that''s the reason why we can''t crack their system. It''s too outdated for our machines to break it," he exined, still shaking his head in disbelief.

    "That''s not all that surprising," Kris said with a smile. "Back in the days, the military would use the oldest technology that could still be made to work. The older your equipment was, the lesser chances were of it either malfunctioning or falling prey to the online attacks," Kris exined before shaking his head. "Well, keep up the good work. Make sure to call me if something happens," Kris said as he patted the young man''s back before turning around.

    The road from the temporary operation center back to the surface was pretty annoying. With how long it took to move from the cave underneath the dome back to the farm made it pretty hard for anyone to take any breaks. Outside of few more essential officers, Kris was the only one capable of just having a walk outside to smoke a cigarette.

    "I wonder how they are doing down there," Kris muttered, thinking about the kids that went down to the dungeon. ''If they made it to the meeting point, they should be alright. I guess I need to be as confident in that little brat as I am in my own kids," Kris thought, recalling the sight of his daughter happily jumping into the capsule, without the slightest care for the danger that this operation could potentially bring.

    "Father?" Marvin asked when he noticed his father climbing up thedder hatch out of the tunnel. "Something happened?" he asked with a worried look on his face.

    "So far, not yet," Kris replied, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and stuffing one of them into his mouth.

    "I thought you quit smoking," Marvinmented on the side, with his eyes already back on the tablet on hisp.

    "Getting scolded by a man on a wheelchair? My own son at that?" Kris muttered. As he walked by Marvin''s ce, he ''identally'' mmed the back of his elbow into the kid''s head.

    "Wah?!" Marvin twitched. "What was that for?" he asked, slightly angered by the unjustified violence.

    "Never doubt your parents, son," Kris replied in a voice full of pathos. He then walked out to the backyard of the farm before lighting up the cigarette in his mouth.

    For a single moment, Kris could rx. For a mere second, the world turned tranquil. As the smoke entered his lungs, Kris managed to calm himself down and clear his mind.

    And as he returned the smoke back to the world around him, all the peace broke into pieces.

    "Boss! Bad news!" one of the younger members of the family rushed out and shouted all the way from the corridor inside the farm.

    "I''ming," Kris shouted back before releasing a deep sigh and throwing his still fresh cigarette on the ground. As he moved back inside, he made sure to close the doors behind him. "What''s wrong?"

    "Boss, the system kicked Cleo out!"

 Chapter 97: Almost there

    Chapter 97: Almost there

    **Ten minutes earlier**

    "Come on, we are so close!" udia desperately smashed her fists into the hordes of monsters of endless variety... As far as the monsters were varied within the dungeon itself, that is.

    Between war goblins, demonic hellhounds, and ogre lieutenants, Tom preferred thetter. Both hoblins and hellhounds always came in great numbers. On the other hand, ogres always acted more individually, limiting their numbers for the sake of greater strenght.

    Yet, that was the case on the former floors.

    Right now, Tom faced an endless horde of monsters of all types. The spiders, gnolls, some kind of meaty abominations... Tom had no time to think between striking the strong opponents down and making sure neither of the girls had too much fight to handle.

    "Just one more floor!" Tom encouraged the group. No matter how endless the horde was, they could fight it off. The difference in strenght was just too unreal.

    "Ah," Tom sighed, pulling the spear out of a massive ogre''s chest. Next, he leisurely summoned a magic spear in his left hand. With more weapons than he needed at hand, Tom threw his spares towards the near spider, kobold, and golem.

    "Get off," he shouted, kicking away two goblins that attempted to strike his leg. ''Those rascals,'' he thought kindly, turning their faces into a bloody mess.

    A strange rtionship formed between Tom and his enemies. Even though they were just monsters created by the dungeon, in the moment of life and death, Tom could connect with them. For a moment, a random cyclops would appear like a brother in arms, allowing Tom to truly embrace it. Embrace it as he sank his spear in its heart.

    Suffice to say, Tom managed to remain on the life side, while his opponents quickly sumbed to the other possible end of the moment.

    "I can see the end of them!" Cleo shouted from a position way ahead.

    ''Even with rtively low level and as a mere avatar, she still can hold her own at the forefront,'' Tom thought, catching sight of the girl.

    Her unique skill set allowed her to blend into the background. Thanks to years of constant training in real life, she could easily sit behind the enemy lines, cullings its numbers in the process.

    "Finally!" udia shouted in joy before rushing forward. Thanks to Tom''s direct way of feeding her mana, she long surpassed her previous limits.

    ''If I recall it correctly, she learned how to add attributes to her smashes,'' Tom thought, bringing back one of the recent memories.

    With the abundance of the grade four stones, the two of them managed to raise their levels at an insane rate. As if that wasn''t enough, Tom''s spear turned out to be a far better piece of junk than anyone dared to expect.

    Tom''s spear was the main conductor behind most of his skills. He could hold his own barehanded, but that still severly limited his potential.

    Thanks to his ability to produce the magic spears, Tom never had to fear fighting weaponless. Yet, that didn''t cover the gap between the quality of a magic-created weapon and a proper, physical one.

    ''Unless I was drastically wrong, this spear nearly doubles the amount of the energy we get from the stones,'' Tom kicked away yet another swarm of goblins before covering himself with the mes of the Everze skill.

    ''Now that I think about it, I can now use most of my skills in a small area around me,'' Tom realized as he cast his nce at the spear. For a moment, it felt as if just holding this mysterious weapon didn''t greatly boost his ability to feel the crux of the magic.

    ''It doesn''t feel like learning at all,'' Tom thought, gazing at his marvelous weapon. ''It''s more like...'' For a moment, the young man sought the proper word yet ended unable to describe it. This wisdom about the essence of magic casually flowed into his brain.

    Thankfully, it was a slow, gradual process. ''If not for that, I could get pretty confused on the go,'' Tom thought before shaking his head.

    ''No, I don''t have time for that,'' he realized, closing his eyes for a second. As if taking a breath to gather the air in his lungs, Tom gathered his strenght.

    Then, just by rxing his muscles, he managed to invoke his fireball spell.

    For now, he could only replicate the feeling of the basic one. Casting the proper fireball still required him to hold his spear.

    Tom took off his everze. The vibration of the magic that it caused made it harder for him to hold his focus.

    "Release," Tom muttered, allowing the aura that he was bloated on to flow through the intent in this word.

    All at once, Tom''s surroundings exploded. A fireball on its own and without attribute at that wouldn''t amount to much. Yet, when replicated in thousands and aimed in every direction?

    A shockwave of fire exploded outwards. Incinerating swaths of enemies on its way, the spell instantly sucked away most of Tom''s mana. It was a simple and cheap skill to invoke. Yet once again, done in thousands, it could empty Tom''s entire reserve in a split of a second.

    ''Break,'' Tom thought. By the time he managed to react and break the spell, he was already drained beyond his limits. By processing all the information necessary to aim every single fireball as to not hit the girls, Tom could barely see right now.

    His vision went nk as if losing all the contrast.

    This weird nauseasted only for a short moment. Before Tom could as much as twitch, Cleo already rushed to him. The moment his body was about to fall to the ground, Cleo caught him and pressed a grade four stone against Tom''s spear.

    "Than..." Tom attempted to thank the girl when it happened.

    It didn''t feel like the normal breakthroughs he had so far. Rather than noticing a surge in his powers, Tom discovered a whole new realm of magic altogether.

    A whole new realm of magic, currently overflowing with familiar-looking, greenish aura.

    ''It''s the spider''s...'' Tom thought before his new sense exploded under the flood of all the energy that Tom previously absorbed.

    "Tom, what..." Cleo asked in a panic. She could recognize the symptoms of something going terribly wrong. And she already went through one moment of extreme worry.

    But Cleo never got to finish her sentence. Tom''s sense broke under the overwhelming might of the overflowing energy. Without anywhere else to go, this enormous pool of mana exploded outwards, killing Cleo''s avatar on the spot.

 Chapter 98: Insides of the mission

    Chapter 98: Insides of the mission

    "Cleo?" Krist asked. His body twitched lightly. "What happened?" The man''s looks sharpened.

    Marvin in the lobby raised his eyes at the messenger.

    "Sir, I''m not really sure, just got the call from the bottom," Tom''s ''cousin'' passed the phone to Cleo''s father.

    "Speak," Krismanded.

    "The girl is okay," Mathew spoke to the phone. As one from the older generation, he served both with Krist and Tom''s father back in the war. And with Krist on the surface, he held the front in the tunnels. "It seems little Tom is growing faster than anticipated," Mathew added in his low, raspy voice.

    "Need help?" Kris asked, getting straight to the point. ''From the feel of the situation, I guess she woke up rather abruptly,'' the man thought for a second. With Mathew''s assurance, he didn''t need to worry about his daughter.

    Rather than that, he could pull his full attention to solving the situation.

    All at once, the world around Kris shrunk. Their entire farm became just a point on a three-dimensional map that surrounded his consciousness. in the corner of the room, the outline of the city appeared.

    "We are all right. The error will remain in their system for a while," Mathew abruptly changed the topic, moving on to the problematic parts. "Nephew ims it should flush out within an hour or so," Kris''s friend added in his calm voice.

    "I will be there in a minute," Krist said, getting on the move. He ended the call and turned his face to Marvin.

    The young man was sitting in the nearby room in his wheelchair. It was a part of his mission. Despite his wounds, he was a living bait once the first and soft approach of their enemy would reach the farm. And now, he was staring daggers at his father.

    "She will be okay," Kris said, releasing a deep sigh.

    "I heard so," Marvin said, softening his re. "Still, it''s better to hear it directly," he added after a moment, only to shake his head and lower his gaze back at his tool.

    "How is it going?" Kris asked, heading towards the basement.

    "We got scouts all the way into the hills," Marvin replied, touching his tablet with a finger and snapping it towards a nearby TV.

    Tom''s farm looked shabby on the outside. What''s more, everything visible from the outside kept the quality and rudimentary looks of the building walls. But inside, in the rooms that had no direct line of sight outside, the furnishing was modern and stylish.

    A ck ne suddenly appeared on the wall. Thanks to its borderless design, it perfectly imitated a part of the massive wardrobe. Even if someone were to attempt to open it, it would work as a shelf perfectly fine.

    "Unless they somehowe from underground without alerting our wires, we will know at least fifteen minutes in advance," Marvin said as the ck screen turned into a live bird''s-eye view of the entire region.

    The microdrones that Tom used to prate the insides of the Dome at first now came useful as a horde of invisible eyes.

    "Make it five," Kris said, squinting his eyes. "Never expect the enemy to act the way you think they will," he lectured his son. "It tunnels your vision. Did you forget about how strong Tom managed to be?" Kris waved his phone.

    Ever since the three of the youths entered the dungeon, they somehow could make contact with Cleo. Rather than using some sort of weird tool, Tom''s family simply tapped into the Online Hub''s system.

    Rather thanmunicate directly, they managed to utilize the functionality ofmunicates to establish a rudimentary connection between the two parties.

    For the first part of the mission, the surface only had limited knowledge of how the mission went. In the end, Cleo was the only one connected, and she was separated from the other two.

    Ultimately, ten hours into the mission, all three of the youths came into contact. Since then, while the throughput was severely limited, two parts of the group could effectively pass some information.

    "On the bad side, having Cleo return has its positives," Kris muttered to himself. "We will finally be able to get a full picture of the situation," he added, ncing over at his son.

    "But that means cutting our link," Marvin replied without raising his eyes from the stuff he was overseeing. "Right, we got some intel from the market," he added after a second, moving his eyes on his father. "They say there is a chance of something big happening in the Hub," he said.

    "Coincidence?" Kris sharply raised his sight at his son. "Wait, they shouldn''t be able to locate the bug yet..." Kris suddenly smiled. "Now that I think about it, it was actually the nigh time for it to happen?" he said, moving his eyes towards thedder hatch in the basement.

    "If we get a few more hours to clean the logs and mechanical interference, we just might be able to get away with it," Marvin smiled lightly.

    Ever since the mission began, the situation was so tense that one could cut it with a knife. Everyone entered their most focused mindset, putting the years of training and experience into motion.

    ''Sweat hard, bleed little,'' Marvin thought, recalling the maxim of their family. Sourced from some general from the ages past, a man who introduced the idea of increasing people''s ability to decrease their casualties.

    And from the looks of things, they were close to achieving a wless victory in that regard.

    "I''m not going to hold you any longer. Just make sure to keep tabs on the mainline," Marvin added after a moment, tapping himself on the shoulder. A small pin was attached to his shirt there. With a simple microphone and antenna, it could only connect to a nearby wireless transmitter.

    Said transmitter would then pass by a capable all the way to their center of operation in the tunnel, securing an old-type but still working military line ofmunication.

    "Be on the tip of your toes," Krist said, waving his hand as he headed off for the tunnel. "You don''t know what they might throw at us," he added before turning around and descending into the hidden passage.

 Chapter 99: Toms mere moment

    Chapter 99: Tom''s mere moment

    *At the same time*

    "What the fuck just happened?" udia asked, watching how Cleo''s lifeless avatar fell into Tom''s arms.

    "I killed her avatar," Tom said nkly, still having trouble processing what happened. Because what others could see was nowhere asplicated as what he went through.

    In a single instant, when this strange, different kind of magical power overflowed his senses, Tom experienced a lot of stuff at once.

    For a mere fraction of a second, he could sense the magic flowing inside Cleo''s body.

    It only happened because he both reached a higher level and touched Cleo''s avatar at the same time. Tom couldn''t stop his mana from leaking out. But now that he could use it, there was nothing stopping him from attempting to absorb it.

    All at once, he pushed his inner energy to its limits. Using the sense that he just discovered by instinct alone, he furiously sucked the mana inside.

    Not a single drop of energy managed to get outside.

    Tom survived this moment only thanks to his already mana-ustomed flesh. For anyone else, this process would be akin to happily sitting down on an electric chair.

    ''Ultimately, all kinds of energy are all about force,'' Tom thought, recalling the few lessons of physics he could still remember.

    In the world outside the dungeon, energy meant an ability to cause change. ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom thought, twitching in ce. ''The dungeon nor the magic breaks that rule.'' With that conclusion in mind, Tom didn''t stop.

    Rather, the opposite. He sucked on the energy even faster.

    ''With everything that''s happening to me, I can hardly call myself human anymore,'' Tom suddenly realized. His twitching stopped as his body rxed. His strenght... It grew beyond anything he could imagine previously. Not just from the current situation but all the stones he consumed already.

    Tom no longer had problems withcking strenght. He now had to learn how to properly utilize it.

    ''And for someone in my position,'' Tom thought, steeling his determination as he continued to suffer through the endless expanse of this single instant.

    He could feel his very muscles ripping apart under the pressure as more and more energy continued to overflow them. His bodes went through something that can only be called growth pain... But intensified to an unbearable scale.

    His body went through a tremendous change once again.

    ''Done,'' Tom thought, as soon as thest bit of energy safely returned to his body.

    ''Just like expected,'' Tom thought, still hung up in the single instant. All this energy that exploded outwards came from him. And since he was once capable of holding it inside him, he obviously had to be able to rein it back in.

    And then was when Tom made a mistake. Overjoyed with the prospect of solving another crisis, he suddenly noticed something in the magic of Cleo''s avatar.

    Just like before, it seemed as if his brain jumped on a whole different level of ability. Despite not knowing how and why he could feel the struggle between the finest IT technicians of the Online Hub and a single young adult from Tom''s family.

    And he could see the hunter closing in on the prey.

    He didn''t even see the numbers. He didn''t know what the hunt was all about. But he could see that the defenses put up by one of his cousins were quickly crumbling against the manpower the online hub threw at him.

    This realization made him lose his focus. Still, in the same frozen frame, Tom allowed a small detail to slip away from his attention.

    That as he continued to suck more and more energy, the pulling force over his own mana grew stronger as well. And now that he reined all his mana back in, the bnce of the momentum would be broken.

    Tom''s still perception crashed apart when a powerful rebound shook his body, the true perpetrator behind Cleo''s avatar''s sudden demise.

    ''That was close,'' Tom thought, allowing the lifeless doll to fall into his hands. Even though he allowed himself a momentarypse of attention, Tom made use of it as soon as the rebound appeared. ''With that, we should be safe,'' he thought, slowly calming down.

    In a moment of desperation, Tom managed to grasp the power of the rebound. While he couldn''t fully control it, by some fluke of fortune, he managed to direct this energy to burn a patch between the hunter and the prey inside Cleo''s avatar.

    Killing her wasn''t Tom''s intention. He just didn''t even bother to take it as a part of the equation when destroying everything that could lead the enemy on the right trail.

    "Why did you do that for?" udia asked. Sparks of hostility appeared in her eyes for the first time since the two knew each other. Not the kind of hostility an angry person would showcase.

    The kind that reached deep to the human''s core, to the lowest level of disgust that a moral person can feel towards an immoral act.

    "They almost managed to track us," Tom replied, keeping his face as straight as he could. "I know how it looks and sounds, but it was necessary. Don''t forget," Tom pointed his finger up, "that it''s only her avatar, not her real self," Tom said.

    ''Thank God I had him exin to me how the connection works,'' Tom thought, recalling the few moments he spent with that informatical genius of his cousin.

    If not for his exnations, Tom would be too scared to attack Cleo''s connection so directly.

    If he were sure that this was the only option to avoid discovery while just as sure as someone was actually looking for them, Tom wouldn''t hesitate.

    But the current situation wasn''t about certainties. It was all about just a feeling that Tom had.

    And even after everything he went through in the dungeon, he still couldn''t fully trust something so random.

    "Either way," Tom said, gently cing Cleo''s avatar on the ground. "Are we good to go?" he asked, looking towards the boss room gate already visible at the end of the corridor. "Once we beat the boss, we will finally get our hands on grade five stones!"

 Chapter 100: Argument

    Chapter 100: Argument

    "I still don''t think killing Cleo''s avatar was a good choice," udia muttered as soon as the boss of the floor fell to the ground.

    While it was initially a massive, if not a giant, orc, right now, it looked more like a hedgehog. During the fight itself, it didn''t pose much danger to the current Tom and udia. Rather than an opponent, it turned into a test subject for how many spears could Tom conjure before they would start disappearing.

    "Are you for real?" Tom muttered, rolling his eyes. "How long are you gonna sit on this topic?" he asked, already annoyed with this matter.

    "For as long as I get my answers!" udia replied, furiously kicking the one spot of the dead ogre that was free from Tom''s spears. "Ever since that happened, you kept dropping the topic, refusing to exin yourself!" she protested, pointing her finger right in Tom''s face. "I don''t think you appreciate the seriousness of this question!" udia added, squinting her eyes.

    "No," Tom turned his face around. For the first time since they entered the dungeon, it waspletely still, as if all the emotions had disappeared from it. "I think it''s you who does not appreciate the seriousness of the situation," he said, taking a step closer towards the girl.

    "So how about you exin it to me instead of trying to be some vague sh mystic shit of an arsehole?" udia bounced the ball back, unable to hold her doubts any longer. "I kept silent when you kept that act for the entire raid, went along with your ideas, did my best to help out," she listed out one by one, her hands tightening into fists with each word she said. "But myck of protests doesn''t mean I''m stupid. I simply hold all my thoughts close to my heart, but now I need some answers!" udia shouted, stomping her feet on the ground.

    "What a naive and oblivious kid you are," Tom uttered, shaking his head in disappointment. ''So far, I was taking her silence for a good note.'' He shook his head once again. ''Who would''ve thought that it was a mistake?'' he asked himself before focusing on the girl once again.

    "Sure, have some, then," Tom said, getting one step closer to the girl. "Right now, we are daring to infringe on the security of the single greatest contributor to the world''s economy. All on our own." Tom looked at the girl without any emotions on his face.

    While he got ready to reveal the entirety of the truth to the girl, he could hardly feel anything but sympathy for her.

    "Just in case you still believe, we can just apologize and get everything straight, with what we saw here... If anyone ever learns that we entered the dungeon in the normal way, we are dead. Our families are dead. Everyone who recognizes us is dead. Just for good measure," Tom said, grabbing the handle of his real spear and pulling it out of the corpse with one swing.

    "Yeah, yeah, you are going to go far with that defeatist way of thinking," udia scoffed, turning her face to the side. It was a clear act of defying everything that Tom said so far as if she didn''t want to hear it at all.

    "Let me exin it bit by bit, then," Tom said, crossing his hands on his chest. "Online Hub is an organization that provides roughly thirty percent of all the wealth currently circting in the world''s economy," Tom said. Then, he spat the facts he learned just a few days before the mission started.

    "From what my family discovered, their entire business is reliant on the exploitation of the dungeons to which they have a monopoly," he added, raising his hands and swinging them around. "Just because we were here with our physical bodies makes us a threat to the story they use to cover the reality. And tell me," Tom turned to the girl. "What do you think an organization that rich and influential does to those who endanger their entire business model?" he asked, sending udia a look worthy of some naive kid.

    "If they are that big and powerful, why pick a fight with them in the first ce, then?" udia attempted to counter Tom''s words. "You guys are at fault for picking a fight with someone you can''t defeat, not me for denouncing it!" she added, mming her fists into the dungeon''s wall.

    "In a sense, you are right," Tom shrugged his hands. "If you were to just return, go straight to the Hub and report everything you saw here so far, you would have a nice chance of surviving," he revealed a potential way out for the girl without even a moment of hesitation. "Oh, by good chances, I mean about a single percent. I doubt anyone high enough to make decisions concerning your case would bother with the risk of keeping you alive," Tom added, turning his sight away from the girl as if he no longer cared about her whatsoever.

    "As if I would do something like that!" udia screamed, torn between her fury, confusion, and wish to understand.

    "Then your only and best shot at surviving is doing exactly what I did when I instantly attempted to kill Cleo''s avatar," Tom turned his face around, looking at the girl. His face was tense, still without even a shred of emotion on it. "They can only harm us if they discover what we did. While they are sure to already know about the interference, for now, I made it look like the bug in their system simply autodestructed," Tom exined, turning his face back towards the stone-bearing wall of the room.

    For the first time since he started raiding the dungeons seriously, for the first time since he graduated, he saw the grade five stones.

    There were only a few of them stuck in the wall, mixed with all the other grade four brimming in the wall.

    ''I can''t wait to see how much they will help me improve,'' Tom thought, taking a step closer towards the wall.

    "Wait, what bug? Did we bug their system?" udia asked, still trying to figure out the puzzle of the situation she was in.

    "We?" Tom asked, looking at udia with a weird expression. "Do you consider yourself a part of us right now? Or are you going to go back to whining at reality once it gets morefortable to you?" he asked, squinting his eyes.

    "Get off my head already," udia requested, sending a hateful stare back at Tom. Then, as if she managed to calm herself down on the spot, her sight mellowed as she lowered her head. "I''m sorry, I shouldn''t act like that. But, for now, can you answer my question?" she requested politely, holding her emotions back.

    "We didn''t bug their system at all," Tom replied, following the girl''s request. He kept going towards the wall, enchanted by the sight of the stones. "In a sense, we are the bugs. But to be more precise, Cleo was connected to the system directly, rather than going through the normal procedure," Tom said, bringing up something that udia saw with her own two eyes.

    "So she was the bug?" udia asked, unwilling to ept theplicated exnations. ''With how everything seems to be even deeper than I was worried about, it''s better to make sure I understand the situation correctly," she thought, raising her big eyes at Tom''s back.

    "In a sense, yes," Tom nodded his head, finally reaching the stone-bearing wall. He raised his hand to the wall before sending a quick burst of energy towards it.

    As if suddenly oversaturated with the amount of magic it could hold, the wall started to crumble, popping its stones out like ripe fruits.

    "What do you mean by that?" udia moved towards Tom, casting only a nce at the stones before moving her eyes back at her partner. For her, the value of information right now was far greater than the value of those stones.

    "I''m not a technician, so I can''t give you the details, but Cleo was still connected to the system of the game while she was here, with us," Tom said, putting his spear towards the nearest grade five stone he could see. Without even uttering the name of his spell, he absorbed all of its energy.

    Sadly, ever since the massive breakthrough that unlocked a whole new ne of magic energy for him, following breakthroughs wouldn''te as easily as before.

    "But from what I can tell, is that they managed to almost reach the crux of the problem that Cleo caused," Tom said after focusing on absorbing the mana for a short while. "By forcefully killing her avatar, I burned the source of the problem, meaning it should fix itself before the Online Hub will be able to figure out what really happened," Tom said, moving on towards another grade five stone.

    "Or rather, that''s what I can only hope for," he added after a moment before striking the stone with the tip of his spear.

 Chapter 101: Real reason for the error

    Chapter 101: Real reason for the error

    **A few hourster**

    "This is impossible," Jason muttered as he went through the logs. In theory, he shouldn''t be doing this at all. In theory, all the people that Peter brought from the Incubator should be more than enough to solve the problem.

    But they followed Peter''s decision, not the protocol or honesty.

    ''To think I would struggle with bootlickers even in this line of work,'' Jason thought, shaking his head as soon as he cast a nce at the mess beyond the ss panel that separated him from the rest of the room.

    Normally, the sea of cables,puters, and servers was Jason''s private domain. At its best capacity, it could house up to even fifty people withoutcking anyforts.

    ''Is that how developed nations felt during the first wave of the global migration?'' Jason thought, casting yet another scornful nce at the people swarming the desks.

    The original manpower of Jason''s department was limited to twenty people. They all knew each other, each other''s weaknesses and strengths, allowing them to form a great and coordinated team. Being the IT freaks they all were, even the social anxiety that by standard was ever-present in this group didn''t stop them from enjoying their work together.

    But now, it was all gone.

    "What is the meaning of this?" One of the newbies rose up in anger, smashing his hand into his desk. Or rather, a desk that Jason was responsible for sharing with him.

    "I didn''t spend myst three years in that damned Incubator to be now crunching those stupid numbers!" One of the ''refugees'' or rather the freshly injected manpower in the department protested.

    ''Well, it''s no wonder they are angry,'' Jason thought, leaving the problem to one of his coworkers. This was one of the few advantages of being a manager that he could find in his current situation. Thanks to this, he was now able to pretend he didn''t see or hear anything, focusing back on the task at hand.

    "It doesn''t look like a self-destruct at all," Jason muttered, scanning a wide array of numbers with his very own eyes.

    For an IT technician like him, going all down and personal with the numbers was a sign of respect. But there was nothing else he could do at this point.

    Whether it was just a fluke or an insanely well-written algorithm, the bug managed to terminate its presence right as they were about to single it out. Jason''s knee-written code proved more than sufficient for that task, especially when all the newbies shamelessly stole his code and modified it to their own desires, introducing a wide array of hunting bots that looked for the initial error.

    But what they found out instead was a massive chunk of data already fully corrupted. It looked as if some sort of overload went through the wires, frying just a few selected spots in the massive sea of servers that made up the Online''s Hub lifeblood.

    Singling out those corrupted regions and then trying to piece them together was what the newbies were doing currently.

    "It''s Kira. May Ie in?" A voice appeared in Jason''s inte. As he looked down at the cell mounted on a special slot near his mainputer, the middle-aged man could see the figure of the girl standing right at the doors.

    Whether or not she was putting her cleavage on a perfect disy of the camera on purpose or not has yet to be decided.

    "Come in," Jason pressed the button at his chair, releasing the maic look on the doors.

    Ever since the disaster at his department started, he didn''t want to invite anyone in that he didn''t have to. Sadly, Kira''s case was different, as she didn''t even need to ask his permission to enter in the first ce.

    "Huh, you got quite a mill here," the girl said as soon as she got past the ss doors. Dropping down her thin cloak, she unceremoniously sat down on Jason''s chair, forcing him to stand by one of the many shelves in the room like some kind of student about to be scolded.

    "I want to hear what you think this entire thing actually was," Kira said, gently smiling at Jason. At this moment, the middle-aged man couldn''t help but swallow a mouthful of saliva, as the memory of the reason why he allowed this mess to start in his kingdom in the first ce.

    "I don''t have any proofs, only insinuations," Jason shook his head, refusing to just feed this girl a set of prefabricated lies that Peter decided to be the solution to the problem without even knowing what the problem was.

    "That''s fine with me," Kira smiled once again, slightly revealing the whites of her teeth. Sitting with her legs crossed, in an extremely exposing outfit for a young woman like her, she should be the epitome of sexiness, one that, if filmed, would be the icon of filmography for the next several generations.

    But the strange, icy atmosphere that emanated from the girl killed all the hots that Jason could ever have for her.

    "I don''t think we had any bug, to begin with," Jason said outright, not bothering to hold his words back.

    This was the conclusion that he repeatedly arrived at in thest few hours. No matter how much he tried to figure out what kind of bug they were looking for or what its intended purpose was, nothing seemed to click. No possibility appeared to fit the pattern.

    "What do you mean by that?" Kira asked, squinting her eyes.

    The official version of the story that the freshmen in the department prepared was that a random bug appeared in the system due to some minor data corruption. In a sense, this was a pretty usible exnation, as the energy readings of the Vortex didn''t like to behave the way people expected them, making it quite easy for some bits to switch under its influence.

    This kind of problem was umon but normal. Back in the prenuclear era, when there still were people who believed that going nuclear was a bad idea, theputers had a rare chance to encounter this kind of bug when a random strand of radiation could change the energetical value representing a bit.

    This kind of unprovable and unexpected bug first came to the public attention when a gamer of the old generation achieved the impossible. In a speed run of a certain ssical game, his character made a jump that shouldn''t be possible.

    The same yer attempted to replicate the same move over and over again but never seeded at it. Only thetter study revealed that rather than an exploit, it was a bug of a nuclear nature.

    And this was exactly the kind of exnation that Peter opted to use for their current problem, despite being perfectly aware that it wasn''t the case at all.

    "If it wasn''t a bug, then what it was?" Kira asked, leaning her head to the side for a bit. She moved her left leg down, only to hang her right over it, effectively turning her cross-legged position around.

    "Outside interference," Jason muttered softly, lowering his eyes. Even though he was almost entirely sure that it was the case, theck of evidence for this theory made it hard to present it with confidence.

    "You mean that someone attempted to crack our system?" Kira asked. Her eyes showed signs of curiosity for the very first time since she entered the ce.

    "I think someone managed to wire themselves directly into the system," Jason corrected Kira''s understanding. In this single moment, some kind of strange courage entered his body.

    He walked forward and grabbed the edge of his own seat.

    "Huh?" Are you..." Kira squinted her eyes, "making a move on... what?" she attempted to ask, only to wait powerlessly as Jason pushed the seat away, getting his ess to the keyboard back.

    "Don''t be silly," Jason chuckled. "I do not want to eat my own balls," he added, furiously typing on the keyboard.

    As his fingers did their magic, the windows on the main monitor in the room started to shuffle before a massive array of numbers appeared on it.

    "Look here," Jason brought his finger towards the screen, stopping it just a tiny bit away from the screen. For an IT technician like him, smearing the screen goodness with his filthy fingers was akin to sacrilege. "Those numbers are perfectly normal," he said, moving his finger to the side. "But when you look at them here, barely a minuteter, they no longer make a single shred of sense," he exined before turning around and taking a long look at the girl.

    "And how is that proof that someone connected directly to our system?" Kira asked, not showing any reaction to Jason''s exnation.

    "If it were some kind of bug, the data would get corrupted from one of the entry points, like... Or never mind," Jason said as he gave up on the idea of exining the detailed inner workings of the system. "In simple terms, it doesn''t make any sense for a bug to appear here first. If it was somehow uploaded to the servers, it would appear way quicker," Jason finished his exnations, sitting back on the edge of the desk.

    "Didn''t the data get corrupted when that bug killed itself?" Kira asked, proving that she knew at least this little about the situation.

    "Do you really think I''m so inept as to not keep the backups?" Jason asked before tapping at the frame of his monitor. "Those numbers got recorded in real-time. Sadly, that means I can''t ess anything that I didn''t check back then... But I don''t think it will be necessary," he said before looking at the girl with a strange look in his eyes. "The question now is, do you know who could connect directly to the Hub''s system and why?"

 Chapter 102: Last decade

    Chapter 102: Last decade

    **Two hourster**

    "Are you for real?" udia stood frozen in ce as soon as the two of them reached the new floor.

    "That''s worrying," Tom muttered, gripping the handle of his spear a bit harder.

    They just finished the next set of ten floors. Even with Cleo out of the game, Tom and udia alike grew at a rate allowing them to just burst through the monsters on their way.

    As if there was some upgrade of a deeper level to the stones, their levels continued to soar ever since they reached the seventy-first floor. And now, crossing the barrier between the eighty and eighty-first floor, a massive change urred.

    There was no dungeon at all around them. Instead of a maze of spiraling corridors, the two of them appeared in the boss room right after crossing through to the new floor.

    "At least it doesn''t look too strong," udia whispered while lowering herself a little. With her knees bent and hips lowered, she focused on the boss ahead.

    ''It kinda feels like a downgrade,'' Tom thought, rxing the muscles of his arm. He fought with a spear in his hand for long enough to realize that tensing his arm wasn''t the right way at all. ''I need to keep as rxed as possible,'' the young man thought, taking his first step towards the boss.

    It was a hobgoblin. One of a monarch grade, putting it pretty far on thedder.

    But ultimately, it was just a simple goblin. Compared to thendwhale of the previous floor, it didn''t appear to be a threat at all.

    "Well, let''s do..." Tom said, his eyes moving past the boss to the wall with the stones. Just like he expected, the back wall of the room glistered with the shine of the mana stones. But when he saw something he didn''t expect, Tom froze in the middle of his move.

    "Got your back," udia stepped forward, noticing the trouble. She didn''t ask what was going on. They were in the middle of the boss room, with the monarch hobgoblin already making its move. There was simply no time for questions.

    ''Well, whatever,'' Tom thought, brushing his shock aside. ''I will think about itter,'' he decided, pulling his eyes away from the shine on the wall. He could think how the heck they could see grade six stones so quickly, forter. "Let''s go!" he shouted, encouraging both himself and the girl.

    Tom bent his body forward as the effect of the haste kicked in. At this point in the dungeon, he didn''t hesitate to go all-in right away.

    ''Everze,'' Tom thought, bringing forth one of his most used spells. ''Thicken,'' he thought, adding attribute to the spell.

    Instead of spilling over from overhead, as usual, everze''s mes shrank, forming a thick, burning barrier. At the same time, he reached with his leading hand to the back, conjuring a magical spear in it.

    Despite holding his real weapon already, Tom created another magical one in the same hand before throwing both of them ahead. This lousy attack would almost certainly fail... If it was aimed at actually hurting the monster.

    The goblin reacted. Despite wearing nothing but a rag over its crotch, the tattoos that it had all over its skin brimmed with energy, forming an area with magic so thick around it that hardly any distance attack could affect the monster.

    ''So it''s not that weak at all,'' Tom thought, conjuring one more spear in his hand. Then, not discouraged by the previous failure at all, he threw his third spear forward.

    ''Energymancer,'' Tom thought. As much as he wanted to do it by himself rather than relying on the skill, he didn''t dare to lose any focus during a fight with a boss. ''As powerful as I am, if I die here, it''s all over,'' Tom thought, infusing his spear with a massive amount of energy.

    The goblin instantly turned its attention to the flying spear. Its tattoos exploded with light, nearly freezing the small area around it. Despite being just a goblin, this little, green creature was pretty powerful on its own.

    Tom''s attack failed. The dense mana that surrounded the goblin was too much for his spear to breakthrough. Thankfully, the head-on throw was never the way Tom intended to deal the monster with.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought. In an instant, he changed spots with the magical spear he threw earlier. From his previous position, udia appeared, lunging with her fists at the monster.

    The goblin put its focus on the new threat, failed to notice Tom''s new position. ''Recall,'' he thought, weakening the link between the skill and the pool of his mana as much as he could.

    And just Tom intended, his real spear didn''t disappear. It didn''t just appear in his hand. Jerked up by his mana, it instantly elerated to an insane pace in an attempt to return to Tom''s hand.

    The goblin monarch turned its head around just in time to see the mighty spear fly towards him.

    Its eyes turned red. If the mana around it was dense before, then it thickened to the point Tom didn''t expect to be possible.

    ''Perfect,'' he thought, releasing the seal on his mana at the same time as he invoked the swap again.

    Tom dove right in the pool of the goblin''s mana. He conjured a magical spear in his head, instantly pushing it towards the goblin ahead. ''Recall,'' Tom thought, once again reining all the mana that he could.

    The goblin managed to stop Tom''s lousy attack with ease. Locked in the pool of the area fully controlled by the monster, Tom''s hand moved forward at a snail''s rate.

    But the real spear that Tom swapped ces with a moment earlier continued as usual, uninterrupted by the goblin''s defenses.

    "Bye, bye," Tom muttered, watching how his weapon plunged deeply into the goblin''s body. Prating through the monster, the spear almost struck Tom himself. ''Opportunity,'' he thought, reaching forward and grabbing the bloody de of the spear.

    For the most part, the monsters in the dungeon rarely had arge amount of mana on their own. Most of them would seemingly use it to evolve their physical forms, making for formidable opponents on their own. But among those, there were some that made proper use of mana.

    Just like the spider from before or the goblin now, they had a massive pool of energy in themselves, making for great prey for someone with a skill capable of absorbing said energy!

    ''With so many grade six stones, energy won''t be a problem toe by with,'' Tom thought, raising his eyes as his body filled with a refreshing wave of energy.

    Before the boss of the room would die, Tom was set on drying its pool of mana.

    Not because hecked it or was desperate to grow stronger. But because this floor had a bad vibe to it.

    ''No corridors at all? Stones grade higher than they should be?'' Tom asked himself, looking at the loot still embedded in the wall. ''Normally, there should be exclusively grade five stones here,'' he thought, calcting everything in his head.

    For the floors from the first to the tenth, only grade one stones would appear. For the floors eleven to twenty, grade two stones would gradually make their appearance. From the twenty-first, all the way to the thirtieth floor, only grade two stones would appear.

    By extending this pattern to the floor eighty-first they were on right now, they should see grade five stones exclusively...

    But there was no denying it.

    ''That wall has like, how many? Twenty stones?'' Tom thought, squinting his eyes.

    This haul was roughly twice as big as they could get, even on the hardest floors!

    ''With that, we might reach level ny if lucky,'' Tom thought, pretty happy with the idea.

    Ever since their leveling rush started, he couldn''t help but enjoy the moments when he would get new skills.

    ''Judging by all my skills, I should be above level eighty by now,'' Tom thought, looking down at his hand. The mana in the goblin was quickly running out, making him nce towards the haul on the wall. "Still, this is pretty weird," Tom said, looking at the girl behind him.

    "And I feel pretty weird about not contributing at all," udia replied, sulking as she averted her eyes.

    "Can you focus for a little?" Tom asked, pulling his spear out of the goblin''s dry body. ''Recall,'' he thought at the same moment as he let the weapon go.

    Losing its footing, all the blood covering the spear fell to the ground while the weapon itself reappeared all clean in Tom''s hand. ''Outside of the battle usage, this has to be the most convenient ability of all that I have,'' Tom thought, putting a small smile on his face.

    "Why are you so anxious?" udia asked, shrugging her shoulders. "We killed the boss, didn''t we?" she asked, stretching her hands up.

    "Don''t you think our situation is weird?" Tom asked, shaking his head. "If I''m not wrong, we are likely reaching the end of the dungeon," he said, moving his eyes at the gate leading to the lower floor. "While it''s only a loose rumor, I heard that we are on thest decade now," he added, tensing up a little.

    "Last decade?" udia asked. "Last ten years? Do we have some kind of curse now or what?" she asked, puzzled by Tom''s cryptguage.

    "Nah," Tom shook his head in response. "Last decade refers to thest ten floors of the dungeons," he said, moving his eyes at the girl''s face. "In other words, we have only nine more floors to go!"

 Chapter 103: Anxiety in the car

    Chapter 103: Anxiety in the car

    **Same time - Important note. Unless there is a marker of time passing (something I started using rather recently, like 2 hourster and so on), it means the time flows as per usual. But the events of different PoV''s don''t happen simultaneously (unless imed otherwise) but rather one by one. This note doesn''t increase the chapter cost but was important enough for me to put it here**

    "Where are you dragging me?" Jason asked, resisting the surprisingly strong pull of Kira''s hand. "Let me go!" He protested loudly, attracting the eyes of the people surrounding them.

    But they were in the middle of the ground floor of the online Hub. One could walk there naked, and no one would bat an eye. So much ridiculous and logicless stuff happened in this ce that having two people argue didn''t offer any entertainment factor for people to care.

    "Just shut up ande with me," Kira muttered, blushing as she dragged Jason behind her through the ce. For someone who used to hide in the staff-only areas of the Hub, she was weirdly sensitive to the few looks that people threw at them.

    "It would be easier if you just told me where we are going," Jason said, his lips twisted in an unhappy grimace. "It''s not like I can deny an order from my superior anyway," he added with slight scorn as his eyes clouded.

    For a slight moment, Jason felt the chill just by recalling the atmosphere in his workce. His refugee turned into a bustling stove of corruption and ipetence.

    ''I can''t deny their skills,'' Jason thought. His mind was full of the focused faces of the recently hired staff. ''But they don''t have the soul for this,'' he thought, shaking his head.

    The main reason why Kira was currently dragging him away was because of the news that he brought to her. As an Investigator, someone a notch above everyone else locally, her means of work varied greatly from Jason''s nine to five basis.

    "You see, we recently learned about this huge, low-key family that lives nearby," Kira said, revealing what should be a top secret of the ce. "While it would be hard to officially request their help, I''m in a position to ask privately," the girl smiled, even further increasing the beauty that brimmed from her.

    "What do you need me for, then?" Jason asked, finally rxing a tiny bit. "This isn''t a part of my job!" he attempted to protest.

    "And that''s why I''m dragging you along," Kira said as they moved out of the building. "I don''t understand any bit of that whacky, IT stuff," she admitted, raising her hand.

    By the time they reached the side of the street, a car had already waited with its back door open.

    "Just let me reiterate," Jason said, trying to sort his thoughts. "You want me to go to some kind of influential family that went under your radar. Then, I''m supposed to ask them if they know something about a major attack on the Online Hub," Jason spelled his words slowly.

    Kira listened to the man''s attempt with a straight face. Then, once he was done, she nodded. "That''s exactly right," she smiled, revealing her pearl-like teeth.

    "You guys really love to drive your ves to the bone," Jason said, releasing a deep sigh. "Well, whatever," he added after a moment, lowering his head and turning silent.

    Their journey to the distant ranch didn''t take long. Despite how unpopted the area was, it still had the dense area of the roadswork, a relic from thest world war.

    "It''s like the war never came here," Jason muttered, looking through the window. "So beautiful," he added after a moment, observing everyst detail of the dense woonds surrounding them.

    In a sense, this ce was one of thest remaining gardens of humanity. Simple and wild, it stood in a stark difference to the concrete puzzles of the human cities.

    "They are watching us," Kira said, keeping her head low as she nced outside.

    "Huh?" Jason sharply raised his head at the girl, only to feel a cold shiver run down his spine a momentter. ''I shouldn''t have done that,'' he thought, scolding himself on the spot.

    "Can you read the frequencies?" Kira asked, casually turning her face towards the abducted employee. "I''m not sure if that''s just a feeling," she added after a moment, averting her eyes.

    "Sure," Jason muttered softly. He then pulled out a hand-sized device. By grabbing its two, thicker ends, he pulled it to the sides, revealing a thin, see-through foil. Jason fully stretched the ends, eliminating all the bruises and dents on the screen. He then pulled out a pair of thick sses from his breast pocket and dragged them on his face.

    "Give me a short moment," Jason requested as he started to furiously tap his fingers into the see-through panel device. His sses at first lit up a little, only to dim back down in a mere second.

    ''That should be a quick check,'' Jason thought, setting up a simple searching program. By fanning out the nearby frequencies, he couldn''t tap into the potential connection, but he could easily detect the interference. A sign that some kind of low-keymunication was actually going on.

    ''And done,'' he thought, pushing his finger down to input the instructions.

    But then his finger stopped in the air.

    ''This ce looks like a damned pre-war sanctuary,'' Jason raised his sses and took a look at the outside. With a nce at the front desk of the car, he confirmed that they still had a few minutes before reaching their destination. ''What if...'' he thought, allowing his sses to fall right back on his nose.

    Then he deleted all themands he prepared a second ago.

    "Can you hurry up?" Kira asked. A slight nervousness appeared for the first time in her voice.

    ''To think that an investigator like her could stress out like that,'' Jason thought, rolling his eyes. But this observation only ascertained the man in his sudden enlightenment.

    ''What if I check the low-dimension frequencies instead?'' Jason thought, opening up one of the few archaic apps he still had on his personalputing device.

    For a moment, the middle-aged technician stared at the screens hidden in his eyes. The words and numbers shing at his eyes made it slightly hard for the man to move even an inch.

    "We are seriously running out of time," Kira said, nervously moving around in her seat.

    "You won''t like what I see," Jason said in a surprisingly calm voice. He took his sses down and looked at the girl. "They blocked me out," he said, folding his tools and hiding them back in his pockets.

    "What does that mean?" Kira asked, tensing up a little. For the first time, Jason saw her as the young female, barely in the middle of her twenties, faced with the cold reality that she wasn''t even aware of.

    "There are tools to block ess to the low-dimension frequencies," he said, looking at the girl. "We are against pros."

 Chapter 104: The last floor

    Chapter 104: Thest floor

    "Hey," udia started up the conversation after she made sure that yet another boss of the floor was dead. Her testing methods were anti-borate, limited to a strong kick to its body. "Isn''t this all too easy?" she asked, looking at Tom as if hoping that he would have an answer to that question.

    "It''s not that those fights are easy," Tom shook his head as he approached the wall. "We are just growing too strong for this ce," he exined the situation, sending a sh of energy through the stone wall.

    The stones embedded in it popped out like ripe coconuts. As they fell to the floor, a slightly annoying yet mentally pleasant sound invaded the ears of the duo.

    "I guess that''s it," udia muttered, resting her weight on one of Tom''s spears littered all over the boss room. "Still, isn''t it getting too boring?" she asked, raising up and allowing Tom to recall one of his magic spears back.

    "I''m much happier with boring stuff than with a dangerous one, though," Tom replied, smirking under his nose.

    Right now, the duo was quick on its way to reaching the end of the dungeon. Defeating four more bosses in a single, rushing wake, they now stood a the gate to the next floor.

    After the past five consecutive boss fights, Tom and udia earned ny-two grade six stones. A single one of them held more energy than all the stones of grade four and below that they both have consumed to this point. Excluding the grade five stones, a single grade six was better than everything they looted so far.

    "Still, I would like for the fights to be a bit more challenging," udia said as she moved closer to her partner. "Still, we are not going to stop, do we?" she asked with a small grin forming on her lips.

    "And why would we do that?" Tom copied the girl''s expression. "It''s not our problem that we grow stronger faster than the bosses," he said, catching the first of the stones with the tip of his spear.

    Right now, Tom grew so powerful and confident in his powers that he didn''t really need to use his real weapon. Obviously, it had its bonuses making it more efficient to suck the stones dry with it.

    But Tom only would do that to the first stone of every batch. Once he would be done, he would half-conjure a set of magic, each of which grew out of his body and extended towards another stone.

    In this way, Tom could consume the stones at a way greater rate. Given how he shared half of the mana with the girl, the raging inflow of mana barely tickled his skin anymore.

    "Huh?" Just as the stones were about to crumble, Tom suddenly shrugged. Despite how little hope he had for his current growth, a familiar sensation of his inner self expanding shook his body. ''Did I just reach the hundredth level?'' Tom asked himself, counting his skills once again just to make sure.

    "Judging from your expression, I owe you ten bucks," udia grinned. "Congrattions," she added with a wide smile.

    "Thanks," Tom replied, shaking his head. For a moment, he was confused by all the instincts suddenly opening up in his mind, indicating the birth of a new skill.

    But for some reason, even once he regained the rity of his thoughts, Tom still failed to figure out what this new skill was.

    ''Some kind of passive?'' Tom asked himself, biting on his lips to help himself focus.

    "Well, that''s it for me," udia said, breaking Tom''s line of thought. As he moved his eyes to the floor, he saw all of the crystals already in pieces,pletely drained out of the energy.

    "That seems to be the case," Tom muttered before shaking his head yet another time. "Well, you will be able to catch up on the further floors," he said, raising his eyes towards the gate at the end of the boss room. "So there is no need for you to be anxious about it," he smiled gently, recalling all of his remaining spears back.

    "Shall we go, then?" udia asked with a small smile.

    "Sure," Tom said, sending the girl a wink as he moved towards the gate.

    The moment of transporting between the floors was just as weird now as it was when they first experienced it. For a moment, one would be approaching the gate as usual. Then, the world around them would slow down as if the air turned into some kind of dense liquid. Next, before they could process it actually happening, they would regain their freedom of movement as the surrounding would change instantly to the next floor.

    This was the case on the first floor and on the eighty-sixth one as well.

    "Huh?" Tom sighed in surprise as he appeared on the next floor. Not because it was different from the others. In fact, just like thest five floors, it consisted of a simple arena-like boss room.

    The only thing missing... was the boss.

    "Where is it?" udia asked, sharply looking around. Despite not even a hint of the monster''s aura being present in the room, the two of them turned even more alert than usual.

    Yet, no matter how hard they looked, no boss monster of the floor appeared.

    "Wait, where are the stones?" udia pointed her hand out at the back wall of the room.

    "There are none," Tom muttered the response, as a sudden thought shed in his mind. ''The gate...'' he thought, turning his face around...

    And it was in the exact same ce as before.

    In fact, the gate to the higher and lower floors was the only thing present in the room!

    "Shall we go deeper?" Tom thought, biting his lips. ''I don''t like it,'' he thought but killed this inner sense of his a momentter. ''Well, it''s not like we ultimately have any choice,'' he thought, reluctantly making his first step forward.

    "Do we even have any choice?" udia asked, grabbing Tom''s hand and pulling him ahead.

    In moments like those, she would be the one more likely to show more initiative. Whether it was courage or recklessness, though, Tom couldn''t decide.

    But as the two of them got deeper and deeper, the situation turned weird. Because the empty floor wasn''t a singrity. All the way to the nieth floor, all they saw were empty walls and the gates separating the floors.

    "Do you think some kind of mad monster awaits us at the bottom?" udia asked, grabbing Tom''s hand. For a moment, her natural delicacy came out.

    ''Thinking back, I''m still not confident in defeating that girl from before,'' Tom thought, recalling the meeting at the bottom of the other dungeon. ''Still, I don''t think I could judge her strenght with how weak I was back then,'' he added in his thoughts before tightening his hold over udia''s hand. "Let''s go deeper," Tom said, pushing ahead.

    Once again, the two of them went through the experience of passing between floors. Once again, the scenery changed around them.

    But this time, there wasn''t just a single boss in the room.

    As Tom entered thest floor of the dungeon, he didn''t see the final boss waiting for him.

    Instead, the same girl that he met all the way back in the other dungeon was currently battling four others of her kind, not paying attention to the new guests to her floor at all!

 Chapter 105: Find me on the outside

    Chapter 105: Find me on the outside

    "Is that all you''ve got?!" The girl screamed, swinging a massive two-handed sword in her tiny hands. Between her petite figure and this massive clunk of metal, a strange form of gap moe appeared.

    ''I didn''t even see her use a weapon at that time,'' Tom thought, recalling the only other memory he had with this specific boss. ''Still,'' he thought, ''is she the boss of every dungeon there is?'' he asked the air.

    This kind of idea was hard to believe. For a single monster to appear simultaneously in all sorts of dungeons? Unless it was just a copy of the one original, there was no way for a single monster to be at different ces at the same time.

    ''That is, unless,'' Tom froze even further, stunned by the sudden notion. ''Unless all the dungeons ultimately converge in one point,'' he thought, unable to even tighten his grasp over his spear.

    "Futile!" One of the girl''s opponents swung its massive mace at the girl. Unable to escape from the range of this long weapon, the boss of thest floor took the hit directly on her sword instead. "You will have to try way harder than that," she screamed joyously, pushing the mallet away with a wide swing of her sword.

    "You are all open!" a man-like monster appeared behind the girl, shing his fencing sword from overhead.

    "Are you an idiot?" The girl turned her side towards the man, making herself as thin of a target as possible while shielding her exposed side with the body of her sword. "Who does announce his attack like that?!" she asked with ridicule, allowing the man''s rapier to slide down her weapon before kicking him right in where no man should be ever hurt.

    "You bitch!" the man screamed through his teeth, squeezing his legs together mid-air before crashing into the floor of the room. "Huh?" the man shrugged when he raised his eyes, only to notice Tom and udia, both standing with troubled expressions on their faces.

    "I''m sorry to disturb," Tom engaged, slightly lowering his head. "You guys can duke it out between each other. We will wait at the lower floor," the young man said, pulling back without even lifting his head.

    "Wait," the female shouted as a wide grin formed on her face. "You guys go. I will punish you for thatter," she said, ncing at her opponent from a single moment before.

    Tom saw the girl fight with three opponents so far, still leaving a single boss'' spot missing.

    And sure enough, before anyone could leave, a fourth figure appeared.

    This time, it wasn''t some kind of war-hammer-wearing barbarian or a fancy swordsman. This time, it was a tall girl, with her entire body covered in nothing but a dozen of thinyers of fancy cloth.

    On its own, the cloth was so thin that it almost could float on the gentle winds. Yet, with all those levelsbined, the real figure of thest of the bosses remained fully hidden, as if she was trying to look like some kind of pure maiden.

    ''The mana around her,'' Tom thought, watching the girl in the white muslin. ''It''s on a whole different level,'' he thought. Then, his eyes moved on the rowdy loli that was owning everyone on the battlefield just a short moment ago.

    "I''m sorry, but we are not open yet," the girl said, putting a wildly grotesque smile on her face. "I will have to ask our guests..." the girl continued.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shook when another wave of understanding flushed through his entire self. This sudden realization was something that his real self could never randomly notice. It was something that the vast improvements to the capabilities of his brain made possible. ''Isn''t she kind of...'' Tom thought, before finally daring to voice his idea internally, ''lifeless?''

    No matter how one looked at the small girl, she looked every bit alive. Her skin was flushed from the exercise she had just a second ago. The details went as far as showing drops of sweat trickling on her mostly exposed skin.

    Yet, there was this uncanny valley feeling, as if everything about this monster was artificial.

    "Do you recognize me?" Tom asked before the girl would have a chance to finish her own sentence.

    "Huh?" the girl shrugged, surprised by the question. For a moment, she stared nkly at Tom, only to lean forward a bit a momentter.

    "TO LEAVE!" the girl shouted,unching herself forward. She ignored the unexpected interruption from before, swinging her sword right at Tom''s head instead.

    "Stop," a perfectly girlish voice appeared in the room. Tom, startled, turned his head towards its source, only to see the girl in whites from before standing in the opening of the gate.

    She brought her hand forward in the familiar, stopping gesture. The exposed skin of her fingers only proved how fair yet frail she was, allowing Tom to formte a guess as to what her weird dress was for.

    "Why did you ask her that?" the girl in the whites didn''t waste any time. She asked and then simply stood in ce, lowering her hand beforepletely freezing.

    "I met her at the bottom floor of a different dungeon," Tom said openly. ''I know revealing information like that is a grave mistake,'' he thought, clenching his teeth. ''But I''m just too curious to finally understand what the hell is going on with this ce, with my father, with my memories...'' Tom shrugged for the third time in this short span of a time.

    Because right now, he realized that ever since he drowned himself in the experience of exping and growing, he managed to forget all about his actual motivation of exploring the dungeon.

    Only now, at the very bottom of it, this awareness of the ultimate goal has returned to him.

    "So you have reached the bottom of two different dungeons?" the girl asked. Even though neither Tom nor udia could see her face, the two of them could tell that a small smirk appeared on her lips. "Impressive. But would you mind telling me what happened thest time you were on the bottom floor?" the girl continued her questions.

    "I..." just as Tom was about to answer those questions too, the white maiden sharply turned her head to the side. Surprised, Tom attempted to follow the movements of her head with his eyes, but...

    ''There is nothing there,'' he thought, looking at what the girl directed her face. ''Just walls and floor. Oh, and ceiling too,'' the young man thought, puzzled by the strange behavior of the girl.

    Then, just as suddenly as she turned it away, the girl brought her face back to its previous position. Then, as if there was not enough surprises for today yet, she suddenly caught the sides of her muslin veil before throwing it up and behind.

    ''So beautiful,'' Tom thought, unable to stop himself from gawking at the girl''s exceptional beauty. Because she wasn''t just beautiful. She looked as if she herself was the definition of what beauty was!

    "Go and find me on the outside," the girl said, looking intently at Tom. "Hurry," she said. She brought her hand up as if in an attempt to enhance her plea...

    Then, her muslin veil fell back on her face. And once again, Tom got this weird, uncanny valley feeling. As if everything was right, but not really.

    As if once again, this girl was nothing but the same as the petite girl, still frozen in the single moment of time. Still unable to break free from the still frame she was in.

    And then, she could.

    The girl threw herself at Tom without as much as a second thought. She swung her sword rapidly, clearly aiming at depriving the young man of his thinking unit.

    ''Guard,'' a vibration shook Tom''s body as a familiar feeling of a skill activation on his own pushed him out of his momentary stun.

    ''Haste,'' Tom quickly invoked his most vital skill, already conjuring several magic spears in both of his hands. By the time the rebound momentum from the girl''s sword could die off, Tom had already scattered his spears all over the ce.

    He was ready to start swapping ces with them at any given notice. But he could for as long as udia remained rooted behind him.

    "Interesting." The girl took a moment to regain control over her weapon. But instead of attacking right away, she stood her ground, gracing Tom with a moment of relief as she sized him down. "You are truly interesting!"

    A powerful surge of mana entered the room, concentrating around the girl. In a single instant, from a purely physical opponent, she gathered an amount of energy that could easily rival Tom''s own mana pool.

    "I bet you have many questions, but those will have to wait," the girl said, kicking her sword up and bringing its tip towards Tom''s face. "And if you want some answers, you will have to work hard for them!" she screamed, before throwing herself at Tom again.

 Chapter 106: Anticlimatic fight

    Chapter 106: Anticlimatic fight

    The cuts of the girl bore the weight of her rank as thest boss of the dungeon. Every time she would swing her sword, she would cause a sharp gust of wind to cut through the room, leaving a small mark on the walls of this circr arena.

    ''That was close,'' Tom thought, swapping ces with one of the spears in the back. ''If I were to be a secondter,'' he thought, looking at the crater that was left where he stood previously.

    ''Is this sword really a sword, or some Warhammer shielded with illusion?" Tom thought, unable to believe his own eyes.

    He was pretty powerful all on his own. With all the levels he obtained, he could easily stand against an entire army of average humans. In fact, he approached the barrier between still being a human and reaching a point when even modern firearms wouldn''t be able to hurt him.

    For someone born and raised in the modern era of civilization without even a single hint of magic outside of how magical science could be at times, this was Tom''s distinction. The difference between being a human and an entity that was way too strong to be considered a human anymore.

    "Why are you running?" The girl shouted with a joyous expression on her face. She then brought her hand up, raising the massive sword on her shoulder.

    "Pff..." Tom made a mistake. He released a small chuckle. ''I know this is rude,'' he thought, covering his mouth with his hand. ''But it''s just too funny!'' Tom screamed in his mind, forcing his eyes away from the ridiculous picture.

    The girl''s sword was the biggest piece of personal weaponry that Tom had ever seen with his own eyes. Yet, the girl wasn''t a giant herself. The disparity between hercking height and overall petite body build and the ridiculously big clunk of metal on her shoulder was just too impossible for Tom to ignore.

    "What are youughing at?!" The girl screamed, throwing herself with yet another attack of hers. There was absolutely no finesse to her attacks as if she believed that she was strong enough to ovee any adversary with just her raw power alone.

    ''Well,'' Tom thought, lowering his eyes at the many craters thest floor boss left in her wake. ''I guess she would be the first to actually have the strenght to back her behavior,'' Tom thought. ''I guess the reality is a lot less forgiving than all those novels I read back in the days,'' the young man made a notice in his mind, swapping his position once again.

    The mana costs of swapping ces with his spears was so minuscule that he didn''t even need to worry about it. Sadly, that wasn''t the case with his magical spears.

    On their own, once created, Tom''s magical weapons acted just like any other physical object. Without outside interference, once Tom would distance himself far enough or if the spear were to sustain critical damage, recovering its magic would be no longer possible. In most the cases like that, the mana used to create the spear would be simply lost.

    ''At this rate, I will onlyst a few more moments,'' Tom thought, tightening his teeth as he continued to dance all over the ce.

    "I asked you!" The girl shouted, cleaving the sidewall of the floor in half. For a mere moment, Tom could gaze into the true form of the dungeon rather than the skin that it covered its insides with. For a moment, he could stare right into a nearly endless pool of mana.

    Mana so thick that it turned material. Yet, even in its material form, it was still too thick for thews of magicless physic to handle them.

    For a mere moment, before the dungeon regenerated, everything stopped. The small watch on Tom''s wrist came to a stop as a terribly powerful wave of gravity broke into the room.

    If the situation were tost even a microsecond longer, everyone inside the room would turn into a t pancake of matter hotter than the surface of the sun.

    Thankfully, the speed at which the dungeon recovered from having a rift opened up in one of its walls appeared to be a factor of the same magic that Tom observed.

    In other words, just like that thick mana could break thews of physic in a single instant, it also continued to push the dungeon''s regenerative abilities.

    "What was that?" Tom muttered under his nose, directing his eyes to where the dungeon''s boss left her mark a moment earlier.

    "What''s wrong with you!" The girl continued her screams, ignoring Tom''s baffled state. "First you are running and running, and now you are standing and standing!" the boss''s body shook in ce as if she broke down in weeps. "This isn''t fun anymore!" she screamed through her now visible tears, proving that the situation wasn''t as simple as Tom expected it to be... just ten minutes ago.

    ''I knew this would be strange ever since the first boss went missing,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes back on the girl while raising his hand towards where the wall was ruptured a moment earlier. "I will y with you," the young man said, gripping the handle of his sword a little tighter as a wave of distant fear shook his flesh. "But tell me, what was that force?" Tom asked.

    "Huh?" The girl raised her tiny head before putting her thumb into her mouth. For a moment, she remained motionless, with both of her eyes directed somewhere in the upper-left corner. "What power?" she asked obediently, looking at Top with a face full of expectation and curiosity.

    "You broke through the dungeon''s wall," Tom said, shaking his extended hand. "If I could detect that overwhelming might that seeped inside, then you surely noticed it as well," Tom said as his face darkened. ''Is she going to y the dumb now?'' he asked himself while constantly trying to analyze the situation as far ahead as he could.

    "I did?!" The girl jumped in surprise, forcibly turning her head towards the wall behind her. "Huh?" She added after a moment, turning her eyes back at Tom as her expression darkened. "There isn''t even the slightest smudge on it! You tricked me!" she shouted, clearly not weing the situation she found herself in.

    "Say what?" Tom could only respond in this alogical manner to this illogical situation. "Are you trying to pretend right now? Because you are not going to fool me into believing, I just oversaw this!" Tom shouted back at the girl, calling for his true spear for the very first time since the start of this fight.

    "Whatever," the girl shrugged her shoulders before violently kicking at the edge of one of the craters she made earlier. Crumbling apart, a sizeable piece of floor separated from the rest, allowing the girl to kick it up and then kick it udia''s way.

    During the entire battle, Tom''s partner wasgging pretty badly. It wasn''t that she was weak on her own, but her fighting style didn''t suit the rapid exchanges that happened between Tom and the boss. In fact, if not for Tom''s ability to move around the ce instantaneously, even he would have a lot of trouble avoiding one of two attacks of this monstrous loli.

    And that was with all the bonuses from having his level already in three digits and with his haste spell on!

    "What the hell are you..." the girl started, raising her sword to bash it down from overhead into the floor.

    Back before the fight started for real, the girl somehow infused herself with a vast amount of energy. Yet, all the way to this point, she didn''t make any use of it at all or did it in a way that Tom failed to notice.

    But this next attack wasn''t such a case.

    ''I will die,'' Tom thought, looking at the dense mana circting around the sharp edge of the girl''s weapon. As Tom found out already, one could thicken his own mana almost indefinitely at the cost of increasing hardship of keeping the spell in such a withheld state. In exchange, once one would release this thickened mana, it would, for some reason, follow the natural physicalws of pressure, adding the momentum of its explosive spread to the power of the spell itself.

    And right now, Tom felt like a convict with his neck already on the cutting block. In this single moment, as he stared at the descending sword, he couldn''t find a single way out. Not a single way to dodge the attack.

    Because the area that would be annihted once the energy of the sword would be set free.

    But the attack never came. The girl simply froze in ce, with her massive sword perfectly in line with her perfectly t body.

    And then, her eyes dimmed out before turningpletely dark.

    And then the boss of the room simply fell lifelessly to the ground.

 Chapter 107: Talks at Toms farm

    Chapter 107: Talks at Tom''s farm

    "Hello!" Kira said with a wide smile on her face. "I''m sorry for troubling you, but I came here to have a little talk," she said as soon as the doors to the farm opened up.

    "If you are looking for the owner of this ce, then he is away right now," a young man in the wheelchair replied. He was sitting in the living room across the corridor. A small remote controller in his hand gave away how he managed to open the doors from so far away.

    "Ah, I hoped to meet one of the people that work with him. It doesn''t necessarily need to be Tom himself," Kira smiled, trying to verbally push her way ahead.

    ''Isn''t this the guy?'' Kira thought, recalling all the operations involving this particr family. ''Wait, what if he knows?'' the girl asked herself, unable to hold back a shrug from shaking her body. ''No, I wasn''t in the operations, even if they know, it has nothing to do with me personally,'' she thought.

    "Well, you cane in at the very least," Marvin said, quickly pushing a number of fingers on his remote.

    A buzzing noise entered Kira''s ears. Looking up to where the noise came from, she noticed several illegal armaments.

    "Aren''t autonomic turrets forbidden?" Kira asked, lowering her eyes from the slightly glistering barrels of the roof-mounted guns. ''I would only show how scared I am if I were to ignore it,'' she thought, silently swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ''In that case,'' Kira made her decision, looking at the man in the chair with one of her eyebrows raised and her lips twisted in a small, ironic smile.

    "First off, those are not the auto-turrets that the convention banned from use," Marvin replied with a kind, open smile. "They are based on that ingenious weapon, but they are not auto-turrets ording to the convention itself," he added before shrugging his shoulders. "You know, an invalid like has to secure some means of protecting himself, doesn''t he?" Marvin asked, sending the visitor an eye.

    "That''s an undeniable truth," Kira smiled before grabbing Jason''s hand and pushing forward.

    "Hello," Jason said in a weak voice, unable to hold back his terror from his face.

    In the end, he was just an IT freak. Not some all-rounder spy to be able to casually walk into the house owned by a group that even Online Hub couldn''t really investigate!

    ''If they can monitor theirnds like this...'' Jason thought, looking up as stealthy as he could. Even though he wasn''t all that well-versed in the arms of the past war, he could easily confirm the man''s statement.

    After all, no kind of scrap-made auto-turrets could handle the burden of shooting the bullets marked with a dark "high-explosive" name!

    "Looking at your face, I can tell," Marvin suddenly said before his guests could even enter the living room. "It''s you guys who attempted to mess us with our security, aren''t you?" he asked.

    "Don''t even twitch," Kira whispered, cing her hand at Jason''s chest to hold him in ce.

    "Huh?" the informatic only shrugged, too frozen in his fear to realize what she intended to do.

    "Now, are you going to exin what an Investigator wants with my family?" Marvin asked, fully rxed, proving that Kira''s identity was no secret from him.

    "How did you know?" Kira asked, frozen in ce. ''They got us on a frying pan,'' she internally clicked her tongue, forcefully stopping her eyes from ncing over in the direction where the bullets woulde out if anything went wrong.

    "Did you really forget?" Marvin asked, leaning his head over his shoulder. He then turned his automated wheelchair around, showing a ck shotgun attached to the previously hidden side. "Before my cousin came back from the city, I was supposed to y the celebrity at your hub," the young man smiled before moving his head out of the gun. Then, he waved it away, slightly away from the corridor Kira and Jason were in.

    "Oh," Kira said as a group of fully armed men appeared in the living room. Given how they came from the area hidden behind the corridor''s wall, it was clear that they fulfilled the duty of human security in the ce. "Thatpletely fell out of my head," she admitted before squinting her eyes. "Still, that doesn''t exin how you know my position," she said, crossing her arms on her chest. "All you could learn from observing the insides of the Hub would be that I''m either a secretary or Peter''s whore," Kira said bluntly.

    "Oh,e on," Marvin said, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace. "You don''t really think I will reveal the sources of my information, do you?" he asked, looking at the girl as if she was some kind of naive child.

    "That thought never crossed my mind," Kira instantly replied, quickly blinking with her eyes. "But before we talk any further, are we allowed to enter the room?" she asked before sending a meaningful nce towards the security personnel that now moved to the back of the room.

    "Did I ever retract my permission?" Marvin asked, taking a dumbfounded look on his face.

    Kira didn''t reply this time. She only sent the man a look while leaning her head to the side in a pretty cute way.

    "Right, right,e in," Marvin ended up inviting the girl again. "Since you are here, I believe you should be aware that people like me need to be... really secure," he said, pointing his hand at one of the many chairs in the room.

    "Woah," Jason said as soon as he could get a proper look at the insides of the farmhouse. "This ce is so nice," he said, genuinely awed with the tasteful interior of the ce.

    "Thank you," Marvin smiled, more than able to ept praise in a proper manner. "But let''s cut the small talk," he said, moving his eyes over to the girl. "What brings you here?" He asked before chuckling lightly. "I assume you didn''te here to share some juicy rumors from the Hub. For that, Peter woulde here personally instead of sending hisckeys," Marvin said in a taunting voice while keeping his eyes on the girl.

    "Come on, calling me ackey?" Kira asked. "Aren''t I too cute for that?" she added another question before theatrically looking all over her body. "Boobs check, slim waist check, long lest check," she listed all her attributes before looking over her back. "And my ass is to kill for," she added with a bright smile before looking back at Marvin. "Who would waste such a sexy body on a simpleckey?" she asked, sending the young man a cute smile.

    "Is this how you do intend to gather the information you came here for?" Marvin asked, proving that he could bold as well.

    "That would make my job far easier than I expected," Kira shrugged her arms before finally sitting on one of the chairs before slowly crossing her legs. "So what, do we have the deal?" she asked while smiling sweetly.

    "Maybe if you came on me before the inci... I mean, ident," Marvin said, keeping his eyes on the holy garden that the girl most likely intentionally exposed to his view.

    "That''s a pity... But still, can I ask you some questions now?" Kira looked up at Marvin before sliding her leg off her knee and spreading them apart next. "I will make sure it will be worth your while," she said in a seductive tone before putting her forefinger on her lips. "Trust me, a wheelchair won''t be a problem for me," she added, lowering her face while still keeping eye contact.

    "Look," Marvin shook his head, easily pulling his eyes away from where the girl''s pants should be. In the end, even goingmando and showing herself like that wasn''t enough to put a dent in Marvin''s mood. "I know why you came here. I know what answers you seek. I''m also capable of answering your questions," Marvin said in quick session as his face tensed up.

    "Then..." Kira started, already standing up in excitement, ready to fulfill her end of the deal even right now, even with everyone else in the room watching.

    "I also know who''s behind this little ident of mine," Marving continued to list out the things he knew as his expression continued to darken. "But above all," he said, looking at the girl''s now shaken face. "I know that you can''t afford any of my questions," Marvin said decisively.

    "I don''t believe..." Kira started, only to purse her lips when a young female entered the ce as well. Her face was already dark as she sent a hateful look towards the investigator. "What my brother meant was that it would be the best for you to leave right now," she said, not bothering with acting cultured at all.

    "Am I going to leave here alive?" Kira asked, looking at Marvin''s face. Between the wounded man and his sister, it was the man that seemed to be easier to deal with.

    "Today?" Marvin asked. "Yes," he answered all on his own. "But keep in mind, today is a special case," he announced before suddenly standing up from his wheelchair and looking at the girl with squinted eyes. "But as my sister said, it will be best for you to leave, right now."

    For a moment, Kira stood in ce in silence. But then, she pulled the cloth of her skirt down before turning around and leaving. Before long, the sound of the doors mming and the engine reeving entered the room through the set of cameras that Marvin didn''t even bother to hide beforehand.

    "What''s wrong?" he asked, ncing over at Cleo.

    "We lost the signal of their tracker," she said.

 Chapter 108: Toms idea

    Chapter 108: Tom''s idea

    "That was strange," Tom said, warily looking at the lifeless body of the boss from afar. After climbing ny floors of the dungeon, he knew better than to approach a monster that appeared to be dead.

    "I''m not sure if you noticed," udia pointed her hand at the wall where the stones should be, "but there are no stones on this floor,'' she said.

    "Only two gates, huh?" Tom muttered. He scanned the entire floor with his eyes, but no matter how hard he tried, there was absolutely nothing of interest in there.

    "Should we just go through?" udia suggested while still casting wary looks at the lifeless boss of the floor.

    "I don''t think we have anything else to do," Tom said, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace. "But it also means we didn''t reach the bottom floor, doesn''t it?" he said, slowly circling around the curvature of the room. Even though they could ess the next gate and reach the following floor by going in a straight line, Tom wasn''t going to risk it to save a few seconds of his time.

    "Well, there is nothing we can do about it," udia shrugged her arms. "I guess we will be able to im the prize of learning that fact, won''t we?" she said, clearly trying to improve the mood.

    "I don''t want to kill your happiness, but we are not going to report it," Tom said, recalling half of the magic spears that he previously sprayed all over the room. As the magic used to create them returned to his body, Tom felt as if all the exhaustion from the recent fight left his body.

    "Huh?" udia shook in surprise. "Why?" she asked, leaning her head over her shoulder while invoking a puzzled expression on her face. "Do you even realize how much money we could get out of this?" she asked, visibly doubting Tom''s sanity.

    "There is no record of our avatars reaching thest floor," Tom said, moving towards the gate. "While I''m sure that every avatar is tracked to some degree, I have no idea how extensive this surveince is," Tom admitted to thepses in his knowledge, proving that he wasn''t arrogant enough to im that he knew everything. "As such, it is only rational to assume the worst-case scenario. Because if the Online Hub can tell everything that happens with the avatars in the dungeon..." the young man cut his words short, letting udia figure out how the events would y out on her own.

    "Dang, you might be right with that," the girl said, biting her lips. "I guess all we can do is to push forward, then?" udia asked, already following after Tom.

    "We could always turn back," Tom said, standing right at the edge of the influence of the gate. Just a single step more, and he would step through the border between two floors. "But aren''t you a little curious whatys further down?" he asked before lowering his eyes. ''Or what does the other side means?'' Tom asked himself, recalling the strange words the girl from before told him.

    Tom still had more questions about the dungeon that he found answers to. His recent hope of learning something after defeating the boss turned void when that powerful girl somehow stopped moving. With that, he could force her to fulfill her own end of the bargain.

    "Well, there is no time to waste," Tom said, patting his hand against the backpack he was carrying. Ever since they entered the dungeon, it continuously turned lighter and lighter as the single set of rations had to fulfill the intake needs of two people. "At the current rate, we are two meals away from running out of food," he said, making the judgment based on both the weight of the backpack and the vague memory of how much they ate so far.

    "If we were to rush, I think we should be able to return in four to five hours," udia said, rubbing her chin. "I think we can still afford to take a little peek," she added with a smile before grabbing Tom''s hand. "So, how will it be? Do we go?" she asked, gracing her partner with a lovely smile.

    "You already know how I will reply," Tom grinned lightly, tightening his grasp over the girl''s hand. And then, without any further ado, he took a step forward.

    ''That''s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,'' he thought as their bodies warped in the interspace before reappearing in yet another floor.

    But just as before, it was empty.

    With the wall decorated with the same grade of stones as before, both Tom and udia expected the boss of the floor toe out any moment... But no matter how long they waited, no enemy made its appearance.

    "Is this floor just like thest few ones?" Tom suggested, trying to figure out the strange situation they were in. While the entirety of this dungeon was one unknown variable, there were some rules that Tom learned about it ever since his time ying as an avatar.

    But as they reached the highest floors of the dungeon, those rules he thought to be absolute quickly proved to be nothing more but a false assumption.

    "Well, there is no point in waiting anymore," Tom said, lowering the tip of his spear. "Let''s get the stones and move on," he added as he approached the wall.

    Just like before, a single strain of his mana infused into the wall was just enough to force all of those stones out of the wall. As if some kind of magical maism were at y there, it seemed that even the slightest amount of mana could do the trick.

    "This is strange," udia said as she picked up the first of the stones. "Now that we are on the ny-first floor, shouldn''t we see stones of a higher grade?" she asked, turning her face towards Tom.

    "Why ask me?" the young man shrugged his arms in reply. "It''s not like I have an answer to every mystery this ce has to offer," he said, shaking his head.

    "Still, I believe you have some ideas as to how to exin our situation," udia insisted. She had known Tom for only a short while, but their rtionship was pretty intense. While it started as simple cooperation between the two yers of the Dungeons Online, now they were something far greater.

    Not because they fucked each other. In the current times, this kind ofmitment could hardly be called amitment in the first ce. In some jokes, people liked to im that giving a girl a bouquet of flowers was more binding than flushing her ass with one''s sperm, proving how the world has fallen into decadence in this regard.

    What bound Tom to udia and the girl back to her partner wasn''t their sexual rtionship but the fires of battle that forged their rtionship to be stronger.

    And at the same time, it allowed the two of them to learn the true face of the other without wasting several years to discover it in a more natural way.

    "If I were, to be honest, I do have one idea that could exin where we are right now," Tom said, averting his eyes to hide his reluctance to talk about this topic.

    "I know that you are worried that I will take that assumption too seriously," udia said with a lovely smile as she continued to push the stones towards Tom''s feet.

    For how many times did they do it already, Tom and udia could talk freely while feeding their power with even more mana. Even though it started as aplicated procedure requiring a lot of focus from both sides, right now, it was nothing but a chore that Tom couldplete even while half-asleep.

    "If my assumptions are correct, we are not on the ny-first floor right now," Tom said. Then, he absorbed one of the grade six stones of the floor before pushing the energy to the tip of his spear and moving it towards the girl. "Rather than that, I believe we are on the eighty-ninth floor," he added before pointing his hand at the stones. "That would exin the grade of the stones and theck of the boss," Tom said in order to justify his belief.

    "Doesn''t that assumption begs quite a massive question?" udia asked, caressing the tip of Tom''s spear with her fingers as she sucked in the energy amassed in there.

    "I think I know what you mean," Tom said as he once again recalled the words that this strange girl from before told him. "If we are really going down the dungeon right now..." Tom cut his words, unwilling to speak about such possibility out loud.

    "Then once we move up from the first floor, will the world still be the same one that we entered the dungeon from?" udia voiced the question out, not holding any of the reservations that stopped Tom from doing so.

 Chapter 109: Claudias training

    Chapter 109: udia''s training

    "Just like I thought," Tom said once they finally reached either the ny-fifth or eighty-fifth floor. And just like he guessed before, for the first time since the fight with that insanely overpowered girl, a boss monster of the floor appeared.

    "Do you want to take care of it?" udia asked, effortlessly punching away the attack of the boss.

    When they fought with the boss of the same level of strenght ten floors before, she still had some troubles with it. But now, after literally ten more floors worth of grade six mana stones, this boss was nothing but a small challenge for her.

    "I think you should get a little bit more experience fighting the stronger monsters," Tom said, taking a few steps to the back before resting himself against the wall. "Just shout if you need my help at any time," he added before conjuring several magic spears and throwing them all over the room.

    "Was it really necessary?" udia asked as she strolled towards the boss monster. This time, its appearance was pretty wild, iparable to anything that they saw on the previous floors. "It may look like some kind of eldritch horror, but it doesn''t appear to be all that strong," she said, kicking away a scythe-arm that reached for her throat.

    The monster itself was pretty hard to even describe. Higher than an average human by half, it had a surprisingly short torso. The majority of its real height came from the long limbs of it, all shaped in the form of a proper limb to half of its length and then turning into a deadly scythe towards the end of it. Yet, as if this wasn''t enough to make the faint-hearted piss themselves on the spot, it''s head...

    Its head looked like some kind of tube with rows of teeth moving around it as far as one could nce inside.

    "Just in case," Tom replied, watching how the girl quickly got used to the pattern of the boss attacks.

    The mostmon attack of the monster was a lunge, then transforming into a wild shing of its upper limbs. By ejecting itself at the target, the monster likely hoped to pin udia only to turn her into a meat paste with hundreds of quick and shallow shes. While its attacks were so quick that even Tom would have trouble with keeping up with them, there was one major w in its attacks that this monster didn''t appear to be aware of.

    "Break!" udia shouted, pushing her fist forward. She didn''t cross her rtively fragile flesh with the sharp scythes of the monster but used the ability that she gained all the way in the early floors. With her smash actually appearing roughly a meter away from her, the monster''s tempo broke apart, leaving it stumbling across the floor.

    "Are you done ying with it, now?" Tom asked as this exchange continued a few times. The monster would lunge at udia, only for her to smash it out of its trajectory. But instead of following up with a finisher, she would simply wait for it to regain its stability, only for the entire process to repeat itself over and over again.

    "Didn''t you say that I should train fighting strong monsters?" udia asked, turning her head only when she fisted the monster out of its path once again. But before she could add something else, she turned her face back to the monster, proving that she wasn''t distracted enough to miss its movements.

    "Just wait for a damned second," she muttered, sending the monster away yet again with her smash. "If your guess is correct, then the further we go, the weaker the monsters will be. So in a sense," udia turned silent once again only to torment the boss for a moment, just to make sure it wouldn''t catch her off-guard as she was speaking. "This is one of myst few chances to train, isn''t it?" she asked, once again putting her attention back at the monster.

    "Okay, that''s enough," Tom said, moving away from his resting ce. He called forth his main weapon before pulling his arm to the back. ''Swap,'' he thought, changing his ce to a spear that just happened to be towards the monster''s back. Then, without any hesitation, he pulled his retracted arm forward, sending his spear flying.

    The monster''s body was fully covered in some kind of armor, appearing to be pretty simr to the chitin structures that animals on earth would cover themselves with. Yet, against the might of Tom''s spear embedded with a high chance of executing his entirebination with every hit, even the boss of what looked like eighty-fifth floor didn''t stand a chance.

    "Woah!" udia shouted as she jumped away from the monster when a tip of Tom''s spear suddenly appeared in its torso. Yet, even though it fully prated the monster, not even a drop of blood appeared on it as if the energy of Tom''s attack vaporized all the fluids inside the monster''s body. "What was that for?!" udia shouted, clearly displeased with an unexpected end to her training.

    "We don''t have that much time to waste," Tom said, squinting his eyes. "If we are really going to check what''s on the other side, then we need to ount not for a single descent from a ny-floor, but three times as much," Tom said, leaning his head over his shoulder. "One time to get down to the first floor on the other side, one time to get back to the nieth floor, and then one more time to return home," he exined his math before patting himself on the backpack. "With our current supplies, we will barelyst that long. And I wouldn''t count on the other side to happily provide us with food for our return," he added, shaking his head.

    "Why are you so damn negative?" udia asked, biting her lips. "Would it kill you to have some fun?" she posed another question as her anger and surprise mellowed down to a minor annoyance.

    "I''m not negative. I''m cautious," Tom corrected the girl as he approached the monster. Given how it died while standing, he kicked it down before pressing his foot hard on its carcass and grabbing the handle of his spear. "If we don''t know what to expect, we cannot just assume a scenario most fitting our needs," he said, pulling his spear out of the monster in one go.

    "What a buzzkill," udia said, lowering her head as she approached the wall with stones. "Are you going to pull them out or not?" she asked in a voice, proving that she was still eager to pick a fight, even if it would be limited to just words instead of weapons.

    "Yeah, yeah," Tom dismissed the girl''s taunt as he approached the wall and ced his hand on it. A surge of his energyter, the stones started popping out and falling to the ground just like usual.

    ''For some reason, it makes me a bit relieved,'' he thought, watching how the stones cascaded down to the floor. "Do we use them right away?" he asked, prompted by the sudden idea that appeared in his head.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged in surprise. "What for?" she asked, looking at Tom as if horns suddenly grew out of his head.

    "You see, we know nothing about what awaits us on the other side," Tom said, squinting his eyes as he watched the stones roll on the floor. "I''m not sure if you did, but I read a lot of novels about the situations like the one we are in right now," he stated before shaking his head. "While I don''t want to get my hopes up for that, what if we somehow encounter other people in this dungeon once we reach lower floors?"

    "That would be..." udia started speaking only to turn silent in the middle of her sentence. "Weird, to say the least," she finally finished it after a moment of serious consideration.

    "What? Did you finally start to show some shame?" Tom asked, looking at the girl''s nearly naked body. "Don''t tell me that you are going to stand your ground and go back home because of that?" he asked jokingly.

    "As if you would care for that," udia said, shrugging her arms. "If we actually will meet someone, and if that someone won''t be just an avatar of some random yer, then..." Once again, udia cut her sentence short as she bit her lips.

    "In such scenario, being seen almost naked would be thest of the things on our mind," Tom finished his partner''s words for her. "That''s why I want to save some stones. In case we meet someone that could be potentially hostile to us," he said, using a small piece of cloth to stack all the stones in one ce before covering them in a bigger piece of cloth. Once they were all safely tucked to his belt, Tom raised his eyes at the girl and finally finished his sentence. "In that case, just shing grade six stones should be enough to discourage them from attacking us," he said before looking over to the gate.

    Right now, they were only eighty-five floors away from finding out whether Tom''s guess was correct. But how far they were from the possibly nearest party from the other side or just the nearest group of adventuring avatars?

    That question was impossible to answer. Not because Tom was too stupid to figure it out, but because he didn''t have the necessary information to make a sound judgment.

    "Well, either way, we need to keep going," Tom said, checking whether the makeshift bag full of stones was safely tucked into his belt. "We are only one meal away from the beginning of our starvation!"

 Chapter 110: Claudias rushed mishap

    Chapter 110: udia''s rushed mishap

    "At this point, I think it''s safe to say that we are actually going down," Tom said, kicking away the corpse of yet another boss.

    "How can you tell?" udia asked as she looked around the boss room for the first time.

    "Not only it was weak," Tom said as he shrugged his arms before pointing the tip of his spear at the other end of the room, "but there is a corridor instead of gate there," he added.

    Just like when they were climbing, thest teen floors had no corridors at all. Rather than challenging the adventurers who dared to venture into the depths of the dungeon with swarms of monsters, thest ten floors were only focused on the bosses themselves.

    And right now, they have reached the area where this kind of convenient and time-saving shortcut no longer applied.

    "Do we rush, then?" udia asked, looking at the grade five stones embedded in the wall. Even though they had quite a lot of value, with how powerful the two of them were after feeding of tens if not hundreds of grade six stones, she could no longer see them as anything else but shiny trash.

    "I think that would be the best way to go about it," Tom nodded his head as he replied. "But what if we encounter another party?" he then asked. "If we were to truly put our back into running, we wouldn''t be able to tell whether they are monsters or adventurers at all, even if they looked fully human," Tom added, shaking his head.

    "Is that really something that we should be worried about?" udia asked as a wicked expression appeared on her face. "Even if they have some kind of civilization on the other side, we didn''t see anyone from it on our side of the dungeon," she said, moving her eyes on Tom and smiling brightly. "We didn''t see anyone on thest ten floors of this side either," she added, still unwilling to exin what she wanted to imply with those points.

    "udia, listen," Tom shook his head, witty enough to figure out the true meaning of her words. "Even if we are stronger than anyone on the other side, this doesn''t mean we are capable of toppling their entire civilization," he added before shaking his head. "Heck, even if we could, I don''t think it''s something we should do. If there is anything that thest war taught to humanity is that it is a he lot cheaper to just buy the stuff we need rather than trying to conquer it," he added before lowering his spear and taking a step forward.

    "What about our supplies, then?" udia asked, putting her hands on her hips. "You said it yourself. If we don''t hurry up, we will most likely end up dying in the dungeon," she added as an ugly smile surfaced on her lips. "And to be honest, I don''t really mind acting like brigands and robbing any potential party that we meet on our way to the bottom," she added, turning her previously ugly smile into a lovely one.

    "To think that less than a day in a dungeon could change you so much," Tom shook his head as he recalled all the magic spears he littered all over the boss room as soon as he entered it. "I hope that was a joke," he added, already marching towards the corridor''s entrance.

    "Yeah, yeah," udia shook her head. "I think you should know where I''m serious and when I''m not at this point," she whined a little before following right in Tom''s footsteps.

    Their journey through the corridor... was as easy as one could expect. With all the immense power they obtained through their hardships on the earlier floors, both Tom and udia were more than capable of rushing those floors all on their own. And with the two of them, there were hardly any moments when they had to stop to take even the shortest break.

    Back when they were still climbing the floors on their side, conquering the eighty-ninth floor took them roughly fifteen minutes. Even back then, the monsters of the corridor hardly posed any challenge to them. But right now, crossing through the entire floor just to reach its entry-gate took them less than three minutes in total, with the momentary fight with the boss of the floor included.

    "Hey," udia said her first word ever since they left the boss room only as they were about to descend to the higher floor, "could you leave the next boss to me?" she asked, looking at her partner with upturned eyes.

    "At this point, you should know that you don''t need to make a cute face like that for me to agree," Tom smiled, unable to hold back the hastening of his heartbeat caused by the girl''s cute expression.

    "Great!" udia almost jumped in joy before rushing right into the gate.

    "WAIT!" Tom shouted after the girl, but it was already toote. Before he could catch the girl''s hand, she had already disappeared into the gate.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed in his mind, quickly following after the girl. A moment of spatial tearingter, he appeared in the boss room of the eighty-eight floor, only to see the girl already rushing at the massive and well-armed Orc standing motionlessly in the middle of the room. ''And I can''t even scold her right away,'' Tom thought, biting his lips.

    Even though they were powerful, that didn''t mean they were invincible. A single well-aimed hit was more than enough to cause a serious, if not a lethal injury to them. The only reason why Tom didn''t really care about it anymore was that hardly any monster was capable of executing an attack swift enough for Tom to be unable to avoid or even block it.

    Meanwhile, the girl didn''t bother with such hesitations. She rushed at the boss without any doubt. Roughly four meters away from it, just as the Orc started to turn its head towards the invader, udia turned to the side, changing from running into a simple slide.

    The Orc turned fully around, raising its one-handed ax to strike the girl down. But udia didn''t enter its range for no reason at all. Before the two of them could sh, she sprung her arm forward, smacking the air in front of the Orc with all the might of her body and with the momentum of her slide at the same time.

    "UGGHU!" The Orc screamed when udia''s fists imprinted itself on its chest armor, instantly breaking at least half of its ribs.

    ''I know that I''m strong myself, but I just can''t help but be jealous of this skill,'' Tom thought, watching how the metal te on the Orc''s chest refused to rebound.

    With its chest constantly pressed to the point of his insides squishing and breaking apart, udia only needed a single strike more to end the monster. With her fist striking directly into the monster''s head, her actual attack transferred just a little bit further, turning the monster''s brains into an ugly mess that then exploded outwards out of its skull.

    "How was it?" udia turned around and asked with a bright smile once she confirmed that the second attack of hers really finished the monster.

    "You damned idiot!" Tom finally could shout freely without worrying about distracting the girl to the point where she would be in danger. "What would you do if we were to be separated now?" he asked with a fury-filled voice.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged. "What do you mean?" she asked, most likely still too engaged with the recent fight to think straight.

    "Did you forget what happened back when we first entered the dungeon?" Tom asked. It was his usual manner of discussing any problem that the other party wouldn''t agree on. Rather than just giving out the answer, Tom wanted udia to figure it out on her own.

    "We entered it. What''s more, there is to that?" she asked in response before suddenly turning silent for a moment. Then, roughly half a minute of Tom''s silenceter, her face turned nk. "Ah, I get it!" she shouted before lowering her head. "Sorry for going ahead like that. Itpletely fell out of my mind that we still don''t know how this damned ce operates!" she shouted before kicking the corpse of the Orc she just defeated.

    "It''s fine, as long as you won''t forget it again," Tom shook his head before approaching the barrier separating the corridor from the boss room. "Don''t forget that it would be you who would be most troubled by it as I''m the one carrying thest of our supplies," he added before turning his face towards the corridor and moving ahead.

    ''At this rate, our food and water will onlyst us until the lowest level of the dungeon on this side,'' Tom thought, biting his lips in an expression of anxiety. ''I guess I need to pray really hard that there is actually some kind of civilized world on the other side!''

 Chapter 111: Empty results of the investigation

    Chapter 111: Empty results of the investigation

    "Just what the hell was that?" Jason asked as soon as the two of them sat back in his office. Even though their car appeared to be rtively secure, he refused to say a word ever since they left the mansion.

    "You finally said something," Kira replied in a low voice, sitting down in the corner of Jason''s office, on the very chair that he never agreed to share with anyone. "I thought you were so scared you turned mute," she added, sending the man a peculiar look.

    "You didn''t realize it, huh?" Jason said, refusing to borate as he sat down directly at one of the many tables fitted into his ss-covered office of his.

    "Realize what?" Kira asked, sending the man an annoyed look. Even for someone as antisocial as Jason, it was clear that she didn''t enjoy the game of ignorance he yed with her.

    "Those people..." Jason attempted to start his exnation, only to get stuck as soon as he opened his mouth. "Their level of expertise... It''s really hard to put it into proper words," Jason shook his head, troubled with how nearly impossible it was to exin the technical details to someonepletely out of their own field of expertise.

    "Then try to put it into words I will understand," Kira said, leaning forward as her face tensed up. As annoyed as she could be with Jason''s inability to report properly, she was more than capable of guessing the reasons behind the stress that made it hard for him to speak up.

    "Do you have any history on them?" Jason asked, raising his eyes at the beautiful female with curiosity. "I know this seems like a change of topic, but I need to know if a few of my guesses are correct first," he exined, crossing his arms on his chest.

    "Their history?" Kira asked before turning her lips into a wide smile. "You mean the official or the real one?" she specified her question before shaking her head. "ording to what is officially out there, they are just a bunch of families set by the retired veterans of one of the units that took part in the great war," she said before biting her lips. "As for their real history? Beats me."

    Kira bit her lips as she closed her mouth and refused to borate any further. For a moment, the two of them just sat in the silence of Jason''s office. At the same time, just beyond the ss panels that separated the ce from the rest of the department, numerous groups of informatics and technicians drilled their brains out to figure out the nature of the bug.

    "If that''s their official story..." Jason said, cutting his sentence short as a powerful shrug shook his body.

    "Yeah," Kira nodded her head. "I dare not to think what''s the real story behind them," she added, swallowing a mouthful of saliva.

    "Then you really won''t like what I''m about to tell you," Jason said, finally raising his eyes. The shaky, anxious, and socially awkward man disappeared. He was reced by an expert confident in his abilities and now going to release a massive bomb of a report at his superior. "There is one simple reason why I didn''t talk at all before we reached this ce," Jason said, turning himself around before tapping his fingers against the keyboard for a moment.

    In just a few seconds, the graphics on the set of wide screens that covered one of the room walls changedpletely. From the array of numbers where Jason previously hoped to find the bug out, the screens change to the grid of the local town with several circles of different colors covering it.

    "What is that?" Kira asked, standing up from Jason''s chair and approaching the screens.

    "My rough estimate of how far they can see and hear everything," Jason said before slipping from his desk and rushing to take his seat back for himself. Once seatedfortably, he pushed it closer to his desk before tapping at his keyboard a few more times.

    This time, the circles suddenly expanded, covering the entire area not only around the town but also reaching far into the deserted outskirts all around. In this new map, there was only a single point that stood out from the color-coded areas.

    The online Hub itself.

    "Do you mean this is the only ce where we can safely talk?" Kira asked as her eyes opened wide.

    "Even that I''m not so sure about. In terms of being fully free from eavesdropping, only this room I can be certain about," Jason said as he lowered his head and turned silent. "Listen, the technology they are using and the way they do..." he shook his head before swallowing a gulp of saliva that was stuck in his throat. "I think there is only one lie in that official story of that family," Jason said before ncing over at the female. "It''s the part about them being retired."

    For a moment, the room turned silent. Once again, there was a huge contrast between the messy environment outside the ss panels and how silent it was inside.

    But soon, it was all about to change.

    "How long is it going to take you to fix that damned bug!" Peter asked, forcing his way into Jason''s privatepartment. The only reason why he managed to enter unnoticed was just how messy the outside of the room was.

    "The bug is already long gone," Jason instantly replied, unwilling to share the entirety of the situation with his direct superior. Between Kira and Peter, even someone as unsocial as Jason knew who was the better person to tell about his guesses regarding that strange family.

    "Then how long is it going to take you to find out who was responsible for it?" Peter asked, not changing his aggressive tone at all.

    "Peter, what''s wrong?" Kira forced herself into the discussion, surprising the Online''s Hub High Manager by doing so.

    "Huh?" Peter shrugged. "What are you doing here?" he asked as his eyes opened wide in surprise.

    "This was a bug that could potentiallypromise the integrity of our data," Kira replied in a rxed tone, taking the very same spot on the desk to sit as Jason did before. "It''s well within the scope of my responsibilities to look into it," she added, shrugging her arms to show how little she cared about the man''s opinion right now. "But on the other hand, I would like to know why are you trying to push your own anger at failing the report on your subordinates," she asked as her expression suddenly turned sour.

    "What the hell do you mean by that?" Peter asked, squinting his eyes. For the high manager of the local online Hub, having someone disrespect his authority was certainly new, especially when it came to people that were supposed to support him here.

    "What I mean is that you can stop trying to push the me for failing the report on the others and take it on yourself," Kira replied with a lovely smile before sliding down the desk. "The bug is already taken care of. Right now, I''m trying to help Jason figure out who was behind it. Do you have anything else to ask, or are you going to scram and not bother us as we are working?" Kira asked, proving that outside of serving as Peter''s secretary, she was perfectly aware of what she could and what she couldn''t do.

    *******

    "This went surprisingly well," Marvin said once the car with the spies from the Online Hub left the area of their drones'' surveince. Despite tuning their capabilities to the limits, they didn''t manage to catch those two talking in the car off-guard.

    "We didn''t get to learn anything. How is that a good oue?" Marvin''s father asked, ncing over at the several screens on which the live feed of the car was shown.

    "Oh, father," Marvin sighed as he shook his head. "This is the reason why you were only a subordinate of the uncle rather than the leader yourself," he added in a manner that many would consider disrespectful.

    "What do you mean by that?" the man asked his son, squinting his eyes after the low-key insult.

    "You were never able to read between the lines," Marvin said, biting on his lips. "But now is not the time to talk about this. As for now, we are fully pulling out," Marvin said, tapping his fingers against the screen of his tablet.

    "Full withdrawal?" Tom''s uncle asked, barely able to believe his own ears. "Are you going to leave them to their own devices now?" He asked one more question, just to make sure that he heard correctly and that his son was aware of what his order entailed.

    "We lost their signal, didn''t we?" Marvin raised his eyes, biting on his lower lip again. "Right now, there is nothing we can do to help them. And it''s only a matter of time before those two will figure something out," he said before standing up from his wheelchair.

    Thanks to the military-grade medicine that Marvin consumed every hour ever since his ident, he was long capable of walking on his own two feet. The only reason why he remained in his chair was the fact that in case of someone visiting them during the ongoing operation, they were likely to look at him through the prism of his handicapped state. "Make sure to kill all the traces of what we did and mend the surface of the sphere," he added before looking up at his father''s face and smiling sadly. "Right now, we can only hope that Tom won''t return right when those bastards will be doing a full check of their system!"

 Chapter 112: First encounter

    Chapter 112: First encounter

    "Dang, this is so boring," udiained for the nth time in thest hour. Ever since the two of them reached the seventy floor, all the monsters that they encountered turned out to be too weak to pose literally any challenge to them.

    "How about you strip naked and guard your clothes then?" Tom replied, rolling his eyes in annoyance. While he had only a few memories of his father, this silly joke was one of the things that he could still perfectly remember.

    "What, are you horny again?" udia replied as she leaned her head to the side before raising her arms and grabbing herself by her boobs. "I know that I''m super sexy, but what will we do if we finally encounter someone?" she asked before sending Tom a wink.

    "Aren''t you an exhibitionist?" Tom asked, pretending to be surprised. "Anyway, I know it''s boring, but it''s actually a good thing to us," he said, dropping the joking line from before and focusing back on the task at hand. "I think that if we go ten floors higher, my everze should be enough to take care of all the monsters we will encounter," he added, constantly shooting and recalling his magic spears.

    At the current sixty-ninth floor, Tom started to feel the signs of boredom as well. While they were climbing down the dungeon''s floors, there was the excitement of growing stronger and aiming to discover whaty at the bottom of it. Those feelings were more than enough to motivate him and ward him off against any kind of mental exhaustion.

    But that changed ever since they descended from the eightieth floor. Ever since that time, the stones offered by each floor were practically useless for them, while monsters didn''t provide them with any real challenge. If not for the curiosity of whaty on the other side of the dungeon, Tom would long turn around and strive to return home as soon as possible.

    "How about we hurry it up a bit more?" udia suggested, mming a whole group of poorly armed goblins aside. And what was supposed to be a simple shove aimed at pushing them out of their way, turned the pack into mincemeat when the free space to move was reced by a hard wall of the dungeon''s corridor.

    "I''m all up for it," Tom replied before leaning a bit forward and changing from stroll to a slow run.

    They progressed through the dungeon''s floor as if they were in a museum rather than in a ce where their lives were at stake at any time. Roughly two floors lower, some monster managed to somehow sneak in a hit against Tom''s exposed flesh... Only for its rusty sword to bounce off Tom''s skin.

    The difference in strenght was just too damn great.

    Their mad dash through the floors continued for a fewteen more minutes when Tom suddenly raised his hand and broke his momentum. "Stop!" he whispered, cing his hand at the girl''s chest to prevent her froming around the corner ahead of them.

    "What''s wrong?" udia asked, initially surprised only for her face to turn slightly red as a happy smile appeared on her lips. "What, are you finally ready to get down to the business?" she asked when she realized just where Tom''s hand identally fell.

    "Shush!" Tom scolded the girl, putting his finger on his lips. Then, he aimed his other hand at the corner before looking at the girl with his face fully serious. "There is someone beyond it," he said.

    This was the first moment when they managed to encounter something interesting ever since crossing over to the other side of the dungeon. As such, all the notions of boredom andziness instantly evaporated from their minds.

    "Do they look human?" udia asked, bending her knees in an attempt to appear smaller than she was in reality.

    ''What is she so wary of?'' Tom thought, recalling how she would use this kind of position only when turning fully serious before a fight with the boss. "How should I know?" Tom asked out loud, hiding his curiosity about her stance. "It''s not like I can see them. I only felt an aura that doesn''t fit any monster we encountered so far," he said, shaking his head.

    ''While there is a chance that it''s some kind of monster we have yet to encounter,'' Tom thought, puzzled by the situation, ''if something like this were to happen, it would happen at the higher floors, not in the middle areas like the one we are in right now!''

    After their mad rush, the two of them managed to reach as far as floor fifty-ninth. At this point, Tom could just keep running through the floors, leaving his everze skill to just kill everything ahead and behind them. The only reason why he didn''t get to use it previously was his worry that if he were to ramp up its intensity to the point where it could deal with monsters of the higher floors, it would make his skill too powerful for udia to just calmly follow him right through the mes.

    "Are we going to make contact?" the girl asked, looking up at Tom''s face.

    "It''s not like we have much choice," Tom said a momentter after feeling up the aura from beyond the corner. "If I''m not wrong, they are busy fighting monsters right now," he added after closing his eyes for one more moment.

    "How about we go help them, then?" udia asked before looking over at her own look. Ever since their unfunny encounter with the slime all the way at the beginning of their journey into the dungeon, their clothes were basically gone. While she didn''t really pay it any mind ever since they both grew used to each other near nudity, appearing in nothing but a few pieces of ragged cloth covering her most vital parts definitely wasn''t the way that udia wanted to appear to the potential otherworlders for the very first time.

    "It''s not like we have any choice," Tom repeated his words from before as he caught the girl''s drift. "Right, while we don''t know if we canmunicate with them in the first ce, we still need to get our story straight," he said before lowering his head a little.

    "We went up all the way to the seventy-seventh floor. We lost two of ourpanions there and were stuck for a long time, trying to get back home," the girl replied in an instant as if she already thought about this topic way ahead.

    "This should work," Tom said as he stood up and fixed the little clothing he had. "It can also exin why we are in such a rugged state," he added before shaking his head. "Well then, shall we go?" he asked, casting a quick nce at the girl.

    "Sure, after you," udia smiled in response as she smacked her fists against each other. "Worst case scenario, we will just have to kill whoever those people are," she said before spreading her arms and shaking them. "This could also solve the problem of ourcking clothes," she added with a small yet vile smile.

    "Whatever," Tom shook his head, not willing to bother with this trait of the girl''s character. ''Is it just me, or did she turn quite merciless after entering the dungeon?'' Tom thought, puzzled by the situation. Ultimately, he ignored the topic and took his first step forward instead.

    There would be a lot of time to think about udia''s mental state in the future, while his feeling told him that the party that he somehow felt didn''t have that much longer before they would be overwhelmed by the monsters they were fighting with.

    "Heal the tank!" A voice reached Tom''s ears as soon as he crossed the corner. Yet, to his surprise, there was no human nor a monster in sight. "Kill it already!" another voice reached his ears not long after.

    Tom nced over at the girl. ''It''s clear that they are struggling,'' he thought, recognizing the anxiety in both of the voices.

    "Let''s just hurry it up," udia muttered, equally surprised.

    ''To think that those people would speak the samenguage...'' Tom thought as he rushed ahead with his spear already in his hand.

    "NOOOO!" A desperate voice reached Tom''s ears just as he crossed half of the distance that separated him from the next angled part of the corridor.

    ''Fuck,'' he thought. That shout was clearly filled with pain, grief, and terror. And in a dungeon, there was only one situation when one would act like that. ''I guess this proves the other party is not made up with some random avatars,'' he thought, conjuring a magic spear and throwing it towards the next corner.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought, instantly recing the spear that he threw and sliding past the corridor.

    Just like expected, he finally reached the ce where the battle was taking ce. A massive horde of poorly armed goblins crowded the corridor, with a set of three massive orcs taking up the front row.

    And right behind them, a group of five stood their ground. They were injured all over. Their auras were weak, proving just how little mana they had left to use in the fight.

    And right in the hands of the ogre at the very front, a lifeless body of a... something.

    ''Could it be?'' Tom thought as excitement exploded in his veins. While exploring the dungeon was a mission for his family, seeing just what the monster was holding was too much for him not to feel overwhelmed with joy.

    But those feelings could wait. Tom conjured another magical spear in his left hand before taking a half-step forward and throwing it right into the chest of the ogre that held a lifeless body of a demihuman in its arms!

 Chapter 113: Grim reminder

    Chapter 113: Grim reminder

    ''I wonder how far I should go,'' Tom thought, kicking away the nearest group of goblins as if they were some maquettes. Just a few hours ago, they still posed a serious threat to his health, yet now, they were nothing more but cannon fodder. ''It wouldn''t be good if we were to appear too strong,'' Tom thought, taking the future into ount as he made his way through the swarm of monsters.

    "URA!" udia shouted as soon as she joined Tom''s side. Then, with no regard to her image, she started fisting away any enemy that was unlucky enough to get into her range. "What''s holding you up?" she asked, turning her head around after grabbing one of the goblins and throwing it at the ogres at the front.

    "Women..." Tom said, rolling his eyes. ''There goes my wish to keep a rtively low profile,'' he thought, raising the speed at which he was mowing down the monsters.

    "Just a little bit longer!" One of the people behind the monsters shouted.

    ''They noticed us,'' Tom thought, biting his lips as his spear sank into the chest of yet another goblin. Instead of trying to wrestle it''s free, something that even for him could prove to be slightly challenging, he simply conjured another weapon and continued the carnage.

    Rather than trying to pull the weapon out, it was easier to keep going and recall it a momentter.

    "Hold on!" udia shouted. The heat of the battle clearly got to her head, making her forget about any and all possible reservations that the two of them should have.

    The reservations against showing the full extent of their strenght in the face of a group of people from a different world.

    Yes, another world. Because there was no ce on earth where a long-eared race of people lived!

    "ROAR!" The ogre at the very front roared. Even though it was rtively quick to notice a threat from behind, udia and Tom managed to y half of the entire group by the time it finally took notice. It wasn''t that the orc was slow. It was the two of them that were exceptionally fast.

    "Just shut up!" For some reason, Tom got annoyed with that roar. Unwilling to see the first elf he ever saw die in the hands of this hideous monster, he conjured two spears in his right hand before throwing them right at the monster.

    But rather than aiming for its vital points, Tom took aim at its wrist. For now, whether that poor elf was alive or not was yet to be confirmed. ''It would be bad if it tore that poor fe apart in the fit of a flying rage,'' Tom thought, swapping positions with one of his magical spears as soon as they flew past the orc.

    "Huh?" Even in this tense battlefield, the other party couldn''t help but gasp in one voice when Tom suddenly appeared between them and the dwindling horde of monsters.

    "Stay back!" Tom shouted, instantly pushing forward. This time, rather than dealing with the monsters in detail, he swung his spear horizontally. Even though the corridor itself wasn''t all that narrow, Tom managed to block two-thirds of it with the length of his spear.

    And then, as if he was pushing some kind of cargo uphill, he moved forward.

    "Take care of the Orcs!" Tom shouted. For now, those massive monsters luckily have yet to pay him much attention. As such, facing only poorly armed goblins, he could make use of his superior range to push them away without putting his torso in danger. But as soon as the two remaining pig-like monsters were to catch on...

    "On it!" udia didn''t bother to waste time hesitating. Without any wait, she leaped forward, sending a kick straight to the head of the first of the two orcs.

    ''I really wish she could take a better care of how she fights when there are others watching,'' Tom thought, watching how the girl unknowingly shed everything that a man could wish to see about her. Yet, after this momentary distraction, he infused a tiny bit more mana into his flesh to increase the strenght of his arms.

    "..e her!" between the noise of the weapons ttering and monsters moaning from pain, Tom heard a voice from behind. "Save her, I beg of you!"

    Tom turned his head around. As soon as he noticed the intense stare of the foreign group, he suddenly felt a wave of shame washing over his soul. With nothing but a ragged piece of cloth wrapped around his hips, he appeared like some kind of exhibitionist pervert rather than a valiant heroing to the rescue of some random adventurers.

    ''If I were to appear like that back home, I would finally find out how the prison looks from inside,'' Tom thought grimly before looking over at where one of the people behind him pointed their hand.

    Just as expected, there was only one person that required a direct saving right now.

    It was the elven girl that the orc previously held like a trophy in the air, currently tossed to the side yet still well within the ranks of the monsters.

    "Fend for yourself for a moment!" Tom shouted to the back, adding the strenght of his back to his hold. With a short burst of energy, he pushed the swarm of goblins away. Using the momentum of the rebound, he shot his right arm to the back before bringing it forward and letting go of his spear.

    ''Swap!'' he thought, instantly appearing above the heads of the remaining goblins, just a meter away from the unconscious elf.

    ''I can''t use everze here,'' Tom thought,nding right beside the lifeless body. Even though it was a quick nce, he could tell that her body, although properly covered in clothes and some rudimentary armor, could easily rival that of udia herself. "I guess I don''t have much choice, then,'' Tom thought, closing his eyes for a mere moment.

    ''Spear domain!'' he shouted in his thoughts, properly closing his eyes.

    And then, the true carnage started.

    Without moving an inch from his spot or opening his eyes even a tiny bit, Tom started to wildly swing his spear. Whenever a monster would cross a distance of two meters away from Tom, it would instantly have its body torn by the spear''s de.

    This was the first time for Tom to deploy his newest skill in a real fight. With how he preferred to be as mobile as possible, something as stationary as this sphere of perfect awareness wasn''t useful at all. Only now, when his priority was to defend this single, particr spot, could this kind of skill finally turn helpful.

    "Help!" A sudden shout reached Tom''s ears. Opening his eyes, Tom saw something that he didn''t really expect nor wished to see. As he was focused on defending the lifeless body of that elven girl, the goblins finally realized that approaching him was akin to suicide.

    To the back, udia ravaged their ranks just with the coteral damage of her fight with the orc. To the side, Tom would spear any monster that would be stupid enough to approach them. As such, there was only one way left for the monsters to push with any chance of sess. And with how focused he had to be to invoke his domain, Tom missed it.

    ''I won''t make it,'' he thought, throwing his arm to the back in an attempt to send another spear flying. Yet, a swarm of goblins already shed with those strange adventurers of the other side of the dungeon. And right now, Tom could see in slow motion how one of the rusty swords used by those rtively weak monsters was reaching for the unguarded throat of one of the female adventurers.

    "NO!" A male behind her shouted. Tom tensed his entire body along with invoking his haste, hoping that he would make it in time.

    Sadly, he didn''t.

    Just as the spear left his hand, the throat of the unlucky girl opened up under the relentless attack of the rusty sword.

    The goblin responsible for the attack died a moment after that, pierced by Tom''s magical spear. But that didn''t change anything for the girl that suddenly found it impossible to catch a breath as a river of blood rushed out of the deep wound on her throat.

    "Fuck," Tom muttered, feeling how a familiar yet unpleasant feeling spread out through his soul.

    For the young man, the dungeon has long lost its aura of danger. Ever since he managed to somehow best the boss of its final floor, no monster stood any chance against him. Ever since that point in the past, Tom unknowingly started to disregard the danger, confident that he could ward off against any threat that the dungeon could pose.

    Yet, the sight of the girl falling to her knees as she drew herst, gaggling breath served as a grim reminder that this dungeon never stopped to be dangerous.

    Because it never ceased to be full of threats. Tom simply reached a point where those threats no longer applied to him.

    But this knowledge would make no difference to the girl that fell face-first to the floor. Judging by the amount of blood gushing out of her throat, she was already weed in whatever afterlife she believed in.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom gritted his teeth before putting his attention back to the fight. As much as he hated the situation, he couldn''t do anything before all the monsters would be eradicated!

 Chapter 114: Toms (un)heartless request

    Chapter 114: Tom''s (un)heartless request

    ''And that''s thest of them,'' Tom thought, pulling his spear out of thest remaining monster in the area. With how swift this movement was, all the blood stuck to the de fell to the ground, forming fat drops as it fell.

    "Please, wake up!" Then, behind him, one of the men that Tom saved with udia cried out, desperately shaking at the lifeless body of the girl that got her throat cut open.

    ''Doesn''t he realize that it''s futile?'' Tom thought, puzzled by the situation. Even though he never directly experienced a death of a fellow human, not to speak about someone close to him, his extensive training was more than sufficient to make up for thisck of experience.

    On the other hand, the party that Tom just saved shouldn''t really have problems like that. While the death of apanion was always a tragedy, for someone clearly making a living by touring the dungeon, death should be no stranger.

    Yet, defying Tom''s logic, a man continued to bawl his eyes. The strenght of his shakes gradually lost its might as the exhaustion of his flesh started to catch up to his mental state.

    "No matter how much you try, it''s futile," udia was the one to speak up first. She didn''t care how her simple sentence could be ssified as literally the first contact with extraterrestrial beings. Instead, the look of pity on her face proved that she was actually affected by the poor girl''s death more than by the contact with the other party. "She''s already dead," she added, lowering her head and pointing her eyes to the floor.

    "You don''t know that!" The man shouted before forcing his head around. "Kaisha, please, I beg of you, heal her!" the man pleaded to the third of the girl in the group. His eyes were so filled with tears that Tom, if not for the hard limit of how many girls there was in the other party, would find it troublesome to figure out who the man spoke to.

    "I don''t have a single bit of mana left," a beastman looking female replied, slowly shaking her head to the sides. "I ran out of it half an hour ago," the girl added, raising her dagger-wielding hand.

    ''So they know about mana,'' Tom took notice of this small detail. While meaningless in the greater picture, it could serve as a small part of the mosaic of truth that he wished to build. In the end, if anyone were to attempt hiding some truths about whaty on the other end of the dungeon, one would bother with the major stuff.

    That''s why, be it in the distant past of Tom''s world or its present state, one had to look for the details. Because only the small elements of the picture could prove that the entire thing was just an borate falsification or the actual reality.

    ''I guess some things don''t change no matter how different the world is,'' Tom thought, aware of his own thought process. After all, this coldly ration approach to tackling the unknown stemmed not from his innate character but the mental training his father put him through before disappearing.

    "She''s dead," another man of the party said, slowly approaching his despairing friend before cing his hand on his friend''s back. "You can''t help her anymore," the man added as he bit his lips before raising his eyes at Tom. "For the timely... For the rescue, you have my gratitude," the man said after fixing his unintended mistake.

    ''I guess he just wanted to get us off with a staple form,'' Tom thought, keenly observing every tiniest detail of the interaction. ''Well, it''s not like I mind it at all,'' he added in his thoughts before gently shaking his head. "We are going back now. Normally, you would have to ditch the body to return yourself, but this time you can at least give her a proper burial,'' Tom said, moving his eyes at the despairing man.

    "I will stay back here," the man replied in an empty voice. His eyes were just as hollow as his voice, proving that he was already broken. "With her," he added, slipping his hands under the dead female''s back before raising and then hugging her corpse.

    "Don''t be ridiculous!" The third of the men, one that had the appearance of the tank of the group finally said something. His face was twisted in an ugly grimace. "Do you really think that''s what she would want you to do now?" he asked, grabbing the despairing man''s arms before shaking his soundly.

    "What does it matter," the broken man replied impassively, ignoring the physical stimuli just like he ignored the words of his friends a moment earlier.

    "Celestia is waking up!" Suddenly, the voice of the tank pulled all the attention from the tragic scene to one thing that actually mattered after the bloody encounter.

    ''So that''s her name,'' Tom thought, looking how half of the party rushed to the elven girl who was about to regain her consciousness. Out of everyone, only one of the men remained focused on their despairing friend.

    "Are you all right?!" Kaisha asked, checking every inch of the delicate body of the elven girl. Her hands moved from her gentle yet dignified face, slid down her moderate chest, a slim waist, only to end up at the very bottom of her legs. "You don''t seem to have any open wounds. To get away with only a few bruises..." the only human-looking girl in the party raised her head as she looked Celestia right in the eyes. "You got quite lucky," Kaisha said only to cast a quick nce at Tom, bite her lips and shake her head. "No, we were all lucky," the girl said, standing up only to bow her head low before Tom and udia.

    "For saving us in the time of peril, you have our greatest gratitude," Kaisha said, only to raise her head back up. Yet, before her eyes could wander off somewhere else, her pupils suddenly dted.

    ''Seems like she finally noticed the state of our clothing,'' Tom thought, shaking his head to harness the small crowd''s attention on himself. "Gratitude?" he asked, shaking his head a bit faster. "That''s not going to cut it," he added with a grim expression surfacing on his face.

    "Huh?" This time, it was the time for the tank of the group to react. As soon as he heard Tom''s words, his expression darkened, yet that didn''t stop him from standing up and looking at Tom with a clear challenge brimming in his eyes. "What do you want, then? We don''t have any money. If that wasn''t the case, we wouldn''t be exploring..."

    "I don''t need any money or valuables," Tom cut the man''s pleas short. " I''m not sure if you realized it given the shock caused by the death of one of your people, but we aren''t really in a state to enter the city, don''t you think?" Tom said, meaningfully lowering his eyes at his own body.

    "Oh!" The man''s eyebrows twitched. "That''s true..." he said before looking around the area. "But it''s not like we brought some spare sets with us..." he said before his eyes suddenly fell on the lifeless body of the deceased girl.

    And at that moment, the man''s face darkened beyond what Tom would ever consider possible.

    "Don''t even think about it," Tom said, realizing just what had to be going through the man''s head. "We don''t need fulls sets. Two long coats or something alike will suffice," Tom quickly specified his request. Even though he couldn''t care less about the deceased girl, even he wasn''t as heartless as to demand her friends to strip her bloodied body naked just to fulfill his need for clothes.

    "That we can somehow manage," the man replied, breathing out a sigh of great relief. It appeared that in this hard moment for his team, he finally found a tiny bit of sce. "But if I may ask, what made you lose all your clothes like that?" he asked, clearly trying to push his mind away from the grief of losing one of hispanions.

    "A slime on a sixty-fifth floor," Tom replied with a prepared lie right off the bat. "That bastard was so slippery and hard to deal with that we didn''t even realize that it dissolved most of our clothes as we fought it. Only by some luck did we manage to save those few rags that we are wearing right now," Tom added more details to his prefabricated history.

    Just like he was on the lookout for the details, overwhelming the other party with them would make it harder to discern whether his words were true or not.

    And given how they were nearing the moment of disembarking to a world that seemed to be fully foreign to them, hiding as much about himself and udia as possible was imperative.

    After all, information was the greatest power that any intelligent species could ever obtain!

 Chapter 115: Attack of the cliche

    Chapter 115: Attack of the cliche

    "It sure is easy to return with powerful adventurers like you," Krater said once they reached the twentieth floor. Given all the dys they experienced on the way, its boss already managed to spawn again, threatening the entire group.

    Yet, even though it managed to get a jump on their now bigger group, udia jumped at it right in time to cleave its entire body in two with a random smash of her fist.

    "It''s just the difference in power," Tom shook his arms. Ever since the battle during which one of the girls from the other party died, he didn''t show his abilities at all. Even though he held his spear in his hand through all this time, he stubbornly refused to use it. "If my guess is correct, you should be able to deal with this boss all on your own," Tom added, pointing the tip of his weapon at the already deceased monster.

    "Don''t joke around with me," Krater said, shaking his head. "My defenses might be great, but I obtained them at the cost of nearly all of my attack power. For me, dealing with that boss alone would be a long and tough task," he added before looking to his back. "Well, with the rest of them in such state, without you two guys, I would have no other choice but to do just that," he said before releasing a deep sigh.

    Just like the man said, the mental state of the rest of his group wasn''t the best. Or rather, it could hardly get any worse. With Celestia, the elven girl still unconscious, Loman, the other man of the group, was renderedpletely useless by the task of carrying her. Adding Kaisha, who continued to mutter silent words in some weirdnguage in an attempt to heal theirpanion, three out of the original six of the party were unable to join the fight at all.

    Out of the five survivors from their original six-men strong team, Ubzen was tasked with carrying the corpse of the deceased girl. ''From what Krater told me, they were lovers,'' Tom recalled a bit of information he randomly obtained thirteen floors above. ''Even if both Loman and Kaisha could fight after dropping Celestia for a while, I don''t think Ubzen would be of any use,'' the young man analyzed the situation before nodding his head.

    "You arepletely right," Tom said, moving his eyes at his ownpanion, who had already reached for the entrance of the corridor. "Without the two of us, you would be dead."

    Even if this group could easily fight off against the boss of the twentieth floor, it would require them to reach that floor in the first ce. Given how they were about to all die before their first encounter with Tom and udia, the current situation of their group only made it even clearer how much they relied on this duo of strangers.

    "Is that an attempt to put us even further in your debt?" Krater asked with a sour smile blossoming on his lips.

    "You don''t have anything that would be of interest to us," Tom replied while shaking his arms. Then, he reached out to his backpack only to pull out one of the grade five stones. "With this, we should be able to live for a little while," Tom said, taking a nce at the man beside him. "And I don''t think you have anything that could be more valuable than this stone," he said before putting the worthless piece of condensed mana back into his backpack.

    "Well, I''m not gonna deny it," Kartor''s smile turned even more sour than before. He then shook his head and picked up the pace. "Well, if there is anything that you would like our help with, just tell me. Even if we will never be able to repay the favor, you still saved our lives," he said, raising his eyes back up.

    "Actually, there is something that we would use your help with," Tom said, finally pulling on the ephemeral fishing rod now that the bait was finally set.

    "Huh?" Carter shrugged, realizing that he had just stepped on thendmine. "Should I be scared to ask what''s that?" he posed a question, stealing a quick nce of Tom''s face.

    "You don''t need to worry that much," Tomughed out loud, amused by the man''s reaction. ''For how serious he is whenpared to the rest of his team, it''s fun to see him react like that,'' he thought as he attempted to kill hisughter off. "Still, it bound to the favor we asked for earlier. Since we lost all our possessions literally outside of this bag, our weapons and some rags, we have no way to go around the city," Tom said, once again taking the risk by randomly shooting at what could be the background of the entrance to the dungeon those people knew. "Given how we kind of sneaked into this dungeon, it''s not like we all well-known enough to avoid problems if some diligent guards were to bother us," he said, deciding to go all in.

    After all, given how they were from a different world altogether, neither Tom nor udia had any idea what to expect on the other side. As such, their best bet was to rely on the people who not only knew the stuff they desperately had to learn but also owed them a huge favor that would make them not only inclined to help but also likely not to ask any doubtful questions.

    "Don''t tell me," Kartor muttered as he suddenly stopped in ce only to look Tom directly in the eyes. "Did you lose your adventurer''s card?" he asked as his eyes widened.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged, unprepared for the sudden assault of the cliche. ''I knew they had to have some sort of identification documents in ce given how developed their civilization has to be to produce te armors such as the one Krater is wearing... But to think that they would smash me right in the face with such a cliche right away?'' he thought, startled by the question.

    "Ah," Kartor shrugged when he noticed the sudden trouble on Tom''s face. "Ignore the question if you don''t want to answer it," he said, backing off a few steps, pressured by the powerful aura Tom unknowingly released in his moment of shock.

    "It''s not like that," Tom instantly pulled himself together, replying to the man as he lowered his head and hid his face in the palm of his hand. "I just didn''t expect this topic to surface so quickly," he added while desperately pushing his brain to its limits to figure out how he should continue the talk.

    Because in this moment of shock that came with the sudden appearance of the adventurer''s guild cliche, he also lost the footing for the several ns he had in store for different situations.

    Expect the unexpected. It was one of the pretty much basic rules for anyone in his family. Or rather, it was a maxim that his family ingrained in his soul. But it wasn''t something his people came with, but something they passed down from their own experiences... And what was ingrained in the old generation when they first entered the military camp at the beginning of their service.

    With this rule out of his mind but always present in his actions, Tom never considered the option of an adventurer''s guild existing. It was simply too convenient and nice for it to be true. That''s why, when the reality suddenly proved to be far simpler than howplex Tom expected it to be, he couldn''t help but get stunned for a short while.

    ''Still, just hearing those two words is rilling me up a lot,'' Tom thought, observing his own mental state for a moment before rapidly raising his head. "The truth is, we never have any adventurer''s card. There are some reasons why we were ineligible to get one back in our homnd," Tom said, finallying up with a viable excuse.

    "What? How is that... Or nevermind." Initially shocked, Krator quickly pulled his tongue back behind his teeth. "There are all sorts of situations in the world, so I''m not going to be biased enough to im that it''s impossible," he said, lowering his head in apology. "But going back to the topic, while we can help you in the city, if you want to safely enter the dungeon ever again, you will need to apply for the guild''s license," the middle-aged man said, pping his hands against the sides of his hips.

    For a moment, the two of them turned silent. It was as if neither of them knew what to say next.

    "Well," Krator finally decided to be the one to break the sudden barrier of muteness. "Whatever your circumstances were elsewhere, no one is going to stop you from getting your card in the city of Karnaz. Especially when you are so powerful," he said, reaching with his hand and patting Tom''s shoulder.

    "You have no idea how great of a relief it is for us," Tom replied, looking up at udia''s back, disappearing behind the first corner of the floor''s corridor. "You have no idea."

 Chapter 116: Occurence at the gate

    Chapter 116: urence at the gate

    "How are you holding on?" Tom asked when the two of them finally found a little bit of privacy. As they had already reached the very first floor on the other side of the dungeon, they could finally leave the work of dealing with the monsters to Krater and the few of his teammates that held their sanity.

    "Slightly stressed out? Anxious about what''s toe?" udia replied with questions on her own before shaking her head. "You know, I can''t really figure out what I should think about this all," she whispered, lowering her eyes. "I know that my life changed by a whole lot ever since we started adventuring in the dungeon," she said, raising her eyes and scanning the area to make sure no one was listening to their conversation before biting her own lip, "but still, another world? Who would''ve thought?" udia asked before lowering her eyes again.

    For a moment, the two of them just moved forward in silence. Outside of the few monster corpses that had yet to be absorbed by the floor of the dungeon, they had nopany whatsoever. In the end, even people who struggled on the middle floors as a group of six were more than capable of dealing with the initial floorspletely independently.

    "We don''t know that yet," Tom muttered after a while. "We don''t know what we are going to see, so it''s better to keep our assumptions to a minimum," he said while constantly surveying the area to make sure they wouldn''t identally stumble into Krater or one of his friends while speaking off the matter those people could not hear about no matter what. "Worst case scenario, maybe they are all avatars used by kids with a middle-schooler syndrome?" Tom suggested, despite not believing in such a scenario whatsoever.

    ''If that were to be the case, their wording would be different,'' he thought, keeping those thoughts to himself. ''After all, I can''t imagine any of the chunnis from my word using guild license instead of a guild card,'' he thought, looking down at the dungeon''s floor.

    For some reason, its mundane and grey texture had a calming effect on his mind.

    "Guys, we are nearing the gate!" Krater suddenly shouted from way ahead, where he was clearing the corridors.

    "I guess our time to be anxious is running out," Tom said with a small smile.

    "I guess," udia replied, clearly disinherited by that fact.

    ''I guess exploring the potential new world is far more interesting on paper than it is in reality,'' Tom thought, unable not to notice the anxiety on the girl''s face. ''But now that I think about it, I''m not really all that hyped up for it either,'' he realized before sping his hands into fists.

    "Don''t worry about us!" Tom shouted back to one of his newly made friends. "By the way, how are your people holding?" he asked while raising his head up. In reality, though, Tom couldn''t care less. His question was just a random attempt at keeping the conversation going so that he could get his mind off the anxious thoughts about the new world they were about to embark into.

    "Not great, not terrible," Krater shouted from the distance that separated the two of them. "To be honest, it''s a miracle that I''m capable of keeping my mind straight. We just lost one of our sisters after all," he added with a weaker voice, one that barely managed to cross the distance that separated the otherworlders from the locals.

    "I see," Tom replied in an even weaker voice, one aimed to prove that he replied without actually allowing Krater to hear the words. In this way, the discussion had a high chance of being cut, given how the other party would likely be troubled to reply to what he didn''t hear. "Well, we are nearing the exit, so they will be able to take as much time to rest and grieve as necessary," he added in a normal voice as soon as the anxiety rted to entering apletely new world reached for his sanity once again.

    "Yeah," Krater replied, taking the burden of cutting the discussion on himself.

    For the next few moments, only the silence apanied the party of the seven survivors of the dungeon. Yet, this situationsted only for a short while.

    ''Huh?'' Tom thought when he suddenly noticed the rest of their group standing in ce. Yet, as he raised his eyes, he couldn''t help but notice what made them stop in their tracks.

    "We are here," Krater said, noticing the appearance of their rear guard. "Before we go in, though, we need to get our stories straight," he said, looking at Tom''s face with a peculiar look on his own.

    "What do you mean by that?" Tom frowned, silently fixing his hold over his spear. ''I knew that there is a chance they will notice something is amiss, but to think they would bring it up only now...'' he thought while forcibly rxing the muscles of his face. "Is there something we should know about the locals?" he asked, still trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong with their backstory.

    "Yeah," Krator nodded his head before lowering his eyes and turning silent for a moment. "I know it''s not like it never happens, but to meet another party in the dungeon..." he said before cutting his words and refusing to borate any further.

    "In theory, we are legally obliged to report such a thing. After all, by consistently reporting those urrences and then analyzing everyst bit of the story is the only way to figure out how and when it happens," Kaisha finished the words of herpanion. She even took a step forward, only to take another one a momentter. Ultimately, she ended up just a few meters away from Tom and udia with a tense look on her face. "Ever since the emergence, the enforcement of this rule became way stricter than before," she added as she bit on her lip.

    ''Something is wrong,'' Tom thought, forcing his face to remain as still and clueless as it was a moment ago. Given the importance of information, especially in the situation they were in right now, betraying his thoughts by revealing his emotions was the worst thing Tom could do.

    ''I can''t even look at udia to see if she keeps her face straight,'' Tom thought, gripping the handle of his spear a bit tighter. Fighting off his desire to nce over at his onlypanion from his original world, he kept his eyes on the girl in front of him.

    Yet, instead of pushing him aside only to dash towards the gate, Kaisha actually bowed deeply, all the way to the point where Tom started to worry about the health of her spine.

    "I know the rewards of reporting a meeting in the dungeon are immense, but please, could you pretend that it didn''t happen?" she asked, biting on her lips to the point where her mouth covered in blood.

    For a moment, Tom just stood there in silence. To his side, he could hear udia gulping down a mouthful of saliva. ''If I can guess, she is likely waiting for me to react,'' he thought, feeling the pressure on him increasing with each second.

    Tom squinted his eyes.

    "What''s the reason behind this request?" he asked, making sure that his tone would remain calm while adding a hint of coldness to it.

    "I know how much we are asking for," Kaisha whispered as she straightened her back and looked Tom in his face. "But right now, I just want to spare Ubzen from recounting everything that happened. Adding how Celestia remains unconscious..." Kaisha said, only for a sudden noise from behind her back to stop her words in their tracks.

    Looking over the girl''s shoulder, Tom quickly noticed the reason for the smallmotion.

    The elven girl that caught his interest all the way when he and udia first met the other party finally regained consciousness.

    And for some reason, as soon as her eyes were drawn to Tom''s figure, her face nked out in terror.

    She opened her delicate mouth yet failed to produce any sound. Her hand moved up, only to turn still once she pointed it at Tom and udia.

    "Monsters..." she whispered, barely capable of producing any voice.

    "Huh?" Kaisa muttered, turning around. Yet, instead of turning scared just like her elvenpanion did, she instantly turned her face back to Tom, only to once again lower herself in half. "I''m sorry for her. She clearly has yet toe to her senses!" she shouted, profusely apologizing for her friend.

    "Don''t worry about it," Tom smiled, slightly rxing his fist tightened around the handle of his spear. "I''m not unreasonable enough to expect someone who just woke up to make any sense," he said, attempting to cate the situation.

    Meanwhile, Celestia continued her muttering.

    "They are not humans," she whispered with her body frozen in ce. "They are death!"

 Chapter 117: Pulling out/Pushing forth

    Chapter 117: Pulling out/Pushing forth

    "Commence a full withdrawal," Marvin ordered as soon as he reached the temporary underground facility.

    "Yes, sir!" In the dugout cave, no one hesitated even for a second. As soon as the order was given, Marvin''s family rushed into action.

    "I will get the cables out!" Someone shouted, rushing towards the hole in the metallic dome.

    "I will cover our tracks!" Someone else announced while rushing to the corner of the cave where all the tools were kept.

    "I need three more to help with pressurizing the barrier!" One of the older men and a chief engineer of the operation shouted, moving out before anyone could react to his words.

    "Will that be really necessary?" Marvin grabbed the old man''s arm before he could leave for the crossing site. "If we pressurize the rift, he won''t be able to get back to us once he returns," he said, looking intently in the man''s eye.

    "Son, you are an excellentmander. Your father and uncle taught you well," the old man said with a gentle smile appearing on his face. Yet, his smile soured pretty quickly. "But there is one lesson that you still need to learn. And it''s about when to start cutting losses," the old man said.

    For a moment, the two of them just stood there, in silence. Surrounded by the noises of people rushing about, a young man and an old man stood in ce, staring at each other.

    "I''m not giving up on Tom," Marvin said, clenching his hands into fists.

    "I never asked you to do so," the old man answered before shaking his head. "Listen, for now, we lost contact with him. Even after waiting twice as long as the procedures rmend, he failed to get back to us," he said before biting on his lip and lowering his head. "At this point, we cannot risk the safety of everyone just to give Tom more chances. I bet he would make that decision if he were in your shoes," the old man added before patting Marvin''s shoulder again.

    "What if he will return soon?" Marvin asked, still looking for a way to get his dear friend a way out of trouble. "If we pressurize the entrance, then he won''t be able to break into the tunnels even if he somehow manages to find out the exact spot where he entered before," Marvin said, bringing up how problematic the situation was.

    The entire process of pressurizing the entrance was nothing more but a code-naming. In this instance, it was taken from the space marines dictionary, one that a selected few of the family elites learned during their service.

    On its own, it had very little to do with the pressure itself. After all, even if the rift in the metallic sheet that made up the dome around the dungeon''s entrance wasn''t sealedpletely, there would be no difference in pressure on either side of it. But even if the tiniest of the holes were to remain, detecting the opening would be a piece of cake for anyone actually looking for it.

    Once the rift in the metal sheet would be fully mended came the problem of actually pressurizing it. But instead of the meaning that was originally derived from space physics where the insides of one''s space ship had to be filled with oxygen and other elements for people to work in it properly, in this particr scenario, the situation was greatly different.

    Because pressurizing the metal te meant turning it to be as stable as it was before the tunnel was dug out, revealing it to Tom''s family in the first ce.

    "Think about it," the old man said before releasing a deep sigh. "There are only two options for you to consider right now. Tom is either dead or alive," the old man said. His head froze in ce, and so did his eyes, stuck in a contest of stares with Marvin. "If he is dead, then what we are doing right now is the best thing we can," he stated the obvious.

    "But if he is alive, then the situationplicates a little, doesn''t it?" Marvin instantly changed the tone of the talk. For him, even considering the option of his friend dying while exploring that unknown ce was nothing less but a sphemy. "If he is alive, then the situationplicates a lot, doesn''t it?" he asked, squinting his eyes. ''I just can''t help but feel that you don''t want him to return alive,'' Marvin thought, using all of his willpower to stop those words from escaping through his mouth.

    "If he is alive, then the situation has two routes to go as well," the old man said, pulling Marvin along. They already wasted enough time standing in ce and doing nothing but talking. "Starting with the positive option, let''s assume his guesses were right," the old man said. "Let''s assume that there really is something on the other end of that portal that is worth dering war on the entire world. In that case, he will be able to destroy the entire dome just to get out of it. Do we agree on that point?" the man asked, turning his head around as he continued to move deeper and deeper into the tunnel.

    "That''s right," Marvin replied without borating on that point. The potential content of what was inside the portal visible in the very center of the dome appeared to be pretty obvious. The online hub that controlled this ce and many others like it across the entire world paid some insane amount of effort to construct such a dome. For such an insane investment to go through, there had to be even greater money to be found from exploring those portals.

    "But there is also the chance that our dear Tom''s guesses will be proven wrong. What do you think we, as the family, should do in that case?" the old man asked. To prove just how important this question was, he even stopped in his tracks, even though he was known for not liking to waste any of his time.

    "Then we lost," Marvin said with a straight face as if he was reporting that some ice cream melted in the fridge rather than dering the fate of the entire family, its fortune, and the fates of everyone in it. "If he won''t be able to find anything of value even close to what he believed he would, then there will be no point in acting up," Marvin brought his hand up and bit on his thumb. "In that case, we would just need to grovel, promise to keep silent, and pay some reparations," he said after thinking for a moment.

    "See?" The old man smiled. He then patted Marvin''s back and picked his pace back. "That''s why pressurizing the rift right now takes the absolute priority," he said, sternly looking ahead. "Not because it makes things harder for Tom once he returns, but because it gives us more time to react in case the online hub will be the first one to find out about the entire thing."

    *********

    "I apologize for her!" Karter shouted before falling to his knees. Then, without even a shred of hesitation, he mmed his forehead against the cold stones of the dungeon''s floor. "She seems to be still out of her mind, please, forgive her insults!" he pleaded, pressing his forehead tightly to the floor.

    "There is no point in minding that," Tom replied with a small smile, behind which hid a sea of anxiety and focus. "For people as weak as you, it''s no wonder that we would appear like monsters," he added before sharply raising his head. "No, I apologize," Tom lowered his head. "It was unbing of me to call you weak, only because we are way stronger than you guys," he said, lowering his head in an apology.

    "Death, death, death, death," Celestia continued to mutter, unable to tear her eyes away from Tom''s face.

    "Miss," Tom finally dared to look at the elven girl. ''The terror in her eyes...'' he thought, clenching his firsts a little. ''It''s real,'' he noticed before taking the first step. And then another. And soon, he appeared within a hand''s reach away from the terrified girl. "Little miss, I''m aware how we are likely to appear to you," Tom said as he pushed his hand forward, only to grab the delicate fingers of the elf and cover it with his palms. "Please, look in my eyes for a moment," he requested in a calm,posed voice.

    Still shaken by the terror, the girl silently followed the order.

    "Now, looking in my eyes, I want you to see for yourself if I will lie now," Tom said before taking a short break. He took a breath and slowly released the air back. For a moment, he closed his eyes as if he wanted to gather up his wits and sort out his thoughts.

    "I''m here not to put you or your friends in danger. I''m here only because I need to find my missing father. That''s my priority and the only thing I care about. That''s why, unless someone attempts to do me harm, I''m not going to needlessly put them in danger either," he said, looking right into the beautiful eyes of the elven girl. Then, he slid his palms off the girl''s delicate hand only to stop when her fingers were about topletely feel off his reach. Then, he pulled his hands up, bringing the girl''s hands along. "Now tell me," Tom said in his calm voice. "Looking in my eyes, did you see any hint of falsehood or dishonesty?"

 Chapter 118: Stepping off the platform

    Chapter 118: Stepping off the tform

    The process of moving through the gate wasn''t any different from what Tom and udia experienced many times over during their trip in the dungeon. The differences only started to appear once their transit was over.

    ''Beautifull,'' Tom thought as soon as he emerged from the portal. Stunned by sight, he was unable to make a single step.

    "MOVE AWAY!" Krater screamed before bodymming Tom out of the way. And right after that, udia appeared in the same spot that Tom did a moment ago.

    "Beautifull," she muttered silently, as stunned as Tom was a mere moment ago.

    "Did you already forget how risky it is to stand at the entrance?!" Kratershed out at Tom while helping the young man stand up.

    "I''m sorry. It''s just been too long since Ist saw the light of the day," Tom apologized and excused himself, pushing his mind to its limits to keep his story cohesive.

    After all, he couldn''t just go and im that it was his first time seeing this world in the first ce!

    "Now that you said it... You might be right." Krater lowered his head before shaking it.

    The only reason why the current leader of the party that Tom met in the dungeon could react so fast was that he and the rest of his party left the dungeon several minutes in advance. And now, this decision to let them go first proved to be pretty good.

    ''I had my doubts about them, but I don''t see any armed forces gathering around this ce,'' Tom thought, casting a sneaky nce all around.

    In theory, there were many ways to hide away from his eyes. But in reality, with how powerful Tom was at this point, he could sense the tiny fluctuations in the mana that any living being would case, making any attempt at hiding futile.

    "There is a reason why this is the very first thing you learn when you join the guild!" Krater said in an angry voice, pulling udia away by her hand.

    The entrance to the portal itself was starkly different from what Tom saw back in his homeworld. Instead of a massive structure securing the area around the portal to deny ess to any unwarranted guests, this world adopted a more open-minded approach.

    The portal hung in the air, just like back in the dome back near Tom''s home. Yet, instead of various types of security preventing ess, the locals actually built quite a few structures aiming to help with the transport between the world and the dungeon.

    The tform on which all the returnees appeared was no different. Raised over five meters above the ground, it was made with massive chunks of stone bricks. The tform itself was full of borate carvings, ones that even precision cutting machines from Tom''s world would have trouble finishing in a short period of time.

    And in a world clearly devoid of any electrical appliances, turning a simple stone b into this kind of borate work of art had to take an unimaginable amount of effort.

    "I get that you avoided the city thest time, but I don''t think it''s a good idea to look for another ce to sell your haul," Krater said. He then cast a quick look at the rest of his party already standing a few meters away.

    Rather than upying the small tform, they all moved to the lower floor of the construction, where only a single set of stone stairs separated them from the ground itself.

    "The guild is going to be a problem. With no license..." Tom said, only to cut his sentence short and put a thoughtful look on his face. "Or nevermind," he suddenly appeared to change his mind as a small smile blossomed on his lips. "I think I know how to deal with it," he muttered before turning his eyes back to the newly metpanion. "Would you mind leading us to the city?" Tom requested.

    "What are you even talking about?" Krater''s eyes widened as he gasped for air in surprise. "You saved our lives. How could we even dare to deny?" he asked, shaking his head powerlessly as he exhaled the air he gasped in before.

    "I didn''t want to pressure you into this. That''s why to consider this a request as long as it''s not too much trouble," Tom said, adopting a polite approach.

    In this world, his strenght mattered now. Just like back home, no matter how powerful he was personally, a well-organized unit would likely be able to take care of him.

    "As I said, we wouldn''t deny it even if it actually was troublesome," Krater replied, shaking his head even faster.

    "Tom, do you have a moment?" udia asked, approaching the two from behind.

    "I will give you two some privacy, then," Krater said as soon as he heard the girl''s request. With those words on his lips, he moved downstairs before grabbing the rest of his group and leading them down to the ground.

    "What do you need?" Tom asked, turning his face to the girl and lowering his voice just in case.

    "Do I really need to spell it out loud?" udia asked, adapting the volume of her voice as well. "This is a whole, new world!" She eximed while keeping the volume of her voice to a soft whisper. "While there is a lot that I would like to talk about regarding this discovery, I think there is one thing that you should be most interested in," she said as she raised her arms only to put her hands on Tom''s shoulders.

    "There is a huge chance that your father isn''t dead," she said, looking Tom straight in the eyes.

    "I know," the young man replied impassively, averting his eyes away. "While he might still be alive and messing in this world somewhere," he said, raising his eyes back only to shake his head the momentter, "but I don''t want to raise my hopes yet." Tom bit on his lip. "Only when I find some..." he started speaking, only to cut his sentence short when the portal behind them suddenly lit up.

    Moving his eyes to the source of the event, Tom saw electric sparks travel all over the circumvention of the dark orb of the portal. Then, it appeared as if the entire portal squeezed, copsed onto its core... Only to bounce back and throw a clump of matter out of its insides.

    "Hah," a man released his breath only to step down from the tform right away. Before long, the portal started to act up again, only to throw out yet another person.

    ''I guess Krater was right about that thing everyone learns,'' Tom thought, observing how everyoneing out of the portal would instantly move away from thending tform.

    "Guys, hurry up!" Krator shouted from the ground where he brought the rest of his party. Looking at them from his elevated position, Tom couldn''t help but notice the suspicious look still present in the beautiful eyes of the elven girl.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom shrugged when their eyes met. For some reason, he instantly averted his sight as a wave of bashfulness coursed through his body. ''Huh?'' he thought, surprised by the reaction of his own brain. ''Did I turn into some kind of pre-school kid or something to act like that?'' he thought, puzzled, while his cheeks turned slightly reddish.

    "Hmm?" udia muttered slightly, squinting her eyes as a small grin appeared on her face. "Your father''s situation aside, I wouldn''t mind getting her for a roll," she said as she bumped her elbow into Tom''s side.

    "What, are you bi or something?" Tom asked, more interested in dropping the topic than actually learning the answer.

    "Not really," udia shrugged her arms as she grabbed Tom''s hand and pulled him downstairs towards Krater''s group. "Bute on, aren''t we here now?" she asked, clearly hoping to avoid any words or sentences that could betray how they perceived this ce as another world, betraying their real identity in the process. "How could I resist the opportunity to take an elf for a roll?" she asked, grinning from ear to ear.

    "Once we sell our haul, we should have more than enough money to hire the most beautiful from some kind of brothel district," Tom said, instantly putting down the mes of udia''s passion. "Don''t forget that we can''t act too high-key for now," he added as the two of them joined with the rest of the group.

    "Huh?" udia shrugged in surprise. "Why not?" she asked, only to look around in hopes of finding some clues. "What''s wrong with iming the position of strenght with the power we have?" she asked, clearly puzzled by Tom''s approach to the topic.

    "Because of the mess that I''m about to kick in the guild," Tom replied with a lovely smile, unable to stop the hints of viciousness that already ran rampant in his soul.

    "Guys, I''m not sure we are supposed to hear that," Krater said with a troubled look on his face.

    "There is no need for you to worry," Tom replied, shaking his head as his vicious smile turned kind. "It''s all just a n to get them to issue us new licenses without forcing us to go through the standard ordeals," he said as his eyes moved towards the line of the horizon.

    The horizon where the outline of the town already started to appear.

    ''A town in a new world,'' Tom thought, barely capable of holding his excitement back. ''Let''s see what this ce has to offer for us!''

 Chapter 119: Splitting ways with Kraters party

    Chapter 119: Splitting ways with Krater''s party

    For the standards of someoneing from an advanced civilization, the city near the dungeon didn''t offer anything great.

    It was created with the shape of a star at its base, with each of its five protruding arms spewing out a road. Yet, despite this actually ingenious shape, only three out of the five roads leading out of the city had any real use.

    Starting with the southern road, it connected the city to the treasure trove that the dungeon was. ording to Krater''s words, it held an unofficial name of "adventurer''s road" from how mostly people of this profession used it.

    "Dang, it takes a while to reach the city," udia muttered after nearly half an hour''s worth of a slow-paced journey.

    "It only makes sense," Tom said in a low voice. "As much as the dungeon can offer, it also inherently brings danger. If the city was any closer, then the people would be justifiably worried what would happen if something were to change about the portal to the dungeon," he added, keeping his voice as silent as he could.

    For someone like him, an otherworlder, there were some logical reasons behind the city being so far away from the dungeon. Yet, there was a huge chance that locals looked at the matter from a whole different perspective.

    ''Details,'' Tom thought, biting on his lip. ''It''s all about the details that we don''t know.''

    "Yes, they are with us," Krater said, pointing his hand at the two of them. While Tom talked about the city with udia, the leader of the other group was busy dealing with the guards at the city gate.

    This was yet another point on which Tom was reminded just how little he knew about this world. Despite its clearly medievalistic look, the guards didn''t take their duties easily, as opposed to what Tom was used to from all the periodical literature he consumed in his earlier days.

    "You know it''s not going to be as easy," the guard in the middle of his twenties smiled viciously, clearly seeing Krater as nothing but a fatmb to skin for his own benefit.

    "Here," Krater only sighed before handing out a stacked pouch. The metallic ttering it gave as it moved made it clear what kind of content was hidden inside. "We happy?" he asked, gently squinting his eyes.

    "Are we?" the guard wasn''t going to make it any easier for the adventurer. "The rates recently went up, so you know..." he said, as his smile widened.

    "Meanwhile, those two behind us came here to officially register with the guild," Krater said, quickly losing his patience. "I wonder what the Magister will say when he learns that they decided to register somewhere else... And sell their grade five stone elsewhere..." Krater muttered under his nose, just loud enough for the guard and guard alone to pick his words up.

    "Keep talking," the guard didn''t really pay any mind to Krater''s insinuations. "If what you said is true, they would long be registered in the guild, wouldn''t they?" he asked before leaning his head over his shoulder. "Or should I call my superiors to deal with this matter?" he then asked in a threatening tone.

    "That would actually be a great idea," Krater countered. Even though Tom didn''t know the man for long, he could see from his face how Krater was quickly reaching the limit of his patience. "I wonder what Trayan will say once he discovers a tracker in the pouch that you are holding," he added, taking his own turn to put a vicious smile on his face.

    "You little..." the guard clearly hesitated. His face filled with wrath, only for it to recede a momentter. "You are free to go," he ended up saying, standing aside and waving his head at Krater''s group.

    ''I guess some things don''t change, no matter what world you are in,'' Tom thought, hiding his snicker as he went past the guards.

    Entering the city... Didn''t affect him much. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the ever-present feeling of a fantastical world filled with different races and magic items disyed at every corner, the ce was no different from how Tom pictured the insides of a small, medieval city.

    ''I know that saying that medieval towns were full of stink is nothing but a historical lie created to me the past ages, but still,'' Tom thought, taking a deep breath of the surprisingly fresh air. ''It''s nice that it doesn''t smell like shit in here,'' he thought, following after Krater deeper inside the town.

    "The guild is located all the way up this road. Once you reach the top of the hill, it will be the most magnificent building around," Krater suddenly said, pointing his finger in the distance.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged in surprise. "I thought you were going there with us," he said, slightly disappointed by the implied situation.

    "We will," Krater said, nodding his head, "but not yet. We need to get Celestia to the shrine to let her heal properly. Then, we will go and report the death of one of our own," he said, lowering his head as a sudden wave of grief took over the man''s face.

    "Fine," Tom nodded his head. Between forcing the group to guide them towards the guild and letting them deal with their own matters first, the choice was pretty obvious. Given how they were not only the only people that Tom somewhat knew in this world but how they were also indebted to him, it was better to keep their rtionship somewhat positive. "Let''s meet at the guild then. In case that we won''t be there by the time you arrive, just ask which Inn they rmended to us," Tom said before nodding his head.

    The two groups finally separated. Even though they didn''t spend that much time with each other, Tom could feel a strange feeling welling up in his soul.

    ''That''s one thing I already like about this ce,'' he thought to himself. ''You don''t need to waste hours just to bid your farewells,'' he noted before shaking his head and turning his face towards udia. "Let''s go."

    The road to the guild building was as simple as Krater pointed it out. After moving through a crowded main street uphill, they quickly reached a small teau. Right in its middle, there was a huge town''s square with fountains, benches, and even well-trimmed trees growing here and there and offering a nice shade for the locals.

    ''Compared to the dull concrete zas of the future, this looks way more pleasant,'' Tom thought, recalling the sad and lifeless look of the cities from back home.

    But there was nothing that he could do about how most of the towns looked like. With the recent war devastating the greater part of the world''s naturalndscape, only a few retained the privilege to live in the countryside amidst nature.

    With the arablend greatly limited, the cities turned into the true hub of human dwellings, where every inch of space had to be used effectively. Taking into ount the poprity of self-driving cars and the huge demand for parking spots, it is no wonder that the green color almostpletely vanished from the human settlements.

    ''Now that I think about it, it was quite a privilege to live at my family''s ranch,'' Tom thought, recalling the pleasantndscape of natural wildlife that surrounded the entire settlement of his tribe. In a sense, it was a barrier that separated the local town from the radioactive desert that made up roughly seventy percent of what was left of the earth.

    "Are you okay?" udia asked, bolting her elbow into Tom''s side.

    "Auch!" the young man screamed out lightly, more from a surprise than from actual pain. After all, if he could still be bothered by such a tiny nudge, then all his leveling and current power would have no meaning whatsoever. "What was that for?" he asked, turning his eyes towards the girl.

    "Stop spacing out," udia said with a small, dishonest smile. "You can do that once we are in the inn, not when you are about to kick up a massive mess!" she added, sizing Tom with her eyes.

    "Yeah, yeah, I get it," Tom replied. He then shook his head to get rid of all the useless and unnecessary thoughts. "Making a messes first, doesn''t it?" he said before moving forward.

    Krater''s advice on how to find the guild building proved to be quite useful. While all of the ces around the square were quite impressive for the standard of a medieval city, only one stood out of them. With all sorts of decorations, columns, and even paintings that prettied both its walls and its doors alike, there was hardly any doubt which of the buildings could actually house the guild.

    "Just in case, do you want to kick some assess in there?" udia asked, as she never really bothered to ask about what exactly Tom''s n was.

    "It all depends on how they will react," Tom said as he let his hands loose along his waist before stepping towards the gate of the guild. "I guess you will have to decide that yourself," he said, pushing the doors to the building open.

 Chapter 120: Stirring up the mess

    Chapter 120: Stirring up the mess

    ''Now, that''s what you call a fantasy world,'' Tom thought, making his way through the crowded insides of the guild.

    This was the first ce when the aura of another world could be felt. In contrast to the city''s streets, popted mainly by humans, the guild was filled with people from all sorts of races. Just by looking around, Tom could see a variety of elves, dwarves, and even folks that could only be described as demon folk.

    ''I better steer clear from calling out anyone on their race,'' Tom thought as he marched towards the counter conveniently ced at the building''s side opposite to the main doors. ''Who knows who would take what names for insults,'' he added in his thoughts only to stop right at the counter.

    "Hello," a young man sitting behind the table said while slowly raising his eyes to Tom''s face. "How can I help you?" he asked.

    ''How about you pay me your full attention first?'' Tom thought, his lips slightly twisting.

    The man''s hand that he approached continued to move, scribbling some strange marks on the paper hidden from Tom''s view.

    "I came here with mypanion to register," Tom said in a calm voice, trying his best to use as few words as possible. ''In this world, who knows what kind of random word could be a pitfall betraying myck of localmon sense,'' he thought warily.

    "Register as who?" the man asked, putting a small, smuggish smile on his face. "Perhaps you are here to take on the job offering of the conservator of the t surfaces?" he asked as sparks of amusement appeared in his eyes.

    "Should I kill him?" udia asked, nudging Tom in the side with her elbow.

    ''Isn''t she quite fond of this kind of abuse?'' Tom thought, ncing over to his side. ''Ever since we entered this world, she started to nudge me like that quite often,'' he thought before putting his attention back to the topic at hand.

    "Nah." Tom shook his head, denying the girl''s suggestion. "If we were to kill every clueless idiot, we would turn into genocidal maniacs," he then exined his reasoning behind his restraint.

    ''Still,'' Tom thought, looking back at the man. ''I thought that only a civilization like mine could bother toe up with fancy names for clearing services,'' he thought, recalling a joke that exploded in poprity just a few years ago.

    "If you are not here for the job, then scram," the young man said, lowering his eyes back to the paper he was scribbling at.

    "Oh?" Tom squinted his eyes before putting a wide smile on his lips. "I heard that I would be able to sell this here," he said, pulling the grade five stone from his pouch and smashing it into the counter.

    Sadly, amidst all the power that he had, Tom has yet to learn one thing.

    Restraint.

    Used to use his strenght against monsters and walls of the dungeon, Tom didn''t ount for just how fragile the wood of the counter could be. Or maybe it wasn''t a miscalction on his part at all?

    The counter snapped in half. No longer supported from both of its ends, the table fell down, sending all the papers stacked on it flying.

    "What the hell are you doing?!" the young man behind the counter screamed, jumping out from his chair and away from the devastating table. Then, his eyes moved on to the stone in Tom''s hand. "Huh?" he gasped for air, shocked by the sight before his eyes.

    "I came here to get my license and to sell this shiny rock," Tom said, keeping his smile on his face. "But if that''s too much trouble for you to bother with..." he said, pulling back his hands with the stone.

    "GUARDS!" the receptionist shouted even before Tom could threaten to take his business elsewhere. "Take this thief down!" the young man shouted, pointing his finger right at the otherwordly duo.

    "Can I kill him already?" udia asked, looking up at Tom''s face once again.

    "For now, take care of those guards he is calling," Tom replied, shaking his shoulders without care. "As for you," Tom said, turning his attention back to the young man, "how are you going topensate for calling me a thief?" Tom asked with a lovely expression on his face.

    "They areing," udia said before striking her fists together. With the corner of his eye, Tom could see a wide smile brimming on her lips.

    ''I guess she is pretty excited to fight with some other humans,'' he thought, noticing a group of well-armed men heading their way.

    "You will die like a dog, you damned bandit!" the young man screamed out.

    "Is that all you have to say for your defense?" Tom asked politely, reaching out with his hand to the side and conjuring a magical spear. ''For the likes of him, there is no need to call for the real thing,'' he thought before pointing the spear''s tip at the young man''s throat.

    And here he froze, staring at the young man with a lovely smile on his face, one that he would typically wear during the aftercare of his intimate moments with udia. At the same time, the guards that the receptionist called for finally reached udia''s spot.

    Yet, a single look at the scene was enough for them to stop in their tracks.

    "You," the man at the front of the group pointed his hand at a random person in the crowd. "Go and fetch the guild master," he ordered before moving his eyes towards the girl that stood between him and Tom. "I don''t think there is a need to fight here, is there?" he asked, keeping his hand steady at the handle of his sword.

    "That depends," udia answered as her smile soured. "Tom?" she asked, keeping her eyes stuck to the group of guards in front of her.

    "You know, in the ce where wee from, calling someone a thief always leads to someone losing their hands," Tom said,ing up with a random story on the spot.

    ''I guess that''s one of the advantages of reading a shitload of novels back in the days,'' he thought only to smile at his own thoughts.

    "Either by taking the thief''s hands or the hands of the one falsely using him," the guard said, smiling gently. "Am I right?" he asked as he threw a peculiar look at the young receptionist.

    "It''s nice to know that you are a fellow man of rules and culture," Tom said before leaning his head over his shoulder. "How is it going to be? Should I kill everyone in this building outside of you to prove that I have the strenght to obtain this stone on my own?" Tom asked without any regard for the localmon sense.

    There was a time when he had to pretend and hide with how little he knew, but it wasn''t now. With the mess already stirred, he could just im that everything he said so far was nothing more but a part of his tough act.

    "That won''t be necessary," a new voice appeared in the fray. This time, it belonged to a middle-aged woman, dressed as inly as one could ever attempt to dress.

    In a sense, her sense of clothing made her look like a genuine member of medieval times. But instead of wearing robes that would make her look noble, she only had simple pants and a white, coarse shirt.

    "Are you going to cut his hands off then?" Tom asked, unwilling to let go of his agenda. While he was a little worried about letting udia see something as brutal, unless he marked his presence in this ce in a forceful manner, there would be no end to the problems in the future.

    "If that''s really your wish," the female shrugged her arms, keeping her slow yet steady tempo. She only stopped when no more than a meter separated her from udia, who stood guard at Tom''s side. "But I believe we can somehowe to a less bloody agreement. What do you think about it?" the girl asked, leaning her head while her lips formed a small smile.

    "First of all, don''t you think it only makes sense for you to introduce yourself before attempting to negotiate?" udia asked, proving that she wasn''t only good at fighting off any enemies. It was something that Tom managed to forget over all the time they spent in the dungeon doing nothing but killing monsters.

    "Ah, that''s right," the female shook her head before looking up and turning her smile wry. "I''m the witch of the north, the bane of the undead, and a fifth-ss adventurer. Coincidentally, I currently serve as the guild master of this branch of the adventurer''s guild," the female introduced herself in a way that clearly didn''t fit her appearance nor her title. "Now that you know who I am, may I know who am I dealing with?" she asked.

    It was as if someone took your average Joe, pped him with some glorious title, and then dressed as amoner.

    In other words, every detail of how she looked, acted, and spoke didn''t match the rest.

    "I''m Tom, and this is udia," Tom said with a straight face, deciding not toe up with any titles for themselves on the spot. Not because he was incapable of proving them, but simply because of how much it would contrast with the woman''s introduction. "Now, what do you propose?"

 Chapter 121: Trouble at the guild

    Chapter 121: Trouble at the guild

    "Let''s put the matter of this idiot aside for now," the woman said as she swung her hand to the side, pointing towards one of the many doors fitted into a nearby wall. "How about we discuss business in a more fitting ce?" she asked with a slight smile blossoming on her face.

    "No, I don''t think this is a good idea," Tom replied with a smile as bright as the one that the guild master wore. "If we bring it behind closed doors, won''t that make everyone here feel like we are going to make some shady deal?" Tom asked, spreading his arms around as if in an attempt to point at everyone in the room.

    "Young man, I don''t think I appreciate how bold you are," the woman said, her smile souring.

    "Old hag, I don''t think I care what you do appreciate or not," Tom replied, his smile blossoming even further.

    For a mere moment, the entire building turned silent. The people stopped talking; there were no sounds of cups hitting the desk or the liquor flowing down the adventurer''s throat. The entire ce froze.

    "Heh," the guild master chuckled. "Hahaha!" she thenughed out loud, taking everyone, Tom and udia included, by surprise. "It''s been ages since anyone dared to be so audacious with me!" she shouted, grabbing herself by her stomach to quell herughter.

    "I didn''t expect that, I won''t lie," Tom said, taking his turn to sour the smile on his face.

    "What, would you prefer if I acted up?" the woman asked, still holding herself by a thin line from rolling on the floor fromughing.

    "Aren''t you overexaggerating?" udia suddenly asked, taking a step forward. "I don''t think anything happened to warrant your suddenugh," she said, squinting her eyes and clenching her palms into fists.

    "There is no need to be so wary of me, youngdy," the woman said, wiping the tears off her eyes. Then, she finally managed to calm herself down and straighten her back before looking properly at udia. "Once you work in a position giving youmon respect, having someone treat you like people did in the past will be really enjoyable, I promise," she said.

    "Enough with the chit-chat," Tom cut the discussion, approaching udia only to put his hand on her shoulder. "We came here for two reasons, but now there are three matters to deal with. First, how are you going to punish one of your workers for naming me a thief?" Tom asked, still keen on continuing with his n.

    "Why are you so keen on punishing him?" the woman asked. "It''s not like he did you any real harm," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

    "Then," Tom''s smile turned vicious, "you wouldn''t mind if everyone in this room started calling you a loose whore with horseshit for brains?" he asked, using the rich depository of insults that any yer of the online games would learn.

    "Careful," the woman said, lowering her eyelids. "So far, I can still consider your words as a poorly-ced joke, but you are quickly reaching the line you shouldn''t cross," the guild master warned.

    "See?" Tom asked, rxing his facial muscles. "You im that there is no harm in insulting me, yet you actually threaten me when I use this logic against you!" the young man pointed out, not bothered by the hostile aura of the woman at all.

    ''If I were topare... Her strenght would be roughly simr to that of the bosses from the sixtieth floor and above,'' he thought. ''No,'' he added in his thoughts after a moment. ''That''s just the aura of hers. Adding skills and experience, and she could maybe be on part with the boss of the seventieth floor?'' Tom made a guess, ensuring that no one in the room posed any real danger to him or udia.

    "I..." the woman hesitated for a moment only to hand her head low nearly a minuteter. "I guess you are right," she said, releasing a deep sigh. She then shook her head and nodded at the guards standing behind her. "Take him and throw him to the lord''s dungeon for a month." She turned her head and looked at Tom. "Will this punishment suffice?"

    "Was it really so damn hard?" Tom asked instead of giving a straight answer. He then brought his hand up, presenting the grade five stone back to the public. "Now, how much are you willing to pay for this stone?"

    "It has a nice cut, almost as if it wasn''t mined at all," the woman said, taking a step closer and leaning towards the mana stone. "Normally, I would offer fifty princals..." the woman hesitated for a moment only to raise her eyes at Tom, "but I remember that you had something else to deal with here. Let''s discuss the price once I hear more about it," she said, raising her torso and moving away from Tom.

    "Thest matter that I need to settle is the registration with the guild," Tom said, lowering his hand and hiding the stone back underneath his clothes. "We managed to reach so far on our own," he said, taking a nce at the girl beside him, "but there is only so much that one can achieve as a pair of two and two alone," he added, looking directly into the woman''s eyes.

    "You managed to get so powerful without registering?" the guild master asked as if she didn''t hear the question the first time. Her face tensed up while her eyes widened, proving that she simply couldn''t believe what she actually heard.

    "We didn''te here to discuss our reasons or means," Tom pointed out, raising his left eyebrow. "Of course, if our manner of keeping our cards to our chest isn''t to your liking, there are so many other ces where people would be happy to help us," he said, shaking his shoulder to show how little he cared.

    "I guess that''s an undeniable truth," the woman replied, shaking her head. Her eyes lost a bit of their usual shine.

    ''Is she bothered by this statement or something?'' Tom asked himself. Even though he knew finding out an answer would cost him way too much time and effort and was something he wouldn''t be able to do without wasting those, he still formted the question in his head. Not because he had any chances of finding out the answer, but because a thought stated was an idea, while a fleeting thought was just an inspiration.

    "Well, with the registration in mind, the price will fall to forty princals," the woman said.

    Just like when Tom dared to openly insult her, the entire room turned silent. While the young man could understand that there was something huge in the guild master''s statement, theck of knowledge aboutmon sense made it impossible for him to figure out what exactly was that.

    "Is that your final offer?" Tom asked, more for the sake of sounding the other party off rather than actually trying to negotiate the price.

    "I''m sorry, but yes," the woman said, looking Tom directly in the eyes. "Not reporting what I just heard is worth that much," she said before her lips suddenly curved upwards, making the woman reveal the whites of her teeth. "But that''s just me and the stuff of the guild," the grin on the woman''s face turned ugly. "No matter how much you will pay me, I can''t vouch for all the people in this building," she said, shaking her shoulders.

    For the third time in the short period of time, everyone in the building froze.

    Tom looked around. While confusion took over the expression of the majority of people around, there were some faces on which greedy smiles started to grow.

    "udia," Tom said, keeping the eye-contact with the guild master.

    "Yes?" the girl replied, raising her eyes at the young man.

    "Kill anyone who dares to leave the building," Tom said with no hesitation before bringing the stone forward on his extended hand.

    "IDIOT!" a shout reached Tom from the side. One of the adventurers that just happened to sit rtively close lunged forward, stretching his hands towards the precious stone.

    Even without his haste activated, Tom could both see the movement and react to it. But before he could as much as twitch, udia took half a step forward and mmed the air in front of her.

    "Huh?" the man only gasped for air when a wave ofpressed strenght squashed his stomach and sent the to-be-snatcher flying.

    "What do you think you are doing?" the woman asked, ignoring the quick sh and looking at Tom''s face instead. "While I agreed to buy it, I never said I can pay for it right away," she said, pulling her hands as far away from the stone as she could.

    "I don''t care," Tom said, gently throwing the stone to the woman. Thanks to the lucky disy of udia''s strenght, no one dared to attempt snatching it. "Give me as much as you can now, and I wille to get the rest once you are done gathering it," he said, watching how the guild master caught the stone.

    "Are you..." she started speaking only to suddenly bite her lips. "Are you actually sure you want to give away such a precious resource?" the guild master asked, looking at Tom as if he was some kind of madman.

    ''What, did you think that the entire thing was just a rouse?'' Tom asked himself before shaking his head.

    "For the two of us, this thing is nothing more but a spare piece of trash," he said, gracing the woman with a lovely smile of his. "We lived in the wild for long enough. Right now, I just want to give my wife theforts she deserves," Tom said, patting udia''s on her shoulder.

 Chapter 122: Shaking the deal

    Chapter 122: Shaking the deal

    "I didn''t expect to hear that," udia muttered as the two of them followed the guild master to the room in the back of the guild.

    "Don''t tell me you didn''t like it," Tom replied, putting a wide smile on his face.

    "And just when did you get the misconception that sleeping together would lead to that?" udia asked with a lovely smile, leaning her head over her shoulder. "Don''t tell me you still live in the past age standards," she muttered a momentter before sending her elbow towards Tom''s side.

    "Hey," Tom dodged, although only barely. "Can you stop with the nudges?" he asked in a normal voice. After all, there was nothing that they needed to hide about a small banter. "I could handle it once or twice, but you are getting too used to hitting me like that," Tom protested, sending the girl a dreadful stare.

    "Stop looking at me like that," udia protested, wrapping her hands around her own chest as if in an attempt to make herself smaller. "What will you do if I piss myself?" she asked, lowering her head and looking at Tom with upturned eyes.

    "As if you would ever do that," Tom replied before shaking his head and dropping the topic.

    "Are you guys done, now?" the woman leading them asked, proving that Tom picked the right moment to cease the friendly fight.

    "You sound like you really want to give me the opportunity to create an even bigger mess," Tom said to the guild master before he could bite on his tongue to stop. This was one of the downsides of turning as powerful as he was. With his body improving beyond any level he could ever expect, it seemed that his brain seeminglygged behind, making it a lot easier for both Tom and udia to jump the gun even in the simplest situations.

    "You know I didn''t mean it in that way," the woman shook her head before raising her fist to her shoulder and pointing with her thumb at the doors behind her. "Still, you don''t want to enter the treasury with that kind of attitude," she said as the corners of her lips twitched.

    "Is that a threat?" Tom asked, gently raising one of his eyebrows.

    "More like advice," the woman replied before releasing a long, depressed sigh. "Keep in mind that being a guild master is a given job, not one I got just by reaching the top. As such, I''m not the only and absolute authority of the guild," she added as her expression soured.

    Then, without any further dy or exnation, she turned around and pushed the doors open.

    "Get the fuck out," a low, deep voice instantly made itself present as soon as the doors pried open. Without any regard for the guild master''s authority, whoever was inside was quick tosh at her and anyone elseing in.

    "Shut your crap," the woman replied as she indicated with her hand for Tom and udia to follow her. "I came here for all the money that you have," she said before reaching with her hand towards Tom.

    ''That''s... Well... Unexpected?'' he thought, pulling out one of the grade five stones he had and passing it to the woman ahead.

    "What for?" the man asked, finally revealing himself from behind the counter.

    On its own, the overseer of the treasury didn''t look like someone managing a vast amount of money. ''Doesn''t he look like your average geek?'' Tom thought, watching at the rtively young face of the man, hidden behind some massive sses.

    Instead of some old geezer who ate his teeth at the job, the local treasurer appeared to be in the middle of his twenties. As much as Tom could tell through his clothing, he had no muscles at all nor the aura that would indicate some kind of magical prowess.

    To put it in simple words, the man was weak. As weak as the monsters on the early floors in the dungeon, if not even weaker. Yet, despite all of that, he had some kind of aura that made it hard, even for Tom, to tread lightly in his presence.

    "Here," the guild master ced Tom''s stone on the man''s counter as if she would m a cup of beer in some low-key tavern. "They are stupid enough to sell it. I tried to talk them out of it, but who am I to refuse free profit?" she asked, ncing at Tom over her arm.

    "Grade five?" the hostility in the man''s voice vanished without a trace as he leaned over the stone, focusing all of his attention on the item. "No, this is actually a pristine grade five stone!" he eximed a momentter, fixing the position of his sses as if he med them for the unrealistic sight before his eyes. "And they are selling it?!" The man''s voice turned weird when a tone of bewilderment found its way to his throat.

    "Yes, we are selling it," Tom said, taking a step closer and emerging from behind the guild master''s back. "Unless you don''t want us to, then we will take our business elsewhere," he added as he shrugged his arms.

    "No, I will take it," the treasurer instantly replied, clearly worried that Tom would turn his threat into reality. Then, the man raised his eyes at the guild master. "How much do we need to pay?" he asked as his hands trembled slightly.

    ''I guess they are really treating it as a treasure,'' Tom thought, already forming several ns for several different contingencies. ''Well, worst-case scenario, if they are scamming us on the stone''s worth, we will just burn this entire guild down,'' he thought, looking up at the ceiling with curiosity. To his pleasure, the support beams were made out of some kind of wood, proving that the building would be susceptible for Tom''s everze if using it inside ever proved to be necessary.

    "Forty princals," the guild master replied hastily as her face turned still. "Don''t ask me why only this much. It''s a part of a bigger deal," she said as a sour grimace took over her face.

    "And why would I ask?" the man looked at the woman as if she was some kind of stupid hoe. "Like you said before, there is no reason to refuse free profit!" he added as a smile grew on his lips only to brim from ear to ear in the very next moment.

    But instead of wasting his time on rejoicing, the man quickly sat back down and started to surf through a stack of papers hidden underneath his desk.

    "Right now," he started, only to turn silent as wrinkles appeared on his forehead, indicating just how focused he was, "We only have a quarter of that in the treasury, discounting for the daily operating costs," he said after a few more moments before casting a quick nce at Tom''s face. "Will that suffice for now? I know this might be a bother, but we will need to auction this stone out to pay you the rest," he said, averting his eyes as if worried that this inconvenience could kill the deal.

    "I understand," Tom nodded his head, "how long will it take?" he asked, staring right into the man''s eyes.

    "A week at most," the treasurer answered before biting his lips to the point when they started to bleed. "I will do my best to hasten the process. If I pulled some favors, I could get it done even in two days..." he said before turning silent as he hesitated.

    "But that would mean the price would fall down," Tom finished the man''s sentence for him. Then, a small smile appeared on his lips. "To be frank, if you can get it done by tomorrow, I will settle for thirty princals," he added only to leisurely stretch his hands to the back.

    "Deal," the treasurer rocketed up from his chair, instantly pushing his hand forward in an attempt to seal the deal.

    ''I wonder how much the princals are worth,'' Tom thought, reaching forward and shaking the man''s hand.

    "Then, give me a moment," the treasurer said, breaking the handshake and running off to the back of his room. With a weirdly huge number of bookshelves filled with texts to the brim hiding the majority of the room, Tom couldn''t even follow the man''s movements.

    ''Huh?'' he shrugged in surprise. ''I can''t even track him by his aura!'' Tom noticed, bewildered by the unexpected discovery. Yet, before he could even create a guess as to what just happened, the man returned with a small pouch in his hand.

    "Here," the treasurer said, mming the pouch on the counter and opening its top. "Ten princals for the down payment," he said before passing the pouch to Tom.

    "I will be back to collect the rest tomorrow afternoon," Tom said, snatching the bag and turning around.

    "What now?" udia asked, not caring for the presence of other people around them.

    "Now," Tom started, only to put a huge smile on his face. "Now we go to eat something nice," he added before pulling the girl away from the room.

 Chapter 123: Pricey meat

    Chapter 123: Pricey meat

    "Was it all really necessary?" udia asked as soon as they left the guild building.

    ''I wonder if she did that intentionally,'' Tom thought, curious about the case.

    Out in the open street of the city, the bustling streets made for a perfect cover. With all the noises of the city, even if someone were to eavesdrop on them, they wouldn''t be able to achieve anything. In regard to the safety of their talk, the open areas of the street were a surprisingly good choice.

    "Yes and no," Tom replied, refusing to give a simple answer. "Yes, because we needed to see how people would react. No, because there were other ways to achieve it," he built up on his simple answer only to shake his head a momentter. "And obviously, we still had to sell that stone as soon as possible. Say whatever you want, but it should be even harder to survive in this city without any money than it would be back home," he added, biting on his lip as soon as he finished the sentence.

    "Why didn''t you just approach the desk and attempt to sell the stone, then?" udia asked, bewildered by the unexpected exnation. "Wouldn''t that be way easier and quicker?" she asked, grabbing herself by her stomach. "Now that I think about it, I''m quite hungry."

    "Because that would give away too much information," Tom said before pursing his lips shut.

    There was no point in borating over the precise details of his thinking. Just exining how they could be offered a scam price, only to reveal that they had no idea about the market value of the stone would take a long while.

    And it was just one of the points that Tom had to consider.

    ''Only by putting people at least slightly against the wall, one can count on a somewhat honest response,'' he thought, recalling one of the many life lessons his father taught him before disappearing into the vortex of the dungeon.

    "How about we try this one out?" udia suddenly asked, breaking Tom''s line of thought. Forced out of his state of inner focus, he raised his eyes at the stall her hand was pointing at.

    "Skewers?" Tom asked, his eyes widening in surprise and disappointment alike. "What are you, a lord of cliche?" he asked, recalling how meat skewers appeared in literally every Isekai novel he read in his early years.

    "What''s wrong with them?" udia asked, genuinely surprised. "The stall is close, so we can be back at the guild as soon as Krater''s party returns," she said, making quite a lot of sense.

    "Well, you are right," Tom replied, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace. ''Still, it feels weird to follow a cliche route like that,'' he thought, approaching the stall the girl singled out from the many present on the side of the street.

    "Four, please," Tom said, raising his hand with all its fingers but thumb raised up.

    "Sure thing, young sir!" the vendor replied happily, grabbing four sticks with grilled meat stabbed on it. "That will be eight Marqs," he added, stretching his other hand towards Tom.

    ''Well, let''s see how it goes,'' the young man thought, grabbing the pouch and pulling out one of the ten coins he received from the guild.

    But the vendor''s hand didn''t move. Rather than that, his eyes widened up, only for the middle-aged man to back out a single step.

    "You must be joking, young sir," the man''s voice trembled as he said those words. "There is no way I will have a change for that!" he added before hastily lowering his head.

    ''So those are really worth a lot,'' Tom thought, forcibly stopping his eyes from ncing over at the coins. "It''s okay," he said instead, putting a wide, charitable smile on his face. "You might find it surprising, but I actually love rewarding hard-working people like you," he said, scrambling his brainpower toe up with a valid story.

    "Sir?" the vendor asked, still too scared to even go back to his previous spot. The juice from the meat dripped down on the skewer, only to dirty the man''s hand. Yet, even though the liquid was clearly way too hot for one to touch it, the vendor didn''t dare to release a single word ofint.

    "Let''s do it like this, then," Tom said, keeping the initiative in the discussion. "As you can see, I currentlyck the proper kind of coins to entertain my sweetheart," the young man said, wrapping his hand around udia''s side and bringing her closer. "How about you give me all the change you have and double... No, triple the skewers I ordered. With that, I will consider our small exchange a fair deal," Tom suggested.

    "Sir... Are you really sure?" the vendor asked. Yet, amidst all the fear in his eyes, a glint of greediness appeared.

    "Sure," Tom replied joyfully, only to walk around the stall, grab the man''s hand and force the silvery coin directly into the man''s palm. Then, he walked back to the customer''s ce as if nothing had happened. "May I ask for my food and change?" he asked with a kind smile stered all over his face.

    "Sir... Yes, sir!" The vendor almost jumped in his attempt to reach for the bottom of the grill. After a bit of scuffing around, he pulled out a sizeable cassette with a lock taking up a third of its size. "Here," he said, passing the rectangr item towards Tom. And as soon as Tom''s hands touched the item, the vendor reached underneath his in shirt only to present the young man with a simple, iron key.

    "My food, please," Tom said, pulling the box away and reaching out with his other hand.

    "Huh?" the vendor stumbled for a little before finally getting rid of his shock. "Here you go, young master," he said, passing the skewers to Tom''s hand.

    "Thank you for your business," Tom said before turning towards udia and passing half of the skewers to her. "Here, how about we enjoy it on that bench over there?" he asked, pointing at a nearby spot in the shadow with his chin.

    "Sure," udia replied in a weird tone.

    ''It''s hard to say whether she is confused, unhappy, or just thinking about something else,'' Tom thought, swallowing the sour pillow of dealing with women. If it was Marvin or Cleo here, they would just speak their mind rather than keeping their thoughts to themselves.

    But again, both of his childhood friends operated on simr wavelengths to him. After all, they went through simr training to what his father put him through, making them capable soldiers of the family. As such, they could easily see through the reasons for everything that Tom did so far in this new world, as weird as it might look for anyone looking at it from outside.

    "Do you enjoy wasting your money away like that?" udia asked as soon as the two sat down on a simple bench hidden in the shadow of one of the trees.

    "Do you actually mind that?" Tom asked, his eyes widening in surprise.

    "What did you do that for?" udia ignored Tom''s question, pressing her agenda without even the slightest hesitation. "Didn''t you see the look on his face? Didn''t you hear what he said?" she asked before stuffing her mouth with one of the skewers.

    ''It seems her hunger got one better over her anger,'' Tom thought. He failed to stop a small smile from forming on his lips.

    "Listen," the young man said while the girl''s mouth was still too upied for her to interrupt him. "We don''t know the kind of coins people use in this ce. We don''t know their ratios, their worth, anything," Tom said but left the rest of the exnation away.

    "So you are telling me," udia said as she swallowed a huge chunk of meat, only to throw away an empty skewer and instantly move on to the next one, "that you did it to gain information?" she asked, too focused on the food to even look at Tom.

    "Right now, information is everything," Tom replied in a lowered voice. As they were now in a pocket of rtive silence and calmness, it was actually way easier for any shady party to hear what they were talking about. "Don''t forget, we are not from here. It''s better to waste a lot of money to find out the basics than to let anyone know what we actually are ignorant about," Tom finally exined his line of thought.

    But it was actually both far moreplicated and far simpler for someone who knew all the details of his approach.

    It wasn''t that it was risky to let the world know that neither of them knew the value of each coin in the local cirction. The only risky aspect of this problem was the fact that if anyone noticed it, they would be sure to keep a watchful eye on them in the future.

    In other words, Tom wasn''t bothered by the possibility of standing out. He just couldn''t ept the far-reaching consequences of this happening.

    In this regard, losing a lot of money didn''t seem costly at all. Especially with how easy this money came from and how simple it would be for them to gain it all back.

    After all, with their current level of power, reaching the bottom of the dungeon would be a breeze.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom suddenly turned silent. His hand and mouth froze, letting a small drip of drool fall out of his meat-stuffed mouth. ''Wasn''t there a girl that asked me to find her on the other side?''

 Chapter 124: I demand a satisfaction!

    Chapter 124: I demand a satisfaction!

    "They are back," udia announced, pointing in the distance with her chin. "Are we going to call them out?" she asked while holding her hand on her stomach.

    When buying the food, Tom considered a set of two meat skewers per person a proper amount. And looking at the girl right now with her stomach bloated from double that portion, it appeared that his initial idea was pretty spot-on.

    "I guess so," Tom said, standing up. Used to go for a long time without food, something that his life on the minimal amount of food money taught him, he dropped two out of four skewers that he got for himself.

    ''I know wasting food is bad, but it would be even worse to be handicapped because of overstuffing myself,'' he thought, casting away the guilt that this action made him feel.

    "Well, let''s not waste any time, then," udia said, standing up from the bench they were sitting on. Yet, as soon as she did so, her cheeks pumped up in an expression known to anyone who partook in the drinking parties that went wrong.

    "Are you okay?" Tom asked, cing his hand on the girl''s back just in case she needed urgent support.

    "Yeah," udia muttered, swallowing back whatever made its way up her throat. "I guess I ate a bit too much," she said before raising up and walking ahead.

    ''Trying to ignore the problem won''t make it disappear, you know?'' Tom thought, ultimately holding himself back from saying those words out loud.

    Amidst other things, Tom was a fervent believer in the blessing of vomit. While he never tried to artificially make himself throw up for no reason, while he could understand why others didn''t like it, ultimately, it was one of the functions of the body.

    And there were hardly any things about one''s body that were unnecessary.

    As such, whenever Tom felt bad enough for the feeling of nausea to start welling up, he wouldn''t bother with holding it in. Since his organism was telling him that there was something wrong with what he ate, the best course of action would be to get rid of the problem in the quickest and safest way instead of forcing it to be digested first.

    "Hey, you are already back," udia said while raising her hand to make it easier for the other party to notice her.

    "Yeah," Krater nodded his head in a greeting. "Did you go to the guild already, or did you wait for us?" he asked.

    As the two groups met once again, Celestia was quick to hide herself behind the back of her teammates. It appeared that she still couldn''t ovee the fear ingrained in her soul after what she saw in them back in the dungeon.

    "We already dealt with our stuff," Tom said, joining the discussion. Even though he would prefer to just stand back and observe how the rest of Karter''s party would act and react, he couldn''t just let udia reveal her own interpretation of what happened in the building.

    "Do you want to wait, or are you going to get in with us?" Krater asked.

    Just as Tom was about to answer, the other party moved. As if swaying away from the iing attack, they all backed down from the center of the street, giving way to the approaching party of three.

    With the mess already created, Tom quickly caught udia''s hand before pulling her back as well.

    ''Who are they?'' he asked himself, watching how a burly man in a full ted armor, a scrawny man with an impressive bow on his back, and a young girl in wizard-looking robes passed between the two parties.

    For a moment, Tom felt an urge to kick up another mess. Not for any rational reason, but just for the sake of testing out his strenght.

    From the way that Krater''s party reacted, it was clear that this trio had some sort of massive fame in the town or at least in the adventurer''s guild. With that in mind, having them as his opponents would give Tom a great chance to see just how strong the people at the top of the localmunity were.

    "So? Do you want toe in with us or not?" Krater asked once the two groups met in the middle of the road once again.

    "Lead the way," Tom replied, purposefully avoiding the topic of the party that just passed right through them. Given how they were heading for the guild as well, he opted to give himself some more time to analyze the situation.

    ''All in all, I should be able to judge their strenght even without starting a fight,'' he thought, already paying a huge fraction of his attention to the residual mana stirred by the powerful aura of the trio.

    Ultimately though, there wasn''t enough time for Tom to get any urate guesses. With Krater''s party leading the way, Tom and udia were already back at the guild before he could make any real observations.

    "What are you doing here?" Tom moved his eyes towards the source of the voice. And as expected, the samedy in the same in clothes as before stared at him with her eyes wide open.

    "Just apanying some friends," Tom smiled before sending the guild master a wink.

    "And here I was worried you didn''t cause enough trouble for the day," the woman said, putting a light smile on her face. "Well, go on, then," she said before moving her eyes back to the people she was talking with before.

    "Already popr, huh?" Krater said. A small smirk appeared on his face, only to disappear a momentter when he approached the guild''s reception desk. "I''m here to report thest dungeon exploration..."

    "Why are we even here?" udia asked, pulling Tom''s attention away from the events at the reception desk. For the locals, it was likely just a simple administration task, one of the many enforced by any advanced civilization on those who were a part of it. Yet, for Tom, it was an invaluable source of information about how this ce worked in normal circumstances.

    He could use it as soon as he would appear in a different city with a different guild and potentially a different dungeon.

    "Because we need to learn where some good inns are," Tom replied offhandedly. There was no way for him to pay much mind to such a simple question if it meant losing the ability to eavesdrop on the talks at the counter.

    "If a good ce to stay is what you need..." the guild master approached them, clearly feeling uneasy about their presence in her building alone, "then I can help you out with that," she said, putting a lovely smile on her face.

    "I''m sorry, but we are not interested," Tom replied, unable to be bothered to act respectfully. "Who knows what kind of unspoken details such a deal would contain," he added, seizing the woman from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.

    "I..." The woman hesitated before hanging her head low. "I understand. I''m sorry to be a bother," she added, taking a step back.

    ''Is it the money?'' Tom thought, curious about the reasons for the woman''s retracted behavior. Given the face she showed him just a few moments ago during their first visit to the guild, he expected the guild master to actually be a little pushier with her agenda.

    "I don''t like the way you talk to the master," a man suddenly appeared by Tom''s side. With just a single look, Tom could tell that those words came from his heart rather than from some random wish to stir up some trouble.

    "I don''t like dogs barking in my face, thinking I will pay attention to them because of the noise they make," Tom replied despite recognizing the man before him.

    It was the same, scrawny guy that he saw walking through the very middle of the street just a moment before.

    ''Am I going to witness some kind of cliche development?" Tom asked himself, more curious than worried about such urrence. In fact, it felt like if the scrawny guy just offered him free candy.

    After all, he was more than happy to test his strenght against the guy, something that he had to previously give up due to theck of potential justification for stirring up yet another mess.

    ''There has to be a limit to how far the guild master will allow me to go before snapping,'' the young man thought before shaking his head.

    "What did you say?!" the scrawny man asked in a deadly calm voice as he reached for the handle of a massive knife strapped to his belt.

    "Can someone please take this dog away?" Tom said out loud, already preparing himself mentally for the fight that was clearly about toe soon.

    "Can you please act calm andposed for once?" the guild master requested in a low, annoyed voice. Yet, despite how clearly upset she was about Tom''s actions, she didn''t condemn them in the slightest.

    "Do I really need to bring another story to exin why I won''t allow some lowlife to treat me in such an unreasonable way?" Tom asked before a wild, genuine smile appeared on his lips. "Or can we just skip the details and get this over with?" he asked, turning his face back to the man in front of him.

    "You are courting death," the man said, squinting his eyes even further. He moved his right hand up, revealing a small glimpse of light reflecting from the de of his weapon.

    "Do you really want me to consider your words an open threat?" Tom asked, looking at his potential adversary with hope-filled eyes.

    "Take it however you want," the scrawny man replied before tightening his hands into palms. "Because it won''t change the reality," he added. Then, he pulled down a glove off his hand and threw it to the floor, right at Tom''s feet. "Since you refuse to act respectfully towards your betters, I have no choice but to ask for satisfaction!"

 Chapter 125: Claudias performance

    Chapter 125: udia''s performance

    "Hahaha, first!" udia shouted as she threw herself to the ground before snatching the glove from the ground. By the time she was gathering herself from the floor, Tom barely managed to twitch.

    ''She could be that fast?'' Tom thought, baffled by what just happened.

    "What do you think you are doing?!" The scrawny man''s eyes opened wide, proving that he failed to understand what just transpired.

    "Noing back now; I picked the glove, so we are going to fight to the death, right?" udia said, happily waving the piece of clothing around as if it was some kind of trophy.

    "Were you that itchy for a fight?" Tom asked, rubbing his forehead with his hand.

    "Isn''t it boring to fight monsters only?" udia looked at Tom as if trying to teach a lesson to some naive kid. "What''s the use of our power if we can''t smash the faces of arrogant pricks like this one?" she asked, pointing her hand ostentatiously at the scrawny man.

    "Are you really sure this is what you wish for, little girl?" the man asked, clearly annoyed by having udia''s finger shoved right in his face.

    "Shush, dog, no one is talking to you," udia replied, waving her hand at the man.

    "That does it," the man muttered as his face darkened. He then took two steps to the back, taking his bow from his back. "I hope you are ready for it," he said, drawing the string of his weapon.

    The man never put an arrow on the string. It was a puzzling sight at first, something that would make any archer back in Tom''s homeworld scream in agony. Yet, as soon as the string reached its full draw, mana converged right where the man''s fingers held it, summoning an arrow right where it should be.

    ''Isn''t it quite simr to my magical spear?'' Tom thought, instantly drawn by the simrity. Yet, after a second look, this arrow wasn''t anything like his magical spears.

    Instead of taking a fully physical form like his magical weapons, the arrow was stuck in a state where it wasn''t fully physical, nor was it a fully magical object. Some parts of it managed to properly form, but the greater part of it remained as a condensed, blue light, proving that the man was too weak to turn his mana into a physical object.

    ''Or is that all there is to it?'' Tom questioned himself, unwilling to simply assume the weakness of the other party. ''Maybe he is doing that intentionally,'' he suggested himself, trying to see the situation in a different light. But there was something else that he had to do before he could fully focus on the curious situation at hand.

    "Aren''t you going to stop them?" Tom asked the guild master with a puzzled expression on his face.

    "Huh?" The woman shook in surprise. "Why should I?" she asked, clearly missing the point of the young man''s question.

    "I mean," Tom took a moment to find the right words, "if that idiot were to duel with me, I would likely be able to hold myself back. But in udia''s case..." Tom said, turning his normal voice into a mutter so silent that even he himself couldn''t fully hear it.

    "In her case, what?" the guild master asked as the first signs of anxiety started to appear in her eyes.

    "Well, this pretty building is as good as gone," Tom exined, shaking his arms as if to prove how little he personally cared.

    "Wait, what?" The guild master''s eyes widened as she shook her head. "Could you say that again? I don''t think I heard you properly the first..."

    Her words failed to arrive in time.

    "Here... I..." udia spoke slowly, one word per single step she took forward. "GO!" She shouted. Her body exploded with momentum as she struck forward.

    ''Huh?'' Tom leaned his head to the side, surprised. Her attack was powerful, yet itnded directly against the unsuspecting opponent. ''She isn''t using her skill yet?'' he thought as his expectations were broken.

    "You bitch!" the bow-wielding man jumped away, failing to shoot the arrow he already had nocked on the string. What followed was a flurry of udia''s strikes, forcing the man to back down every time he would draw the string of his bow for even an inch.

    "Are you seriously that weak?" udia asked when she suddenly stopped her attack, allowing the man to get as much distance as he wanted... Or rather, as little of it he could gain before his back hit against the wall.

    "Don''t get ahead of yourself!" the man shouted, using the momentary window of opportunity to properly draw his bow again. The arrow appeared nocked on the string of his weapon just like before. The gentle shine of its mana-made parts was alluring, but to Tom, it didn''t seem powerful at all.

    ''No, I was wrong earlier,'' he thought, lowering his head in disappointment.

    What he earlier predicted to be some kind of special technique turned out to be just a failure and waste of his attention. While the arrow remained as before, partially magical and partially physical entity, after a closer look, the purely magical parts were actually barely strong enough for Tom to even notice them in the first ce!

    "EAT THIS!" The man shouted, releasing the string of his bow. In an instant, the arrow rocketed forward, pushed by the momentum of the string pulled by the springing wood of the bow.

    "WEAK!" udia shouted, fisting the projectile away.

    ''What a show-off,'' Tom thought, fully rxing. At this point, the simple truth was clear to him. ''Even if that hit you, it wouldn''t even puncture your skin,'' he thought. Yet, as surprised by udia''s behavior as he was, he couldn''t help but get curious about her reasons behind this peculiar act of hers.

    "Shut up!" the archer shouted, pulling his bow again.

    udia simply stood in ce. She even went as far as to rest her knuckles against her sides, awaiting the attack with her head leaned to the side. All the while, her lips turned into a small, mocking smile.

    This time, the man didn''t limit himself to shooting just a single arrow. As soon as the first projectile was sent flying, he had already drawn the string of his bow again. In short session, three more projectiles went udia''s way before even the first of them would have a chance to strike the girl.

    "Pathetic," udia said, shaking her head in disappointment. This time, she didn''t even bother to swat the arrows away. "Well, it was fun, but it''s time to end this," she said, shaking her head again.

    Then, she took a step forward. And then, she took another one.

    With each moment, the girl was getting closer and closer to the man, forcing his back against the wall.

    "No," the man muttered when he realized he no longer had any way to run away from her attacks. "Stop," he whispered in a silent plea, likely realizing by now how stupid it was to challenge the people that even the guild master treated with respect.

    "As if I would do that," udia''s lips formed a wide smile. The whites of her teeth showed up when she took a battle-ready stance.

    With her knees slightly bent, she lowered her center of mass before spreading her arms apart. Her left hand moved forward, only for her entire arm to end up stretched all the way. Yet, it was her right hand, currently brought close to her chest, that drew everyone''s attention.

    "Please, I apologize..." the archer continued to plead, yet it brought no effect whatsoever.

    ''I wonder if she can kill him,'' Tom thought, curious about what the girl would do.

    Even though he never took a human life with his hands or directly with his actions, he saw no problem with doing that. With all the hunting he has done with his childhood friends, and all the hellish training he went through as a kid, taking a life was no different for him than cooking a meal or taking a bath. Just another part of one''s daily life.

    But udia was different. Although she belonged to the generation that suffered through thest few years of the great war, she didn''t have to participate in it herself. What''s more, Tom could tell that she never went through the process of hardening of any sorts, which was the freakishly incorrect term that Tom''s family used when referring to their traditional training regime.

    In other words, whenpared to Tom, she was just a mere civilian.

    "Die," udia said in a calm tone as her body sprung up. Already tense while she held her stance, she allowed her muscles to finally follow the path she ingrained in them over the course of their journey through the dungeon. As her right arm straightened in a fist, her fist appeared to strike some barrier in the air rather than the archer''s body.

    ''Finally,'' Tom thought, already knowing what would happen.

    And when udia''s fist stopped, so did the breathing of everyone in the room.

    She was still quite a bit away from her opponent, yet she remained motionless after executing her failed attack.

    After all, with how her attack never connected, it couldn''t be called anything else but a failure, was what most of the spectators likely thought.

    Yet, before the people could start asking questions about what happened, a small thump attracted everyone''s attention.

    Only for them to see the lifeless body of the arrogant archer slumping down to the ground, with a big hole where his stomach should be.

 Chapter 126: Tom joins the fight

    Chapter 126: Tom joins the fight

    Everyone in the guild turned mute. For a short moment, those who cheered for either party forgot the tongue in their mouths, unable to believe what just happened.

    Total domination with a single hit. That was the true power that udia could exhibit at any moment.

    Those who could understand this simple truth realized something else. Ever since the gauntlet has been thrown, the girl did nothing but toy with her prey. All those short moments when the scrawny archer attempted to attack happened not because of his skill but because udia allowed them to happen.

    Yet, even those who could understand that, some turned too emotional to see the through right before their eyes.

    "Heal him!" the wizard-looking girl from the archer''s party shouted in distress. Her eyes widened, hinting that the adrenaline levels in her blood skyrocketed.

    "On my..." someone in the crowd shouted in response, only to stop, frozen in ce when udia raised her hand.

    "It was a fight to the death," she said in a cold voice, killing any and all initiative of those willing to help. "I doubt anyone would be rushing to help Tom or me out if we were on the losing end, so what makes you believe that I will allow any help for him now?" she asked, sending cold res towards everyone who dared to as much as flinch.

    "Don''t be unreasonable," the man d in steel armor said, stepping forward and cing his hand on the hilt of his massive sword. "There is a limit to how vile you can be in this town," he said, pulling an inch of his de out of its scabbard.

    "I dare you to take another step," udia said, unbothered by the clear threat in the man''s words.

    "Do you think we won''t dare?!" the staff-holding girl said. Her voice oozed desperation mixed with unlimited hate and disdain.

    "Hold your horses, little whore," Tom said, stepping forward. Yet, even though he took the brunt of all the stares on himself, he didn''t bother to pull his weapon out. "And you, mister in great armor wishing to go two versus one against an unarmed girl," Tom turned his stare to the burly man. "You call us unreasonable?" he asked before shaking his head.

    "You came on us, challenged us to a fight for no reason, and now you are trying to save someone whose life my girl has rightfully imed?" Tom asked, alternating his stare between the man and the girl of the party.

    "I don''t care," the woman said, leaning her staff forward. "Step back and let us heal our friend, or face the consequences," she said in a cold, calm tone.

    "I tried," Tom said, turning his face to the guild master. Yet, instead of a troubled or annoyed expression, Tom saw amusement on her face. "I tried to spare their lives, but they are giving me no choice," he added, shaking his arms as if he was shaking the responsibility for what was about to happen out.

    "Feel free to do whatever you want with them," the woman said, in a voice as in as was her shirt.

    "Die, you bastard," the wizard girl shouted before Tom could even get ready for the fight. At the same time, the bulky top of her staff shone with a bright light.

    ''Haste,'' Tom thought, invoking his bread-and-butter spell. In an instant, the world around him slowed down. With his skill active, the increasing brightness of the girl''s staff suddenly turned still as if it was just some kind of borate shlight.

    ''Recall.'' With more than enough time to spare, Tom called forth one of his magical spears.

    ''In the fight of this level, there should be no need for the real thing,'' he thought before breaking the haste spell.

    The time resumed its natural flow.

    "I hope you won''t mind..." Tom said just as the wizard girl finished invoking a spell on her own.

    The light on top of her staff seemed to condense, only to implode and suddenly expand outwards. This time, though, rather than spreading like a wave of light, it turned into sharp icicles of condensed magic, all aimed at Tom and udia alike.

    "... if we destroy the building a little," Tom finished his sentence as the girl''s attack tickled him all over.

    Yes, he didn''t even bother to dodge. Ever since the hostilities started to grow, he focused all of his attention on figuring out the strenght of the other party. And while they were likely to be something on the local level, whenpared to Tom''s level of power, their attacks wouldn''t amount to more than a bug''s bite.

    "Is that all?" he asked, leaning his head slightly over his shoulder.

    "Tsk," the girl clicked her tongue, instantly moving to cast another spell.

    "You wasted your chance!" the man in the armor shouted, drawing up his massive sword. As he took a step forward, he used the momentum of his move to finish the draw, instantly bringing the tip of his sword on an arch against Tom.

    "As if," Tom muttered, stepping aside from the sword''s path.

    "Do you want me to join?" udia asked as a small smirk formed on her face.

    The two of them fought for long enough to know each other capabilities. That''s why Tom was never worried about udia during her duel. And that''s because she could see how he was simply ying around with the two clueless idiots.

    "Nah," Tom said, shaking his head while avoiding a barrage of cuts from the armored man''s sword. "Going two versus two against them would be just straight out bullying,'' he said, leaning his head to the side to avoid getting it scrapped by the sword.

    "I got you!" the wizard girl screamed out in joy as a huge smile formed on her lips. Following this, seven pirs of fire suddenly erupted all around Tom, effectively sealing his movement. And then, they started to move in a circle, tightening its diameter at a slow yet steady pace.

    "Do you really believe that?" Tom asked, throwing his magical spear aside, right through the gap between the pirs of fire.

    ''I don''t think this fire could do shit to me,'' Tom thought, yet he still went on with his momentary battle n. ''Swap,'' he ordered, letting the magical spear take his ce inside the trap.

    "What?" the sorcerer girl muttered in surprise. Her eyes widening to the limit only proved that she didn''t expect such a move at all.

    "Hey, can you tell me how does very work in this ce?" Tom threw a question at the guild master, already forming up an end-game n for the fight.

    "Huh?" The woman shook, surprised by the question. Yet, she was the only person with wits quick enough to not annoy Tom. "Simple. Once a ve, a ve forever unless released by the master," she said, as her pupils dted.

    ''Don''t tell me she already figured out that was the n all along,'' Tom whined internally, annoyed by such a potentially capable figure right in the first town he entered. While having a guild master capable enough to see through his intention was something praiseworthy for the local guild, yet extremely annoying for Tom.

    Because that meant he could no longer take her lightly.

    "Well, that settles it," Tom muttered, turning his attention back to the ongoing fight.

    During this little exchange, the girl managed to prepare another spell with her staff. The ball of light already formed on its tip, announcing loud and clear to everyone watching that the new attack wasing.

    ''Is she an idiot or something?'' Tom asked himself, pping the de of the man''s sword away before conjuring another magical spear in his hand. Then, finally free of the burden of stalling for time, he threw it towards the girl.

    "Hiya!" the sorceress shrieked out in panic as soon as she noticed the de rocketing towards her. Yet, before her scream could finish, it had alreadynded just a single step away from her. "Huh?" she exhaled in shock when she realized that she had just avoided danger. "You missed!" she then eximed in an obvious attempt to put Tom''s morale down.

    "He did not," udia chuckled. But Tom didn''t wait for her to get her bit. Swapping ces with the spear he just threw, he used the momentum he got before swapping to push his first right towards the girl''s soft stomach.

    "Ugh," the sorceress bent in half when her insides got squashed by Tom''s fist. The light on top of her staff disappeared along with her focus.

    "NADIA!" the man in the armor shouted, instantly changing the direction of his attack and rushing to help his friend.

    "Sit," Tom said, throwing a simple fireball straight towards the man''s face.

    By the time his body reached Tom''s feet, the poor man was already desperately fighting to kill the me that ate away at his head.

    "Right now, you have two choices," Tom said, looking down at the opponents he just defeated. "Resist and die, or submit to me as ves and I will allow you to heal your friend," Tom said, ignoring how udia could be dissatisfied with such a result.

    After all, he just arbitrarily decided the potential fate of a man whose life belonged to her.

    But that problem was something they could deal with at ater date. And thankfully, from theck of reaction from the girl''s side, she seemed to understand it well.

    "W-we..." the man attempted to say something, only to turn silent when the fire on his face used thepse in his concentration to grow right back to its previous size.

    "We surrender," the woman at Tom''s feet pushed the words out through her tightened throat, only to go right back to retching her guts out directly on the building''s floor.

 Chapter 127: Results of the fight

    Chapter 127: Results of the fight

    "Repeat it so that everyone in the building will be a witness," Tom said in a cold voice.

    This was exactly what he wanted. Exactly what he hoped to happen ever since he learned that there indeed was a world on the other end of the dungeon. But that was also the precise reason why he didn''t act in a hurry or allow the excitement to go in his head.

    ''Historically, people are most prone to lose what they wanted to achieve just as they reach thest step of obtaining it,'' he thought, bringing yet another motto of his father.

    "We submit to you!" The girl screamed out, only to go back to retching her guts out in the very next moment.

    "Okay then," Tom said with a smile, crushing the core of the fireball spell of his with a single wave of a hand. Then, he reached out to his pouch, only to bring forth one of the silvery coins that the guild master gave him just a few hours ago. "Whoever will be able to heal them all up to the top-notch state will be rewarded with this coin," he said, throwing the bait to the crowd of baffled spectators.

    Just like before, all the murmurs and other sources of the noise disappeared as shook took over everyone. But this time, this eerie silence didn''tst for long.

    Like a flock of Karens in the ck Friday, people rushed forward.

    "I will do it, pick me!" some screamed out the same meaning in various words, hoping to secure the deal for themselves. Those, Tom disregarded right off the get-go.

    Others rushed wordlessly to the injured, instantly focusing on the task rather than its official site. And those Tom paid his attention to.

    "He lost way too much blood..." a middle-aged woman said, kneeling by the side of the scrawny archer''s body. She then raised her head and scanned the crowd around. "You, you and you! Come help me!" she ordered the people, using her hand to point them out in case they would prefer to just watch from the sidelines.

    ''I didn''t expect anyone to know something as basic as this,'' Tom thought, recalling all the seminars of first air he had to go through during his school years. And like some kind of religious mantra, this rule was always repeated as if an attempt to kill everyone with boredom. When in a situation like that, always make sure to point people out that you want to help you! ''Well, this serves as a good lesson,'' Tom thought, resting his back against the wall as he watched the proceedings. ''I guess I can''t take this world too lightly,'' he thought, biting on his lips.

    Out of the threebatants that dared to challenge Tom and udia, only the girl''s opponent was in a critical situation. In the end, she didn''t bother holding back her punch, turning the problem of saving the man''s life into a huge challenge.

    "Heal," the middle-aged woman chanted, raising her hands above the man''s wound. The people that she singled out of the crowd ced their hands on her back, and all unanimously closed their eyes.

    ''Are they channeling mana or something?'' Tom thought, watching the unfolding events with curiosity. In the end, while he learned a lot from the fight, there was still an ocean of stuff he had yet to figure out.

    "What are you going to do, now?" The guild master asked, not bothered by the bloody situation at all.

    "Just like I said before, I''m going to look for some inn to stay," Tom replied without any hesitation. This was a truth he could easily share as it involved neither any secrets about his identity nor the details of what he wanted to do in this world. "Tomorrow, I will get them to be my official ves before going on a shopping spree, getting the rest of the money for the stone, and setting off for a journey," Tom said, building up on his story as he went.

    "Journey?" the woman looked at Tom as if he was a madman. "Wait," her face tensed up, "you do realize that there is a massive war going on right now? Once you leave the city, you won''t be able to travel as easily as people used to," she said, casting a curious nce at the man.

    "I think I already proved that we can take care of ourselves," Tom said, pointing with his chin at the ongoing rescue operation.

    "They weren''t weak," the guild master nodded her head only to end up staring at Tom''s face just like before. "But they weren''t the strongest either," she said with a clear agenda behind her words. "I''m not trying to put you down here, but you shouldn''t overestimate your ability. Out there, there are no weak people, and some are monsters that even I wouldn''t stand a chance again," she said, biting her lips to the point where several drops of blood trickled down her mouth.

    "I''m aware of that," Tom said, not bothered by the fact in the slightest. "Right, there is one thing I actually need to ask, though," he suddenly said as a new idea popped up in his head. "Do you mind telling me where is the closest, deep dungeon?" he asked, using the words he believed to be universal enough to work in this different world as well.

    "Deep dungeon?" The guild master looked at him with a puzzled expression.

    "You mean, one with a lot of floors," Tom exined what he meant. "This one here has what? Seventy-five? Eighty floors?" he pretended to guess, only to shake his head. "We explored a lot of dungeons, but the one near this city is rtively shallow," he added, turning his eyes towards the ceiling of the building.

    "If you want big dungeons, then Patrasian one should be your aim," the woman said after taking a moment to think about the answer. "I heard of people going as deep as a hundred and twenty floors in there..." she added only for a look of curiosity to appear on her face. "But from what you said, you have yet to explore the local dungeon all the way to its bottom, right?" she suddenly asked.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head. ''As if I would ever admit to actually not only reaching the very bottom of it but also doing it twice in one go,'' he thought, pursing his lips and steeling his face.

    "Why won''t you just focus on the local one for the time being, then?" the woman asked with a triumphant look on her face. "I know we didn''t start in the best way, but I can assure you, the guild would buy everyst stone you would bring to us!" she added, mming her fists against her chest.

    "You seriously don''t realize what''s the problem?" Tom asked, opening his eyes wide only to look at the woman as if she suddenly started bbering some nonsense.

    For a moment, the two of them just stood like that, neither of them willing to say a word.

    "So that''s the case," Tom finally spoke out, only to release a deep sigh a momentter. "Listen, the closer you get to the bottom of the dungeon, the faster its difficulty...? No, the stronger the monsters be," he said after fixing his initial way of exnation.

    "Isn''t this always the case?" The woman asked, her puzzled face proving how poorly Tom exined what he had on mind.

    "Yes, that''s indeed the case, but that''s not what I meant," he said, lowering his head and biting on his thumb as he pretended to think hard for a moment. "Listen, the difference of the monsters'' strenght between the fiftieth and fifty-first floor is not that great," he said, moving his eyes back on the guild master. "If you arefortable with conquering the fiftieth floor, you won''t have a hard time doing the same with the fifty-first one. But that''s no longer the case once you approach the deepest floor of the dungeon," Tom said.

    "Huh?" The guild master''s face changed. If she was curious before, then her face now looked as if she had just stumbled upon a gold mine. "How does it look for thest floors of the dungeons then?" she asked, clearly interested by the topic even more than Tom expected her to be.

    ''Are we the only ones to ever reach the bottom floors?'' he asked himself, trying to make sense of what was happening. But right now, he could no longer hold back the information he hinted at. "Don''t take my word on it, but once you reach thest few floors, the strenght of monsters in them raises dramatically. The difference between seventy-first and seventy-second floor felt like if we skipped five floors along the way," Tom said, lowering his eyes and taking up a pained expression as if saying this made him revoke some unpleasant memories.

    "Is that how far you ventured in our dungeon?" the guild master asked, her eyes shing with excitement.

    "No, we reached seventy-third floor here," Tom lied while shaking his head. "That''s also the reason why my brother is no longer with us," he said, creating a personal reason why speaking about this topic would be hard for him. "Because the difference between the seventy-first and seventy-second floor didn''t feel like five floors, but ten floors instead," he said before turningpletely silent.

    "I''m done," the middle-ageddy said, leaning to the back and taking a heavy breath. She then moved her eyes from the scrawny archer on Tom''s face. "Are you satisfied with the results, sir?"

 Chapter 128: Is it how it feels to be a tycoon?

    Chapter 128: Is it how it feels to be a tycoon?

    "Here, just like promised," Tom said, throwing the silvery coin to the female that saved the life of the scrawny archer. "Split it with those who helped you out in any way you believe to be fair," he added before turning his face to the guild master.

    "Let me guess," the woman spoke up before Tom could even say a word. "You want me to handle the procedure of turning them into ves, right?" she said, looking at Tom with a peculiar look on her face.

    "Exactly," the young man replied. "I want them to be absolutely loyal to a single order I will give them while being unable to even say a word about the task to anyone else," he stated his wishes before turning around and scanning the entire room.

    ''There they are,'' Tom thought, ignoring the guild master and everyone else who had some part in the recentmotion. "Sorry for the dy, but I had to deal with it right away," he said as he approached Krater and the rest of his group.

    During the fight and the entiremotion surrounding it, they fell to the second n in Tom''s mind. After all, as they didn''t pose any immediate threat, they could be dealt with once the situation in the guild would be secured. But now that all the burning matters were settled, Tom finally had the time to ask the very question that he wanted Krater to answer.

    "It''s okay," the man replied, clearly unsure how he was supposed to deal with Tom. While there was the fact that Tom saved him and the rest of his party from certain doom in the dungeon, as he observed his exploits, it was clear that he wasn''t sure whether helping him out was a good idea anymore. "I could see that you gave them more chances than I would. I''m just shocked how easily you could deal with the top party in the city!" he added, shaking his head and finally reaching some kind of conclusion.

    As a result, rather than adopting a reserved attitude, he made his words sound like praise. In the end, there was no point in putting a distance with such a powerhouse like Tom and udia only because they exercised their own power a little!

    "Great," Tom''s face rxed a bit, "I was worried you would take this entire thing in the wrong way. What''s more," he took a short pause to think how much he could reveal, "No, let me put it in a different way. You can rest assured that I''m not going to bully those people, even once they will be my ves," he said, reaching out and patting Krater''s shoulder. "I have something extremely important that I needed someone to take care of. Once they are done, I will likely release them back to freedom too," he added, taking a quick look deeper in the guild.

    Following her own suggestion, the guild master already took care of the defeated trio. Even though they were not in bounds, it was clear that they had no thoughts of escape from the devastated looks on their faces.

    "Right, before I forget again," Tom said, turning his eyes back to Krater. "Would you mind rmending me some kind of a good ce to rent a room for the night?" he asked. At the same time, all the tension finally left Tom''s body.

    For the short moment now, he could stop thinking about all his schemes, all the stuff that he had to do, and everything that could be possibly happening back home. For a moment, he could just focus on dealing with stuff that everyone else would be troubled with.

    For a short while, he could act like yet another average adventurer.

    "Seeing how you like to overspend on everything you do..." Krater muttered, throwing a look at the samedy that healed the archer up, currently throwing a massive celebratory party at the bar-side of the room. "I don''t think I know any ce that could satisfy your expectations," he said, shaking his head.

    "Come on, man," Tom sighed. "I just need somewhere peaceful, where I won''t be worried about anyone interrupting or attempting to rob me," he said, mming his forehead into his palm.

    "With that..." Krater hesitated, only to finally let out a deep sigh and nod his head, "With that, I can help," he said before turning to his own group. "Feel free to return to your quarters, for now. I will guide our benefactor around the town for a short while," he said before grabbing Tom''s arm and leading him out of the building.

    "What''s the hurry?" Tom asked, surprised by the sudden haste of the man. "Did something happen?" he added another question, genuinely puzzled by the man''s behavior.

    "You happened," Krater replied while rolling his eyes. "While I don''t mind helping you out, I don''t want everyone to associate me with you," he exined his problem.

    "Huh?" Tom''s eyes widened as he looked at the man in surprise. "Wouldn''t that be great for you to have backers capable of mopping the floor with, how you called them yourself, the strongest party in the city?" he asked, unable to understand just what was going through Krater''s head.

    "Take it as my guess, but I believe you won''t stay here for long," Krater said with a conflicted smile.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the man''s words. "What makes you believe that?" he asked.

    "You are already in cahoots with the guild master, but you went against the local powerhouse group," Krater said, listing out both achievements that Tom got in such a short amount of time. "While it''s just a guess, but you are a conqueror. A conqueror that''s left in a ce with nothing to conquer," he added, revealing the reason behind his hesitation.

    "All that''s left for me is to weep, then," Tom said, paraphrasing one of the famous quotes from his world. ''And then he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer,'' he thought, recalling the famous quote. ''Am I really that kind of man, now?'' Tom asked himself in this rare moment of self-reflection.

    "We are here," Krater said after a few moments of silence. Shaken out of his daze, Tom raised his face only to see an impressive-looking front of a rtively massive building.

    For the standard of his world, this could be at most a privately owned hotel in a tourist location, yet for the level of this city, it was truly a magnificent ce.

    From the front, a collumnade supported a huge terrace on which several tables awaited the customers. Yet, it was the insides that made the greatest impression on Tom.

    ''To think that someone could understand that adding more gold and expensive arts often only destroys the bnce of beauty,'' he thought, staring at the toned insides of the building through its wide windows.

    "It doesn''t look that great, I know," Krater said as he pulled Tom inside the building.

    "The fuck are you saying?" Tom shrugged, wrestling his arm free from the man''s hold yet obediently following behind him anyway. "This ce looks great, thanks," he said before getting ahead of the man and approaching what looked like a counter.

    "How can I help you, sir?" A young woman approached Tom from the side, taking him by surprise. ''Not from behind the counter?'' he thought when his expectations of the reception were broken.

    "I would like to inquire about the price of your rooms," he said, putting a gentle smile on his face.

    "Sir, what kind of quality are you looking for?" the female smiled professionally, instantly moving on to the details. "How many beds would you like in the room?"

    "To be fair, I''m actually interested in renting the entire top floor of the building," Tom said, still keeping his small, humble smile on his lips. "As for how long, I think two days would suffice," he added in the same calm tone as before.

    "Sir, excuse me for asking, but are you sure?" the girl asked. But, what Tom could only praise as the heigh of the professionalism, her eyes twitched only for a tiny bit. "The cost of renting the entire floor..." she said before closing her eyes for a moment. "Sir, the cost could easily reach thirty dukets," she said, opening her eyes and looking at Tom.

    "That''s fine," Tom smiled before pulling out yet another of the silvery coins offered to him by the guild. Even though this was the highest price that Tom discussed in this world so far, the professional face of the girl twitched at the sight of the silvery coin. "I will entrust this coin in your hands," Tom said as he ced the coin on the counter. "Also, rather than change, I would like one of the rooms to be outfitted with all sorts of delicacies and best drinks you can provide," he said, already nning for how he would cate udia for leaving her alone at the guild.

    "Sir, we will dly take you up on your offer, but if we really were to go all out with the food and drink service..." the girl hesitated as her eyes nced over to where Tom''s coin reflected the light of the sun.

    "Don''t worry," Tom quickly interjected, nodding his head with understanding. "It would be problematic for you if the cost were to rise above what I paid," he said before pulling another coin of the same grade and cing it down on the counter. "I hope this will be enough to ward off any worries of that kind," he added with a big smile as he stared down at the cute face of the girl.

    ''Is this how it feels to be a tycoon?'' Tom thought, perfectly aware of the intense looks the girl threw at his back as soon as he turned around and left the ce, heading back to the guild.

 Chapter 129: The laws of slavery

    Chapter 129: Thews of very

    "You are finally back," udia said, crossing her hands on her chest. "Where did you yeet out to?" she asked, seizing Tom from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.

    ''Is that how it feels to be a husband returningte in the night from a drinking party?'' Tom asked himself, not sure how he should feel about the situation.

    "I got us a ce to stay," Tom replied inly, not seeing any benefit to linger on the topic. "How are the things on your end?" he asked, hoping to change the topic as soon as possible.

    "The guild master told me to get you as soon as you return." udia shook her head before releasing a deep sigh. "Come, then," she added a momentter, turning around and heading deeper into the guild.

    ''They are still partying,'' Tom thought, catching a glimpse of the crowd in the service area of the building. The woman that was sufficiently quick on the uptake to grab the opportunity he gave a few moments before was now wasting all the earned money away on a huge variety of drinks. What''s more, she already gained a huge following of people happily apanying her in this drunken endeavor.

    All for the single coin that Tom offered for the woman''s help.

    ''I really need to get the worth of those coins settled,'' Tom thought as he silently followed behind his friend.

    "You are finally here," the guild master said once the two of them entered one of the rooms. There was a group of officials and the defeated trio inside the room outside of the woman herself, all focusing their attention on Tom and udia.

    "Is it done?" Tom asked, ncing over at the guild master. Then he scanned the former powerhouse of the city, quickly noticing how each of them wore a small, leather wrap around their necks.

    ''Isn''t this something they can tear away with a single pull?'' he thought, puzzled by the unexpected.

    Tom was quite familiar with the idea of what made ves, ves in the fantasy world. No matter what novel or story he would look into, a metal chain locked around their neck would be the prime example. But now, there was no sign of anything that crude on his ves.

    "Yeah." The guild master nodded her head. "For the next seven years, which is the longest possible very term, they will be unable to disobey any of yourmands," she said before throwing Tom a peculiar look. "I hope you are aware of all the limitations to their service," she added, looking at Tom''s face with her eyes slightly squinted.

    "I can''t recklessly throw them to their deaths, I can''t sexually abuse them, nor can I give them any orders that would let others vite the aforementioned." Tom looked up to the ceiling of the room while taking up a thoughtful expression on his face. "Is that right?" he asked as he lowered his head a momentter.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged slightly when he noticed the darkened expression on the guild master''s face. ''Did I make a mistake?'' he thought. After a moment of considering the consequences of doing soter, Tom mentally prepared himself for bringing bloody carnage onto everyone in the room.

    "I''m sorry," the guild master lowered her head. A drop of blood fell out of her lips that she cut with her very own teeth. "I thought that was one of the things that you wanted them for, you know, seeing how the girl is quite cute and all..." the woman said, avoiding Tom''s eyes as if they could burn her soul away.

    "Does it mean my other requests will turn troublesome?" Tom asked, not paying any mind to the woman''s troubles nor the look of hate that the ser girl threw at him. Out of everything that was going on within the room, only to look of disgust that both the scrawny archer and the burly warrior threw at him managed to bother him a bit.

    "No, it''s just the price of ve''s conditioning with what I ordered..." the woman spoke out, only to turn silent before finishing her sentence.

    "I just paid two of the coins that you gave me for two days at the Inn," Tom said, rolling his eyes at the anxiety of the woman. "Do you really think I care for money all that much?" he asked before turning his head and looking at the trio of the ves.

    "Kneel," Tom ordered, eager to test the effects of the conditioning.

    In an instant, the trio bent their knees only to m their foreheads against the floor.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged in surprise and squinted his eyes. ''So the way they fulfill the order is dependant on their own interpretation on it?'' he thought, before waving his head and saying, "at ease."

    "Sir, despite my mishap... Are you satisfied?" The guild master asked, looking up at Tom''s face with hope burning in her eyes.

    ''From how subservient she is, does she want to curry favor sh avoid trouble, or is she doing her absolute best so that I would underestimate herter on?'' Tom asked himself, unsure about the answer.

    While it was almost certain that he was stronger than the top team of adventurers in this town, he still couldn''t be sure about the level of power of the guild master. ''Judging from the titles she called herself with at the very beginning, she is likely not to be some random pushover,'' he thought, sizing up the woman for yet another time.

    "Raise," Tom said, ignoring the guild master''s question. This time, contrary to how they didn''t move at all when he told them to be at ease, the trio of ves moved up.

    "What are all the restrictions regarding what I can do with them and what they can do while under service?" Tom asked directly. It was a question he couldn''t pose earlier, as it would betray hisck ofmon sense,ck of knowledge of what this world likely expected everyone to be aware of. But now, with the guild master admitting to her mistake, he could ask the same question as a sort of assurance that there were no further mistakes on her end.

    "Outside of what you said, sir, you can''t make them participate in things that would break themonws. While at that, this restriction does not apply to the localws, so you cannot be careless when moving around," the guild master said, her expression souring.

    "Is that it?" Tom asked, taking up the role of a bitchy client, almost all the way to the point of bing a Karen and threatening the guild master with calling her superiors.

    "Just in case you get the girl pregnant, you will be obliged to take care of the kid. In other words, unless she will endorse the idea of giving up on the child, you cannot do any harm nor mistreat it. After all, the children do not bear the responsibility for their parent''s sin," the woman said. Even though her expression proved how unsure she was about her current situation, her eyes didn''t break away when Tom looked right into them. "And once her term will be up, it will be up to her to decide whether she takes the kid or not," the guild master added, crossing her arms on her chest, proving that this was a term she wasn''t willing to give up on.

    "Judging from your behavior, it''s not a rule that most of the ves are protected with," Tom said, putting a small, vicious smile on his lips. But as the contest of stares continued, he suddenly shook his head only to allow a small chuckle to escape from between his lips. "Don''t you worry," he said, turning his head towards the ves before pointing with his chin towards the girl. "I do not n on seeing them more than twice from now on. Once I give them my orders, they will be free to go around doing their best to fulfill them. But before that, there is one thing I need to know," Tom said as his expression turned serious once again.

    "How can I ensure that no information I will share with them will ever reach the ears of anyone else?" Tom asked, turning the discussion back on track of what was truly important.

    "You can''t," the scrawny archer muttered as he threw a hateful look at Tom. "Whatever you will tell us, we will make sure to..." he didn''t get to finish. As if some kind of failsafe went off in his brain, the man''s eyes turned white as he started to mindlessly salivate.

    "As you can see, there are restrictions on what ves can do as well," the guild master said as a small smile of satisfaction grew up on her lips. "As for your question, you don''t need to worry," she said, casting a quick nce at Tom. "The moment they try to reveal anything or cause you any harm, they will be deprived of air for as long as it takes to change their mind," she said before shrugging her arms.

    "And what if they won''t change their mind?" Tom asked, unwilling to let any questions of this magnitude go unanswered.

    "Then they will kill themselves, as their chain will suffocate them to their death," the woman exined, pointing her hand at the scrawny archer who was already shaking on his legs.

    "Good," Tom said, nodding his head with satisfaction while ignoring the intense look that udia continued to throw at him all along. "You guys, follow me. I don''t want to see your damned faces for any longer than necessary, so let''s get this over with."

 Chapter 130: Unexpected revelations

    Chapter 130: Unexpected revtions

    The road to the Inn that Tom rented proved to be surprisingly difficult. Ever since Tom appeared in the guild for the third time, barely anyone paid him any attention anymore. It appeared as if the novelty of having someone not only as strong as him but also as daring already ran out, making everyone else promptly return to their tasks.

    But the same couldn''t be said about the crowds in the city.

    ''We are in the middle of everyone''s attention,'' Tom thought, pretending not to notice the countless stares of the passersby. ''Or rather, they are,'' he corrected his thought when he noticed how all those stares were directed mostly at the trio of his ves.

    "Are we there yet?" udia asked in a grumbling tone. Even though she tried to hide it, it was pretty clear that she was dissatisfied with something.

    "Not at all," Tom replied, unwilling to crack open the can of worms of her mood yet. ''Hopefully, she will cheer up once she sees the ce,'' he thought, lowering his head and pushing ahead.

    The trip to the inn didn''tst long at all. Tom was used to the pretty long distance between his farm and the city and even the long walks between different points in the city itself. As such, even though the ce they were in right now was likely one of the bigger cities in the area, it appeared as nothing but a small settlement to Tom.

    "Wee home, master!" Tom shrugged as soon as he pushed the doors to the inn open. In there, from the very doorway all the way to the staircase, a row of maids stood with their heads bowed down.

    "I see you didn''t waste any time," udia grumbled, averting her eyes when Tom looked at her with curiosity.

    "What''s wrong?" the young man asked, finally free from the scrutiny of the crowd outside. Yet, as they moved through the corridor made by the maids, udia didn''t reply to his inquiry.

    "Master, we prepared everything just as you requested." The servant girl that Tom met before appeared right beside the stairs. With her head lowered down in a graceful bow and her hands cupped right at the height of her belly button, she appeared to be perfectly used to this kind of service.

    "Great," Tom smiled as he replied. "Thank you for your efforts," he added, averting his eyes and moving up the stairs.

    ''Why is it so troubling to be received like that?'' he asked himself, doing his very best to hide the small blush that invaded his cheeks. ''It''s not like I hate crowds. I never got nervous when being in the center of attention either,'' he thought, puzzled by his current state of mind.

    "So, which one is our room?" udia asked as soon as they climbed to the upper floor of the building.

    "That''s the fun part," Tom replied with a small chuckle. "This entire floor is ours for the next two days," he said, spreading his arms as if to point out at every room in the corridor at once. "Oh right, I asked for one of the rooms to be turned into a buffet, so feel free to enjoy the food whenever you like," he said, looking at the girl with hope that this information would mellow her bad mood down a bit.

    "I see," udia replied impassively, clearly not impressed with Tom''s efforts at all.

    "Well, let''s not waste time, then," Tom said before releasing a long sigh. "Come with me for a moment," he said, not directing his words at anyone specific before going inside the closest room.

    "Now, as I said before, I only have a single task for all three of you. I don''t care how you will do it. I''m not going to limit your options either," Tom said, ready to reveal the mission he had in store.

    "Can I have a moment?" udia asked, tugging on Tom''s sleeve. Her face was even darker than before, proving that whatever Tom did to anger her, still continued to affect her mood.

    "Sure," he replied, eager to learn just where he trespassed on the girl''s wishes. "You three, stay here for the time being," he ordered the trio before leaving the room and following after the girl.

    ''Just what might be going through her mind?'' he thought, watching how udia pulled the doors to another room open before standing aside and waiting for Tom to enter.

    "Just what the hell do you think you are doing?!" udia screamed out as soon as she closed the doors.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the sudden outburst. "What did I do?" he asked, genuinely puzzled about the reason behind her anger.

    "Do I really need to spell it out for you?!" udia smashed her fist into the wall. "I know that this ce has its own rules, but very?" she said, looking at Tom as if he was some kind of monster. "Didn''t we leave it behind as a stain on our history several hundred years old already?"

    ''So that''s what she means,'' Tom thought, biting on his lips.

    "Also, aren''t I enough for you?" udia posed another question as a small blush appeared on her cheeks. "I know that having a harem of ve girls is every man''s deep fantasy, but can''t you separate your dreams from reality? Don''t you have some kind of mission here?!" she asked, averting her eyes as small tears started to form in the corner of her eyes.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the sudden change of the topic. But as he looked at the girl''s face, a sh of enlightenment suddenly struck him.

    ''So that''s what she was all about,'' he thought, barely stopping himself from pping his forehead with his open palm.

    "Come with me," Tom said, grabbing the girl''s hand and pulling her back to the corridor, only to enter the room where their three ves were awaiting next orders.

    "Wait, my face is still a mess!" udia attempted to protest, yet Tom didn''t pay it any mind. Shutting the doors behind him, he ignored the curious and anxious at the same time looks of the ves.

    "Take a look at this picture," Tom said, pulling out a small roll of paper that he brought all the way from his home.

    It was one of thest photos of his father, taken barely a week before he went missing.

    "This is your one and only mission," Tom said, presenting the photo to the trio of ves. "I want you to find out everything you can about this man," he said, only to take a deep breath. "I need the name he goes by, where can he be found, how to contact him, who is he affiliated to," Tom said, listing out everything that coulde to his mind.

    "Umm, sir?" one of the ves attempted to say something, only to be hushed down by Tom in the same instant.

    "This is the easy part of the task. But there is also someone else I need you to find. Sadly, I have no photo of her, so listen clearly to the exnation," Tom added, only to turn silent as he closed his eyes.

    For a moment, Tom''s thoughts moved all the way back to the moment where the boss of the bottom floor of the dungeon somehow stopped working. To the moment when that strange girl appeared and requested him to find her on the other side.

    "She is a slim, long-haired woman. Her hair is of a tinum blonde color and reaches all the way to her knees. Her drees consist of an endless number of muslinyers so thin they appear to be made out the air alone," Tom recited everything he could remember about that short meeting, listing every trait he could see in his memories out.

    "Sir, if I may..." the burly man who used to wear full-te armor attempted to speak up again.

    "What do you want?" Tom asked, annoyed by the man''s persistence.

    "Is that really all you need us to do?" he asked, clearly unable to believe it. "I mean, you are not going to bed, my sister?" he asked, unknowingly mellowing down Tom''s attitude towards him.

    "And why would I?" Tom asked, opening his eyes wide in shock. "It''s not like I need anyone else but my girlfriend, isn''t it obvious?" he asked, pointing his hand at udia.

    "Then, I think I can already fulfill a part of our mission," the man said, looking up from the photo and then moving his eyes directly to Tom''s face.

    "Huh?" Tom shrugged in surprise, although he considered this kind of development to be possible. After all, from how he acted himself, it would be anything surprising if his father made a name for himself in this world as well. "Go on," Tom said, fully ignoring the girl beside him, even though this entire situation was aimed at calming down her jealousy.

    "Sir, the man on this... picture... He is a lord of Katan, thend that recently started the massive war with all of its neighbors," the burly man said, keenly observing the changes on Tom''s face. "He is the one responsible for the war that blocks this city from the rest of the world!"

    "Hmm..." Tom muttered, moving his hand up to his chin as he caressed it for a moment. "How about the girl?" he asked, moving his eyes back on the man''s face.

    "Sir, I can''t be certain with just the description, but she seems to be one of that man''s former followers," the ve woman replied, forcing Tom to move his eyes slightly to the side. "And it just so happens that she is one of the leaders of the coalition aimed at toppling Katan''s dominion down!"

 Chapter 131: Toms breakdown (slightly +18)

    Chapter 131: Tom''s breakdown (slightly +18)

    "Are you okay?" udia asked as soon as the two of them sat down in a separate room.

    "Do I look like that?" Tom replied with a question on his own, raising his eyes to the girl only to lower them down a momentter.

    The revtion was just too big. Too big for Tom to swallow just like that.

    "No, you don''t," udia said, lowering her head. "But still, I''m sorry," she added, taking a step closer and sitting beside the man. "I was jealous, and I assumed quite a lot of things, pushing my anger and insecurity on you," she said, clearly trying to get Tom''s mind off the massive news.

    "Sorry, but I''m not ready to talk yet," Tom replied, cutting the topic.

    ''This should be good news,'' he thought, clenching his teeth. ''After all, I have a confirmation that father is actually alive,'' he thought, trying to look for the positives.

    But this situation was just unreal. Even if Tom couldn''t really make any long-reaching guesses about the details, he couldn''t really believe the wall he just faced.

    "Come here," udia whispered, reaching with her hands and grabbing Tom''s head. She then moved her upper body a little closer, only to rest Tom''s face right in her chest. "I really don''t know what to say right now, so that''s the best I can do for you," she muttered, running her fingers through Tom''s hair.

    ''What am I supposed to do now?'' Tom thought, barely noticing what was happening to his body. ''Just go all in and look for him?'' He attempted to shake his head, only to rub his face against udia''s bust. ''No, that won''t do,'' he bit his lips, ''we still don''t know how powerful people are on the battlefield,'' he thought, unsure what he should do.

    For the first time in a very long time, Tom was genuinely lost. For the first time in a very long time, he couldn''t see a path for him to follow.

    ''Howe I could throw a gauntlet to the greatest and mightiest organization in the world with ease but be stopped by an actual news about my father?'' he asked himself, trying to find a reason in the entire thing.

    "Isn''t it great, though?" udia said, still trying to somehow cheer him up. But Tom was too focused on his own thoughts to even notice her voice. "I mean, all the way up until this point, you had no idea whether your father was even alive. Even if you don''t really know what to make out of what we learned, aren''t we at least one step closer to finding him?" she asked, even though Tom wasn''t in a state to reply.

    For a moment, the two just remained in the same position. udia continued to gently rub Tom''s scalp while the young man continued to battle with his own thoughts and doubts.

    "I have no idea what I should do now," he muttered, revealing the inner state of his mind for the first time.

    Even since udia was low-key forced to follow him, Tom made sure to always appear as the oasis of calmness, always ready to reassure the girl in a potential moment of doubt. Yet, against all odds, he was the one to break his mental fortitude first.

    Tom was perfectly aware of this fact, making it even harder for him to pull himself together. As if he was stuck in some kind of limbo, he was aware of how whining like he was doing right now wasn''t helping, yet he was unable to stop.

    "Okay, that''s it," udia whispered in a decisive tone before pulling Tom back on the bed.

    Shaken by the sudden movement, the young man only managed to gasp for air before his head once againnded on the soft flesh of the girl''s chest.

    "What are you doing?" he asked, momentarily forced out of his limbo.

    "Listen here, you little," she muttered, pressing on the back of Tom''s head, forcing his face even closer against her breasts. "You don''t need to take everything on your shoulders. I know that''s what every man in the world want''s to be, but you are not some kind of hero to tackle all the world''s problems all on your own!" she said. Yet, despite how stern her voice was, her embrace remained as supportive as it was before.

    "I''m not trying to save the world," Tom protested, confused by the sudden usation. "I''m just lost. I was so eager to find my father, only to find out that he is currently heralding a massive war. The same war that might make it impossible for us to go and find him!" he said, barely stopping himself from shouting.

    From Tom''s perspective, everything went terribly wrong. He made the massive ruckus at the guild mostly in hopes of setting the foundations for making a name for himself. It was something he deemed necessary to be influential enough to even begin a serious search for his father.

    But as it turned out, he was toote. While he was busy believing that his father was gone, while he was busy ying Dungeons Online like the massive crowd of clueless yers all around the world, his father was leading a second life in this world.

    ''Did he leave me just like that?'' A thought appeared in Tom''s head, finally striking right at the core of his confusion. ''Was I looking for someone that no longer cares about me?'' he asked himself, tightening his fingers into fists.

    ''Was it all meaningless?'' Tom thought, closing his eyes and allowing his face to sink into udia''s soft bosom. ''Did he even want me to find him?'' he continued to ask himself the questions that were insanely painful yet necessary for him to move on.

    "I think you are overthinking this," udia said, calmly epting Tom''s need for intimacy. Rather than shrieking, pushing him away, or even restraining how much he could immerse himself in her flesh, she epted him all, all the while trying to figure out a way to help his mental self. "The truth is, we don''t know anything. Like, isn''t it strange that one of your father''s followers is going against him now?" udia asked only for her body to suddenly freeze. "Wait, what did you say that girl told you back in the dungeon?" she suddenly asked, grabbing the sides of Tom''s face and forcefully lifting his head up.

    "Huh?" Tom muttered, clueless what was the content of the question. With his thoughts running wild in his head, he found refuge in the warmth of her body, a refuge that allowed him to kill all his thoughts. "What did you ask again?"

    "That girl in the dungeon, the one you described to the ves," udia spelled out her words one by one. "What did she tell you?"

    "Hmm," Tom took a moment to gather his thoughts, giving up the control of the conversation without a care in the world. "To find her... On the other side?" he said, not even sure if his memory was correct at this point.

    "Assuming that she knew where we came from, and she had to given how we met on thest floor, don''t you find it strange?" udia asked, only to move her hand and p Tom''s cheek.

    "Huh?" Tom shook his head as the pain forced all the useless thoughts away. "What''s strange?" he asked, focusing all his brainpower on the question. "If she knew that we came from the other side, then isn''t it obvious that she would ask us to find her on the side she was in?" he asked, puzzled by the girl''s questioning.

    "Then where she is now?" udia asked, looking directly into Tom''s eyes while holding his chin to stop him from averting them.

    "And how could I know?" Tom replied as small bits of anger poisoned his voice. "I know that I posed as someone who knew everything, but can''t you see that I''m just as clueless about this world as you are?" he asked, his anger starting to boil in his soul.

    In fact, Tom wasn''t angry at udia. Even if she was pushing him a little with her questions, it was no reason for him to get agitated over. What was making him furious was how he had to ept that he no longer was in control over his situation. Something that he was experiencing for the first time in his adult life.

    "This is exactly what I want you to think about," udia said, still holding Tom''s face in ce. "If she was in the dungeon back then, then shouldn''t she wait for you at its entrance?" the girl asked.

    "Wait, I think I''m starting to get it," Tom muttered, lowering his eyes as his brain started to work properly again.

    "If she asked you to find her, then it means she was perfectly aware that you two wouldn''t meet at the dungeon''s entrance. And given what we learned about her from those ves..." udia said, only to cut her sentence short and let Tom voice its ending himself.

    "She wasn''t anywhere near this dungeon when it all happened," Tom muttered, feeling as if something finally clicked. "If the war started even before we appeared in the city if she is one of the leading figures of one faction, then she couldn''t be in the dungeon when we met her!" Tom suddenly eximed, finally realizing what was low-key bothering him all this time.

    "I think the situation is far moreplicated thanmon people are allowed to know," udia said, finally letting go of Tom''s face, only to pull him back on herself.

    With his head once again surrounded by the warm and fragrant flesh of the girl, Tom could feel the sea of his soul calming down. Even with all the magic that he learned and experienced in the dungeon, the magic of intimacy was still something that he could fight against.

    "What are we going to do, then?" udia asked, moving her hands down from Tom''s hair to his back, only to slip them even further down towards his hips. "What do youmand, my lord?" she asked provocatively as she locked her legs around Tom''s hips.

    "For now, we ride," Tom said, raising his head and cing a long, deep kiss on the girl''s lips. Feeling how her own abdomen started to move around, he could feel the fires of lust exploding in his mind.

    Like a firestorm, all his doubts started to melt and then boil away as the raging current of his carnal desires filled both his flesh and body.

    "And then what?" udia asked with a smile as she started to unbutton her shirt, allowing her chest to see the light of the local sun for the first time.

    "Now that I think about it," Tom muttered as he buried his face in the girl''s breasts, "I think we should actually go back," he said, moving his lips up and catching udia''s nipple between his teeth.

 Chapter 132: New direction and proposition

    Chapter 132: New direction and proposition

    "Go back?" udia froze when she heard those words. Then, instead of following with the steamy movements of Tom, she caught his hand and held it in ce. "Why?" she asked, not wasting her time to borate on the question.

    "Isn''t it obvious?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the girl''s reaction. "Right now, we are severely understaffed. How else can we hope to force our way into a damned battlefield if not by getting more people and equipment for that?"

    For a moment, udia simply stared down Tom''s eyes, as if she couldn''t believe what he had just said. Then, she let go of his hand and rested her head back at the pillow on the bed.

    "What?" Tom asked, puzzled by the voiceless reaction of the girl. "If you have something to say, then just do it," he suggested in a light voice, trying his best not to be pushy at all.

    "Try to think about what you said a moment ago," udia said before rolling her eyes. "We need people, and we need equipment to force our way through the warzone," she reiterated Tom''s words. "Tell me, where in this sentence is there any reason to go back home?" she asked, putting a light smile on her lips.

    "I guess..." Tom hesitated for a moment before breathing out and allowing his head to fall right on the girl''s chest. For some reason, having his face surrounded by her warmth made it easier for him to think.

    ''That''s actually a good point,'' Tom thought, calming himself down to the point where his usual analytic self could im his mind once again. ''Less for the people, we can easily get some proper equipment in this town. What''s more, there ought to be some way to get to other cities without risking everything on the journey,'' he thought, bitting udia''s nipple instead of his lips.

    "Ah, stop it!" she protested with a chuckle, yet her hands have yet to even attempt pushing Tom''s head away. "Nothing wille out no matter how hard you try!" she chuckled when Tom changed his tactic.

    "I know," Tom said, ceasing his tease. "And I think I know what we should do now," he added, letting go of the girl''s breast and prompting himself up on the bed.

    "It''s nice to see you regain your motivation," udia said with a smile before pulling herself up as well. "What do youmand, my lord?" she asked with a small chuckle.

    "For now, we need to figure out what kind of useful stuff can we buy in this city," Tom said, reaching for his own clothes as he started to dress up. Even though they were in the middle of ars granti a moment earlier, after all the time he wasted being depressed, he was unwilling to let go of this thin strand of motivation he found. "Then, we will dive deep into the dungeon again," he added, pulling his pants up.

    "Dungeon?" udia asked as her eyes opened wide in surprise. "What for? I thought we gave up on the idea of rushing home for now?" she pointed out, grabbing and the edge of the duvet to cover her chest up.

    "We are not returning yet," Tom said, shaking his head. "But we need to get stronger ourselves first, even if it will feel like grinding," he added before grabbing and then passing udia''s shirt to her hand. "Once we both get one more skill, we will start to gather all the stones we will be able to," he added before sitting down on a nearby chair.

    "Reaching for the next skill I can understand," udia said, pulling the shirt back on her upper body. "Since that''s the only way to measure out general level. To be honest, I still have some hopes that the guild cards we will receive tomorrow will somehow fix that problem. Having a precise measurement of our strenght would make it easier to grind," she said as a dreamy smile surfaced on her face.

    ''That''s a gamer girl for you,'' Tom thought, not bothering to hide the small smile of his. "Still, from how you formed your words, I assume there is something that you, in turn, do not understand, right?" he said, sending a nudge to the girl''s side.

    "Yeah," udia nodded her head as she finally stood up from the bed, fully dressed. "Grinding for our own strenght, I can understand. But what''s the point of doing it even when we won''t be able to realistically progress any further?" she asked.

    Her objection, even if not voiced out, was simple. Just like grade one stones would lose their effectiveness once one reaches a certain threshold of strenght, the same rule would apply to the grade six stones. With how the local dungeon could only produce up to grade six mana stones, there was a certain soft cap to how strong they could be.

    That''s why there was no point at all in grinding once one would reach that soft cap. Rather than wasting months if not years just to forcibly push one''s strenght by a single level, changing the dungeon for one with a higher cap seemed like a better idea.

    "Even if we find some tools, even if we find some people locally to help us, crossing the warzone will still be a massive danger," Tom said, grabbing udia''s hand and pulling her out to the corridor. "That''s why the only way to realistically bring our strenght up is to help others get stronger as well in exchange for their loyalty," Tom said, pushing open the doors to the room where he left the three ves of his before.

    "My lord," the trio stood up in an instant as if sitting on the bed or chair was sin for a ve when their owner was standing.

    "At ease," Tom waved his head, unable to be bothered with such useless formalities. "I came here with a question to the three of you," he said before grabbing the edge of one of the chairs and sitting down in it.

    "Speak your mind, my lord," the burly man said, falling on one knee. Ever since they experienced Tom''s first request and his reaction to their answer, the attitude of the trio somewhat changed.

    ''Maybe they no longer consider me a powerful idiot who likes to throw his strenght around, but a careful tactician who simply won against them?'' Tom thought before pushing this idea to the back of his head. ''For now, it doesn''t matter,'' he thought, focusing his eyes on the trio again.

    "I came here with one order that I forgot to give to all three of you beforehand. Only once it''s out of the way, I will be able to speak my mind," Tom said before leaning forward.

    In response to his words, both the girl and the scrawny archer fell to their knees as well, ready to receive the order. Yet, from how stiff this action looked, it was clear that it was enforced by their ve status rather than their own will.

    "From now on until the end of your days, you will speak no word to anyone about the knowledge I will share, about my or udia''s origin," Tom said, carefully picking his words. "You will refuse to hint at any information you will learn from me, nor will you give any clues about anything you guess from my actions, words, or intentions to anyone else," he said as he stood up.

    For a moment, Tom just remained in the spot, staring down at the lowered heads of the trio. Then, with a huge sigh, he reached out to his pocket only to pull out a grade six stone, one of the few that he and udia actually saved from theirst trip to the dungeon.

    "All the wealth that I currently possesses from selling a single grade five stone at the guild. What you have before your eyes is a grade six stone," Tom said, rubbing the stone with the cloth that he used to hold it in the first ce. After all, even outside of the dungeon, just touching the stone would be enough to absorb it.

    "Sir?" the scrawny archer was the first to raise his head. While his widened pupils proved how shocking this sight was for him, he dared not to utter a single, spare word.

    "This is just the first out of the many stones I''m willing to offer to you. But for that, you need to make a pledge," he said, digging deeply into the few bits of information the guild master passed to him about very before.

    For the battle ves like the trio before him, there were strict rules and stiptions of what their owner was allowed to make them do. Once Tom''s wishes would go above, and beyond those rules, there would be nopelling force behind them. The same would apply to all the orders of his once the ve status of the trio would be lifted.

    The only way to make sure they wouldn''t speak a word of the things he was willing to show them even after returning to the free part of the society was to make them pledge their word on it.

    In a sense, a pledge was simr to very in how it had apelling power on the pledging party. Contrary to very, though, it was something that could be imposed only on oneself. As such, it was free from the restraint of the maximum very term and would be in effect for as long as the party pledged to wouldn''t acknowledge its end.

    "Sir, what do you want us to do if we actually make the pledge?" The scrawny archer asked, proving to be the actual brains of the party.

    "I have no need for mindless and rebellious ves," he said as he ced the stone on the table without a care in the world. "Right now, you have a choice," Tom said, sitting back on the deep chair and cupping his hands together. "You can remain ves like you are right now. Once you gather all the information there is about the two people I asked before, I will fulfill my promise and set you free," Tom announced, proving that he wasn''t about to go back on his earlier word.

    "Sir, from the way you said it, it''s clear that there is another option," this time, it was the girl who spoke up. She even dared to raise her head and look at Tom, yet only to move it right back down when she saw the determination in the young man''s eyes. "I humbly request you to enlighten us," she said, slightly trembling once she lowered her head.

    "The other option is for you to be my followers. Soldiers whose loyalty I won''t ever need to doubt," Tom said in a calm voice. Then, he closed his eyes for a moment, only to open them a few secondster. "Soldiers, that I will deem worthy of my thrust to the point of bringing your strenght as high as possible."

 Chapter 133: Rushed awakening

    Chapter 133: Rushed awakening

    Tomzily opened his eyes once the sun rays making their way through the gaps in the windows shuts annoyed the skin of his face too much for him to just ignore it.

    ''What time is it?'' Tom asked himself, raising his wrist to his eyes, only to notice apleteck of clock on it. ''Huh?'' Tom blinked his eyes a few times, unable to believe this strange situation. ''Did I forget to put it on yesterday?'' he asked, looking around in hopes of finding it.

    But there was no clock conveniently lying in wait on the nearby shelf. Rather than that, Tom''s other arm was locked underneath udia''s head. And just like in the situation where one would have a cat sleeping on his knees, Tom found it impossible to apply any power to his muscles in an attempt to free his arm from this heavenly prison.

    ''Damn, I can''t feel my hand,'' he thought, torn between the possible death of his limb and the attractive possibility of staring at udia''s sleepy face.

    "Hmm..." udia muttered when Tom''s delicate movements slightly shook her head. "Just five more minutes," she whispered, only for her breathing to calm back down a momentter.

    ''I guess I just need to wait,'' Tom thought, slowlying back to his senses.

    There was no clock on his wrist because, just like the majority of his equipped items and clothes, it was consumed by the dungeon. After its initial transformation into basic materials in the pool of slime''s liquid, it was then absorbed by the dungeon''s floor, never to be found again.

    ''Right, I will actually have to wake her up,'' Tom thought, ncing over at the face of the sleeping girl. ''We have a lot to do today,'' he thought, fighting with himself to force his flesh into doing what was right.

    "Hmm?" udia muttered as her eyes slowly pried open, saving Tom from his mental struggle.

    "Hey," he greeted the girl, putting a small smile on his lips. "You are finally awake," he added, using one of the legendary quotes of their homeworld, one that was so old that no one really knew where it came from.

    "Good morning," udia muttered, freeing Tom''s arm as she pulled her upper body up. The cover they were sleeping under promptly slid down her chest, revealing her bust to Tom''s grateful eyes. Yet, what he didn''t expect to see on it, was the plethora of marks that he left on it during their slightly wilder y than usual.

    ''I guess we exercised a little bit more than we should,'' he thought, recalling the events of thest night.

    "What time is it?" udia asked in her sleepy voice, proving that just like Tom a moment ago, she still failed to realize how different their reality was whenpared to the usual.

    "Way past the sunrise," Tom muttered in response, reaching for his clothes haphazardly thrown all over the room. ''A testimony to how wild we werest night,'' he thought, picking them one by one. ''Now it feels like I''m just doingundry,'' hemented on his own actions while adding udia''s clothes to the mix.

    "Huh?" udia wiped her eyes with her fists only to sit down on the bed and stare nkly in the distance. Only a few fair momentster did the sanity return to her eyes as she suddenly jumped down and stood up straight. "THE SHOPPING!" She shouted, too focused on her thoughts to care how her body now stood in full disy.

    "Dress yourself up first," Tom said, throwing her set of clothes udia''s way. "We overslept, I know, but hurrying it up now won''t change anything," he added, quickly pulling his own clothes up.

    "Right," udia muttered in response, reaching for her equipment thrown on the bed. Yet, before she even pulled her undies on, she stopped her movements before throwing Tom a slightly angered look. "You could pay a bit more attention to such a sexy sight," shemented, clearly disappointed with Tom''sck of attention.

    "After thest night?" Tom asked, turning his head to take a quick look at the girl. "I don''t want my thing to dry out and fall off," he added with a small chuckle as he wrapped the cord holding up his pants in their designated ce.

    "Spoilfun," udiamented, properly pulling her underwear on. "To think that you would turn into sage so quickly," she attempted to bait him, not only with the words but also with the way she continued to dress up. Because rather than just quickly pulling her clothes on, she took her time to turn her back to Tom as she slowly pushed her feet into the opening of her pants only to slowly pull them up.

    ''Is she trying to seduce me?'' Tom thought, watching how the material of the girl''s pants hooked against the mounds of the flesh of her ass, squeezing them in an enticing manner. "You do realize that at this rate, we won''t have the time to visit shops at all?" He asked, trying his best to voice his slight dissatisfaction in a roundabout manner.

    "Huh?" udia almost jumped in surprise, turning her head around and sending Tom a desperate re. Then, as if an idea struck her mind, her expression turned into an amused smile. "You and your empty threats," she muttered, turning around and letting her breasts swing due to her sudden turn. "If we won''t go shopping ourselves, how else are you going to obtain all the equipment we need?" she asked, clearly believing she found a hole in Tom''s threats.

    "It''s simple," Tom said as he finished dressing up. Yet, instead of answering, he moved towards the doors and ced his hand on the knob fits. "We will just get our ves to do it for us," he finally exined as he pushed the doors open and moved out of the room.

    "Fabian! Ulster! Le!" He shouted as if the entire Inn was his own.

    "Yes, master!" The burly man was the first to respond to the call, rushing out of his shared room with the other two. In just a few secondster, the others joined him, falling to their knee as soon as they noticed Tom.

    "Take this money and head to the market, auction house, or whatever is the best ce to get the equipment to explore the dungeon," Tom said, ignoring the shouts of anguishing from the room he and udia picked to sleep in. "I want you to go and buy everything you can afford with this money while reserving everything that you won''t be able to buy," he ordered before moving down the corridor towards the staircase.

    "Oh, before I forget," he added, turning around. "I need one of you to get one bag worth of food and medicinal supplies. Bring them to the guild as soon as possible," he added before finally throwing the pouch with all his money towards the trio.

    "WAIT!" udia shouted, finally rushing out of the room. Her clothes were all in disarray, proving how hastily she dressed herself up.

    "Toote," Tom said with a wide smile before ignoring the girl and heading downstairs.

 Chapter 134: [Bonus Chapter]Guild License

    Chapter 134: [Bonus Chapter]Guild License

    "I can''t believe you''ve done this," udia muttered as she followed closely behind Tom''s back. Ever since the waking-up incident, she refused to match steps with him, instead opting to walk right behind him.

    "We overslept," Tom said in the same, monotone voice as countless times before. "We can''t waste time like that," he added, refusing to borate any further.

    "What harm would an hour or two of shopping do?" udia asked, unwilling to drop the topic yet. Even though she continued to nag Tom about this for the past fewteen minutes, even though Tom''s answer didn''t change at all, she couldn''t just give it up like that. "Wasn''t that a great opportunity to learn what kind of equipment one can buy in this ce? Maybe even learn something that would force us to return home posthaste?" she continued to speak, finding new and creative ways to put the shopping as an actual worthy way of using their time.

    "Listen," Tom turned around, finally reaching the limit of his patience. "I know that this world is all fun and new for you, but every moment we spend in it, something wrong might happen on the other end," he said, failing to control his voice.

    "Why is your voice so cold?" udia asked, taking a step back. Even though this wasn''t the first time for the two of them to have varying opinions or something, it was the first for her to hear Tom use a voice without even a shred of emotion in it.

    It was as if... He didn''t even consider her a partner to talk with at that moment.

    "Because all the decisions I made... No, all the decisions we made are still weighing me down," Tom replied while squinting his eyes. But instead of pushing the argument any further, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath before turning his head back towards the guild. "We can talk about it once we get to the dungeon. We wasted enough time already," he said coldly, once again picking up the pace.

    For some reason, Tom''s cold words shut udia up. All the way to the guild, she didn''t say a single word.

    ''I wonder if she is just following my request or overthinking things,'' Tom silently pondered, pushing the doors to the guild open and walking in as if he owned the ce.

    "Young master!" The guild servant that just so happened to be serving drinks near the entrance lowered her head with respect as soon as she noticed Tom. "It''s a pleasure to wee you in the guild today," she added before pointing her hand at the backdoor leading to the insides of the building. "The guild master is awaiting you," she informed before nodding her head again and returning to her duties.

    "I guess we will hear an earful from her now," Tom muttered, already depressed by the prospect.

    Ever since they arrived in the town, he was trying to build up a certain brand for the two of them. While the discovery of the news about his parents shook Tom''s priorities and ns, changing his attitude for no openly announced reason would only confuse everyone else about how they should approach his group. As such, keeping the image he had already started to craft was of utmost importance.

    Yet, appearing several hourste to the meeting they had scheduled with the guild master wasn''t a part of the image Tom hoped to establish!

    "See?" Tom muttered as the two moved deeper into the guild. "This is one of the reasons why I was in such a hurry," he said as they moved through the same path that they did yesterday. The only difference was that this time they had no guide to tell them where to go.

    "You are finally here," the guild master said from behind a huge desk once Tom finally reached the room at the very end of the corridor. "I thought you were going to ghost us and just leave the city," she added, sending Tom quite an annoyed look.

    ''Is she courageous, naive, simpleminded, or actually strong?'' Tom asked himself, unsure how to take the woman''s guts to look at him in this way. With yesterday''s show he gave, Tom thought he had already established just how strong he and udia were. Yet, against all reason, the guild master didn''t change her attitude towards them at all.

    "Anyway," the woman rolled her eyes before reaching for one of the nearby shelves. After sorting through the mess inside for a moment, she pulled out two leather folders only to pass them on to Tom a momentter. "Here you go, your licenses," she said, urging the man to open it up.

    Tom unveiled the small cord holding the shutting mechanism together only to find out that a folder contained a simple piece of paper with some marks on it along with a rectangr, metal piece. From a single look, the metal piece looked pretty simr to the credit cards that humanity used to use in the prewar era or actually the yer cards that online hub distributed to literally everyst user of its service.

    ''What the fuck?'' Tom thought, pulling the card out. Even with touch, it gave off the same feeling as the card that he used to register his party with udia when they first met or to log in to his ount before entering the capsule.

    ''Is this just a coincidence?'' he thought, forcefully killing his own shock and raising his eyes on the guild master.

    "Why is it..." he attempted to ask.

    "WHAT THE FUCK?!" udia shouted behind his back, unable to hold back her emotions as well as Tom did.

    "Eh," the guild master sighed as she leaned back in her chair. "It''s just like I thought," she muttered before waving her hand.

    In an instant, the entire room was covered in bright light, blinding Tom and udia alike.

    ''Haste!'' Tom shouted, trained to keep his head cool in sudden situations like that. Thanks to his skill, he managed to sense some kind of force closing in on him. Sadly, his skills didn''t allow him to detect what exactly it was nor to fight off the blindness.

    The force closed in at a breakneck speed, even when taking Tom''s haste into ount. He rushed to the side, hoping to dodge the attack, only for it to instantly adjust its direction, homing right for Tom''s wrists and ankles.

    ''I can''t dodge it,'' he thought, tightening his teeth as he pushed his body to its limits. In a desperate attempt at warding off against the attack, Tom burned the sack that held all the remaining stones underneath his clothes, instantly redirecting the energy of the grade six mana-stones into his own abilities.

    But that still wasn''t enough. Whether it was his reaction speed or flexibility of his body, he had no time to react.

    ''Come!'' he shouted regardless, conjuring a set of five magical spears in each of his hands.

    Against an unknown, human opponent, he didn''t dare to reveal his triumph card yet. After all, if the guild master could somehow snatch his weapons, losing his real spear would be the end of him.

    The attack finally reached Tom''s flesh. In an instant, all four of the magical presencestched on to Tom''s wrists and ankles...

    Only for his guard skill to repel three of them with ease!

    Sadly, the attack on his left ankle managed to surpass the three-attacks limit of his skill,tching on Tom''s leg and forcing him to stay in ce.

    But as swift as the attack was, the guild master didn''t seem to be able to move just as quickly. And with his other three limbs free to move as he liked, Tom haphazardly threw all ten spears of his away.

    ''Whatever made you attack me,'' he thought, already preparing another attack, ''I will make you regret doing so!'' he eximed in his soul, directing all the spare mana he had into his spear domain skill.

    This ability was his absolute triumph card. Revealing it so early in the fight appeared to be a novice mistake... But with the magical attack stilltched on to his ankle, Tom wasn''t ready to risk it all just for the sake of vignce.

    In unexpected scenarios like that, going all-in was the only option.

    ''I will skewer you!'' he shouted angrily in his thoughts, feeling the presence of the woman as his domain expanded...

    Only for all of his skills to cease all at once when a sudden pulse of magic shook through the attack thattched to his ankle before.

 Chapter 135: Desperation

    Chapter 135: Desperation

    The feeling of having all his skills suddenly cease to work was akin to falling down to the ground from a high elevation. Because not only did Tom lose his ess to activating any of his further skills, all of the abilities that he had active died down as well.

    ''Just what the heck is this?'' he thought, looking down at his leg. Sadly, the blindness caused by the sh of light before still lingered. For now, he could barely distinguish major shapes in his surroundings.

    "Did you really think that you coulde to this world and do as you please?" the guild master asked in a mocking manner. "Still, it''s impressive of you to avoid three of the mylerit chains. I guess going for the extra effort was the right choice to make," she added before her voice was broken by the sudden clicking sound.

    ''What just happened?'' Tom thought, keeping his eyes closed to let them recover faster. On the off-hand, this only made it harder for him to figure out what the hell was going on.

    "You are courting death," udia said in a calm voice, more surprised by the sudden betrayal than shaken by the actual attack. "How long do you think it will take before we break free from those chains?" she asked before a metallic cking sound announced how she had already started testing their strenght.

    "How long?" the guild master asked beforeughing out loud. "Do you really think you will be able to do anything before we change them for the proper Kansanite chains?" the woman asked before a pping sound could be heard. "Right, barbarians like you don''t even know what either of those names means!" she added before letting out a hearty chuckle. "Out of the two of you, it''s the guy that was stronger," she said before another clicking sound appeared, followed by a portion of Tom''s strenght leaving his body. "And two of those chains are already binding him down," she added only for the third clicking sound to announce that the guild master wasn''t going to stop whatever she was doing.

    "Why are you doing this?" Tom asked, forcing thest bits of his remaining strenght to hide how weakened he was. "How did we offend you? Why are you even attacking us?" he asked, throwing several questions in quick session to appear as confused as it was possible.

    Those two elements, tough behavior, and confusion-indicating manner of speech wasn''t just a simplebo. It was one of the few behavioral tactics that he was taught back at the family.

    Those tactics were one of the most guarded secrets of the military families of thest age. It was a set of tools used only by the absolute elites that worked behind the enemy lines, often with the intention of actually getting caught.

    In the post-war period, they were often disregarded as a failed project, a set of techniques that were a far cry from how they were expected to perform. Even in the peace treaty that limited what sort of weapons would be left and allowed in the post-war world, no one bothered to include them.

    This result was also the greatest proof of just how efficient they could be if used properly.

    Sadly, Tom''s family didn''t get their hands on the entire set. Even with how high Tom''s father and his brothers-in-arms were in the ranks, they had no direct ess to the method. And out of the few techniques they managed to obtain, Tom only knew a few.

    "Do you really think I will just reveal all my ns to you now, sweetie?" the guild master asked in a gleeful tone. "Anyway, let''s stop the chitchat," she added before the fourth clicking sound appeared.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed in his thoughts when a sudden wave of weakness washed over his body. It was in no wayparable to how it felt when the previous chains locked on his limbs. Rather, it seemed as ifbining all four of them changed their restraining strenght from the cumtion of the power of each chain into multiplication.

    Yet, he stood his ground, not buckling even for an inch. "This is way too little for y-you to break m-me," he said, intentionally making his voice shake a bit.

    "When attempting to soften up the guard of the target, act tough but let some clues to how weak you are slip," the voice of Tom''s uncle rang through his ears.

    The young man wasn''t conditioned. He didn''t receive the injections, nor was his subconsciousness programmed. As such, without any of those crucial elements, his performance didn''t evene close to how it should look.

    ''But I''m not against professional with the equipment of the twenty-fourth age,'' he thought, calmly analyzing the situation. ''Huh?'' he thought a momentter when he noticed that there was something wrong with him.

    ''The domain is still active?'' Tom thought only to cast this realization away in fear that it would affect his performance.

    "Is it done?" Suddenly, a new voice entered the room. "Good job," it said.

    Tom opened his eyes. While his vision was still affected but no longer nked out. ''I can see,'' he thought, raising his head to assess the situation.

    The room was nowhere how it used to look like. In fact, if not for being certain that he was still in the same ce, Tom couldn''t really recognize it.

    All the furniture was broken down and in pieces. Some of his spears stuck out of the rubble that once used to be walls. Without moving his head around, he couldn''t see what became of the entirety of the building, but what used to be the guild master''s room was now nothing but a big hole filled with rubble all over the ce.

    "I restrained them as ordered," the woman said, throwing a satisfied look at Tom''s expression indicating how he struggled to keep his tough front. "And just as expected, they are not going to obediently follow the orders," she added as her lips twisted in an ugly grimace.

    "It doesn''t matter," the other voice replied, forcing Tom to look over to its owner.

    The man oozed seriousness. His face was perfectly still, as if a single emotion never dirtied its surface. His eyes were cold and focused, not moving around at all but centered on whatever the man was currently looking at instead.

    ''A man of focus,'' Tom thought, recognizing the type of character that man possessed. ''This is bad,'' he noticed, splitting his attention between observing the situation and analyzing his current standing.

    ''I still have my spears. With just a single window, I can free myself,'' he thought once catching a glimpse of his magic spears scattered all around. Then, as he looked towards his chains, he noticed a peculiarity that gave him quite a lot of hope.

    All the chains on his limbs were actually connected to a dark-red b of crystal embedded into the very floor of the building, which was the only part of it that remained rtively unscathed by the short fight!

    ''Is it pulsing?'' Tom thought as his eyes drew to the crystal b. With this observation, he suddenly realized that his strenght wasn''t flowing out in a steady stream, but in the pulses corresponding to the vibrations of said b instead!

    ''So that''s how those chains work,'' he thought, moving his eyes up. Up to this point, his act made both the guild master and the strange man disregard him. Even if they didn''tpletely lower their guard, it was clear that they considered themselves to be the lords of the situation.

    "Anyway," the man reached under his robe, moving his stare towards Tom''s face, "let''s not waste any time," he said, pulling out another crystal. It was a diamond-shaped object so dark that Tom couldn''t even see through its darkness. ''It''s like aplete void,'' he thought when his eyes were drawn to the seemingly endless darkness of the crystal.

    All of Tom''s senses cried out in rm. Whatever this stone was, it was dangerous enough to touch the reverse scale of his instincts.

    "Yes, sir!" the guild master said, reaching forth for the stone. And as she grabbed it, she kneeled down, moving the stone towards the pulsing b.

    ''There is no time,'' Tom thought as his entire self tensed up.

    He still didn''t really know how to use his domain. It was one skill of his that he never got to master. But now, with all his abilities blocked, it was the onest thing he could use.

    ''Swap!'' Tom thought, wishing for the spell to work with his entire soul. Yet, nothing happened. The guild master''s hand continued to move the void crystal closer to the b.

    ''Fuck!'' Tom thought. He didn''t need to know what that stone was to understand it wasn''t something he could ignore. ''Just go and fucking die!'' he screamed out in his thoughts, unable to think of anything else anymore.

    "That''s enough," udia suddenly said in a shaky voice. "Tom, how long are you going to let them do what they want?" she asked.

    Tom didn''t even need to turn his head around to know that her lips formed a confident smile.

    ''And just what am I supposed to do?'' he thought, tightening his teeth.

    "Toote, girl," the guild master said, pushing the stone down on the b.

    ''Just go and stab her?'' Tom thought, ridiculing the thought as the crystal reached the surface of the b. But instead of touching it, the b suddenly melted down, as if opening up to create a socket for the void-like crystal to fit.

    "Tom!" udia shouted, first signs of distress appearing in her voice.

    ''Fuck,'' the young man got desperate. The satisfied look on the man''s face and the amused one on the guild master''s lips didn''t bode well for their future. In thest ditched attempt, he caught sight of the nearest spear of his.

    ''It''s so close,'' he thought, feeling how the chains started to suck away his will to fight their influence. ''If only she could trip and stab herself...'' he thought.

    And then, the spear jerked up, as if moved by an unseen hand.

 Chapter 136: She is as good as dead

    Chapter 136: She is as good as dead

    "Huh?" In a single instance, three voices united in a single expression of surprise.

    Tom exhaled the air. His eyes widened a little. He didn''t expect his desperate wish to actually work.

    The guild master looked down at the spear protruding from her stomach. Her raised eyebrows proved how shocked she was by the sudden attack.

    The strange man in ck raised one of his eyebrows, more curious than shocked.

    ''So that''s how it works,'' Tom thought, forcing this strange feeling of control to burn itself on his soul and mind. ''Wait, wasn''t it spearmage domain rather than just spear domain?'' he thought as an idea popped up in his head.

    "What just happened?" The guild master uttered only to spew out a mouthful of blood. The stone that she so readily wanted to press against the crystal b slipped out of her fingers.

    ''If I can move the spears within the domain as I wish...'' Tom thought, moving his eyes towards the falling stone. Without his haste, it was only the sense of impending doom that elerated his thoughts. ''Then... move!'' he gave another order.

    The spear rocketed forward, ejecting itself from the guild master''s body and striking right against the side of the stone. This alone was enough to knock it out of its trajectory.

    The sound of the void crystal hitting the floor rang in everyone''s ears as it fell down and rolled around beforeing to aplete stop.

    ''MOVE!'' Tom urged the spear again. He wasn''t a professional soldier, but his training was enough to stop him from just gawking in rapidly-changing situations like this.

    The guild master moved as well. She conjured some sort of magic, sting it to her side. Exploded away, she narrowly dodged the flying projectile.

    But the explosion was too weak to st her out of Tom''s domain. Yet, rather than trying to finish one of the opponents off, Tom redirected the spear somewhere else.

    Right to where the chains were attached to the crystal b.

    "Impressive," the man in ck robes said. A small smirk appeared on his lips as he raised his hand.

    ''Those spears are products of condensed magic, are they not?'' Tom thought, attempting to force a certain logic on his own mind. ''If that''s the case, then... explode!'' he thought just as his spear reached the ring that bound the chains to the crystal b.

    Ring!

    Tom''s binds shattered with ease. The same chains that gave both him and udia a run for their strenght proved to bepletely useless against an attack directed at them from the outside.

    "AH!" Tom breathed out a sigh of relief as he felt a surge of strenght return to his flesh. It was only a small part of what he lost, but it proved that it wasn''t the chains that sucked the energy from his. ''Are they some sort of conductor?'' he thought, only to cast those ideas aside.

    For now, there were more important things to take care of than analyzing the specifics of the chains.

    "udia!" Tom shouted, sending four more of his spears against the chains that bound the girl.

    ng!

    This time, his attack only bounced off the metal of the chains.

    ''Right,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes to another target. ''Her chains are different,'' he figured out, recalling the few bits that the guild master spilled the beans about.

    The corners of Tom''s lips raised, creating a vile smile on his face. ''Right, the guild master,'' he thought, snapping his eyes to the side.

    ''Haste,'' he called out for his spell just in case. Even if he wanted to take care of the woman, there was still that ck-robed man that he had to pay attention to.

    "DIE YOU...!" The guild master rushed forward. She paid no heed to the bleeding wound on her stomach, lunging at Tom instead. As she flew forward, magic condensed in her right palm, only to stretch out and turn into a beautiful sword.

    But she was still well within Tom''s domain.

    ''Skever her,'' Tom thought with close to no emotion in his inner voice at all.

    Following his wish, the same four spears that attempted to break udia''s chains... Did nothing. Even though they were well within Tom''s range, they didn''t respond to his wishes anymore.

    "BASTARD!" the guild master finished her sentence, shing with her sword. It aimed right at Tom''s neck. If he just stood in ce, his head would be cleanly lopped off.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought calmly, changing his order the second his vision swirled, ''fly!''

    "Huh?" Once again, the woman only managed to release a single utter of surprise, where instead of Tom, she shed at an empty space. The only thing that was there was the spear that Tom exchanged ces with.

    But that spear wasn''t stationary. Rather than falling to the ground like any object hanging in the air, it rushed ahead, piercing the woman''s stomach again.

    "Now, now, why don''t we stop it right..." the man in ck attempted to say something.

    Tom paid no heed to his words. ''Explode,'' he ordered, releasing the structure that condensed his mana so greatly it turned into a physical object.

    Since Tom went on the warpath against the online hub, he imed a human life for the first time.

    There was no explosion this time. As there was no source ofbustion nor any reaction like that, no fires appeared. But the storm of raging mana that instantly rushed to equalize its density in the air cleaved the guild master in half.

    ''What a mess,'' Tom thought, staring down emotionlessly at the gore picture before him. His spear swap brought him only a few meters away to one of the closer spears he didn''t move yet. He could escape further, but as he had no idea how far his domain spanned, he dared not to risk letting those two get away.

    And now, he had no other choice but to stare at the bloody result of his actions. The woman that used to be quite a beauty was now turned into two halves, with blood and guts creating a pool of disgusting mess between the parts of her body.

    "And she''s dead," the man in the dark said, shaking his head. There was no grief in his voice, only... disappointment? "Didn''t I tell you to wait?" he asked, raising his eyes at Tom.

    "I saw no reason to listen to an enemy," the young man replied, slowly inching his way closer to udia. ''Now that I took his ally''s life, he is likely to try doing the same,'' he thought, ready to stop that possibility from happening.

    "Well, I guess that''s true," the man said before finally stepping forward. Yet, instead of approaching Tom and udia, he actually stood up above the corpse of the guild master and looked down, seemingly unbothered by the smell or sight.

    Then,pletely ignoring Tom and udia alike, he kneeled down only to push his hand directly into the chest of the woman''s corpse. He didn''t break through her skin, nor did he snap the bones. It appeared as if the flesh of the deceased guild master was just an illusion, an illusion that the man''s fingers prated with ease.

    "Here it is," the man said, pulling out his bloodied hand. And right between his fingers, a beautiful stone shined brightly, was stronger than any of the stones that Tom saw in the dungeon. "Anyway," he said, turning his head towards the wary duo. "While the things didn''t go the way I expected them, I got mypensation already, so how about we call it quits right now?" he asked, putting a weirdly off-putting smile on his face.

    "So you think you can im the spoils from my kill and just leave?" Tom asked, taking half of a step forward. He still had yet to summon his real spear, but instead of doing that, he backed out the step did a moment earlier and raised his hands up. "I won''t attempt to take back the crystal," he said as a small smile surfaced on his lips, "but this doesn''t mean you can just go and leave," he said.

    "What do you want?" the man asked, rolling his eyes as he looked at Tom.

    "Your actions here destroyed our ns for this ce," Tom said, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace. "Whether it was something you enticed that woman to do or if it was her n, it doesn''t matter," he said before taking a step forward. "But now, you need to recuperate our losses," Tom added, perfectly aware how thin was the line he attempted to bnce on right now.

    "I will ask once again," the man in the dark said, clearly dissatisfied with the situation. "What do you want?" he asked as his eyes turned hostile.

    "Root out every group that''s tasked with rying the information about this ce to the outside," Tom said as his mind spurred toe up with a valid n.

    "Huh?" The man shrugged, clearly surprised by request. "And what''s in it for you?" he asked, squinting his eyes with suspicion.

    "Does it matter?" Tom asked, leaning his head. But before he could say anything else, a sudden realization came to his mind. "Right, I will need you to free my girl from those chains," Tom added, pointing his left hand behind to where udia stood.

    "Wait, so you actually care about her?" the man asked as his eyes widened.

    "What do you mean by that?" Tom asked as a bad premonition washed over his soul.

    "I mean, just look at her," the man said, leaning his head over his shoulder. "With how long those chains sucked her life force away, she''s is as good as dead already."

 Chapter 137: Prophet and solution

    Chapter 137: Prophet and solution

    "What the hell?!" Tom turned around, dropping his focus in an instant. For a mere moment, his guard fell down, allowing the man to strike right at his exposed back. And just like the guild master''s case proved, no matter how strong one was, once a lethal hit would be dealt, no amount of strenght would save one from certain doom.

    "Hey, can you hear me?!" Tom shouted, shaking udia by her shoulders. But the only thing that it achieved was the girl losing her bnce and falling down to her knees. ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed in his mind, catching the girl before she could m her face against the rubble.

    "What did you do to her?!" Tom shouted, turning his face towards the man in the ck. The rage was burning in his eyes, more than ever before in his life.

    "I didn''t do a thing," the manzily shook his arms before pointing his hand at the girl in Tom''s arms. "If I were you, though, I would get rid of her chains first, though," he said, forcing Tom''s attention back at the topic.

    "Righ," Tom muttered, looking back at the bounds that held udia''s limbs.

    Contrary to the pitch-ck material that his chains were created with, udia''s restraints had a silvery hue. What''s more, they continued to shine in a pulsing manner, as if stealing their light from the flesh they were attached to.

    "How do I break them?" Tom asked, not caring about the possibility of the man ignoring or refusing to answer his question at all. The way the situation developed so far proved that he had no wish to fight him at all.

    "That depends," the man replied. "If you want to kill the process as soon as possible, you can destroy them in any way you want. But if you want to minimalize the damage, you need to tear every circle of the chain from the bottom-up," he added, proving Tom''s guess right.

    ''It''s good that he is cooperative,'' Tom thought, scanning udia''s body with his eyes. For now, her chest still moved up and down, proving that she was, at the very least, still alive. But no matter how hard he shook her, her eyes refused to open.

    ''Right, the chains,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes down at the bounds that allegedly sucked udia''s life away. "You do realize what will happen if you are tricking me right now?" Tom asked, throwing the question right in the face of the man in the dark.

    "I''m perfectly aware that my life would be forfeit," he replied, circling around what was left of the room in order to appear right in Tom''s view, even when he was looking at udia.

    ''I guess he does have some brains,'' Tom thought, moving his eyes back to the chains only to catch them and slide his hand down the metal.

    Whenpared to the chains that bound him, udia''s bounds weren''t connected to anything. As if some sort of joke, their ends simplyid haphazardly on the floor, as if they were actually some snakes that turned into chains the moment they died.

    "Rip the eyes apart from the bottom up, huh?" Tom asked, gathering the ends of the chains in his hand. "What good will that do?" he asked, perfectly aware that with each passing second, udia''s situation was getting worse and worse.

    "There is a limit to how much life''s energy a single eye of the chain can hold. That''s why the longer it is, the quicker does it suck the energy," the man in the dark replied before sitting down on his knees and ceasing to move at all. "Differing potentials," he said some scientific-sounding words as if expecting Tom to actually understand its meaning.

    ''Whatever,'' Tom thought, moving his attention back to the chain. And without any further hesitation, he grabbed the ring at its end with both of his hands, only to rip it apart with a single pull of his hands.

    SCRIEEE!

    It wasn''t a scream, nor was it some kind of noise. As soon as the first ear of the chain gave up and split into two, Tom''s soul shook when assaulted with this strange, spiritual outcry.

    But he didn''t stop. Grabbing the next ear, he ripped it apart, moving on to yet another one right after.

    Soon, the length of all the chains was reduced by half. A few momentster, only a fourth of their original length remained.

    But rather than slowing down, the rate of the pulsing light on the remaining part of the chain only elerated.

    ''Did he lie?'' Tom thought as he observed the phenomena. ''Fuck, I can''t really waste time on analyzing it,'' he thought. Then, without allowing any of his doubts to stop him, Tom continued to rip all the remaining chains apart.

    "Make sure to leave one ear on each of the chains," the man in the ck adviced. "If you rip it apartpletely, the lifeforce will vanish, leaving the girl to deal with it on her own. If you do that, she will die for real," he said, still sitting motionlessly in one ce.

    ''Is he trying to taunt me?'' Tom thought, looking over at the man before moving on with his job. ''Or is he genuinely trying to help me out just to make sure I won''t split him in halfter?'' he asked himself.

    Even with all the training he received back at the family, with all the experience of observing the people from the shadow that he gained at his school, Tom couldn''t tell. The face of this strange man was like some sort of mask,pletely unprable, even for Tom''s keen eyes.

    "Fine," he said, ripping apart thest few ears of the chains.

    udia''s body tensed all up as her chest shot up. Her reaction to thest few pieces of the chains breaking was akin to one''s body upon a defibritor shot. Herplexity improved a bit as colors returned to her cheeks... But outside of more steady breathing, nothing else changed.

    "She is not waking up," Tom muttered, raising his fiery eyes at the man in the ck.

    "I never said she will right away," the man sighed, clearly expecting this kind of reaction. "Right now, the majority of her lifeforce is stuck in those four pieces of chains that I advised you to leave intact," he said, standing up in one, fluid motion and approaching the girl. Yet, instead of going all the way, he stopped roughly a single step away from udia''s body, clearly unwilling to go any further. "Right now, it''s up to her whether she will regenerate that life force or not. As much as it saddens me to say this, that''s all you can do for her for now," he said, lowering himself back on his knees only to sit down on the rouble yet again.

    "What is that supposed to mean?" Tom asked, slowly moving up from his knees. ''Come,'' he thought, bringing forth the spear that he held back as his ace-card all this time.

    "I only know of one method to forcefully wake her up," the man said without even a moment of hesitation. "And it''s to flood her with more energy than she had at her peak," he said as an ugly smile appeared on his lips, finally revealing the fact that he had some sort of agenda in what was going on. Yet, instead of attacking Tom, the man fell to his knees only to strike his forehead against the floor the next moment. "My wish is to see a new prophet emerge. As such, I''m willing to give my all to support you on your mission of helping that girl recover," the man uttered, unwilling to move an inch from his new position.

    "Do you think I care about your wishes?" Tom asked, putting the tip of his spear against the man''s exposed neck. Right now, a simple, short thrust would be enough to sever his spinal cord, bringing a decisive end to his existence.

    "I don''t think so," the man said in a steady tone, proving that the prospect of death didn''t faze him at all. "Right now, the world has two prophets in it. Unless their bnce will be tripped, only a certain doom awaits all of the people in it," he said, pushing his forehead even harder against the rubble. "That''s why I''m willing to give my life if it means awakening another prophet," he said before turning silent.

    "Don''t you think that assaulting me and my girl is a wrong way to go about it?" Tom asked, slightly pushing his spear forward to the point where the man''s neck started to bleed. "What if I ignore your wish and just take her back home where my people might find other methods of waking her up?"

    "I don''t think you can do that, sir," the man replied. "Not when a far easier and certain option awaits you in this world."

 Chapter 138: Toms heartless decision

    Chapter 138: Tom''s heartless decision

    Tom walked out of the room through the hole in the back of its wall. There was no longer any need for the doors, now that nothing separated what used to be the room from the corridor covered in rubble.

    "At least the entire building didn''t copse," Tom muttered, keeping the degree of the destruction in his mind. ''Now that I think about it,'' his face tenses up, ''what even caused this degree of damage?''

    Tom''s question only seems weird. Even if the guild master herself was weak, far weaker than she posed to be, Tom was confident about his strength. As such, at first thought, a fight that forced him to go all-in should actually result in far greater coteral damage to the surroundings.

    But that wasn''t the case at all once one thought about it.

    Tom was surely strong, but his power was sealed away by those two kinds of chains that the guild master pushed on him. In fact, he only managed to get out of those dire straits because of his domain that those chains failed to block.

    But the domain itself wasn''t some kind of explosive spell. ''From what I found out, it only allows me to manipte my spears at a set distance around me,'' he thought before squinting his eyes. ''What made the entire ce explode, then?'' he asked himself before moving deeper into the corridor.

    In a sense, leaving udia to that man in the dark could be a very bad idea. But right now, Tom simply didn''t have any other choice.

    From the very beginning, his attempts at preserving her life were all fueled by the information of that strange man. If any of his advice were aimed at harming the girl, Tom wouldn''t be any wiser. As such, whether he left the girl to that man or not, it didn''t really matter. Because Tom was already past the point where the matter of trusting that man could change the oue of udia''s problem.

    "Sir?" he scrawny ve of his asked as soon as Tom appeared in the main room of the guild. From how it was filled with dust and smaller pieces of rubble, it was clear that even here, the fallout of the short fight could be felt. "Did something happen?" he asked as he ced two sizeable bags of supplies on the floor.

    "Yes, a lot has happened," Tom muttered before taking a seat at a random table. He then covered his face with his hands, taking a moment to calm down and analyze the situation.

    ''My options are pretty limited right now,'' he thought, pressing his palms against his eyes to the point where some strange shes started to appear in the darkness. Soon, they were followed by sharp pain, announcing that Tom''s actions were actually harmful. ''Should I go back? Or maybe I should just yolo into the warzone?'' he asked himself, trying to figure out the best path for him.

    "Sir?" The archer attempted to speak again, clearly capable of noticing the distress Tom was in right now. "Is there anything I should do right now?" he asked, proving that he, at the very least, had the very minimal amount of self-preservation instinct.

    ''Right, is there something he could do?'' Tom asked himself before a sudden idea appeared in his mind.

    Right now, Tom was all alone in the foreign and clearly hostile world. While he could deal with most of the open threats, there was little to nothing that he could do about people like the guild master, ones willing to act while he was wary and ready to strike the moment he lowered his guard.

    Against this kind of enemy that he couldn''t know about, Tom had no way to defend himself.

    "I guess this is the only option I have left," he muttered as he slowly stood up from the table. Then, he turned his head and looked at the scrawny man. "Tell me, who''s the highest authority of this town?"

    "There is the guild master of the adventurer''s guild, the major of the town, the merchant''s guild that governs themerce..." Ulster listed out while raising a finger on his right hand for each entity he mentioned. "It will be a stretch, but the cksmithing and alchemy guilds are also quite influential," he added before lowering his eyes and looking at Tom with a puzzled look.

    ''Why do you ask?'' Tom thought, reading the unspoken question from the man''s expression. "Good," he said instead, raising from the table.

    ''Come,'' with a single thought, Tom''s real weapon appeared in his hand. "Lead me to the major," he ordered, not paying any heed to the worries written all over Ulster''s face.

    "Excuse me..." one of the guild servants attempted to put in a word.

    "Are you going to disobey my rule of this town?" Tom asked coldly, looking at the girl.

    She wasn''t guilty of anything that happened between him, udia, and the deceased guild master. But at this point, Tom could no longer afford to y kind or nice.

    "Is there anyone who is willing to oppose me, here?!" he shouted the question, turning around his own axis as he scanned the people in the room.

    "Tom, are you okay?" this time, it was Krater who approached Tom with a worried look on his face.

    "Just answer the question," Tom replied before pointing the tip of his spear right at the man''s throat. "The time for me to be kind and act as if I care about you guys is over. You will soon have a grave of that bitch of a guild master to thank for that," he added, leisurely revealing what happened to that woman.

    "N-no..." Krater replied, taking a few steps back. From the shocked expression on his face, it was clear that he didn''t really understand what was happening. Yet, even this expression quickly vanished when a glint of understanding shed in his eyes. He then fell down on one knee before lowering his head. "My party won''t oppose any of your actions. You are free tomand us," he pledged despite tightening his fists in mute, powerless fury.

    "Good," Tom said before casting another sweeping look through the interior of the guild. "Is there anyone daring to oppose me?!" he shouted again, just in case people misunderstood his intentions before.

    But no one stepped out.

    Whether they were too scared to do so, happy to actually follow him, or hoping to bide their time in hopes for some kind of opening, it all didn''t matter. For now, Tom only cared about forcing the entire town to its knees so that he could turn it into a forward base of operations.

    That was the simple answer to the problematic situation he was in. If he couldn''t deal with all the possible enemies and troubles he would encounter in this world, there was one simple way to change it.

    And it was to bring people that were better at those things than him. People, of whose loyalty he could be damn sure!

    Sadly, to bring his entire family to this ce, Tom had to set the foundations for the migration first. From supplies necessary to feed the suddenly appearing group, through pacifying anyone who would dare to raise his hand against Tom''s family, those were the things he had to do in advance of actually bringing them all here.

    "Lead the way," he muttered to Ulster, unwilling to waste even a single more second. Right now, to the pressure of potential troubles that his adventure would put his family in came the worry of how he should save udia.

    Because ultimately, she wasn''t a soldier that he could order to die. She wasn''t someone that was prepared for death either. The fact that she stood silent as her life flew out of her body was the greatest proof of that.

    ''Only those that are fully prepared to give up their life should be allowed to do so. Anyone else is just a naive kid misunderstanding how the world works,'' Tom thought, recalling the sentence said not by his father, but his father''s closest friend and Tom''s deceased uncle. Said by the man who unofficially governed all the family affairs during the greater part of the period when Tom was not only away but also too young and immature to take matters into his own hands.

    "Yes, boss," Ulster replied, quickly picking up the pace.

    Tom''s journey from the guild to the residence of the major didn''tst long. Not because someone suddenly appeared to oppose him, but because the building was pretty close to the guild itself. And what''s more, the major appeared to notice the trouble in the guild, which prompted him to make his way there himself!

    "Huh?" A tall, lean man stopped when he noticed Tom and Ulster walking his way. Even if he didn''t know who Tom was, the aura of death hanging all over him made it quite easy to discern that he was somehow included in the events at the guild that alerted him. "Who are you?" he asked in a surprisingly respectful tone.

    "Will you follow my orders, or do I need to kill you first?" Tom asked, pointing the tip of his spear at the man''s throat. Given how effective this kind of threat was, there was no point in using any more borate means.

    "You trash!" Major''s guards instantly reached for their weapons, rushing to put themselves between the man of importance and the potential aggressor.

    "Do I need to kill them too?" Tom asked, leaning his head to the side with a deadpan expression all over his face.

 Chapter 139: Deal with the Major

    Chapter 139: Deal with the Major

    "Men!" The major shouted. "Stand down!" he ordered with a stern voice, clearly dissatisfied with their actions. Yet, although he showed an unhappy face, Tom could see through how fake it was.

    Yet, despite the major clearly trying to hide his real feelings, Tom actually smiled.

    ''Well, there is nothing wrong with one being happy to havepetent followers,'' he thought, feeling how his dire situation stopped weighing him down for a short moment.

    Sadly, it was just that. A short moment. Before the major could say another word, Tom''s soul returned to its previous self, burdened by all the things that were on his mind.

    "First off, there is no need for violence," the major said, caressing the long beard that made him look like some kind of eastern cultivator from the novels Tom used to read in his childhood years. "Still, if you ask me to submit to you, even if I personally would like to do it, I cannot make such a hasty decision. Not as the representative of the people of this town," he said, raising his eyes directly at Tom''s face.

    ''Not bad,'' Tom thought. Even though the man refused to instantly submit, it wasn''t the reason to turn furious yet. Even though Tom was set on solving the matter of taking over the town as quickly as possible, it wasn''t some kind of simple process that he could achieve without a second thought.

    After all, if he were to take power by the sheer force of his strength, it would be nothing but a fake and unstable situation. By antagonizing everyone in the city, he wouldn''t be able to make them truly follow his orders but would push them into gueri-style warfare instead.

    "What do you want to know, then?" Tom asked, lowering his spear. This was as far as he was willing to go right now. Given the recent experience of being assaulted all out of nowhere, he couldn''t discount the possibility that the major wasn''t trying to solve the situation peacefully but was trying to lower his guard instead.

    "First off, what happened at the adventurer''s guild?" The major asked, looking at Tom with curiosity.

    "The guild master raised her hand against me and seriously injured one of my people," Tom said, introducing a bit of false into his revtion.

    Hearing those words, the Major''s face turned still for a moment before a wide smile suddenly made its way onto his lips.

    "Am I right to assume that this bitch is dead?" he asked, managing to take Tom by surprise.

    "And why do you think so?" Tom asked, leaning his head over his shoulder. "Don''t you think that a quick death would be too little of a punishment for her?" he asked.

    "Come on," Major replied, shaking his head only to roll his eyes. "I knew her well enough. Also, I heard how you managed to topple over the strongest party that still resides in this town," the major added, proving that he wasn''t as clueless about the situation in the town as he initially appeared. "This alone is enough to prove that you were stronger than her. And in that situation, she would resort only to a few possible tricks to attack you. Judging from how you admitted that she got one of your people..." The major said, only to cut his sentence short.

    "Quite smart, aren''t you?" Tom asked. "Anyway, yeah, you are right on the money. She''s dead," he admitted, moving his eyes away from the Major''s face and sending a nce over to his bodyguards.

    ''He is a politician, so he should be able to keep his face straight. But I doubt the same could be said about his people,'' he thought, keen to find any hint that could help him judge the truth about the situation.

    And to Tom''s actual surprise, instead of looks of distress, sadness, or just pure anger, some of them allowed a smirk to grow up on their faces!

    "That means you are most likely from the same ce that this man came from, right?" Major asked only to release a deep sigh a momentter. "I mean, don''t take me wrong, it''s not like I will hate you because of it... But that brings us to the one thing I need you to promise if you wish for my cooperation," the major said. At the same time, his face lost all the signs of amusement or happiness from before, turningpletely serious.

    "And what this might be?" Tom asked, tightening his grip over his spear.

    "That you won''t bring this town into a war," the Major said without even a moment of hesitation.

    "If you are so smart, then you should know that this is no longer possible," Tom replied, unable to be bothered to hide his intentions. What''s more, he wasn''t in the mood of trying to lie his way out, only to betray the man''s expectationster on.

    For Tom, this was still an unknown world. The means that the guild master used to defeat him proved that he had no idea what else could be out there. ''I don''t know if he isn''t using some kind of oath magic or something right now,'' he thought, unwilling to fall into a potential trap.

    "Let me exin exactly what I mean,'' the major said, clicking his tongue at Tom''s instant denial. "For as long as you don''t involve this town in a war, I''m willing to help you out. That means you can organize your force, train them in the dungeon, treat this ce as a base of operation. But once you will be all ready to actually join the war, you and all your people will need to leave," the major said.

    For a moment, Tom thought over this option. Needless to say, having someone like the current Major of the town on his side would make taking over the town a far easier job than he initially expected.

    ''No, I shouldn''t agree to it too easily,'' Tom thought, trying to push back against the incentives offered by the man. Because from what he just heard, the Major offered him exactly what he wanted, with the caveat that all of those advantages would be lost once Tom was ready for the real action. ''Then, let''s see what he will say to this,'' he thought as a small smirk appeared on his lips.

    "Excuse me, help me to understand one thing. Right now, I''m more than capable of killing everyst person opposing me in this city. What''s more, I''m quite certain that most of them would lose their will to fight once enough corpses would pile up," Tom said, tightening his grip over his spear.

    While he said that, the young man was perfectly aware that doing something like that... Was actually impossible.

    Not because he wasn''t capable of doing so, but because his family would disinherit, banish and then execute him upon learning of such a story. It would be a whole different story if everyone in the city ganged up against him, but killing civilians just because they refused to involve themselves in the war?

    Tom''s group was created by the veterans that survived the bloodiest war in the history of humanity. They saw what real horrors the war had to offer. As such, it would be already problematic to ask them to join the war to help Tom find his father. Making them join the side that started its history by an onught? That would be in out impossible.

    "If you need some details or more concrete pledges from me, then just say so," the Major replied with a deep sigh. "I don''t think you are stupid enough to be ignorant about what would happen if you were to kill everyst person of importance in this town," he added, shaking his head in displeasure.

    "Humour me," Tom said as a small smile returned to his lips. "What exactly is it that you can do for me?" he asked.

    "Outside of the Magistrate, there are four... No, five groups or factions that you need to take care of," the major said, already proving that Ulster''s information was iplete.

    ''That, or he is trying to dupe me in by talking bullshit,'' Tom thought, taking note of such possibility.

    "And I''m willing to help you deal with two of them," the Major said, putting out a hand with two of his fingers erected in the signmonly understood as a victory.

    "Which ones, exactly?" Tom asked, unwilling to let such an ambiguous answer settle the deal.

    "First off, the magistrate, but that''s obvious and a term by default," the Major replied, shaking his shoulders. "The adventurer''s guild is already taken care of, so I can pacify the merchant''s guild and the alchemy guild," he said before lowering his hand and looking Tom directly in the eyes. "The cksmiths, you will have to take care of yourself. What''s more, I''m powerless to do anything against the lord that governs the fortress at the border," he added, revealing a piece of information that Tom heard for the first time.

    ''A fortress by the border?'' he thought only to shake his head. ''No, I will think about itter. For now...'' Tom thought, raising his eyes at the major. And then, as soon as he came to a decision, he threw his spear to his left hand, alerting the guards with that, only to push his empty right hand forward.

    "Deal," he said only to notice a look of surprise and confusion on the Major''s face. "Where Ie from, shaking one''s hand means sealing the deal," he exined, catching up the crux of the problem right away.

    ''If I can be troubled by not understanding theirmon sense, so can they be troubled by the habits of my world,'' he thought.

    "Fine," the Major nodded his head before reaching forth and sping his hand with Tom. "By tomorrow, the city will be yours."

 Chapter 140: Peculiarity of the Blacksmiths guild

    Chapter 140: Peculiarity of the cksmiths guild

    "With Major, Alchemy, and Merchant guilds out of the way, I still need to deal with the cksmiths and that lord by the border, huh?" Tom muttered to himself when he suddenly felt a presence appear a few meters beside him.

    "Come out," he said softly, recognizing the faint aura of the man.

    "Boss, I have taken care of the girl. She is now in one of my secure locations in the city," the man in the ck said even though he had chosen not to appear from the shadows. "I already assigned one of my subordinates to properly take care of her," he reported.

    "Good," Tom replied, raising his head to the sky. For a moment, he remained fully silent, seemingly thinking about something. "Tell me," he suddenly broke through his temporary muteness, "why do you keep hiding even when there is no one around?" Tom asked.

    It wasn''t that he craved the answer. All over the world, or rather, all over both of the worlds, people had their own, often unexinable, quirks. Tom wasn''t the one to admonish or even peer into any of them. ''To each their own,'' was a phrase he picked in the second year of his school when he grew up to the point where more intimate topics became prevalent.

    But in this strange world, even if he was disinterested in the reasons behind the ck-clothed man''s behavior, asking about it could reveal some quirks of the world itself to him.

    Ultimately, amon sense of a certain group wasn''t built by textbooks or hard, logical factors. While there were some things that were bound to appear in every civilization simply because of what made a group of sentient beings a civilization, most of their actual folklore and culture came from the smaller elements.

    Just like that, even in another world, Tom could be sure that there were varying factions both in the town he was trying to take over and in any other town he would stumble upon in the future. By projecting the situation on a greater scale, he could be sure that some countries would hate a few of their neighbors while striking amicable rtions with those that didn''t necessarily border them.

    Those were the universal rules of conflict, growth, and the drive to grow. Because at the point where any kind of resource became scarce, people, or other races in regards to this new world, would strive to im ownership of what was already taken.

    ''But life isn''t as simple as that,'' Tom thought, intentionally keeping his eyes motionless instead of ncing over to where he sensed the man''s presence.

    There was a multitude of possible reasons for him to keep to the shadows. Those reasons could be simple and logical, like being an ouw or a member of an organization everyone feared. But those reasons could also take more ambiguous forms like faith, culture, or even physiology of the man''s body.

    "Boss, I''m not sure how that will sound to you, but please, do not overreact," the man whispered, clearly hesitant to spill the beans.

    ''Just like I thought,'' Tom smiled to his own thoughts, yet, he didn''t pull his question back.

    His inquiry clearly struck a sensitive note in the man''s heart. Normally, he would have no qualm against dropping the topic for the convenience of the other party, but this time, the aim of that question was different.

    Learning the small details about the world aside, by forcing the man to reveal a potentially sensitive part about him, Tom could even further establish the hierarchy between the two of them.

    ''And in a situation where that guy holds an immense leverage over me, I cannot skimp on any opportunity to do that,'' he thought.

    "Actually, boss, I''m from a race known as a lesser vampire," the man revealed, his voice shaking. "While I do not have the urge to drink blood, the sunlight is still too much for me to bear," he exined, his voice dying down with each word.

    "Good," Tom muttered in response before suddenly looking right in the man''s direction. "Now, tell me what do you know and think about the major," he said as he recalled his spear only to rece it with a freshly-made, magical one. Then, without waiting for an answer, he picked up the pace as he marched towards the town.

    "He is a... weird man," Tom''s shadow replied after a moment of thought. From how his voice easily reached the young man''s ears, it was clear that he saw no trouble moving through even the open areas of the town while staying close to his master. "He came to this ce roughly a decade ago with nothing more but a bag full of money and a vision in his head.

    "Ever since then, he slowly climbed his way up to the top. In a sense, he managed to topple the nobles that owned this entire ce. And all of that, without even a single drop of blood spilled," the lesser vampire spoke, a certain sense of awe and respect striking through his voice.

    "That''s quite impressive," Tom admitted. ''If everything works out just fine, maybe I would be able to enlist his help with the matters back home?'' the young man thought about an unrealistic dream.

    Between God and truth, Tom wasn''t confident in his political skills whatsoever. He was a born tactician, a master of small battle, but when it came to the fully-fledged conflict, his abilities were no longer of need.

    This was one of the reasons why he considered himself to be the heir to themanding seat of the family... But in name only. When it came to the true management of rtions, striking deals, and deciding on enemies, it was a job that Marvin did splendidly in his ce.

    "There is one thing that upsets me about that man, quite a lot at that," the vampire suddenly said, its voice louder than before.

    ''Did he get closer, or is he agitated?'' Tom pondered. "Right, before you borate, which way to the cksmith guild?" he asked, realizing that he had no idea where he should go.

    Contrary to ces like ughter shops or tanneries bound to be situated at the edge of the town, the actual cksmith could be literally in any ce around the town. While there was a huge chance it wasn''t anywhere directly near the residential buildings, it wasn''t a strict rule but rather a loose guess.

    After all, the peasantry of this clearly medivalesque world had little to say when it came to theforts of living in the city. Just being able to live as an actual citizen was likely to be rewarding enough for them to put up with all the inconveniences of living near a noisy, dirty, and often extremely hot ce like smithy!

    "Straight ahead. In this town, there is not a single building of importance that doesn''t announce just how important it is with its looks alone," the vampire said in a voice as if he wasmenting over the fact.

    Yet, with his words interrupted, he didn''t delve back into the topic of his worries about major that he wanted to borate on before.

    Surely enough, before long, Tom noticed a massive chimney, almost as high as the adventurer''s guild alone, protruding directly from the ground. To its side, a blocky building stood with metal bars for its windows and metal bs for its door.

    "I guess you were right," Tom muttered, standing in ce and taking a moment to get more details from rtively afar.

    The chimney continuously produced smoke proving just how busy the insides of the building were.

    "If you go to the other side, you will see their shopfront, boss," the vampire informed in its usual whisper.

    "So the door that I can see is their backdoor?" Tom asked, already forming a n in his head. "Or rather, what should I expect from them? Will they act up if they learn that I came from the other side?" he asked more questions.

    "That''s the worker''s entrance. If you use it, you can expect some resistance and attempts to throw you out," the vampire said before taking a strangely long pause. "As for the other questions, I can only answer with what I know from the rumors. It''s nothing I confirmed myself," he said.

    ''Does that mean he was thrown out of the ce?'' Tom thought, amused by the perspective of someone as stealthy as the ck-d man getting his ass kicked out of a ce in a high-key manner. "It''s fine, go on," he added anyway. ''Even the stupidest rumors hold some truth,'' he thought.

    "The thing is... Those people are really simple-minded," the vampire said with a deep sigh. "They don''t really care about the city itself or who governs it as long as nothing much will change for them," he added, clearly hesitant to strike right to the point.

    "Why did the major leave the job of taking care of them to me, then?" Tom asked, smiling lightly.

    "As I said, they don''t give two fucks about matters that are of your concern, boss," the vampire sight before releasing yet another sigh. "But if you want to implement any changes, they will surely ask you for a battle," he finally revealed the point of the matter.

    "Battle?" Tom repeated the crucial word while shaking the spear in his hand. "How is that a problem?" he asked.

    ''Even if they are fit, no, even if they are ripped because of their line of work, how would that be a problem to me?'' he thought, puzzled. He saw himself how physical fitness only amounted to so much whenpared to the power of magic that one could obtain in the dungeon.

    "Boss... The battle... Well, it''s not a bloody one. What they will challenge you to is an arm wrestle match!"

 Chapter 141: Invading the smithy

    Chapter 141: Invading the smithy

    Tom heard all of the advice of his unlikely advisor. Yet, instead of heeding them, he headed directly for the back entrance of the building.

    "Boss, that''s the worker''s entrance!" the vampire protested, clearly misunderstanding Tom''s intentions. "If you go through there, nothing good wille out of it!" he continued his attempts to persuade the young man all the way to the point where Tom stepped into the open area of the street, right at the building''s entrance.

    ''I guess he has nowhere to hide out in the open,'' Tom thought when the voice of the vampire ceased to bother him. ''Well, I guess that''s good for now,'' he thought, looking down at the magical spear in his hand.

    For a moment, Tom simply stood in ce, one step away from the metal bs of the doorway. He closed his eyes and slowed down his breath, readying himself for what was about toe.

    Tom''s eyes opened up. He finally made the step forward before kicking against the metal door. Yet, rather than resisting his force, the door pried open with ease proved just how perfectly well was it weighted on its hinges.

    Crack!

    The metal of the doors mmed into the bricked wall inside, cracking the building material all over. Yet, despite causing quite a lot of noise and even making the building shake a little, no one seemed to be any wiser about Tom''s intrusion. Most likely, because Tom stood at the door instead of going inside.

    A mere momentter, a powerful gust of hot air rushed outside. ''Feels just like checking a damned over,'' Tom thought, recalling all those moments where he would check on his food only to be caught in the heat previously trapped within the kitchen''s tool.

    For a moment, Tom felt as if he had entered hell. To say that the rushing air was hot would be a gross underestimation. Yet, instead of avoiding the scalding temperature, Tom stood his ground, waiting for his body to get used to it instead.

    "Who opened the door?! Close it, you little fuck!" A voice somehow made it out of the building, cutting through a plethora of noises that resembled a modern industrial building rather than a medievalesque smithy.

    Finally, Tom stepped in. This small moment he took between opening and entering the ce allowed him to avoid getting stunned and confused by the extremely peculiar situation inside the building.

    "Hey, who the fuck are you?!" Soon, someone took notice of his invasion. Yet, instead of calling for others to help, a burly man instantly headed Tom''s way with his hands tightening into fists. "Now you are going to pay for our losses!" he screamed out, not to scare Tom, but most likely to make his voice actually break free from the ever-present noise inside.

    Tom didn''t reply. He continued to walk forward, right on the confrontation course towards the man. Yet, this wasn''t his intention at all. The corridor was simply too small for him to hide or give way.

    "Get the fuck off!" The man shouted, sending his fist flying towards Tom''s face.

    Tom rxed his right hand, allowing his spear to fall out of it. He then twisted his hand around. ''Recall,'' he thought, bringing the spear back only to use its blunt end to strike at the side of the man''s arm.

    There was no need to fight with everyone on his path. By redirecting the attack slightly to the side, Tom''s made the man''s fist miss by quite a huge margin.

    The burly''s man''s hand struck directly into the bricked wall, causing even more cracks than appeared when Tom mmed the metal door into it.

    ''That''s quite showy,'' he thought, calmly passing by the man who suddenly found the bones in his hand shattered. ''Anyway, that''s what you get for being too hasty with your judgment,'' he thought, moving ahead.

    "Here he is!" Tom heard a shout after making just a few steps. It was clear that the earlier shouts somehow managed to reach the rest of the people inside the spacious building.

    ''I thought their hearing would be dulled.'' Tom thought, gently biting his lip. The constant noise of metal hitting metal, water exploding into vapor, and all kinds of other sounds that one could expect from the insides of a smithy was quite annoying for him. But just like listening to loud music for an extensive period of time, this wasn''t the environment where one could keep his hearing intact.

    The corridor quickly became crowded when a group of people emerged from its steamy side. They were all rushing forward, clearly unwilling to let Tom.

    ''Eh,'' the young man sighed. ''Haste,'' he thought, activating one of his main abilities.

    The corridor was cramped. Most likely, it was a measure for preventing excessive heat loss whenever any of the outer doors would get opened. With five or more people all rushing at Tom, there wasn''t a single inch of free space that Tom could use to slip through.

    But Tom had no intention to fight with those people whatsoever. He stretched his leading arm to the back only to pull it forward in one, fluid motion. Still keeping the blunt end of his spear at the front, Tom threw the spear... above the crowd rushing at him.

    ''Swap,'' he thought, less than a second after his weapon flew over the group.

    Tom''s vision changed, only for a sudden burst of pain to overwhelm his mind for a short moment. ''I guess I was too slow,'' he thought with dissatisfaction, pulling himself away from the wall he mmed right into. ''Still, I need to take some time to figure out how the momentum is preserved during swaps,'' Tom realized, turning his head around to take stock of the situation.

    Given how he threw his spear along the line of the corridor, having it strike a wall meant that he was either at the turning point or at the split of ways.

    A quick look to the right revealed an entry to what looked like a warehouse with weapons, tools, and broken parts stacked all over the metal shelves.

    "THIEF!" A shout resounded within the building. "We have a thief in the warehouse!" the voice changed its narration a bit once its owner noticed where Tom was looking.

    ''Are you for real?'' Tom thought as he turned his head towards the source where the voice came from. For a moment, he just stood in ce, gracing the rmist with a look of disbelief on his face.

    And then, just like that, Tom turned his back to the warehouse and moved forward.

    He couldn''t see where the other path led to. The dense fog of steam made it impossible to see any further than a few meters, effectively hiding the insides of the building from Tom''s eyes. Yet, he could still feel the auras of several beings hidden deeper into the fog.

    Step by step, Tom made his way through the fog to the ce where more people were. Even though he initially avoided the confrontation, butting heads with the smiths was still his ultimate aim.

    "A murderer!" A shout this time entered a new narration. "Kill the invader!" it quickly changed to yet something else.

    "Who are you?" Tom heard the first reasonable question when he finally escaped from the corridor and entered some sort of a massive room.

    Judging from the flow of the steam, the source of all the fog was somewhere nearby. Given how the young man had never been in a real smithy before, he couldn''t judge the distances or outline of the ce from the intensity of the sounds alone.

    "A challenger," Tom replied, pushing his perception to its limits.

    He didn''te here to hurt anyone. While he was willing to do so if necessary, it wasn''t his aim at all. Yet, the people in the smithy had no way of knowing that fact, making their reactions possibly over the top.

    "That tremble in the guild... Was it you?" the same voice asked. Yet, before Tom could answer, the sounds of the chase that the people from the corridor gave made him realize that his time was running out.

    "Yes. And as you can guess, I came here to ensure that you won''t try to meddle with stuff once this entire town falls under mymand," Tom said openly before turning around to face the way he came from.

    Just as expected, it didn''t take long for his pursuers to catch up. They knew which way he went, meaning, as soon as their confusion died off, they quickly rushed after him.

    Before long, Tom was surrounded by a huge group of burly, sweaty monsters that could barely be called human. Just a single look at their ripped muscles would put most of the bodybuilders from Tom''s world to shame.

    ''I guess that''s what you get when you actually use your body rather than artificially training it,'' he thought before raising his spear-wielding hand... and dropping the spear to the ground.

    "I came here to challenge the strongest of you. Who is willing to take me on?"

 Chapter 142: Arm-wrestle match

    Chapter 142: Arm-wrestle match

    As soon as Tom uttered his words, the entire ce turned silent. The people surrounding him froze in ce as if his invasion suddenly made sense. Even the people that didn''t pay the situation any mind, too busy with their work to bother, stopped working the metal and turned their attention towards themotion.

    "You came here to challenge us, huh?" One of the smiths said, stepping ahead of the rest. Even if it was just a random guess, Tom decided to treat him as the temporary leader of the group.

    "That''s right," the young man said with a confident smile. "One on one, arm-wrestle match. I found this solution to my wishes more... eptable than just killing you all," he said before spreading his arms. "I don''t like waste," Tom added.

    "So a challenge you will have," the man said before sping his hands together.

    It all happened in an instant.

    Everyone in the smithy got to work, but on something else than their usual duties. In just a single moment, someone started spinning huge fans, clearing the fog from the room. Someone else poured coals into the smelters so that the fire wouldn''t die while everyone was busy with the match.

    ''They surely work fast,'' Tom thought when a weird table suddenly appeared right before his eyes. In the next moment, someone else brought chairs while yet another person started fiddling around that weird contraption of a desk.

    ''Oh, so that''s what it is,'' Tom thought, not sure whether he should cry orugh.

    The strange table turned to be a copsible version of what he saw in the videos of the prewar past. A simple table with two cushions for one arm and two simple handles that contestants could stabilize themselves with.

    Even though everyone was rushing around, Tom could feel the massive change in the atmosphere.

    From the hostile one caused by his invasion, it changed to a joyful one, onlyparable to what he felt during the Christmas period as a kid.

    "On it, boss," someone said before making his way towards the table.

    As the crowd parted to give way to the man, Tom could finally see just who he was going to wrestle arms with.

    ''Huh?'' the young man thought, unsure how he should take the situation.

    The man that approached the table didn''t look special at all. His head was bald, although it wasn''t anything out of the ordinary in the ce where fire risk was prevalent. But what drew Tom''s attention was the fact that despite working in the smithy, he couldn''t see the man''s muscles at all.

    ''It''s not like he doesn''t have them,'' Tom realized as he started to take deep breaths to saturate his body with oxygen. ''They are simply covered with a thinyer of fat, making them look all floppy,'' he thought, tightening his hands into fists.

    "I''m Sutra, and I will be your opponent," the man announced in a calm voice before taking a seat on the opposite end of the matching table.

    ''Still, isn''t he too old?'' Tom thought, mirroring the man''s actions as he observed the many wrinkles on his face. Yet, no matter what that man''s age was, there was no denying one fact.

    His body had wrong proportions all over.

    Despite being short, roughly a head smaller than Tom himself, the man was actually huge. His arms didn''t look human at all, but more like if he hunted some orcs back in the dungeon, reced his arms with theirs, and then painted them so they wouldn''t attract others'' attention.

    ''I wonder if my thing is bigger than his arm,'' Tom thought, grabbing the handle with his left hand before setting his right one straight up. "I''m set," he said.

    Sutra wasn''t as hasty as Tom. He slowly wiggled around his chair as if to find the best possible position before finally cing his hands on the table.

    "Now then, shall we begin?" he asked, looking up to Tom''s eyes with a small smirk on his face.

    "Before we begin," the same man that epted Tom''s request earlier suddenly ced his hands on the table. "You wish for our cooperation if you win. But let me ask this, what do we stand to gain if you lose?"

    ''That''s actually a valid question,'' Tom thought, realizing that hemitted the blunder that he often found himself ridiculing when done by others. How could there be a bet if only one side stood to gain something?

    "What do you want from me?" he asked politely, raising his eyes at the leader of the smiths. Given how he didn''t know the situation in the city, Tom was unable to even guess just what those people might be after.

    "I think I might surprise you here..." the man took a short pause to let the tension increase. Yet, from the amused smiles of the other smiths, Tom could tell that the stakes were already decided the moment he issued the challenge. "Actually, if you lose, we will still support you. But in exchange, you will abandon all the taxes rted to the smithy," he said, spreading his arms wide and putting on a huge smile.

    "Deal," Tom said without even a moment of hesitation.

    ''Sure, this ce should be generating profits like crazy to employ so many people at once in such a small city,'' he thought before his small smirk turned into a vicious smile. ''But how could I care about taxing it if my uncles will introduce a whole new kind of smithing to this ce soon?'' he thought, barely able to believe his own luck.

    "Then it''s decided!" The leader of the smiths eximed joyfully before suddenly smashing his fist into the matching table. As if it was a built-in feature, a square piece of it suddenly fell out from the very middle point of the table, only for the leader to pull out and insert a piece of metal directly into the hole.

    A piece of metal that Tom could recognize even with his eyes closed. A piece of metal that turned into chains was responsible for the sorry state udia was in.

    "So that''s how you ensure that one won''t use magic during the duel," Tom said, not bothered by the sudden change in the situation.

    "I hope you will forgive us our precaution," the smithy''s leader replied.

    "Cut the small talk," Sutra suddenly interjected as a grimace of displeasure appeared on his lips. "I have work to do. Let''s do it," he said, hurrying everyone up.

    Tom smiled.

    As much as he hated what happened back at the adventurer''s guild, those events allowed him to understand how did this metalwork. And while it was true that he could no longer use any magic when near it, that didn''t apply to the skills that were active... in the passive form!

    ''To think that it would be my ace,'' he thought, grabbing Sutra''s hand with a huge smile appearing on his face.

    From just how their hands looked against each other, Tom would never bet for himself. Within the confines of the meaty hand of his opponent, his entire arm looked like nothing but a stick.

    ''Well, let''s see how well does my casino works,'' he thought, watching how the leader of the smiths ced his palm on their entangled hands and shook them.

    "All ready?" he asked.

    Both Sutra and Tom nodded their heads. Both were extremely confident that they knew the oue of the battle even before it began.

    "GO!"

    With the shout of the smiths'' leader, both men pulled. Their hands wrapped in a test of strength.

    But to everyone''s surprise, they remained locked in what appeared to be a stalemate.

    ''How strong,'' Tom thought, pulling with all his casino-reinforced strength. While he didn''t kill any monsters recently to power up the passive, its constant addition to his base stats was still pretty strong. Yet, even with this ace in his sleeve employed from the very get to, he just couldn''t gain an advantage.

    ''Just holding him in ce takes all I have,'' he noticed grimly as thoughts of just throwing the match appeared in his mind.

    The two continued to push their strength to the limit, unwilling to give away even a single degree of the angle.

    The entire building turned silent. At first, from the shock that Tom actually managed to withstand the strength of their champion. But as drops of sweat started to appear on both men''s foreheads, their surprise turned into the excitement that no one dared to voice out in fear of distracting their friend.

    "JUST YIELD!" Sutra shouted, leaning his entire body to the side, adding a bit more strength to his pull.

    For a moment, Tom''s hand wavered. But he wasn''t going to give up that easily. He mirrored the man''s movement, bringing the contest back to a rtively stable equilibrium.

    ''I think that should be enough,'' Tom thought. He could go on for a lot longer, but there simply wasn''t any point in doing so. Yet, just as he was about to rx his muscles and slowly start to give his opponent more and more ground, he realized one thing.

    ''Isn''t his arm... thinning out?''

 Chapter 143: Only the feudal lord left

    Chapter 143: Only the feudal lord left

    The change was peculiar, yet no matter how much Tom looked, he couldn''t spot the ongoing process.

    ''I''m sure it''s thinner than it was before,'' he thought, squinting his eyes. ''I can already see his muscles pretty well,'' he added, not sure what to think about the situation.

    The one thing was obvious. The man''s arm continued to thin out as if he was consuming the fat in his arm for every second of the arm-wrestling match.

    ''Is he using it for fuel?'' Tom thought, puzzled by the situation. ''I might not be a biologist or a medic, but that shouldn''t be possible, would it?'' he thought, confused by the situation.

    ''Well, at least now I know why they were so confident about winning the match,'' Tom thought, closing his eyes in order to focus even more strength in his hand.

    At this point, his biceps burned with pain as if they were really on fire. His entire arm was turning numb from the overexertion, threatening that if the match wouldn''t be stopped soon, it could end up permanently injured.

    ''Still, I wonder how it works,'' he thought, keeping his eyes closed as to not let this strange situation distract him.

    The two men continued to push their hands for the next few moments, hoping to overwhelm their opponent. Yet, just like before, they were pretty evenly matched.

    Tom opened his eyes. While this meant risking losing his focus, he wanted to see whether there was any noticeable difference to the man''s arm.

    ''What the hell,'' he thought, noticing how much thinner it became.

    Sutra''s arm no longer appeared as imposingly as before. Right now, it was ripped to no end, free from even the tiniest hint of fat. From the look of desperation on his face, it was clear that he wasn''t going to give up, but...

    ''What is he going to consume once he runs out of the fat?'' Tom asked himself before the possible answers appeared in his mind.

    There were only two possibilities there. Either the man would lose his edge once he would have no more fat in his arm to consume, or he would start turning his flesh and muscles instead.

    Tom closed his eyes. He took a single breath and allowed the man to push his hand a little.

    It wasn''t a trap.

    Bit by bit, Tom allowed his hand to take an angle. Once it was just a few centimeters above the surface of the table, he finally gave up, allowing Sutra to m his arm into the wooden piece of furniture.

    The silence in the room continued for a few more moments as Sutra''s friends took a while to realize what had just happened.

    And then, the room erupted in cheers.

    "We won!" Someone shamelessly imed a part of the victory as if he contributed something!

    "Serves you right!" One of the men that initially chased after Tom spat this shout in the young man''s face.

    "Horray!"

    ''I guess that does it,'' Tom thought, leaning back on his chair.

    For him, it was no difference whether he would win or lose. His only objective was to obtain the support of those people so that the takeover of thisnd could proceed smoothly. And whether or not they would pay any taxes?

    Even if their business was booming, it would be nothing whenpared to what Tom could bring to this town with a single trip to the dungeon! Even if the major were toin about the decreased tax revenue, Tom was more than capable of just paying it all from his pocket for the next few years ahead.

    ''And that''s assuming they will remain in the business even after I bring my family here,'' Tom thought, unsure what kind of expression he should make. ''Well, no matter what, their skills will still be of use,'' he came to a conclusion. ''And I don''t want to have that man''s fate be a reason for guilt trips down the line.''

    For a smith, losing the ability to swing his leading arm would be akin to losing their meaning in life. Even if Sutra had enough savings to live the rest of his days in peace, Tom could tell that smithing wasn''t only his job but also a passion.

    ''Thinking about this, I believe it applies to everyone in the room,'' he realized as he scanned over the faces of the cheerful crowd.

    "Well then, just as promised, you will no longer need to pay any taxes, but you will support my im to this ce. Is that correct?" he said, turning his face to the leader of the group.

    "That''s right!" the man replied, unable to hold back his smirk. "I bet you thought you could win!" he added, reveling in the victory of his friend a little bit too much.

    "He could win," Sutra muttered, averting his eyes as soon as his leader took a look at his face. "He threw the match. I saw it in his eyes," he added before standing up from his chair and lowering his head to Tom. "For sparing my arm, you have my gratitude. If there is anything, I can do to repay this debt..."

    "Can you tell me what was that in the first ce?" Tom quickly asked, both to sate his curiosity and to change the topic. For some reason, the cheerful atmosphere of this ce allowed him to fare better against all the depressing thoughts that ate away at the core of his soul.

    "It was no magic, sir," Sutra replied, sitting back in his chair, still unable to look Tom in the eye. "While this is shameless for me to say now, we are honest workers. We wouldn''t cheat the match by using it," he added before putting his weakened arm on the table.

    Previously, it was ripped to the point where Tom couldn''t see a single spare gram of fat on it. Only the skin and the muscles. Yet now, although a small amount, fat already started to return to the man''s flesh, slowly filling in the gaps.

    "This ability is something I was born with, a special constitution that only a handful of people are," Sutra said, revealing the truth behind his inhuman strength. "Most of them end up as adventurers... But that wasn''t something I ever wanted to do. Smithing is way more interesting," he added, his face brightening up as soon as he started to talk about his interests.

    ''So there are people like that too. I wonder if there are other constitutions that one can have in this world,'' Tom thought, taking a mental note of this potentially important fact.

    After all, he just got an example of how potentially powerful such a constitution could be. In a situation where one''s magic would be hampered or evenpletely cut off, it appeared that the bodily constitution would work, as usual, allowing one to easily exceed the natural limits of the human body.

    "Now then, I guess it''s time for me to go," Tom said, satisfied with what he learned. "After all, I still have the lord at the province''s border to deal with," he added offhandedly, without even thinking about it.

    ''Huh?'' he thought, surprised by his own honesty. ''Why did I tell them that? It''s not like it''s important or vital information, but still...'' Tom thought, confused by his own actions.

    Was it the rxation he experienced thanks to everyone''s joy? Was the short time ofplete loneliness in this world already started to affect him?

    But the young man didn''t get the time to think deeper about the topic, as his words instantly made the atmosphere in the guild sour.

    It was as if the source of everyone''s joy suddenly disappeared without a trace.

    "What happened?" Tom asked. The change was so obvious that he didn''t even need to exin what he asked about.

    "I guess that''s it for our tax freedom," the leader of the guild sighed before shaking his head.

    "Could you please borate?" Tom asked another question, raising up from his seat. Given how the change happened as soon as he mentioned the feudal lord of the ce, it was pretty obvious that those smiths knew something that could potentially influence hisst opponent on the path of taking full control over the area.

    "You are not going to win him over. Not unless you can bribe his brains out," Sutra said, clearly hoping to somehow pay Tom back for sparring his arm.

    "Guys, I appreciate the worry, but don''t forget that what you saw right now was me... but without any magic," Tom said, leaning his head over the shoulder. "While I don''t mind using bribes if it''s the easier way out, don''t you think that you are underestimating my capabilities a little?"

    "No, we are not," the leader of the guild said with a conflicted look on his face. "First of all, the lord''s keep has a huge quantity of Mylerit embedded into its walls. So you can say your farewells to the idea of using your magic inside," he said before closing his eyes.

    "And even if you bribe him, that fucker will backstab you at the first given opportunity," Sutra finished the warning, finally raising his eyes and looking Tom directly in the eyes.

    "So that''s the case..." Tom muttered, taking a moment to think. ''This mylerit is quickly starting to annoy me,'' he thought, recalling his first experience with it. Although it wasn''t the metal that udia''s chains were made of, it was still a pretty annoying thing to deal with. "Well, it doesn''t change anything if I were to be honest," Tom added as a huge smile appeared on his face.

    "How so?" the leader of the smiths asked, looking at Tom as if he was some kind of naive child.

    "From what I figured out so far, mylerit blocks one from activating or forming any magic, right?" Tom said only for his smile to blossom even further. "But I observed it had no effect on the magic that''s already cast!"

 Chapter 144: Change of mind

    Chapter 144: Change of mind

    Tom left the cksmithing guild. While learning about the problematic nature of the local feudal lord was of great use to him, it was also the limit of what those smiths could provide him with. That is, outside of one, single thing.

    ''That''s a nice spear,'' Tom thought, swinging the cksmith''s gift around. It was iparably worse than his main weapon but also far greater than even the strongest magical weapon he could create on the spot.

    ''It can serve well to bait others,'' Tom thought before striking the ground with it.

    This was now one of his weapons, meaning he could recall it at any time he would like. As such, there was absolutely no drawback to just leaving it in a random ce, as long as he would recall it to his hand before entering the feudal lord''s castle.

    ''Still, I shouldn''t underestimate that guy,'' he thought as he headed in the direction that the group of smiths pointed him to. ''Who knows what kind of tribtions he went through before. I might not be powerful enough to deal with him, especially within that damned keep of his.''

    Tom continued his journey all the way to the point where he reached the border of the city. Ahead, only an open in remained, one that any random developed on earth would cover with gold to purchase.

    "Wait a second," Tom thought, suddenly realizing a certain factor. "Is there even any need to deal with that guy?" he asked himself.

    Since he couldn''t see the border keep from the edge of the town, it had to be quite a fair distance away. And between God and truth, his family wasn''t even that numerous for anyone to notice them within the poption of the city.

    As such, was there any reason for picking a fight with that feudal lord in the first ce?

    "How about I just ignore him?" Tom muttered, thinking over the possibility.

    "In a short term, it could work," Tom''s shadow returned with another piece of advice.

    ''Just when the hell did this guye from?'' he thought, startled when he suddenly heard those words. For some reason, Tom failed to detect the lesser vampire''s presence, allowing that dastardly being to catch him off guard.

    "And in the long term, I stand to gain more than enough power to easily deal with the lord," Tom added before suddenly turning around. Now that he came to this realization, there was absolutely no reason for him to stay in this city for even a minute longer.

    "I guess I should take care of the girl while you are away, right?" the vampire asked, still hiding in the shadows.

    "That would be for the best," Tom nodded his head, already directing his steps back to the center of the town. While he would love to go directly to the dungeon, he still had to pick up the supplies that his ves were supposed to bring him a long time ago.

    ''Right, I will have to give them some orders,'' Tom thought, already forming an outline of a n in his head.

    His return to the guild was met with varying reactions. Some stared at him as if Tom was some kind of celebrity, while others sent him hateful stares, clearly unhappy with the recent events.

    And right there, in the very middle of the crowd, all three of his ves stood in wait.

    "Master," Fabian said, raising the bags with provisions that he held in his hands.

    "I''m sorry for beingte," Tom said. Even if the other party were his ves, he didn''t actually endorse the idea of keeping humans as his own personal property. The only reason why he ever made those people his ves was to protect his secrets, secrets he had to reveal in order to learn more about the basics of this world.

    That''s why, despite the three of them being his ves, Tom never bothered to treat them as such.

    "Master, here are the supplies," Fabian said, passing the bags to Tom''s hands. He then scratched his chin and averted his eyes.

    "What do you need?" Tom asked. It was easy to notice that Fabian had something he wanted to say.

    "Boss, you are going to the dungeon, right?" he asked, still keeping his eyes away.

    "Yes," Tom replied, leaning his head over his shoulder yet refusing to borate.

    In the middle of the guild, there were too many ears that would be more than happy to learn more details about Tom''s ns.

    "Can we go with you?" Fabian asked, pointing his hand at the two of his teammates and fellow ves.

    "I''m sorry, but not," Tom shook his head as he refused. "I understand how it sounds, but it''s not some kind of way of punishing, bullying, or ignoring you. You would bring me way too much trouble for how deep I''m about to go. And I can''t take responsibility for you if I leave you on the floor you guys arepetent to survive at. A single slip and you could die," he said before throwing the bag of supplies on his back and turning around.

    "Master, do you have anything to do for us while you are away?" Ulster asked, joining the discussion.

    "Actually, I have," Tom replied, reaching underneath his clothes. He then pulled out one of the few grade-five stones that he had left. "You can do whatever you want with this stone while I''m away. All I need is for you to secure a big house for me to stay in once I return," he said before throwing the stone to Fabian''s hands. Between him, the scrawny archer, and the fragile mage girl, it was this burly man that Tom felt the most fitting to bear such a burden that this stone, in reality, was.

    "We won''t disappoint you, master!" Fabian instantly replied, striking some kind of weird pose that was likely to be a local salute.

    "Good hunting, Master," Le added, limiting herself to just wishing Tom luck.

    "Right, before I go," Tom said as he turned towards the doors. "There is a certain someone following me in the shadows. If you were to encounter him, keep an eye on what he will be doing. Once you get the house ready, he will bring someone for you to take care of," he added before walking out of the guild.

    ''Still, knowing the extent of the damage to its back, it''s a wonder the guild is still standing,'' Tom thought as he walked down the street only to exit the entire city a few momentster.

    Just like he noticed when he first entered the city, the path to the dungeon was insanely simple. One just had to go in a straight line, and in just a fewteen minutes worth of calmly walking, they would reach their destination.

    ''It''s been a while,'' Tom thought, standing still as he finally reached the foothold of the dungeon''s entrance. For some strange reason, he could feel the hints of stress and anxiety spreading through his soul as he stared at the dark entrance to the dungeon.

    ''I guess it''s the anxiety one feels whenever moving out somewhere else,'' Tom summarised his own state before taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

    Then, he started to slowly climb the stairs.

    ''First, I need to cross the entire dungeon,'' he thought as he called forth both of his physical weapons. ''Who knows if I will be able to call it if I were to leave them on this side,'' he thought, unwilling to make that bet.

    While Tom could easily pass the majority of the dungeon with his magical spears alone, the same couldn''t be said about the topmost floors.

    ''Right, now that I think about it, I wonder whether this boss fight will happen on thest floor,'' he thought as he continued to climb the stairs. While doing so was pretty annoying, it was still far easier than what awaited him once he would reach the highest floor on the other side.

    "Well, there is only one way to find out," Tom muttered as he finally reached the top of the tform and entered the dark gate.

    For a moment, the reality seemed to fade away, reced by a strange universe filled with distortions.

    ''It''s different than before,'' Tom thought, surprised by the experience.

    Sadly, it ended too quickly for him to learn anything new.

    ''I didn''t have my haste on, nor did I get any stronger since entering the other side,'' he thought, shocked by the momentary experience.

    Normally, his vision would crack for a moment before everything would be over. But this time, Tom somehow was stuck in the space between the points that the gate connected, in a space that didn''t make any sense to his human brain.

    "Well, whatever," he ultimately muttered, calling forth his main weapon and taking his first step forward. "The sooner I reach home, the sooner we will start to look for my father!"

 Chapter 145: Trouble at the family

    Chapter 145: Trouble at the family

    Tom passed through the first fifty levels of the dungeon with a breeze. The monsters of those levels were simply too weak for him to bother with.

    In fact, Tom didn''t even pay them any attention. With his everze constantly on, surrounding him with mes, all the monsters that dared to attack him were basically killing themselves.

    ''This is getting repetitive,'' Tom thought, kicking the boss of the fiftieth floor with ease. If anyone were to look at the fight, they would surely gasp for air with surprise.

    After all, it wasn''t amon sight for a young man not even in his twenties to send a four-meter tall mountain of meat and muscles flying with a single kick!

    This single kick alone was just enough to crush the innards of the minotaur, rendering him unable to move. It was still breathing, although it was clear that just doing that was causing it an enormous pain.

    ''Thinking about this, I never considered those monsters living creatures,'' Tom thought, mercifully sinking the de of his spear in the minotaur''s chest.

    In contrast to the stronger monsters on the lower floors, the minotaur only had one heart, positioned just like it would be in a human of his size. There was no trick to killing him. He didn''t possess any strange abilities that would force Tom to be wary.

    The entirety of the hardship of the fiftieth floorid in besting the overwhelming power that the minotaur had... Power, that was nothing much whenpared to Tom''s current state. Especially with the active part of his casino passive, turning him basically into the God of the ce.

    ''Well, I can only hope it will work,'' Tom thought, approaching the stone-bearing wall of the boss-room. With a single strand of energy pushed into a said wall, all the stones trickled down the floor.

    Back when he first made this journey, he would snatch all the stones he could from the dungeon. After all, back then, they offered him a chance to grow.

    The situation changed when he and udia made their descent after reaching the lowest floor of the dungeon. At that point, it was simply not worth the time to waste on picking the stones, given how they would have no effect on their strength whatsoever.

    But this time, when Tom made his way through the middle floors of the dungeon for the third time, he didn''t dare to miss a single stone.

    And each one he would pick would end up in an already massive bag that he continued to drag along.

    ''Good thing I asked for that chain,'' Tom thought once he scooped his haul. Without it, his own everze skill would long turn his bag into a pile of ashes, leaving all the stones to be reabsorbed by the dungeon.

    With the new batch of stones added to his bag, Tom continued his journey. Moving forward, he breathed a sigh of relief. From the floor fifty-one, he hoped to find some challenging monsters, ones that could provide him with some entertainment instead of just dying to his mes.

    "Are you for real?" Tom muttered, only a few minutester. For the nth time in this single dungeon crossing alone, he encountered overgrown spiders.

    They were one of the most annoying monsters to deal with, mostly because one could never see what pattern of attacks they would use... Before well, they would attack.

    From spitting spiders, through jumping spiders all the way to even the flying ones, Tom had to be ready to counteract every possibility...

    Or just move past them.

    ''This is going to be a long day,'' he thought, pulling out his greatest spear.

    ''Now that I think about it, I think I will need to find a way to upgrade it somehow,'' he thought, offhandedly cutting the legs of the nearest spider and leaving it wriggling on the floor.

    ''So it''s jumpers this time,'' Tom thought, watching with disgust how a swarm of monsters continued to charge ahead, each of them too stupid to realize that they were no match for him.

    ''And there goes my answer to whether they are living beings or not,'' Tom thought, cutting through the swarm with ease. For how disgusting and agile they were, he didn''t even need to put his back behind the shes of his spear. ''It''s like bullying children,'' Tom thought, sighing deeply.

    And so, his path to the depths of the dungeon continued.

    ****

    "Boss, they cut us all out," one of the uncles reported to Marvin. From the look on the man''s face, it was clear that the situation was just as dire as his words described.

    "That was to be expected. We attempted to y cocky with them," Marvin replied while shaking his head. "Given how prideful they are, it was only a matter of time before they tried to exert some sort of pressure on us," he added, standing up from his favorite chair.

    Over the past two days, things took a turn for the worse. Marvin''s attempt to chase the envoys of the Online Hub resulted in a sudden dip in their attitude towards the family.

    ''Still, I didn''t expect for it to happen so quickly...'' he thought, tapping his fingers against the wood of his desk.

    "Could you call Cleo for me? Oh, and a strong coffee if you could," Marvin threw to his uncle, gazing at the news feed disyed on his personalputer.

    "We can''t allow for such autonomous groups to exist! They circumvent the anti-arms conventions by using the tools that didn''t make it to the list, turning them into a threat to the public security!"

    The words of the local Online Hub manager were spoken by one of the high-ranking politicians of the city. Even without a proper investigation into the matter, Marvin could tell that the man was in cahoots with the global powerhouse.

    "For every day that they continue to exist outside of the establishedw, outside of the norms, and outside of the big cities, we are proving that the reforms of our system were all worth nothing!"

    Marvin didn''t even bother to turn the sound of the live stream. If he could feel his soul boil with rage just from the subtitles, he didn''t want to risk flying into a fury from hearing the man actually speak those words.

    "Should I do something with him?" Cleo asked as she entered the room. Given the angle that she had on the monitor, she only needed a single look to figure out what was happening.

    "Nah, it won''t be of any use," Marvin replied, pushing the lever and leaning back in his chair. "If we do anything to him or even try to approach him, it would be like giving a free pass to the online hub to the same with our people," he said, pushing the window of the live stream away.

    "Are we going to just sit and wait?" Cleo asked, sitting directly on the table.

    "So you heard," Marvinmented, squinting his eyes. "And, obviously, no. If we just take those attacks and do nothing, they will take it for granted. And we can''t allow that," the young man summed up.

    "How about we pay them back in the same way?" Cleo asked, taking out her tablet and furiously tapping her fingers on its screen for a few moments before passing the device to her brother. "If we cut those industries out, we could cause a widespread panic on the stock market. What''s more, if we me it on that guy''s actions..." she said, only to cut her sentence short. "No, it won''t work. The online hub doesn''t really care for the local stability, nor do we have any way to me it on them," she added, tightening her hands into fists.

    "Wait for a second," Marvin said, scrolling through the list of businesses that were either directly owned or heavily involved with their family. "I think there is something that we can do," he said as a wide smile appeared on his face.

    "Now you are scaring me, man," Cleo scoffed before smiling herself brightly. "What do you have in mind?"

    "Right now, they are bitching about our military might and equipment," Marvin said, finally finding what he wanted on the tablet before passing it back to the girl. "I would say, how about we humor them and give up the catalyst?"

    "Wait, are you for real?" Cleo shouted, opening her eyes wide. "That thing could go for billions on the market! If you reveal that we actually have it..." her words ended up stuck in her throat.

    "That''s right," Marvin smiled. "All the forces that are on par, if not greater than the online hub, wille flocking to get their hands on it," he said, only to raise three of his fingers. "We will close down the threepanies that I marked, ming it on the town''s interference with our business. Then, we will make a gesture of good faith, giving out the catalyst, in secret, to the online hub to amend our rtionship."

    "You mean, we will spread the rumors that Online Hub wanted it, so they pressed their politicians to suffocate us," Cleo grinned, sparks of devilish energy appearing in her eyes. "And once the vultures wille flocking, not only will the town turn into chaos, not only will everyone me it on the hub, but we will also get to be the white knight on a white horse that wille to the people''s defense!" she muttered, dissolving Marvin''s n.

    "I wonder how they are going to deal with it," Marvin added, forcing his agitation to calm down. "After all, even we would be powerless against some of the factions that would kill entire nations just to get their hands on this useless piece of junk!"

 Chapter 146: We are going to migrate

    Chapter 146: We are going to migrate

    "You really are working fast," Cleo said with a moan, entering Marvin''s workroom. "I didn''t expect you to kick up the fuss so quickly," she added, falling on top of a sofa.

    "We don''t have any time to waste," Marvin replied, shaking his head. "Every single day, we are losing a quarter of a percent of our assets, and the situation is only going to get worse," he added before sighing deeply. "The sooner we get this mess out of the way, the better."

    "Still," Cleo brought her knees up, resting her head on top of them. "I wonder what Tom will say once he sees all the mess we are creating," she muttered, squinting her eyes as she delved deep into her inner world.

    "It all started because he just couldn''t let his obsession go," Marvinmented offhandedly, constantly scrolling through the feed on his tablet.

    "Are you saying it''s his fault?!" Cleo instantly brought her head up, sending Marvin a furious look. "Don''t you realize that everything started to move rapidly after your ident?" she asked, once again squinting her eyes, although for a different reason now.

    "Now, now," Marvin attempted to cate his sister. "I''m not saying that what happened and what''s going on are his faults," he said before releasing a deep sigh. "It''s just that... How many years has it been since the leader left?" he asked.

    "If I recall... Nine years?" Cleo replied after making a quick count. "Still, if our father were to disappear like that, wouldn''t you do everything in your power to find him?" she asked, turning her head sideways.

    Marvin sighed.

    "Yeah, I would do everything in my power to bring him back, save him if he were to be in trouble or to take vengeance on those who would potentially bring him harm," he admitted before releasing yet another sigh. "Although I cannot imagine anyone capable enough to make him disappear in the first ce."

    For a moment, the room turnedpletely silent, with both siblings thinking about their own stuff.

    Suddenly, a window popped out on Marvin''s tablet. But what was even more important, it triggered a small rm sound, forcing Cleo''s brother''s attention back to the screen.

    "It''s starting," he said, swiping a finger on his tablet to send the feed to one of the many screens mounted all over the ce.

    "As you are watching us, we are witnessing one of the greatest acts of bullying that our town ever witnessed!" A young female reporter spoke to the microphone while looking directly into the camera.

    "Just a moment ago, we got hold of the information that shed some light on the handover that''s about to take ce just behind my back. This mighte as a shock to all of you, dear viewers, but what was supposed to be a signing of a trade deal between the city and one of its major, supporting families turned out to be something entirely else!"

    The reporter continued her job, making sure to y not only with her words but also her face and the entire body.

    With every fiber of her being, she transmitted just how disgusted and terrified at the same time she was.

    "She''s good," Cleomented before taking a quick nce at her brother. "But I can vaguely recall her face. Didn''t you two..."

    "Yeah," Marvin nodded his head, "I fucked her back at the college. She is one of the rising news stars from the north district," he added as a mysterious smile grew up on his lips. "I just cashed in one of the favors from the past. It was cheaper and less risky than involving any of the media outlets that we control," he added.

    "Right, it''s better to get your fuckbuddy to do the dirty work rather than usingpanies that could be traced back to us," Cleo said, her words implying scorn, yet her face actually filled with pride and content.

    "Dear viewers, I would advise you to hold on to your seats, as what I''m about to reveal might shock you!" The woman announced from the screen. "The ceremony that takes ce right as I''m making this report is not what we all were told it is. It''s actually the greatest act of submission, and a definitive plead for peace for a family that was ostracized and uwfully pressed by the very politicians you can see shaking hands with said family on the other channels!"

    "Woah, she really is good," Cleo said as her eyes widened a little. She then jumped down from the sofa and turned on another monitor, quickly opening up the feed from the local station.

    In there, it wasn''t the groundbreaking report that aired but the live feed of the ceremony that Marvin orchestrated overnight.

    "Isn''t this the guy..." she muttered, closing her eyes in an attempt to recall one of her memories. "Yes, this is the fucker that Hub used to press us yesterday!" she eximed, pointing her finger at the screen.

    "Shush," Marvin silenced his sister, not even bothering to look at the other screen. "I know. In a sense, what she is speaking are my words," he added, a hint of pride clearly noticeable in his voice.

    "All the major media outlets hope that you will stare right at the ceremony only to direct your attention to the line of trucks with equipment that can be used by our local hospital. But listen to me, this is nothing but a distraction, a kind gesture of the bully allowing their victim to save face!" Marvin''s former lover almost screamed out to the camera. "While we are talking, the very truck that you can see at the end of the procession is carrying nothing else but..."

    The feed was cut. The camera went down, recing the side-way view at the ceremony with nothing but ckness.

    "Was that nned?" Cleo asked.

    "Obviously... not," Marvin replied with a small smirk forming on his face. "Just watch... Oh, and don''t mind the booms," he added before turning his eyes towards the town-oriented window of the room.

    For a few moments, nothing happened. And then, just like Marvin orchestrated, a massive explosion shook the town!

    Even at Tom''s estate, the shockwave wreaked havoc... Or rather, it would, if this shabby-looking building wasn''t made with military-grade materials, to begin with. In a sense, what looked like a run-down farm, was no worse than a bunker from the peak years of the great war.

    Soon, the wave of condensed air passed by.

    "Was that nned too?" Cleo asked, gathering herself from the floor.

    "Not at all," Marvin replied grimly, kicking away the remains of his broken chair. The look on his face revealed just how furious he was. "Still, we cannot monitor the situation anymore," he added, pointing his hand at the broken monitors all over the ce.

    While the building was shock-resistant, the ss in its windows was not. In the end, not even the bulletproof ss could withstand the shock of an explosion that was observable from so far away!

    "That means the upper families got involved," Cleo summed the situation up, a satisfied smile appearing on her face. "Still, that girl of yours..." she muttered, only to cease speaking half-sentence.

    "Yeah, she is likely dead," Marvin replied, shrugging his arms.

    There was no use crying over spilled milk.

    "How cold," Cleomented as a wry smile appeared on her face. "With how things are right now, Tom definitely is not going to be happy once he returns," she added.

    "Yeah, I''m not," Tom confirmed her guess, randomly appearing in the doorway.

    "See?" Cleo said before freezing in ce. She then slowly turned around, only to see an unkept version of her childhood friend.

    Tom''s face was scarred, or rather, his wounds have yet to cover in scab.

    "You are back!" she shouted the amount of relief and happiness in her voiceparable to the energy of the explosion that just turned the entire area into a wreck. She rushed forward in an attempt to grab Tom in her arms, only to stop when she noticed his feeble state. "What happened?" she asked, raising her fingertips to the long cut that went from his left temple all the way to his nose.

    "A tough boss," Tom replied, immersing himself in the memory of the recent events. "But I think I should be the one asking what happened... That is if we had the time for that," he added, looking at the broken windows of the building.

    "What do you mean?" Marvin asked, saving all the sentiments forter. "We just made sure the Online Hub will get off our back!" he added, clearly dissatisfied with Tom''s words which he took pretty seriously.

    "It doesn''t matter," Tom replied before cleaning the blood from his face. "I confirmed it. There is actually a world on the other side of the dungeon," he added before dragging in a bloodied bag that he previously left behind the doors.

    "Here, have everyone in the family take and consume at least two of those stones," Tom said before suddenly grinning. "We are going to migrate to another world!"

 Chapter 147: Deciding the future of the family

    Chapter 147: Deciding the future of the family

    "Huh?" Marvin gasped for air, clearly having trouble epting Tom''s random announcement. "What do you mean, another world?" he asked, proving that he didn''t really digest what Tom told about a moment earlier.

    "Like I said," Tom rolled his eyes, "the dungeon doesn''t end at its lowest floor. Once you deal with thest boss, instead of facing a wall or secret treasure, you are going to start climbing it... down," Tom said, taking a moment to seat himself in one of the few surviving chairs.

    "And once you reach the highest floor again?" Marvin asked, unwilling to ept any default gaps in the story.

    "You enter another world," Tom confirmed the truth with a nod of his head.

    "And you want our entire family to migrate there, right?" Marvin asked, slowly realizing that Tom wasn''t describing a new idea for a fantasy novel but what he actually saw with his very own eyes.

    "I see where this discussion is going to," Tom said before shaking his head. "Listen, I''m not going to force anyone toe with me. But before you decide whether or not you would like to migrate, tell me one thing," he said before setting his right leg on the left and cupping his hands together. "What is the purpose of our family?"

    "Huh?" Cleo shrugged ufortably. "To survive in this broken world?" she replied with a question on her own.

    ''And this is the reason why we struggle,'' Tom thought, closing his eyes. ''We don''t really have any purpose. And there is a limit to what we can achieve by just sitting on our assess,'' he concluded.

    "To retain our family position in the local society, preserve our strength and means, andstly to cultivate our traditions even if the world will once again turn unreasonable," Marvin replied with the actual motto of the family instead.

    "And as we can both see," Tom said, spreading his arms as if to point at the messy room, "it''s going great, isn''t it?" he asked with a small smirk.

    The devastated state of the room was more than enough for an answer.

    "Don''t you try to use this card," Marvin replied, his expression darkening. "It all happened because you picked a fight with the online hub!" he said, pointing his hand at his childhood friend.

    "Tell me," Tom leaned his head to the side, "does it matter why it started?" he asked before shaking his head. "Because in my book, we can either look to the past to find people to me, or look to the future and analyze our options. So let''s do just that," he added before turning his face to Cleo. "Tell me, what are the prospects of the family assuming we remain in this world and cease all the involvement with the dungeon?"

    "In no more than ten years, our autonomy will be just a memory. In the next twenty-five, we will be wiped out as dangerous elements," she said, not hesitating or even taking any time to think about the answer.

    "And there you have it," Tom said, turning his face back to Marvin. "On the other hand, let me tell you what will likely happen if we all migrate with all the people and resources to that other world I saw," he announced as he stood up from the chair and approached Marvin''s desk.

    Tom then snatched one of the papers before picking up a random pen that found its way towards the floor.

    "In one month, we will turn all the soldiers in our ranks into people capable of toppling cities of this world, all on their own," he said, drawing a simple, short line on the paper he picked. "In one year, we will create a country all on our own in which we will rule however we fit using the advantage of technology," he said, drawing another line. "In ten years, we should be able to understand the physics of the magic andbine it with our technology, turning us into the greatest power of both the worlds at once," he added, drawing the third line on the paper.

    Those lines had no meaning whatsoever. Tom only bothered to draw them to focus Marvin''s attention on his words. A small trick he never had the chance to use before.

    "Wait a moment," Marvin stopped Tom''s lecture by raising his hand. "Beings capable of toppling entire cities on their own?" he repeated Tom''s words with a look of doubt on his face. "What did you mean by that?" he then asked.

    "Let me show you," Tom replied with a small smile. ''Recall,'' he thought, only for his main spear to suddenly materialize in his hand. "This is one of the abilities I use in the fighting system I developed. Look," he said, throwing the spear through the broken window.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought, disappearing from the room.

    "What the fuck?!" Marvin eximed, jumping out of his seat. "Where did he go?" he asked, staring nkly at the spear that reced his friend''s body.

    "Do you need me to showcase the full extent of my powers here, or can you take my word on it?" Tom shouted his question from a fair distance away. Yet, as soon as Marvin turned his head around to look at him, Tom swapped again, promptly returning to the room.

    "That was... weird?" Cleo muttered, taken aback by the show. "Wait, don''t tell me..." she whispered as a spark of enlightenment lit up her face.

    "Yup," Tom nodded his head. "The abilities that you have as your avatar actually can be obtained by a real person. And they do not stop working once you exit the dungeon," he exined before taking his seatback.

    "So, what would you want us to do?" Marvin asked as he bit on his lip. Even though the entire area was now devastated, he couldn''t help but throw one more look at thendscape outside, the ce where he grew up and came to love with all his heart.

    "We gather everyone and everyst piece of equipment or knowledge that we can carry," Tom shrugged his arms. "Worst case scenario, just download as much of science stuff on the mobile data carriers and get several readers. Just enough to make sure they won''t all break at the same time and in a short period of time," he said, stretching back in his chair.

    "Just the science stuff? What about weapons?" Marvin asked, surprised by Tom''s approach.

    "We need to limit what we carry to the bare minimum. Outside of food and clothes, everyst gram of matter that we will carry matters," he said, once again standing up from his chair and approaching the side of the room where two screens somehow managed to survive the st.

    Then, without any hesitation, he smashed his fists into them, turning them into nothing more but a mix of metal and electrical scrap.

    "The fuck are you doing?!" Marvinshed out, jumping out of the seat that he just managed to sit back in.

    "We need to eradicate everything that we cannot bring with us. If we overload the catalyst, we should be able to eradicate this entire area from the maps and draw everyone''s eyes away from the dungeon''s entrance," he said, turning his face back to his friend.

    This time, however, Tom didn''t have a smile on his lips. His eyes were not lit by the excitement of returning to that strange, magical world on the other side of the dungeon.

    Right now, Tom acted his role of the leader of the family, even if he only got it by inheritance.

    "I understand," Marvin tightened his jaws for a moment only to hang his head low in defeat. "I will get people to copy all the data that we can still have. But I still need to know one more thing," he said before looking sternly into Tom''s eyes. "How hard is it going to be?"

    "What?" Tom asked. "Crossing the dungeon? Entering it? Establishing ourselves in the other world?" he asked, clearly not sure what Marvin had on mind.

    "All of them," Tom''s childhood friend replied without even a moment of hesitation.

    "Crossing the dungeon is going to be the hardest part," Tom replied without a second thought. "All my injuries... Well, they are from fighting thest boss alone. She is a real pain in the ass," he said, only to shake his head a momentter. "Anyway, once we force our way to the dome by force, the online hub won''t have the time to react. That''s why I believe entering the dungeon itself will be the easiest part," he said before a small smile appeared on his face.

    "You didn''t answer thest question," Marvin pointed out. "How hard it will be to establish ourselves in that other world?" he asked, unwilling to drop this question.

    Even if Tom was the leader of the family, it didn''t mean he could just throw all of them under the bus.

    "That''s the best part," Tom turned towards his friend and openly chuckled. "It''s not going to be hard, and it''s not going to be easy. Because," he took a break to increase the tension of the moment, "I already took care of it."

 Chapter 148: Gathering in the tunnel

    Chapter 148: Gathering in the tunnel

    "Is everything ready?" Tom turned his face towards Marvin as soon as he entered the tunnel.

    "Not yet," the young man replied with a slight frown. "Gathering everything of use can take time, you know?" he threw before resting his back against the rough surface of the dugout.

    "I didn''t ask to imply ming you," Tom muttered before shaking his head. "Well, it doesn''t matter if it will happen a few minutester or earlier," he added, turning his eyes towards the depths of the hole.

    ''It was a pain toe this way,'' Tom thought, recalling the events he had to go through once emerging from the dungeon.

    ''Not only did I have to fight with that girl again, not only I had to somehow sneak out from the middle of the most important ce of the entire damned online hub, but I even had to dig half of the tunnel away with my very hands,'' he thought, allowing the anger caused by all those troubles to take over his thoughts for a moment.

    He allowed this negative feeling to persist only for a short moment, though. ''I guess they had their reasons to do that,'' Tom thought, staring at the loosely uncovered path that led all the way to the insides of the dome.

    "It''s nice to see you again, son," Marvin''s father entered the tunnel, meeting with Tom for the first time since the vengeance raid at the motorbike shop.

    "I''m d to see you in good health too, sir," Tom replied as his lips formed a gentle smile.

    In the absence of a father of his own, this middle-aged man turned into the fatherly figure for him... for a short period of time before he was sent off to a big city in order to enroll in a good school.

    ''Back in the days, I med him for sending me off like that, but now...?'' Tom thought before shaking his head. ''Yeah, I still me him. I guess he just couldn''t be bothered with me,'' he added as he kept his fake smile up.

    Despite belonging to the same family, Tom wasn''t an exact fan of every member of it. While he knew he could rely on everyst one of his brothers, cousins, uncles, and whatever, that didn''t mean he was willing to go grab a beer with all of them as well.

    "Anyway, I wanted to ask," the middle-aged man struck up the conversation after a few moments of awkward silence. "Are you really sure those are all the weapons you want us to bring?" he asked, pointing at a huge sports bag that he brought along.

    "That''s right," Tom replied without even casting a single look at the bag.

    ording to the specification he gave, only three long firearms, five hand weapons, and a bunch of explosives along with explosiveunchers were necessary.

    But what no one outside of Tom knew was that they wouldn''t use those weapons in the dungeon itself. They were Tom''s method of dealing with that damned magic-resistant castle of the feudal lord at the border!

    "Is this really going to be enough?" Marvin asked, taking the role of the doubtful guy. "I mean, if the dungeon looks just like we could all see it while using the avatars, won''t we die on the first floor when the monsters attack?" he asked.

    "You don''t need to worry about the monsters whatsoever," Tom replied, shaking his head. "First thing first, there are two possibilities here. Either we get transported all together as I hope we will, or the dungeon will forcibly split us into groups," Tom announced, jumping down from the rock he was sitting at.

    "Wait, so you don''t know how that works either?" Marvin asked, opening his eyes wide. "Why you didn''t tell us that sooner?" he asked, clearly ming his friend for withholding such crucial information.

    "Because it doesn''t change anything," Tom replied calmly. "Also, I had no way of testing it out. You wouldn''t believe how hard it is to get a huge amount of people you can trust on the other side," he said before shaking his head.

    "Anyway, the first scenario," Marvin quickly stopped Tom from going into a long retrospection. It was only a matter of time before the entire family would finish packing up and gathering at the tunnel, making the time for his inquiries pretty limited. "If we manage to get all as a single group into the dungeon. What will happen then?" he asked with a stiff expression on his face.

    "Then it will be easy," Tom replied, shaking his arms. "I will kill all the monsters and distribute the stones of each floor to those with the greatest skills. Once we reach thest ten floors, I will im all the stones to myself and kill the boss that gave me so much trouble before," he finished his rough exnation without even batting an eye.

    "Wait a second, kill it? So you didn''t kill it already?" Marvin''s father caught on the detail that didn''t fit the rest of the story. "Wait, if you didn''t kill the boss of the lowest floor, how did you manage to go to the other side?"

    "I don''t really know how it works myself," Tom lowered his eyes only to bite his lips a momentter. "It was my second time fighting with her. After shing for a few moments... she just stops and freezes in ce. Yet, when I tried to finish her off, a powerful barrier stopped me from doing so," Tom revealed the details of his second encounter with that small yet insanely powerful woman.

    "Anyway," Marvin interjected in the discussion. "We can talk about whatys at the end of the dungeon once we are inside. For now, Tom, tell me," he said, taking a step towards his friend. "If our family were to separate at the dungeon, what''s the n?"

    "As weird as it might sound to you, that would be actually better," Tom muttered under his nose before shaking his head. "Listen, there is a set amount of stones that can appear on each floor. The more people we have in one party, the less of them we will be able to bring to a level high enough for them to be of any real use," he said, taking a step back from his friend.

    The look on Marvin''s face was just that scary.

    "But in that scenario, I can only advise everyone to advance slowly and carefully. The monsters at the first ten floors are so weak one can easily just punch them to the death," Tom said, raising his head towards the ceiling and closing his eyes for a moment. "If we were to be split up, then each of the groups will have to make the decision who to promote as their fighter."

    "That''s it?" Marvin asked, raising his eyebrows and leaning his head to the side. "Do your best? Is that what you are sending our entire family with?" he asked, quickly turning pretty angry. "What about thatst boss? You went through the dungeon twice already, yet you still can''t really deal with her!" he pointed out a potential w in Tom''s n.

    "That you don''t need to worry about," Tom smiled despite Marvin''s suddensh. "This dungeon works like a pyramid of sorts. There is a lot of alternate versions of the low floors, but as you go up, they start to merge into a smaller and smaller number," he said, drawing the picture of his words directly on the wall. "That''s why I believe we should be able to all meet up once we reach the eighty floor," he added, pointing his finger at the very top of the pyramid.

    "So that you will be still the one to fight with the boss, hmm..." Marvin muttered as he raised his hand to his chin to caress it. Even though it was simple, Tom''s exnation somehow managed to calm him down a little.

    "Wait, if you can deal with the monsters with your bare fists, then why bother bringing any weapons at all?" Marvin''s father suddenly asked, gently shaking the sports bag in his hand.

    "Not for the dungeon itself, but for a problematic person on its other side," Tom muttered before amotion from the opening of the tunnel forced him to look the other way and stop talking.

    Only a few people entered, each of them carrying more luggage than a human being should be rationally able to carry.

    "So that''s all of us?" Tom asked, sending a quick look to his friend.

    "That''s right, those were thest stragglers," he added as a massive frown appeared on his face. "The hell do you think you guys are taking all this stuff?!" heshed out at thete arrivals with no hesitation.

    "Those are all the important works of culture!" one of the women that appeared didn''t give Marvin any ground. "You ask us to migrate to another world? Sure, I can handle the ridiculousness of that. But don''t ask us to abandon who we are for that weird mission of yours!"

 Chapter 149: Breaching the dome

    Chapter 149: Breaching the dome

    "Well..." Tom hesitated. For how pragmatic he was, he wasn''t naive enough to believe his approach to life would be shared by everyone else in the family. ''And there is a bit of truth in what they said,'' he thought, biting his lips due to this unexpected problem.

    "How about we divide your luggage amongst others?" Marvin proposed, noticing Tom''s distress. "This way, you won''t be just a dead weight," he added, clearly hoping to infuriate those people.

    After all, as counterproductive as it was to operate with someone emotional, it was also far easier to make them do stuff one wanted.

    "Try all you want. You won''t be able to bait us," the leader of the culture-oriented faction stepped forward, crossing his arms over the straps that held his massive back. "I don''t trust you guys. You would throw those treasures away on the first given opportunity," he said before shaking his head. "This is the burden that we decided to take on our own; as such, we are not going to ept your fake help in carrying it," he added, looking at both Tom and Marvin with scorn.

    "Well, whatever rocks your boat," Tom replied offhandedly, too busy with the actual danger of the migration to bother with a bunch of freaks.

    "Wait, are you sure?" Marvin stopped his friend from leaving for the deeper part of the underground path. "Are you really going to ept those deadweights?"

    "And why wouldn''t I?" Tom replied, leaning his head over his shoulder in confusion. "It''s not like they are more problematic than the rest. They are our family, and they are entitled to have their own beliefs and needs," Tom said before shrugging his arms. "Anyway, let''s drop this topic and get moving. The longer we wait, the greater the chance that someone will find out about our move," he said before turning around and finally heading deeper into the tunnel.

    The path that used to be wide enough for a small cart to carry people over was now crowded with people. Given how everyst member of Tom''s family gathered in the same ce, more than half of it was so densely packed with people that it made squeezing through them an actual challenge.

    In the end, the path that would take less than twenty minutes to cover while it was empty took Tom and Marvin over an hour to traverse. Yet, rather than seeing a force ready to fight whatever dangersid on the other side of the impromptu metal barrier that acted as the masking of the entrance to the restricted area, only Cleo and her dad awaited there.

    "Where is everyone else?" Tom asked, frowning when he noticed the strange situation.

    "Spread out equally amongst the rest of the group," Cleo replied calmly, crossing her arms on her chest. "What would you need them for?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in an expression of surprise.

    "To fight in case the online hub got the news of our intentions?" Marvin replied, only to notice Tom''s hand appearing on his shoulder.

    "Cleo is right," Tom said with a small smile before whipping out his spear out of nowhere. Right at the very front of the tunnel, there was just enough space for him to arm himself back without risking cutting his fellow family members on the way. "I alone should be enough to deal with whatever will stand on our path. And if anything, it''s better to have armed people with the rest of the family instead," Tom added. "If we will have to hurry up, that gives us the greatest chance that if the dungeon will split us into groups, that every group will have one or twopetent people in them."

    "If that''s what you say," Marvin said, raising his hands as he backed off only to jokingly bow and point his hand at the metal shield that blocked the end of the passage. "Women and children first, then," he joked.

    "Never change, brother," Tom muttered as the edges of his mouth twitched. "Never change," he added as he approached the metal te and pushed it aside.

    "FIRE!"

    In an instant, Tom came under an attack. Yet, given how an entire day passed since hest had to use it, his auto guard skill saved him from the bullet.

    "FUCK!" someone from behind Tom shouted when the bullet proved not to be a simple projectile but rather a shootable explosive.

    ''Haste,'' Tom thought, not wasting a single second. In an instant, the time flow around him slowed down, allowing him to assess the situation ahead.

    The insides of the dome that were perfectly empty when he came out of the dungeon were now swarming with opponents.

    The gate itself was surrounded from all sides by makeshift trenches filled with an entire army of armed men. The further parts of the dome had its ss windows shattered to make space for the perfectly ck muzzles of the long weapons the enemy prepared.

    And within this slowed frame of time, Tom could see an entire swarm of bullets heading his way.

    Too quickly for him to dodge.

    ''Idiots,'' Tom thought, forcibly restraining his guard skill. Rather than moving out of the line of fire, he simply raised his arm to his eyes so that the only vital and exposed part of his body would not be shelled at.

    And then, the flurry of bullets hit.

    ''Damn,'' Tom thought, having troubles holding back a giggle. ''It tickles!'' heined in his mind while conjuring a set of magical spears in his left hand.

    "Move away from the entrance!" Tom turned around and shouted, taking care to utter his words as slowly as possible. Given his haste, it was still quite possible that no one would be able to understand him.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged in surprise when he noticed that Marvin and Cleo were already long gone from the space threatened by the heavy fire of the online hub men.

    ''I activated the haste the moment I came under attack, but they still...'' he thought, unsure what to make out of the situation. ''Those rascals!'' he ended up thinking as a small smirk creeped up on their lips. ''So that''s why there was no one...'' he thought when his eyesid on the bloody body on the ground.

    In the slowed-down time, it was almost funny how the blood burst out of what was left of the man''s leg with long intervals between each burst.

    Tom''s soul stirred up when he realized what had just happened.

    The explosive bullet that his auto guard made him avoid didn''t end up as a miss at all.

    ''Those fuckers...'' Tom''s thoughts all disappeared. His mind cleared out as he turned his face back towards the enemy and stepped forward.

    The hail of bullets continued even though they amounted to nothing more but a tickle for Tom.

    "Die!" he shouted, not expecting anyone to understand his speed-up speech. Along with his word, he gently threw his spears in to the air.

    ''Domain,'' he uttered in his thoughts before his weapons had the chance to fall down. At the same time, a new batch of spears continued to pour out of his hands, quickly draining the enormous pool of mana that he had.

    And then, he stepped forward.

    Spinning his spears around in severalyers, Tom effectively invalidated most of the bullets. Those few who managed to sneak through the speak inferno he created would still amount to nothing more but a tickle.

    Tom moved forward with his eyes fixated on the direction where that explosive round came from.

    ''Right there,'' he thought, locating a single position, right below the dungeon''s gate.

    It wasn''t a shooter that fired that round. It was a damned anti-tank artillery piece, brought straight from the battlefield of thest world war!

    "From my family, with love," Tom muttered as he summoned another magical spear. This time though, he didn''t just let it float around him within the boundaries of his domains.

    He threw it right at the artillery piece.

    An energy of a thrown spear mostly depends on its speed. Obviously, the quality of the weapon, the attribute attached to it, or even another spell glued to it could make a massive difference... But Tom wasn''t capable of performing any of that. Even though he could attach attributes to his spells... His magical spears were not spells but physical entities made with magic.

    That''s why the only power that he could add to the spear came from its kic energy. Its kic energy was derived from the multiplication of its mass and its speed.

    And while Tom couldn''t affect the mass of his magical weapon, with his haste spell still going on, he was more than capable of sending it flying at a speed far greater than any other human could consider being possible!

    Tom''s spear flew so fast that it easily broke through the barrier of the sound, creating a small shockwave in its wake. But, as the after product of his attack, the shockwave itself didn''t amount to much. At most, it made a few people in its path flinch.

    But the spear itself struck the metal stand of the massive gun so hard that rather than breaking apart, it actually started to melt!

    "Wwwhhhhhhhaaaaaaattttt...." the first word of the obvious curse reached Tom''s ear as a petite figure jumped away from the copsing gun.

    ''There you are,'' he thought, bringing forth another magical spear of his. This was the human responsible for the injury that Marvin''s and Cleo''s dad suffered. Not even small bumps sticking out of the woman''s chest could grant her any mercy.

    "Just die..." Tom thought, reaching with his hand to the back in order to throw the spear.

    Then, his auto guard made him dodge.

    An attack of a scale iparable to any of the bullets came!

 Chapter 150: Coldblooded massacre

    Chapter 150: Coldblooded massacre

    ''Fuck!'' Tom thought, his body twisting in an unnatural manner to avoid the attack.

    He managed to rein his autoguard previously, not by the sheer power of will, but by convincing himself that the attacks on the scale of simple bullets couldn''t even be ssified as attacks.

    But as a solid chunk of the iron ball with spikes all over it shed past his body, he had no other option but to realize one slightly distressing truth.

    The online hub came prepared for the confrontation.

    ''So the guns were just a distraction,'' Tom thought, jumping away and sending two of the spears from his domain swarm as far away as he could.

    Looking to the side, he saw a thick, ck metal chain that connected directly to the ball that almost punctured his body in several ces only to smash it into pulp the very next moment.

    Following by the chain, Tom raised his eyes towards where it came from.

    ''So it''s you...'' he thought, noticing the nonchnt look on Peter''s face. ''It seems that the high-managers of the online hub didn''t get their name for nothing,'' he thought as Peter retracted his right arm to the back.

    But he was slow.

    Rather than instantly moving the entirety of his weirdly-shaped morgenstern, he actually had to pull its back by its chain.

    ''Do you seriously think I will allow that?'' Tom thought, stupefied by the naivety of the man.

    Rather than just waiting for the man to retract the dangerous part of his weapon, Tom stepped on the chain instead.

    His autoguard attacked for the third time, allowing him to avoid a powerful burst of electricity that cracked over the entirety of the chain.

    ''Woops,'' Tom thought, jumping away from the dangerous entity. ''I guess I cannot make any more blunders like that,'' he thought, watching powerlessly how Peter fully retracted his weapon.

    "Did you really think that you could just waltz into my domain and do as you wish?!" Peter shouted over from the vast distance. He showed no intention of getting anywhere closer, even though he could no longer hope for any lucky hits like the one that almost reached Tom''s body before.

    "Are you sure you are not overestimating your ability?" Tom asked, shredding several of Peter''s people into bits with his hail of spears. At the same time, he started to send his spears all over the ce, aiming some of them to fly directly towards the man.

    "Weak!" Peter replied, pping the two spears that flew towards him with the palm of his hand. He then raised his right arm only to throw it forward, allowing the chain that could somehow hide in the handle of the weapon to unveil.

    ''Is he seriously thinking that this will hit me?'' Tom thought, watching at the approaching ball of deadly iron with disbelief.

    For Peter, this had to be a swift attack, one that only the best martial artists on earth could ever hope to dodge.

    But for Tom, it was a weird show of a spiked ball slowly making its way towards him.

    It wasn''t swift at all.

    ''If I were topare, it''s like someone leisurely walking towards me?'' Tom thought, taking two steps to the side to get out of the line of Peter''s attack.

    The ball flew past him, burying itself deeply into theplicated electrical circuitsid at the bottom of the dome.

    Tom simply smiled, hoping to provoke Peter into closerbat.

    "UGH!" A moan of pain escaped through Tom''s lips when a powerful attack squeezed his lungs from behind.

    ''IT FUCKING HURTS!'' he screamed out in his soul, only for a small smile to appear on his face a momentter. ''As if,'' he added, reaching to his back with his hand and pulling the head of the Morgenstern from his back.

    There was no physical way for Peter to manipte just the head of his weapon with how loose the chain was right now. And that means it had to be the work of his skill.

    ''Quite a clever trick,'' Tom admitted, staring at the blood-covered spikes, signifying that Peter''s attack actually seeded.

    But Tom wasn''t worried.

    The pain that momentarily shook his body was already gone. He couldn''t even feel any difort in his back, right where his arrogance ended up with Peter''s attack hitting him.

    "What an idiot!" Peter shouted, gently shaking the handle of his weapon. The slight vibration caused by this move instantly turned into an electric current.

    This time, however, he kept his hold over the chain.

    ''Do you wanna see who has more energy in them?'' Tom thought, epting the pain caused by the raging electric current sting through his flesh.

    The feeling was akin to having his body paralyzed and burned with an open fire at the same time.

    But even after a few moments of voluntarily subjecting himself to this torture, no signs of permanent damage could be seen anywhere on Tom.

    ''This resilience skill is far more powerful than I thought,'' Tom thought, recalling one of the skills that he obtained while adventuring in the dungeon with udia.

    It was the simplest skill in the book. By using his very own mana, he could heal the damage to his body. As this was an active skill, he could choose whether or not to use it. That''s was the one reason why the wound left by the dungeon boss turned into a scar on his face instead of turning it back into a perfect state.

    Because Tom chose not to heal it. One reason was to have this scar serve him as a reminder that there were beings stronger than him, even after all the levels, skills, and statistics he gained from the dungeon.

    And secondly, for the very reason that Peter fell for. To feint his inability to heal the damage he sustained.

    "Anyway, I think it''s time to wrap this up," Tom muttered silently to himself. Even with their senses boosted, only the closest survivors of the hail of his spears could hope to hear those words.

    Tom dropped the chain. Yet, before it could even fall to the ground, he activated another skill of his, one that he turned into the very foundation of his personal fighting style.

    ''Swap!''

    In an instant, Tom changed position. But he didn''t go for the kill instantly, opting to jump to one of the many spears that he scattered all over the ce.

    The second Tom moved, his domain followed. Rather than being pulled through the distance that he teleported away, it disappeared, only to reappear around him as soon as he materialized in his new spot.

    ''Recall,'' Tom thought, forcing all of the magical spears that freed from the influence of the domain were about to fall down to the ground back into the new position of his domain.

    Without as much as a single thought, another group of Online Hub personal turned into mincemeat under the onught of a horde of spears flying in all directions.

    "WHA..." Peter turned his head, attempting to follow Tom''s movement....

    ''Swap,'' Tom jumped again, clearing another area from the enemies. Before Peter could even locate him, he used it again. And again. And again.

    Soon, the entire dome turned silent. With a quick look, Tom realized that only Peter and the girl that he once saw in hispany managed to survive.

    ''Strange,'' he thought, surprised by the survival of that girl. Given how she not only managed to escape from when he destroyed the high-caliber gun but also avoid the certain death of being stuck within his domain, she had to have some serious skills on her own.

    "The fuck did you do?!" Peter scowled, only now realizing that the numerous army he brought to this ce was reduced to a single person left alive.

    "Cleaned out some trash," Tom replied calmly. After two rounds through the dungeon and many years of hunting experience, he had no mental bacsh after massacring scores of people just like that.

    He went through the experience of his first human kill back in the other world, freeing him from this burden on this side.

    ''Cancel haste,'' Tom thought. In an instant, the world reverted to its usual speed, allowing him to have a normal conversation instead of making out what Peter was saying from the funny sounds he made in the slowed-out perception of his.

    "You will die for that," Peter uttered through his teeth, readying his morning star for another attack.

    "Do you know why you are still alive?" Tom asked. ''Recall,'' he thought, summoning his true weapon and resting his weight on it.

    "Enlighten me," Peter said, throwing Tom a murderous gaze.

    "Because it will be a greater punishment to you to be left alive," Tom calmly replied before shaking his head. "Sadly, letting you live would endanger my family," he added with a vicious smile as soon as he noticed the sparks of hope appearing in Peter''s eyes.

    ''That''s it,'' Tom thought happily. Marvin''s and Cleo''s fathers paid with his limb for their attack. And now, Tom was going to crush that man''s hopes in silly revenge. An act of revenge that would cleanse his soul from the burden of allowing anyone to hurt one of his own.

    ''Swap,'' Tom thought, finally using the spear that he formerly aimed at Peter. Appearing right behind the man''s back, he simply thrust his real spear forward, pushing it through the man''s body as if it was made out of paper.

    ''It''s done,'' he thought, pulling his weapon out and shaking the blood off the precious weapon. He then looked towards the miraculously surviving woman, currently sitting on her bottom with her eyes opened wide in terror.

    ''Swap,'' he thought, unable to be bothered to walk towards her. ''Cleaning this ce will be a pain,'' he thought, taking aim for the girl''s throat.

    Even if she only followed orders, she was still the one who shot the bullet that harmed his uncle.

    "Spare me..." the girl muttered through her rattling teeth. Her entire body was shaking from terror. "I beg you..." she pleaded with a tiny voice, unable to even pronounce her words correctly.

    "Tom!" Cleo suddenly called out, stopping her friend just as he was about to push the de of his spear through the impressive chest of the woman. "We can get a load of information from her!" she shouted over from the entrance to the dome.

    "I will tell you everything you want!" Kira pushed her body forward, striking the floor with her forehead. "I will do whatever you want!" she continued to plead, barely able to even speak due to how petrified she was.

    "See?" Cleo said, crossing the distance from Tom in just a few jumps before kicking the woman to her back. "She can still be of use for us," Tom''s friend said as a vicious smile grew up on her lips. "And after we boom this ce away, she won''t have anywhere to return to either, would she?"

 Chapter 151: Begining of the migration

    Chapter 151: Begining of the migration

    "With this matter settled, let''s get moving," Tom said, moving his eyes away from the sobbing girl. It wasn''t his father that lost his limb, so if Cleo was okay with just turning Kira into their ve, Tom saw no point in arguing over that. "First," he said, turning his eyes towards the defeated girl, "which direction can your reinforcementse from?"

    "Reinforcements?" Kira asked, looking at Tom as if he had lost his mind. "You killed everyst ofbat-able personnel of the online hub. We even went as far as to hire illegal mercenaries to bolster our defenses!" she said, uttering the words through her tightened teeth.

    "That wasn''t the content of my question," Tom replied, sending the woman an angry look.

    "There is a passage towards the main hub at the third level, in that direction," Kira replied, no longer willing to add her own two bits to the answers. She then raised her hand and pointed to Tom''s right, exactly the opposite end of where he ducked it out with Peter.

    "Cleo!" Tom shouted to get the attention of his friend.

    "Yes?" the girl quickly jumped back, instantly getting into the disciplined mood.

    They were one big family, but a family of military origins. When the push came to shove, there was no room for leisurely giving the tasks out. In a situation like the one they were in, only the military methods would work.

    "Take the two teams with arms to protect the passage. This trash will guide you," Tom ordered before moving his head towards the entrance he made himself. "I guess it''s time to start guiding the people out," he added before moving towards the hidden hole.

    With all the enemies confirmed dead or unable to fire a shot, there was no longer any time to waste. Bit by bit, Tom''s family started to get out of the cramped tunnel, amassing a small distance from the gate that was supposed to lead them to the other, better world.

    "Everyone!" Tom shouted once everyone gathered in a single ce. Looking over the surprisingly massive crowd of nearly two hundred people, he couldn''t help but feel emotional. "I''m not going to waste time on encouraging speeches. What I want right now is for everyone to grab hands with two others!" he ordered.

    Even though most of the family could follow a military drill, it didn''t mean everyst person in the crowd was capable of doing so.

    Some of Tom''s uncles and cousins married civilians who also decided to bring parts of their families over. In the end, only one hundred and twenty-two people could trace their origins back to the original seven brothers-in-arms that established the family in the first ce. And that number already included the few toddlers that were born into mixed marriages.

    That''s why, only by getting everyone to hold their hands with two other people could Tom ensure that they would enter the dungeon as a single, concise group!

    Yet, even this simple order, due to the addition of more than fifty civilians, took more time than Tom hoped it would.

    "This is going to drive me crazy in the long run," he muttered, watching how several women failed to grab the hands of other women with who they had some kind of fight.

    "That''s just how civilians are," Cleo replied, shaking her head. "Rather than cursing at them, you should thank Marvin instead," she said, pointing her hand towards the source of the biggestmotion.

    And just like she suggested, Cleo''s brother was already there, trying to solve the issue.

    In the end, organizing everyone took twice the amount of time necessary to get them all out of the tunnel. In total, from the moment Tom entered the insides of the dome to the point where he could finally give the order to enter the dungeon, two entire hours passed.

    "Don''t get mad," Marvinmented, uniting with Tom at the very front of the entire crowd. "You lived outside the family for so long; you never had the chance to get used to this reality," he said with a tired voice.

    "Is it a bad thing?" Tom asked, raising his eyebrow only to end up shaking his head a momentter. "Well, we will talk about this once we safely travel to the other side. For now, let''s go!" he said, taking the first step towards the floating ck mass of the dungeon gate.

    ''Now that I think about it, I wonder if all the gates are like that,'' Tom thought,paring the ck ball of the void with the nicely-framed in stone structure gate that he saw in the other world.

    But his thoughts were cut short when he finally made his first step on a provisory ramp leading to the emptiness of the gate.

    Stepping through the ck veil, Tom once again experienced the same feeling as when he did it thest time.

    It felt as if for an endless yet also unbelievably short moment, he was stuck in an interdimensional space, one where rules of magic and physics alike no longer made any sense.

    Thankfully, before Tom could lose his mind in this sanity-depraving ce, his feet struck against the solid floor of the dungeon, proving that he managed to sessfully cross the border between the real world and whatever, in reality, this dungeon actually was.

    ''Fuck, I can''t just stand in ce!'' Tomposed himself, instantly pushing forward. And just like that, people started to appear all over the entrance to the dungeon, only a single step ahead from the gate leading back to earth.

    "Move ahead!" Tom shouted, urging Marvin, Cleo, and three more people that already managed to enter.

    With some kind of sentient power making sure that everyone wouldn''t fall on top of each other, there was a real risk of someone appearing in this dungeon... Only to return to earth at the very same moment due to appearing directly in the gate leading back!

    "So this is the ce..." Marvin muttered, amazed by the sight of the cold dungeon. As if some kind of weird wind blew, he caught his arms in a futile attempt to stop his own heat from escaping.

    "Get used to the cold," Tom said with a small smirk. "When I first went through, we ended up crossing it with barely any clothes at all," he said in only a slightly flexing tone.

    "Wait, what?" Cleo asked, surprised by the unexpected information. "What for? Just to flex it in our faces now?" she asked as she curled in herself, not used to the cold air of the dungeon either.

    "Nah," Tom shook his head as a small smile appeared on his lips. "We were careless at the beginning, and a slime ended up dissolving our clothes. We only managed to save as little as our underwear," he added before his smirk disappeared from his face as he looked towards the entrance.

    Because right now, the people stopped appearing. In the dungeon, they were left with only Tom, Marvin, Cleo, Kira, and a random adolescent boy of roughly thirteen years of age.

    "Where is everyone else?" the boy asked, clearly looking forward to reuniting with his parents as soon as they would cross through the barrier.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom thought, tightening his fists. ''Thank god we prepared for this possibility... but still, fuck!'' he thought, closing his eyes for a moment only to open them up and approach the boy.

    "For now, we are going to wait an hour. If no one else appears in that time, it will mean they are moving through a different route," he said, trying to cheer the boy up without actively lying to him.

    "But you said that they will appear right away!" the boy protested, clearly not happy with the current development of the situation.

    "I said that there is a chance that we will all move as one group," Tom replied before shaking his head. Yet, rather thanshing out at the boy for taking his time, Tom put a smile on his face before rustling the boy''s hair. "You don''t need to worry. There is someone really strong in every group," he said, hoping that this would at least calm the boy up.

    "But... But... If there is someone strong in every group, then who is strong in our?" the boy asked, his eyes lighting up with excitement.

    ''Right,'' Tom thought, a small smile creeping upon his lips. ''It''s normal for boys this age to be fascinated with this kind of stuff,'' he thought as his smile became even brighter.

    "In our group, I''m the strongest, so you don''t need to worry about anything!" Tom said, once again rustling the boy''s hair before turning his head towards the rest of the group.

    "You guys need to decide who will get most of the stones in this run," Tom said. "For now, it doesn''t matter. The early stones are basically worthless. But once you get the first skill..." he spoke, clearly troubled by the matter.

    ''Just how the hell am I supposed to tell them that I might need help with the boss of the dungeon?'' Tom thought, troubled by the matter.

    "Don''t worry," Marvin said, shaking his head. "Whoever will get the better skill once we reach the tenth level will be the one to get the rest of them," he said as he rolled his eyes. "In the end, it''s not like the dungeon will disappear once we pass through it, won''t it?" he added.

    "Yeah," Tom replied, slowly calming down. Even if the migration was his own n, he still couldn''t help but get worried about all the other groups that would enter this ce for the very first time and with little to no supplies. "For now, then, let''s wait to see if someone else will appear!"

 Chapter 152: Cleos show

    Chapter 152: Cleo''s show

    "Isn''t it a bit... too easy?" Marvin asked, kicking away yet another slime.

    Under the force of his kick, the slime fell towards the wall, only for the force of impact once it struck it to shatter its core.

    "Man, we are still on the seventh floor," Tom replied, rolling his eyes. "How long ago did you y Dungeons online for thest time?" he asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

    "A good year or so?" Marvin replied, kicking away another slime.

    "Can I try fighting those slimes too?" the young boy asked, looking at the ongoing fight with sparks in his eyes.

    "There is no need for that," Tom shook his head. "I do not doubt your bravery, but you are still too young to fight with monsters," he added, sending the boy a smile.

    "Mister, if you are that strong, why are you not fighting yourself?" the young boy asked, clearly dissatisfied with Tom''s answer. "My parents would let me fight those slimes..." he added in a mutter under his nose.

    "Cleo," Tom called out to the girl.

    "What''s up?" Cleo asked, turning her head around from the slimes she was smashing with her bare hands.

    "Remember to remind me once we get out on the other side to have a proper talk with this boy''s parents," Tom exined before sending a meaningful look to the boy.

    ''Am I bullying him too much?'' he thought, watching how the look of confidence washed away from the young man''s face, reced by the terror of realization that the responsibility of his words would be pushed on his parents instead.

    Or rather than that, he most likely realized that if his parents were to get scolded, it would be him that would receive the scolding at the end of the line!

    "Mister!" the boy cried out. "Please, forget what I said!" he pledged, running towards Tom andtching on to his side while looking up with upturned eyes.

    "My memory is too good for that," Tom replied, gently pushing the boy away. "Kira!" he shouted.

    "Yes!" the woman instantly rushed forward, ignoring the potential danger from the nearby slimes.

    "From now on, you are responsible for this kid with your life," Tom said, quickly pushing the burden of caring for the little fart on the only person he didn''t need to ask for an opinion about it.

    "Excuse me?" Kira asked, her face showing just how dissatisfied she was with the solution Tom came up with... But this expression of herssted only for a short moment.

    "Do you have a problem with that?" Tom asked, raising one of his eyebrows. "Or maybe you would prefer to be just a stress relief for Marvin instead?" he added in a threatening tone.

    "I will take care of him as if he was my own brother," Kira quickly replied, lowering her head.

    "Shouldn''t it be the son?" Cleo asked over from where she yed around with more slimes.

    "Do I look that old to you?!" Kira red up, even more than she did when the burden of taking care of the kid was pushed on her.

    "Hahaha," Cleoughed, only to shake her head a momentter. "Forget it, then!" she shouted over before putting her attention back to the current task.

    Within the narrow corridors of the dungeon, fighting barehanded wasn''t that hard. Only once the group would reach the further floors, this area limitation would be a burden, especially once bigger and stronger monsters would start to appear.

    "And that''s thest of them," Marvin said as he stomped down on the slime. His hand forced its internal liquids to move away, all the way to the point where only the membrane of its skin separated the monster''s core from both the floor and Marvin''s shoe. Then, with nothing else to protect it, the stone-like object shattered.

    ''It''s disgusting to watch this happen,'' Tom thought, almost averting his eyes from the genocide of the slimes. ''Back in the days, I thought it was the bugs I don''t like, but now?'' he thought, shaking his head. ''Slimes are far worse,'' he thought, fighting off against the disgusted shake of his body.

    "Well, it''s great that it''s over now," Tom said, taking a step forward from the wall he was leaning against while his friend fought. "Now, let me take care of the boss," he added, stepping through the barrier that separated the corridor from the boss room right ahead.

    Just like all the monsters on this specific floor, the boss was a slime. Roughly twice as big as the mobs in the corridors, it instantly moved what appeared to be its face towards Tom the moment he crossed through the barrier.

    "I wish you could let us fight the bosses as well," Cleo muttered, still dissatisfied with Tom''s decision regarding this matter.

    "We don''t have time for that," Tom countered, pulling out his spear while creating a magical one in his left hand.

    With a single throw, he punctured right through the slime, making its liquids spill all over the ce at a rapid rate.

    ''Everze,'' he thought, invoking his basic fire spell just for the sake of preventing the disgusting fluid from dirtying his clothes.

    ''There is it,'' he thought after a bit more fluid escaped from the slime''s insides, revealing the position of its core.

    With the other magic spear in his right hand, Tom took a single step of runout before throwing it towards the monster. Yet, rather than just letting it puncture the slime and end up flying towards the other end of the room, Tom released his hold over the weapon''s structure, disintegrating it back into free magic.

    Free magic that he could still influence thanks to his spear-magic domain

    "Fireball," he uttered silently, no longer bothered by hiding his skills from his friends. In the end, even if Kira were to learn what skills he had, there was no chance for her to ever catch up to his strength.

    The spear at first dissolved, fading away from Tom''s view as if someone just erased it from existence. Yet, before it couldpletely disappear, its colors suddenly grew more intense only to turn into a massive ball of fire... right beside the slime''s core!

    BOOM!

    The only reason why Tom used such an borate attack to take down such a weak boss was his own disgust in the liquid that the slimes were mostly made from. Given how it was prettybustible, only by igniting it from the inside, before the slime''s skin could dissolve back into mana, could Tom prevent a stter that would likely end up with everyone in their group getting their clothes eaten away by that liquid.

    "I guess it''s time for more energy, right?" Marvinmented, taking a quick look towards the wall.

    In it, just like on every single level of the dungeon, stones were embedded. Yet, due to how little the group managed to progress so far, only grade-one could be found there.

    "It''s a pretty nice haul," Tommented, putting his hand against the wall and infusing it with a silver of his energy like usual. A momentter, the stones quickly started popping out on the floor, allowing Cleo and Marvin to carefully pick them up.

    "Can I get one too?" the boy shouted over from a distance, reminding Tom that he was still there.

    ''Thisss is doing a surprisingly good job,'' he thought, casting a quick nce towards Kira. ''I didn''t expect her to keep him silent for so long,'' he added before covering his hand with a cloth and reaching it out towards Cleo.

    "Here you go," the girl said, passing the first stone over.

    Just like when he was climbing the dungeon with udia, Tom had no wish to waste even a single silver of energy by letting his friends consume the stones directly. Rather than that, he pulled out his main weapon and used his skills through it to turn the stone into its true form before leaning the de towards the girl.

    "Here you go," he said with a small smile. "As for you, young man," Tom turned his face towards the kid stuck in Kira''s arms in the distance, "I''m sorry, but we need to let my friends level up as quickly as possible," he said, turning his eyes from the sight of Cleo absorbing the energy.

    Unlike udia, Cleo''s reaction to the infusion of energy was quite... intense. Her face turned red, her lips parted only for her to start moaning wildly.

    "Ahhhh..." Cleo moaned, unable to stop her voice from escaping through her mouth.

    "I''m sorry," Marvin muttered, turning his face away.

    "Don''t mind it," Tom replied with a sigh before throwing a quick nce towards Kira and the boy hidden in her arms.

    ''That''s quite... thoughtful,'' he noticed, seeing how the woman covered the boy''s ears and made sure to shield him from the sight with her own body.

    "More," Cleo muttered, passing another stone in Tom''s direction. "Give me moar!" she shouted, messing up herst word as her saliva started to drip from her mouth.

    "This is going to be a long climb," Tom thought, pulling his weapon out only to turn the stone into energy and pass it to the girl again.

    For a few more moments, Cleo continued her show, constantly reminding Tom that it was a while since he got a girl in his bed. Yet, when he fed her the fourth and second tost stone of her batch, her vision suddenly cleared, her moans stopped.

    "I just reached the tenth level!" she shouted with joy, looking at Tom with pride in her eyes. "I mean, I just got my first skill!"

 Chapter 153: Heal and Roadkill

    Chapter 153: Heal and Roadkill

    "So?" Tom asked, happily lowering his spear and changing the foot on which he was resting his weight. This was the only way in which he could low-key conceal the natural reaction of his body to Cleo''s moans. "What skill did you get?"

    "I... I don''t really know," Cleo replied, shaking her head in confusion. "It''s not like its name just appeared in my head. More like..." she lowered her eyes, trying hard to figure out what her next words should be. "No, I need you to give me a monster to present it," she finally said, raising her face back on Tom.

    "Well, it''s not like we need to know it right away," Tom said, shaking his arms. He then looked at his male friend with a small smile. "Marvin, it''s your turn."

    Since Cleo already got her skill, now it was time to bring Marvin''s level up as well. Whatever stones would be left afterward would have to wait for the group to know what both Cleo''s and Marvin''s skills were before Tom could distribute them.

    "On it, boss," Marvin replied, approaching Tom''s spear and reaching out with his hand.

    "Just like before. Calm down and just ept it," Tom said, cing the de of his spear on his friend''s hand. Even though there wasn''t a lot of energy left after Cleo sucked most of it, there was no way he would waste even the tiniest amount of this precious resource.

    "I guess this won''t be enough," Marvin muttered as he averted his eyes once not a single silver of energy was left on Tom''s spear.

    "Don''t sweat it," Tom replied, reaching out with his hand to Cleo only to receive another stone. Out of the total of eight that they got from the floor, they used up only three of them. As such, if Tom''s assumptions that everyone''s level requirements were the same, they had more than enough to bring Marvin to the tenth level.

    Yet, with two more stones disintegrated by Tom''s skills andter absorbed by his friend, Marvin still didn''t get to obtain a single skill.

    "I guess this stone should get you to the tenth level," Tom said, taking second to thest of the stones that they had.

    "I certainly do hope so," Marvin replied, slightly dishearted by the situation. Even though, ording to Tom''s calction, his friend was still only a silver of energy away from reaching the threshold for obtaining his first skill, he could see where Marvin''s uncertainty wasing from.

    In the end, this dungeon could very well work ording to a set of rules that wouldn''t make any mathematical sense. No one said that reaching the tenth level required a certain set of energy. No one knew if killing the monsters influenced one''s speed of reaching higher levels.

    The only thing they knew for sure was that consuming the energy of the stones would sooner orter bring one''s level up.

    "Don''t think too much about it, brother," Tom encouraged his friend. "We are already making way better use of those stones than we would without my skills," he added with a small smile.

    This was also the only reason why Tom managed to bring Cleo to level tenth and likely do the same with Marvin, even though they only reached the end of the eight floors of the dungeon so far.

    "I will keep that in mind," Marvin said before nodding his head to inform his friend that he was ready.

    And surely enough, Tom expended less than half of the energy that he obtained from the stone before something in his friend clicked.

    "I got it!" Marvin shouted in joy. "This feeling..." a weird expression appeared on his face as he raised it towards Tom. "Brother, would you mind cutting yourself a little?" he asked.

    "Excuse me?" Tom leaned his head to the side, trying hard to understand what his friend meant.

    "I might be wrong, but I think..." Marvin''s words got stuck in his throat for a moment. "But I think I got a healing ability," he finally said, lowering his face as if he couldn''t look Tom in the eye.

    "Why are you looking away?" Tom asked, genuinely surprised by Marvin''s reaction. "Don''t tell me you think that a healing ability is bad!" he said, quickly dropping his spear and calling forth a magical one.

    ''If I use the real thing, I would likely heal from my skills as soon as I would cut myself,'' Tom thought, grabbing the spear near its de before sliding his left hand through the edge of the de.

    In an instant, a small cut appeared on Tom''s hand, right where his magical de cut through his skin. Yet, as soon as the cut appeared, Tom had to forcefully withdraw all his magic not only from the hand alone but from his entire left arm just to make sure his own self-healing skill wouldn''t kill the wound.

    "Here you go," Tom said, stretching his hand towards his friend.

    "Here goes nothing..." Marvin muttered, cing his hands on top of Tom''s palm.

    For a moment, Tom felt a sting, and then there was nothing. Not even a tiniest bit of pain or the residual itch from the wound.

    Marvin slowly raised his hands. He even had his eyes closed, as if he was too scared to see to confirm whether he was actually right about his ability.

    "Congrattions," Tom said, noticing that there wasn''t even a scar left on his hand. "You appear to have an inner drive towards support abilities!"

    "Fuck..." Marvin muttered, clearly distressed with the reality.

    "Why so mad?" Tom asked, genuinely puzzled. "Don''t tell me you have this childish mindset that only the damage dealers are important!"

    "And why would you need a heal if you can already heal yourself?!" Marvin shouted, revealing the reason behind his anxiety.

    It wasn''t that he didn''t like his ability. What he was upset about was how useless it appeared to be in their current situation in terms of helping Tom deal with thest boss.

    "I might surprise you here, but right now, I''m heavily inclined towards focusing all the stones on you," Tom announced before bowing his head in Cleo''s direction. "I will still take a look at your skill, but honestly speaking, support is exactly what I needed. I didn''t actually hope for one because I considered it a scenario too good toe true!"

    "I understand," Cleo replied, shaking her head. "You don''t need to worry about it. What''s important for now is not for either of us to get stronger, but for all of us to get to the other side," she said. "Rtively unscrapped, if possible," she added with a small smirk.

    "Well then, now that we know what Marvin''s skill is like, let''s try testing yours," Tom said to the girl before turning his head towards the end of the boss room. "Kira, young man,e," he said before turning towards the massive gate.

    At the current point, Tom couldn''t even count how many times in total did he pass through the gates like that. Thankfully, the weird phenomena that started to happen to him whenever entering or exiting the dungeon as a whole didn''t ur while traveling between floors.

    A momentter, the group of five appeared on the next floor.

    "Just one more floor before the first real boss," Tom muttered, just to remind everyone about the rule.

    In the end, their current run of the dungeon wasn''t the only one they would participate in, but the first one instead.

    Given how running the dungeon was the simplest way to grow one''s personal power, many of Tom''s family members were likely to end up in the dungeon again if not many times over.

    As such, the sooner they would all learn the basic rules that governed it, the better for everyone.

    "Well, I guess it''s time to test my skill out!" Cleo shouted with joy, more than eager to check it out.

    "I got your back," Tom said, calling forth his main weapon.

    Given how they were only testing the skill, there was a huge risk that something would go wrong. As such, he dared not to hold back, even if they were only on the ninth floor of the dungeon.

    The experience back at the adventurer''s office on the other side of the dungeon taught Tom as much.

    "Here I go, then!" Cleo shouted with joy as soon as she noticed some goblins emerging from beyond the corner.

    ''She looks like udia right now,'' Tom thought as a small smile appeared on his lips. But he had no time to just stand and contemte, given how Cleo rushed with all her speed ahead!

    There was no finesse in her movements. She simply ran into the goblins... and ran over them!

    ''What the fuck?'' TOm thought, stunned by sight.

    The goblins were actually dead!

    "I called this skill..." Cleo said, waiting for a moment to build up the tension, "ROADKILL!"

 Chapter 154: Toms doubts

    Chapter 154: Tom''s doubts

    "This doesn''t make any sense," Tom muttered as he approached the dead bodies of the goblins.

    Even though it was only a short moment since Cleo ran over them, they were already slowly starting to dissipate and sink into the floor, proving that they were truly dead.

    ''There is no way a level ten ability would be capable of one-shotting a huge group of enemies like that!'' Tom thought, unable to make sense of what he was seeing with his very own eyes.

    Then, a sudden idea struck his mind.

    "CLEO!" he shouted, turning his face to the girl. "Are you injured?!" he screamed out, rushing towards the girl.

    "Huh?" Cleo twitched in surprise, turning her face towards her friend. "I''m fine; why ask?" she asked, opening her eyes wide.

    "Thank God," Tom replied, resting his hands on his knees as he breathed heavily. It was the rush to the girl that tired him out, but the jump of adrenaline when a certain possibility appeared in his mind.

    "What happened?!" Cleo asked, her face turning serious. Even if she didn''t understand what was going through Tom''s head, she could clearly see how distressed he was.

    That alone was enough for her vignce to shoot through the roof.

    "This doesn''t make any sense," Tom repeated himself, raising his hand and chewing on his thumb.

    "What doesn''t make any sense?!" Cleo replied, reaching forward and grabbing Tom''s shoulders. "Speak up, soldier!" she screamed out in his face.

    "Can''t you see it?!" Tom shoved Cleo''s hands away only to point at the pools of liquid that used to be goblins just a few moments ago. "Try to think about the times when you yed with your avatar," he said, "were you ever capable of one shooting a single enemy with the very first ability you obtain?"

    Only now, Cleo''s face showed some signs of understanding. Her eyes widened as she took a step back, ncing over to the scene of the carnage she caused a moment earlier.

    "No, even the strongest skills would take at least two hits to down a simple mob," she replied, only to look down at her hands.

    For a moment, the two of them were stuck in the limbo of not understanding. Yet, after several moments, Cleo raised her eyes from her hands and looked over at Tom.

    "But... Doesn''t this mean... I''m pretty powerful?" she asked, her face proving how hard it was for her to digest such a possibility.

    For someone else, a situation like this could be a reason to rejoice. After all, who wouldn''t like bing strong with little to no effort?

    But Cleo wasn''t a simple, average person one could find on the streets. She was perfectly aware that with strength came responsibilities. And with ease to grow her power, she would be the prime target for anyone wishing to chip away at their family''s power!

    "Does it mean I should be the one to raise my strength now?" Cleo asked in a trembling voice.

    "I don''t know," Tom shook his head, taking a step to the back only to rest his back against the wall of the corridor. "I don''t know," he repeated, covering his face with his hand.

    "Is there some kind of problem?" the kid that they were babysitting suddenly appeared on the scene. Behind him, Kira was running with a look of terror on her face.

    In just a second, she reached the boy and slid down on the floor only to grab him between her arms.

    "I-I''m sorry, he slipped out..." she muttered, barely capable of forming full words, not to speak about sentences.

    "Take him away," Tom said in a guttural tone as he threw an angry look at the kid.

    Right now, he had no mind to spare to bother with that kid''s worries. Just the fact that he entered the dungeon and reached the frontline proved that he was nowhere as disciplined as they were back in the days. And that alone was enough to spoil Tom''s opinion about the new generation of his family.

    ''Was it really wise?'' he suddenly thought, realizing that his decision to migrate didn''t affect only those who had strong ties with the family''s history and traditions. It also affected those who just wanted to live normal lives.

    Even if it meant conforming to the reality of the postwar period.

    ''Did I really have the right to force them all out to another, foreign world?'' he asked himself, closing his eyes.

    "You can leave those thoughts forter," Marvin suddenly said, appearing on the scene.

    Opening his eyes, Tom still caught a nce at the look he threw at the kid who Kira was currently dragging to the back of the corridor.

    "Don''t mind them that much," Marvin said before releasing a deep sigh. "Sooner orter, they will get used to their new reality," he added before reaching out and patting Tom on his shoulder.

    "Was I really right to bring them all away?" Tom voiced his doubts, seeking affirmation from one of the few people he could truly trust. "Was it really right for me to bring them away from that rotten world only to push my ideas on them?" he asked.

    p.

    Tom''s face didn''t hurt at all when Marvin''s hand suddenly smacked his cheek. The difference between their levels was just too great for Marvin to be able to cause him any pain.

    But this facep wasn''t aimed to hurt on the physical level. It hurt on the emotional side instead.

    "You have no right to doubts like that, not right now," Marvin said with a grim tone. "Sure, I could be the nice person and im that they were going to be the pawns in our battle with the Online Hub. Sure, I could tell you that they would be forced into our reality sooner orter. But I''m not going to do that," he said, speaking openly about the stuff he just imed he would not.

    "What do you mean?" Tom asked, confused by his friend''s words.

    "You made your decision," Marvin replied, staring right into Tom''s squinted eyes. "You had every right to do so as the leader of the family," he added.

    "You took the information you had, the problems you knew our family was facing, the struggles thatid ahead of us," Cleo joined in the discussion, sensing what was going on. "Whether your decision was right or not, only time would tell," she added before shaking her shoulders. "But it was inly visible to anyone with any brains and foresight how we would end up in ten, twenty years without doing anything," she said, taking a quick nce at her brother.

    "That''s right." Marvin nodded his head. "I initially and partially med you for starting the war with the Online Hub, I admit that," he said before shaking his head. "But the brutal truth is, we would go against them either way. It was only a matter of time before they would feel confident enough to eradicate our autonomy."

    "And this is something that none of the oldest generations would agree to," Tom said, perfectly aware of the things they were saying right now.

    After all, those were the things that he considered when conquering the dungeon to return home!

    The initial push that made Tom enter the dungeon was the situation with udia. Without her support, he simply felt incapable of achieving his objectives in that world. Not on his own. Not without anyone to rely on. Not with just the power of his brain alone.

    But as he delved deeper into the dungeon, as he continued to conquer one floor after another, he managed to calm down.

    And realize everything that was said just now.

    Their family was living on borrowed time. With how the world was changing before their very own eyes, it was obvious that there would be a time when their lifestyle, sourced from the times before the third world war, would be destroyed.

    That''s what happened to every group that dared to stick to the past when the new came. That''s what happened to all the countries that refused to acknowledge and embrace the change that would ultimately bring forth their downfall.

    This was the main reason Tom decided to involve not a selected few people capable of helping him find his father, but his entire family instead!

    "Well, I guess it doesn''t matter now," Tom finally said, raising his hand and wiping his mouth clean.

    It wasn''t that his lips were dirty; it was just an act he used to collect himself.

    "What do you mean?" Marvin asked, shocked by the sudden development.

    "It doesn''t matter if my decision was right or not," Tom said, pushing his back against the wall and springing against it to take a step forward. He then called forth his weapon and took another step forward.

    ''Everze,'' he thought, covering himself in mes as another pack of goblins already appeared in the distant end of the corridor.

    "Because it''s in the past," Tom said, stepping towards the goblins. "And since I cannot take it back now, I can only move forward. To see whether it was right or not, I can only decide that once I know what the future holds for us."

 Chapter 155: Solution to Cleos trouble

    Chapter 155: Solution to Cleo''s trouble

    "Yes!" Marvin shouted, taking his hand away from Tom''s spear. "Finally," he added, jumping a few steps to the back before extending his hand in the direction of the corridor''s entrance.

    "Icicle burst!" he then shouted.

    A huge ice crystal appeared above his head... Or not. Rather than a massive attack that he clearly hoped for, the space around him swirled up. Once it stabilized again, it appeared as if every inch of space around him was filled with tiny mirrors, all distorting the image of his body.

    And then, like a storm of sharp edges, the tiny icicles rushed in the very direction he was pointing at.

    There were no monsters anywhere near for Marvin to test out his spell, making it for a pretty poor showcase of what his new, already fourth skill could do.

    "I''m not sure if this is an attack spell," Tom said, biting on his lips as he did so. "It looks more like some kind of debuff," he added, averting his eyes away from Marvin''s look of disappointment.

    "Can we go test it out?" he asked, clearly excited about the prospect, refusing to acknowledge his support role even after several hours in the dungeon.

    "We still need to feed Cleo her stones," Tom rebuked, shaking his head. But as he turned his eyes towards the girl, he couldn''t help but swallow a mouthful of saliva.

    ''At this rate, this is going to get really dangerous,'' he thought, cing the tip of his spear over the next stone, absorbing it, and then moving the spear towards the girl.

    "Here you go," Tom said, forcing a smile on his lips.

    "Here we go again," Marvin rolled his eyes before turning his back to the scene.

    ''You are her fucking brother,'' Tom thought, losing all the pity that he had for his friend. ''How can you leave me alone in such a situation?!'' he whined in his thoughts as Cleo approached the spear.

    "Tom, if this is too hard for you, I can just consume the stones directly," Cleo said with an uneasy look at her face.

    "You know I''m not that wasteful," Tom replied only to shake his head in refusal. "This is nothing; go on," he added, shaking the tip of his spear before the girl''s face.

    "Well, then, if you will excuse me," Cleo said, bitting on her lips as she reached for the tip of the spear.

    "Aaah!" the moment the energy started to flow from Tom''s system to Cleo, her face twisted in pleasure as her lips released a damn erotic moan.

    "MORE!" she moaned again, despite her obvious attempts to hold her voice in.

    ''You do realize that trying to hold yourself back only makes it worse for us?'' Tom thought, sending a quick stare to Kira and the boy in her custody.

    Learning from their experiences, they left the two in the corridor, hoping that at least the small barrier that separated the two would stop the guy from hearing what was going on. Yet, even with this precaution, Kira continued to shield both the boy''s ears and eyes, hoping to stop him from peeking at the events.

    ''ording to my calctions,'' Tom thought, absorbing another stone into his spear, ''we are still at least five stones away,'' he thought, biting on his lips and leaning his spear towards the girl.

    "Give me a moment," Cleo asked, raising her hand while she leaned forward and breathed heavily. It seemed that the show she gave every time the energy would nourish her body was pretty exhausting for her.

    Or maybe she just couldn''t handle several stones at once without going crazy?

    "Tell me when you are good to go," Tom said, lowering his spear.

    Holding the magic infused in his spear without absorbing it himself was pretty hard, but he didn''t wish to see Cleo just shove her hand into her crotch in a situation where she couldn''t handle the feeling anymore.

    ''If she were to start masturbating, I don''t think I could handle it anymore,'' Tom thought, opting to just hold on to the magic with all his might.

    "Okay, I''m ready," Cleo said after a few more moments of panting heavily.

    With only the three more stones left from the current, thirty-seventh floor, she would be unable to reach the next level threshold. Yet, portioning this situation was the only way that allowed the three of the dungeon conquerors to hold on to their sanity.

    "If you are acting like that just from consuming a few stones, I do not want to see what would happen if you were to consume more stones at once," Tom said several floors before when Marvin suggested to just stock on the stones and let his sister consume them in one go.

    ''That was a good decision,'' Tom thought, recalling the moment as he tried to distract himself from the show right before his eyes.

    Cleo''s back bent as she threw her head to the back. The fire lit up in her eyes as her breathing got even heavier than before.

    This time, she could no longer stop her hand from running wild on her body. Thankfully, before she could move it from her breast to her crotch, the magic in Tom''s spear ran dry once again, freeing the three friends from the unusual torture.

    "I-I think I will need a little bit of time..." Cleo muttered, falling down to her knees. Her face was beet red, and her breathing ragged.

    "Take your time," Tom said, weaving a heavy sigh of relief. ''If this were to go for any longer, I don''t think I could hold myself back,'' he thought, turning around and stepping away to give the girl some space.

    "Why don''t you two just get the heat off?" Marvin suddenly spoke, throwing an annoyed look at the two.

    "The hell?" Tom replied, turning his head around and throwing an angry stare at his friend.

    "What, don''t tell me you don''t find her sexy!" Marvin protested before pointing his hand at his sister. "It''s not like she would mind it either!" he shouted.

    "Shut your crap!" Cleo shouted, her face turning even redder than before.

    "At this rate, we will never reach thest floor, not to speak about getting to the other side!" Marvin shouted, clearly having too much of this show for his own good.

    "Well, that''s kinda true," Tom said, biting his lips as he did so. While he knew what admitting that could lead to, there was no denying that at the current rate, their group was spending more time dealing with Cleo than actually fighting monsters.

    "No matter what, we need to be the first ones to get to the other side," Tom muttered, clenching his hands into fists. "Or at the very least, to reach thest floor," he added, still refusing to look at his dear friend.

    "If that''s how it''s going to be, then let''s just do it," Cleo said, standing up from her knees and approaching Tom''s back. "You don''t need to think much of it, just a small help for your friend," she muttered in a shaky voice while locking her arms around Tom''s chest.

    "Do you really think I think so little of you?" Tom asked, forcing Cleo''s hands apart and turning around once he freed himself from her grasp. Looking at her face, he could see how red her cheeks were.

    "Is friend a little?" Cleo asked, quickly averting her eyes from Tom''s sight. For some reason, her body started to slightly shake, as if she was under some kind of enormous stress.

    "You do realize that I consider you a part of my family," Tom said, shaking his head. "How could I call you just a friend?" he asked, raising his hand and rubbing Cleo''s head.

    "Well, in this situation, I think it''s best if we stockpile some stones first," Marvin said, approaching the two before the situation could turn any more steamy for them. "I mean, if you are going to do it, then at least make the most out of it!" he said, shaking his head with a weird grin on his face.

    "I-I... I think this is a good idea," Cleo said, lowering her head as her cheeks continued to turn even redder and redder.

    ''I guess that''s how it will go,'' Tom thought before releasing a heavy sigh.

    "In that case, how about we just power through the next few floors?" he asked.

    "What, are you that hasty to get down with me?" Cleo asked, raising her eyes and pushing her lips to form a small, cheeky smile.

    Tom rolled his eyes.

    "If we are going to spend some time fucking around, then we better save some of it now," Tom said before looking over to Marvin. "As for you, if you are feeling especially horny, feel free to get down on Kira," he said, shaking his shoulders. "Given what she did and what she wants from us, that''s the very least she should be willing to do."

 Chapter 156: Small break

    Chapter 156: Small break

    "Let''s take a short break," Tom said once the group reached the fiftieth level. With the boss of the floor defeated, they had at least two hours before monsters would start respawning on the floor, making the boss-room a great ce to take some rest.

    "What, are you tired already?" Marvin asked with a small smile. "Or are you that hurried toy down with my sister?'' he asked, his smirk turning into a smirk.

    "I could go through this entire dungeon in one sitting," Tom replied, rolling his eyes. "At the current state, both yours and Cleo''s stamina also allow you to do that," he added, only to nod with his chin at the pairgging behind. "But the same cannot be said about them."

    Out of the group of five, there were only two people who had yet to consume a single stone.

    It was Kira and Rufus, the kid who ended up in their party for some strange reason.

    Kira wouldn''t get a single powerup for the simplest possible reason; she was nothing but a ve, a prisoner trying to atone for standing on the wrong side of the battle at the dome.

    On the other hand, the matter with Rufus was far moreplicated.

    On the outside, Tom imed that everyst stone had to be used on his friends, especially with how he decided to let both of them level up at the same time.

    But the truth was somewhat different.

    ''I don''t know if his parents would want for him to be a soldier,'' Tom thought, reminded of all the doubts that he had just a few hours ago.

    He dropped the idea of thinking too much about them, but it didn''t mean he was free of their burden.

    As such, he dared not to impose his own values on someone else''s kid.

    What''s more, it was obvious that this kid would crave to be a strong person. This was the natural drive for the great majority of boys, no matter the age, no matter the ce. Yet, recklessly allowing him to obtain power greater than that of his peers could have a disastrous effect on his character without infusing proper values and discipline into him first!

    "If that''s the case, then let''s stop dawdling on the matter and just take a rest," Cleo said, clearly unwilling to waste her time. Whether she was the one eager to get fed more stones or just wanted to get the entire thing over with as soon as possible...

    It didn''t matter.

    Because ultimately, they were the ones that had to be in the greatest hurry. In the end, if any of the other parties formed from their family were to reach the boss of the entire dungeon first, Tom didn''t need to strain his imagination to figure out what would happen.

    With everything said and done, their break passed rather quickly.

    For the first time since the group entered the dungeon, they actually unpacked some of the perishable food, one that was designed to be eaten with the first priority.

    Sadly, the greatest advantage of the foodid in howpacted it was, with the taste leaving a lot of room for improvement.

    And while Tom, Marvin, Cleo, and even Kira didn''t even bat an eye to that aspect, Rufus couldn''t stop whining andining about how dry the food was.

    "Is this how are we going to eat from now on?" he asked, throwing a hateful stare at Tom''s face. "If that''s the case, what did we migrate for? To live like beggars?!"

    Every sentence he uttered was childish and caused by how naive and iplete his worldview was. Those were the words spoken by a child, unable to grasp the scale and seriousness of the reasons that prompted Tom to push the entire, wide family to a migration.

    But that didn''t make his words any less painful.

    "Don''t listen to him," Cleo said, noticing the signs of Tom''s distraught. "He will learn as he grows up," she added, not bothering to muffle his voice at all. She even went for the extra mile and sent the kid an annoyed stare.

    "Who do you think you are talking to, BITCH?!" the kid shouted, clearly not used to being treated without some kind of fake respect.

    ''Are those the effects of stress-free upbringing?'' Tom thought, twisting his lips in an ugly grimace.

    Marvin sighed heavily and put away the can with his meal. He then stood up, approached the kid, and waved his hand.

    sp!

    Without even a second of hesitation, he smacked Rufus'' face, instantly invoking tears of both pain and surprise on the kid''s face.

    "Watch the tone you are using when speaking to me, my sister, or the boss," he said, sending an angry stare to the kid''s teary face. "You might be young, you might believe to be the center of the world, but if you do that again, I will drop you in the middle of a group of monsters for them to feast on your flesh, bones, and tears," he said, staring daggers at the kid.

    "Stop it, brother," Tom said, lightly shaking his head. "He isn''t stupid. He is just young," he said.

    ''What''s the point of threatening him with something that we will never do?'' Tom thought, more annoyed with Marvin''s reaction than he was with the kid''s words. Right now, if the kid were to ever cross the line again, they would be unable to stay true to their word, proving that he was free to do whatever he wanted.

    Even if they were to end up punishing the kid in any other way, the authority of adults would be already uprooted in his eyes.

    And that would make the rest of the journey through the dungeon all the more annoying.

    "Did you act like that when you were thirteen?" Marvin asked, calmly turning his head away from the weeping kid and looking over at Tom.

    "When we were his age, we were already out in the wild, hunting game for the dinner," Tom replied just as calmly. "But we are different from him. We grew up quicker because that''s how the world was back then," he added.

    "I''m not a kid!" Rufus protested through his tears, unable to take it any longer. "Kid this, kid that, kid fuck, is this the only word you have in your dictionary?!"

    "You im not to be a kid, but you act like one," Cleo replied, amused by Rufus''s outburst. "Youin about the food when others are risking their lives to get you safely to the destination. Youin about not getting stronger when there is virtually no spare room for you to grow along with those with better potential..." she added, only to shake her head. "If you are not a kid, then why do we need Kira to keep your eyes and ears closed so that you won''t peek at me when I''m receiving energy?" she added, leaning her head to the side and throwing the kid a daring look.

    ''Damn, I forgot how on point she could be at times,'' Tom thought, swallowing a gulp of saliva.

    For some reason, seeing her act headstrong like that pulled a cord on his heart.

    ''Do I fancy daring girls like her?'' Tom suddenly asked himself, unsure what to make out of the situation.

    "Well, since everyone is done with their food, how about we move out?" he proposed, throwing a nce at the can of dehydrated meat that Rufus only yed around with instead of eating.

    ''You want to act like an adult? Then be my guest,'' he thought, smiling viciously.

    "On it, boss," Marvin replied, noticing Tom''s nce and acting ordingly.

    His quick wits were one of the things that Tom liked the most in his friend. Rarely there was a time when he had to exin his ns to him without Marvin figuring them out himself.

    At least, that was the case for anything that Tom coulde with on the spot, with his reactions. When it came to strategizing or setting the course for a far-off future, they still needed to talk things through to understand each other.

    "Let''s move out, then," Cleo said, standing up. From how she didn''t nce over to Rufus'' side, Tom could tell that she missed the point of his sudden rally. Still, she was smart enough to follow their skit without as much as a single word of protest or doubt.

    "It mighte as a little surprise," Tom said, turning his face to his friends, "but I want you two to take care of the monsters on the next floor."

    For a moment, everyone in the group stopped, frozen by this statement.

    "Are you sure?" Marvin asked, a look of hesitation appearing on his face.

    Even though this wasn''t the first time for him to clear the dungeon, it was the first for him to do it with his own flesh and bones.

    "Yes, I am," Tom nodded his head. "While your skills are pretty powerful, you need to learn how to effectively use them in battle," Tom said before distancing himself from his friends. "Look," he said, constructing a magical spear in his hand.

    For a moment, Tom stood in silence, without as much as moving an inch. Underneath his closed eyelids, he imagined a set of opponents standing right in front of him.

    And then he moved. Throwing his spear forward, he started to construct another one from the bottom up, right as the previous one left his hand. In this way, by the time he sank the de of his second weapon sank into the flesh of an imaginary opponent, he instantly swapped to his flying spear, kicking the face of the second opponent and lunging out at the third.

    Executing this attack took Tom less than a second, yet he had already defeated three of his imaginary opponents.

    It wasn''t just the strength of his skills. It was his extensive experience in using and connecting them together to create powerful and often unforeseenbinations.

    "That''s what I meant," he said, turning his face to his friends. "What youck right now is not power. Its experience in wielding that power."

 Chapter 157: Cleos advance

    Chapter 157: Cleo''s advance

    "Speedy Gonzales," Cleo whispered as soon as she entered the next floor of the dungeon. "Roadkill," she then shouted out loud, rushing ahead.

    "This moron..." Marvin muttered, covering his face with his hand. "Why not let me cast some buffs on her first," heined, shaking his head.

    "This is her first real fight," Tom replied with a smile. "Give her some room to have fun," he added before shaking the spear in his hand. "Don''t worry, though. I''m watching over you two."

    "If you say so," Marvin spoke in a muffled voice before finally picking up the pace and going ahead.

    For the first several minutes, the two of them saw nothing but squashed corpses of monsters slowly disintegrating on the dungeon''s floor.

    "Whenever I see it, I''m salty about her getting the strong skills instead of me," Marvin admitted, casting a look at the ttened body of a rtively small orc.

    "Didn''t I tell it already? It doesn''t matter." Tom asked, rolling his eyes. "With your buffs, I will be able to defeat thest boss without risking my life. That alone is worth more than even the most powerful ability for us," he added.

    "It''s easy to say, especially for you," Marvin rebuked before leaning forward and picking up the pace. "Don''t you need to go check on her?" he asked, turning his head to the side.

    "I can still somewhat sense her." Tom shook his head. "I will be able to tell if something wrong happens. It''s better if we just let her run free and test her strength out," he added.

    "If you say so," Marvin muttered, focusing himself back on the running.

    Running after Cleo wasn''t a simple task. With her speed boosted both by her self-buff and the roadkill skill itself, even Tom found it hard to keep up with her speed without using his haste spell. On the other hand, Marvin was unable to even follow in time with the girl.

    "You know what," Tom''s friend said after taking a short break to catch his breath. "You go on ahead; I will make sure no monsters will threaten our cargo," Marvin said, giving up on the chase.

    "Are you sure that''s the reason?" Tom poked fun at his friend, averting his head to make sure no angry gaze would reach his eyes.

    "Just go on. Pick me up at thest corner of the corridor. I will make sure we will stay back enough for the two of you to enjoy yourselves," Marvin said, paying Tom back and then some more.

    "Yes, Boss," Tom showed his tongue to his friend before speeding up. Yet, even when he ran at his fastest speed, without making use of any of his skills, he had no hopes of actually catching up to the girl.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged when Cleo''s distant aura wavered a little. ''Did she encounter some sort of stronger monster?'' he thought, tightening his teeth.

    ''Haste,'' Tom thought, not wasting any time. Keeping up his speed, he couldn''t even feel when did he actually speed up.

    ''It feels like trying to run in water,'' he thought, attempting to seamlessly go from a simple run to one within the haste influence. The air itself appeared to resist his attempts to speed up, making it harder to run faster the faster he actually ran.

    ''I wonder how Cleo does fight against it,'' Tom thought, forcefully breaking through those restraints and achieving his full speed.

    ''Still, I think just jumping from spear to spear would be faster, but I can''t waste that much energy just to catch up with her,'' he thought, gritting his teeth as Cleo''s aura continued to waver.

    And then he reached the scene.

    Cleo''s entire body was running wet with sweat as she continued to avoid the attacks of a massive orc.

    ''Right, on this floor, there are two or more types of monsters at once!'' Tom realized, ming himself for forgetting about that part.

    "DDDuuckkk!" he shouted, trying to make his words as slow as possible while recalling one of the thousands of magic spears that he created.

    This was Tom''s ultimate answer to the problem of how costly it was, energy-wise, to create a magical spear. Since his mana would slowly regenerate during rest, he simply continued to make more and more of them whenever he could and leaving them all over the ce.

    And once a need appeared, just like now, he would simply recall the one farthest away from him, making sure that there would always be a magical spear well within his range.

    The girl heard Tom''s message, jumping away out of his line of sight instead of ducking.

    ''Smart call,'' Tom thought, noticing how the orc didn''t only use a massive club but also a spear on its own. And while ducking would allow her to avoid the club, it would put her in the path of the monster''s spear.

    "Hhh..."

    Cleo attempted to say something. But Tom didn''t wait for the girl to finish her slow words. Rather than that, he stretched his arm to the back and threw his magical spear forward, instantly recalling another one to his hand.

    "RRRROOO..." the orc attempted to make something like a mating or threatening call, swinging his club right at Tom''s spear.

    And what was surprising was that it actually managed to push it away!

    ''Is it abnormal or something?'' Tom thought, surprised by the situation. ''Or was it just lucky?'' he considered the other possibility right before thinking, ''swap!''

    The orc managed to strike Tom''s spear away just by trickling it with his club. But as soon as the projectile changed its course away, its attention moved back to Cleo and... the spear that reced Tom''s previous position.

    "Die," Tom muttered, pushing his spear through the orc''s throat before allowing the momentum of his jump to carry both himself and the spear out.

    With its throat pierced and then shed open, even the orc quickly sumbed to its wounds, turning into a grand spectacle for Tom to watch in slow-motion.

    "eeelll..." Cleo''s shout for help stillsted even after the fight had already concluded.

    ''Break,'' Tom thought, ending his haste spell right as his feet touched the ground.

    "p..." Cleo finished her plea before she could realize that the fight was actually over.

    "What seems to be the problem?" Tom asked with a small smile.

    "..."

    For a moment, Cleo simply stared at him, unable to understand what actually happened. Then, her eyes moved towards the orc, who finally fell on its knees only for its lifeless corpse to angle forward and fall to the ground.

    "Thanks," she finally said, rising up from her knees. "It seems that I found out the disadvantage of the roadkill," she added, looking back towards her friend.

    "Let me guess," Tom smiled as he approached the girl. "It doesn''t work on opponents bigger than you, right?"

    Cleo''s face darkened for a moment before rxing a secondter.

    "Yeah, that''s right," she said, biting her lips.

    "Don''t worry," Tom shook his head, perfectly aware of what was going through the girl''s head. "This doesn''t make you weak. In fact, you are still pretty powerful. Even if there is a w to your skill, that doesn''t mean it''s weak on its own," he added before patting the girl''s shoulder.

    "Right, where is Marvin?" Cleo asked, looking around, a look of confusion appearing on her face.

    "When I felt your aura change, I rushed ahead," Tom replied. "He decided to clear all the smaller monsters so that our baggage won''t find itself in trouble," he added.

    The baggage, obviously, referred to the enved Kira and young Rufus, out of which neither could hold the candle to the monsters of this level.

    In the end, even if Kira had some abilities to her name, without the nourishment of the mana stones, those skills would quickly turnpletely useless against the monsters in the dungeon.

    "Want to take on the boss, then?" Cleo asked, pointing her hand ahead.

    Tom confirmed that they had indeed arrived at the end of the floor already with a single look. Even though it seemed short, it was actually caused by just how fast Cleo moved through the corridors.

    "Sure thing," Tom said, quickly averting his eyes. For the sake of his own sanity, he didn''t bring Marvin''s words and suggestions up.

    "Do you think I will be able to take care of it?" Cleo suddenly asked right as Tom was about to pass the barely noticeable barrier between the boss room and the corridor.

    "Right now?" Tom asked only to shake his head. "I don''t think so," he replied, looking towards yet another massive orc sitting in the very middle of the room.

    In a sense, it appeared to be a twin brother of the orc they fought before, just that it was even bigger. What''s more, instead of a club and a spear, it wielded a club and... a mage''s staff?

 Chapter 158: Forty-first floor

    Chapter 158: Forty-first floor

    "Now then," Tom muttered, passing through the barrier, "how should I deal with you?" he threw the question in the orc''s face.

    Just like usual, the moment he crossed the barrier, the boss noticed his appearance. It shook both of its weapons once as if cooking them for the fight only to stand its ground.

    ''It''s not charging?'' Tom thought, observing the monsters with his keen eyes. ''Well, whatever,'' he dismissed his worry, calling forth a magical spear to each of his hands.

    Tom didn''t change his strategy at all. He simply threw both of his spears, one to the right of the monsters and one to the left.

    There was no point trying to nail it down with the first shot as the weaker monsters from before already proved to be capable of shoving it aside.

    ''Now, which way will you look?'' Tom thought, calling forth the third spear to his hand.

    But the monster stood its ground. Yet, just as Tom was about to swap, it charged forward.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom cursed under his breath. With the monster changing its position, there was no longer any point in swapping ces with the spears he threw previously.

    ''Still, that''s strange,'' he thought, jumping away to gain some distance.

    So far, the entire fight continued without Tom using his haste. As this was his greatest trump card, he didn''t like the fact that he always relied on it.

    Sure, it was great to use in a clutch and had a negligible mana cost. Yet, for all the great advantages that it offered in terms of physical capabilities, it had a massive physical disadvantage.

    It made Tom rely on it.

    And just like the skirmish back in the guild office proved, there would be times when Tom would be unable to use it anymore.

    ''I guess I should try ying with the domain a bit,'' he thought, opting to use this rtively low-level monster to his advantage. So far, their progress was pretty quick, allowing Tom a short moment of training.

    ''Domain,'' Tom invoked his actual trump card. While the spears that he threw were outside of its sphere of influence, the spear in his hand was well within the range of the spell.

    The monster continued its charge, likely not noticing any of the changes.

    ''Let''s see if I can do something like this...'' Tom thought, reaching with his arm to the back and throwing his third spear.

    The distance from his previous spears was roughly thrice the range of his domain. That meant he couldn''t just swap around while constantly controlling the spear.

    But that wasn''t what he wanted to do either.

    The spear flew right towards the monster.

    As expected, the orc didn''t find it hard to reflect the attack, striking the side of the spear with its club. It even raised it again in hopes of bashing Tom''s head in...

    ''Swap,'' Tom didn''t wait for the attack to connect. Instead, he swapped ces with the spear thatid in the direction where the orc showed his spear aside.

    However, it was important that while the third spear changed its course, it continued to fly.

    Right into the location of Tom''s new sphere of domain!

    ''Don''t let it stop!'' he thought, focusing more on the path of the spear than the actual fight with the monster.

    By gently changing the direction of the spear and using his domain to elerate it, Tom made the spear orbit behind him, only to let it go as soon as its pointy end aimed towards the orc again!

    "ROAR!"

    The spear sank deeply into the orc''s side, right before it could even turn its head towards the attack.

    ''It managed half of the turn,'' Tom thought, noticing the angle at which the spear hit the enemy.

    The young man walked towards the monster, reaching the point where it was right at the edge of his domain.

    "Rah, rah, rah," it made a strange sound as it breathed, only to grab the spear''s handle in an attempt to pull it out.

    ''A bad decision,'' Tom thought, recalling all the first-aid lessons he went through in his early years.

    While moving with a de embedded into one''s insides was definitely not a good idea, pulling it out would only cause the wound to bleed. As such, if one was ever attacked with a de that would end up stuck in their body, one should leave it as it is or, better, bandage around it, stabilizing it in ce.

    For all the bad stuff it could do, at least the de would prevent excessive bleeding, which would be the greatest drawback of the wound if pulled out!

    "RAH!" the monster screamed out as it finally managed to pull the weapon out of its side. The blood and intestines hanging from the ragged de only prove Tom''s lessons correct.

    But it didn''t matter, as the young man took a step forward, enveloping the monster and the spear in its hand within his domain.

    ''Dance,'' Tom ordered, instantly wrestling the control of the spear from the monster.

    He didn''t order it back, nor did he swap ces with it. Tom simply turned his spear into a swirling de, akin to what one could find in a kitchen''s mixer.

    The spear spun around the monster, prompted by the invisible hand of Tom''s domain. Circling around the monster, it soon turned the use of its skin around, leaving not a single spot of its body unwounded.

    ''Now, die,'' Tom thought, sending the spear with all the force he could add to it straight towards the monster''s skull.

    Upon the strike, the spear broke apart into pieces only to diffuse into a mist of condensed magic and disappear. Yet, the head trauma was enough to cut the orc''s suffering on the spot.

    "It''s done," Tom muttered, raising his hand and wiping the sweat from his forehead.

    Surprisingly enough, fighting even such a low-leveled monster without the use of his haste spell was far more challenging than he expected.

    ''Am I actually weak?'' he thought, trying to figure out all the details of what just happened.

    ''No, it''s not true,'' he thought, shaking his head. ''I still defeated it with ease. I guess I''m just too used to dealing with everything in a split of a second,'' he concluded before approaching the opening that separated the boss room from the corridor.

    "That took a while," Cleomented, stepping through the barrier into the room.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head. "I wanted to see how far I could go without relying on my skills too much,'' he added before casting a quick nce at the yet-to-deteriorate. ''Still, it was pretty strange,'' he thought, recalling the way the boss monsters moved around.

    It was as if... the monster knew about his ability to swap ces with spears! After all, what other reason could there be for its sudden freezing and chargeter on that happened just as Tom threw his spears out?

    "I guess it''s time to get the stones, then," Cleo muttered in a weak voice, averting her face away from Tom''s eyes.

    "Right, I totally forgot about that part," he replied, feeling how his cheeks turned hotter than before.

    ''Huh?'' Tom twitched in surprise when realizing what was going on. ''Why am I bashful?'' he asked himself, unsure what to make out of the situation.

    Yet, despite all his doubts, he still approached the wall and infused his energy into it, extracting the stones embedded inside.

    ''Wait, how could I miss it?'' Tom thought as he watched the stones roll on the floor.

    Because he just conquered the boss of the forty-first floor, amidst several grade-three stones that Cleo was already used to absorbing, there were even some grade four ones!

    ''Oh boy,'' Tom thought, a strange feeling welling up in his abdomen. Yet, rather than enjoying this moment of his lust waking up, he couldn''t help but bite his lips. ''I''m not a virgin anymore... So why am I reacting like that?'' he thought while allowing Cleo to collect the stones.

    "Those are the fourth-grade ones, right?" the girl said, picking up one of the stones with her gloved hand.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head, pulling out his main spear. Even though the two of them were pretty bashful about it, they both knew what was going to happen for a long time already. And with a small pile of stones carried from all the previous floors, this ufortable situation wouldst for quite a while.

    "I guess there is no point in waiting, then," Cleo said, taking a deep sigh and pressing the stone against the tip of Tom''s spear.

    Using his skills, Tom broke apart the structure of the stone, turning it back into pure energy. Yet, as soon as he brought the spear''s end towards the girl, Cleo moved forward, locked her left arm around his neck, and leaned in for the kiss.

    Only when their lips touched, she allowed her right hand to slide down the handle of Tom''s spear, all the way to the de where Tom amassed the mana for her to consume.

 Chapter 159: Absorbing the stones and the schlong (+18, do I really need to spell it out loud?)

    Chapter 159: Absorbing the stones and the schlong (+18, do I really need to spell it out loud?)

    "Wah!" Tom took a deep breath, trying to regain his calm. Only by pushing Cleo away did he manage to stop her from suffocating him with her kiss. "What the..."

    "You didn''t like it?" Cleo asked, not allowing Tom to even finish his words. Her eyes were moist, yet Tom could hardly decide whether from excitement or from how she was about to cry.

    "Of course I did!" Tom instantly rebuked, cing his hand on the girl''s head and rustling her head. "How could I not?"

    "Then why?!" Cleo shouted, pressing her head against Tom''s chest and striking one of her fists on it as well. Notably, her right hand remained glued to the tip of Tom''s weapon. "Why did you pull away?!" she cried out.

    "Umm..." Tom hesitated before raising his face up and covering it with his hand. "I still need to breathe, you know?"

    Cleo raised her head, looking at Tom''s reddened face. For a moment, she simply stared at it only to lower it down and chuckle.

    "If that''s the case," she muttered softly, standing up on her toes and once again reaching for Tom''s lips.

    This time, however, she let him go with only a quick peck.

    One that still allowed Tom to fully appreciate the softness and warmth of her lips.

    With the first ice broken down, Tom finally managed to collect himself. Lowering his head, he once again joined his lips with the girl. Finally, with his head cooled down, he managed to properly kiss his years-long friend.

    The initial kiss quickly evolved into a deep one as the two of them employed their tongues. Rubbing them against each other, their saliva started to mix.

    "Ah," Cleo breathed out as she pulled away, keeping her eyes glued to Tom''s. Yet, they quickly wandered off to the side, to where she held Tom''s de. "It''s gone," she whispered softly as if she suddenly ran all out of the alcohol.

    "I guess it is," Tom muttered.

    ''It feels strange,'' he thought, stopping his lips from twitching. ''I know we are doing it to help her get through the ordeal, but still,'' he tightened his jaws, watching how his friend pulled out another stone and ced it on the spear.

    "Let''s keep going," Cleo muttered as soon as the stone dissolved into the pure energy. "Touch me," she requested, grabbing Tom''s hand and putting it on her breast.

    ''It''s soft,'' Tom thought, pressing his fingers against the material of her outfit. With Cleo holding back from the kiss this time, he could watch how her gaze turned dreamy.

    "Ah," she moaned, proving that she was feeling his touch. Cleo then pressed herself forward as if trying to push herself into Tom''s hand. "More," she whispered, raising her free hand and locking it around Tom''s neck only to go in for the kiss again.

    Feeling the taste of her lips, Tom couldn''t stop himself any longer. With a single pull, he ripped Cleo''s clothes apart, only toy his hand down on her bare breast.

    ''It''s been so long,'' he thought, immersing himself in the sweet taste of Cleo''s saliva while yfully fondling her exposed breast.

    With their lips connected, Cleo could no longer utter any moans, sending them as vibrations directly through Tom''s mouth to his brain instead.

    Her entire body started to tremble as the excitement caused both by her action and by the absorbed mana started to build up.

    Cleo''s legs suddenly gave in.

    "Watch out!" Tom shouted, moving his hand to grab her by her tail. Yet, without his haste spell, he was just a moment toote.

    ''Fck,'' Tom cursed in his mind when his knees struck the floor. While not painful by itself, the angle of the hit was just right to send the electric shock right through his entire body, proving that he hit himself directly in the nerve hidden in the knee.

    "You are so quick to get into it," Cleo muttered, the excitement on her face proving she didn''t mind it at all. "You beast," she added, using her hand as the sole support as she brought her upper body up for yet another smooch.

    Kneeling on the floor with Cleo''s crotch directly rubbing against his own, Tom couldn''t stop his own lust any longer. With a few more moves of his free hand, hepletely ripped Cleo''s shirt away, exposing her slim torso and the entirety of her surprisingly huge breasts.

    "Mine," he muttered as he moved away from the girl''s lips, only to lower his head and attack her nipple instead.

    Tom sucked on the hardened cheery on top of Cleo''s flesh mound as if his life depended on it.

    "It''s gone," Cleo moaned in a pained voice, instantly grabbing another stone only to press it against Tom''s spear. She ced her other hand on the back of Tom''s head, pressing it even further onto her breast as if she wanted Tom to swallow itpletely.

    ''So delicate,'' Tom thought, savoring the taste of Cleo''s skin for a few more moments as his free hand moved down, unbuttoning Cleo''s pants.

    They had some spare t-shirts in the luggage, but the same couldn''t be said about the pants. That''s why, rather than ripping them off, as much as he wanted to do so, Tom limited himself to gently pulling them down.

    "Move your ass up a bit," he requested, raising his head for yet another kiss.

    "Mhmm," Cleo didn''t even form proper words for her reply. She obliged as she immersed herself in another kiss.

    With the girl obediently following his wishes, Tom couldn''t help but notice how her panties stuck to her crotch, giving testimony to just how wet she was.

    "Let me eat you out. In the meantime, make sure the stones areing," Tom whispered right into Cleo''s face, giving her onest kiss beforeying her down on the floor and pushing himself to the back.

    Kissing his way down her corbone, chest, and then stomach, he slowly made his way down to her crotch. He then grabbed one of her things, moving her leg out of the way.

    Completely on his own, Cleo moved her other leg to the side, giving Tom the perfect view of her most important ce.

    ''Let''s get started, then,'' Tom thought, nting a kiss on her clit while slowly pushing his forefinger inside her wet hole.

    There was no resistance whatsoever. Rather than that, Cleo''s pussy sucked on Tom''s finger, proving just how hungry for some insertion she was.

    As he started to move his finger up and down her ce, Tom continued to y around with her clit, poking it with his tongue, licking it only to suck on it next.

    "Ah," "No," "More!" Cleo''s moans apanied the young man in his fun as he finally moved his tongue down before pushing it inside her gaping opening.

    With both his tongue and his finger in one ce, Cleo''s pussy turned slightly cramped, especially when the walls of her vagina started to mp down on him.

    Even though she was ready from the very beginning, Tom continued to have his portion of the fun all the way to the point when he judged Cleo wouldn''tst for much longer.

    "Are you ready?" he asked, raising up on his knees and unbuckling his pants.

    "G-give it to me," Cleo replied with a moan, spreading her legs even further. At the same time, she didn''t bother to pull out another stone but grabbed the edge of the sack in which all the stones were before pushing it right on the edge of Tom''s spear.

    ''WOAH!'' Tom nearly lost his focus when the flurry of magical power assaulted all his senses. For a moment, the sensitivity of all his senses skyrocketed, making it hard to wrestle control over the raging energy.

    "QUICKLY!" Cleo shouted, her entire body trembling with excitement as she continued to desperately suck on the energy from the spear.

    ''So that''s how she felt all this time,'' Tom thought, a sudden moment of enlightenment dawning upon him. Unable to hold himself back, he shoved his pants down.

    After all the kissing, fondling, and forey, not to speak about Cleo''s reactions to all of that, Tom was ready to go as well. Yet, prompted by the vicious side of his nature, rather than instantly prating the girl below him, he simply ced the tip of his penis on top of her pussy, as if he wanted his shroom to seak in her sticky juices.

    "Come on!" Cleo protested, unable to stop her body from wriggling around.

    "Don''t you think you should beg for it?" Tom uttered, all ready to go, yet unwilling to refuse himself thisst bit of fun.

    "FUCK ME!" Cleo shouted, raising her hips up as if she wanted to nail herself down on his schlong on her own.

    "Since you asked so nicely," Tom whispered, leaning down and joining lips with the girl.

    ''I can only submit to your wishes,'' he thought, finally pushing his hips down and showing his penis as deep as Cleo''s wet pussy allowed.

 Chapter 160: Results of "training" (+18)

    Chapter 160: Results of "training" (+18)

    "AGh!" Cleo screamed out. All the excitement, all the anticipation that consuming vast amounts of energy induced in her, finally got satisfied.

    "Just..." Tom uttered, "give..." "me..." "a..." "moment..."

    ''The feeling is out of the world,'' he thought, feeling how Cleo''s moist insides wrapped all over his thing.

    He wasn''t a virgin since the time heid down with udia in the dungeon. To be fair, he did it a whole lot while adventuring with that girl. Yet, for some reason, his current experience was on a whole new level.

    ''Is it because of the mana... or?'' Tom thought, unwilling to voice the possibility even if in his thoughts only.

    The difference between Cleo and udia was pretty simple. Tom has known Cleo since forever. She was a part of all his childhood memories all the way to the day when he migrated to a big city.

    And now, she was squirming below him, reacting to everyst change in his movement.

    Her pussy would gasp the moment he would tighten his grasp over her breast. Her body would twitch whenever he pushed himself deeper inside, only to tense up as he would pull out.

    ''She is so lovely,'' Tom thought, savoring everyst of Cleo''s expressions, looks that she has never shown him before.

    The difference was obvious.

    Tom never spent that much time with udia. As such, while aplete novelty during their first intercourse, her reactions held only a little meaning for him.

    Sure, he cared for her. Sure, he didn''t wish any harm toe her way. Sure, he trusted her.

    But she was just another person that would randomly stroll through the path of his life. And when, because of that fight at the adventurer''s guild, she vanished from his life in one way or another, Tom hardly had any trouble getting over it.

    ''Now that I think about it, it was harder to ept the fact that I could no longer pursue my father than to ept that she went into aatose state,'' he thought only to shake his head a momentter. ''No, begone vile thoughts,'' he restrained his own mind. ''Right now, there is only one person I should be focusing all my attention on,'' he thought, following his thoughts with actions right away.

    "Are you okay?" Tom asked with a soft whisper, slowing down his movements.

    "Yeah," Cleo opened her previously tightly shut eyes, savoring the sight of Tom''s ripped chest above her. "Why did you stop?" she asked, her expression turning into something between sadness and disappointment.

    "I was worried about you, you know?" Tom replied before lowering himself over the girl and reaching for her lips with his mouth.

    The taste of Cleo''s saliva was something he never expected to get a free sample off, definitely not in such a direct way.

    And here he was, exchanging mouthly fluids with her while their juices mixed at their crotches as well.

    "You can fuck me harder, you know?" Cleo whispered once Tom pulled out from the kiss.

    A yful expression appeared on her face as her legs shot up and locked behind Tom''s waist.

    "I won''t let you go until I dry your balls empty," she imed, finally leaving the edge of Tom''s spear and moving both of her arms towards his neck.

    Bouncing her back against the floor, Cleo gained enough momentum to roll up Tom''s arms. Without even a second of hesitation, she joined her lips with his, stabilizing their new position.

    ''This is quite nice,'' Tom thought, holding the girl closely in his arms. A momentter, she started moving up and down, working the entire length of his penis.

    "I..." she moved down, "will," she brought herself up, rubbing her chest against Tom''s skin, "dry you!" she eximed, clumping down and nailing herself all the way to the core in the process.

    ''Not good,'' Tom thought, feeling how his excitement was quickly welling up around his crotch. He first enjoyed this sensation with Mister Thumb and his four flirty girls. Later on, Tom felt it with udia. As such, he was more than capable of recognizing it as the sign of what was about toe soon!

    And it wasn''t Christmas!

    ''At this rate...'' he hesitated, unable to resist the girl jumping up and down on hisp. The sight was too mesmerizing for him to do anything. Her boobs jiggling right in his face, her stomach tensing up and rxing with every hop, the look of ecstasy on Cleo''s face...

    Just the sights alone were more than enough to make him nut his load. But as if this wasn''t enough, he wasn''t numb down there either!

    Again and again, the sensation of Cleo''s wraps rubbing themselves against his penis continued to assault his mind, sapping all the strength out of his body. At this point, Tom could only keep his hold over the girl, enjoying her warmth and enthusiasm.

    "I''m about to..." he shouted, attempting to warn the girl.

    "MINE!" she uttered, tightening her entire self around him. Her arms pulled his face right into her ample bosom, burying his face in the sea of soft warmth. Her legs pulled her own crotch as closely as possible to the base of his penis, forcing its tip to the ultimate depth of her insides.

    Strangled just like that, Tom couldn''t resist any longer.

    A feeling of enormous relief shook through his body as a wave of pleasure washed off his flesh and soul alike. All of it then shoot right through Tom''s mighty heirloom, directly into Cleo''s womb.

    "That''s it..." Cleo whispered, raising her head and arching her body to the back. For a few more moments, she just continued to tremble on Tom''sp, still reliving the moment of her orgasm.

    And then she fell right back into Tom''s arms, resting her head over his shoulder.

    "And so we finally did it," she muttered several momentster when the exhaustion of the act finally washed off.

    ''What a change,'' Tom thought, gently caressing her back. ''From a wild one before to the calm and submissive one now,'' he thought, his mouth twitching a little. ''Is this what they call submissive and breedable?''

    "How did the advancement go?" Tom asked instead, unwilling to voice out this ages-old catchphrase.

    "What?" Cleo moaned, clearly not catching Tom''s drift. Only after a meaningful silence thatsted a few more moments did she finally realize what her friend was asking about.

    "I didn''t notice any breakthroughs... But you know, I wasn''t exactly focused on sensing them," she added only to send Tom a wink.

    "How about you try it out?" Tom suggested. ording to his calctions, with the number of stones gathered, it wouldn''t be a surprise for her to reach not one but two breakthroughs!

    What would be impossible if they were to keep distributing the stones between her and Marvin now became a possibility.

    "What, you don''t like cuddling?" Cleo asked, moving around a little as if to remind Tom about thefort of holding a naked girl right on hisp.

    "Cleo..." Tom muttered, unsure how to respond.

    "Yeah, yeah, I understand," the girl replied, slowly standing up. As she did so, Tom could enjoy the eye candy of his sperm slowly dripping out from her pussy, concrete proof of the deed they had done.

    "Oh!" Cleo suddenly tensed up, raising her hand to her lips as a small smirk grew on her face. "You just wanted to see me move around all naked!" she shouted as if she was a scientist that just discovered a massive breakthrough.

    "Take it however you may," Tom replied with a sigh before standing up from the floor himself. A single look towards the bag where they held the stones confirmed that Cleo really managed to consume them all in one go.

    ''At this rate, we may only need to do it once or twice again,'' he thought, unsure how to feel about this information.

    "I think I got it..." Cleo suddenly muttered, forcing Tom to drop his current line of thought.

    Looking up, he saw the girl in all her naked glory... but it wasn''t her ass that Tom''s eyes gravitated towards.

    It was a strange ball of red light she held in her right palm while sending Tom a confused look. What''s more, rather than just holding a piece of red light, said light was actually exuding smoke, like some kind of re.

    "How about you throw it?" Tom suggested.

    ''In the end, there are only so many things that you could do with it,'' he thought.

    "Sure thing," Cleo replied, stretching her body in Tom''s full view before reaching to the back with her hand and shooting the ball of red light forward!

    Nothing happened during the orb''s flight. Marking its path with the red-colored smoke, the orb simply fell to the ground...

    ''WHA...''

    Tom thought, raising his hands to his eyes as a sudden sh of red light almost burned his vision away. A small tickle also announced that in the meantime, he somehow found himself on the ground, despite not recalling the feeling of falling at all.

 Chapter 161: G-force

    Chapter 161: G-force

    "What was that?!" Tom shouted, amazed by the ability.

    For some low-leveled spell to be able to affect him to such a degree...

    To say that he never heard about something like that would be an understatement!

    "Are you okay?" Cleo asked, approaching the ce where Tom fell. Right now, his vision was still flunky, making it hard for him to stand up.

    "Yeah, I''m just confused..." Tom replied, shaking his head to get rid of the nauseating feeling that this spell induced in him.

    ''Not only does it blind everyone who sees the explosion but also confuses them,'' Tom thought, finally opening his eyes and looking in the direction where the spell fell.

    Rather than disappearing as soon as the explosion happened, the red orb of Cleo now turned into a dense cloud of red smoke, making it impossible to see what was on its other side.

    ''I wonder if that smoke will induce that confusion effect as well,'' Tom thought, grabbing Cleo''s extended hand and using her help to stand up.

    "Give me a moment," Tom muttered, unsteadily walking towards the smoke.

    A single whiff...

    And Tom fell on his bottom once again. While the confusion wasn''t as powerful as the one caused by the explosion, it still managed to mess with his sense of space, making it feel as if he was standing on a massive earthquake.

    "Seriously, what are you doing?!" Cleo shouted, panic mixing with amusement and confusion in her voice.

    "Wait, you can''t see it?" Tom asked, crawling away from the smoke. Even though it was quickly dissipating, every breath of it only made Tom''s confusion worse.

    "See what?" Cleo asked, putting her hands on her hips and looking around. "We are still in the boss room. The only thing I can see is you and our clothes," she said, pointing with her hand at the ce where they recently fucked.

    "I see," Tom muttered, finally taking a breath of fresh, smoke-free air. "I think I know what your ability is all about," he added, once again using Cleo''s help to stand up.

    ''Wait, isn''t it a great opportunity?'' Tom thought, his yful side waking up.

    While his confusion was mostly gone now, he still used it as an excuse, tripping on his own feet and falling right into Cleo''s arms.

    "Seriously, what''s wrong with you?" Cleo breathed out before enclosing Tom within her embrace and carrying him away.

    Stuck between her soft chest and her delicate arms, Tom allowed the girl to help him move before she finally forced him to sit down right where their clothes were.

    "I will dress up," she said, letting Tom take some time toe back to his senses.

    "If you keep stretching like that, I will get hard again," Tommented after carelessly throwing a single nce at the changing girl. As she was currently reaching for her pants to pick them up, she, intentionally or not, exposed everyst part of her secret ce to Tom''s eyes.

    ''Seeing my sperm still flow out of her hole... How can this be so erotic?'' Tom thought before courtly averting his eyes to give the girl some privacy.

    "What, don''t tell me you fell in love with me now," Cleo said, turning around and rolling her eyes.

    From how her face was perfectly calm, it appeared she didn''t feel any shame parading naked around the ce.

    "You are crushing my heart right now," Tom replied with a sneer, finally gathering himself up from the floor of the boss room.

    "Isn''t this what all the girls are good at?" Cleo asked jokingly, pulling her pants up and reaching for her shirt.

    "What a sexist view. I didn''t expect you to present it," Tom countered.

    "Those words would hold more weight if you didn''t stare at my boobs all the time," Cleo pushed back. But before they could continue any longer, she burst out inughter and approached Tom.

    She grabbed him by the edge of his pants only to pull him closer and ce a deep, wet kiss on his lips. With her shirt still in her hand, Cleo''s chest ttened on Tom''s chest as her tongue forced its way inside Tom''s mouth.

    "Pwhaaa..." Cleo sighed when the two of them finally separated their lips. "Happy now?" she asked with a small smile, finally putting the rest of her clothes on.

    "That''s more like it," Tom replied, reaching out with his hand and patting the girl''s head. "Anyway, do you feel like you got another skill or something?" he asked, zipping his pants back and reaching for his own shirt.

    "I kinda do," Cleo replied before turning silent as she pulled the shirt down her head. "But I can''t really put my mind to it. Like, some kind of condition is not satisfied," she added, putting a thoughtful look on her face.

    "Maybe it''s a shield, then?" Tom asked, leaning his head. "Guard yourself," he requested, standing just two steps away from the girl.

    Instead of replying, Cleo simply raised her hands as if she was about to enter a boxing match.

    ''Let''s see,'' Tom thought, bringing his fist to the girl''s face with all his might.

    He intended to stop right before actually hitting his friend.

    ''Haste,'' he thought, elerating his own reaction time and movements for the sake of stopping the attack.

    Yet, before he could actually do anything, his hand suddenly froze.

    "FUCK!" Tom yelled out in pain, feeling the strain suddenly ced on his bones.

    ''It feels like hitting a piece of steel!'' he thought, lowering his arm and grabbing it with his left arm. This moment of confusion also forced him to end his haste, dropping him back into the natural flow of time.

    "Oh my god, I''m so sorry!" Cleo shouted, noticing that something had just happened. "Are you okay?" she asked, kneeling right beside squatting Tom.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head, allowing his magic to work the pain away. "I''m not exactly sure what happened. It felt like hitting an immovable wall," he added, massaging his own arm.

    "Here, let me do it for you," Cleo muttered, grabbing Tom''s arms and pressing her delicate fingers against his pained flesh.

    ''Huh?'' Tom noticed that his arm... was all turning violet. As if everyst bit of his flesh in the arm was beaten up to the point where bruises covered everyst inch of it.

    ''Bruises?'' Tom thought, recalling the lecture about this topic from back at school. And then he realized.

    It wasn''t just the tip of his fist that hurt. That ruled out the possibility of Cleo''s ability being a simple barrier.

    Now that he focused on the pain, he realized that he could actually feel it not only in the arm but even at the shoulder and partially at the right side of his waist!

    ''The pains align perfectly with the muscles I moved to execute a punch!'' Tom realized, his eyes opening wide from the shock of the meaning behind this information.

    "Hmm?" Cleo muttered, raising her eyes at Tom''s face as soon as she noticed something was wrong. "What happened?"

    "I think I know what your new ability is," Tom whispered, too shocked to reveal it just like that.

    "Is it bad?" Cleo asked, a new hue of worry appearing on her face.

    "Bad?" Tom shouted, only to take a deep breath and calm himself down. Then, he shook his head. "No," he said, lowering his sight. "It''s more like, I can''t believe how damn overpowered it is," he added in a weak voice.

    ''I was so happy with my own abilities, respected udia''s skills, enjoyed Marvin''s ones... And then there is Cleo,'' he thought, gritting his teeth in frustration.

    "Tom!" udia shouted, most likely recognizing the state of his mind from the expression on his face. "Just tell me," she requested in a meaker voice, raising her hands and cing them on Tom''s cheeks.

    "I''m still not sure, so take it only as my guess," Tom said as he grabbed Cleo''s hands and removed them from his face. He then stood up and sent her a mysterious look. "Can you try to use it again?"

    "The condition..."

    "I know," Tom cut Cleo''s protests before moving a few steps away. "Are you ready?"

    "Yeah...?" Cleo replied with hesitation, not sure what to expect.

    Tom charged forward, right in the direction of the girl, as if he wanted to m her down to the ground.

    And just as he was about to hit her, his entire body froze in ce, only to explode with pain a momentter.

    ''Just like I thought.'' Tom''s happiness from the discovery was muffled by the overbearing pain prating through everyst tissue of his flesh and bones.

    "Is it making others stop?" Cleo attempted to guess her skill herself.

    "Close, but not exactly," Tom muttered, pouring all the magic that he could to heal his injured body. "It''s more like you forcibly kill the momentum of an object heading towards you... or so I think," he replied.

    "Then your injuries..." Cleo cried out in protest, only for her face to tense up as she realized exactly the same thing that Tom had in mind since a few moments earlier. "The rapid change of momentum..."

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head. "The g-force is the culprit of all those," he said, raising his arms to show the bruises they were covered in.

    "Ah!" Cleo suddenly sighed, her knees giving up. She then fell to the ground, right on her shapely ass. "I think I also discovered the cost of using it," she said with a weak smile before her consciousness faded away.

 Chapter 162: Dealing with Cleos sleep

    Chapter 162: Dealing with Cleo''s sleep

    "Marvin!" Tom shouted from the bottom of his lungs. Even though the soundwave would be slightly tampered by the gate separating the dungeon''s corridors and the boss room, he still hoped that his voice would reach his friend.

    After all, he was supposed to wait with the rest of the group just at the edge of the range of Tom''s voice.

    ''I wonder if it will work,'' Tom thought, casting a quick nce towards the exist before moving his eyes back at the girl in his arms.

    ''Still, is she just exhausted? Did she run out of mana? Or what else could have happened?'' Tom attempted to figure out the problem.

    After using her new ability just twice, Cleo copsed and lost consciousness. Right now, her chest was moving up and down, proving that, at the very least, she was still alive.

    But that didn''t mean anything.

    ''udia is still alive as well,'' Tom thought, biting his lips. He then reached out and pushed aside a stray bundle of hair from the girl''s face, stopping it from clogging Cleo''s nose.

    ''Is she sleeping, or did she fall into aa?'' That was the one major question on Tom''s mind. While the second option could potentially help him crack udia''s problem as well, he wasn''t ready to lose the other andst girl that he deeply cared for in his life.

    As opposed to udia''s situation that only served to radicalize his choice of actions, Cleo''s health was of far more importance to Tom.

    Contrary to udia, who Tom considered a sex friend and fellow adventurer, Cleo was the girl that he wouldn''t mind spending the rest of his days with.

    ''Still... If only she wakes up, we will have to push her to test this ability a lot more,'' Tom thought, gritting his teeth.

    He hated the idea of pushing his dear friend as far as he considered to, but there was no other option. If she wanted to keep using this overpowered ability of hers, Cleo had to be ready for sacrifices necessary to unravel its mysteries.

    Was her exhaustion affected by the strength of her target? Was it a matter of levels? Would she be able to stop someone on her own level a lot more before copsing? What would happen if she attempted to stop an enemy that far outssed her, be it in terms of strength or just pure levels?

    All those questions had to be answered before Tom would allow Cleo to freely use her newly found ability.

    "Tom!" Marvin shouted, emerging from the barrier. Raising his head, Tom noticed the distressed expression on his friend''s face, proving that he already noticed the state his sister was in.

    ''Well, it would be strange if he didn''t,'' Tom thought, clenching his jaws. ''After all, she is currently unconscious and resting in my hands,'' he thought.

    "Is she okay?!" Marvin shouted his question, falling to his knees and sliding thest few meters that he couldn''t even be bothered to run through properly.

    "I have no idea," Tom replied, averting his eyes. Right now, he couldn''t look his friend in the face.

    "You couldn''t go any easier on her?!" Marvin shouted, his voice containing a mix of shock, awe, and anger.

    "Dude, are you serious?" Tom''s eyes opened wide as he asked. "I''m not some kind of monster to do her like that!" he protested and shook his head. "We were just testing her new abilities. And let me tell you this," he said, taking a short pause and finally looking up at his friend''s eyes. "Her abilities are too strong."

    "Huh?" Marvin took a deep breath, unable to let it go for a long time. "What do you mean?"

    "Her first ability is something like an area of effect stun. Not only does it blinds you and then confuses the heck out of you, but it also leaves a smoke that not only covers a huge area but also induces the same confusion," Tom exined.

    "Trust me, whiffing it for a short moment made me feel as if I tanked a barrel of vodka and watered my throat down with a bag of drugs afterward," Tom said, shaking his head. "But it''s the other ability of hers that made Cleo like that."

    "Wait, what?" Marvin protested, confused by Tom''s words. "How could her own ability make her lose consciousness?"

    "It''s just a guess, but I think it''s exhaustion," Tom stated his belief. "As to whether the ability can only be used once per some time, whether it has to do something with the difference of our strength or levels..." Rather than finishing his words, Tom shook his shoulders.

    "She will wake up, will she?" Marvin asked, raising his eyes from his sister''s face to Tom''s head.

    "I do hope so," Tom replied, although there wasn''t even a shred of confidence in his tone. After the mishap with udia, anything that even resembled that situation induced a bad feeling in his soul.

    "Is there anything we can do to help her?" Marvin asked, still unable to ept the situation as it is.

    "I have no idea, brother," Tom replied, his jaws slightly trembling from the pressure he put on them. "The one thing that''sing to my mind is to either just let her wake up on her own or feed her more stones," he said, casting a look to the empty bag in where they previously hold the dungeon''s haul.

    "And we don''t have any left, right?" Marvin guessed only to shake his head afterward. "Good. Then let''s do this," he said, rising from his knees and turning towards the entrance to the boss room only to wave his hand.

    Following the gesture, Kira and Rufus entered the area.

    While the woman was pretty cautious with her every step, still not sure how to act around her captors, the kid in her arms was her exact opposite.

    Not minding his manners at all, he instantly caught the sight of the girl in Tom''s arms. His eyes shed up as his face reddened, telling everyone in the room just what kind of thoughts were going through his head.

    "We are going to the next floor," Marvin announced, perfectly aware that Tom was currently not in the right state of mind to take any action or make any decision. "We will remain right at the entrance while you will rush for the boss room. If we don''t know if consuming stones will help her, then the best we can do is to try to find out," he said, offering Tom a hand.

    "Thanks," Tom muttered, using his friend''s help before gently shaking the girl in his arms. "I guess you will have to carry her, then," he added.

    "Sure thing," Marvin pushed his hands forward, only to ept the lifeless body of his sister a momentter.

    "I can help with that!" Rufus shouted, pushing his chest forward as if he wanted to appear bigger. "I''m pretty strong, you know?" he added.

    If not for the blush on his cheeks and fire in his eyes, Tom would for a moment believe that the kid actually wanted to help.

    ''This damned pervert,'' he thought, coldly ncing at the kid.

    "You better shut your mouth," he said out loud, not sparing any mind for the kid''s obvious schemes. "If you want to feel a girl up, then find one that will willingly let you do so. You are disgusting," he added, turning his back to the young kid and moving towards the gate.

    ''Thank God this strange space warping doesn''t work while transfering between floors,'' Tom thought when he emerged at the entrance of the forty-second floor. ''With everything that I have on mind right now, I don''t think I could pull myself through the experience,'' he thought, taking a few steps forward and stopping.

    The rest of the group came to his side a momentter, appearing from thin air. At first, only the general shape of their bodies appeared, with colors and detailsing to a view as if someone slid the bar of the image quality in Tom''s brain.

    "We are here; you may go," Marvin said, fixing his hold over Cleo''s body before stepping forward andying her down on the floor. Rather than having her rest t on the stone ground, he made sure to rest her back against the wall instead.

    "Right, I think it will be better if Kira takes care of her," Tom mentioned, already stretching his body for the rushed run of the floor. "Cleo is unconscious either way, so it''s not like taking care of her would be a problem. On the other hand, if I miss some monsters while rushing ahead..."

    Tom didn''t finish his sentence. He didn''t have to.

    "I will take care of this," Marvin said, nodding his head. He perfectly understood what Tom meant with his unfinished words.

    "Great," Tom smiled before turning his head towards the depths of the dungeon''s floor. "I''m off then!" he shouted.

    ''Haste,'' he thought, activating his ace spell and darting forward.

 Chapter 163: Living wall

    Chapter 163: Living wall

    ''Stop it, there is no need to hurry,'' Tom thought to himself, dashing forward without the slightest care in the world.

    He would run only through the shortest corridors that he would find. Whenever a long one would appear, he would throw his spear, conjure another one in his hand, swap ces with the thrown one and repeat the process.

    With how little energy he had to expand to recall his spears or swap ces with them, this kind of movement was actually more energy-efficient than a normal run under the influence of a haste spell.

    ''Why are you even in a hurry?'' Tom continued to try to argue with himself, unable to understand the sudden duality of his thoughts and actions.

    Whether Cleo would be fed stones soon, or a bitter, wasn''t likely to make any difference. This was something so obvious that Tom didn''t have a shred of doubt about it. After all, her state didn''t deteriorate over time, as much as Tom could judge from the short time he spent with her after the event.

    Yet, there was some kind ofpelling force that pushed him to finish his task as quickly as possible.

    ''Monsters,'' Tom thought, noticing burly figures of orc-like beings. This time, however, they were apanied by a bunch of wolf-like animals and a pack of massive spiders.

    ''Annoying,'' Tom gritted his teeth. Given how he would have to go back the same way he came, he couldn''t leave the monsters behind his back.

    Even with how insanely powerful he was whenpared to the monsters of this level, if all the mobs of the entire floor were to gather, even he would be hard-pressed to just pass by them.

    But what was even more dangerous would be the moment when the group would enter the level as a whole.

    ''I would still somehow manage, but the rest of them?'' he thought before shaking his head. ''I have to deal with them right now,'' he thought, invoking one of his staple spells.

    ''Swap!''

    Rather than appearing right at the end of the corridor, Tom swapped ces with his spear when it was right above the diverse pack of monsters.

    ''Recall,'' Tom thought, opening his palm only to close it when he felt the spear returning to it. With another thought, he infused his spear with fire and wind attributes only to execute a long, cutting sh.

    With this specific mix of attributes, it appeared as if Tom''s spear elongated, even though its real length remained all the same.

    It was the factor of wind mirroring the movements of the edge of Tom''s weapon and the fire burning out the enriched load of oxygen in it.

    A single sh and the massive gathering of monsters turned into a hellscape filled with burning flesh, flowing blood, and massacred bodies.

    ''That didn''t work?'' Tom thought with annoyance, noticing that only about half of the monsters sumbed to his attack.

    Considering the difference of levels between them, this result was truly a let-down.

    Tom had to swing his spear exactly three more times before the pocket of mobs was finally cleared out. By the time he was done, the corpses of the first batch of corpses had already started to dissolve.

    ''That''s strange,'' Tom thought, lowering his eyes on the sight. ''Normally, it would take a bit longer,'' he noticed, only to shake his head and resume his journey.

    ''The dungeon is no longer working the way I thought it would,'' Tom thought, a huge wrinkle appearing on his forehead.

    The unexpected changes to the dungeon''s behavior were something he couldn''t help but be wary of.

    This dungeon was the only ce that he could easily ess from both ends. There was even a chance that this was the only passage leading to the exact world Tom wished to visit and settle in.

    ''Unless I visit and conquer another dungeon, I won''t be able to find out the truth about them,'' he thought, tightening the grip over his spear.

    Everything was changing way too fast for Tom''s liking.

    From the situation in the sword and magic world on the other side, through the eleration of the war between the Online Hub and his family, all the way to the ongoing changes to the dungeon''s behavior...

    ''It''s as if the entire universe was elerating the pace of the events,'' Tom thought, pulling out his real spear as he neared the entrance of the boss room.

    Right now, he had no time... or rather, no will to spend the time training on the local boss. He was here just for the stones.

    Tom stopped in his tracks right before the entrance of the room. Rather than entering hot-headed and slightly tired after his dash, he properly took a few breaths to calm himself down.

    ''Let''s do this," Tom muttered to himself. It was a small encouragement, but he didn''t need it at all for a boss of this level.

    Passing by the barrier, Tom was struck by surprise. Like in a small number of scenarios before, the boss... was actually nowhere to be seen.

    ''Is it hiding or something?'' he thought, looking around the roundish room, only to confirm his initial observation.

    The boss... wasn''t here.

    Or so would Tom think if his eyes were the only sense he could use.

    The boss was nowhere to be seen, but he was more than capable of sensing a fluctuation of mana near the roof of the room. Yet, even when he looked up and strained his eyes, he couldn''t see a thing!

    ''What the hell?'' Tom thought, startled by the notion.

    If he could feel the monster''s presence, then just how advanced its hiding mechanism had to be for his eyes to keep deceiving him?

    "Well, whatever," Tom muttered, raising his face to where he could feel the strongest fluctuations. "I''m here just for the stones. If you want to fight, then I will fight you. If you want to just survive, I won''t mind it either," he said before lowering his head and moving towards the wall furthest from the entrance.

    ''That''s strange,'' he thought, approaching the wall.

    If the monster wanted to ambush him, the best time for it had already passed. After all, the boss had no means of knowing whether Tom wanted to just pass through the ce or actively consume the stones on the spot.

    With the wall and the shiny stones embedded in it right in front of him, Tom could hardly hold himself back.

    But it was the eerie silence of the room that made him so alerted.

    ''Fuck it,'' Tom suddenly thought, cing his hand on the wall and sending a small strand of his energy inside. ''Whatever the local monster is, it''s not like it can seriously harm me,'' he thought, focusing his attention on the fluctuations on the roof rather than the wall ahead of him.

    ''Wait, what?'' Tom suddenly tensed up, realizing that something was missing.

    The stones that should already trickle down to the ground... were still embedded in the wall, as if the dungeon suddenly decided that his mining trick would no longer work!

    "What the..." Tom muttered when the wall suddenly exploded.

    With his attention drawn to the fluctuations in the middle of the roof, he failed to realize that instead of a single strand of mana... Tom continued to supply the fake wall with more and more energy.

    And right now, all of this stored energy exploded right into his face!

    In a situation where the attack didn''t target him specifically but simply shoot out in every possible direction, Tom''s autoguard couldn''t really help much.

    The one thing it achieved was forcing the young man to actually jump away, right in the nick of time to avoid the main brunt of the attack.

    "This fucker..." Tom muttered, anger welling up in his soul.

    He never expected a monster to get one better over him. Maybe with the exception of thest boss of the dungeon, the one monster that Tom actually continued to struggle with.

    But for a boss of a measly forty-second floor?

    Whether it was the only way in which this boss could attack or just a trap prepared to weaken its opponent, it didn''t matter.

    Now that the hostilities had begun, Tom would be the one to end them.

    ''It hurts,'' he thought, standing up to a normal position and recalling the farthest spear that he still could recall.

    This time, he didn''t add two attributes to it. While greatly increasing the attack''s versatility, it was inevitably weaker than simply infusing it with a single attribute.

    "Burn away," he muttered, infusing all of the pain of his bruises into his intent, before sting the spear up, right towards the main source of mana fluctuations!

    Pop!

    Rather than an explosion, his spear clearly broke through some sort of shell... But it didn''t explode. Not a single hint of fire appeared.

    The entirety of the boss'' room seemed to pulse.

    And in the next moment, Tom''s spear dissolved, only to disappearpletely a momentter.

    The pulse traveled through the roof and the walls of the room again.

    And Tom could feel it was hungry for more.

 Chapter 164: Fight with the slime

    Chapter 164: Fight with the slime

    ''The dungeon is definitely changing,'' Tom thought with a grim look on his face.

    This was the first time for him to encounter a monster as such. Instead of getting affected by the magic, one that would simply consume it. A monster that could even dissolve magic hardened into physical objects.

    ''Or is it something new?'' Tom suddenly thought, whipping out his true weapon. Since his magical spears would be of no use, or rather, would only make the monster stronger, he had no other choice but to use the only physical weapon that he had in tow.

    "No, it doesn''t matter," Tom muttered, raising his eyes towards the pulsing blob of stolen magic. Now that the monster snacked on his energy, it''s lost its greatest trump card - its invisibility.

    Tom rushed forward.

    The ceiling was sadly out of the question for now. Without the use of throwing and then swapping ces with his spears, Tom had no means of reaching it.

    ''Since I can''t hit your core, let me just chip you away!'' he decided, rushing towards the wall with glistering stones.

    Tom stopped his legs when he reached roughly ten meters before the wall, sliding the rest of the distance on his foot instead.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' he smiled, ''you are not the only one who can consume magic!'' he thought, brandishing his spear and thrusting it right at the wall.

    His body instinctively protested. The idea of thrusting his weapon into a solid wall didn''t resonate with his instincts well.

    But it was Tom that was the wielder of his body, not the opposite.

    The tip of his spear touched the wall... And sank into it. Nearly three-quarters of the de ended up immersed in the wall before the tip of his weapon finally struck something solid.

    ''You are quite deep, aren''t you?'' Tom thought as a vicious gleam shed in his eyes.

    There was no need for finesse. Tom forcibly turned his weapon around for the edge of his de to aim sideways... And then, he started running.

    His monster-born weapon shed the local boss with ease. For all the tricks the boss had to its sleeve, its body was surprisingly delicate, likely a reason behind its vicious tactics.

    After all, in the dungeon, every strength came at a cost. Just like Cleo''s consciousness fading away after the girl overused her ultimate spell, for this monster to be able to counter magic so well, it had to be insanely weak against physical attacks!

    Tom continued to run in a circle. His initial idea of cutting a hugeyer of the monster out quickly proved futile when the boss managed to regenerate the opening of his cut before Tom could even reach the third of the room''s circumference.

    ''What a crafty, little bastard,'' Tom thought, tightening his jaws.

    Yet, rather than getting annoyed, Tom simply continued to run around the room, with his speer constantly damaging the monster as he went.

    ''No matter how quickly you can heal, there is a limit to how far you can keep it up!'' he thought, a vicious smile appearing on his lips. ''I wonder who will run out of breath first, me, or you?''

    This n sadly proved to be as short-lived as the previous one. Not because Tom had any doubts regarding his stamina, but because he realized the greatest w of his n.

    ''It would take too long,'' he thought, clenching his teeth. Yet, even for a second, he didn''t stop running around.

    By the time he finished his fourthp around the room, the monster finally reacted.

    Tom continued his jog like usual when the wall suddenly morphed out. It suddenly started to condense, decreasing the thickness of its body glued to the wall, only for a blob of its mass to suddenly erupt outwards, blocking Tom''s path.

    ''Whoa!'' he thought, pulling his spear out and shing the protrusion at its root, cutting it away.

    ''That was close!'' he thought, stopping his advance and retreating to the middle of the room.

    ''Still, you fucked up,'' he thought, a vile grin appearing on his lips.

    Because Tom could recognize the faint smell that the cut-away protrusion gave off as soon as it sttered on the floor.

    It was the same smell that he fell all the way in the past when he and udia lost their clothes.

    "Now I know just who are you," Tom said out loud.

    Just like he guessed up before, the boss of this room was a simple slime. Bytching itself all over the walls and ceiling and then masking itself out in it, it managed to conceal its own greatest weakness - its core.

    Even with the light pulsing across what appeared like thin veins within its body, Tom was unable to decide whether to follow this hint or not.

    ''It could be another trap,'' he thought, staring at the ce where are the lights converged and swirled into a whirlpool of lights.

    Judging from the memory and his movement around the room, it was exactly the same ce where he had previously thrown his magical spear at. Which meant it likely wasn''t the location of the slime''s core.

    ''After all, why would it expose it all on its own?'' Tom thought, taking a moment to analyze the situation. ''Or was it the w of its building, and it''s my fault that I attacked it with magic, to begin with?''

    Troubled by the situation, Tom ended up simply shaking his head.

    ''There is no use to overthinking things," he decided, shaking the spear in his hand to fix his hold over it before running towards the wall again. ''It reacted to being cut before, so it''s likely losing out with that,'' he thought. Tom then mmed the de of his spear into the squish of the wall and started to run again.

    This time, rather than trying to figure out the best approach to fighting the beast, Tom focused all his attention on the changes to his surroundings.

    Surely enough, before he could do even half of thep, the wall started to react. Once again, it suddenly started to grow, proving that the thickness of the slimes was shrinking.

    And then, just like before, it suddenly shot out. This time, though, rather than a single blob reaching for Tom''s flesh, an army of hundreds of them, each the size of a twig, erected from the wall.

    ''Futile!'' Tom shouted in his thoughts, shing away half of the slime arms with a single swing. But without his haste spell active, he was just a second toote to do away with the other half.

    ''Yuck,'' he thought, when the slimy mass attached to his clothes, quickly burning through them to get to his flesh.

    And sure enough, even with the massive level difference between him and the slime, its touch hurt like hell.

    ''I guess acids work the same, no matter how strong one was,'' Tom thought, extremely tired after forcefully restraining his autoguard spell.

    Since this slime thrived on absorbing magic, he decided to pay it back, in the same way, a while ago. He just had to reach a situation where he would be able to do so.

    And without injuries, against controlled magic, Tom was unable to use his bloody-spear spell!

    "Got you," he whispered after waiting for a few more moments for the slime''s acid to dissolve his skin and reach the living part of his flesh.

    Tom then mmed his spear into the wall, along with half of his arm''s length.

    ''Bloody spear!'' he thought, only to start shaking his hand around.

    The greatest advantage of using a spearid in the massive leverage one could use to make one''s attack hit heavier than with any other weapon. In that regard, only mallets and hammers made even better use of this principle at the cost of their maneuverability.

    But it didn''t matter now. Tom''s opponent didn''t reveal the location of its weak point, nor did it have any permanent limbs or parts that Tom would need to cut away.

    What the young man needed was any sort of damage to the slime.

    And just moving around the spear, deeply embedded into it, was more than enough for a huge array of small cuts to appear inside the slime''s body.

    Tom didn''t aim to seriously injure the monsters with his attacks.

    All he needed was for any sort of injuries to resonate with his skill!

    ''Bloody spell,'' Tom thought, a smile of satisfaction spreading on top of his lips.

    In an instant, it felt as if a thunderbolt struck Tom. A single second was enough for the third of the slime''s body to wither away while all of its energy rushed into Tom''s veins.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged in surprise, not expecting his tactic to have such a wonderful effect.

    ''Damn, I need to injure myself again,'' he thought, raising his head towards where the rest of the slime remained. Yet, just as he ced the de of his spear on top of his palms with the intention of cutting it, a strange idea appeared in his mind.

    ''Could it be possible to...''

 Chapter 165: Healing Cleo

    Chapter 165: Healing Cleo

    ''I have no idea if it''s possible, but it would be a waste not to try it,'' Tom decided, pulling himself back. He then threw onest look at the slime before shrugging his arms and turning around.

    Since he could heal himself off this monster, and this monster was perfectly capable of absorbing vast quantities of magical energy...

    Could it be possible to use this slime to heal Cleo as well? And by a stretch, if he were to somehow iste its core and bring it to the world outside, maybe even udia could see the light of the day as well?

    "I''m turning more crafty by the day," Tom muttered, lowering his weapon and approaching the barrier between the boss-room and the rest of the level.

    ''Wait a second...'' Tom suddenly stumped and froze in ce. ''This gate doesn''t allow any monsters to cross it...'' he realized, cing his hand right against the slightly shimmering area. ''I guess I won''t be able to move it anywhere outside the dungeon,'' he thought, a small wrinkle appearing on his forehead.

    Tom did his absolute best to think about ways to circumvent this problem for a moment. From taming the monster, through coating it in his own energy all the way to killing the slime and attempting to revive it outside...

    The truth was pretty disappointing. Even if there was some option to put Tom''s sudden n into motion, they required way more testing time than they could spare.

    Tom''s group was already running low on time with Cleo''s incident and their previous fun-time. Unless some quick attempts at pushing the slime''s core through the barrier would work, Tom would have no other choice but to give up on the n.

    ''Well, it''s not like we can''t return to itter,'' he thought, taking a deep breath and passing through the barrier. ''Worst case scenario, we will have to farm the dungeon for as long as necessary to encounter this boss again,'' he thought before starting to run.

    This time, Tom didn''t use haste nor any other of his spells to increase the pace of his travel.

    With the idea of bringing unconscious Cleo to the boss-room, he couldn''t allow for any monster to stand in their paths. It would be hard enough to keep two nonbatants out of harm''s way.

    There wasn''t even a shred of possibility for Tom to risk it with three of them.

    Even without exploiting the advantages of any of his skills, Tom traversed through the dungeon at a pretty fast rate. The difference in levels between him and the monsters was simply too great, reducing even whole packs of them that previously avoided his attention to nothing more but a momentary hassle.

    And soon enough, he managed to take thest corner before the rest of his group came into his view.

    "Do you have the stones?" Marvin asked as soon as he noticed the appearance of his friend.

    "I might have something way better," Tom replied, shaking his head and raising his hand to show his empty palms.

    "Tsk," Marvin clicked his tongue only to bite his lips and add, "I''m all ears."

    "Do you know about my blood-spear skill?" Tom asked, approaching the group and kneeling before the still-unconscious Cleo.

    "The one allowing you to mitigate damage by stealing it from injuring others with your spear?" Marvin nodded his head. "Yeah, I know," he said, squinting his eyes.

    "I have several more skills. And since I already proved that I canbine them, there is a huge chance I will be able to heal Cleo with my bloody spear," Tom exined his idea.

    "Do you have any idea how bad that sounds?" Marvin smiled, unable to stop himself from the little joke.

    Even in moments like that, the two of them were still old friends.

    "Piss off," Tom replied, sneaking his arms underneath Cleo''s back and knees before lifting her up. "I cleared most of the monsters on the way. Still," he said, approaching Marvin and passing the girl''s body to his arms, "let''s not risk it."

    "As you wish, leader." Marvin took over his sister and rolled his eyes. "Hopefully, we can get this over quickly.

    With no time to waste on idle chatter, the group moved on. Just like Tom announced, not a single monster appeared on their path, allowing them to reach the boss-room pretty quickly.

    "Okay, I will take over now," Tom said, approaching his friend.

    "I still have no idea how do you n to do this," Marvin countered, staring at the empty boss-room on the other side of the barrier. During their travels, Tom didn''t forget to exin what kind of monster awaited on the other side.

    "Not by princess-carrying her, that''s for sure," Tom said, grabbing the girl before settling her on his arm.

    He still had to have some room to move around unless he wished for the slime to get the upper hand on him!

    "Good luck, brother," Marvin shouted, pushing Kira and Rufus towards the barrier and standing guard a few meters deeper into the corridor.

    Even though Tom cleaned all the monsters that he could find, it was better to be safe than sorry if any of them somehow managed to sneak underneath his radar.

    "Thanks."

    Tom entered the boss room again. Just like before, the slime was nowhere to be seen, with only the fluctuations of the energy allowing the young man to detect the monster''s presence.

    ''Well, let''s start it in a peaceful way,'' Tom thought, recalling one of the magical spears to his right hand as soon as he dropped his real weapon to the floor.

    He then approached the wall and slowly pierced the spear into the wall-imitating slime.

    ''Here, eat well,'' he thought, watching how the spear dissolved and caused the entire room to pulse with lights.

    ''Another one,'' he thought, carefully feeding the slime another spear.

    Tom recalled his real weapon only when the slime''s veins'' flickering light turned permanent.

    ''Here goes nothing,'' he thought, cing his left hand on Cleo''s back before striking his spear into the soft, fake wall.

    In an instant, a burst of energy coursed through his flesh, rushing to heal all the minor damage to his muscles caused by even the slightest strain.

    ''Right, even exhaustion is just the muscle damage,'' Tom realized before shaking his head and aiming his focus.

    ''Origin mage,'' Tom thought, invoking the one ability that he still had no clue how it worked.

    Tom closed his eyes. The fluctuations of magic were more than enough to alert him if the slime were to turn aggressive, and he really had to focus right now.

    Feeling the energy stolen from the slime coursing through his body, Tom attempted to redirect it. Without changing its nature, he pushed it towards his left hand and then outwards.

    But it didn''t work.

    ''It''s heavy,'' he thought, his knees starting to shake. Just by trying to push the energy in a new, undiscovered path felt like if he was trying to lift a damned boulder, all the while breaking all his bones on the go.

    ''Don''t give up,'' Tom encouraged himself, refusing to simply drop the idea. ''Even if it''s magic, it still has to follow some rules!'' he eximed internally, pushing at the mana etched with healing intent even harder.

    And then it clicked.

    As if a new pathway was created within his body, the magic swirling in his body suddenly found an outlet, rushing towards the newly added valve. It surged through his hand, right into Cleo''s back, filling the girl with healing mana.

    Tom pulled his spear out of the wall as soon as the flow of mana ended. With his eyes closed, he couldn''t see it, but it was already pretty clear that the part of the slime he was stealing energy from was already withered.

    Right now, he supplied the girl with the pure mana of his own, squeezing his very flesh for everyst drop of energy that he coulde up with.

    "Huh?" Cleo suddenly muttered, her voice all sleepy. "What''s going on?" she asked, finally allowing Tom to cease his relentless efforts. "Huh? Why are you holding me like that?!" the girl finally freaked out, jumping off Tom''s shoulder at the same moment as his knees finally gave up.

    "Tom?" Cleo muttered, trying her best to understand what was going on.

    On the other hand, already on his knees, Tom could only breathe heavily, doing his absolute best to maintain his consciousness.

    ''Why is that?'' he asked himself, unable to understand the current situation. ''Why, despite all the mana that I have, I could only pass so little?''

    Filling Cleo with energy to the brim should be an easy job for Tom for the level he was in. Yet, for some reason, he felt as if everyst drop of juice was squeezed out of his soul and flesh alike.

    ''Why is transfering mana so damn hard?'' he asked himself, his body leaning forward only for Tom to fall on all fours. ''What''s the difference between mana I can feed to others with the mana that I have myself?'' he thought, before a convulsion shook his body, forcing him to eject the content of his stomach on the dungeon''s floor.

 Chapter 166: Dealing with the slime

    Chapter 166: Dealing with the slime

    "So this is the slime," Cleo muttered, raising her chin high to cast a nce at the blob that likely housed the slime''s core.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head. "If not for it, I have no idea what would happen to you. Hopefully, you would just sleep for a while, but it''s not like we were sure about it," he added, his expression souring.

    "Come on, I was just sleeping!" Cleo protested as she lowered her head and looked at Tom with grief. "Seriously, why did you wake me up? It was that simple..." she muttered, only for her voice to fade away when all four members of the group threw her a look.

    "It''s not like we didn''t try," Marvin joined in, taking the burden of dealing with his sister off Tom''s arms. "You wouldn''t wake up no matter how hard we attempted to force you up," he added before turning his face towards his friend. "Anyway, what are we going to do with it?"

    "That''s the right question," Tom replied offhandedly, staring at the blob with the slime''s core. "We could try asking," he said before summoning all the magical spears that he still could.

    After fiddling around with them for a little while, Tom finally managed toe up with a makeshift construction. By using the spears as poles, he set them up in a mutually-supportive arrangement, making a pyramid-like construct with a square base.

    Yet, it wasn''t something that one could just walk on. Rather than that, Tom had no other choice but to climb one of its sides like adder before he finally managed to reach high enough to get close to the slime.

    "Hey slime, I know we just fought each other to the death, but the thing is, I never really tried to kill you seriously," Tom said, ying along with the act he came up with.

    In the end, after the shitload of stress they went through because of Cleo''s problem, a littleedic relief was necessary for the party.

    "I mean, when I first encountered you, I tried to kill you and get the stones you are protecting... but you tricked me and attempted to retaliate as well, so we are even, right?" Tom continued his act.

    The greatest challenge of what he was doing was to not die from cringe as he pretended to converse with the slime.

    "You see, you proved to be capable of transforming huge amounts of magic, something that I could find a great use for. So how about instead of fighting each other to the death, you would just join us?" Tom asked, rolling his eyes.

    "Tell him the benefits!" Marvin shouted over, joining in on the fun.

    "Oh, right!" Tom pped his own face as if he had forgotten about the most important part of the speech. "If you join us, I will keep feeding you magic whenever I have some spare. On the other hand, if we will need to heal someone, we will stea...- take some of that magic back for our own purposes," Tom continued his fun.

    ''The longer it goes, the more time we will waste here. We are already behind schedule, so I will have to...'' he thought when a sudden weight appeared on his shoulder.

    Despite his level, Tom didn''t dare to move an inch. He event kept looking straight, worried that he would move too rapidly if he were to even move as little as his eyeballs only.

    "Tom..." Cleo muttered, her face tensed up in shock.

    "It''s on my shoulder, isn''t it?" Tom asked, still trying toe up to terms with reality.

    ''I knew there were some intelligent monsters... but for a slime to be one as well?'' he thought before a sudden idea appeared in his mind. ''What if... it''s not an intelligent one? What if it''s simply attacking me right now?!''

    Tom''s wariness shot through the roof, only to die off in the next moment.

    ''Wait, if it had hostile intentions, then wouldn''t it dissolve my clothes already?'' Tom noticed, finally regaining the courage and looking to the side.

    And just as expected, a small blob was currently sitting on his shoulder.

    Whenpared to before, it was no longer invisible. Its color was... strange. It appeared as if it had no color at all, yet thisck of color was so dense that it appeared to be slightly greyish.

    "Tom, it''s no longer on the walls," Marvin pointed out.

    ''So it condensed...'' Tom thought, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "Well, let''s try the most important thing, then," he said, slowly descending down the spear-made structure. "Can it pass through the barrier?"

    With this question on his lips, Tom slowly approached the entrance to the corridor.

    "I''m going to now pass through it. We need to know if you can move freely across this barrier or not," he added, exining the situation to the slime.

    Since it understood Tom''s words before, then surely it would understand it now?

    Yet, as soon as Tom made another step, the slime suddenly turned red. Then, its outer wall started to shake, as if its internal fluids were swirling around.

    "What''s wrong?" Tom asked before having to fight the wish to facepalm himself.

    How was the slime supposed to answer him?

    "We need to test it out, little one; you wouldn''t want to be brought to another floor only to find out you can''t cross the barrier!" Tom argued, trying to reason with the monster.

    The shaking lessened while the slime''s color turned pink.

    Then, as if propelled by its inward motions of fluid, the slime jumped down from Tom''s shoulder and rushed for the construction of magical spears!

    "THAT LITTLE..." Tom shouted, suddenly realizing what was the slime''s n altogether. It likely hatched it when Tom first came up with the construction, noticing how everyst part of it was made out of juicy, juicy mana! "Stop it!" he shouted.

    The amount of magic stored in Tom''s spears on the construction was pretty much the same as his current potential. The only reason why he managed to get so many of them was that he would create a new magical spear whenever his energy fully regenerated.

    In a sense, those spears were Tom''s stockpile of energy for emergencies.

    And now, this damned slime was attempting to snatch them!

    ''Wait, can''t I just recall those spears?'' Tom suddenly noticed while both Marvin and Cleo jumped towards the slime, only for the monster to easily slip out of their reach.

    ''Recall,'' Tom thought, calling forth all the spears from the construction to his side one by one. He couldn''t recall them en mase, but he could get most of them out of the slime''s way before it could reach them!

    Slomp.

    In the end, only two spears fell prey to the slime. As soon as its membrane touched the handle of the first of the spears, its fluids exploded outwards, only to harden a momentter and fall down on the spears.

    ''I can''t recall the spears anymore,'' Tom thought, worried that doing so would bring the slime along.

    Yet, the truly strange elements of the day were only about to happen.

    Because after consuming both of the spears that Tom didn''t manage to recall in time...

    The slime changed color to a green one before turning back to its usual, delicate grey. And as if nothing happened at all, it started to bounce up and down, only to return to Tom''s shoulder a momentter!

    "Excuse me?" Tom was stumped by the situation, unable to decide how he should react.

    "Maybe it needed more energy to survive the passage?" Marvin suggested, a wry smile appearing on his lips.

    "Isn''t it cute?" Cleomented in a more girly fashion, her eyes starting to shine a little.

    "Well..." Tom muttered, cautiously moving away from the pile of his spears.

    Whatever was the intent of this slime, if it were to consume all or even a big part of Tom''s spears, not only would Tom''s ability to move around during a fight substantially weaken, but the slime could also be an opponent even he would struggle against!

    While thest part wasn''t that bad in itself, after all, Tom could still defeat it by stealing his own mana back; he would no longer be able to protect the rest of his group while doing so.

    "Try taking it outside the boss room," Marvin suggested, clearly aware of the thoughts that his friend would have in a moment like that.

    "Yeah..." Tom muttered, making a wide circle around the pile of his weapons before approaching the gate once again.

    Just like before, the slime turned red for a moment, only for the color to quickly fade away, reced by a bright green.

    ''Is it trying tomunicate by changing its color?'' Tom concluded, still not sure what to think about the entire thing.

    But there was a simple way to find out whether Marvin''s guess was right.

    So Tom took the step forward and crossed the barrier.

 Chapter 167: Slimes miracle

    Chapter 167: Slime''s miracle

    "It worked..." Tom muttered, struggling to ept the operation''s sess just like that.

    The slime on his shoulder... was still there!

    As if in response to his feelings, the slime turned bright pink, wiggling around like some kind of oversized tit.

    ''So you are happy as well,'' Tom thought, raising his fingers and gently patting the slime.

    It was a strange feeling. All the way until now, Tom believed that outside of a few glorious examples, all the monsters were only the targets to be eradicated. The obstacles on his way to the dungeon''s stones or to his attempts at crossing over to their other side.

    But with the slime happily wiggling on his shoulder right now, he couldn''t really look at the monsters in the same way ever again.

    ''I knew there were some intelligent monsters ever since meeting that giant sage,'' he thought, a wrinkle appearing on his forehead. ''But to think that slime could be one as well? What if all the other monsters also can be reasoned with?'' he thought.

    ''No, I can''t waste my time on thinking about this right now,'' Tom thought, steeling his resolve.

    "We are going to go back the way we came. Are you ready?" he asked, turning his face towards the slime.

    In response, the slime simply turned green, just like when it was ready to cross back to the corridor.

    ''It had to consume two of my spears to cross in one way but is more than willing to cross the other?'' Tom thought, trying to make sense of the situation. ''Is this barrier only working as a one-way blockade?'' he thought, stepping back into the boss room.

    "It worked!" Marvin shouted in joy, clearly capable of understanding the ramifications of this event.

    If Cleo could be healed with the help of Tom''s skills and this slime, wouldn''t that mean they just received an endless supply of an ultimate potion?

    Even if using this kind of healing was taxing on Tom, didn''t that mean they just managed to find a way to heal people that even his own healing spell failed to work on?

    "Hey, Tom..." Cleo muttered, approaching her recent partner.

    "What''s up?" Tom looked up, grateful to the girl for a chance to get his thoughts off all the matters that bothered him.

    "Do you think... I could hold it for a while?" Cleo requested, her eyes shing up in passion.

    "Sure," Tomughed it off, turning his face towards the slime again. "What will it be, little guy? Could you y with her for a little?" he asked.

    The slime turned pink once again. It then tensed itself up, only to jiggle up. The momentum created by its dpression carried it up and forward, making the slime jump away from Tom''s shoulder only to end up directly in Cleo''s cupped hands.

    "AAAH!" Cleo squeaked. "It''s so cute!" she added in a high-pitched voice, only to bring the slime to her face and start rubbing her cheek against it.

    "Anyway, time to get the stones," Tom said as he shook his head.

    ''If we could actually get friendly with all the monsters in the dungeon, wouldn''t that make for a great zoo?'' he thought as a smirk appeared on his face.

    Yet, rather than thinking too much over the topic, Tom ignored the overexcited girl behind him and approached the wall with the stones.

    This time, there was no invisibleyer of slime covering it and stopping Tom from extracting the prize of the floor.

    A surge of energyter, the stones trickled down the floor, only to be stopped by Marvin''s shoes.

    "With what you two were up to before, I assume it''s my turn to consume them," he said, a weird smile growing on his face, "right?"

    "Yeah," Tom replied, averting his eyes.

    For some reason, his interactions with his old friend turned slightly weird. It was as if the fact that he slept with his sister made the air between them slightly awkward.

    "Here you go," Marvin said, raising the stone towards Tom.

    "On it." Tom whipped out his spear, yet, just as he was about to ce it on the stone''s surface, an idea appeared in his head.

    "Actually, give me a moment. I want to test something out first," he said, dropping his spear to the ground and approaching Cleo.

    "Hmm?" Cleo turned her face towards Tom, stopping her cuddles with the slime for a moment.

    "I will need the little one for a short moment," Tom announced.

    "Ehhh?!" Cleo cried out, clearly disappointed. Yet, she still grabbed the slime from her shoulder to her hands and passed it on towards Tom.

    "Listen, little one," Tom said. "Do you think you will be able to turn those stones into pure energy?" Tom asked. "Pure mana, I mean," he added a momentter, changing the wording to one that slime might have an easier timeprehending.

    The slime changed shape a little, a small protrusion growing out of it, only to turn into a thin thread that looked over Tom''s shoulder. It then quickly recalled its limb-like part before turning green.

    "That''s great. But listen to me very carefully now," Tom said, approaching his spear and bringing the slime with him. "I want you to consume all the energy in this stone. Once you are done, I want you to touch this spear and spit all that energy out to the spear," Tom said.

    ''If I were to pierce it with my spear, I would likely end up killing it,'' he thought, unwilling to take the risk.

    The truth was, he had no idea if this arrangement would work. The chances were, once the slime would consume the energy, it would no longer be a fuel capable of powering one''s growth.

    Just like Tom couldn''t use the healing powers of his bloody spear to raise his own levels by attacking monsters, the same could be the case right now.

    ''There is no biscuit for those who don''t risk it,'' he thought. In the end, for the possible reward of multiplying the energy from a single stone even further, he was more than willing to sacrifice a single, grade-four stone.

    "Well then, let''s try it out," Tom muttered, grabbing the stone from Marvin''s hand and passing it over to the slime on his own shoulder.

    The slime didn''t touch the stone. Rather than that, it pushed its body forward... and simply enveloped the entire thing as if in an attempt to consume it!

    ''Well, even if we were to lose a single stone, it wouldn''t be that much of a trouble,'' Tom thought, still bringing the edge of his spear near the slime.

    For a moment, the stone continued to gently shine through all the liquid of the slime surrounding it. Yet, before long, both the shine and the stone itself started to diffuse, only to disappearpletly a momentter.

    ''Now, let''s see what it will do,'' Tom thought, staring with curiosity at the slime.

    And lo and behold, it actually created a protrusion out of its body and touched Tom''s spear with it!

    ''What?'' Tom shrugged in shock when a wave of energy assaulted all his senses. It wouldn''t be an overestimation to say that the surge was just as powerful when Cleo shoved the entire bag worth of stones on top of his spear!

    Thankfully, before Tom could get overwhelmed by the intense amount of magic flowing through his spear into his body, he managed to take the reins of himself and pull the spear away.

    The slime jiggled up and down only to turn yellow. Yet, rather than just waiting for something to happen, it extended its protrusion, clearly aiming to touch the spear again.

    "I-it''s enough..." Tom struggled to utter, barely capable of diverting enough of his focus to speak, too busy trying to control the raging mana inside him.

    "MARVIN!" he shouted, finding it way easier than simply speaking.

    "On it!" Marvin rushed to Tom''s side, quickly grabbing his spear. Noticing his friend''s plight, Marvin was so hasty that he even ended up cutting the skin of his fingers as he grabbed to the sharp edge of the spear instead of the blunt one.

    "Aaaah...." Tom released a deep sigh of relief as the mana finally found an outlet, surging out of his body and towards his spear. Yet, rather than remaining in the spear as he was worried it would do, it properly entered Marvin''s system.

    "That''s..." Marvin attempted to say something, only to gnash his teeth and cut his sentence short. In a second, his entire body started to shine for a moment.

    And then it all ended.

    The shine of Marvin''s skin disappeared, reced by the natural, healthy color that his face would usually have. Yet, the stunned expression remained well-lodged in his eyes as he raised them to look at his friend.

    "Are you sure this was just a single stone worth of energy?" he asked, alternating his eyes between Tom''s face and the slime, still yellow in color, on his shoulder.

    "I think so," Tom replied, taking a nce at the slime.

    As if reacting to Tom''s words, the slime turned back to its natural color. Only this time, it was a bit brighter, more distinct than before.

    "Little one, do you have any energy of that stone left?" Tom asked, only to see the slime turn red.

    ''That means...'' he thought, only for an idea to spark up in his mind.

    "How about this. Back when you tried to reach for the spear, you still had the energy to spare, right?" Tom guessed, trying to figure out the pattern behind the slime''s behavior.

    The monster on his shoulder turned green.

 Chapter 168: Fourteen

    Chapter 168: Fourteen

    "Righ, before I forget," Tom turned his face away from the slime and towards his friend. "Did you manage to break through?"

    Back when Tom was helping Cleo with that matter, they weren''t really in the position of checking her skills one by one. Thankfully, Marvin was capable of assimting the energy of the stones without any excessive show.

    The reason why Tom asked this simple question was pretty straightforward. While there was some degree of randomness to one''s skills, he still believed that one''s need would influence what kind of skill they would receive next.

    "I think so," Marvin replied, looking down at his hands. "But I wasn''t very far from it earlier, so it''s not like that slime changed much," he added, trying to be as precise with the situation as possible.

    The slime on Tom''s shoulder turned slightly red, clearly not happy with the remark.

    "Do you have any idea what that skill might be?" Tom asked, unable to stop his curiosity from taking over.

    Marvin''s support skills were already quite a novelty, even when considering how varied one''s abilities could be in the dungeon. As such, with four abilities already revealed, Tom couldn''t help but wonder what would Marvin''s next ability be.

    "I... I don''t think so," Marvin bit his lip and lowered his head. "I know I have it; I can feel it... But it''s like..." he hesitated, struggling to put his situation in words.

    "It''s as if some kind of requirement isn''t fulfilled?" Tom suggested, already ustomed to this situation. After all, this was exactly what Cleo struggled with before.

    "Yeah," Marvin nodded his head, raising his head again. In his eyes, Tom could see the desperate struggle to uncover the secret of his new ability.

    ''It''s no wonder he is feeling under the water,'' Tom thought, staring at his friend''s face. ''This dungeon already proved it can still surprise us, and here he is, not onlygging behind on the firepower but even unable to discover the secrets of his new ability,'' Tom noticed, gnashing his teeth.

    He was close to Marvin enough to feel the mental pain of his friend as if it was his own. Just like he would feel the shame in cringe situations happening in a movie he would watch, Tom could resonate with what was going on in Marvin''s head.

    "Well, there is no point thinking it over too much," Tom said, hoping to take his friend''s mind out of what Marvin likely considered to be his own failure. "How about we keep going? We still have quite a few of the stones," he said, looking towards the fewteen stones still left on the floor.

    "Yeah, let''s not waste time," Markus replied, thankful for Tom''s proposition.

    Tom shook his spear out in his hand to get a better hold on it before looking over to the slime.

    "Are you ready?" he asked.

    Just like before, rather than uttering a voice, it didn''t have, the slime turned green and even rubbed itself off Tom''s cheek.

    "Let''s begin!"

    Once again, Tom had to go through the process of feeding the stone to the slime and then having the slime release all the gained energy that Tom could hold in his spear back.

    Notably, the multiplication of the energy from the stone was so great that even Tom struggled to hold it all in his spear. While it appeared to be possible to feed the energy in quick, sessive bursts instead of a single dosage, doing so quickly proved to be quite draining for the slime.

    ''I don''t think it will be that bad to let it feed off the scraps,'' Tom thought, patting the slime''s back after the third stone came and went.

    "Brother, I think I''m close," Marvin informed after taking a while to assimte all the energy that he could.

    Hisplexity didn''t improve but rather increased in brightness. While this effect gave Marvin''s skin an unhealthy look, Tom could guess what was really happening.

    ''In order to assimte all the energy, his body is using the excess amount to purify his flesh so that it can amodate all the power,'' he thought when his nose caught a whiff of an insanely repulsive stenching off from his brother. ''Just like in all those cultivation novels I used to binge back in the days. I guess its authors got at least some things right,'' he noted.

    "I did it!" Marvin soon shouted, just two stonester. At the same time, just the residual energy that Tom was too slow to absorb from the slime made it noticeably grow in strength, easily raising it from the level of a forty-second-floor boss monster to one capable of challenging level fifty monsters.

    "Any ideas this time?" Tom asked, still hoping to learn just what kind of abilities his friend could receive.

    "I don''t think you will like it," Marvin said before gulping down his strength as he stared his friend in the face with his eyes wide open.

    "Come on, man," Tom shook his head. "Just spill the beans," he requested.

    For a moment, Marvin looked at Tom''s face before finally averting his eyes and bringing them down.

    "Level ny-eight. Titles include Conqueror of the Easy Dungeon, Monster yer, Spearmaster, Ally of the Sentient, Ruthless Warrior," he said before finally raising his eyes at Tom''s face. "Brother, I can see statuses now," he exined.

    ''That doesn''t sound so promising... Or wait, aren''t this kind of thinking insanely naive?'' Surprised by the revtion, Tom had to take a moment to digest the news.

    "Wait, isn''t that pretty great?" he announced, looking at Marvin with his eyes wide open.

    "Being able to see one''s status?" Marvin repeated his earlier reveal with a questioning tone. "How is that...'' he was clearly about toin about his abilities even further when a realization struck his mind.

    "I have no idea what are you guys talking about," Cleo joined in on the discussion. "Isn''t information the greatest weapon in any kind of warfare, save for the barbaric smashing of everyone''s head?" she asked.

    "That''s what I thought right now!" Tom and Marvin spoke exactly the same words at exactly the same time. They then looked each other in the eye, only for a huge smile to appear on both of their faces.

    "So, what is your level right now?" Tom asked. ''If we manage to know how quickly the levels are rising, we would be able to more or lesspare how much using that slime is improving our growth rate,'' he thought.

    "Cleo''s is fifty-three," Marvin said after taking a quick look at his sister. He then took a little longer to look at his own hands. "My level is fifty-one," he added.

    "Great," Tom replied, a smile growing on his face. "For a moment, I thought aboutparing the growth when employing the slime''s help and when relying just on my abilities... But I don''t want to be wasteful. So, are we going to keep going?" he asked, pointing his spear towards the four remaining stones.

    Given how they started with the grade four ones, the remaining stones wouldn''t make much difference anymore.

    "I don''t think there is any point," Marvin shook his head. "Let''s just keep going," he added.

    "That''s what I think as well," Cleo nodded her head. "If we are not going to break through with those few stones, there is no point in using them yet. While this might be only my guess..." she muttered before taking a short pause to clear her throat, "it feels like momentum can influence how much we grow," she said.

    "What do you mean?" Tom asked, quite surprised to hear that news. Given how he would always consume his stones as soon as he would receive them, he never had the chance to find this particr point about them before.

    "It''s nothing I can confirm," Cleo hesitated, taking a moment to figure out what she should say, "but it feels like it''s easier to absorb more energy, the more energy we absorb..." she said. She then lowered her eyes only to shoot the chin of her head up and steal a nce at Tom. "Does this make any sense?"

    ''Well, I vaguely remember a simr rule regarding space travel,'' Tom thought, squinting his eyes. ''The faster you go, the more efficient further eleration will be,'' he recalled one sentence he dug out from an ancient forum when he enjoyed the rocket-building game of the ancient age.

    "It won''t hurt to try," Tom finally said, shaking his head. "Let''s not waste any time, then. Little one, are you ready to cross to the next level?" he asked.

    The slime was already green, so it first turned to its natural, opaque color only to turn itself green again.

    "Oh," Tom shrugged, "on that note, what is our slime''s level?" he asked.

    "Give me a moment," Marvin muttered, approaching Tom''s shoulder. Yet, when he pulled his face away, Tom could tell that something was amiss.

    "It''s level is..." Marvin swallowed a gulp of saliva, "fourteen!"

 Chapter 169: Its 5am, cant think of a title - author

    Chapter 169: It''s 5am, can''t think of a title - author

    "That doesn''t make any sense," Tom muttered, unable to tear his eyes away from the slime. "Level fourteen? On the forty-second floor?" he asked, voicing out the obvious contradiction.

    Sweat started to trickle down Tom''s neck.

    This wasn''t the first time for the young man to be puzzled by the findings of the dungeon. But for the first time, he couldn''t even form a single guess as to what this peculiarity could mean.

    Or rather, the answer was so obvious that it almost pushed itself to the tip of Tom''s tongue, begging for him to spell it out loud. The thing was, the meaning behind such an answer was too disastrous for Tom to ept it.

    "What if all the monsters are on low levels? Just... stronger?" Marvin proposed the solution that Tom was unwilling to speak about.

    Not because monsters being stronger on the first level was that much of a big deal on its own. After all, as their adventure within the dungeon proved, this didn''t change anything.

    But the slime on Tom''s shoulder proved something, of which ramification was easily capable of scaring Tom.

    ''If monsters can be powerful even on their first level... How strong would they be if they were allowed to level up freely?''

    Like the slime that they managed to tame proved, monsters were likely capable of leveling up.

    "Why are you so concerned about this, guys?" Cleo asked, looking at the two of them as if they were over-worrying themselves for no reason. "It''s not like the monsters can leave the dungeon, right?" she pointed out, alternating her eyes between her brother and her friend and, since recently, lover.

    "That''s... yet to be confirmed," Tom sighed. "Even if it didn''t happen before, we have no idea if it can or can not happen in the future," he said.

    "Is there even any point in worrying about it?" Cleo asked, unwilling to drop her agenda. "It didn''t happen. That means neither of the worlds is prepared for such an oue. And if the push were toe to shove..." she smiled deviously.

    "Nuke solves it all," Tom muttered, finishing the girl''s sentence.

    One could have all the magic that one wanted. One could have the strongest body that one wanted. But in the face of total annihtion, of the forces of nature brought to their extreme, no living matter could survive.

    In the face of the sma hotter than the sun, everything was bound to perish.

    "The thing is," Tom shook his head, "even if our home can defend itself if the push were toe to shove, we can''t say the same about the world we are heading towards," he said, his face taking a look of worry again.

    Sure, an atomic bomb could be the ultimate solution. Even if there existed a creature that could resist a single element of the atomic explosion, it was ultimately all the natural disastersbined into one.

    If there existed something capable of resisting the temperature of the nuclear discharge, then it would perish to the radiation. If something could withstand both radiation and temperature, it would be turned into smithereens by the shockwave.

    The problem that Tom had with this kind of solution was... that he had no means of getting his hands on a single nuke!

    ''Raiding the earth is out of options. Even if any nuke survived thest war, they are bound to be strictly guarded. And it''s not like my skills would make me able to outrun a sustained and heavy fire,'' he thought, biting his lips.

    "Tom!" Cleo shouted, finally getting through the intenseyer of anxiety that Tom built around himself as he immersed himself in his thoughts.

    "What?!" Tom snapped at the girl. It wasn''t his intention. All the emotions pent up in his soul, all the stress, anxiety, and burden of leadershipbined into this single shot at the girl.

    "Calm the fuck down!" Cleo shouted, pping her hand against Tom''s face.

    For a moment, Tom simply stood in shock. The intense sensory experience overloaded his brain for a moment, making him struggle to regain control over his body.

    "Wheeez," Tom took a deep breath, slowly releasing the air back while rxing his body at the same time.

    "Thanks," he said, rubbing his hand against his cheek. "You didn''t hold back at all, though," he added, sending a sad puppy nce over to the girl.

    "Don''t you make those eyes at me," Cleo smirked, "it won''t work," she added.

    The situation was more or less diffused. Even though they figured out or solved absolutely nothing, Tom returned to his senses.

    And looking at the stares that Kira and Rufus were throwing them from the back of the corridor, it was clear that solving that problem was an absolutely greatest priority.

    In the end, how could they hope to pass through the dungeon if the strongest person in the group and their leader would lose himself to the pressure?

    "I guess I was overthinking too much," Tom summed up his previous behavior. "Whether monsters can level up or not, it''s not something that I should be thinking about right now. Since they don''t seem to be capable of leaving the dungeon..." he muttered when another realization struck him.

    ''Are they?'' he thought when a single figure appeared before his mind.

    "I will wait for you on the other side," said the mysterious girl before Tom engaged inbat with thest boss of the dungeon. He never saw her again ever since that time, but if she was in a dungeon...

    Was she a human? An elf? Another kind of humanoid? Or was she a monster?

    ''Damn, I''m really overthinking this,'' Tom thought, swallowing a gulp of his saliva. He then raised his eyes and looked at Cleo. ''For now, I need to focus on getting us out of this ce,'' he decided.

    "You good?" Marvin asked, patting Tom''s shoulder.

    "Yeah," the young man nodded his head before shaking it a little. "Anyway, whenever we say to stop wasting time, we end up wasting even more of it. So I won''t repeat it this time," he said with a smile.

    "Yeah," Cleo nodded her head. "Since I''m not sure if I should use that skill of mine, I will hold the backline," she announced, turning around and moving towards the rest of the group.

    "Care to join me, then?" Tom asked, grasping his spear a bit tighter. For some reason, the cold metal of the spear''s handle had a calming effect on his mind.

    In a sense, holding on to his weapon made him slightly tunnel-visioned, as if onlybat existed in a world where he held his spear. But within the confines of the dungeon, it was hardly a bad thing.

    "Sure thing," Marvin smiled, seeing that the real Tom returned. "I want to test my skills. And since I''m support-oriented..." he shook his shoulders.

    "You can''t do it without someone to support," Tom finished his friend''s words with a smile. "Let''s get going then!" he said.

    Yet, before either of them could make as much as a single spell, the monsters finally appeared from behind the corner of the corridor.

    "It seems like we really took more time than we should," Tom muttered, silently ming himself for the fact.

    Fighting the monsters within the same corridor as the rest of their group theoretically wasn''t anything bad...

    ''I don''t want Rufus to see anybat,'' Tom thought, starting to slowly jog towards the mixed group of monsters. ''His childish ideas of what it means to be a hero are already a force strong enough to pull him towards exploring the dungeonster on,'' he thought, scanning theposition of the monster''s group. ''I don''t want to make any shy scenes for him to be even more inspired,'' he thought.

    "Marvin!" Tom shouted, right as he leaned his body forward.

    "On it!" Tom''s friend didn''t waste any time.

    There were seven wolf-like monsters, three of which carried goblins armed with various kinds of sharp tools and dressed in leather armor. Behind them, a group of three orcs, three heads higher than your average human, followed.

    "I GOT IT!" Marvin suddenly shouted, filled with excitement.

    "What?" Tom shouted back, fighting the desire to turn back and look at his friend.

    "I have no idea!" Marvin dutifully reported. "Just brace yourself!" he added, warning his friend.

    Tom''s vision tunneled. This time, it wasn''t the effect of his spear but an event that he could clearly observe. The corridor seemed to elongate, turning the monsters into a faraway sight.

    Only to suddenly copse right on Tom''s face, as if the passage shrank from roughly fifty meters it was in reality, to just a single step.

    This strange vision ended as soon as it ended. Tom''s sight returned to how his eyes would normally operate right after that.

    With one distinctive difference.

    Right now, he could see some kind of strange, red paths cutting right through the corridor. Paths that, for some reason, had a strangely attracting force over his body!

    Unsure what this feeling was, Tom decided to give himself up to it.

    His body moved as if pulled by the strings. His hand shot backward as his legs pushed him ahead. By the time he reached the group of monsters, the same strings had pulled his hand forward, sneaking his spear right underneath the guard of the goblin only for Tom to cleave its head cleanly off!

    ''Could it be?'' Tom thought, breaking control of this strange feeling of his body and kicking the ground. After he gained a tiny bit of distance, he quickly got to the work, massacring everyst of the monsters, leaving only a single orc alive.

    This was still just the forty-third floor. Monsters that popted it were of no challenge for Tom to ughter. But there was still one thing that he wanted to try.

    "Marvin, can you try it again?"

 Chapter 170: This place has this kind of effect on ones mind

    Chapter 170: This ce has this kind of effect on one''s mind

    "Go on!" Marvin shouted over. And just like before, Tom''s vision tunneled. It at first expanded as if the distance increased before making Tom feel as if he fell down the hole of said distance, closing it in a single second.

    And then, everything returned to the usual look, with a red path calmly hanging in the air.

    ''I think I get it now,'' Tom thought, allowing the path to take over his movements.

    His spear flew forward. By the time he closed half of the distance, he somehow changed the hold over his spear, holding it like some kind of long-handled ax.

    And then he swung it down, cleaning thest remaining orc from its shoulder all the way to its belt.

    ''Fuck,'' Tom thought, his muscles exploding in pain. The swing of his spear,bined with all the power he had to infuse in the strike, brought his muscles well beyond what they would normally be capable of doing.

    He defeated the orc in just a single hit, sure, but he now had to pay the price of it.

    "I think I know what that skill is," Tom muttered, lowering his weapon and massaging the muscles of his right shoulder.

    "So do I," Marvin smiled, looking at the cleaved body of the orc. "It''s something like a buff to a critical hit, right?" he suggested.

    "You can see it too?" Tom asked. "Those red paths, I mean," he specified his question.

    "Yeah," Marvin nodded his head. "But looking at how you reacted, this will be only useful in the direst of situations," he said, his face slightly quivering.

    "Man, seriously," Tom shook his head. "Can you imagine how insanely powerful this would be if it could allow me to finally deal with that damned boss?" he asked, sending Marvin a slightly annoyed stare. "Right now, it might not look powerful because I''m against monsters I could deal with anyway," he pointed out before turning towards the further part of the corridor.

    "Brother, I understand it," Marvin whined. "I''m aware just how powerful support like me can be in terms of enhancing the strength of the party. What I don''t like, though, is how you guys will be risking your lives while I will stayfortably in the back!" he exined his mind.

    "So that''s what you meant all this time," Tom finally understood his brother. He then turned around and approached the annoyed Marvin. "Listen," he said, cing his hand on his friend''s shoulder. "We are not going to risk our lives. I managed to get through this dungeon all on my own. With your help, it''s only going to get easier."

    "And what next?" Marvin raised his head, looking directly into Tom''s eyes. "Once we are done with the dungeon, in the new world that you wanted our family to settle in, what then?" he asked, pushing Tom''s hand away.

    "We are already more than powerful enough to steamroll through anyone daring to oppose us there," Tom replied, surprised by the continued outburst of his friend.

    "Did you already forget what title I can see you have?" Marvin asked, squinting his eyes. "Conqueror of the easy dungeon. And that means there are dungeons that are far harder out in the world somewhere. If level one hundred is what can one realistically achieve in this dungeon, then what if someone wille with level two hundred?" he asked.

    "That''s something I already thought about," Tom said with a smile. "Once we prepare the grounds for the family to settle in the new world, we are going to go and look for my father, that''s obvious, but we are also going to enter any dungeon we can to get even stronger," Tom exined his idea.

    "And what would that change for me?!" Marvin shouted before his eyes suddenly roamed over Tom''s shoulder. "Fuck, we were too loud. Would you mind?" he asked.

    "Yeah, give me a moment," Tom replied before releasing a deep sigh.

    Right now, they were still stuck rtively close to the opening of the dungeon. Contrary to their talks within the boss rooms of the floor, being in the corridor means that the monsters would just keeping.

    Still, it wasn''t a problem for Layn. With his overwhelming strength, dealing with the rush of a group of monsters was just a breeze. A breeze that allowed him to calm down and think things through a little.

    "Anyway," he said as he returned from the group of monsters, "you are worried that you are not putting yourself to the same degree of risk that the rest of us do," Tom reiterated Marvin''s earlier words. "But tell me one thing, back when you were managing the family during my absence, did you take the same risks as themon soldiers?" he asked.

    "Wait, what do you mean? Or rather, what do you imply?" Marvin asked, squinting his eyes.

    "Back when you ordered someone to send the catalyst off, did you do it personally?" he asked.

    "No, obviously not," Marvin shrugged, clearly surprised by the question.

    "Then how is it any different from what you are doing right now?" Tom asked, a small smile growing upon his lips.

    "You are my friend and a sworn brother while Cleo is my sister, duh!" Marvin yelled out, proving that the family wasn''t anywhere as united as Tom always imagined it to be.

    It wasn''t a surprise. Tom was perfectly aware that while he could force the entire group to move along his wishes thanks to this status as the boss, it wasn''t a singr entity with discipline and professionalism rivaling the militaries of the old.

    It wasn''t the case the moment his father disappeared into the dungeon, only for the world to drastically start to change a mere monthter.

    "Marvin, listen," Tom lowered his head only to shake it. "I entered into this dungeon, fully ready to die in it. I just couldn''t let go of the idea of finding my father," he said, resting his back against the corridor''s wall. "When I did so, I couldn''t care less about the rest of the family with some glorious examples," he admitted, lowering his gaze and sticking it to the ground.

    "And what?" Marvin asked, clearly unhappy with the direction Tom was leading their debacle to. "Do you believe hearing about your misgivings would excuse my own?"

    "No," Tom shook his head. "What I meant to say by that is that we can only care about a limited number of people. We can care about the family as a whole, but it will never be a feeling as powerful as ones that the few closest to us can invoke," he exined his mind.

    "And what does that have to do with anything that we were talking about before?" Marvin asked, raising one of his eyebrows as he sneered.

    "You have a problem with not putting yourself through the same degree of risk as Cleo and I do, right?" Tom asked, deciding to use one of his preferred forms of debating with others.

    "That''s right," Marvin nodded his head, his smile turning slightly vicious. "For how much I did to protect the family in your absence, this makes me quite the viin, doesn''t it?" he suggested, raising his head and mirroring Tom''s pose. The only difference was, instead of putting his head down, he looked up, sticking his eyes to the ceiling.

    "You made the best use of the resources and position avable to you in order to achieve the things you cared for the most," Tom reiterated his own understanding of Marvin''s stance. "Then look at the current situation. You only have a very limited degree of control over what skills you receive. Just think about it. Did you ever see me train with a spear before?" Tom asked, unable to hold back his giggle.

    In a sense, the only time when he considered learning any form of martial arts, it was fully limited to either barehanded techniques or swordy. There wasn''t any deeper meaning behind it, outside of the childish dreams of being a hero and conquering foreignnds to bask himself in the glory of people and adoration of jade beauties.

    "Well, nay?" Marvin replied, leaning his head over the shoulder. It was clear that Tom''s jumps in topis were too huge for Marvin to connect them on his own.

    "When I started getting my spear skills, I decided to go with the flow. In a sense, I don''t know how to use a spear for real, even though it''s my main weapon right now," Tom giggled. "And I believe this is the kind of mindset that you should have right now, just like you had it back when you lead the family. The only difference between those two situations is that you were prepared for one, while the other took you by surprise."

    "So I should just stop whining and focus on getting even better support skills?" Marvin summed up all of Tom''s words in just a single sentence.

    "That''s right," Tom nodded his head, rolling his eyes over the way in which his friend simplified the situation. "We can''t change what skills we receive upon leveling up. While I believe there is some sort of logic behind it, I have yet to understand it," he said. "But there is one thing that we can change," Tom said, but instead of exining his mind, he simply looked at his friend.

    "We can change the way in which we look at those skills," Marvin muttered before shaking his head.

    "Well, I don''t me you for losing your chill in this ce," Tom smiled, pushing his back against the wall and fixing his position.

    Even though they lost quite a while bickering like that, he much preferred to help his brother regain peace of mind than being punctual.

    Just like he said before, there was a limited number of people that were infinitely higher in the priority hierarchy for him. And for those people, he didn''t really mind turning into a monster for others.

    Even if it meant turning his back on the rest of his family.

    "This ce just has this kind of effect on people," Tom muttered, bringing his eyes up towards the corner of the corridor.

    The monsters have already managed to find out about their whereabouts. While they were still hidden by the dungeon''s structure, Tom could already hear the noises of them rushing ahead.

    "But now, we need to focus on catching up with the schedule," he said, fixing his grasp over the spear.

    "Oh, right," Marvin suddenly shouted, making Tom look over his shoulder. "There is one thing that we believe we should focus on now," he said, approaching Tom and patting him on his shoulder. "Rather than letting us keep increasing our levels, how about you try to reach the hundredth level yourself first?"

 Chapter 171: 1357

    Chapter 171: 1357

    The group finally managed to speed up in hopes of adhering to their schedule.

    With the decision to let Tom soak all the mana from the stones in hopes of pushing him to the breakthrough point of a hundredth level, they no longer needed to take short breaks between each of the floors.

    Breaks that, although short on their own, quickly started to amount to yet another portion of theirteness.

    "Okay, I''m off for the boss," Tom announced as soon as the group reached the end of the corridor.

    Right now, they were at the endpoint of the fiftieth floor. A single step further, and Tom would have to face the rank-up boss, one that belonged to the ss of monsters of the floors above rather than the floors below.

    "Marvin, remember. You only need to take a quick look at it before retreating," Tom reminded his friend about their n. "While I shouldn''t have any problems with it, we are slowly encroaching upon the monsters that might act in a way that exceeds my imagination," he said.

    "Don''t worry," Marvin smiled, a hint of excitement shing in his eyes. "I might be a ball of whining, but I''m not stupid," he said, moving his eyes towards the monster standing in the center of the room.

    It was a monster that Tom had never seen before, despite venturing deep and wide into the dungeon. Not in any of his real adventures, nor back when he still used an avatar to explore this ce.

    ''It looks kinda like a... faun?'' he thought, observing everyst twitch of the monster before finally releasing a deep sigh. ''Whatever it is, it doesn''t change what I need to do,'' he thought.

    "Are you ready?" Tom asked, turning his face around to take a look at his friend.

    "Any time," Marvin smiled, bending his knees a little.

    The time when his head was filled with pointless arguments about his skills was long gone. Right now, Marvin was back to his usual,posed self, ready to make the best of his job before doing his even better to run away to safety.

    "Let''s go, then," Tom muttered, taking a stride forward.

    Passing through the barrier usually wasn''t any special kind of experience. It felt as if a veil ofpressed air washed over Tom''s skin, and then he would be already in the boss room.

    But this time was different.

    ''Wha...'' Tom shrugged, feeling as if just by stepping inside, he mmed his entire body into a wall.

    It wasn''t stopping his movements. It wasn''t something solid.

    It was the sheer density of the monster''s aura that the faun continued to calmly release that made Tom''s entire insides shiver.

    ''Just what is this thing,'' he thought, his eyes opening up wide.

    "So you havee," the being consisting of furry, goat-like legs and a perfectly human top-half of its body said, looking towards Tom.

    There wasn''t a single hint of fear on its face, nor the usual rage. It had the look of a perfectly sentient being, one that was just as aware of its own existence as was Tom, Marvin, or Cleo.

    In other words, it was just as human as they were, outside of not being a human at all.

    "What are you?" Tom asked, fighting off the thrill that urged his body to retreat. It was a sensation he didn''t expect to experience anywhere outside of the very bottom floor.

    "Shouldn''t you ask who I am instead?" the goat-like person released a small chuckle. "How rude!"

    "Fine, my bad," Tom muttered, lowering the center of his weight and grasping his spear tightly. He already had all kinds of spells at the tip of his tongue, ready to engage at the first moment''s notice.

    "Who are you?" Tom asked, staring down at the monster.

    "I''m Faunaris," the faun bowed gently.

    "Given that you are sentient, are you willing to let me and my group pass?" Tom asked, still hoping for a peaceful resolution of the situation.

    Just from the density of this monster''s aura, there was one thing that he had no other choice but to be perfectly aware of.

    Tom didn''t have even the slightest chance in a stand-off between the two.

    "I''m sorry, but that''s impossible," Faunaris shook its head. "If you want to pass through, you will have to satisfy my curiosity," it said, gracing Tom with a smile.

    "And I can satisfy it by...?" Tom said, leaving his sentence open to turn it into a question.

    "Isn''t that obvious?" Faunaris leaned his head over his shoulder. He then waved his hand...

    And a sword appeared in it!

    ''Does it work just like my spear recall?'' Tom instantly recognized the ability. After all, he had one that worked in exactly the same way! ''Or is it a sword creation instead?'' he asked himself.

    "And it will be a fight to the death, I assume," Tom muttered, barely stopping his knees from giving up.

    "Tom..." Marvin suddenly whispered, making Tom''s body shiver.

    The Faunaris turned his eyes to the side, looking away from Tom.

    "It''s level is..." Marvin attempted to say, only for his words to end up stuck in his throat.

    "Run away," Tom uttered with the utmost struggle, barely capable of speaking with all the oppressive aura around hampering his senses.

    Marvin didn''t need any convincing. The thick drops of sweat trickling down Tom''s forehead were enough of a reason for him to realize just how desperate the situation was.

    In the end, the dungeon had its moments when it didn''t act in a way one would expect it to do.

    "...three hundred fifty-seven!" Marvin shouted, jumping to the back in hopes of crossing the barrier before the faun could react.

    "That''s wrong," Faunaris smiled with glee. "You missed a thousand at the beginning," it added, showing the whites of its teeth in a wide smile.

    ''It''s over.'' Tom strangely calmed down.

    Faced with a being so overwhelmingly stronger than him, there was no use in panicking.

    ''If it wants me dead, I''m dead,'' he thought, taking a deep breath despite all the oppressive aura filling the room. ''There is no use asking what does it do at such a low level,'' he thought, raising his eyes with curiosity at this strange being.

    "And to answer your question," Faunaris said, moving his eyes back at Tom, "if you fail to satisfy me, then yeah, you will die here," it announced.

    There wasn''t even a shred of mercy in this being eyes. Outside of the hint of curiosity and its overbearing confidence, there was nothing in its eyes at all.

    "Just two more questions, then," Tom said, raising his left hand and showing two of his fingers. "First, are you acquittance with the girl at the highest floor of this dungeon? The one with a lizard-like tail?"

    "Oh, you mean Daria?" Faunaris suddenly opened its eyes a little wider, clearly interested in the matter that Tom brought up. "Aquiatanced, yeah. But she is just a dumb kid that his fucker could easily put into guarding this passage," Faunaris scoffed and even rolled its eyes. "Weak, untrained, relying on nothing but her innate power. A ck sheep of the draconoid kind," it exined before shaking its handsome face and moving its eyes back at Tom. "And the second question is...?"

    "Actually, now I have more questions..." Tom muttered, biting his lips, "but I believe you won''t be inclined to answer them. So let''s just go with what I originally intended to ask," he said, reaching to his belt and bringing up a small sack. "Would you mind if I power up before our fight a little?"

    Faunaris looked at Tom with his eyes filled in surprise. Then it suddenlyughed off, dropping its sword and allowing it to disperse back into the form of free mana.

    "Feel free to power-up however much you like!" it giggled, amused by the sheer audacity of Tom''s idea.

    As if leveling up even a bit right now could change the oue of their fight!

    "Give me a moment, then," Tom nodded his head with gratitude, turning around and walking back towards the barrier.

    "Don''t even think about it," Faunaris'' voice suddenly turned cold. "This barrier can''t stop me if I bother to break it," it warned. "There is no use trying to run away, not after you caught my attention," it added.

    "It was never my intention," Tom rolled his eyes as he replied. "Just give me a moment," he added, passing through the barrier back into the middle of his group.

    "LET''S RUN!" Cleo shouted the moment Tom crossed the barrier. To the side, Marvin was retching by the wall, his body unable to withstand the mere presence of Faunaris aura.

    "There is no use," Tom shook his head. In the short time since he encountered the faun, he managed toe to terms with what was about to go down.

    When he entered the dungeon for the first time, he was prepared to pay with his life for doing so. The fact that it would happenter than he initially expected yet way earlier than he wished for... changed nothing.

    Because the world was never kind. It was a misconception those living in thefort of the cities could have.

    ''No matter how much the world advances, this simple truth will never change. Run it, dread it, one''s deathes all the same,'' he thought, steeling his resolve.

    "Little one, I will need you for this onest time," he said, turning towards the slime on Cleo''s shoulder.

    The slime turned grey for a moment, showing emotion of this color for the first time. Nheless, it then turned green before jumping on Tom''s arm.

    With a whip of his hand, Tom threw the bundle of mana stones in the air before piercing the tip of his main spear into the tip of the bag.

    The stones poured down one by one, quickly coated in the slime''s liquids. Then, a small limb appeared out of the slime''s blob before touching the de of Tom''s spear.

    In an instant, a raging wave of energy rushed inside Tom''s flesh, filling his body to the brim.

    All signs of exhaustion vanished from his body. Then, his entire self exploded in pain of the forced growth.

    This was an experience far more dreadful than simply absorbing the stones. It appeared that multiplying the energy came at a cost.

    ''It''s like the energy turns less efficient if it''s morepacted, more eptable for a human''s absorption,'' Tom thought, epting all the pain that came with his growth.

    In a mere instant, thest hurdle before his breakthrough fell apart, adding the third digit to his level. But it didn''t end there.

    As if some kind of strange vortex appeared inside his soul, the raging current of mana suddenly started to vanish inside it.

    And then it all ended.

    Tom opened his eyes only to look down at his hand. He could tell what happened, but he couldn''t believe just how unlucky he had to be.

    ''Casino EX?'' he thought, tightening his palm into a fist, ''are you for real?''

    But as much of a failure his new skill was, there was no escaping the reality.

    Tom turned around and walked right back into the room. He didn''t bid farewell to his friends, hoping to spare them the needless emotional struggle.

    "Onest thing before we begin," Tom said out loud, grasping his spear as hard as he could.

    "Speak freely," Faunaris nodded its head as if respecting the look of determination in Tom''s eyes.

    "Whatever the oue of our fight will be, you won''t hurt my friends," Tom announced. He didn''t request it but rather put this matter as a fact instead.

    "You have my word," Faunaris nodded its head again before invoking a new sword in its hand. "Shall we go, then?" it asked, lowering its center of weight.

    "Let''s begin!" Tom shouted, mirroring the movements of this being before rushing ahead.

 Chapter 172: Fight with Faunaris

    Chapter 172: Fight with Faunaris

    Tom rushed forward.

    He didn''t cast any of his supportive skills, unwilling to reveal his hand so early in the fight. Instead, he simply relied on his already fearsome physical capabilities.

    ''Let''s see how good this Ex skill is!'' he thought, rushing towards the faun ahead.

    "You are too hasty," Fanuaris smiled, angling the hold over his sword.

    Before Tom could even reach close to the monster, another sword appeared in its other hand, turning him from a single-wielder to a dual wielder.

    ''Is that your trick?'' Tom thought, jogging at a fraction of his speed forward.

    He saw no point in actually closing the distance and entering the closebat quarters. Just from the look at Faunaris face, Tom could tell that shing weapons with him would be no different than a death sentence.

    But there was one skill of his that required him to get just a little closer.

    ''Recall,'' Tom thought, burying his feet into the ground. But instead of calling just a single spear of his...

    He called all of them.

    His hands instantly turned encumbered, unable to hold more than three or maybe four spears at once. As such, Tom had no other choice but to drop his main weapon, allowing all his magical spears to keep appearing in his palm only to instantly fall down.

    "A trick?" Faunaris muttered, its eyes opening a little. It quickly took two steps to the back, escaping from the range of Tom''s domain.

    ''Was it a fluke?'' Tom thought, steeling his face to not let his opponent see how disappointed he was. Given the massive level gap between him and the monster, he hoped that thetter would disregard Tom''s actions, allowing him to make full use of his domain.

    In the end, it was the strongest skill he had!

    ''It doesn''t matter,'' Tom thought, sliding forward as more and more weapons continued to pour out of his palm.

    And then, there was a resonance, as if Tom''s call for his weapon struck a wall, only to rebound and clog the magic pathways his mana had to take to call forth his weapons.

    ''Spearmage domain,'' Tom thought, in an instant, wrestling all of his weapons up and forward.

    Due to his constant motion forward, everyst spear of his was currently behind his back. Yet, under the influence of his spearmage domain, two things started to continuously happen.

    First, the spear would jerk forward as if there was a rocket engine attached to its front by some kind of invisible string. Once the spear would pass by Tom''s body, it would suddenly start burning in hot mes and fire, and wind attribute coated the entire thing.

    ''It would be best to make them explode on impact,'' Tom thought, gritting his teeth.

    Because the monster retreated the two steps it did, he could no longer exert such precise control over his spears at the distance where the explosion would be effective.

    "A spear domain?" Faunaris muttered, a hint of respect shing through his eyes. "You really are that fucker''s son,'' it added, instantly throwing Tom''s concentration off.

    "What?!" he asked in shock, losing control over his spears. The n that he crafted for the fight fell apart in an instant, making four of Tom''s spears shoot forward, only to be deflected by a quick movement of Faunaris swords.

    "Ah, sorry for that," Faunaris apologized, shaking its head up and down. "That was unseemly of me. Do you need a moment to reorganize your thoughts?" it asked with an arrogant smile.

    "I will..." Tom muttered silently, gathering his focus back.

    ''I can''t make the explosion reach so far,'' he thought. By attaching the attribute to his spears and dissolving the spear just as it would near the faun''s body, he could make the freed energy of the magical spear fuel the explosion of the two attributes mixing over the copse of their medium.

    But now that the faun stepped outside of the range of Tom''s domain, he could no longer do it. In the end, this kind of attack was something that he came up with on the spot when his hopes for some powerful skill were broken.

    ''Wait, if I can''t make the explosion reach him, does it actually matter?'' Tom thought, an idea appearing in his eyes.

    "I WILL MAKE YOU ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Tom''s disposition changed. He kneeled down, grabbing one of his spears directly with his hand before throwing it towards the faun himself.

    "Seriously, if you need to calm down..." Faunaris raised its head with a shocked expression on its face. It was clear that this monster didn''t expect this kind of outburst from its opponent.

    Tom''s spear flew towards the faun... But just as it was about to escape from the range of Tom''s domain, it exploded.

    For a mere second, neither Tom nor Faunaris could see each other as an orange flower of magical outburst shielded them from their view.

    The explosion itself could, at most, warm the air around the faun. But blocking its view was enough.

    Tom jerked all of his spears forward, sending them ahead in two batches.

    The flower of the first explosion quickly diminished, allowing Faunaris to notice the attack.

    "Can''t you see it didn''t work?!" it shouted as if in agony over Tom''s refusal to ept the reality.

    ''Disperse,'' Tom thought, breaking apart the first wave of his spears.

    For a single instance, a huge number of the explosion shook the entire room.

    Sure, on its own, a single explosion could at most scare the mobs of the upper level. For people on Tom''s level, not to speak about Fanaris himself, it was nothing more than a gust of warm air.

    But the same couldn''t be said about half of Tom''s entire stock turning into mes all at once!

    "Tch," Faunaris clicked its tongue, taking another step back. Even for him, the temperature quickly turned unbearable.

    And then, the second wave of Tom''s spear emerged from the orange balls of mes.

    Each of those spears carried no attribute whatsoever.

    ''On its level, it''s likely able to sense this kind of magic,'' Tom thought a moment earlier, removing the attributes from the second wave of the spears. What''s more, he made sure to grab his main weapon by hand.

    As soon as the first explosion was unveiled, Tom sent the second wave of his spears ahead, only to throw his main weapon forward half of a secondter.

    ''It knows what the domain is, so maybe in this way I can at least surprise it?'' Tom thought.

    All of his magic spears... were ultimately nothing more but constructs of condensed magic. Tom dared not to assume that just throwing them at the faun without attaching any attribute would allow him to cheat the senses of the monster.

    Just like he could feel the movements of the mob monsters in the dungeon before actually seeing them with his eyes, Tom believed Faunaris could treat his actions just in the same way.

    As nothing more but a struggle of an ant, unaware of just how big the difference was between it and the human foot about to stomp on it.

    But that didn''t mean an ant couldn''t at least try to fight back! As futile as it was, this was the right that every living being had.

    "Clever," Faunarismented when the second wave of spears emerged from the explosion, all rushing at different parts of its body while others cut his possible routes of escape out. In a sense, this was the true form of a wall of des, covering a huge area with equal distribution of threat between the des.

    "BUT ITS FUTILE!" Faunarisughed the attack off. "DOMAIN!" it shouted, instantly dwarfing Tom''s attempts.

    ''He can use it to,'' Tom dully noticed, rushing forward. He had no time to waste if his spearmage domain failed to work. Right now, as desperate as it was, only a close-quarter''sbat could still give him some chance.

    "Ah?" Faunaris uttered in shock at the same moment when Tom finally emerged from the cloud of smoke leftover by the attack. He held a newly conjured magic spear in his hand, ready to attack the monster at the first moment''s notice.

    But instead of attacking, Tom buried his feet into the stone of the floor, stunned by sight before his eyes.

    Hisst-ditch attack, desperate attempt at oveing the limitations of the monster''s senses... actually worked.

    Faunaris held the handle of Tom''s main weapon. But rather than pointing it towards the young man, it instead simply stopped the weapon from piercing right through him.

    Nheless, the tip of Tom''s spear was definitely embedded into the monster''s insides!"

    "You actually managed tond a hit on me," Faunaris muttered, raising its eyes in shock and awe.

    "I did?" Tom instantly sensed the opportunity, dropping the spear in his hand and slowly walking towards the monster with an empty expression in his eyes. "I know it is too much... but can I get my spear back?" he pleaded, his voice trembling, his eyes fixated on the point where the de of his spear connected to the blood of the monster.

 Chapter 173: Heritage

    Chapter 173: Heritage

    "Aah!" Faunaris tightened its hold over Tom''s spear before pulling it out in a single jerk of its hand. It then looked at Tom''s face with a weird look.

    "You want your spear back?" it asked, dumbfounded by Tom''s straightforward request.

    "Yeah," Tom nodded his head, tears starting toe out of his eyes. He reached his hand out, hanging it out just a few inches away from the handle of the spear.

    For a moment, nothing happened.

    Faunaris was too puzzled by Tom''s change in attitude to react. Tom didn''t dare to make any hasty moves, in fear of his n, his only way out of the situation to break apart.

    "You managed tond a hit on me," Faunaris said, turning its lips into a thin line. It then closed its eyes as a whole plethora of different emotions raced on his face. "It appears I lost the bet..." it said, keeping its eyes closed as it clearly fought back with its emotions.

    "You did," Tom said in a calm voice as soon as he finally touched the handle of his spear. "And I''m sorry," he added.

    ''Bloody spear,'' Tom thought, using the connection between his spear, Faunaris blood, and Faunaris flesh to suck at its energy as if his life depended on it!

    Tom wasn''t injured at all. That would be the result of examination that any random doctor would bring forth if he were to test him right now.

    But while that was truly the case for his outsides, the same couldn''t be said about his insides.

    Ignoring all the injuries he sustained while he forcefully absorbed a massive amount of unrefined mana from the slime, he just pushed himself to the limit. In order to control so many spears with his domain, add and remove attributes to them at will, Tom''s energy was already almost depleted.

    And how could that be anything else if not a set of internal injuries? If his state was not the best it could be, then Tom was injured!

    At least, that''s how he thought about it internally. But now, he could only pray that this internal belief of his would be enough.

    "Quite clever," Faunaris muttered, not a reaction to Tom''s desperate sucking of its mana at all. Or rather, its lips quivered only to form a small, uneasy smile.

    "I guess I''m dead," Tom sighed.

    ''I tried, I lost, now I die,'' he thought, fully ascertained on this fact.

    Since he failed to overwhelm the faun by stealing massive, in Tom''s opinion, amounts of mana from its body, then there was nothing else he could do. Even if he were to restore himself to its absolute best capability, Tom couldn''t even dream about defeating that monster.

    The gap of their levels was simply too great.

    "Didn''t I say that if you manage tond a hit on me, I would answer your questions?" Faunaris asked, opening its eyes and looking at Tom with curiosity.

    The monster still held Tom''s spear, either to show its defiant approach to Tom''s desperate attempts, because it forgot that it was holding it, or simply because it made no difference whatsoever whether Tom continued to suck on the monster''s energy or not.

    On his own, Tom couldn''t tell.

    "What''s the use of knowing answers if I''m too dead to remember them?" Tom asked, no longer pressured by the situation.

    In a sense, when standing in the face of the overwhelming power, a power that could crush him like an ant, his mind finally cleared out.

    There were no more matters that he needed to be bothered with. Nothing else mattered.

    ''Is this the state of mind one achieves when they ept death?'' Tom thought, quite curious about the phenomena.

    "That''s a valid point," the monster said, finally rxing the hold over Tom''s spear and allowing the young man to retract his weapon.

    "Can you make it quick?" Tom requested, lowering his spear and dropping its de to the ground only to use this powerful stick as what it was - nothing more but a walking stick for a dying man.

    "Don''t you want some answers first?" Faunaris asked, surprised by Tom''s attitude. "Even if it''s just for the vain sake of satisfying your curiosity?" it asked, surprisingly not showing even a hint of hostility towards Tom.

    What was even stranger was that Faunaris'' aura was no longer as overwhelming as it was before, as if there was some reason why this monster would hold its output out.

    "Do I really need to repeat myself?" Tom twisted his lips in an unsightly grimace. "If you start answering my questions now, I will only start to cling to life once again," he said, shaking his head. "What''s the use of it now? I''m as dead as a living being can be," Tom shook his shoulders, resting his weight over at his fancy walking stick.

    ''I hope he won''t try to make the passage hard for me. There should be no reason for something like him to take the struggles of an ant as an insult,'' Tom wished.

    "Your father is not dead," Faunaris said with a peculiar smile, ignoring Tom''s wishes altogether.

    "Is this what it is?" Tom''s muttered, his expression darkening. "Is this your way of retaliation against my sneak attack?" he asked, the look in his eyes darkening.

    "Huh?" Faunaris eyes twitched. "What do you mean?"

    "You want me to cling back to life so that you will be satisfied seeing me desperate not to die as you kill me?" Tom muttered, something strange welling up in his soul.

    It wasn''t that his desire to live returned. He never lost it in the first ce. He just grew used to the idea that if he were to fail to defeat this monster, his life would simply conclude.

    But now, this strange feeling in his soul...

    Just what exactly it was?

    A desire to kill? A desire to take revenge? Or maybe just a desire for this monster to shut its crap?

    "You really are his son," Faunaris smiled, acting as if there was something wrong with its head.

    "Father this, son that, are you done yet?" Tom released a guttural noise from his throat. "Is that what you want? For me to kill myself as to stop hearing your bullshit?!" Tom shouted, the emotion in his soul firing up.

    Faunaris eyes twitched again, its face rxed, only to turn serious the momentter.

    "That''s right," it suddenly changed its agenda, staring down at Tom as if he was the ugliest worm in existence. "But I don''t want you to kill yourself," it shook its head only to drop its weapons and allow them to disperse back into a mist of concentrated magic. "Let me bring out a weapon suitable to deal with trashes like you!" it shouted, raising its hand.

    Tom twitched.

    This didn''t make any sense.

    This feeling in his soul, the strange changes to the unusually calm Faunaris...

    ''How could just a few words of mine re him up so much if he kept his calm even when I tried to seriously kill it?'' Tom asked himself, directing his eyes towards the faun''s extended hand.

    Around it, the mana started to gather.

    It wasn''t Faunaris own mana; it didn''t ooze out of his body. Rather than that, it was as if the world itself was pushing the mana to this area, making it look like some kind of a natural phenomenon.

    Tom didn''t think at all. He allowed his instinct to take over.

    The emotion welling up in his soul exploded, setting his entire mind aze.

    Tom reached out with his hand.

    ''Origin mage, he thought.

    Since Faunaris was trying to manifest a weapon from the very basic mana...

    Then wasn''t the origin mage the best skill to deal with it?

    ''Break,'' Tom thought, allowing his emotion to guide his thoughts and movements alike.

    And just like that, the process of mana gathering suddenly stopped.

    The reality itself cracked as if the world instantly retaliated about something daring to interfere with its inner workings.

    The cracks spread out rapidly as if reaching for Tom.

    It wasn''t the air, walls, or floor cracking. It was the reality itself retaliating.

    "UGH!!!" Faunaris spewed out a mouthful of blood, suddenly appearing right in front of Tom. Its expression was that of an immense pain mixed with... pride? Satisfaction? Amusement?

    "You really are your father''s son," it muttered, falling down to its knees and retching out a constant stream of blood.

    ''What?'' Tom shook his head. ''What just happened?!'' he stood in ce, shocked by both the situation and its development.

    The cracks, after striking down a living being, stopped. After dealing a fatal hit against a living being, they fulfilled their purpose.

    "Listen up, boy," Faunaris uttered, forcing back the blood down its throat. With just a single look, Tom could tell that it was quickly reaching the limits of its powerful body.

    It was as if... Those crack didn''t care about the level of whatever they were dealing with. It was as if...

    ''As if they were a force on apletely different ne than all the mana and levels in the world,'' Tom thought, stunned by the realization.

    "Boy!" Faunaris shouted, clearly unwilling to waste the few moments of time it had left. "Your father already killed me, so I bear no grudge to die to the Celestial Order," it uttered, its arms wobbling as if no longer able to support the faun''s weight. "I won''t be able to answer your question, so just listen to this and remember it well," it said, turning its whitened face towards Tom.

    "Master this ability," Faunaris said, massive rifts started to appear all over its flesh. "Only with this heritage, you will be able to save your father."

 Chapter 174: The true scale of the gap

    Chapter 174: The true scale of the gap

    ''Heritage? Ability?'' Tom bit his lips, watching how Faunaris disintegrated right before his eyes.

    This monster was likely even more powerful than thest boss at the top of the dungeon. And yet, it simply vanished, as if its entire body was nothing more but an illusion.

    And all of this happened because Tom fell right into the trap of doing what that monster wanted.

    "Can I get some answers instead of getting more questions? For fucking one?" Tom muttered, clenching his fists.

    But there was nothing he could do about this situation right now. With nothing more but dust remaining from the monster that made him give up on his life, Tom no longer had any hopes regarding receiving the answers.

    ''Well, I guess I will have more than enough time to think about itter,'' Tom ultimately decided, turning his face towards the stones in the wall.

    But there was something wrong.

    Instead of grade three and four ones like he expected...

    The stones of the wall appeared to be something that Tom had never seen before in his life.

    Instead of being almost transparent with a blueish hue being the only source of their visibility... The stones were all golden as if they were made from a mix of solid gold and tinum.

    The young man could tell that they were nothingpared to any of the stones that he saw before, even without approaching them.

    ''Could it be...'' a sudden idea appeared in Tom''s mind as his entire body froze in shock. He took one step and then another before finally approaching the wall.

    But he didn''t mine them out right away. Just looking at their precious-like structure, Tom couldn''t help but swallow a gulp of saliva.

    Looking at those golden stones was enough to make him feel unworthy of even gazing at them.

    ''If the stones are just a byproduct of the mana supporting the monsters of the entire floor...'' he thought, gently rubbing the tips of his fingers against the wall, too hesitant to actually infuse his magic into it.

    It felt that if a single of those stones were to fall to the floor, just the shred of mana it could give out during its fall could cause the entire dungeon to copse.

    That was the feeling that those stones gave Tom, proving just how immensely powerful they were.

    ''To think that they are likely just a residual mana of Faunaris,'' Tom thought, swallowing another gulp of saliva.

    This was the only exnation that made any sort of sense. The only reason why the stones were different from the ones in any of the floors below or above was Faunaris. That was the only possible solution to the equation before Tom''s eyes.

    And even if he could swallow the idea of those stones holding more energy than all the stones that Tom encountered so far in his life together, he really had trouble epting the idea that this dungeon... It was actually nothing else but a device to steal mana from all the monsters held inside!

    ''But nothing else makes sense,'' Tom thought, staring down at the golden glow of the stones in the wall. ''It''s the only thing that seems viable,'' he thought, nailing down this point in his head.

    "Tom, are you okay?" Marvin asked, entering the room with a puzzled expression on his face.

    "Can''t you see that I am?" Tom muttered, too overwhelmed with all the questions in his head to pay his friend any mind.

    "That''s the point, brother," Marvin sighed, "ever since you entered back into the room, the barrier turned ck, no longer allowing us to see what was happening inside," Marvin exined before turning around and pushing his hand beyond the boss room''s gate.

    "Tom!" Cleo shouted, rushing right through the gate a secondter. She ran towards her lover without paying any mind to anything else, only to m right into his back and wrap her hands around his chest. "Are you alright?!" she whined, unable to stop the floor of worry present in her voice.

    "I''m not," Tom replied, too focused on his internal questions to pay his friends any mind.

    "What happened?! WHO DID SOMETHING TO YOU?!" Cleo shouted, her rage exploding in an instant.

    "Noone did anything to me," Tom muttered in response, shaking his head.

    He was too stunned by the realization of what the dungeon was to actually pay heed to Cleo''s worries.

    ''If this entire dungeon is just a trap used to suck the mana out of all those monsters... Then who could dare... No, who was powerful enough to force Faunaris inside?'' Tom asked himself, moving back to the memory of that being.

    Even if it never really attacked him, Tom could still remember the feeling that this monster gave him. A single move from it was all it would take for Tom''s life to conclude.

    And yet, he came out alive out of the sh.

    ''I''m only alive because it wanted me to be alive,'' Tom realized, finally calming down enough to start analyzing the recent events. ''It manipted me into using that ability and then took the burnt of the cost of using it,'' Tom thought, clenching his fists.

    ''But just what that monster was to my father? An enemy? Apanion? A servant?'' Tom continued to ask himself more and more questions

    "TOM!" Cleo shouted, finally managing to get through to Tom''s head.

    "What?" he asked rudely, turning his face around only to notice the teary expression on Cleo''s face. In an instant, a feeling of guilt exploded in his head. "I''m sorry, there is a lot on my head right now," he said, shaking his head as he turned his face back to the stones.

    ''But I guess there is no point in wasting any time,'' he thought, putting his hand against the wall for the second time before finally infusing a silver of his energy into it.

    The golden stones behaved exactly just like any kind of ordinary stones Tom encountered before. But as they trickled down to the floor, hispanions finally noticed their peculiarity.

    "Tom, what are those?" Marvin asked, approaching one of the stones before gently pushing them forward with the tip of his shoe.

    "Stones of a grade that even I can''t fathom," Tom replied,ying down a sheet of cloth on the floor before moving the eleven stones in total on it.

    Seeing the usual events, the slime on Cleo''s shoulder started to wiggle, clearly excited with the idea of growing even stronger than before.

    But this time, Tom wasn''t willing to share those stones.

    "I''m sorry little one, but not this time," Tom said, kneeling down and grabbing the first stone with his bare hand.

    Tom''s consciousness exploded. It was a feeling far more powerful than anything that he experienced so far, even when he desperately assimted all the raw mana that slime could provide.

    The golden stones were just that potent.

    In a second, Tom could feel that he had achieved several breakthroughs on the spot. And the stone didn''t even get to fully enter his body, not to speak about actually assimting with his flesh!

    "BE CAREFUL!" Cleo shouted, toote with her words to stop Tom. The look of worry on her face only made Tom''s heartache a bit...

    But he had no attention left to spare for the girl right now. With the overwhelming energy of the stone coursing through his veins, he could only focus on desperately assimting it.

    For the first time in his life, the meaning of doing something as if his life depended on it dawned upon Tom.

    ''If I fail to rein this energy, I will die,'' he realized, falling down to his knees and smacking his other hand at the ce where the golden stone continued to sink into his palm.

    For a moment, Tom lost his ability to see, hear or feel anything that was around him. It was as if the rushing current of mana that constantly burned his body down only to rebuild it a fraction of a secondter isted him from the rest of the world.

    ''I need to hold on,'' Tom tightened his teeth, refusing to let go of his consciousness. From how he felt, he realized that even if a fraction of the energy currently coursing through his body were to be released outside, his friends would be no more.

    In the face of the energy of just a single stone, all Tom''s power so far turned out to be absolutely nothing. This finally made him realize the scale of the gap between him and that faun monster.

    ''If that''s the power of the stones created from the tiny bits of his power, just how powerful he had to be at his full strength?!'' Tom thought in desperation.

    Against such strength, all the tricks he came up with werepletely meaningless. Only now did Tom finally realize that with this scale of mana in its body, his attempts at using the bloody spear skill against Faunaris... were nothing more butughable.

 Chapter 175: Absorbing the Golden Stones

    Chapter 175: Absorbing the Golden Stones

    Tom fell to his knees.

    His forehead was wet with sweat that desperately attempted to coll Tom''s skin down. Even with the raging current of mana dying down, Tom''s entire body was burning like crazy.

    ''Aaahhhh...'' Tom released the air from his lungs, unused to this new body of his.

    He was still the same person that he was before absorbing the stone. But at the same time, he could feel that he was different.

    Tom raised his hand to his eyes, trying to see whether his outer self changed at all. Because judging from how the delicate wind brushed against his skin, he no longer was the same person that he was before.

    "Tom, are you okay?!" Cleo rushed to Tom''s side, falling down on her knees and reaching out for his shoulders with her arms. Yet, before the two of them could touch, Cleo stopped her hands, noticing the weird look on her lover''s face.

    ''What the hell happened?'' Tom asked himself, lowering his hand. He couldn''t see any difference between how his hand was before and how it was right now. Yet, he could tell for sure that he had changed.

    ''Is this what evolution feels like?'' he asked himself, trying to crack the problempletely on his own.

    But there was one piece of information that he could actually use right now.

    "Marvin," Tom spoke, quickly realizing that even something as simple as speaking made him feel weird.

    As if it was his first attempt at doing so. As if speaking... was something he wasn''t familiar with at all.

    "Here," Marvin didn''t dare to waste even a second of his time, instantly kneeling on one knee beside his friend.

    Just like Cleo, Marvin could see the look on Tom''s face. And if there was ever need for a military discipline in their group, the time for it was right now.

    "What''s my level?" Tom asked, keeping his eyes lowered, stuck to the same point on the ground.

    With how his body was right now, Tom felt as if he would puke if he as much as looked around.

    "It''s..." Marvin attempted to reply, only for his words to end up stuck in his throat. He then swallowed a mouthful of saliva before properly repeating his report. "It''s the same as before, exactly a hundred-first level," he informed his friend.

    ''What?" Tom held back his surprise, unwilling to let his friends worry even more. ''How could that be?'' he thought, gnashing his teeth as he looked back at his hand.

    His skin had the same color. His musclesid down in exactly the same way as they did before.

    But there was a distinct feeling that made Tom sure that he was now different.

    As if the word human could no longer apply to his existence.

    ''Well, something had to happen,'' he summed his situation up. ''All that magic energy had to go somewhere,'' he thought, shaking his head to throw the delirious feeling out.

    "Tom, are you okay?" Marvin asked, echoing Cleo''s earlier question. "I know that we are in a hurry, but if you need some time..." he suggested.

    "Don''t mind me," Tom countered, standing up on his feet. "I wasted enough time dealing with that monster," he said, unwilling to reveal the details of what just happened. "We need to hurry up," he concluded, forcing the uneasiness back down his throat and grabbing the cloth on which the rest of the stonesid.

    ''Should I use them all up now?'' Tom hesitated, staring at the golden beads resting on the piece of cloth. ''I''m already feeling awful, so wouldn''t it be better to just keep going right now? What''s the use of resting up only to feel like that againter?'' he thought, biting his lips.

    This was a decision that only he could make... A decision that he found himself unable to take.

    "Tom?" Marvin called out, clearly capable of seeing that Tom was in some kind of distress.

    "Fuck it," instead of replying, Tom reached out for the stone. Before anyone could as much as voice their concerns, his hand already touched the golden bead, instantly sending him back to the internal torture chamber of his body.

    Whatever this stone was doing, Tom was sure that he would end up stronger after consuming it. After all, he could feel that it contained an overwhelming amount of refined mana, an amount that no number of stones of lower grade could ever make up for.

    And once again, Tom''s entire body exploded in pain, as if everyst cell of his flesh suddenly broke apart, only for the mana to rebuild it from scratch.

    The magical energy felt like a liquid fire spreading from his veins to everyst inch of his body, changing its structure on a level that even molecr scientists couldn''t fathom.

    Yet, before the process could conclude, before Tom''s torture coulde to fruition... It ended.

    ''Huh?'' Tom shrugged, surprised by the events not happening in the exact same way as before.

    Right now, he felt an insatiable thirst, not for water, nor was it hunger for food, but a desire to consume more of that energy.

    Unable to stop his hand, he reached for another bead, allowing the excruciating feeling to fill his mind yet again.

    A few moments of struggleter, the process finally reached its final stage before closing on. Just as the raging current of mana contained within the stone dried up, Tom could feel that something in his body clicked, proving that whatever was happening to him finished just as it should.

    Tom felt the air brushing past his cheek. This feeling was so intense that he instantly fell down on all fours and retched, releasing all the matter from his stomach out to the dungeon''s floor.

    "TOM!" Cleo shouted. "STOP IT!" she protested. Unable to as much as move a muscle, Tom could only guess from the noises that Marvin was holding the girl back from rushing towards him.

    "I''m okay," he said in a meek voice, barely able to form a coherent thought.

    It wasn''t that his mind stopped operating as usual. It was simply overwhelmed by a massive amount of sensory information flooding Tom''s thoughts from all directions.

    The gentle sounds of wind hitting the dungeon''s wall. The beating of the hearts of everyone in the proximity. Even the flow of mana within everyone''s bodies appeared to produce a tiny, distinctive noise that Tom''s ear could finally hear.

    ''Did I evolve or something?'' Tom attempted to guess, feeling how the control over his body slowly started to return to his limbs.

    As devastating and confusing as those new senses were for Tom''s brain, it didn''t take long before Tom''s grey mass started to adapt to it.

    In the end, human senses were far sharper than they would normally know. Their bodies were actually far more efficient at physical tasks than any of the modern men could believe.

    The people who were born all right only to lose one of their senses in their lives were the greatest example of it, with how their other senses would sharpen topensate for the lost one.

    After a few more shakes of his head, Tom finally managed to stand back on his feet. Taking his sweet time to straighten his posture, he took a nce at the remaining golden beads.

    "Don''t even think about it," Cleo warned. Tom turned around, only to see her eyes widened in a fury.

    "Think about what?" Tom asked impassively, intuitively taking a step back.

    It was rare to see Cleo be so full of emotions. And for the great soldier she was, she was even better big sister of their group, more than capable of beating everyone up with just the authority of that role alone.

    "Can''t you see how weak you are getting after consuming those stones?!" Cleo shouted, finally wrestling herself free from Marvin''s arms only to rush straight for Tom.

    She headbutted Tom''s chest, only to wrap her arms around his waist and tackle him to the floor, away from the golden mana stones.

    "Kheee.." the air escaped from Tom''s lungs when his back smashed against the floor.

    His brain managed to get used to this new sensory overload... But his body was still far from doing the same. Right now, even a child throwing a stone at his chest would be enough to topple Tom over, not to speak about Cleo''s fully-fledged charge!

    "That hurt!" Tom protested as soon as he regained his breath. While his words were an over-exaggeration, the meaning behind them was still true.

    "See?!" Cleo shouted, her eyes tearing up. "How could you feel pain from such a weak tackle if those stones weren''t making you weaker?" she pointed out in a voice as angry as it was worried.

    "I''m just not used to this body yet..." Tom said before realizing the mistake he had made.

    Those words could be understood in a very wrong way!

 Chapter 176: Not at the front anymore

    Chapter 176: Not at the front anymore

    "You are not used to this body yet?" Marvin muttered, his eyes widening.

    "A slip of the tongue," Tom was quick to rectify his mistake. "I''m not used to how sensitive it is," he exined what he actually meant before. "It''s like... I can feel the damned wind in the dungeon. Can you?" he asked, bringing forth the simplest possible example to help his friends understand the situation.

    "What are you talking about?" Cleo red up. There is no wind in the dungeon at all!" she said, grabbing one of Tom''s spears littering the floor, and hanging a small piece of cloth from it. Then, she erected the spear up, allowing the cloth to freely hang from it.

    "See?" she said, pointing at thepleteck of movement of the cloth.

    "If there is air, there is wind," Tom muttered, using his spear as a walking stick. "I don''t me you for not feeling it. Just like I don''t me you for not hearing the flow of magic either," he added.

    "Tell us something that only Tom would know," Cleo muttered, clearly unsatisfied with Tom''s exnations so far.

    "Are you for real?" Tom whined, shaking his head.

    "Yes, I fucking am!" Cleo shouted her reply back at Tom.

    "A mole, two centimeters above your clit, slightly to the right," Tom spat out his response, instantly causing Cleo''s face to go red.

    "Okay, guys, stop it," Marvin intervened, noticing how quickly the situation was deteriorating into a in argument. "Tom, what exactly happened?" he asked.

    "It''s hard to exin," Tom shook his head. "It''s like... Every part of my body suddenly became more sensitive. I can feel the rifts in the texture of this spear''s handle," he said, shaking his weapon that he was using as a walking stick. "I can feel the tiniest crevices, I can feel its temperature, I can feel the flow of magic reinforcing it from the inside," he spat out information bit by bit.

    "Why did you act so weak, then?" Marvin inquired, still not satisfied.

    "Because I''m not used to this kind of sensory overload," Tom replied, a nauseating feeling conveniently bringing him to the brink of retching again.

    "What do you want us to do, then?" Marvin finally asked, his shoulders sinking. Finally, he was done with his interrogation and was willing to ept Tom''s exnations.

    "For now, I don''t think I can deal with any of the monsters. But still, we need to hurry," Tom said, a wrinkle forming on his forehead. "While it was just a guess, I believe we should start meeting with others rtively soon," he added.

    Right now, their party was on the forty-third floor, just a single step from the forty-fourth one. With the multiplication of mana that both slime and Tom''s abilities brought forward, both Marvin and Cleo had levels high enough to deal with the monsters on this level, boss-monster included.

    And so, the answer to Marvin''s question was pretty obvious.

    "For the next one, two or maybe three floors, I hope I can count on you guys," Tom said, looking up at his friends. "I''m trying to force my body back in shape, but it doesn''t seem like I can speed this process up by any bit," he said, walking a few steps forward, right towards the gate.

    ''I better get away from those golden stones,'' Tom thought, sending a nce over to the prize remaining after Faunaris unfortunate demise. Yet, thinking about his recent opponent, Tom couldn''t help but think about itsst few words of advice.

    ''This heirloom skill... Origin mage, was it?'' he thought, biting his lip. ''Just what the hell am I supposed to do with it? Ignore it to not upset whatever force killed Faunaris?'' he asked himself only to shake his head a momentter. ''But it''s not like I can ever learn to use it... without using it!'' he opposed his own idea, stuck in the limbo of the massive risk and unknown reward of taking it.

    "That seems like the only option for us to move forward," Marvin said before looking over to Tom. "And where are you in such a hurry to go?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

    "The next floor?" Tom asked, turning his head to the back and looking at his friend with a slight surprise. "How else do you want to hurry up if not by actually going ahead?" he asked.

    "Tom, listen," Marvin sighed. "If you are not going to be the vanguard, then you are the one to stick to the rear," he said as a vicious smile suddenly appeared on his lips. "Now it''s your time to learn how it feels to be a dead weight! Cleo!" Marvin shouted. "Go and call Kira and Rufus. They are going to be Tom''spany for the foreseeable future!"

    Unable to as much as protests, Tom could only stand his ground as the girl ran off to the corridor of the dungeon, only to bring the two of their luggage to the boss room.

    From then on, Marvin and Cleo rushed towards the next floor, leaving the remaining three of their group behind.

    "Did something happen?" Kira asked, using the first opportunity when she was rtively alone with Tom to speak up.

    "A lot happened," Tom replied, only to release a deep sigh and struggle to make his way forward.

    "Do you want some help?" Kira approached Tom and offered her arm. "I know we stood against each other, but I can''t bear to see you move like that," she added, only to turn her face away as soon as Tom raised his eyes on her.

    "I actually would like it," Tom said, grabbing hold over Kira''s shoulder as he made his way through the portal.

    Appearing in the next, forty-furth floor, Tom couldn''t help but release yet another sigh.

    Right off the bat, the entire corridor was filled with stinking remains of the monsters, scattered all over the ce.

    It appeared that they passed the portal just before the dungeon could finish absorbing the monster''s remains, forcing them to gawk at the disgusting sight.

    "Barbaric..." Kira muttered, turning her lips into a single, thin line. Her eyes were filled with disgust.

    "Don''t me her too much," Tom responded with yet another sigh. "This is just the nature of her most powerful skill. It''s not like she wants to decorate the corridors like that," he said, pushing his weak body forward, right through the bloody mess that Cleo left in her wake.

    "I still can''t understand one thing, though," Kira said softly. "What is it that pushes you so hard into conquering the dungeons?" she asked.

    "That came out of nowhere," Tom replied, twisting his lips a little.

    ''What''s her purpose in asking this?'' he pondered, unsure how he was supposed to reply to it.

    "You don''t need to answer if you don''t want to," Kira sighed, proving her awareness of her position in the group.

    "Thanks for reminding me of something I''m perfectly aware of," Tom ironically replied before shaking his head.

    ''Still, once she gets to the other side, she will be stuck there for the foreseeable future. I guess it won''t hurt exining,'' he thought.

    "I never wanted to explore the dungeons for the sake of it. Getting stronger? Living through adventures? This kind of bullshit could work on Rufus, not on the people like me," Tom said.

    "Didn''t it feel nice, though?" Kira asked, once again puzzling Tom about her way of thinking.

    "What?" Tom asked, unsure what she was hitting at.

    "To fight with the others while knowing just how massive the gap of strength between you and them was?" Kira exined her mind.

    "Them?" Tom couldn''t help but smile when she heard this particr word. "Weren''t you with... them?" he asked, raising one of his eyebrows.

    "Only for the convenience''s sake," Kira replied with a deep sigh. "Listen here, I''m not trying to judge your choices or make myself a victim, but not everyone had the luck to be born in an influential family," she pointed out. "I just did whatever I could to get myself out of the garbage. I managed to do it with my own strength. I lost my bet, but please," she said in a stern tone, stopping in her steps and throwing a furious nce at Tom. "Do notpare yourself to me. YOu know nothing about what I went through," she said.

    "Aren''t you quite the hypocrite here?" Tom asked, a small smile appearing on his lips. While Kira might be right about him not knowing shit about her, the reverse also applied. "You know nothing of the trials and tribtions I went through. You know nothing what it feels like to be born with the burden of the entire family on your shoulders from the time when you were still in the womb," Tom pointed out.

    "So are we going to just both assume that since we can''t understand each other, we have no other choice but to go to war?" Kira spat out. "Isn''t this sort of thinking that brought all three world wars forth?" she added, clearly trying to fan the mes of Tom''s rage.

    "If you really think that''s what was the reason behind the third, then you are just a misguided child, roaming in the dark, touching stuff and assuming it''s what you believe it is," Tomughed at Kira''s attempts instead.

    "What brought the third war, then?" Kira took on air before pursing her lips and moving her face away. "It''s not like you would tell me in the first ce; why do I even bother asking," she muttered.

    "You won''t believe me," Tom shook his head, a sad smile appearing on his lips. "But what if I told you that the entire war... was caused by nothing more but an ident and misunderstanding?"

 Chapter 177: The missunderstanding that sparked the war

    Chapter 177: The missunderstanding that sparked the war

    "I would say that you are a liar," Kiraughed off at the mere suggestion that the official version of the events wasn''t exactly true. "Did you hit your head or something?" she added, giggling her heart out.

    Just the fact that she was able to act like that despite being Tom''s ve proved how ridiculous she found this notion.

    And there was absolutely nothing strange with her reaction.

    ''For a conflict that dwarfed the casualty rate of the two previous world wars, even when counting the civilians...'' Tom thought only to release a deep sigh. ''It''s no wonder she doesn''t want to allow the idea that it all started because of a misunderstanding to her head,'' he realized, shaking his head. ''It will be better if I drop the topic, then,'' Tom decided, turning silent instead of rebuking the girl.

    For a few more moments, Kiraughed her heart out, ignoring the strange looks that Rufus threw at her. Once she was doneughing, she turned silent, only letting out a small giggle now and then.

    Their group had to enter the next floor before Kira finally calmed down and thought about the topic for long enough to change her approach.

    "Okay, I give up," she said, nudging Tom''s back. "Can you tell me more?" she requested, her face turning serious.

    "Are you really sure you want to know this?" Tom asked. Even if he didn''t really like this girl, this was the topic that he hardly had anyone to talk about with.

    Everyone in his family was aware of the truth, as Tom''s parent was one of the people that saw the beginning of it all. Not actively participated in it, but powerlessly watched how the dominos started to fall, turning a small misunderstanding into an incident, an incident into an ident, and the ident into a viable casus beli that brought the entire world to the brink of destruction.

    "Yes, tell me," Kira''s voice wasposed; her face was calm. Only her eyes showed the signs of excitement as if a deeply-ingrained passion for truth ignited in her soul.

    "Tell me, then, what is the official version of the story," Tom smiled gently, even if there was a hint of sadness in his smile.

    He knew the official propaganda by heart. But in order to dismantle its influence over the girl''s mind, he had to start from the very beginning.

    "Back when the world was going through the turbulent time of superpowers shifting their positions, the Russian Federation and China decided to ally each other. While it was a rocky alliance, it was aimed at helping those two nations safely fare through the period of transition, during which the States would lose the position of the absolute power."

    Kira recited the verses that every kid in the school had to be able to recite, even if woken in the middle of the night. Her tone was monotone, proving that those weren''t her words but an excerpt from the textbook.

    "Good," Tom nodded his head before releasing another sigh. "Tell me then, what was the greatest development aim of that period and what was the greatest danger to it," Tom requested.

    "The second space race," Kira replied to Tom''s first inquiry without even a second of thought but stopped before answering the other. She raised her hand and rubbed her chin, thinking deeply about the correct reply.

    "In terms of the danger... Was it the economic copse of the international market? I mean, it drove the incentives of the space race down, ramping up its rtive costs and..."

    "That''s not it," Tom shook his head. "Think about something more... physical, decisive," he suggested. "Something that could put a definitive end to everyone''s space ambitions," he hinted.

    "I think I know what you mean..." Kira muttered, lowering her eyes as she started to think hard. "What was it called... Cascade something?" she asked, raising her eyes at Tom.

    "It''s Kessler Syndrome, also known as Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ation cascade," Tom helped the girl out. "In short words, with the growth of the debris in the low and medium orbits, there was an increasing risk that the space would be unusable. After all, all it would take was a single major event, be it an unnned crash or intentional destruction of a satellite, for the positive feedback loop toe into y. Once that would happen, humanity would be locked on earth for hundreds if not thousands of years necessary for the orbit of the space trash to decay, burning it away in the atmosphere," Tom exined the phenomena just in case.

    "Which is exactly what happened during the war anyway," Kira shook her arms. Ever since the second year of the conflict, humanity had to put an end to its space ambitions. With the entire low-earth orbit filling with trash after several satellite eliminations, it was nigh impossible to eject anything beyond earth''s orbit without making it crash into said trash.

    And in space, even a tiny bolt or screw, when traveling at a sufficiently high rtive speed, was as great as a tactical rocket.

    "Now, just two more questions," Tom informed. "What was thepany that brought forward the cleaning satellites?" he asked.

    Back when the problem of the ation cascade was still in its rtive infancy, some people decided to take action. With the increasing traffic in and out of earth''s orbit, it was only a matter of time before something would go wrong. That''s why, instead of hoping for the best, several ideas for dealing with the problem were put forward.

    But it wasn''t before the discovery of the Atarian reaction that the problem became solvable.

    "Wasn''t it KudTech Incorporated?" Kira replied after taking a long time to recall the name. After all, this part didn''t belong tomon knowledge. Only those who showed a certain degree of interest in pre-war history could learn about it.

    "And what else was saidpany manufacturing?" Tom asked, only to shake his head. "Well, if we take the timing into consideration, it would be inventing rather than producing," he corrected his mistake.

    "Wait, are you for real?" Kira''s eyes turned wide when she noticed the connection.

    KudTech was thepany that brought forth the first Atarian reaction to existence. They were the ones who brought up a solution for most of the problems that humanity faced.

    In a sense, just like nuclear energy became the greatest energetical breakthrough of the twenty-first century, then the Atarian reactor became the greatest invention of the twenty-fourth.

    It was a reaction that could use the catalyst to bring forth more energy than creating the catalyst required.

    Tom never reached the degree of physics to understand how the reaction worked, but he was more than aware of how insane that was.

    After all, it was the first Perpetuum mobile that humanity got its hands on.

    "With the unique properties of space around the ongoing reaction, KudTech designed a satellite aimed to clear the debris from the space. The problem of rtive speeds of the debris suddenly disappeared just like that," Tom closed his eyes, imagining the moment when the satellite was about to beunched.

    A hall filled with scientists, already nobilified by their age-breaking discovery. Everyone''s happy faces as they put forth their invention to allow humanity to finally expand beyond the scope of the earth without blocking their descendants from doing the same.

    The moment ofunch...

    And then everything goes downhill.

    rms setting off, entirepound entering a lockdown, military rushing in a few momentster and announcing a retaliatory strike at the site...

    "When the first satellite wasunched, a detached, autonomous site within the European border took it as an attack. A programming error caused by how recent the invention was. Some dumb fuck coded the Atarian reaction properties to have the same danger level as fucking nuke!" Tom gritted his teeth and mmed his hand against the wall.

    He wasn''t there to see it. But his father, one of the military protecting thepound, saw it all with his own eyes.

    In a sense, he witnessed the history in the making. It was a pity that instead of the greatest moment of humanity, it turned into its darkest blot.

    "Back then, it could still be avoided," Tom picked up his story after releasing a deep sigh and calming himself down. He never saw it, but he saw the emotions on his father''s face when he talked about those events.

    "Thepany got in touch with the site in time to take the nuke down. It was brought down safely without sparking its load," Tom added.

    "What happened then?" Kira inquired after a few moments of silence from Tom.

    "An incident turned into an ident," Tom whispered, closing his eyes once again. "The outdated nuke exploded right as it was brought down to theunch site. A failure of fuse theyter said. This time, anyone who could contact others to clear the misunderstanding, was nothing more but radioactive ash," Tom exined, resting his back against the wall.

    An incident turned into an ident. And then, the uncleared misunderstanding sparked the greatest conflict in human history that left the world in tatters.

    "And once a nuke went off, everyone started sting," Kira finished the story for Tom. She was smart enough to figure out its ending.

    This time, it wasn''t aunch but a fully-fledged attack. An attack at the European Military Launch site at that.

    With a nuclear explosion urring, all the possible red buttons were pressed in a matter of minutes if not seconds.

    Before the day was over, seventy percent of the world turned into a radioactive desert.

 Chapter 178: There is always a beneficiary

    Chapter 178: There is always a beneficiary

    "I still can''t understand one thing," Kira muttered a long while after the two of them dropped the topic of the war.

    Whether it was theplete silence that hung between her and Tom, simple curiosity, orpleteck of other topics that she could use to talk, Tom didn''t know.

    However, he could tell that talking to him was nothing more than Kira''s attempts at improving her situationter on.

    After all, just like it was hard to hate someone who one knew as a sympathetic guy or gal, she was likely aiming to have her punishment eased once she would be more than just a nameless enemy.

    "What is it?" Tom asked after releasing a deep sigh.

    The matter with Kira was just a problematic, hot-potato for him. He couldn''t just kill her for no reason. The second she survived the sh between his family and the online hub forces, that chance was lost. He couldn''tpletely ignore her either. After helping her understand the truth about the war, it would make no sense to just randomly stalk talking to her.

    "Why isn''t the truth widely known?" Kira asked after a few moments.

    ''I shouldn''t ask any moreplicated questions. I guess I will try to derive the answers I want from the rted topics instead,'' she thought, raising her eyes at Tom''s weak body.

    While Tom''s condition was improving and improving fast, he was still far from his prime.

    "I mean," Kira muttered after Tom refused to say a word for a few more moments, "it''s not like any of the countries that started the war exist anymore, so it can''t be a propaganda fault," she argued, trying to find some reasons for the current state of things.

    "And why can''t it be propaganda?" Tom asked, rolling his eyes.

    There was a very simple reason why he wasn''t happy to tackle this topic any deeper. And it was because the more he would talk about it, the closer the matter would get to what Kira could consider not only vital but also important if she ever got a chance to return to the online hub.

    "For there to be propaganda, there has to be its beneficiary," Kira rolled her eyes. "What''s the use of hiding the truth if not for some tangible benefit?" she asked before pouting and turning her face away.

    "I wonder who is the beneficiary of destroying the authority of any centralized governments," Tom replied before releasing a deep sigh.

    The answer was pretty obvious.

    Ever since the peace was finally achieved, the world copsed into a loosework of cooperating cities. Some, with bigger poptions and internal industry, turned into local powerhouses. Others were nothing more but cover for powerful families that ruled them over from the shadows.

    And some acted as nothing more but a protective screen for the power hiding underneath them, just like it was the case with Tom''s family.

    But the fact that there were no more overarching nations that couldbine entire cultural groups into a single political entity gave rise to the extreme power of several selected corporations.

    Initially, there were a total of seven of them, each controlling a chain of production vital to the survival and growth of humanity.

    Mashiah household controlled the power production. Hubrin Corporation operated the greatest farms, supplying the world with food and drinks. Dagel Group produced arms. Ubrino Estate provided electrical applicancies of all sorts. Letarpany provided security forces to all the parties included while Ostra Group brought forth entertainment.

    Those seven forces turned into the unspoken rulers of the new world, holding a tight grasp over the poption. Yet, despite having nearly the absolute monopoly over each of their respective aspects, they ultimately had no other choice but to cede a part of their market to each of the autonomous cities.

    If one had an old type furnace, they could dig their own coal to power their house. Looking after some localnds allowed one to get their own food. Scouring the ruins allowed one to unearth weapons of a far greater grade than what Dagel Group could produce in this new world.

    One could always find a local alternative for each family means of production or service. It would be either worse, more expensive, or more dangerous to use, but it was there.

    This bnce between cities'' own power and the overwhelming might of the seven corporations allowed what was left of the world to prosper after the war.

    Yet, this bnce could be broken pretty easily the moment some of the more prosperous cities would unite their advantages and ditch away from the monopoly of the seven families.

    And in order to deal with that risk, the truth about the war was hidden from the public view. It was too great of an opportunity to bash and kill any idea of uniting cities not to use it.

    After all, if there was no entity powerful enough to stand independent from the seven families, there would be no one to call them on their unfair practices, massive profit margins, and generally bully-some approach.

    ''And then we need to add the cooperation of all the families with the dungeon project,'' Tom thought, clenching his fists.

    Only the Letar group was capable of blocking every single dungeon that appeared in the world. Only Ostra group could produce a game to cover up the existence of the dungeons in such a short time they did. Only the Ubrino Estate could craft the capsules necessary to enter the game, or rather, the avatar''s skins.

    No matter what aspect of the Dungeons Online industry one would look at, only the seven families were capable of organizing it. And with how every of their Online Hub turned into the beating heart of the local cities, it was clear just how profitable this business venture was to all seven of the families.

    ''Now that I think about it, they basically conquered the world with this project,'' Tom realized. ''Maybe that''s why they don''t want the normal poption to learn the truth about the dungeons. If we could use the stones to revitalize and repopte the wastnds, they would be hard-pressed to maintain the control,'' Tom thought, gritting his teeth.

    His family never had the dream of recovering thends that were lost to humanity. Tom personally would never see the vast green ins that his father would often reminiscence about. He would never see thend on which his ancestors built one of the greatest nations of antiquity.

    The most he could see was a desert filled with radioactive ash. The most he could see would be the geography altered by the barrage of nuclear and convenient weapons that destroyed entire ecosystems and their niches.

    "It seems like you are not willing to answer," Kira muttered, her face twisted in dissatisfaction.

    "You have to be stupid to not realize it," Rufus suddenly said, only to receive a sharp nce from Tom. "What?!" he snapped, clearly not expecting Tom to react too hard to him speaking. "I noticed it before I turned twelve. For her to miss it, she had to intentionally keep her eyes closed," he added with scorn. "That only proves what I thought. She is all boobs and no brain," he added, shaking its tiny shoulders.

    ''For a kid that young...'' Tom thought, holding it back only to release a small chuckle. "Not bad, kid, not bad," he ended up saying.

    "That''s sexual harassment," Kira protested, staring daggers at the two of them.

    "You better get used to it," Tom sighed once he was done chuckling. "You don''t appear to have any other redeeming qualities that could be of value on the other side," he added, straightening his back a little bit more.

    Before the conversation could continue and allow Kira to once again ask for an exnation, the three of them finally reached the boss room on the forty-seventh floor.

    A single nce at the situation inside revealed that Marvin and Cleo were still in the process of fighting with the local boss.

    "Are you sure you don''t want to help them?" Kira asked, pointing her hand inside. "They are bloodied all over," she pointed out.

    "They need to go through a fair share of hardships," Tom shook his head. With his new sensitivity, he could tell that both of his friends were still brimming with mana. And with Marvin''s healing spell, their blood was likely just a residue from the wounds long gone.

    "Who are you trying to lie to?" Kira asked with scorn. "Do you really believe I didn''t notice how scared you are now?" she asked, clearly angry at how he ignored her previous questions.

    "You are free to believe in whatever you want," Tom replied, shaking his shoulders. "Just make sure to keep it to yourself, as I''m not interested in your faith," he added, watching how the events inside the boss room evolved.

    And surely enough, it took only a few more moments before the boss of the floor finally fell to the ground with its life ripped away from it.

    "Anyway, you pointed it out just at the right time," Tom said, making his way through the barrier.

    For thest three floors, he held the back of the group, using this time to get used to the new state of his body.

    He was still far from his prime, but he was no longer the weakly self from roughly an hour before. And what was even more important, once they would cross past the fiftieth floor, they were likely to start encountering other groups.

    Even if he has yet to regain his full strength, it was now the perfect time for Tom to get back his active role in the conquest of the dungeon!

 Chapter 179: Heated debacle

    Chapter 179: Heated debacle

    "Marvin, Cleo," Tom said in a steady voice as he approached his two friends.

    "Don''t worry, we are done with the boss," Cleo smiled happily as she turned her face towards her lover. But upon noticing Tom''s expression, her smile instantly soured. "Let me guess, you want to go back to fighting?" she muttered, averting her eyes.

    "That''s exactly the case," Tom nodded his head. "I''m still overly sensitive, but I need to get back to fighting as soon as possible," he said, only to whip out his spear and roll it around in the air, proving that he was already as agile as he was back before entering the dungeon for the first time.

    "Tom, you don''t need to do that yet," Marvin entered the discussion, shaking his head.

    From the look on his face, he wanted to stop his friend from risking his health given how Tom has yet to return to his prime...

    But he knew Tom for long enough to realize that this matter was already settled the moment Tom brought it up.

    What looked like a request for approval for others was no different from simple information for Marvin.

    From now on, Tom would return to active duty.

    That''s what his appearance spoke to those who knew him.

    "I think we are all in the know here that if you decided something, then there is no talking you out of it," Marvin said with a sigh. He then shook his head before gluing his eyes to the floor for a long while. "In the end, can you at least tell us what did those golden stones did to you?" Marvin asked.

    "I wish I could tell you what happened for sure." Tom bit his lips. While he had his guess about the reality of what happened, it was just that, a guess.

    From one side, Tom was no different from talking about his guesses as per something set in stone. That was how he tackled the experience of the dungeon as a whole, where nothing was certain, and everything appeared only to be nothing more but a possibility.

    But for some reason, using that kind of treatment in regards to what happened...

    ''It feels like insulting the memory of Faunaris,'' Tom thought, tightening his hold over his spear.

    He met that monster only for a few short moments. Most of the time that he interacted with it was filled with an overwhelming weight of his death looming above Tom''s head. Every second of his interaction with that faun was etched as the most dangerous moment in Tom''s life in his brain.

    Nevertheless, there was no denying that in the end, Faunaris never hurt him. He even went to the highest ends, made the highest sacrifice, just to show Tom just how insanely overpowered one of his early skills was.

    "I think those stones brought forth an evolution of sorts in me," Tom said, finally deciding to break the dams on what he was guessing about the situation. "Instead of raising my levels, it raised the quality of what those levels mean," he added, only to turn silent as he approached the wall.

    This time, Tom didn''t bother to use his spear. After all, it would be no wonder if he managed to cut the stone wall with his de, as it was something he was capable of doing for a long while already.

    Instead, he just stood by the wall for a few moments. Then, as if finding the perfect timing and mindest to do so, he suddenly swung his arm and smashed his fist into the wall.

    Crack.

    From the point of impact, the cracks spread out for several meters, turning the ce where Tom struck the wall into a small site crater.

    Once he removed his hand, the wall appeared as if some kind of a small meteor struck it, not Tom''s hand.

    "Do you see it now?" Tom asked, turning his head to his friends.

    ''If I can do this much while I''m still recovering?'' he thought to himself, looking down at his hand.

    Even though he didn''t hold back at all, even though his senses were heightened, he didn''t even feel a tingle of pain.

    "That was..." Marvin was at a loss for words, clearly not expecting this kind of showcase.

    "That was amazing!" Cleo turned out to be the simpler one, revealing her excitement and shock with simple words.

    She rushed to Tom''s side and ced her hands on the cracked wall as if trying to learn more by closely observing it.

    She then turned around and sent Tom a long nce.

    "It doesn''t appear to be tampered with by magic or anything," she muttered in a voice that almost didn''t make it to her brother while causing problems for Tom to distinguish the words. Only when she repeated her sentence did the meaning of her words reach both of the men''s minds.

    "Does this mean..." MAvin gulped down a mouthful of saliva.

    It was one thing to crack a wall in a dungeon. But it was somethingpletely else to do so without using even the tiniest hint of magic!

    ''If he can smack so hard without using any of his skills...'' A weird thought appeared in Marvin''s and Cleo''s heads for a moment.

    "Then what he would be able to do once exerting the full power of his muscles and skillsbined?"

    "Huh?" Suddenly, another party entered the discussion. And it was the one the three friends grew most reluctant to believe to hear.

    "And here I was worried about your health," Kira whined in a tiny voice before suddenly noticing how her words somehow managed to reach everyone''s ears.

    "I guess now she knows your strength as well," Cleo sighed, clearly unhappy with his random oue.

    "Oh,e on," Kira protested openly. "I''m taking care of this kid for a long time already. What''s more, I was by Tom''s side when he was at his weakest!" she pointed out, screaming the facts back into Cleo''s face.

    "What are you implying?" Marvin asked, squinting his eyes as if to intimidate the girl into telling the truth.

    "I do not expect you to treat me as an equal now, nor to change my status or fate," Kira was quick to stand up and make a point where she stood in the current situation. "If I really wanted to harm him, I would''ve done so already," she pointed out, only to fall down to her knees and start rolling forward and backward on her bottom in the middle of the boss''s room.

    Even though there were no outside stimuli to change her looks, Kira looked like the perfect embodiment of the word hopelessness. Her hair was in disarray, her eyescked their usual shine, her face was filled with grief and a struggle that neither the three friends nor anyone else who wasn''t in Kira''s position could understand.

    The grief of a person that missed the opportunity to join a great party and now was nothing more but a powerless ve of said party.

    "I will ask again," Marvin''s tone turned even colder than it was before. "What are you implying?"

    "I don''t fucking know!" Kira cried out, breaking down in tears. Given how long she managed to hold on without showing any signs of emotion despite being forced into the dungeon right after her entire world copsed, it was no wonder that something like this happened.

    It wasn''t the matter of if it would take ce, but rather of when and where it would happen instead.

    And from the looks of things, the current situation with Tom was a catalyst, only for Marvin''s harsh attitude to the girl to turn into a spark that set her raging emotions alight.

    "What you said before is right," Marcin continued with his chilly-cold voice. "You are not qualified to ask questions like that, nor are we qualified to believe you seek to harm us directly," he added only for a vicious smile to appear on his lips. "After all, if we were to perish, how would you be able to make it back to the first floor?" he asked.

    For someone of Online''s Hub allegiance like Kira, returning back to earth was the only option, the only way to report to the organization she faithfully served for.

    The second she would step into the new world, though, Tom was quite sure she would never even entertain a thought of going back to that messed-up ce.

    "Still, it''s true that you never harmed Rufus but took exceptional care of him," Tom said, proving that by their earlier discussion about the war, the girl scored some brownie points with him. "What you... No, what we ALL need to do right now," Tom closed his eyes as he started speaking, only opening them wide as he shouted the rest, "is to shut the fuck up and get moving!" Tom scolded everyone, himself included.

    "Who knows, maybe once we enter the next floor, the bones of ourpatriots might already be waiting there for us."

 Chapter 180: Toms fatal mistake

    Chapter 180: Tom''s fatal mistake

    "This time, I will be going ahead," Tom announced, not caring about the opinion of his friends.

    They already wasted more time than they could afford. As the stronger group out of all the participating ones, they had to be the first to reach the sixtieth floor, and at their current rate, it would be no wonder if they were to be thest group to do so.

    "I guess we don''t really have much choice," Marvin muttered, likely thinking about the same problems. "Tom, go," he said, nodding his head as he pointed his hand at the doors leading to the teleportation stairway.

    "I''m not going to wait for you this time," Tom informed, grabbing a better hold over his spear as he moved forward. "As soon as I will extract the stones, I will be moving ahead. I will only stop upon reaching the floor we decided to meet with others at," he added before pressing forward.

    A momentter, Tom was once again all alone. With the rest of his group left on the other side of the portal, it would actually take a moment for them to reach the beginning of the forty-fifth floor.

    Not because they would have any problem at crossing over the distance from their position to the gate. With no more monsters guarding it, even Kira could run through it in a matter of seconds.

    But Rufus could not

    Even though he was a man in hister teens, his body has yet to hit the climax of its height sput. As such, his legs were simply too short for the kid to keep up with everyone''s speed if they were to start running.

    On the other hand, Tom instantly jogged forward, no longer willing to waste even a second of his time.

    Just like he said to his friend, they wasted more time than they should on various stuff, from encountering unexpectedly powerful monsters at the intercourse with Cleo ending.

    What Tom had to do right now was to breeze through the floors and reach the boss room of the sixtieth floor as soon as possible.

    ''Huh?'' Tom thought a few momentster as his spear cut through the monsters as if they were made out of butter. ''Was it always that easy?'' he asked himself, surprised by the ease at which he could deal with the monsters.

    It wasn''t that the monsters of this level could pose any challenge for him... But it didn''t mean that he could one-shot them with a spear to their intestines either.

    In the end, he didn''t put his back behind this attack at all. It was nothing more but a warding-off move aimed at forcing Tom''s opponent to increase his distance rather than openly attacking the enemy.

    And yet, despite all of that, the monster could only writhe on the floor for a short moment before the dungeon itself started to clean up. By the time its flesh started to vanish under the influence of the strange quality of the dungeon''s walls, Tom was already several turns of the corridor ahead.

    ''It''s not that those monsters suddenly turned weaker,'' Tom thought, splitting the boss of the floor in half with ease. "I guess I just became stronger," he thought, watching how the monster''s parts quickly fell to the floor.

    Instead of instantly leaving for the further levels, Tom wasted a short moment to extract the stones from the wall.

    The moment he split from the rest of the group, he was no longer certain that they would reunite just by following the same path for a while.

    Just like Tom''s entire family was forcibly split upon entering the dungeon, the same could happen if they were to take some time before moving through the inter-floor gates.

    ''Since I never tested it out, I don''t really have any other option but to assume the words,'' Tom thought,t watching how the stones fell right into a in cloth, only to pull the bag up and close it with a tie.

    It was the simplest way to carry stuff around in the dungeon. Given how Tom was quickly climbing towards the floors where even he would have to be cautious about his movements, he didn''t like the idea of keeping the stones in his backpack.

    After all, his backpack was the biggest w of his position, the one thing that the monsters could sessfully target and even, potentially, force Tom to abandon.

    With the boss of the level defeated, Tom quickly extracted the stones and stashed them away by his belt. Then, without any further wait, he moved towards the doors at the far end of the boss-room before stepping into yet another floor.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' he mused as his surroundings changed, ''doesn''t it feel as if I''m getting better way quicker while I''m fighting than I did back when aI simply walked around?'' Tom asked himself, puzzled by this sudden finding.

    Was it the case of the physical effort facilitating the natural adapting processes of his body? Or maybe he was picking some kind of trace amounts of energy from the monsters he was killing that allowed his body to get used to its new state quicker?

    Just like with many other things in the dungeon, Tom couldn''t tell. But since he was pretty certain that his current actions were a way better way of getting rid of the aftereffects of consuming the golden stones, all he could do right now was to take it for a given truth, even if he didn''t know the principle behind it.

    Conquering the next four floors took Tom only a few minutes. He would simply run through the main corridor of the dungeon, following the path that he had mapped out in the memory.

    While that meant leaving quite a lot of straggling monsters, Marvin and Cleo were strong enough to deal with those on their own. And in this way, between the moment he would appear at the beginning of the floor, and the moment he would kill the boss of it, no more than seven minutes would pass.

    ''I wonder if I will meet him,'' Tom thought about anything other than killing the monsters only when he reached the beginning of the fiftieth floor. This was one of the few ces in the entire dungeon that hemitted to his memory.

    Not because in one more level, the monsters would turn stronger by a huge notch. But because, if lucky, he would get to meet that strange sage monster in the boss-room of the floor.

    With an insane number of questions constantly ramping up in his mind, Tom was pretty eager to ask for some answers. For the first time in a few long yet boring moments, his rush was fueled by something other than the simple hurry.

    And soon enough, he arrived at the doorstep of the boss-room...

    Only to find out that his hopes were all in naught.

    The boss on the other side of the barrier was just another overgrown orc. Judging from the staff it was holding, it was some kind of magic orc... But an orc nheless.

    Not the many-armed giant that he met during his first pass of the entire dungeon.

    "Just my luck," Tom muttered a momentter, stepping on the decaying corpse of the orc''s shaman.

    The fight with the magical orc turned out to be quite novel with all the summons it could bring to the battle. Sadly, just like all Tom''s battles before, it didn''t pose any challenge for him, only furthering Tom''s boredom.

    ''Well, I can''tin about getting bored,'' he thought, stepping down from the corpse and directing his steps towards the doors. ''It''s better to be bored than being worried about Marvin and Cleo,'' he thought, once again immersing himself in the bloody rush to the sixtieth floor.

    Starting from the fifty-first floor, the monsters turned stronger. It was the usual urrence happening every ten floors. Yet, for Tom, the difference was so minimal that there was hardly any reason to even think about it.

    If not for the possibility that the monster he was omitting would now pose some challenge to his friends, he would pay absolutely no mind to the monsters.

    Yet, propelled by this worry, Tom actually paid a bit more attention to clearing the floors, hoping to decrease the chances of his friends finding themselves in a struggle against a bigger group of stronger monsters.

    Ultimately, Tom managed to reach his desired point in about an hour and a half.

    On its own, this was a pretty bad rate of clearing the levels, given how powerful he was whenpared to the local monsters. Yet, even though he could speed that process up considerably by ignoring all the monsters that didn''t stand in his path, Tom took special care to clean out all the bigger groupings of monsters.

    Even though he was in a hurry, this was his responsibility as not only the stronger warrior of the family but also its damned leader.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom pondered once he finally reached the end of the sixtieth floor, ''those who never ventured in the dungeon before nor yed around the Dungeons Online can find it pretty troublesome to reach the sixtieth floor so quickly.''

    As fatal of a mistake as it was, Tom no longer had any means of rectifying it.

    ''The most I can do is hope that if there will be any group too weak to reach the level sixty in time, they will simply turn around and go back to Earth,'' he thought, already hatching up a n ofing to their rescue.

    After all, it was better to get into an even bigger conflict with the online hub than to learn that most of his greater family died because of his unreasonably high expectations!

 Chapter 181: Reunions

    Chapter 181: Reunions

    ''It''s strange to just sit around and do nothing,'' Tom thought as he rxed on the floor of the sixtieth-level boss room. With nothing but his backpack to make his situation a bitfortable, Tom attempted to get some rest.

    With the exception of the ars granti with Cleo, he was on the constant move ever since he entered the dungeon from its other side.

    Starting with the rushed travel from the other side all the way back to the earth-end of the dungeon, then through all the organization of the migration and now up to the sixty floors back, Tom didn''t have even a single second of rest.

    The thing closest to a break that he had was the time where he sat down in a chair while convincing his friends that migration was the best option for their family.

    ''That''s not bad, though,'' Tom thought, stretching his legs as he rested his head against his backpack and closed his eyes.

    In this ce, there was nothing that he could do. With no one to talk to nor anything to do, Tom could only enter a state close to napping.

    His senses would heighten even further than usual, making him even more alert when fully awake. Yet, despite being on his edge, Tom could still fall asleep in this state, allowing his body to regenerate a bit while keeping himself wary enough to wake up the moment his brain would pick any hint of danger or change in general.

    Sadly, this much-needed rest didn''tst long, as, in just a fewteen minutes, Tom opened his eyes.

    His ears alerted him to the sound of someone''s footsteps, forcing him back awake.

    "What are you doing, sleepyhead?" Cleo asked as soon as she passed through the barrier.

    Right now, the girl was slightly different from who Tom saw less than two hours before. While not injured per se, her entire attire was covered in blood, a testimony that Tom failed to get rid of all the monsters.

    "Are you guys okay?" Tom asked, raising from his makeshift bed and looking at the rest of his group with worry.

    Thankfully, no matter how closely he looked, he could see a single open wound on them.

    "We encountered some strong monsters on our way here but managed to push them back for the most part," Marvin replied, slumping down on his bottom.

    "You are tired," Tom muttered, squinting his eyes. "How many times did you need to use your heal?" he asked, quickly figuring out the reason, or rather, the connection between the things he saw.

    "A few times more than I would like," Marvin admitted without any additional push. "To be honest, I would love if you could help us raise our levels," he added, looking down at his hands. "I didn''t expect it, but the monsters are getting more and more powerful, making it hard for us to deal with them," he added.

    "It''s only natural," Tom shook his head, aware of what his friend was talking about. "Just like the monsters are getting stronger, so is the rate of your growth increasing with every level," Tom exined the situation. "Just think about it. If your strength continued to increase in the same way it did back when you gained your first few levels, then reaching the hundredth level would hardly make you any stronger."

    After Tom''s exnation, silence filled the room.

    That information was so simple and obvious that people would likely omit it, ignore it. Without someone pointing this obvious fact out, both Marvin and Cleo simply moved over it, unbothered to actually analyze it.

    On his own, Tom only thought about it when encountering the party from the other side. Only seeing people on the low levels struggling with monsters that Tom considered as nothing more but an interactive background of the dungeon, he was forced to realize that the dungeon wasn''t as simple as it appeared to be.

    After all, how else people from the world where sword and magic fighting was actually relevant would struggle to achieve the levels within the dungeon that Tom and his friends could reach without any help from modern tech?

    How could the people on the other end be stuck at low thirty and forty levels when Tom''s friends could reach that level of strength within a single week of an effort?

    "You do realize how... problematic that is?" Tom asked, more to remind rather than to actually ask. Given how Marvin was the one who kind of pushed him into Cleo''s arms, it would be weird if he already forgot how problematic the matter of his sister leveling up was.

    "Isn''t this the best time to do so?" Marvin asked, rolling his eyes. "Right now, we can still stand guard and keep others away if theye. But if our group grows even a little, it might no longer be possible," Marvin pointed out.

    "I guess we should give all the stones to Cleo, then?" Tom asked in return, too tired to actually bother arguing about the option.

    Right now, all Tom wanted was to get some proper rest. While he managed to ward off his exhaustion for a long while already, now that he had taken a short nap, his body quickly reached the verge of copsing.

    It seemed that rather than helping him out, Tom''s nap only made him realize just how exhausted he was.

    "That''s right," Marvin nodded his head. "I can somehow handle the process, so it''s better to..." his words stopped when a sudden noise announced the end to all of their ns.

    This distant noise quickly grew in volume only to turn into the sound of footsteps a few momentster.

    "I guess we are toote for that already," Tom muttered, raising up and looking towards the gate.

    And surely enough, in just a few moments, another group entered the boss-room.

    They were led by a young girl in tattered clothes at the front, followed by a group of two women and two men behind.

    "Are we the first group to make it?" the girl asked, her previously tense face rxing at the sight of other people.

    "Seems like it," Tom replied, nodding his head and slumping down on the floor.

    ''If I recall correctly, she is one of the cousins, from the fourth line?'' he guessed, unable to recall the details of the girl.

    Outside of the family of the first line, that only Cleo, Marvin, and the descendants of Tom''s father''s direct subordinates belonged to, Tom barely had direct contact with anyone else.

    By a stretch, the second line was still within the group of operatives, people that actively cooperated in the family''s paramilitary affairs.

    The third line consisted of people that only belonged to the family because of the blood ties, while the fourth stretched to everyone who simply lived within their vige or had close business ties with them.

    In other words, the girl that took the brunt of leading her group to the other side had no real obligations to the family atrge.

    ''On its own, that makes her worthy of my respect,'' Tom thought, looking at the girl with a hint of admiration. ''For a civilian like her...'' he thought, only to bite his lip. ''No, the moment she decided to follow with the migration, she can no longer be considered a civilian,'' Tom changed his mind pretty quickly.

    "Still, it''s a relief," the girl released a deep sigh, falling down on her ass to the floor. She then looked up at Tom''s face only to scan the rest of his group. "Do you..." she hesitated, only to shake her head and continue with more confidence in her voice, "do you have some bandages?" she asked before averting her eyes. "We ran out of them a long time ago," she added, her face filling with shame.

    "Marvin?" Tom moved his eyes towards his friend.

    "On it, brother," Tom''s friend replied, standing up even before Tom could call him out. "Let me take a look," he said as he approached the girl.

    Before Marvin could finish healing the brave girl, another group entered the boss-room. This time, however, there was a bit more drama to it.

    "RUFUS!" a middle-aged woman shouted the second their group entered. She then rushed towards Kira, who still fulfilled her duty of keeping the kid safe.

    "Mother!" the kid shouted back, clearly overjoyed at the sight.

    Watching the reunion, Tom could feel a warm feeling spreading through his abdomen. Even though it wasn''t his family getting back together, it was still a tiny ersatz of it.

    "Right, where is dad?" Rufus asked after he hugged his mother for long enough.

    "Your dad..." the woman hesitated and averted her eyes. "He wasn''t in my group," she added a momentter, clearly unwilling to tackle this topic any deeper.

    ''I wonder if that''s true,'' Tom thought, his heart turning heavy. ''Was his father one of the casualties, or was she telling the truth instead?''

 Chapter 182: The Stanfords Prison effect

    Chapter 182: The Stanford''s Prison effect

    Tom waited for every possible group to appear for exactly two more hours since the arrival of the first group. Yet, even when that time passed, rather than hurrying everyone up to the next floor, he stood up and released a deep sigh.

    "Seven groups joined us in total," Markus reported, noticing that his friend was up to something. "Do you want to shuffle them or what?" he asked.

    "No," Tom shook his head, a sad expression appearing on his face. "As much as I hate this time toe, this is the right moment to do the important thing," he said as he walked to the central point of the boss room.

    By the time Tom arrived at his spot, his face lips had turned into a small smile while his eyes turned serious.

    "Everyone!" he shouted, gathering the attention of all the people in the room. "For the organization''s sake, I need you all to join in the groups you were in while conquering the dungeon!" he ordered, keeping silent about the purpose of the exercise.

    "I have a bad feeling about this," Cleo muttered, standing up and moving closer to Tom''s side.

    "What''s the n?" Marvin asked, following after his sister. Yet, even when questioned about his purpose, Tom opted to remain silent.

    The reorganization of all the groups took a while. Even though there were thirty-eight people in total in the boss room, having everyone reunite with those who they traveled with before still took a while.

    "It seems like everyone is ready," Tom muttered after a few more moments, watching how the chaotic movements of his people finally ground to a halt.

    "Tom, what''s going on?" Marvin asked again, unsettled by Tom''s unnatural behavior.

    "Do you remember that experiment when some scientists divided the group of volunteers into wardens and prisoners?" Tom asked, his face turning grim.

    "Yeah," Marvin nodded his head. It was one of the experiments that were the most known in the wide public, something that even those disinterested in social science were likely to be aware of. "Wait, do you mean..." Marvin was about to say something, only to end up stopped by a sharp wave of Tom''s hand.

    "Shush," Tom silenced his friend before casting a sad look into his face. "Hopefully, I''m wrong. But I can''t ignore the possibility," he exined his concerns before walking off towards the first group.

    It was thepany consisting of the young girl as a fighting leader, Rufus'' mother, and two adult men.

    Right off the bat, Tom noticed that given the standard size of everyone''s group being five, there was one personcking in them.

    "I''m sorry in advance," he said to the girl, causing her to lean her head and look at Tom with curiosity.

    "What do you mean?" the girl asked, her face rxed despite the curiosity running through her eyes.

    "I just need you to know that it''s not something I do because of you, but because of the situation," Tom said as he reached out and patted the girl''s arm only to turn his face towards the rest of her group.

    "Right now, you guys have a chance to voice all and anyints about what happened during the first phase of the migration," Tom said with a deadpan expression on his face. "If there were any threats involved, any promises or any ckmails, I now free you from that kind of obligations," he said, looking over the faces of the people.

    For the first time since the people started to reunite on the floor, a look of concern started to appear on their faces.

    They were all family. Even though not all of them shared the same blood, they all ultimately grew up together, went to the same schools, spent their time in the same cliches, and generally knew each other from the crib.

    Still, Tom wasn''t all that positive that this kind of rtionship would prevent some bad seeds from taking advantage of how the dungeon was a ce where the strength reigned supreme.

    "I have noints," Rufus'' mother was the first to speak up as she shook her head. While there was a hint of sadness in her eyes, it wasn''t anywhere close to being a hidden rage that Tom was pretty familiar with.

    Something happened, but she clearly wasn''t able to point anyone in her group to be at fault.

    She wasn''t able to, or simply wasn''t willing.

    "That''s not true," the leading girl muttered silently, catching Tom''s attention. But instead of instantly turning around to ask her, he only sent her a quick nce before moving his eyes at the two other men in the group.

    "I have noints," one said, averting his eyes.

    "It was tough, but that''s how life generally tends to be," the other answered in a more roundabout manner.

    "Now then, you," Tom took a few steps to the back, looking at the leader of the group. "You said that it''s not true that nothing had happened," he echoed her words, looking directly in the girl''s hesitant eyes. "Now, tell me. If what the others said was not true, then what''s the truth?"

    For a moment, the girl hesitated. Despite being the strongest in her group, it was clear that she was unwilling to face the dissatisfaction of the others.

    "I promise, whatever they threatened you with, does not have any power anymore. If they threatened you," Tom said," I will protect you. If they used some other methods of ckmailing you into keeping silent, I will make sure they won''t be able to go through with their threats," he said bit by bit.

    Right now, what was the most important, was to weed out the ck seeds from everyst group.

    If any of the leaders turned out to be abusing his power-given status, Tom would either have to discipline, punish or outright kill them.

    Not because Tom aspired to be the hero of justice in this foreign and hostile world.

    ''If I don''t get rid of troublemakers now, who knows how much harm they could do once they would be trusted cooperators of the cause,'' he thought, looking sternly into the girl''s eyes.

    "Can youe a bit closer?" the girl asked in a weak voice, clearly troubled with the topic that she had on mind.

    "Speak your mind," Tom whispered, leaning over the girl''s ear.

    "Those guys... They threw that woman''s husband to the monsters," the girl whispered in Tom''s ear. "While not for no reason... I was busy fighting the boss when a host of monsters attacked them in the corridor. Before I managed to retreat to help them, they forced him to be the sacrifice," the girl exined in a weak voice.

    Tom took a step back and looked at the girl''s face. Her eyes were tearing up, her expression showing just how guilty she felt about the situation.

    ''It''s not easy to judge situations like that,'' Tom thought, gnashing his teeth.

    The young man moved his chin up and closed his eyes. For a moment, he just remained like that, refusing to buckle even for an inch.

    Then, instead of addressing the issue, Tom opened his eyes and moved on to the next group.

    With the corner of his eyes, he could see the surprise on the girl''s face. But right now, Tom wasn''t ready to pass any judgments yet. While this was his responsibility as the current leader of the family, he opted to get the general feel of the situation first.

    After going bit by bit through all seven groups, Tom realized just how messed up the situation was.

    In the total of thirty-three people and seven leaders, two leaders turned out to abuse their power, while one more group had another problem.

    ''Out of seven groups, four are messed up,'' Tom thought, greatly disappointed with the performance of his people.

    The only three groups that managed to go through the sixty floors without any major hup were all led by the second line of the family. Whether it was the military-like disciple of their leaders or the general greater feel for the family''s unity, Tom had yet to decide.

    But right now, he had no time to think about this topic. Because rather than pondering over the good sides of the part of his family, he had to take care of the ck sheep first.

    "Marvin, are you with me?" Tom asked when he finally came to terms with what he had to do.

    "What? No," Marvin quickly rebuked. "I''m not homo, brother," he exined his sudden outburst before patting Tom on his shoulder. "But in terms of what happened..."

    Given how Marvin followed Tom during the inspection, he had a general feel of what happened. As such, it was clear that in two cases of the leader''s abuse, he no longer considered those people a part of their family.

    "Do you want to do the honors?" Cleo asked, her face frozen in a hateful expression.

    "Honors?" Tom looked at the girl with a confused expression on his face. "Do you really consider it an honor?" he asked, brandishing his spear.

    "Not really," Cleo shrugged her shoulders. "But I guess this is the dog''s duty of yours, now," she added, her face softening up a bit. "Come to me once you are done. While I can''t help you now, I will help you get over itter," she said.

    For a moment, Tom turned silent. The spear in his hand menacingly reflected the dim light produced by the dungeon.

    He then turned around and walked calmly towards the group where he first found out about the drastic abuse of the leader''s power.

    Tom stopped his tracks right before the face of a middle-aged man. From what he heard, he had some kind of berserker-like skills, making him a formidable fighter for someone of his level.

    "You stand used on repeated rapes and killing of yourpanion," Tom said, looking coldly at the confident expression on the man''s face. "How do you plead?"

 Chapter 183: Verdict

    Chapter 183: Verdict

    The viin of the moment was a middle-aged man, someone likely from the third line of the family.

    ''I don''t even recognize him,'' Tom thought while staring down at the man''s fat-covered face. ''But I can recognize why he went as far as to rape someone,'' he thought, his own face remaining calm despite the hate boiling deep in his soul.

    "What?" the man took on airs, clearly unwilling to admit to his crimes. While there was a chance that he was falsely used, the weight of the usations was too big for it to be a random attempt of his former teammates to put him down.

    "Do I need to spell it out?" Tom asked, leaning his head over to the side. "From what I heard, you forced a girl from your team, my cousin mind that, into a sexual rtionship. You apparently imed that it was her way of paying you back for protecting your group in the dungeon," Tom stated, looking coldly at the man''s face.

    "Again, what?" the man squinted his eyes, looking around only to lock his eyes on his team members. Given how there were only men of all ages left, it was clear that the murder usation also involved the same girl. "Where is the girl that I seemingly raped? Where is your proof?!" he shouted, the sparks in his eyes only proving how certain he was of his situation.

    "You spent too much in the secr world," Tom squinted his eyes. "Cleo, would you be so kind?" Tom asked, turning his head towards his friend.

    "Are you sure?" the girl bit her lips. "We still don''t know how my skill works. What if I fall into aa again?" she asked, clearly worried about repeating the same mistake that she unknowinglymitted before.

    "Worst case scenario, we still have the slime and more than enough stones to go around," Tom pointed at Cleo''s shoulder only to tap his hand against the small pouch attached to his belt.

    "Why are you guys acting as if everything is decided?!" the middle-aged man shouted, clearly unhappy with how Tom suddenly went on to ignore him. "You used me of something. How about you find proof of my alleged crimes first? And if you can''t do it, then get on your fucking knees and...:"

    The man didn''t get to finish his sentence. Marvin stepped forward and gently pped his face.

    And by gently, one could only understand it through the difference in the build of their skills.

    Without any buffs added to the attack, Marvin still used all his strength for the p, yet it only caused a small amount of blood to rush to the man''s cheek.

    "Next time you will foolishly run your mouth, you will die," Marvin warned, his eyes turning cold.

    Between the friends, light and empty insults were just a form ofmunication. But between Tom and a random uncle from the third line, there was no such rtion.

    Right now, Tom was representing the absolute top hierarchy of their family. What''s more, they were in the middle of a military expedition.

    No matter how right or wrong that middle-aged man was, Tom was well within his right to im his life for no reason whatsoever, as long as he deemed it to serve the greater purpose.

    "Is this how you wish to rule the family?!" the man eximed, raising his hand to his cheek but wisely not taking any retaliatory action.

    "You two," Tom looked towards the two men who told him about the man''s crimes. "Repeat out loud exactly what you told me," he ordered.

    There was a chance that this middle-aged man was wronged. Tom wasn''t going to let that possibility go without actually checking it. But with no means nor time for a lengthy and detailed n, he only had his instincts to rely upon.

    An instinct that used his augmented senses to pick up even the tiniest clues of the people''s reaction and mimicry clues that they would do their utmost to hide.

    "When we were split, my fiance was with us in the group," the younger of the two uttered, throwing a hateful look at the man.

    But what was interesting was how the used eye''s widened in shock as he realized just who were the people using him.

    ''Could it be that there is another truth to the matter?'' Tom thought, puzzled by his observation.

    The hate of the young man''s face was real. It was a feeling that Tom could easily sympathize with.

    "Starting from the floor tenth, when the leader of the group was decided, she started to quickly distance herself from me. Even though she was acting as if nothing had happened... I could tell," the young man lowered his head and tightened his fists.

    "Wait, she had a fiance?" the middle-aged man opened his eyes in shock. "No, that shouldn''t be possible... Unless..." the look in the man''s eyes changed as he looked at the youth with pity. "If that''s the case, then you should truly be happy that she died," hemented.

    "What do you mean?" Tom asked, slowly starting to make sense of the situation. While there were still some nks and empty bits that he needed to fill, he could slowly start connecting the dots.

    The dots that the young man would never be able to see.

    "I saw her die; we all did." The man calmed down, his face turning slightly sad. "I found it weird why she suddenly stumbled to the front where I was battling the monsters, but I considered this as an unfortunate ident..." he muttered, rubbing his own chin before suddenly casting a quick nce at the other of the two users. "Could it be...?" he mused, refusing to borate on what was going through his mind.

    "Stumbled?" the older of the two users stepped forward, his face tensing up. "You brought the fight towards our group! Don''t you think that I didn''t notice it!" he imed, pointing his hand at the middle-aged man.

    "How about you tell everyone how you fucked her too, instead?" the man pointed out with a sneer on his lips.

    For a moment, the entire boss-room turned silent. In terms of changes, this was the biggest twist to the situation.

    "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" the young man red up, clearly unwilling to let anyone insult his dead fiancee.

    "I said the truth, boy," the man spat those words right into the young man''s face before turning around and looking deeply into Tom''s eyes. "I didn''t rape that girl. The reason is pretty simple. I didn''t have to," he said, ignoring the fuming kid behind him.

    "I can see that," Tom said, only to release a deep sigh. "I guess you were right in the beginning; I cannot see a shred of guilt in you," he added before moving his eyes on the older of the two users. "Tell me, was it really an ident? Or did you have something to do with her death?"

    If others were suspecting the real course of the events before, then Tom''s words finally made them pretty certain about it.

    The middle-aged man didn''t rape the girl. After all, in order for there to be rape, there had to be an unwillingness. And from the looks of things, that deceased girl was pure only in the imagination of her innocent fiance.

    "What do you mean by that?" the older of the users brought an expression of shock and surprise on his face... But before Tom''s eyes, he could very well just admit his guilt.

    After consuming the golden stones, Tom''s senses were brough to the point where he could barely handle all the information they were providing.

    The twitch of the man''s lip, the fraction of a second when he attempted to avert his eyes, the gentle blush on his cheeks... All those small clues allowed Tom to guess what happened in general terms.

    "Let me change the question, then," Tom said, stepping forward and passing by the initial suspect only to stare down the new target of his suspicion''s face. "Did you, in any way or form, influenced the death of that girl?" he asked.

    Tom didn''t need to know whether he pushed her or not. After all, he wouldn''t be able to sense a lie if that man actually kicked her instead. That''s why he decided to ask about the situation in a way broad enough to include all the possibilities while focused to the point where the answer would decide the matter.

    "I didn''t..." the man replied, backing off a single step and averting his eyes to the side.

    "I guess that settles it," Tom sighed before turning around and moving back to his previous position.

    ''Should I let that kid deal with it?'' he thought, sending a quick nce at the confused face of the young man.

    He then clenched his jaws to the point his teeth started to hurt.

    ''No, he doesn''t look mature enough for that,'' Tom decided in his heart.

    He then turned back to the people he was talking with just a moment before. After a single thought, a spear appeared in his hand.

    "For influencing the demise of my cousin, sleeping with that man''s fiancee, falsely using a fellow brother of the family, and inducing chaos during this military operation, I sentence you to death," he said in a deadpan voice, slowly walking toward the man.

    "Wait, what?" the man backed out a few steps, clearly unwilling to ept the direction the situation developed in.

    He even kept the surprised look on his face when Tom''s spear prated right through his chest, turning his heart into a bloody mess and ending his life.

 Chapter 184: Tactics of conquering the dungeons upper floors

    Chapter 184: Tactics of conquering the dungeon''s upper floors

    Judging all the conflicts and resolving all the disputes took Tom only an hour. It was an activity extremely taxing on his mental state but not so much on his schedule or physical endurance.

    In the end, even the strongest of the leaders of the auxiliary teams were only about seventy level, and even that only thanks to a support power awakened by one of the members of his team at the tenth level.

    Still, the rise of one''s strength grew in pace with the rise of one''s level. And while Tom could still have some trouble fighting those people back when he was at level eighty, now that his level was over one hundred with the boost from the golden stones, everyone in the family was as good as ants for him.

    Ding, ding, ding.

    Roughly three hours after Tom''s group finally reached the sixtieth floor, the rm clock set on his phone finally rang.

    "Okay, everyone," Tom shouted, raising to a fully standing position. Once everyone''s attention was on his face, he sped his hands and pointed at the gate towards the lower floor. "We are going in!"

    The arrangement that Tom came up with was fairly simple. There was a strict timeline during which everyone had to reach the sixtieth floor. While strict, the time allocated to this part of the journey was still fairlyx, allowing everyone to calmly decide the leader and allowing the leaders to get used to their abilities.

    But the situation changed once the three hours of rest at the sixtieth floor would run out. And the second Tom''s rm rang, it meant it was the time for the next stage.

    Tom and Marvin heralded the push to the next floor. While the initial n included Cleo within their strike group, given the possibility of some unrest lingering in the groups that Tom judged, she ultimately was set to guard the stability of the second wave.

    There was a simple reason why the second wave would have to wait a period of ten minutes before following in Tom''s steps. And this reason manifested just a few seconds after Tom and Marvin emerged on the starting corridor of the sixty-first floor.

    "Peter reports for duty!" a man in the middle of his twenties appeared at the gate just a few moments after Tom walked off the entrance, instantly taking two steps forward and saluting.

    ''Judging from his speed of reaction, he is from the second line,'' Tom guessed. The fact that the man actually executed a proper salute was another giveaway of the fact. As such, even though Tom couldn''t recall his face at all, he could still rest easy regarding the man''s professionalism.

    "How is your group?" Tom asked, nodding at the man to make him vacate the spot. After all, there was a chance that some more group leaders would appear.

    "No casualties, one wounded. I managed to unlock seven skills and extra''ed one of them," the man reported in a concise manner. A decisive proof that he was one of the men who actually took their military upbringing quite seriously.

    "Your position?" Tom asked, leaning his head over to the side while a small smile appeared on his lips.

    "Forward-forward, boss," the men replied, only to turn around a momentter when the gate behind him started giving out a slight, humming noise.

    A few secondster, another person stepped through.

    "Huh?" it was one of the uncles that Tom actually recognized.

    ''If I recall correctly... He was dealing with the cables all the way back when we connected to the hub,'' he thought, nodding his head to show respect for the man''s age.

    Even though Tom was a the-jure leader of the family, that didn''t mean he had any reason to act arrogant towards his allies, especially when their experience alone made them more eligible for his position.

    "I''m sorry to bother, but your report, uncle?" Tom requested, not bothered by theck of report at all.

    "Ah, sorry, boss," the old man smiled before lowering his head in apology. "Forward-middle position. I was in a group of four, two wounded," the man quickly gave his status.

    ''We are quite front-heavy,'' Tom thought, only to shake his head. ''What''s even the point of strategizing it?'' he asked himself. ''It''s not like we know how we will split once on the other side.''

    The entire split of double-ranking of the front, middle, back, and roaming position was pretty simple.

    Those who would go deep into the enemy formations, disturb their backline, or generally fight at the deepest distance possible would assume the double front position.

    Those who would be more suited for the standard frontline like tanks, cluster warriors, and the likes would ssify as the front-middle position.

    On the other hand, Marvin, as someone whose skills were strictly oriented at support, would be ssified as back-front. If another supporting leader appeared in the family, one whose skills would have absolutely nothing to do with direct fighting, he would be ssified as a back-back position.

    By splitting every fighter into this kind of role, Tom, or any other leader in his position, could quickly organize and manage all the forces under hismand. While originally it was a ssification strictly rted to the Dungeons Online gamingmunity, it was something that perfectly suited Tom''s family needs right now.

    "Guys, do any of you want to train themselves?" Tom asked, quickly assuming themanding role of the new, smaller group.

    "I''m good," Peter replied with a small smile.

    "I think I need some more practice," Tom''s uncle said, his cheeks covering in a slight hue of red.

    "Okay then," Tom nodded his head. "Marvin, you will stick with the uncle for the time being," he said before nodding his head to the oldest in the group. "Only use your skills when necessary. Otherwise, it wouldn''t be much of a training. As for you," Tom turned his head to Peter, "how about you go and clear all the side routes?"

    "On it, boss!" Peter nodded his head, sping his hands together.

    ''Judging from the look in his eyes, he is happy to finally put his skills into an actual use,'' Tom thought, trying his hardest to hold back a small smirk.

    The way in which he organized the group had a simple purpose in mind. As they were the frontal assault group that concentrated most of the firepower of all the groups that stood in waiting on the lower floor, they had to fully clear the level from everyst monster that roamed it.

    Only by achieving this primary objective could the second wave of Tom''s family proceed without much worry for the potential danger. Yet, even in this case, those who actually were confident in their abilities would join the second wave whenever reorganizing at the boss-room so that those who still wanted to practice could get into a bit more fights.

    ''Now that I think about it,'' Tom thought, roughly five minutester, ''how are the four groups are going to merge?''

    Given how his current group consisted of eight small groups from before and two more that joined him on the sixty-first floor, there should be now four big groups in total, conquering the sixty-first floor in parallel.

    ''I doubt that the groups will be split into smaller parts now, so I guess it''s safe to assume there will be two instances of merging, huh?'' Tom deduced, shing at the monsters that roamed the main corridor of the floor.

    His own position was that of an extreme forward-forward. With his agility, maneuverability, and reach, he could only fully unleash his strength if there were no allies to hold him down within his range.

    Because of that, while Tom would thin out the number of monsters on the main path, Peter would kill the possible stragglers in the secondary routes while Marvin and their uncle would take on the remaining monsters.

    This was the most efficient and safe formation that they could assume, constantly keeping the safety of the second wave in half.

    In the end, they managed to reach and even clear the boss-room without any major hups. The one small injury that Peter sustained when he slipped on a small stone was quickly healed with Marvin''s help, allowing them to go right back the way they came, just in case some monsters managed to avoid their attention before.

    Thankfully, nothing of that sort happened, allowing all then smaller groups to safely unite at the end of the sixty-first floor.

    ''I guess I was a bit too cautious when setting the timing,'' Tom thought when he had no other choice but to wait nearly forty-five minutes for his rm to ring a second time. Even though their entire group was doing nothing but wasting time in the boss-room, he couldn''t move ahead of schedule.

    As annoying and counterintuitive this kind of drill could be at times, it was still the only way to cooperate with other groups that were stuck in other paths of the dungeon.

    "This is going to be a long migration," Tom moaned, releasing his annoyance as he cut down another group of monsters with a single swing of his spear.

    What used to be a great way for him to release some stress now turned into nothing more but a hassle.

    ''Even if we will all unite on the eightieth floor, this still means,'' Tom gulped down as he kicked away a massive, golden bull charging at him, ''eighteen hours of conquering the dungeon,'' he thought, clenching his teeth.

    Eighteen hours, out of which only four hours at most would be spent on fighting.

    The other fourteen long hours, Tom would be forced to just wait around in the boss-rooms, waiting for the timer to end, allowing him to finally proceed ahead.

    "This is going to be a long day," he repeated before throwing himself back into the frenzy of killing monsters.

 Chapter 185: Chimera

    Chapter 185: Chimera

    ''Rush!'' Tom thought, pushing the physical prowess of his body to the limit.

    Just like he allowed others to train by fighting monsters while climbing the dungeon, he wasn''t going to let go of this opportunity himself.

    With his haste intentionally turned down, Tom swung his spear around his waist. He let go of the weapon intentionally, allowing its momentum to carry it around his hips only to grab it on the other side and push it towards the monster from an unpredictable angle.

    Given the roundish movement of the spear''s de, if he were to dy the action for even a fraction of a second, rather than striking at the monster''s side, he would strike right at its center. A fraction of a second more, and he would have to twist his arm and wrist to lead the weapon back on the target.

    ''This move is quite risky,'' Tom thought, kicking away the massive spider in order to gain some distance.

    Ever since he created his current formation, it kept going without any changes. While the uncle finally grew confident of his abilities, Tom decided not to change theyout of his group by recing him.

    While it would allow someone else to hone their abilities, given the rapidly rising strength of the monsters, it could also lead to some unnecessary injures and even casualties.

    ''Can we even face off with that dragon-girl at our current state?'' Tom thought, freeing his mind by using his already practiced moves to finish off the spider. He simply threw the spear right at the monster while recalling another one right to his hand. The second the spider raised its leg to push the spear aside, Tom swapped ces with it and plunged his other de into the monster''s side.

    A single, heavy push on the spear''s handle allowed him to force the monster out of the bnce before pinning it to the ground. He then mercilessly shook the spear in and out of the monster''s wound, turning its insides into a bloody mess.

    Even if all the monsters thrived on magic, they were still some sort of living beings. Once their insides would get wrecked, even the toughest opponent would sumb to the wounds.

    "That took a while," Tom thought, pulling out the spear and throwing it directly on the dungeon''s floor. It was too dirty from all the blood for him to use it. ''I guess I can only wait for the dungeon to absorb all the blood before reusing it,'' Tom decided, summoning another spear to his hand as he moved forward.

    Right now, his group managed to reach the seventy-ninth floor. This was the only reason why he was in such a hurry to push through the corridors and towards the boss that he actually used his standard moves to finish the monster from before.

    Right now, Tom wanted to be the first to enter the eighty floor. Only in this way could he ensure that no unsupervised trouble would appear during the merge of the two big groups.

    With ten small groups of five forming a group of forty-eight within his part of the migration, Tom expected another forty to fifty people to appear during the merge.

    ''At this point, I can only hope that not a lot of people have died,'' he thought, clenching his hands against the spear''s handle.

    The casualties of the dungeon were the one thing that Tom couldn''t really control. Unless he could lead everyone personally through the entire ce, he had to ept the fact that there would be some groups that would be potentially wiped out.

    It wasn''t because he wasn''t prepared for the migration.

    ''This sort of thinking would only make me depressed,'' Tom thought when this idea appeared in his mind for the first time.

    It wasn''t that there wasn''t anything else that he could test out or anything that he could do to make the passage smoother or safer.

    The truth was, there was a shitload of things that Tom could do in order to prepare better. But in reality, it was only wishful thinking.

    He entered the dungeon in a state of great agitation. He did it when he saw no other path for himself. Even though he calmed down while conquering the path for the second time when he arrived back at his home...

    Tom quickly realized that there was simply no time for any additional testing.

    Ignoring the factor of the danger that sneaking around the dome was involved with, his family was already about as deep in the local conflict as it could be.

    While it was not something that he nned or participated in, the catalyst was traded off while Marvin ensured that the news about this fact would be leaked out. Those two simple things lead to destruction on a scale of nuking the entire town to the ground.

    In other words, what started as a local conflict when Tom arrived at the scene, already turned into a full-scale war.

    For the online hub atrge, it wouldn''t matter whether Tom''s family were the ones involved in the detonation of the catalyst. It was doubtful they would even bother to check it out properly.

    That''s why, with no other choice once again, Tom forced all his family onto this perilous path. And now, for the second tost time while on this side of the dungeon, he would have to learn the price that others woulde to pay for his decision.

    A monster appeared, forcing Tom to throw all those thoughts aside for a moment. This time, it was a weirdly shaped mix of a spider... and a damned bull!

    "The hell?!" Tom muttered, weirded out by the monster''s appearance for the first time in a long while.

    Just like everyone would be dumbfounded with a centaur... of human legs and horse''s upper body, what Tom saw was created with a simr sense of humor... or rather itsck.

    Walking on eight spidery legs, the monster had the torso and a head of a bull, along with two long and spiky horns on top of its skull. Yet, from its back, instead of a simple tail, there was a stinging fang of the scorpion''s kind!

    ''At this point, it''s not a mix of monsters but rather a fully-fledged chimera!'' Tom thought, grasping his spear a little harder.

    ''Fuck it, whatever it is, I simply need to kill it,'' he thought, shaking his head to get rid of the weirdness and rushing forward.

    This time, Tom didn''t dare to train his abilities. As this was his first encounter with a strange monster like that, he didn''t know the pattern of its movement, its abilities, or its strength. In a sense, this monster was a total enigma.

    That''s why Tom threw his spear forward, aiming to make it either fly right at the level to cut through the middle of the chimera''s tail or to allow him to appear right above its back.

    As the spear flew ahead, Tom called forth two more spears, a magical one in his left hand and the main weapon in his right.

    ''Haste,'' Tom thought, tightening his teeth.

    Since this was a monster he knew nothing about, he dared not to hold his punches even by the tiniest little bit.

    With all of his usual abilities in full swing, Tom opened his mouth and pushed the air through his lips, uttering the word ''swap.''

    Yet, just as thest letter of this spell was about to free itself from Tom''s mouth, the young man''s blood froze.

    The chimera lowered its tail, putting its spike right at the level on which Tom''s spear was flying!

    ''Not good,'' Tom thought, right as his spell was about toe into action.

    With thest-ditch attempt, he rxed his hold over his magical spear in his left hand, hoping to redirect the spell on it instead...

    But it was toote.

    With a sh, the scenery around Tom changed, putting him right in the path on the poison-oozing spike of the chimera''s tail!

    ''Guard,'' Tom thought when his body suddenly twisted in an impossible angle, somehow forcing his flesh out of the spike''s way.

    Regretfully, the rest of the tail still brushed past Tom, changing his direction and smashing him against the ceiling of the corridor.

    ''This fucker,'' Tom thought as he fell to the ground, only to instantly jump away, avoiding the charge of the monster. ''I guess it''s time to stop ying nice,'' he thought, calling forth five more of his spear.

    "Taste despair," Tom muttered, letting go of his wrath as he finally summoned his ultimate spell, the spearmage domain.

    In an instant, Tom''s five spears got to work, cutting through the monster''s leg in two swift strikes. Once it was rendered immobile, Tom''s spears skewered it sideways, as if he wanted to split it into five equal-sized chunks of meat for theter grilling.

    ''To think that I would be forced to use domain so quickly...'' Tom thought, angry at himself. Then he shook his head, killing this invalid emotion. ''No, it''s not that I''m getting weaker or even distracted,'' he thought, looking down on the floor for its uniform texture to help him calm down.

    ''It''s the dungeon changing,'' Tom realized something that he suspected for a while already.

    ''The main question is, right now,'' Tom thought, standing up and looking towards the end of the corridor, where the slight shine of the boss room''s barrier could be seen, ''is it because I grew stronger, or is it because there is a shitton of people in the dungeon right now?''

 Chapter 186: What the hell are you waiting for?

    Chapter 186: What the hell are you waiting for?

    The first merge of the groups happened right on the seventieth floor. What could easily be a disaster of people appearing through the gates at the same time, falling into each other and turning a rtively organized crowd into a panicked mess...

    Thankfully, it didn''t happen. Thanks to the organization and strict scheduling, people appeared at the seventieth-floor gate one by one, with rtively long gaps of time in between.

    ''Thank God,'' Tom thought, watching over the developing situation as more and more people amassed at the entry of the seventieth floor.

    The floor itself was already thoroughly cleaned from the monsters, with some of the small group leaders still standing guard throughout the corridors, watching out for any potential leftover monster.

    ''While it would be quite a sight and a learning experience to know what would happen, I wouldn''t like to see my people turned into an experiment like that,'' Tom thought, the moment of dark humor only reflecting the current state of his soul.

    The dungeon was changing, and Tom had no idea what was the reason behind it. From how monsters apparently knowing his father and possessing an overwhelming strength started to appear more frequently, through the appearances of the monsters whose strength didn''t suit the floor they were in...

    Those were just the examples of the things that bothered Tom. Just like it was proved and noticed hundreds of years before his time, humans feared the unknown.

    And right now, the dungeon that Tom thought to be familiar with was turning into a single, massive unknown.

    "Long time no see," Cleo said as she appeared from the gate. Ever since they split at the sixtieth floor, she continued to watch over the first of the merged groups, making sure that no past conflicts would affect its cohesion.

    Even though she was unhappy about being excluded from the forward position, she still followed Tom''s order without a single whine of dissatisfaction.

    "Spare me the pleasantries," Tom muttered, shaking his head. Yet, contrary to his words, he stepped forward and embraced the girl, finding sce in the peacefulness of her warmth.

    "Is everything all right?" Cleo asked, slightly weirded out by unexpected Tom''s clinginess.

    "More or less," Tom shook his head, hiding his face in the corner between Cleo''s neck and shoulder.

    "I guess that was a wrong question," Cleo chuckled uneasily, reaching out with her arms and surrounding Tom''s waist with them. "How are you holding out?"

    "Barely," Tom muttered in response before finally pushing himself away from the girl. Even though he wanted to stay in Cleo''s arms for a little longer, he could already feel the pressure of all his people staring at him.

    For their sake, he couldn''t show just how poor his mental state was right now. For them, he had to pretend that his morale was still as high as ever.

    Thankfully, with how organized his people were, it didn''t take that long to merge the two groups together.

    "Everyone, let''s get a move on!" Tom shouted, pointing at the deeper part of the floor with his spear. Staying in the corridor only made the problem of crowding seem bigger than it was in reality.

    For now, if they really wanted to reorganize, they had to enter the rtively huge and open space of the boss-room first.

    "What are you so worried about?" Cleo asked once the entire group finally started to inch closer towards the end of the seventieth floor. "I don''t want to imply that you are worried..." she added in a whisper, clearly trying to stop the others from eavesdropping on their conversation, "but that''s just the feeling that you gave me," she mumbled.

    Tom looked to the side at Cleo''s face. From the troubled look in her eyes, it was pretty obvious that she was struggling to put her feelings into words.

    "This and that..." Even though Tom felt that sharing his burdens would lighten his mood a little... doing so woulde at the cost of burdening others. And right now, he believed he was the only one that should carry it.

    After all, if his power was already affected by those negative and uncertain thoughts of his, what would happen if he spread the news to the leaders of other small groups? What would be of his family if all the strong fighters that protected those who didn''t level up were overwhelmed by doubts and hesitations? "It''s too much to exin it shortly," Tom added, feeling that he owed the girl some kind of exnation, even if he decided to hold back on sharing the truth of his worries.

    "Tell me then," Cleo muttered, changing her approach, "do those worries actually matter?" she asked, managing to catch Tom by surprise.

    "And what do you mean by that?" Tom asked, genuinely puzzled about Cleo''s sudden question.

    "I mean," Cleo smiled gently. "Once we get to the eightieth floor, just ten floors from now, we will only have thest boss to take care of, right?" she asked about the obvious.

    "Assuming that thest ten floors didn''t change... yeah," Tom muttered, unable to stop his negative thoughts from affecting his answer.

    Even though he decided not to share his hesitations, they found their own way to surface.

    "Once we take care of the boss, everything will start turning easier," Cleo said with a bright look taking over her face. "I mean, outside of distributing the stones from thest ten floors," she added a secondter, her bright expression instantly souring down.

    "Right," Tom chuckled, his thoughts momentary freed from the burden of leadership. Yet, there was nothing tough about. The matter of dividing the stones between various leaders was bound to spark some conflict and trouble. Yet, whenpared to the magnitude of the troubles that Tom was actually bothered by, this little affair appeared so damn meaningless that Tom couldn''t help butugh.

    "Yeah, this will be a pain in the butt," Tom admitted, nodding his head as soon as he managed to take the reins of his own body and stop his giggle.

    "But that''s not even the good part!" Cleo eximed, finally allowing her voice to turn back into a normal volume. "Once we get past that boss, rather than problems piling up, they will start to melt away!" she shouted, spreading her arms wide and identally pping the face of a random guy that was walking by their side.

    A few moments of apologizing and reorganizing the group back into an orderly formationter, Cleo''s face was already soaking in sweat.

    Just this moment of social interaction was enough to put her through the greatest trouble and effort than climbing seventy floors of this blood-lusting dungeon could.

    "I guess you are right," Tom said, just as their group finally started to enter the emptied-out boss room. "We only need to hold for a few more hours," he muttered, more to encourage himself than to admit Cleo''s words to be right.

    "What are you waiting for, then?" Cleo asked, putting her hands on her hips and standing her ground.

    Right now, the two of them were like a mountain, breaking the waves of the ocean''s current. The difference was, rather than waves, they were breaking the line of the people, and rather than protecting the coast from the ocean''s wrath, they were incurring the anger of all of those who had to struggle to get past them.

    "What am I waiting for?" Tom echoed Cleo''s words, unable to understand what she was talking about.

    ''Right now, I''m waiting for the rest of the people...'' he thought, only to shake his head a momentter.

    This wasn''t the answer that Cleo was looking for. It was clear from how serious her expression was.

    "Right now, you are waiting for everyone to follow the schedule," Cleo gave the answer to her question herself. "But tell me, what''s the point of doing so?" she asked another question.

    "It is to make sure we won''t fall into each other while crossing through the levels and to keep the cohesion..." Tom attempted to answer with the reasons that were actually behind the idea of his tactic.

    "Don''t give me that bullshit," Cleoshed out at him, attracting the attention of the few who have yet to enter the boss room. Ultimately though, when she threw them an angry nce, they hurried forward instead of staying back to listen.

    "What do you want to say, then?" Tom asked, slightly rilled up by Cleo''s unreasonably weird way of approaching the topic. "No, what do you want me to do?" he rified his question.

    This one thing was pretty obvious. Cleo''s words weren''t there to cheer him up. She said what she did for the sake of making him act.

    "Ignore all the tactics. Leave me with the timer, take Marvin, and just hurry up ahead!" Cleo shouted after waiting for thest person to pass through the barrier of the boss-room. "Whether we merge correctly or not, whether we will manage to keep everyone peaceful and calm... Why do you bother with this?" she asked, mming her hand into the wall of the dungeon.

    "Because I''m the lea..."

    "It''s because you are stupid," Cleo summed up, her face finally rxing. "That''s why I''m telling you. Take Marvin, take all the stones, take whoever you deem necessary to deal with the boss. And then just go for it," Cleo advised, spreading her arms out as if to show that she had nothing to hide.

    ''Now that I think about it... Isn''t Cleo actually right?'' Tom thought, biting his lips. ''Outside of the pressure to stick to the n... is there any reason for me not to rush the boss?''

 Chapter 187: Spearhead

    Chapter 187: Spearhead

    Even with all Cleo''s encouragement, even with all her hurrying... Tom still had to take his sweet time to organize everyone.

    With the two bigger groups now merged, nearly a hundred people gathered in the boss room, making it a surprisingly challenging task to gather them up.

    "I will be leaving all the local troubles to you," Tom said, turning to Cleo as the people continued to gather around.

    "Huh?" Cleo almost jumped in surprise, instantly throwing Tom an angry look. "Do you want to say I won''t get to help you with thest boss?" she asked, only to shake her head. "No way," she refused, turning her head away and crossing her hands on her chest.

    "You are the only one that I can trust with dealing with all the possible problems with them," Tom muttered, nodding his head to point at the crowd. "Marvin would also be a good pick, but not only do I need his support abilities, but hisck of offensive ones would make it hard for him to deal with any potential problems," Tom added, exining his stance.

    "No way," Cleo refused again, not even looking back at Tom.

    "Then who else do you think can handle this?" Tom asked, Cleo''s behavior starting to annoy him a little.

    "Just leave it be," Cleo shrugged her arms. Now that there was a topic that she could do anything about, she was willing to talk.

    "You don''t care that this might cause someone else to die for no reason?" Tom asked, riled up by the answer.

    "They are all grown-up adults. You can''t babysit them," Cleo replied, unwilling to drop her idea. "If they are going to kill each other, then trying to stop them now will only make you seem like an autocratic figure. And if you don''t stop them now, the rest of the family will ask you to do itter," Cleo said, a shrewd smile appearing on her lips.

    "And in this way, instead of a tyrant, I will appear as the saint saving them all," Tom muttered, catching Cleo''s drift. "Okay, fine," Tom said, dropping the topic.

    Out of all the things, convincing Cleo to do something that she was so fervently against wasn''t the smartest idea. That''s why, rather than arguing pointlessly with her, Tom turned around and took a look at the crowd.

    During their small discussion, the people finally gathered up and waited for what news he had for them.

    "Everyone, after thinking things through, I decided that along with a few of those who leveled up, we will go ahead of everyone," Tom shouted, hoping that everyone could hear him.

    In an instant, the entire crowd riled up.

    Some people started shouting while others simply murmured under their noses.

    While it was hard to make out what the specific men and women were saying, the general consensus was simple.

    "Are you going to leave us be?"

    "Group leaders, step up!" Tom shouted his next order.

    Just like Cleo wanted, Tom was going to go and challenge the boss of the entire dungeon again. While he had already defeated that dragon-girl twice, with how the dungeon continued to change, he was no longer confident about tackling her on his own.

    Soon, the crowd divided into two groups. The majority of people stepped back and started to disperse, making the most of the unexpected break to eat, rest and waste time.

    On the other hand, ny others remained around Tom, all ready to receive his further orders.

    ''From what I see, there are only seven guys and one girl from the second generation,'' he thought, stopping himself from disqualifying the rest right off the bat.

    Because there was one thing that he had to do first.

    "What are your abilities?" Tom asked, approaching the first one.

    This survey took only a few minutes, far shorter than Tom expected it to take. Normally, no yer nor adventurer from the other side would reveal their abilities to anyone outside of their closest friends andpanions. After all, those abilities were their lifeline, their means of protecting themselves from others.

    But this situation was different.

    In this group of ny people, only eight of them looked like they ever yed Dungeons Online. What''s more, all of them belonged to the second line of the family, meaning they knew better than to put their personal agenda above the wellbeing of the entire family.

    As for the others, they didn''t appear to be aware of how crucial this kind of information was!

    ''Eleven fighters, five ranged, two one rounders, one half-support,'' Tom thought after taking the count of everyone. ''What''s more, only two of them show any promise,'' he thought, biting his lips.

    The situation was far worse than he expected.

    ''Well, that''s only natural,'' Tom bit his lips after a moment of thought. ''Given how they were tasked with clearing the monsters, no one with support abilities would be given priority for the stones,'' he realized, shaking his head.

    In this situation, finding out a single semi-support who could help the others and fight on the frontline was already a lucky find.

    "Okay, everyone!" Tom shouted again, this time limiting his voice. After all, only the group leaders had to hear him now.

    "Me, Cleo, Marvin, Dagstan, and Robert will form a single group, and we will advance all the way towards thest boss," Tom announced. "In the meantime, I want the rest of you to slowly advance towards the eightieth floor just like nned," Tom gave another order.

    This time, no one dared to voice out their protests. It was partially because those who used the stones to gain levels were aware that sooner orter they would have to get some responsibilities for it, but mostly because right now, Tom could spot everyst one of theiners.

    "Now then," Tom muttered, closing his eyes for a moment only to open them up a momentter and look sharply at the people before him. "Subaru, Emilia, and Petere forward," Tom ordered.

    The trio moved forward, their looks as if they were heading for the execution.

    "You guys will be responsible for carrying this entire group ahead," Tom said as he pulled out the bag with the stones. "Cleo, pass me the slime," Tom shouted, reaching out with his hand to where the girl stood.

    "Here," Cleo passed out the slime, a small smile appearing on her lips as she looked at her ''sister''.

    ''Is she curious whether she will act like she did while leveling up?'' Tom thought, rolling his eyes over the silliness of his lover.

    "I have enough stones to bring you guys all to level one hundred," he announced, putting on a glove and pulling out the first of the stones. "Are you ready?" he asked, passing the stone out to the slime that jumped on his shoulder and whipping out his main spear.

    "I am ready!" all three of them replied in unison. Something that was possible only because they all came from the second line of the family.

    The fact that Tom decided to invest the stones in them wasn''t derived only from how they all received a military-like upbringing. It was a major but not a deciding factor.

    "Peter, you will go first," Tom said, pressing the de of his spear against the slime the second it turned the color of its skin to green.

    A surge of energy instantly flushed through Tom''s system... but this time, it was far weaker than what Tom expected.

    ''Did the slime skimp on the mana?'' Tom instantly thought, moving his sight on the small monster on his shoulder... But as the mana continued to pour into his spear, he realized that it wasn''t the case.

    ''It''s not like the amount of mana is decreasing... but rather, I''m now capable of holding a far greater amount of it!'' Tom figured out, only to instantly fight off the desire to just take all the mana for himself.

    Right now, regaining his full potential was far less important than letting those three reach a higher level. After all, they would be the spearhead for the rest of his family.

    Leveling up Peter went smoothly. He didn''t show any signs of side-affects of Cleo''s kind. Rather than that, his face took on an ted expression, as if he was brought near orgasm by the influx of the energy.

    Leveling up Emilia turned out to be the weirdest of them all. Rather than reacting like Cleo by actually getting sexually aroused, she simply stood in ce, soaking the mana like a fresh sponge. But the weird part was, the more mana Tom flooded her system with, the faster she became at sucking it even more!

    In the end, Subaru turned out to be the most normal out of the three of them. While his body resisted the sudden influx of energy a little, the entire process went through smoothly, without any visual or internal side effects.

    "You guys should take about an hour to train your new abilities," Tom said when he finally lowered his spear and used the rest of the mana residing in it to ward off his exhaustion. "Don''t let this feeling of power go to your head... But who am I even telling that to," heughed out. "You should all be aware of that... But with that said," Tom muttered, turning around and looking towards the gate leading towards the next floor.

    With the trio now capable of spearheading the group, there was nothing stopping Tom and his group from going ahead.

    "It''s time to go for the boss!"

 Chapter 188: Gap between level and skill

    Chapter 188: Gap between level and skill

    Tom''s small group sted through the levels as if there was no tomorrow. Even though neither of them received any level-ups ever since reaching the sixtieth floor, they still managed to somehow keep up with the rising difficulty of the dungeon.

    The main reason was pretty obvious and had a shape of a human working with a spear.

    With Tom thinning the herd of every floor and allowing only a few monsters to reach the rest of his group, they could still keep up with the pace while dutifully practicing their skills and cooperation.

    Yes, cooperation.

    This was the biggest element of Tom''s n of defeating thest boss. Because even if every singlest one of them reached a hundredth level or even higher, Tom still doubted that they could tackle thest boss on their own.

    ''Well, it goes without saying. I never defeated that dragon girl once,'' he thought, the taste of those previous defeats still souring his mood.

    The only reason why Tom managed to go past the top floor of the dungeon to its other side... It was because after fighting for a little while, the dragon girl would just... stop.

    ''What''s even worse is that with every second of the fight, she is getting stronger than before,'' Tom recalled that small detail from the very first fight with that girl.

    At first, he had an easy time coping with her attack. Yet, just a second before she would return to a neutral position and freeze in ce, the attack that she was about to smack Tom with was well more than enough to eradicate all the signs of his presence from the world!

    ''Judging from the changes to the dungeon, she is going to keep fighting for a lot longer,'' Tom thought grimly before turning his head to his team behind.

    Marvin and Cleo did exactly what they would do on the floors where Tom traveled only with them, Kira and Rufus. While Marvin would focus on supporting the girl and holding the monsters rtively at bay, Cleo would either m herself into the enemy or unleash a flurry of kicks, stomps, and fists against it.

    Now that she had developed some more abilities, her ability to stop an entire monster in its track also proved to be useful, although Cleo was clearly quite conservative with using it.

    From all four members of his current team, Tom was most interested in the two that he didn''t observe fighting before.

    Dagstan was a perfect all-rounder despite his semi-support ss. He would use his reinforcement ability that stole a tenth of one''s total mana to create a shield around them first, before jumping in to bash the monsters with his armed gloves, just like udia did while Tom toured the dungeon with her.

    But his greatest ability didn''te in the form of reinforcement, but the alignment field, being an area of effect that negatively affected all that the man considered his opponent.

    ''It''s just a guess... but it looks like a good ten to twenty percent of the monster''s strength is shaved away by it,'' Tom thought, keeping a close eye on the developing events while leisurely killing all the monsters that dared to attempt to approach him.

    On the other hand, there was Peter. The reliable fighter that Tom already had a chance to fight alongside. Yet, previously, due to the formation, he failed to figure out what the skills of that young cousin of his were.

    As it turned out, he was a magic swordsman, quite simr to how he was a magic spear wielder.

    His skills were pretty simr. From being able to call forth a sword, through the ability to rapidly dash towards his opponents or imbue his weapon with various elements, it appeared as if Peter was a carbon-copy of Tom... just fighting in even closer quarters than Tom did.

    Yet, the main, distinctive difference between the two of themid in their weapon''s presence.

    Tom''s magical spears were pretty in but effective. Yet, his main weapon, one that was fully physical instead of consisting of hardened magic, was pretty extravagant to the eye.

    On the other hand, Peter''s sword... was fully invisible.

    At first, Tom took it for a drawback. Given how Peter never really learned how to fight with his sword, it was clear from his moves that he couldn''t really grasp the shape and length of his sword.

    But as their group continued to rapidly advance through the floors, Peter quickly managed to ovee this w of his fighting style, turning his sword''s invisibility into a deadly attribute.

    "Boss, are we going to level up yet?" Peter approached Tom when they managed to defeat the boss of the floor seventy-seventhpletely on their own. Yet, what was clear to Tom''s eyes and everyone else''s souls, they were quickly reaching the limit of how strong they could be.

    In the end, in the dungeon, one''s personal skills and prowess could take them only so far. Beyond a certain point, the gap steeming from levels would be simply too great for one to ovee it with ability alone.

    "Just three more levels," Tom replied, shaking his head. "Once we reach the eightieth floor, we will have both time and the stones to spare," he exined his decision.

    Tom wasn''t lying.

    Bringing three people from a level around sixty to level one hundred cost him nearly all the stones that everyone managed to save up. Even with the help of the slime and his own spear-rted ability, there was only so much that he could do with grade four and five stones.

    The reason why Tom chose the eighty floor for the ce to level everyone up was pretty simple.

    This was the floor where the grade six stones would make their first appearance. And with how each grade of the stone drastically increased the amount of energy it contained, the haul of just a single floor would bring them more leveling potential than using all the stones they had left. Including both the leftovers from thest round of level-pushing and all the grade five stones they obtained in thest six floors.

    Peter didn''t bother to argue any further. While he was the most energetic in the group, he was still a member of the second line of Tom''s family. So instead of wasting his energy pointlessly uprooting Tom''s authority as the leader of the group and the person behind all the decisions, he focused on fighting the monsters instead.

    And what a sight it was. In contrast to Dagstan''s more calm and tactical approach to each fight, Peter would simply throw himself into the fray. While this kind of behavior appeared to be quite reckless, it also yielded surprisingly nice results.

    ''I wonder if he has some kind of passive ability that makes him fight like that,'' Tom thought, watching how his cousin dealt with a group of three monsters, each of which is easily capable of defeating them on their own.

    It was a contradiction, one that made sense only within the narrow corridors of the dungeon. If Peter were to be ambushed by those three scorpion-like and horse-sized monsters on the open in, he would promptly lose his life to their attacks.

    Yet, in the narrow confines of the dungeon''s corridor, he made perfect use of their size, forcing them to block each other from using their ws or stings.

    With Dagstan quickly rushing to support him, Marvin buffing the two of them, and Cleo watching over to step at the moment the fight would turn risky, Peter managed to deal with the group that even Tom could find troublesome to fight at once.

    ''I guess I''m not the one most blessed with abilities, but simply lucky enough with my encounters so far,'' Tom noticed grimly before his mood suddenly improved.

    ''What am I even annoyed by?'' he asked himself, feeling the inner pressure to p his own face. ''The stronger my family bes, the better for everyone,'' he reminded himself before turning around and facing the deeper part of the corridor.

    In the end, their group managed to reach floor eighty without any unexpected hups. Yet, by the time they did it, every singlest one outside of Tom in the group was on the verge of copsing from exhaustion.

    Both Marvin and Dagstan exhausted all their energy on healing others, leaving them all with some light wounds after the fight with the boss of the seventy-ninth floor.

    "Huh?" Peter was the first one to react when they moved over to the eightieth floor. Seeing how rather than in a corridor, they appeared in the boss-room right away, he raised his guard, ready to tackle the boss monster and buy others enough time to escape.

    Yet, when noticing just how rxed Tom was, he managed to lower his guard as well.

    "Now you should understand why I picked this floor to be when you will level up," Tom said with a small smirk, approaching the wall with the grade six stones.

    This time, there were entire eleven of them, giving a great hope of bringing everyone to the hundredth level right off the bat.

    "I guess I do now," Peter muttered before falling down on the ground and releasing a deep sigh. "Damn, I''m tired," he eximed, finally taking the opportunity to rest a little.

    "It''s not over yet," Tom smiled, already moving back to the rest of the group with the stones he extracted from the wall. "If I were in your shoes," he muttered, passing the first stone to the slime on his shoulder, "I would hope that the rapid advancement will go smoothly!"

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