《Its Not So Bad To Wake Up In A Goblin Dungeon》 The Wrong Turn at Albuquerque I awoke in a small cave. It was dark save the light provided by some small stones in the ceiling. I sat up and saw that there were four other people laying around me, still asleep. I didn''t know where I was, when I had gone to sleep it had been in my bed at home. I stood slowly, shapes on the edges of my vision making me stop several times. When I had stood fully I noticed that the shapes stopped moving but were still there. I examined my surroundings more closely, the shapes tracking with me no matter how fast or slow I turned. The cave was about fifty square feet in all and had a tunnel leading out of it. The walls looked like they were made of stone with veins of minerals running through them. As I was about to start walking the perimeter of the cave, one of the figures bolted upright, "Where the hell am I!" This startled the others awake, and a commotion ensued, as they attempted to figure out how and why they were in this cave As their eyes began to adjust to the dim lighting, one of them noticed me crouched in the edge of the cave. "Who are you?" They questioned. As a reply I put a finger to my lips and pointed to the entrance. They turned to see what I had, elongated shadows moving as whatever was casting them moved towards us. "Who''s there?" One of them shouted, a high pitched male who had been the last to notice me. The shadows stopped and I heard whispering echo back to me. The whispering ended abruptly and a torch was thrown into the room with the effectiveness of a stun grenade. As our eyes tried desperately to adjust to the sudden influx of light, what appeared to be small green creatures ran into the room. They surrounded the people in the center, while two broke off and crept up to me. I noticed that the small creatures had two torches led among them, and that the rest bore stone axes or spears. The two approaching me had axes, and as they got closer one raised theirs as though to strike. As they swung down at me, I grabbed quickly at their arm, stopping it dead. The creatures eyes went wide in surprise, when it realized the predicament it was in. I twisted it''s arm hard and it shrieked, dropping the axe. I picked it up and swung at the fairly alarmed creature that still was armed. The rest of them had taken notice to me, but luckily the others used my distraction to their advantage. As myself and the second creature swung at each other, the others found themselves being mobbed by the rest of the humans. Even the spear welders had a hard time keeping the other humans at bay, their short arms not being able to fully take advantage of their weapons reach. I held the axe from the now downed creature and faced the other one near me. It backed up slowly dropping it''s weapon in shock. I quickly snatched up it''s weapon and ran over to where my fellow humans were now fighting the still armed creatures. I was able to score a killing blow on the back of one of the creatures that had it''s back to me, by swinging both axes downward at the back of its head. It''s body went limp and almost tore my weapons from my hand, but I managed to keep my balance and pull them free. I almost jumped when it faded away and left some coins and a crystal behind. I ignored it for now and started to help the others. They didn''t seem to need much though, while they didn''t seem experienced in using their weapons, they held the creatures at bay just fine. One person, a shorter chick with blonde hair, jabbed the head of her spear forward and caught one of our attackers in the chest. They thrashed for a moment before going still and disappearing, this time leaving nothing behind. Her face went from shocked to puzzled before she switched her attention to another of the creatures. It felt like forever before we had the creatures that had surrounded the four of our group killed. We took a moment to catch their breath and mull over what had just happened, but I had something or someone else in mind. I faced back to where I had been when the attack started and found the creatures whose axes I had used, cowering at the edge of the cave. I picked up a fallen spear and moved towards them, "Can you speak?" I asked them. "Y-yes" the uninjured one replied, much to my surprise. I looked at the group behind me, who were looking on waiting to see what unfolded. I turned back to the creatures, "What are you, and where are we?" "We are goblins of the Shlakvin tribe, or at least we were. We are in the caves that most of your kind come to our world through." "So you just sit here and wait for helpless people to show up and kill them?" The blonde woman asked. She looked about my age, probably in her 20''s. "We were forced out of our home and told that we could live here. We were to test the newcomers and anything that dropped from those who failed was ours to keep." "Like this gold?" An Asian guy asked, reaching toward what looked to be empty ground near where he had been fighting. His eyes went wide, "What the hell!" He shouted. I myself reached for a pile of gold and crystals that had fallen when I killed a goblin. When I touched them, they disappeared and what looked like rpg text popped up above my hand: +2 gold +10 exp. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! My eyes went wide, "Umm. What the hell?" That''s when I saw more shapes appear on the edge of my vision. When I focused on them, they finally became clear. At the top right of my vision there were three bars: red, green, and blue respectively. The red and green ones were slightly shorter, given my history with video games I guessed them to be health and probably stamina. If the blue was some sort of mana then it would make sense that it hadn''t moved at all, since I didn''t know magic. Next to the three bars was an icon that looked like three coins stacked together and had a 2 next to it. As I was examining all this another bar appeared towards the bottom of my vision, it was purple and read 10/100. "I''d recommend picking up whatever you can see," the injured goblin said, speaking for the first time. "Everyone can only see what is theirs to pick up, but everything is free to trade away." We took a minute to do exactly this and I ended up with 30 exp and 6 gold, the others reported similar results. "Why are you helping us now?" The blonde chick asked. "As opposed to fighting through five humans who just slaughtered our tribe? No thanks." "Still doesn''t make sense why you''d help us instead of pretending not to speak our language." "You," the uninjured goblin said pointing at me. "could have easily killed me and my sister easily, but you didn''t, even when we were both unarmed." The rest of the group looked at me, as though expecting me to say something. "I mean you weren''t a threat at that point, and considering you DROPPED your weapon, I didn''t mind letting you live." I stopped and looked at the group. I wasn''t sure how they would react to this next bit, but I didn''t care. They were strangers and had proven capable of defending themselves if they didn''t want to go with my plan. "You have been very helpful and for that I thank you. I can''t speak for the others, but I would be glad to have you as company. I''m obviously a stranger to you''re world and it would be nice to have help getting acquainted with it. If you help me, I will do my best to protect you." The other four nodded as I spoke, accepting the goblins and affirming that we were sticking together at the same time. The goblins looked at each other and murdered in a language I didn''t understand. In the end they nodded and spoke again to us. "We will join you, both of us were born inside and have never left them. We don''t know much, but we will do what we can. Just know that our chief and his two guards are still in these caves. They don¡¯t leave the main chamber since they protect the spawning grounds and our treasures." I thought about the information and was about to ask them a question, but I was beaten to it by another of the group. She was tall and thin, and when she spoke it was quietly, "If they are left alone would they still pose a threat to anyone else who came through like us?" "Yes. The tribe would eventually recover, but not without-" the goblin winced and hesitated. "Let''s just say my sister and I don''t want to be here for it." "Would we be able to prevent it?" I asked. We were lucky to survive as we had with only minor cuts and scratches." The two looked at each other, "With our help perhaps." The uninjured one spoke. "But it would cost us much, and we have small mana pools between us. Wouldn¡¯t be able to fix much." "Could you teach us how to use magic?" It was the last of our group, a short round guy. He looked like the type who had a lot more experience with role-playing games back home than I did. The goblins were silent for a moment, the injured one looking doubtful at the other. "Magic isn''t something that can be taught necessarily. In order for you to learn from another you have to find magic for yourself, and even then some people have to make the journey themselves." "So this blue bar is useless right now?" I asked. The goblins looked at me surprised while the others just stared at me with blank expressions. "Do you guys not have a blue bar?" They all shook their heads. "Naturally having access to mana is a very rare thing, out of all those who crossed over only one in fifty probably had it. We can teach you some basic things, but as I said before, the rest will be up for you to learn." I nodded and the uninjured goblin beckoned me over, and we sat. The others stood around us listening. "One of the only things that I myself was able to learn was how to mend wounds. The seriousness of the wound determines how much magic it will require from you." I nodded in acknowledgement and the goblin continued, "Put your hands on Grathial''s arm here. Good, now imagine the energy flowing through you and what you want to happen." I did as instructed, imagining the mana as a pool in the center of my chest and it flowing out through my hands, into the she goblins arm. At the same time I imagined her bone knitting itself back together. My mana pool drained quickly as a red glow surrounded the part of her arm where the break had occurred. "+5 maximum to mana" and "Cure wounds lvl 1 acquired" popped up. I felt drained and had to catch my breath. "Well done," My instructor said. "While the bone isn''t completely mended, it is a valiant effort for your first attempt. The more you use your skills the more they and your energy pool will grow." I nodded in acknowledgement, I''d have to focus on breathing the next time I cast a spell. I watched as my instructor laid her hands on Grathial''s broken arm and channeled her own energy. The aura of her spell was a violet color and it only took her a moment to complete the job, the effort not even phasing her. "If I may ask, what level is your heal wounds ability?" I asked the she goblin. "It has been at 15 for some time now, although my energy pool does still grow a bit now and then." I nodded and stood up, taking notice that in addition to the 5 mana I had earned, another 3 had regenerated. ¡°I think we should rest up before we go and challenge the chief, the extra mana could make a difference in the fight.¡± The others nodded and we all rested for a bit letting my mana flow back. Off to Kill a Chieftain As we walked along the smooth tunnels lit by luminescent moss, the goblins filled us in on what to expect from the fight. The chief had risen to power by killing all the other goblins that had defied him, as well as any who he thought could become stronger than him. He was only focused on his strength, but even that had taken the back burner when opposition became almost non existent. It was definitely going to be a challenge to beat him, but not impossible. The walk to the cave that the goblins called home, took us about five minutes. In this time we decided to use the two spear wielders, whose names I found out were Sarah and Samuel, as a front line of sorts. They were the most in shape out of us and probably more likely to take a hit and survive. Behind them would be myself and Kevin, the nerdy guy. We would serve as a secondary defense for the goblins while they cast their limited spells, we would then help finish off the chief. When we finally saw the glow of torches and a cave opening, we paused and reaffirmed our plan of action. Kevin peered into the chamber then crept back to us. ¡°It looks like he is watching some sort of hole in the ground, towards the back of the cave.¡± ¡°That would be the spawning pit.¡± ¡°Spawning pit?¡± I asked ¡°That is where the dungeon set up our mating grounds and the place to keep our young.¡± ¡°Interesting, I have a lot more questions but we should probably strike while he is distracted.¡± The others nodded and we got in formation. As we entered the cave a window popped up in front of my face.
WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING THE BOSS ROOM OF A GOBLIN DUNGEON. THIS CHALLENGE MAY BE TOO TOUGH FOR YOU. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
We all looked at each other and then shrugged as if to say, ¡°Well we¡¯ve already come this far.¡± As we continued I looked around to see what else was around us. The cave had a half dozen or so tents in it, all surrounding a fire in the center. We got about half way to him when two goblins appeared, one to our right and the other to our left.
Minibosses Triggered: Thwompus and Bopus
"Well shit," Sarah said.¡±Guess there¡¯s been a change of plans.¡± The goblins were carrying a sword and shield each. They approached us slowly. ¡°New plan,¡± Samuel said. ¡°split into groups of three, spear users keep their attention while the sword users flank.¡± He waited for us to acknowledge him then darted towards the left goblin. Kevin gave me a nervous look before he and Tamani dashed after. The rest of us kept ourselves between the other mini and the rest of the party. After a moment of our boss just watching us I heard a clash start happening behind us. Our boss started to move in and Sarah began circling him and blocking his test swings, until we had him flanked. Sarah started lunging in with the spear then darting back out, testing how much of a threat the goblin was going to be. The boss blocked her spear every time and even had the awareness to block my sword the couple of swung it took at him. This was looking bad, if we couldn¡¯t even hit him how were we supposed to win. Just then, I felt a slight swell of energy from behind me and webs shot past me hitting the boss in the back of its legs. The boss flinched and tried moving its legs, its movement greatly hindered. Sarah and I wasted no time, taking turns darting in and out, our blows only causing minor wounds, but we were slowly whittling him down. From the other team I caught glimpses of Samuel doing his best to fend off their boss while Tamani healed an injured Kevin. There was a cut on his head and he was clutching his knee. If they didn¡¯t get help soon this was going to be bad. Sarah must have seen, because when I turned back she was taking more serious swipes at the boss. The boss looked taken aback as one of Sarah¡¯s jabs scored a serious hit, piercing deep into his shoulder. His eyes gained a tinge of red to them, but while he was paused I dashed in, slashing at his back. He howled as the blood began to flow and whirled on me, cutting the air in front of me so quick I could feel the air in front of me split. Was he using a skill or something? He took a step forward and made to swipe at me again. He was just as caught off guard as I was, when a spearhead was suddenly protruding from his right breast. Bopus stumbled as, with a grunt of effort, Sarah pulled her spear from him. I didn¡¯t hesitate, while he was still off balance, I rushed in and scored a long slash up his arm. His grip on his sword became visibly weaker and I knew we had him on the ropes. The effort to attempt to block our strikes was clearly taking a toll on him. When I rushed him for the last time, he spun around and lost his footing. Without hesitation, Sarah darted forward and drove her spear into the back of his neck. I was treated to a nice view of his blood spurting out as he grabbed at the spearhead now protruding from the other side. Sarah placed her foot on the back of his neck and as she made to pull her spear out, there was a crack. She looked at her now headless spear in shock for a moment before I said, ¡°Just take his weapons.¡± I ran over to where Samuel was barely holding Thwompus off and shouted, ¡°Oi, weakling.¡±
TAUNT LVL 1 DISCOVERED! +5 Mana and Stamina
I blinked in confusion at the notification that appeared, right before the boss whirled around and charged me. He swung at me with reckless abandon, and it took all of my effort not to be cut to ribbons, even with Samuel jabbing mercilessly at his back. I was on the back foot for only a dozen seconds before Thwompus got through and slashed my thigh. I collapsed to the ground and Thwompus was about to end me, when with a flash of metal his blade was halted. I blinked away the pain to see Sarah, with Bopus¡¯s weapons, standing between me and the remaining mini boss. ¡°Can¡¯t even attack a standing target, whelp?¡± She yelled, pressing her attack. She must have gained the same skill as me, because Thwompus instantly lost all interest in me and began beating nonstop on her newly acquired shield. She held him off as Samuel continued to jab at his back. While I watched them fight the last mini boss, I felt Tamani and Grathial grab me under the arms and drag me back towards the entrance of the cave.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°There is no way that we can take on the chief with all of you wounded like this.¡± Tamani said. ¡°I don¡¯t even know how long it will take for the two of us to heal everyone up, let alone recover our mana completely.¡± I had forgotten that I had the ability to heal until she had mentioned it. When they set me down next to Kevin, I placed my hand near the wound on my thigh and used my cure spell. Even after all my mana was expended the wound didn¡¯t close, but the bleeding was slowed greatly. I laid there exhausted as Sam and Sarah slayed Thwompus. They took a moment to catch their breath then Sarah bent down and looted the fallen boss¡¯s weapons. The items disappeared and I could only assume that she had put them in her inventory. As she and Sam were about to head our way, both the goblin corpses disappeared and they were replaced by blue crystals the size of my fist. At the same time a small chest appeared in the middle of the cave. Sam walked over to the chest as Sarah gathered the crystals. She joined Sam at the chest and he opened it. Their eyes went wide and from they glazed over slightly I guessed they had gotten a notification. They both made a gesture in the air then the chest disappeared. While they took a second to look at eachother a notification appeared in front of me:
You Gained 50 XP and 50 Gold Received 1 common item ticket Prepare to face the Goblin Chieftain
Oh God, the Chieftain. ¡°Guys,¡± I shouted to my awestruck allies ¡°we need to leave¡± They blinked for a moment, then turned to where the Chieftain was lifting a huge battleaxe to his shoulder. They stood stunned for a moment before whirling back around and bolting towards us. They stopped long enough to help the goblins drag us from the cave, not a moment before a barrier went up with us on the outside. They continued dragging us until Tamani, panting and wheezing informed us we were far enough away. Sarah and Sam sat down heavily, gasping for breath while Tamani and I used what little mana we¡¯d recovered for another bout of healing. At some point the goblins curled up next to each other, and we all passed out from exhaustion. I awoke several hours later with my health, and most of my mana recovered. My joints creaked in protest when I finally sat up. Looking around I could see that the rest of my companions were out cold. I stood up and decided to see if I could work on my spellcasting some. I remembered how Tamani had taught me the healing spell, and from what I could gather, the magic in this world was based on imagery. I walked a little way down the tunnel until I found a cave. It was about fifty feet by fifty feet and twenty feet tall. When Tamani taught me to heal the image she had described was very vivid. In theory, I would be able to apply this system to learn new spells. After walking to the center of the cave, I focused on a spot on the wall across from me and imagined my mana flowing down into my hand. I imagined this energy turning into heat and it forming a sphere in my hand. It worked as intended and I hurled the burning sphere at the wall.
Level 1 Fireball Discovered! Quick Learner Acquired! +1 Level Quick Learner
¡°Jesus.¡± I whispered to myself, staring at my hand. The spell had only used about ten percent of my mana. I wasn¡¯t sure how strong the spell was since I didn¡¯t have a target, but from the size of the scorch mark on the wall, it would probably do more than tickle. ¡°Well you seem to be getting a grasp on things,¡± Sarah said from the doorway. I jumped a little and blushed. ¡°Yeah I guess, from the way that Tamani taught me the healing spell, I was able to teach myself fireball. Not sure how much I¡¯ll be able to learn like this but it¡¯s something.¡± ¡°What does it feel like when you cast a spell?¡± She asked. She had walked over to me and was staring at my hand. ¡°Well, it''s like having a pool of energy in the center of you that you can manipulate. From what I can tell if I work at it and have the power, I might be able to do literally anything.¡± ¡°And you just had the mana bar when we all got here?¡± ¡°Yeah it''s pretty insane. They did say that there is a way to unlock it though, even if it is difficult.¡± ¡°Yeah but who knows when I will be able to find someone to do that.¡± I thought for a moment, if the mana was just inside of me and I didn¡¯t have it in our world, why did I have it now. Then I had an idea, ¡°What if the mana has always been there, but coming here something activated it.¡± ¡°So then why weren¡¯t you able to do use magic back home?¡± ¡°It could be something in our world that was suppressing it? I mean we did have witch trials and stuff, who knows how many of them actually could use magic and we just hunted them down.¡± I thought about it some more, ¡°I don¡¯t know if it will work, but can I try something?¡± ¡°Depends, what is it.¡± Her face was one of curiosity, but her tone was cautious. ¡°Maybe I can use the mana I have to activate your¡¯s.¡± ¡°I mean what''s the worst that can happen, you heal me?¡± She laughed, nervously. ¡°Should we like, sit down or something?¡± I shrugged and we sat. I took her hand and closed my eyes. I focused on my mana and how it flowed through my arms and hands when I cast a spell. I imagined the mana flowing through my hand and into her, then up her arm into her core. My image evolved into my mana being a seed to for her to grow into her own mana pool. The mana began to flow and Sarah let out a small breath as it flowed into her. I was met with some resistance as it reached what I felt was her core. ¡°Umm, are you feeling anything?¡± I asked her. ¡°Like there is something warm slithering through my hand and into my chest. Other than that, no.¡± Weird, well if she wasn¡¯t feeling the barricade, it might not be part of her. I upped the amount of mana that I was channeling into her and imagined it gently sliding through gaps in it. It took a moment but, eventually I felt my mana break through and envelope the cavity behind it. ¡°Holy shit!¡± Sarah sounded slightly out of breath. ¡°I can feel it, but I don¡¯t think that I can do anything with it.¡± ¡°Try to imagine taking the mana in your core from me and making it your own.¡± I felt a force tugging on my mana and then I was greeted by a notification:
Would you like to establish a mana sharing link with this entity? Y?/N?
¡°I just got a message asking if I want to share mana with you, I might only be able to give you mana and not unlock it for you. Should I still do it?¡± There was a brief pause then she replied, ¡°Sure, even if it is temporary, I would like to see what casting a spell feels like.¡± I nodded and mentally accepted the prompt. There was a strange feeling as I drifted between not feeling the mana that was in Sarah and then the feeling coming back then I received another message:
There was an error establishing the link: The entity you are sharing mana with can not use mana. Recalculating... Sharing mana could be deadly to this creature. Attempt to Salvage? Y?/N?
Link our fates? If it failed it might kill me, but if I didn¡¯t try she would. If she died with the threat of the chieftain looming over us, I would probably die anyways. Fuck. For the third time I selected yes. For a couple heart beats nothing happened then I went stiff with pain as the mana flowing between us felt like it caught fire. I would have screamed if I hadn¡¯t been put in the same stasis as Sarah. The pain continued for what seemed like years with more messages appearing, my brain unable to process them. When the pain finally stopped my vision went dark and I passed out. Now There鈥檚 Two of Them? I awoke to Tamani kneeling next to where Sarah and I had collapsed. The rest of the party in a semi circle around us. Tamani¡¯s brow was furrowed in concentration until Samuel noticed I was awake and spoke. ¡°What the fuck happened¡± He asked frowning down at me. ¡°You were both gone when we woke up and then we found you like this.¡± It took me a couple seconds to push away the dull ache still running through me. ¡°I was messing with my magic and she came in right as I discovered Fireball. We were talking about how I have the ability to use magic even though we don¡¯t have it in our world and it¡¯s also pretty rare here. I had a theory that I could use the mana I have to unlock magic for her, based on the same way that I taught myself Fireball.¡± I paused for a moment, the events flooding back to me as I put my mind back together. ¡°She decided to go along with it so we sat down and tested it.¡± ¡°What exactly did you do?¡± Tamani asked, no longer absorbed in whatever she had been doing. I explained the imagery I had used, as well as the messages I had received, and what happened after. Tamani¡¯s eyes were wide when I was done speaking. Her sister bore the same expression, and from the look that they gave each other, I felt even more sure that I had fucked up royally. ¡°What you did is something that has not been done in several generations. While you did not know what you were doing, her dying is not the worst thing that could have happened. For her at least.¡± My heart dropped to my stomach, and I sat up slowly as she continued. ¡°The last time that something like this was attempted, the shaman ended up accidently enslaving the goblin recipient on a soul level.¡± She paused here to let it sink in. ¡°Before that most other attempts failed, resulting in the death of the person on the receiving end of the ritual. From what you say however, your situation seems to line up with the one success that my tribe had. Many generations ago, before our tribe started ruthlessly killing all the humans that showed up, one of our shamans encountered a human who wished very much to learn magic.¡± ¡°The shaman performed the ritual much as you did, and when it was over, the shaman and the human had formed an unbreakable bond. The human gained the ability to use magic, but the two always seemed to know what the other was doing, even at great distances. Beyond this there are many tales on the power that the two shared, some claiming that when one was in danger the other could teleport great distances to help them.¡± I looked at Sarah, still unconscious, and noticed that she had what looked to be a tattoo running from her hand all the way up her arm, and into her sleeve. Looking down at my hand, I found that I had the exact same tattoo, running up my arm. I took my shirt off and found that the tattoo ran across my shoulder and expanded over my chest where it felt like my mana pool was. Samuel whistled, ¡°Damn, day two of being here and you might have accidentally unlocked legendary power while almost killing you both. Congrats.¡± I nodded, still shaken, and idly traced the new tattoo on my hand. I was startled out of my daze when Sarah woke up. I sensed it before it happened, almost like another part of me was stirring, one that I never knew was there, but also didn¡¯t feel foriegn. I looked over at where she was laying on the ground, Tamani still leaning over her. Sarah opened her eyes and coughed a couple times, before wiping a thin layer of sweat from her brow. ¡°What the fuck happened,¡± she mumbled, her gaze distant for a moment before focusing on Tamani, ¡°How long was I out?¡± ¡°Around two hours.¡± She replied, ¡°You were both mana starved, so I spent most of that time trickling mana to the two of you as it regenerated.¡± She gestured at me then stood up and walked to where the others had gathered, ¡°He can fill you in on what happened, I need to rest.¡± Sarah looked expectantly at me for a moment before I filled her in on what happened. ¡°So,¡± she said after I was done with the TL;DR. ¡°Soulbound huh, this seems a bit cliche.¡± ¡°I mean it was that or you died, and considering how the fight with the mini bosses went, we kind of need you.¡± ¡°So I die you all die?¡± ¡°Eventually? Probably. In the short term however, I think that since we are soul linked it would just be you and I who died immediately.¡± There was a moment of silence as the words sunk in, then I said, ¡°There is an immediate upside to this though.¡± She looked at me questioningly. ¡°Well you now have access to mana.¡± Her eyes went wide as she realized that even through this whole soul linking mess, we had succeeded in our goal. Her hands shook slightly as she stood up. ¡°So, how did you cast that spell? The fireball.¡± I walked her through my theory on how the spells in this world worked, then after making sure everyone was out of the way, cast a fireball at the wall. I turned to find that she had a strange look on her face. ¡°What¡¯s wrong.¡± I asked, concerned that the link was affecting her negatively somehow. ¡°I felt you use the spell. I could sense you gathering the mana, saw your mental image of what you wanted to do with it, then FELT you throw it.¡± I looked over at Tamani who just shrugged and said, ¡°This is uncharted territory, the legends of our tribe didn¡¯t have many specifics on the link between the human and shaman. What you two discover will be all new information for me.¡± I nodded and turned back to Sarah, ¡°Do you think that you can replicate the spell off of what you felt through the link?¡± ¡°I can definitely try.¡± I felt the mana in her pool start to stir, swirling around her core until it flowed down her tattoo to her hand. I felt the mana grow warm and take the shape of a ball, then I felt the energy disappear as, with a flick of her wrist, she threw the ball of flames across the room into the same soot stained spot I¡¯d hit. I whistled, ¡°Hopefully the chieftain isn¡¯t immune to fire, because if he isn¡¯t we have this fight in the bag.¡± Sarah smiled and prepped for another fireball. I noticed that she didn¡¯t have enough energy in her pool and was about to say something, when I felt my own energy start to flow down my tattoo and go to her.
Soul Bond: Mana Connection Lvl 2 +5 mana each
Sarah looked over at me quizzically and I shrugged, ¡°I guess when we do things that involve the link we both get stronger.¡± We decided to take a break and sit with the others, while the training was nice, we also needed to discuss a plan of action.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°So how are we going to tackle this?¡± Sarah asked. ¡°As it is we almost lost a couple people to the mini bosses, and unless the chief isn¡¯t much more powerful, this fight is going to suck.¡± ¡°Well if we all coordinate what we put our stat points and skill points into, it should make things easier.¡± Kevin offered. I blinked at him in astonishment. Of course why hadn¡¯t I gone looking deeper for an interface or menu of some sort, after all we already had an inventory system, why wouldn¡¯t there be more? ¡°What did you do to open the ¡®leveling¡¯ menu.¡± Samuel asked. ¡°I just thought about my stats and focused on wanting to view them, same with the skills menu.¡± I did as he was told and ended up with this: Spoiler: Vincent''s "Character Sheet" Name: Vincent Level: 4 HP:15/15 Mana:25/25 Stamina:15/15 XP: 0/100 Soul Bound: Sarah
Main Stats: Strength 0 Constitution 0 Intelligence 1 Wisdom 0 Dexterity 0 Charisma 0 Luck 0 3 Attribute points remaining Sub Stats: Mana Regen: 0 Health Regen: 0 Stamina Regen: 0 Spell Power: 0 Spell Control: 0
Skills: Passive: Quick Learner: Lvl 1 Soul Bond, Mana Connection: Lvl 2 Active: Taunt: Lvl 1 Spells: Cure Wounds: Lvl 1 Fireball: Lvl 1 I was glad that Kevin had mentioned the menu system, I wasn¡¯t sure how scaling in this world worked, but considering my highest stat was a whole 1 in intelligence, 2 points was probably huge. I looked around the group and found that the others had a distant look on their faces, probably reading. ¡°We should also take into account the grey item tickets that we all got from the mini bosses, I was able to redeem mine for a short bow and some arrows. You guys might want to use yours for some equipment upgrades.¡± The rest of us nodded in acknowledgment, and Samuel stood up. He made a couple gestures and then made the motion of tapping on something. He swiped the air then, with a smile, tapped again. A round shield appeared on his left arm a section at the top right missing, in his right there was a spear that looked a little sturdier than the ones that goblins had been using. He tested his new equipment out, sparring against an invisible opponent for a few seconds, then turned to us. ¡°This should help a ton.¡± ¡°Where did you learn to do that?¡± Kevin asked. ¡°My family loved to go to renaissance festivals. After the first couple we decided to take up old fighting styles and crafts as a hobby. If my dad were with us he could probably help Kevin with his archery.¡± Now I was curious, what else did the item ticket offer? I closed out my stats menu for now, and went to examine the ticket. When I selected it, the ticket opened up a new menu, this one a drop down of item sets. They all seemed to be a main hand and off hand set, a single piece of decent armour, or a couple of minor pieces of armour. I took my time getting used to how the system handled equipment. I hadn¡¯t paid much attention to it until now, since the last time I had gotten new items had been in the heat of battle. The system seemed to break items down into several categories. First was level requirement. Some pieces you had to be a certain level in order to gain all of their stats, but they would scale down until you hit the requirement. This was awesome because most of the items being offered to me were above my level, even with me hitting level four. The second category seemed to be item quality. While all of the items were grey, they were further divided by the quality of craftsmanship. Out of all the ones I was offered, the highest seemed to be a set of gloves with a ¡°Decent¡±, while the lowest was an almost complete set of cloth armour that had a ¡°Very Poor¡± rating. The items seemed also seemed to be broken down into proficiencies and stat requirements, in addition to other things that seemed almost blurred by the system. After skimming through my offerings again and comparing them to the equipment we¡¯d gotten from our two fights with goblins, I ended up settling on a hammer and shield set. While I had access to magic, I didn¡¯t want to be a sitting duck if something got close. That and we would probably need all of the damage soaking we could get in our fight with the chief. After selecting my new items, I reopened my stats screen and contemplated how to distribute my points. Given how most RPG systems worked, I gathered that Intelligence would probably help me with my spells and possibly mana. I also didn¡¯t want to have a repeat of the fight with the mini bosses. After much contemplation, I put a point into Intelligence, one into Strength and the last one into Constitution. I hoped that this would help me with spellcasting, but also give me something to do after I ran out of mana, or people got too close. After we had all selected our items and distributed our stats, we ended up with Samuel and Sarah as out frontliners (Sarah opted to take a breastplate from her ticket). Kevin put two of his points into Dexterity and one into Strength, giving him some essential help with his bowmanship. With the two goblins accounted for, we had a pretty decent party. Now all we had to do was rest up and face our fate. Spoiler: Character Sheet (At end of chapter) Name: Vincent Level: 4 HP:15/15 Mana:30/30 Stamina:15/15 XP: 0/100 Soul Link: Sarah
Main Stats: Strength 1 Constitution 1 Intelligence 2 Wisdom 0 Dexterity 0 Charisma 0 Luck 0 0 Attribute points remaining Sub Stats: Mana Regen: .5 Health Regen: .5 Stamina Regen: 0 Spell Power: 1 Spell Control: 1
Skills: Passive: Quick Learner: Lvl 1 Soul Bond: Lvl 2 Active: Taunt: Lvl 1 Spells: Cure Wounds: Lvl 1 Fireball: Lvl 1 No Eye of the Tiger in my Training Montage The rest of the day was spent with Samuel giving us tips on how to fight with our new weapons. Unfortunately Kevin only had so many arrows, and with no viable target that wouldn¡¯t damage them, he ended up just watching. One thing that Kevin was able to help us with though, was running through a ¡°playbook¡± of our positioning in a fight. While we couldn¡¯t perfectly plan out how fights would go, having something to fall back on if we got overwhelmed would help. While Samuel was giving Kevin some tips for when he was able to finally able to use his bow, Tamani had us practice our magic whenever we had the mana to cast a spell. Whenever we cast a spell she would ask us a ton of questions, some of them about what we felt while the other was casting, some asking if we had tried this or that through the connection yet. We ended up finding out that if one of us was casting a spell, the other person could concentrate and spend their own mana to boost the spell. By the time the day ended, we were all exhausted. We all had been barely able to keep our stamina pool from completely depleting, but Sarah and I had been on the cusp of mana exhaustion all day, only having a point or two after every spell. All of our efforts weren¡¯t for naught though. We had all gained one or two ranks in skills that would be useful in the fight ahead. The three of us who fought physically gained a rank with shield proficiency, which gave us a 5% discount on the stamina it took to block an attack. In addition we had all gained a rank or two with our weapon of choice, which gave us a stamina discount with them and also made it passively easier to use them. For Sarah and I, we gained a mana discount for Fireball, and after much effort, Sarah learned Cure Wounds from Tamani. For some reason the imagery I used when casting the spell seemed confusing, and almost cloudy to her. Tamani and Grathial hypothesized that even though we were linked at the soul, our minds were still different, so we would still see and learn about things differently for some things. The thing that really helped though, was whenever one of us picked up a skill or gained a rank in something, the system split the stat rewards between us. While we couldn¡¯t spend allocation points until we had a full point, it meant that while one of us hit a block in training, we were able to still grow a little through the link. While we didn¡¯t grow too much, we would probably need every edge that we could get against the chieftain. We would also probably also need to have our minds as clear as possible going in. Grathial lead us to another cave, a bit away from the one I had found, that had a lake in it. The lake had fish in it and we enjoyed a nice meal, after bathing and washing our clothes. When I asked our goblin companions where the wood for our cooking fire came from they told us about another tunnel leading from the goblin camp that lead to another series of caves, leading up to the outside world. Apparently there were caves along that tunnel who¡¯s ceilings had holes that allowed sunlight in, which along with dirt they brought back from the surface had allowed them to plant trees and food. ¡°That sounds pretty sophisticated for a tribe that was nearly wiped out even before we got here.¡± Kevin muttered as he wolfed down his second fish.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. ¡°We have the current chief to thank for that. When he took over he started killing off all the goblins that he didn¡¯t find useful. His definition of useful however was basically anyone that qualified for a combat role. All of our farmers, herders, and traders were all killed off shortly after he took over, and as a result the tribe started to suffer.¡± ¡°When our traders stopped going to the nearby villages, the humans sent some representatives to see if we were in trouble or had an issue they could help with. The chief killed them all and eventually launched raids on the villages when our food and supplies ran low. This caused a lot of anger among the human king whose domain the fell under and he eventually sent a series of counter raids on our dungeon.¡± ¡°We were barely able to fight them off, losing more and more of our dwindling tribe until we were forced to seal off the entrance and live the rest of our lives down here. From there things only got worse, the chief became even more irrational, his only goals being to train for combat, and pump out soldiers so that he could one day take over the human kingdom outside.¡± ¡°Before you had all shown up, we had already been down here for ten years. The chief is now barely able to keep his mind straight except for the few moments a day when he screams orders that are barely intelligible. If we weren¡¯t bound to the tribe we would have left long ago.¡± ¡°Bound,¡± I asked, ¡°Like by a spell or something?¡± ¡°Sort of, since we were born to the dungeon, it is what helps keep us alive. Creatures that come from dungeons are sustained by the magic given to them by the core, which the chieftain controls. Whenever another chieftain is chosen or takes the right from another chieftain, they are given control of the core and thus everything that is bound to it. Thankfully since the chief is hardly coherent, he hasn¡¯t really used this power other than to have us bring him food and water.¡± ¡°What about when we saw him?¡± Kevin asked. ¡°That might have been one of his rare moments of clarity,¡± Grathial answered. ¡°Or it also could have been the core activating a defense measure. In times when the dungeon core is threatened and defenseless it can take control of what is in it to defend itself. It only happens rarely, when its controller is away, or when something like this happens.¡± ¡°So it''s not the chief that we are fighting?¡± Kevin asked. ¡°Not necessarily, he might end up having a moment of clarity when we face him. If he doesn¡¯t though, the core will probably take control of him to defend itself.¡± ¡°Wait a moment,¡± Sarah cut in, ¡°You said that the core will take control of everything in its control to defend itself, what about you two?¡± ¡°You bring up a good point.¡± Tamani replied. ¡°As soon as the core began to take control during the chiefs blank periods, we have been building up a skill to fight it. As of right now, myself and Grathial have 10 and 12 ranks respectively in Resist Control and also a couple in Core Resist. Even then we have to concentrate in order to not be completely taken over, because of this, we are not sure how useful we will be in the fight, which is why we have been trying to help you as much as possible.¡± ¡°Even though we haven¡¯t been able to help you get that much stronger, we will have to face the chief tomorrow, the less time for him to have a lucid period and call us back, the better. With your combined skills and strength, you should be able to work as a team and defeat him. I don¡¯t know what will happen after that, but we will find out.¡± We all agreed to make and attempt at fighting the chieftain tomorrow, and with that, we tried to get some sleep. Let鈥檚 Get To The Core Of The Problem I fell into a deep sleep without much effort, after all the training we did, I¡¯m surprised that I was able to stay awake as long as I did. I don¡¯t know how long I slept, but when I awoke, I felt like I¡¯d just gotten some of the best sleep of my life. The others were still asleep so I did a bit of fishing in the lake using the simple nets the goblins had provided the day before. By the time the rest of the party woke up, I had seven fish all cooking on the fires we had made the day before. It was weird to think of things in days here, I hadn¡¯t seen the sun since waking up in that cave. I wondered if anyone back home had noticed I was missing. I lived alone in a studio apartment and didn¡¯t even have a pet. I didn¡¯t really have any friends that would notice, we¡¯d mostly gone our separate ways after highschool. On top of that, I had just used all my vacation time since it was about to expire, so not even my coworkers would notice. ¡°God that smells wonderful,¡± Samuel said drowsily, startling me from my train of thought. ¡°How long have you been up?¡± ¡°Around an hour. Hard to tell though since I never wore a watch.¡± I shook my naked wrist at him for emphasis. ¡°Yeah well I¡¯m not sure if that would have helped, I was out and about when I got sucked over here. Nothing I had in my pockets transferred with me when I crossed over, not even my pocket change.¡± ¡°I wonder why, it¡¯s not like whatever transferred us here only works on organic matter, because if that was the case some of our clothes probably wouldn¡¯t have made it. Although if that is the case, that means that something intelligent must have made the transfer process, something that could differentiate between what we were wearing and what was just on our persons.¡± We sat there and discussed this train of thought for a while, and were eventually joined my our barely awake party. The fish was soon devoured and we sat around the fires waiting for our food to settle so that we wouldn¡¯t cramp up on the way to the fight. It wouldn¡¯t help defeating the boss if we couldn¡¯t even make it back to his chamber. The walk itself wasn¡¯t as long as we had originally thought and we spent most of the time talking about where we came from and who we were before winding up here. Sarah had apparently come from a family of somewhat successful athletes who were just good enough to get on their college teams, but not enough so to make it past that. She ran track in high school and dabbled in fencing, before deciding it wasn¡¯t her thing. Samuel came from a pretty relaxed household and grew up with a couple of medieval enthusiasts, which explained why his family had the odd skills they did. He told us all about how every Saturday one of his parents had sat him and his siblings down and taught them about some huge discovery that was made during the period, from a breakthrough in metalworking, to the invention of the printing press. I told them how I had played a fair bit of video games and tabletop games growing up and continued to do so once I graduated. I told them how I had worked in tech support for a couple game companies, answering tickets and handling in game disputes. I confessed what I¡¯d been thinking about when Samuel had startled me. This put a damper on the mood as we started thinking about how things were going back home and whether or not we would ever make it back. Kevin looked really depressed when I brought it up and when we finally got him to talk to us, he told us how he spent most of his time as a loner, playing RPGs and RTS¡¯s in order to cope with the issues at home. His father had apparently left before he could even develop memories of him, and his mother spent most of her time bouncing between two jobs and drug abuse. After telling us all of this, he softly said that he didn¡¯t know if anyone would ever notice him missing, and even if they did he didn¡¯t know if they would care. That shut us down for a couple minutes, before Samuel stopped him and made it clear that as long as we were in this world, Kevin would at least have one person that he could rely on. Sarah and I agreed, and Kevin seemed to perk up a bit as we finished our walk. We were a party after all and who knew how many reliable allies we would find. It made it all the more important to keep the ones we had close. When we finally reached the chamber, the barrier was still up. From what Garathial told us, the barrier was one way and when we entered the chamber, we wouldn¡¯t be able to leave unless we won. We all pulled our equipment from our inventories and went over some of our basic plans again. The one we ended up settling on was myself and Kevin giving ranged support until my mana pool was drained then, me using my access to Sarah¡¯s pool for healing us. ¡°Would it be easier for you two to stay out here while we do this,¡± Kevin asked our goblin companions. ¡°Or do you think that it will be just as hard for you to resist the core¡¯s influence?¡± They thought about it for a moment then replied, ¡°It may be easier, we may as well try it.¡± I took a moment to double check my status screen and make sure that there weren¡¯t any unspent points that I had forgotten about: Spoiler: Spoiler Name: Vincent Level: 4 HP: 15/15 Mana: 50/50 Stamina: 25/25 XP: 0/100 Soul Link: Sarah
Main Stats: Strength 1 Constitution 2 Intelligence 2 Wisdom 0 Dexterity 0 Charisma 0 Luck 0 0 Attribute points remaining Sub Stats:This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Mana Regen: .5 Health Regen: .5 Stamina Regen: 1 Spell Power: 1 Spell Control: 2
Skills: Passive: Quick Learner: Lvl 1 Soul Bond: Lvl 2 Single Handed Sword Mastery Lvl 1 Shield Mastery Lvl 1 Fire Affinity Lvl 2 Active: Taunt: Lvl 1 Spells: Cure Wounds: Lvl 2 Fireball: Lvl 2 After verifying that everything was in order, I nodded to the others, then after taking a deep breath, walked through the barrier. The sensation that I got was like walking through a wall of some semi-liquid substance that made my skin tingle. When I exited the other side I was still completely dry and none of the substance remained on me. I shuddered as I tried to shake the sensation from my mind. Remembering what I was doing I snapped my attention to where I had last seen the chieftain. He was still there, holding his battle axe, as though he had been waiting for us to return. As I looked closer I noticed that his eyes were glazed over, and that his face was a blank mask. Well, good thing we had left the other two outside, it looked like we were going to be fighting against the core and its puppet. I looked behind be briefly to make sure that the others had made it through, and then gestured for Kevin to take his first shot. As he started to draw back his first arrow and take aim, I gathered up the energy for a fireball and held it. I waited and threw my fireball in synch with his arrow, while the arrow missed by a couple inches, the chieftain was bathed in flame as my spell collided into his chest. The chieftain was still for a moment before jerking into motion, almost as though the core had just realized that it had visitors. Sarah and Samuel got in front of us and we started to push towards him, Kevin and I launching as many attacks as we could. The chief came forward to meet us, swinging his axe as he got within range. Samuel was forced to block it and was rocked from the force of the impact. He only had a couple seconds to steady his footing, before he once again had to block the axe, this time, coming from above. Sarah used this distraction to circle around the chief and take a few swings at his back. She managed to open a couple shallow cuts, but it seemed as though his bare skin was tougher than it looked. He had burn marks on his chest from where I had hit him with my fireballs, but who knew how deep those burns were given how little Sarah¡¯s blade was doing. I couldn¡¯t let any doubt in, if we failed here it would mean death. Steeling my resolve, I started to empty my mana pool as fast as my spell casting would allow me. I had to dance around the chief as my allies rotated around him, trying to keep up their flank. I noticed at some point that Kevin was hesitating to fire his bow, and given his accuracy with the first couple shots, I couldn¡¯t say I blamed him. When I inevitably ran out of mana, I pulled my hammer from my inventory and joined the fray. The chieftain whirled around frantically, blocking our strikes where he could and lashing out at us when he couldn¡¯t. We managed to stay unscathed for the first few minutes of the fight, weaving in and out of his range as the core tried to keep up with us. It was clear from how jerky his motions were that the core wasn¡¯t used to having to control him. Kevin decided to finally take another shot and somehow managed to land it directly in one of the cuts we¡¯d inflicted. The chief¡¯s body whipped around and made to go after him, turning its back, and more importantly the arrow, facing me. I cocked back my hammer and with all of my strength swung as hard as I could. A solid hit. For the first time the Chieftains body made a noise, howling in pain as the arrow was driven in a couple inches, the rest snapping off. A foot caught me in the center of my chest and sent me flying across the chamber. When I landed, the air was knocked out of me, and I spent the next thirty second or so wheezing as I tried to catch my breath. When I was finally able to stand up, I found the others in deep shit. The chieftain was moving faster now, and my allies had been put on the defensive. His axe now had greenish glow to it and I could hear the air whistling from the speed of his swings. As I readied myself to rejoin the fight I saw it, his eyes were no longer glazed over. Shit! Kevin barely had time to fire more arrows, the chieftain making him run most of the time while still managing to keep the others off him. This really wasn¡¯t good. Kevin ran past me and I held up my shield ready to meet the chieftain. He never struck me though, because as he was winding up his swing, Samuel had the brilliant idea of screaming at him, ¡°Oi, mold breath!¡± He must have triggered taunt, because in one fluid motion the chief used his swing to turn his full body, his axe colliding with Sam¡¯s shield. The force of the blow knocked Sam onto his ass, leaving him vulnerable. If Sarah hadn¡¯t darted in and blocked the following blows Sam would have been dead for sure. I saw arrows fly past me, Kevin doing what he could to try and help. The arrows flew wide and Sarah had to take her attention away from the chief in order to dodge a couple of them, and some of them almost hit Samuel as he tried to get off the ground. The words were on their way out of my mouth to yell at him to stop shooting, when the worst case scenario happened. One of Kevin¡¯s arrows flew low and to the right, catching Sarah in her leg. Her knee gave way as she dropped to the ground, almost knocking Sam back over. He barely avoided her and did all he could to get between her and the chief. I heard the sound of wood clattering against stone and assumed that Kevin had dropped his bow. Fucking great. I swung wildly at the chief, trying to do as much damage as possible. If we didn¡¯t end this fast we were dead. Of all the ways to fucking die, I never thought this would be one. Split in two by a goblin chieftain after learning magic and accidently binding souls with someone in another world. Worst of all, this was all happening on my vacation from my shitty call center job. I wasn¡¯t even scared, I was fucking livid. Fuck whatever had brought me here, from my perfectly miserable life, let me meet what I thought to be some decent people that I would have probably been friends with if we met back home, then try and kill me in a boss fight I was being forced into. I would be fucking damned if I was going to just lie down and take it. I gathered all of Sarah¡¯s mana through the link and combined it with what I had regenerated over the course of the fight. I pushed it all into the head of my hammer and imagined it all discharging into the chieftain as I swung it into him. I then imagined that the hammer was from one of the old Norse gods. What was his name, Thor? I swung with all my might and hit the chieftain in his spine.
Unique Skill: Holy Strike of Retribution Lvl 1 Received
All of the mana left me, carrying with it my anger. There was a resounding crack as the hammer impacted, and every ounce of energy left me. My field of vision started to narrow as I fell sideways, no longer able to even stand. Kevin must have caught me and started dragging me away, because the entire fight started slowly getting more distant. I was laid on the ground and Kevin grabbed pulled one of the spare goblin swords from his inventory. He gently took my shield off of my arm and ran to help Samuel. I didn¡¯t see much after that, my vision grew darker and darker, and eventually I passed out. I woke up in the center of the Goblin camp a familiar splitting headache causing me to scream out. There was a rush of footsteps and both Tamani and Grathial were kneeling over me. ¡°I was hoping that you would not have awoken yet. Whatever you did in that fight left a lot of damage inside of you that I haven¡¯t had time to heal, not with that boy¡¯s arm the way it is.¡± I couldn¡¯t even process the implications of what Tamani said, the knife like pain too much for thoughts to make it through. The pain felt like it was going to split me in two. I laid there for only a few more moments before the sweet embrace of darkness rescued me. I wasn鈥檛 even in Kansas, Now where the fuck am I? I awoke again what felt like a couple of seconds later. I was lying on a large soft bed, in what looked to be the middle of a field. The headache was gone and I slowly sat up. ¡°Where the fuck am I now?¡± I muttered to myself. ¡°You are in my domain.¡± A feminine voice said from behind me. I blinked and was suddenly standing, facing a tall woman. She had long blue hair, average features, and was cloaked in long billowy robes of grey, white, and black ¡°Who in the hell are you and what the fuck has been happening?¡± I asked my brain trying to process everything. Where the fuck had that bed gone? It had felt so blissful after the cave floors. The woman raised an eyebrow at me and spoke, ¡°I the fuck am Cilendrial, I was finally able to contact you after you aligned yourself with my affinity and ideals.¡± I turned back to her from examining my surroundings. ¡°Okay, and that all means what exactly?¡± I blinked again and was suddenly sitting across from her, both of us in some cushy armchairs. Fuck the chair felt nice, not as nice as the bed though. ¡°I am one of the deities that used to guide the human race long ago on what you now call Earth.¡± It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her, I didn¡¯t say anything though and let her continue. ¡°Ages ago, your Earth was just one of many realms connected together to form a larger plane of existence. Back then the realms lived together in war and peace, trading and fighting just as humans do now. Eventually humans grew tired of the constant wars and wanted out. It took them two-hundred years to find a way, but eventually their mages found a way to seal the human realm from the others.¡± ¡°In doing so they also cut off a lot of other things from their realm. From what I have learned, all of you lost your ability to use magic, even if the genes for it were there. You also lost contact with many of the gods, like myself, that used to give you power and help you with life.¡± I thought about what she¡¯d told me for a moment, but there were some things nagging at me, ¡°So, if the human race sealed itself off from the other realms, then why have humans been getting transported to this world?¡± ¡°The spell that your people cast cost a lot of mana to keep active, over time the mana that they used has been slowly getting depleted. They did include a safeguard though. Instead of the spell just collapsing and your realm just being thrown into the mix, enough people will be sacrificed by the spell so that your realm will be slowly merged back in.¡± ¡°How many people is enough people?¡± I asked concerned. ¡°I have no idea, I do not know how much dormant mana lies within your population, nor how much mana the spell will take. Only your mages of old knew that.¡± ¡°That still leaves me with several questions.¡± I muttered shaking my head. ¡°I will answer as best I can, it has been a while since I have been able to contact one of you, and I miss the talking.¡± I tried to gather my thoughts into something more concise, then started digging for information, ¡°If our realm was separated then why have humans been getting transported back before the spell ended?¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Probably to have some people on this side accustomed to the system before everyone else got thrown in. Some of those who were pulled back gathered a following, one was even on the brink of starting a kingdom.¡± ¡°So we got sent here by the spell in order to clear the way for a bunch of people that probably wouldn¡¯t even listen to us? It¡¯s not like the spell is choosing people of influence like the president or some Prime minister. It took a bunch of random people whose disappearances will barely be noticed if at all. Hell the spell didn¡¯t even take people of talent, unless you count the little sparring that Sam did with his family. It didn¡¯t take a scientist to study the world, it didn¡¯t take an architect who could help build a stronghold, hell it didn¡¯t even take someone who was strong enough to make their point heard.¡± ¡°The spell was set up long ago, who knows what guidelines its casters put on it. They may very well have chosen normal people as the target, so that when everyone else crossed over, they would know that they also could also survive in this new world.¡± I didn¡¯t feel like there was much else to ask about the whole world separation thing, but there was one thing that was on my mind, ¡°You mentioned that I had aligned myself with your beliefs and values, but what does that mean moving forward. I know you said you were a patron of Earth at one point but does that you¡¯re a god? If that is the case, I¡¯m not exactly the religious type so you might be better off with someone else.¡± She looked somewhat amused at this, ¡°I don¡¯t know what sort of religion you have back on ¡®Earth¡¯, but here the patron gods of humans acted more as a guiding force that was chosen based on the personality someone had or what they wanted to do in life. For example, one of my brothers is the patron god of farming would try and show farmers what traits they needed to help yield better crops, or how to ask my sister to send rain where there was a drought.¡± ¡°The reason that you received one of my skills, and that I was able to bring you here temporarily, was because of your strong desire to save the people you were with and also your resolve to not give up. This in turn means that, if you wish, I can continue to help you and those like you.¡± ¡°And in return you want what?¡± I asked the doubt clear in my voice. ¡°It''s not something that I want from you in return, it''s more so that, as more people are aligned with me, the more I can help them.¡± ¡°So the more people who follow you, the more powerful you are?¡± ¡°In a way, but the only way that the system lets me use my power is to help those aligned with me. So really by helping me you would be helping yourself.¡± I was still suspicious about what was really going on, but right now I didn¡¯t really have a reason to doubt her. ¡°I guess it can¡¯t hurt, is there some ritual or something that I have to do in order to fully align myself with you?¡± ¡°You really must have some amusing ideas of religion back on Earth.¡± She said laughing. I explained to her some of the older religions like the Egyptians and Greeks, then fast forwarded to Christianity¡¯s spread and the rise and progression of Islam. I also explained to her how even though some evils had been done in the name of religion, it had helped humanity get through some times like the middle ages, where most people only carried on because of faith. ¡°Well I can see where some of the similarities may lie, but those fanatics sound pretty horrible.¡± ¡°It''s amazing what you can get away with in the name of a god or goddess, most of the followers have good intentions and just want to believe that there is something more than them, it just takes a couple of bad people to paint an entire section of humanity in a bad light, it''s not necessarily that the religion back home is outright evil it has just been bent for the gain of individuals a few times.¡± ¡°Well I will have to warn my brothers and sisters of this possibility.¡± She looked into the distance for a moment, as if listening to something. ¡°It appears your time here is up, your body has now sufficiently been healed and¡­ Interesting.¡± She looked surprised, yet excited. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked, if it was something had happened with the party, I needed to help as soon as I could. ¡°You will see in a moment, your friends had to do something fascinating in order to heal the damage to you. It will just be interesting how this all plays out.¡± I felt the color drain from my face, and I was about to ask what the fuck that meant when my vision once again fled and I was cast into darkness. Man I was getting sick of that. Now without Micro Transactions I awoke on the floor of the cave, next to rather large purple crystal. It probably would have been as large as me if I had been able to stand, but right now that seemed out of my range of capabilities. ¡°Holy shit it worked,¡± I heard Samuel say from somewhere nearby. ¡°Hey man can you hear me?¡± I nodded, I felt both energized and exhausted at the same time. Must be the connection to Sarah or something. Sam came over to me and knelt down, a look of guilt and concern on his face. ¡°Why are you looking at me like that?¡± I barely got out, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth. ¡°There was a lot of damage to your body and your mind after you used that skill. There was nothing else that we could do and I had to take a risk.¡± I squinted up at him, ¡°What did you do?¡± So far as I could tell I was still in one piece. He hadn¡¯t found a demon and made a deal with it had he? ¡°I acted as your mediary and made a deal with the dungeon core on your behalf.¡± I sighed, looks like I might not have been to far off. ¡°Greetings human.¡± A melodic voice said, it sounded as though it was coming from inside my mind. ¡°Did you hear that?¡± I asked Sam, he looked at me concerned and shook his head. ¡°He did not,¡± The voice continued. ¡°in order to save you he had to make you the new master of the dungeon, and by proxy, the only one who can speak to me.¡± Great now I had a dungeon talking in my head, hopefully Cilendrial couldn¡¯t do the same. ¡°I can,¡± I heard Cilendrial say, though she sounded distant, ¡°I will only speak in your mind when necessary though, since the thought of it seems to bring you discomfort.¡± Fucking outstanding, I had voices in my head. I checked my surroundings. Nope, no padded walls in sight, this was either still real or a really convincing trip. I sat up, Sam backing off a bit. ¡°So I now have two things that can communicate with me without anyone hearing, well three if you count the vibes I get from Sarah.¡± I got a message of relaxation and the concept of being happy to not be soul bound to a vegetable. Ah yes things were working great. ¡°So Sam, how did you know about the whole binding me to a core thing?¡± I asked stretching out my legs before I stood up. My knees creaked in protest, but when hadn¡¯t they? The look of guilt won over the concern, it seemed that seeing me stand up was a good enough sign of well being for him. ¡°It''s ... complicated.¡± He said, rubbing his neck. I made a, get on with it, gesture and he sighed. ¡°I was only telling you all part of the truth when I said that my family were medieval enthusiasts. The truth is my parents are part of an order that believes that our world was part of a larger one. They trained me and my siblings in the event that the worlds were brought back together.¡± ¡°Well they weren¡¯t wrong.¡± I said, man laying on that stone hadn¡¯t done my neck any favours. ¡°What?¡± Sam asked, looking confused. I told him about my talk with Cilendrial. ¡°They were right.¡± He said looking down. ¡°Wait, did she say how many people would be sacrificed in the collapse of the spell?¡± ¡°No, she seemed to only have a slight idea of what was going on, it seems that whoever cast the spell didn¡¯t bother to inform their patron gods what they were doing.¡± He shook his head at this, ¡°So we don¡¯t know how likely it is that our families are part of the people who die to this spell.¡± This made me pause, I hadn¡¯t even thought about that. ¡°Well, we also don¡¯t know when the spell is going to go down. So for all we know we might be able to find a way to go back and live out our lives, or even find a way to bring them here if we want to stay.¡± He thought about this for a moment, ¡°Well then I guess the only option is to move forward.¡± I nodded. ¡°So,¡± I said internally, directing my thoughts at the core. ¡°You said something about me being made the master of the dungeon?¡± ¡°Correct,¡± I heard the core reply. ¡°Since you are not an entity of the dungeon you couldn¡¯t be made the new chieftain, so I had to set up a different connection for us.¡± ¡°So what exactly is our connection? I haven¡¯t exactly gotten a rundown so far.¡± ¡°I am the core of the dungeon, an entity with the power to change, upgrade and cortrol things within my boundaries. As my master, you now control what I do and when I do it.¡± This whole master of the core thing wasn¡¯t sitting well with me, the concept of an intelligent entity being my slave left a bad taste in my mouth. ¡°Is there a way to give you freedom to do as you wish? Kind of like guidelines that you can do what you want inside of.¡± It took a moment for the core to respond, ¡°None of the chieftains ever tried to do that, though the system doesn¡¯t have any rules against it as far as I am aware.¡± ¡°How about this, since you have a lot more experience with being a dungeon than I do, you think about things that would benefit my party and your dungeon, then talk to me about them. If I agree with you then we can go through with the changes, if not we can discuss the idea.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Once again the core mulled this over for a few moments before replying, ¡°This is unprecedented, but I shall do my best. Would you at least like to hear the options that are currently available?¡± ¡°Sure, why not.¡± ¡°You have 50 dungeon points that you can spend, the options currently available are as follows: You can buy more weapons, but judging on the quality of the ones you and your party possess, I wouldn¡¯t recommend this. You may resurrect the lesser goblins that used to live here. You may spawn new goblins at a lower cost-¡± ¡°You alright?¡± Samuel asked. ¡°What? Oh yeah, just talking with the core. I¡¯m gonna go sit in one of those tents so I don¡¯t look like I¡¯m just completely out of it.¡± ¡°Let me know how that goes.¡± He said. ¡°For five points I can upgrade one of the tents to have a basic bed in it.¡± The core said. ¡°How basic are we talking?¡± I asked. One of the tents grew in size and the cloth looked like it became less patchy. ¡°See for yourself, this is only temporary and will not stay unless you confirm the change.¡± I walked into the tent and found that the floor was covered in a mismatched carpet of pelts. It had a bed on the left hand side that looked, as the core had said, basic. I sat on the bed and found that while it wasn¡¯t nearly as nice as the one Cilendrial had treated me to, and was only about the size of a twin, it was much better than the stone floors. ¡°The bed is made of wood and the mattress itself is mostly woven straw mats that have been stuffed into a cloth cover.¡± I nodded. At the foot of the bed was a small chest that the core said could hold five items or five stacks of items. On the other side of the tent was enough room to fit another bed and chest if I wanted to. ¡°Go ahead and upgrade enough tents for the party, and have a fifth one upgraded to include a second bed and chest set for Grathial and Tamani.¡± ¡°In total this will cost 27 points, do you wish to proceed?¡± ¡°Yeah go for it.¡± I felt the air around me hum, and when I stepped out of the tent I found that four other tents had transformed to look identical to mine. I smiled, we finally had a base of operations. I looked around for Samuel and found him kneeling on the floor next to where Kevin was lying. I looked a little closer and saw a look of guilt and grief on Sam¡¯s face. Oh god. I walked over to them and as I got closer noticed the rise and fall of Kevin¡¯s chest. At least he wasn¡¯t dead. When I got next to them though, I noticed that Kevin¡¯s left sleeve was tied in a knot just below the elbow. Oh. ¡°What happened?¡± I asked kneeling down opposite Sam. ¡°After you hit the chief, he got paralyzed from the waist down. You must have shattered his spine. Kev rushed in to try and kill him before the chief could take me out in his fury. The chief must have seen him coming because he stopped thrashing at me and swung at Kev. He blocked a couple times with your shield but he must not have had much stamina, because he missed blocking the third swing and the chief took his arm off. I was barely able to get up and kill the chief before he ended Kev. Tamani rushed in as soon as the barrier fell, and was able to save him, but she couldn¡¯t do anything about his arm. She was most of the way through dealing with him when you came to the first time, I think that Grathial ended up casting a sleep spell on you so that they could finish working on him.¡± ¡°Is there anything you can do about his arm.¡± I asked the core. ¡°Unfortunately not the only reason I could save you from your comatose state was because of the deal the Samuel made. If he had chosen the other boy, you would be dead to the world.¡± That was twice now that people''s lives have been changed since getting here, because of me. One person¡¯s soul and life were now linked to mine, and another person was missing an arm because I couldn¡¯t even finish the chieftain. Not to mention that I once again almost killed myself and left someone soulbound to a vegetable. ¡°You saved us you know.¡± Sam said, interrupting my guilt train. ¡°What?¡± ¡°I said, you saved us. We wouldn¡¯t have stood a chance if you hadn¡¯t used whatever skill you pulled out your ass to paralyze the chief.¡± ¡°Sure doesn¡¯t feel like it, Kevin is missing an arm now because the blow couldn¡¯t even finish the job.¡± ¡°Yeah and I couldn¡¯t even get up in time to finish the chief while he was flailing on the ground. If Kev hadn¡¯t gotten his attention I¡¯d probably be dead.¡± ¡°Your point?¡± ¡°My point is we did our best and still didn¡¯t come out unscathed. This world isn¡¯t going to change, and instead of dwelling on this like I have been, we need to work on lowering the chances of this happening again. Hell if we actually keep getting stronger and exploring the world, we might be able to get Kev his arm back, or at least something to act as an arm.¡± I nodded, ¡°How long has he been out?¡± ¡°He woke up for an hour or two while you were passed out, so not long. He was exhausted and losing his arm did a number on his mental state.¡± ¡°We should move him to one of the tents that I upgraded, the stone is going to fuck up his back.¡± Sam looked at me confused, then turned to where the tents were, ¡°Shit, I didn¡¯t even hear or feel anything.¡± ¡°Upgrades to the dungeon are only felt by the core, the dungeon, creatures of the dungeon, and the dungeon¡¯s master.¡± I heard the core say in my head. ¡°Could you stop calling me your master? It feels weird.¡± ¡°What would you have me call you, ma-? Sorry.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t sweat it, you can just call me by my name, Vincent.¡± ¡°I will make sure to do this.¡± I nodded then speaking to Sam said, ¡°Apparently only the dungeon, the core and myself can actually feel when stuff gets changed.¡± Sam nodded, ¡°And how do we upgrade stuff?¡± ¡°There are these points I can spend, but I don¡¯t know how to earn them.¡± ¡°We should probably figure that out. Who knows how long we are going to be down here before we can break the seal that Tamani told us the chief put up. We will probably need to get that farm she told us about going again, just in case.¡± ¡°We should probably get the others back here so that we can try to get a plan together.¡± I felt a tug at my connection with Sarah and got the feeling she was heading back to the camp. ¡°Hey core, can you ask Tamani and Grathial to head back.¡± ¡°They are already heading back with the female member of your party.¡± Came the response. Well I¡¯d spent who knows how long passed out on the floor after the fight, time to get back to work. Does this count as a team building exercise? Once we all gathered around the fire and started cooking the fish that Sarah and the goblins brought, we were able to start getting together a plan. The smell of food must have woken Kevin, because he emerged from his tent as the fish were about to be done. He sat down with us without saying anything, and I served everyone on wooden plates that had once belonged to the goblin tribe. ¡°Hey, Kevin, you said you played a lot of games back home right? Mostly strategy and stuff?¡± My mouth was full of food so it mostly came out as mumblings and flecks of food occasionally flew into the fire. Sarah rolled her eyes and I felt mild disgust come from our link. ¡°Yeah, I did. And?¡± Was all I got in reply. ¡°Did you ever play the ¡®Dungeon Keeper¡¯ or ¡®Dungeon¡¯ series¡¯?¡± ¡°Yeah they were really good, well until the one we don¡¯t speak of, so many microtransactions, then again look who bought them.¡± We shared a moment of silence for the game in question. ¡°Why are you so interested?¡± ¡°Well I plan on exploring this world at some point and try to see if I can find more information on the human spell that Cilendrial mentioned. Since in order to do that I am probably going to need to leave this dungeon at some point, someone is going to need to be here to help build this place up.¡± It took him a couple moments to think about it, ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m not sure how good idea me helping you is, I mean look what happened when I tried helping with the chief.¡± He waved his stump for emphasis. His look of depression deepening. ¡°I mean you wouldn¡¯t be having you take over, I just need someone who has done this before to help me. The core isn¡¯t used to having to make decisions on his¡­ its own.¡± ¡°Do you technically have a gender, or do cores even worry about that?¡± ¡°I have no need for a gender, Vincent, as cores do not reproduce. You may however call me whatever you wish, I don¡¯t care.¡± Ahh such a blissful life for a core. ¡°As for your line of thought regarding this other entity lending you a hand,¡± I nearly choked on my water at this. ¡°You are able to use the dungeon interface to edit his permissions for general abilities and individual items.¡± Once I recovered from my coughing fit I relayed the information to the others, minus that accidental arm pun. ¡°What do you say? It will give you something to do in this world and allow me to not be permanently tied to here. Plus if you ever want to go out with the others, I can always stay here and keep an eye on things.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, I might want to think about it.¡± He looked down at his plate, where he had been aimlessly moving around the other half of his fish. ¡°Take your time, I will give you permissions for the dungeon so that you can at least see what you would be getting into.¡± He absently nodded. ¡°Keep in mind,¡± The core started, ¡°I am what is sustaining your consciousness, so you may want to be careful who you leave defending me.¡± I felt a wave of shock, then anger through my link with Sarah. ¡°Wait so now I have to worry about this thing dying too?! Jesus fucking Christ can you endanger my life any more?!¡± She got up and stormed out of the cave barely stopping to snatch up a set of fishing equipment. The wave of seething anger did not lessen any as she left. Ah great I¡¯d fucked up even more. Can¡¯t let that take over my thoughts, got to keep moving forward. Deep breath, and out. I let out a deep sigh and stood up. Well if the core was still keeping me alive, defending it would need to be my first priority. ¡°What can I do to earn dungeon points right now?¡± We would probably need to keep a steady flow of Dungeon Points coming in so starting now would be ideal. ¡°Well with the state of the dungeon, your two availible options are fishing and farming. You can give me any resource and I can convert it to dungeon points for you.¡± ¡°Even the extra equipment from the other goblins?¡± ¡°Correct.¡± I let Sarah know through the link about the fish and got a wall of anger with a slight hint of acknowledgment in response. I winced and started giving all of the old goblin equipment to the core. Kevin and Sam saw what I was doing and started to do the same. ¡°With all of these resources, you are now up to 22 points.¡± I turned to where Tamani and Grathial were sitting, ¡°When you two feel up for heading out again, can one of you show me where the farms used to be?¡± They nodded and continued eating. ¡°How much would it cost to buy a couple new goblins so I don¡¯t need to breed them.¡± ¡°Ten points can get you a basic warrior, Fifteen can immediately boost it to level 3.¡± The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°Is there an option for like general ones that aren¡¯t specialized?¡± ¡°One of the previous chieftains sacrificed that option so that he could get a discount on warriors and higher chance of them spawning as mages.¡± Well that limited my options, but I guess a couple of warriors wouldn¡¯t be bad. I could use them as laborers for now and still have them for protection. ¡°I guess let¡¯s grab 4 of the level ones for now. They will probably just be for labor until we actually need them.¡± ¡°Affirmative.¡± ¡°How much will they actually know?¡± ¡°They will know how to follow your orders and they will have the basic knowledge that they would have gathered from reaching adulthood and training to meet Warrior requirements.¡± ¡°Okay that should be fine then.¡± ¡°Spawning them now.¡± Four pillars of light came up around the core and after a couple of minutes the pillars faded and in their places were goblins. The goblins all wore basic leather armour and had crude hammers that were just sticks and a rock. Ah yes the intimidating goblin warriors that would protect us from so many invaders. Fuck. ¡°So as of right now all four of you will be assigned to help us with the farming of dungeon points. You will be overseen by Tamani and Grathial, who will give you tasks and teach you as I see fit. Understood?¡± ¡°Yes Master Vincent!¡± They replied in unison. I sighed, not this fucking master thing again. ¡°Huh so I guess you really are a Dungeon Master then, where are the dice?¡± Kevin quipped. Now that he mentioned it, I guess I was a DM, didn¡¯t make being called master any better buuuut, ¡°You four are all to either refer to me as DM, or just Vincent. Got it?¡± ¡°Yes DM.¡± Came the second wave of responses. I turned to Tamani and Grathial, ¡°Do you think that the two of you could split up and teach them how to fish and farm?¡± They nodded. ¡°Cool, when whichever of you is going to teach them farming heads out, ask the core to tell me. I am going to be trying to see what else I can do.¡± I turned back and addressed the new guys again, ¡°Do the four of you have names?¡± They shook their heads. ¡°I¡¯m going to leave that to your bosses, don¡¯t give them issues and they might make them good. One last thing before I leave you to them, those four smaller tents each belong to one of you, they are all the same so try not to fight over them.¡± They all nodded their heads. Talkative bunch these ones. There was still something on my mind though. ¡°Hey,¡± I thought concentrating on my link with Sarah. ¡°can we talk? I kind of want to say something in person.¡± ¡°Sure.¡± Was all I got back. I still felt anger from her, but it wasn¡¯t nearly as strong and it didn¡¯t feel like it was directed at me. I walked all the way to the fishing cave and found her sitting on a rock that was next to the lake, but also had a line of sight with the entrance. I walked over and sat on one of the rocks near her. ¡°Hey.¡± I said lamely. No response. ¡°So I wanted to talk with you about this whole soul link and bound to the core thing.¡± More silence. This was going to be fun. ¡°Look I¡¯m sorry that I fucked up and got you bound to me, and I¡¯m sorry that I ended up using that skill against the chief and made myself reliant on the core. I don¡¯t plan on recklessly endangering myself or anything, I am currently working on a plan to get some defences going.¡± ¡°I heard, or felt rather, it¡¯s hard to tell at this point. Sometimes it seems like the amount of information coming through the link is growing¡± She let out a sigh, the anger fading a little more. ¡°I¡¯m not really angry at you, it¡¯s more anger at myself. I couldn¡¯t have known that we would wind up linked when I went through with the mana thing, but at the same time I should have thought about it more since it was messing with something inside of me. Plus you using that skill on the chief saved us, and being bound to the core was the only way for you to not be brain dead. I¡¯m more angry that I now have to rely on you, someone I didn¡¯t know a week ago, and trust you with my life.¡± ¡°I¡¯m angry that there is nothing I can do right now that will get me home. I¡¯m worried that my family is probably worried sick about me right now, and I can¡¯t even let them know I¡¯m alright. Not to even mention that whole spell thing that your goddess friend told you about.¡± ¡°It''s been a long time since I¡¯ve had any friends in the human race.¡± Came a voice in my head. I ignored it for now. ¡°The mana thing was partially my fault, I only had a theory of how magic worked here and very little evidence to back it up. I should have thought about it more. As for the whole being angry at relying on people thing, we are all going to have to rely on each other for a while, that doesn¡¯t mean we have to completely trust each other, though. That being said if you have any input on the decisions I make for the dungeon I¡¯ll listen. Your life is quite literally tied to me and the core.¡± She nodded and I felt more of her emotion mellow out. ¡°If you want to talk more, just let me know. I¡¯m going to work on securing our camp a bit more. Oh, I almost forgot, we have four new goblin warriors now.¡± ¡°I know, I felt you purchase them through the link. Same with the fish giving points, thing.¡± ¡°Oh, right. I guess I¡¯ll leave you to fishing then.¡± She nodded and I got up and started walking back. Half-way to camp the core let me know that Tamani was ready to head to the farm. I had it tell her that I was already on the way, and picked up the speed a bit. We headed out as soon as I got back, taking the other tunnel. It only took us a couple of minutes and we got to another large cave, this one with its floor broken and replaced with dirt. The dirt was dry as a bone, and the crude hoes and scythes were covered in rust. ¡°It will take a bit of work, but we can probably get this place up and running again. We can use the water from the lake for irrigation but that will take buckets and require many trips.¡± I sighed. ¡°Hey core, do we have the option to make fertilizer? This dirt looks like it won¡¯t sustain much.¡± ¡°If you want, you can save for a basic farming crafting station, where you can make it. The station is 10 points.¡± ¡°Thanks for the information.¡± Out loud I said, ¡°Well we have a goal in mind. We live off fish until we can trade them for a bench then we get this field restored with fertilizer.¡± Tamani nodded and lead her goblins off to go fish. Well at least now we had a plan. Meanwhile back on the farm Once we got the farm was restored it took a bit of research with the core and some more fishing, but we were able to purchase some seeds. Unfortunately, since we didn¡¯t have anyone with levels in farming, the crops would take the same amount of time to grow, as they would back on earth. This meant we would still be eating fish for a while, but hey, we were still alive. After a week of mass fishing we found out that the more of a specific resource we turned in, the less Dungeon Points we received from it. Three days after this was discovered, the fish trade had depreciated so much that it wasn¡¯t even worth the effort. At that point though we had 75 points to work with. The night of the great fish market collapse, we were sat around eating dinner, when Kevin had a great idea, ¡°Why don¡¯t we mine out our own cave system, that way we know that nothing else is in them, and we can expand the camp.¡± We all agreed that it would be a good idea, one that we thought even better when the core informed me that the dungeon was set in the side of a mountain. If we found some sort of ore down here, we might actually be able to get some more dungeon points flowing in. The next day, the core, Kevin, and I sat around discussing how to move forward with expanding the dungeon. According to the core, while we couldn¡¯t get access to buying base goblins back, we could still purchase other specialized goblins at their higher price. This meant that we could theoretically get goblins that specialized in farming or mining, but we would need to figure out if the bonuses would be worth it. It seemed like one of the old chiefs had seen the merit in a sustainable food source, because the option to buy a level one farmer would only be seven points. The miners however, would end up costing us ten a piece, plus another five for the tools they needed to actually work. I ended up upgrading the rest of the tents from their crude form to Level 1 with two beds, bringing us up to 20 beds in the base. This would give us the space for more goblins in the dungeon and also just be a quality of life upgrade for the current members of the team. That brought me down to 50 points, which I then used to get 2 miners, who, combined with their gear, brought me down to 20 points. Man if this didn¡¯t pan out, we¡¯d need to break the dungeon seal ASAP. We widened the cave by taking a couple feet off the bottom six feet of the walls. Sam, Sarah, and I helped the miners, picking up whenever the goblins got tired. Just this work took us a couple of days, but we were able to convert the extra stone into dungeon points as soon as it fell, since it all was inside of the main chamber.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. After another week we had a twenty foot tunnel carved out, that connected the camp to a cave we made. The cave itself was twenty feet by twenty feet, and just tall enough that us humans wouldn¡¯t have to bend over to walk around. By the time that we had gotten all of that work done we were sore and exhausted, so we decided to take the next day off and just rest. While the rest of the group went to the lake as soon as they woke up, like normal people would, I decided to take a trip to the dungeon seal and see what could be done about it. When Tamani had originally told me that there was a seal on the dungeon, I had imagined a door that was locked by magic or something. After walking for two hours down a single, unbranching tunnel that Tamani said lead to the surface, I found this wasn¡¯t the case. The barrier covered what appeared to be the last bend of the tunnel to the surface, light coming from around the bend barely making it through the barriers semi opaque blue. The barrier appeared to be flowing over the opening like water, but when I pressed my hand to it, it was completely solid. Despite my best efforts to interact with the barrier using my mana, all I ever received was a message telling me that I could lower the barrier for 100 dungeon points. It appeared that once another entity¡¯s spell was in place, I wouldn¡¯t be able to mess with it. At least not at my level. ¡°Well fuck,¡± I thought to myself, ¡°we will definantly need a new source of Dungeon Points if we are ever going make it out of here.¡± With there being nothing else that I could do, I decided to go ahead and return to camp. My muscles were already screaming at me from the journey I took down the tunnel, so instead of rushing back, I took my time and thought about what we should do moving forward. Around halfway back, a thought crossed my mind, ¡°Hey core, should we be using some sort of crafting facility to turn all of the extra stone into something more valuable before we hand it to you for points?¡± ¡°The more valuable that an item is before I break it down, the more points you will get. So yes, that would probably be wise.¡± I could barely keep from bashing my head against the tunnel wall at the thought of all the points we had missed out on by not thinking of this earlier. Oh well, that¡¯s what we got for not asking sooner. We would definitely need to ask more questions moving forward, it¡¯s not like we had a wiki guide that we could go to for answers. Oh wait, we kind of did. The rest of my walk was rather peaceful, and when I finally got back to camp, I crawled into my bed and took a nap. I awoke only a couple of hours later, all of my joints groaning in protest as I sat up. I still had a decent amount of my day left, so I decided to go to the lake, where everyone else probably still was, and have a nice soak in the cool water. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, mostly spent talking to each other and planning out the days to come. We had dinner around the fire, like we usually did, before heading off to our tents and turning in for the night. Now with a greeting service The next day I sent the Miners and Warriors down the tunnel that lead deeper into the caves. My goal was to have them reach the cave that my party had come into this world through and start a series tunnels in search of ore. All of the stone that they broke was brought back to the camp by the warriors, who were probably getting sick of being used as laborers at this point. I turned in just enough stone to purchase a general work station. Once the station was constructed I used the next thirty points we earned to get some specialized crafters and their tools. These crafters started on the task of turning the stone into standardized blocks, which did not count towards the same trade value as raw stone. One of the crafters also informed me at some point that if I could find some wood, we would be able to make some basic tools, instead of buying them. I made sure to keep this in mind, but since we were underground, I doubted this would happen any time soon. Only a couple of days into the new project, the core informed me that one of the miners had broken into another cave system. I was in the camp helping with the stone processing, so I two of the closest warriors do some scouting. For a while the only reports that came back were uneventful and of more tunnels. About three hours in though, they reported a cave whose walls had streaks running over them. I had them retreat back to the miners for the day and tried to keep my excitement at bay. That night we argued about whether to immediately go for mining the ore, or to keep mining the stone which was safe. Kevin and Sam wanted to go for the ore, but Sarah and I were hesitant because of how far it was from the camp. With the ore cave being about a one and a half hour walk, if there was some sort of hostile creature that attacked, we wouldn¡¯t be able to get to them right away. ¡°Yes,¡± Kevin said, waving his hand around. ¡°but that is why we send some of the warriors with them, just in case.¡± ¡°By extending that far though,¡± Sarah countered. ¡°We could alert something powerful to our presence, and right now we aren¡¯t exactly prepared for that.¡± ¡°The only way we will get more powerful is by fighting and getting stronger.¡± Sam interjected. ¡°So what, are you saying that you will be going with the warriors to escort the miners?¡± ¡°Sure, if that means I have the chance to get some more experience and actually DO something, I will gladly go.¡± After letting them go on for a few moments I finally threw in my two cents, ¡°Guys there is some merit for both options, but we need to take a step back and think about this from both sides.¡± They all turned and looked at me. ¡°There are some things that we can still do in order to make it safer to go out and gather the ore. Sam we still have eight more beds in the camp, we could always use some points to fill them with some more warriors and miners. You can then train some of the warriors some of which you can take with you to guard the miners.¡± ¡°We can leave the rest of them here to guard the camp, or as reinforcements if you need them. If you guys get into fights that aren¡¯t too dangerous, we can rotate our warriors to level them up a bit. Before you start taking them out though, and we risk pissing off something that is bigger than us, we should probably build up some defenses, after all look how easy it was for the four of us to just waltz in here.¡± ¡°Yeah but if nothing ever makes it this far, then we don¡¯t need to worry about it.¡± Sam replied. ¡°So are you suggesting that we build defenses along the tunnels first?¡± I asked. ¡°No, I am suggesting that we get strong enough that we won¡¯t need defenses.¡± I was about to tell him just how moronic his suggestion was when the core cut me off, ¡°Vincent one of the warriors returning with stone is reporting a glow in the cave that you and your party came through.¡± ¡°What is the core saying?¡± Kevin asked. The party had gotten used to my eyes randomly getting distant when the core talked to me. ¡°You think¡­?¡± Sarah asked, the link between us had gotten strong enough, over the course of our dungeon point grind, that she could basically here my thoughts at this point. ¡°Activity in the cave we landed in.¡± I said jumping up. Kevin and Sam barely had time to process what I had said before I was out of the cave, Sarah hot on my trail. I sprinted for as long as I could, on the way to the cave that we¡¯d come to this world through, getting there in barely two minutes. The glow was getting decently intense at this point, and I had to cover my eyes as I caught my breath. ¡°You think it¡¯s more people?¡± Sarah asked from next to me. She apparently wasn¡¯t even out of breath. Show off. She rolled her eyes at me then motioned for me to hurry up. I flipped her off and finished catching my breath. ¡°Possibly. No idea. Could be. Something else.¡± I got out around my panting. By the time Kevin and Sam had caught up to us, I had at least recovered enough to stand up straight. This was a very important lesson in pacing myself, even with all of the stuff we were doing I was still out of shape. By this point the light had gotten so bad that I was barely able to stay inside the cave. Just as I was about to leave the cave and wait for whatever the fuck was going on to unfold, there was a loud bang and the light vanished. In the center of the cave, where the light had been, were six unconscious figures. I pinged the core to have all of the miners and warriors go back to the camp, and to have Tamani and Grathial come to the cave. ¡°Holy shit,¡± Samuel said next to me. ¡°six more? Already? I thought groups weren¡¯t supposed to show up this close to each other.¡± ¡°Unless the spell is getting closer to falling.¡± I mumbled absently. Samuel face turned to one of worry and horror. ¡°B-but if the spell is failing that means¡­¡± The other two only took a split moment to put it together and then I felt a wave of anxiety crash into me over my connection with Sarah. With how much energy I¡¯d already expended running here, her emotion almost made my knees buckle. It took me a couple of moments to clear the emotion out of my own head and actually look at her. ¡°Hey are you okay?¡± I heard Kevin ask, his voice full of concern. She was shaking violently, and her breathing was uneven. ¡°I-if the spell fails th-that means.¡± Her breathing grew more ragged and she collapsed. Kevin and Sam dropped next to her and I saw their lips moving, but I couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying, it was all I could do not to succumb to the even larger wave of panic and fear that she was projecting. It was barely able to catch myself as I dropped, catching myself on my hands and knees. ¡°Your making it worse.¡± I tried to make myself say. My tongue felt like lead in my mouth and I wasn¡¯t even sure the words made it out. I focused on the wall link and the flood that I was fighting against. If I let it overwhelm me then I would lock up, and if that happened¡­ No I couldn¡¯t let her fear infect me, I had to stay calm. I emptied my mind of all thought and centered myself. I felt her emotion whipping around me like wind, but it had stopped affecting me. I focused on keeping my calm and did my best to project it across the link. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
Mental Fortitude Level 1 Aquired!
¡°Sarah.¡± I thought, not even sure if she would be able to ¡°hear¡± me. ¡°Sarah you can''t give in to this. Just because the spell could be failing, doesn¡¯t mean it is.¡± The emotion didn¡¯t let up, continuing to whirl around me, as though looking for chips in my resolve. ¡°Even if the spell does go down, that doesn¡¯t mean that the people you care about will be part of it. You need to focus on what will happen if they do survive it. Will you just let the thought of them not surviving take over, or will you make yourself stronger so that you can find them when they survive and protect them.¡± Somewhere in the chaos of her core I felt a seed of reason peak it head up. I hurriedly continued, ¡°If you have been dealing with this for almost half a month and you¡¯re this scared of what might happen, imagine what it would be like for them. If the spell drops they will need all the help they can get. Even if you don¡¯t think you¡¯ll be strong enough to do that, you still have me and the others to be there with you.¡± I felt the seed start to take root, and I forged ahead. ¡°We might not be strong enough yet, but there are six people right now in the same place we were in two weeks ago that are going to need our help. They¡¯ll probably be scared, they¡¯ll probably have questions. Are you going to help them out when they wake up, or will you still be here still wrapped up in what might not even happen?¡± The seed of reason took bloom, and started beating the chaos back into its dark holes. I felt her mind start to clear itself as mine had, until only a slight breeze remained of the storm. With the turmoil cleared my hearing returned, and I heard her breathing slowly start to even out. I opened my eyes and looked over at where I knew she was lying to see that her breathing, while still ragged, was calming slightly. I turned just enough to sit down and started to gather my energy back. ¡°Are you going to be alright Vincent?¡± I heard Cilendrial¡¯s voice ask, faintly, her concern clear. ¡°Fine is a term relative to an individual. If by fine you mean not consumed completely by whatever that was, yes. If you mean mentally stable, without the wellness of those around me causing me stress, that probably won¡¯t happen anytime before I die.¡± This seemed to be a good enough answer for her because she didn¡¯t reply. I felt a hand grasp mine and almost jumped. ¡°Did you mean that?¡± I heard Sarah choke out, the fact that she had been crying more than clear. ¡°Mean what?¡± I asked exhausted from what had probably happened in less than five minutes. ¡°What you said through the link, about being there if I needed you.¡± I had to stop myself from giving a slight laugh, ¡°I have a very simple saying, ¡®Me. Mine. The Innocent.¡¯ First of all, we are quite literally soul bound, which I¡¯m pretty sure means you kinda qualify for the ¡®me¡¯ part in a weird way. Second of all, you¡¯re part of my party and one of the only reasons I¡¯m still alive, which qualifies you under the ¡®mine¡¯ bit. While I can¡¯t testify as to how innocent you may or may not be, those first two are good enough.¡± There was silence in the cave for a moment as Kevin and Sam sat speechless looking at us, then each other, then back at us trying to figure out what they were supposed to do or say. I didn¡¯t care, I had gone from perfectly fine sitting around a fire, to mentally and physically exhausted sitting next to a bunch of unconscious people. Oh shit, the new people. I gave Sarah¡¯s hand a slight squeeze, then carefully stood up slowly, shaking a bit as I did so. Kev and Sam stood up also, still not sure what to say. While part of me wanted to let the silence stretch on and reconstruct the mush of my brain, I decided to be a nice person and break it, ¡°Just as a heads up for if that happens again, try to give someone space when they are having a panic attack. While talking to them can help sometimes, crowding them like that can make it worse, almost like a feeling of entrapment.¡± They just blinked at me for a moment, before slowly nodding. ¡°Oh and also, we do still have the six new people to worry about.¡± Luckily it was another few minutes before the new people woke up, which gave Sarah and I some time to gather ourselves. Sadly the ¡°welcoming party¡± went about as well as I thought it would. The first person to wake up was a blonde chick who, upon realizing that she was in a cave, started screaming. This woke up the others who began shouting and yelling questions at us. I think that the Mental Fortitude skill helped out a bit, because it took a whole fifteen minutes for a headache to set in. We did our best to calm everyone down and assure them that we were not a bunch of freaks that had kidnapped them and were planning on holding them ransom. Kevin was a huge help in bringing up the fact that if we had kidnapped them, we probably would have at least tied them up. ¡°So if you didn¡¯t kidnap us then where the fuck are we and how did we get here?¡± A muscular dude asked, irate. ¡°You got here the same way we did, we were teleported here by something unknown that randomly chose us.¡± I didn¡¯t want to hit them with the ¡®There is a spell that will at some point fail and cause a miniature apocalypse when it goes down¡¯ bit quite yet. ¡°Bullshit, don¡¯t feed me the plot of some shitty anime and expect me to believe it.¡± Another one of the new people said. Now I was offended, there were perfectly good Isekai¡¯s out there if people would give them a chance. ¡°Listen I know it might be hard to believe, but we have a camp set up where I can prove to you I¡¯m not lying.¡± ¡°Why the fuck should we follow you? For all we know you¡¯re trying to get us to join some weird fucking cult.¡± ¡°Hey Cilendrial you catching all of this?¡± I said in my head as I pinched the bridge of my nose. ¡°Of course, I don¡¯t have much else to do but watch you. You are the only person officially tied to me you know.¡± ¡°Now do you understand why I question whoever built the spell?¡± ¡°Yes, but I don¡¯t think even us gods could predict a mess like this.¡± Fucking swell, even Cilendrial was calling this a mess. ¡°What the fuck is wrong with him, is he just fucking out of it?¡± The muscular dude said, probably referring to my eyes glazing over when I talk to people in my mind. Now that I actually thought about it like that, I could see why people might think I was crazy. ¡°No, he¡¯s either talking to the dungeon core, or the goddess he met.¡± Kevin said matter of factly. This didn¡¯t go over well with Muscles. The guy grabbed Kevin by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. ¡°Tell me how the fuck to get out of here or I¡¯ll fucking kill every one of you psychopaths.¡± He screamed into Kevin¡¯s face. Well this had escalated quickly and was probably going to end badly. Samuel moved so fast that I could barely process it, drawing his spear from his inventory and placing the tip of it right up against the underside of the guys chin. ¡°I suggest you set him down nice and slow, or you will wind up as the first human to die in these caves since we got here. Understand¡± Muscles froze, then slowly lowered Kevin to the floor. Kevin was shaking and as soon as his feet touched the floor, he took a few hurried steps back, almost tripping over himself. Sam slowly withdrew his spear. ¡°Take this as a warning, this world is not a joke and we have enough issues trying to survive without new people showing up threatening us. I will not hesitate to kill anyone who threatens us or our chances of surviving.¡± He manifested his armour and shield directly onto his person using it to drive home his point. The new people stood there in stunned silence, quiet for the first time since getting here, I decided this would be a great time to interject, ¡°Those of you willing to do your part and help us are welcome to join us. Those of you who aren¡¯t, well this is a sealed dungeon, so good luck surviving on your own.¡± I motioned for my party to go down the tunnel leading to camp, Sarah and Kevin leading the way in case any of the new people tried anything funny. It only took a couple steps before the new people started to follow, shuffling along nervously behind us. It seemed that Sam had made an impression, I would have to thank him for it. Who let me make the tutorial? As I suspected the new guys didn¡¯t stay silent for long on the walk to camp. I ran over the basics of the world as we walked, stuff like how to open their inventory and ¡°Character sheet¡±. As I explained everything, they started to trust me, but what really blew their mind was when Sarah and I showed them our magic. We had stopped in the fishing cave for a moment and decided it was the perfect place for a demonstration. ¡°There is a bit of magic in this world, but from what I¡¯ve figured out, not many people can use it. That being said.¡± Sarah and I used our link to pull the energy into our hands and right as I finished speaking, turned it into fireballs that we let hover above our hands for effect. ¡°We can help you get started in this world, and catch you up with what we know and what we plan to do. After we get the seal off the dungeon entrance you will be free to stay with our group or leave if you wish. Who¡¯s in?¡± Everyone decided to join us, even if they were somewhat reluctant. ¡°So if this world is like a game, and you keep mentioning that we¡¯re in a dungeon, where the fuck are all the monsters?¡± Said Muscles, whose name we found out on the walk here was Chad. Dude acted like a fucking walking sterotype. ¡°We killed all the hostile ones that we found, and then I took over the dungeons core.¡± I replied. ¡°I can now control the creatures associated with the core and build stuff inside of the dungeon itself. Some stuff happened right before you guys showed up, and the core must have asked Tamani and Grathial to go back to camp. Can¡¯t say I blame it, not sure you guys would have reacted any better waking up with goblins in the same room.¡± ¡°Goblins? Are you fucking serious?¡± Asked the blonde from before, who on the way here had introduced herself as Kimberly. ¡°Yeah I¡¯m serious, when we took control of the Core they fell under our command. We currently have warriors to guard the camp, miners for gathering ore, and we also have the mages that helped us take over the camp.¡± ¡°Kind of like your own personal army?¡± Chad said, a thoughtful expression passing over his face. ¡°If you want to think of it that way, technically you¡¯re not wrong. They are also my responsibility to take care of and keep alive. So in a senese, I am more a chief than their master.¡± ¡°And they just let you take over when you killed the rest of their tribe?¡± Asked a shorter, rotund guy that looked like he¡¯d never been taught how to shave. I think he said his name was Melvin, I don¡¯t remember, but he looked like a Melvin so it worked. ¡°The two mages were the ones who helped us take down the chieftain, and have been helping us build the tribe up again. I don¡¯t think they would be doing all of this if they wanted to take us out. So now that I¡¯ve had a chance to prepare you a bit, are you ready to go to camp where we can discuss this around a fire and a hot meal?¡± This got their attention and they all agreed, so we left the lake cave and walked the rest of the way to camp. Their reaction to the camp was mixed. On one had a couple of them looked impressed at all of the tents and the large fire, while on the other, a couple looked disappointed, like they had been expecting something grander. Their eyes swept the cave, taking it all in, whispering to each other whenever they saw one of the goblins doing something. It appeared that someone had set the goblins back to widening the other cave attached to the camp, because the warriors were carrying out stone to the core, and the miners were nowhere to be seen. ¡°Was that your decision?¡± I asked the core. ¡°No that was Tamani and Grathials suggestion, I thought it to be a good one. That way we didn¡¯t look like we were sitting around waiting.¡± ¡°Send my thanks to them.¡± I replied. Then to the others, ¡°Welcome to the camp, I will be adding more tents so that you all will have a place to sleep, but until we can afford them, I will have some bedrolls bought and placed around the fire.¡± ¡°What do you mean bought? Is there a store or something?¡± Kimberly asked. ¡°No the dungeon core has access to a system in this world that we can exchange resources for things we might not be able to make. So I guess actually yes, but not in the traditional sense, it¡¯s more like a vendor in a video game.¡± ¡°And how have you been getting this money to buy stuff if this dungeon is supposedly sealed?¡± Melvin asked. ¡°For a while we were turning in fish that the core was turning into points, but when that got to inefficient, we swapped to stone then stone blocks. We had discovered a vein of ore in one of the tunnels past where you had come in and were discussing how risky it would be to try and mine it, but we were interrupted by you guys arriving.¡± ¡°Why would there be a risk if you guys cleared the dungeon?¡± Asked the brunette girl, her voice quite. After searching my memory a bit I vaguely remember her saying her name was Kelsey. I swear, so many new people, I might have to make them where name tags or something. ¡°Well typically in games, dungeons have more than one floor and are surrounded by more monsters. This one only appeared to have one floor until we found more tunnels while we were mining. For all we know that tunnel could be safe or it could lead to more stuff that we might have to fight. It is better for us to assume that the tunnel is dangerous and be prepared than to be caught off guard.¡± She nodded my answer apparently sufficient enough. I then turned to Chad, ¡°You look like you could handle yourself in a fight, would you be willing to help our warriors get stronger?¡± ¡°Why should I?¡± He asked, sneering. ¡°Because none of you have real combat experience and the goblins can help defend us until you do.¡± I said simply.Stolen novel; please report. ¡°And what is stopping you from turning on us when you don¡¯t need us?¡± He said. Well at least he was smarter than he looked, ¡°If I wanted you dead we could have killed you ten times over. If you don¡¯t trust me, then think about this, you are all more useful alive and getting more powerful. To kill you would be to waste a resource we can¡¯t afford to throw away.¡± It sounded cold but I don¡¯t think that a flowery speech on human compassion and companionship would get to him. He squinted at me as if trying to judge whether or not I was bullshiting him. He must have thought my answer to be good enough, because he looked around and snorted, ¡°You don¡¯t have what I would need, no weights, no benches, no track.¡± I mentally pushed an image to the core on what the weights and benches back home looked like and had it set one of the crafters to work. As we continued talking, the steady noise of chisel on stone started in the background as the goblin started forming larger stones into discs of varying sizes. ¡°You can use the tunnels as a track, as for the weights, I¡¯ll have my crafters work on some, as well as benches. We don¡¯t have any metal yet, so they will have to be stone until we can afford to spare better materials.¡± I pointed at the workstation the crafter had started working at, and the new people turned, astonishment on their face as they saw when they saw him busily chipping away. ¡°But how?¡± One of them said, ¡°You didn¡¯t even say anything.¡± ¡°Like Kevin said earlier, I can communicate with the core in my head. In turn, the core can communicate with anything under its control.¡± They must have thought it was a joke until now, because varying degrees of fear and respect crossed over their faces, probably not at me, but rather at the power I wield. ¡°Anything else you can talk to in your head?¡± Kimberly asked, her face a little pale. ¡°A goddess.¡± Kevin replied before I could. There was a pause then the new people started to laugh. That was until the cave got a little brighter. I looked up and there was a glowing image of a sword a shield over my head. Their silence was almost immediate. ¡°Show off.¡± I shouted up at the cave¡¯s ceiling. I heard a faint laugh fill the camp and blinked, that was the first time I had heard Cilendrial outside of my head. My party must have been just as startled as I was, because when I looked at them, they were all frozen, like a deer in the headlights. Any doubt they¡¯d had about my dream, if they¡¯d had any, probably gone. I heard a couple nervous swallows from the new people as they looked back at me. They were all staring intently at me, Kimberly¡¯s face had lost all color. I shrugged, ¡°She said she¡¯d give me and whoever sided with me help. She is why we were able to kill the old chief.¡± I didn¡¯t mention that this was the first time she¡¯d been heard outside of my head, or that her helping had been a huge miracle. No need to ruin whatever image I was building. ¡°So if we stay with you she¡¯ll make us powerful?¡± Another person in the group asked, Shawn I think. ¡°As long as you stick with me and follow our code.¡± ¡°What code?¡± Chad asked, suspicious. ¡°Us. Ours. The innocent.¡± I said ticking them off on my fingers ¡°We look out for each other and anyone who can¡¯t look out for themselves. This includes you guys since you don¡¯t yet have enough experience here to hold your own.¡± ¡°Are you saying I¡¯m weak?¡± Chad asked, his voice rising. I held up my hands, palms out, ¡°If I thought you were weak, I wouldn¡¯t have asked you to train our warriors. What I was saying is that you don¡¯t have skills or levels from this world yet. Take Sarah as an example, she ran track back on earth, but here she can probably take you in a fight, especially if you count her magic into the equation. Once you get used to using a weapon and you get some skills, you¡¯ll probably be one of our best fighters.¡± I chose my words carefully, making sure to mention how strong he was already, as well as how much the system could improve him. He seemed like he was the type who liked having his ego stroked. I must have been right, because his anger faded and he looked satisfied. God he was going to be fun to deal with, but as long as he was on our side, it would probably be worth it. Probably. ¡°For now let me see what I can do for sleeping arrangements and food.¡± I said, then left to walk over to the core. ¡°Could you get a couple of volunteers to go catch some fish for dinner?¡± ¡°Of course, Vincent. Anything else?¡± ¡°Yeah, how many points are we sitting on?¡± ¡°65.¡± The core replied shortly. I sighed, 35 more points and we could undo the seal, but with the decay rate on the material-to-points trade, who knew how long it would take. I shook my head. ¡°How much for enough tents to house the new group, same tents as ours.¡± ¡°Depends on if you are okay with them sharing tents. If so 45 points, if you want them to have their own tents, then it will be 90.¡± I sighed again, we didn¡¯t have 90 points to spend, but I also didn¡¯t want the new people to think I was treating them less fairly than the main group. I decided to compromise. ¡°Go ahead and buy the 3 tents and upgrade them. Some of us will just have to share.¡± I¡¯d have the main party pair up tents wise, that way the new people having to share wouldn¡¯t look so bad. Then again it didn¡¯t matter, if they didn¡¯t listen to me then¡­ fuck. Why did I have to be the one making decisions. To offend, to not offend. To care, to not to care. That left us with 20 points, only one fifth of the way to breaking the seal, and that was IF nothing else came up, which it was bound to. I pinched the bridge of my nose and turned my attention back to reality. I felt eyes on me and turned, the new people were staring at me. I saw Tamani and a couple others pass out of the cave in my peripheral. They kept staring. Then it dawned on me that the tents had just magically appeared and they had never seen anything like it before. I cleared my throat, ¡°There are barely enough beds to spare so we are all going to have to share a tent. Each one has two beds so it shouldn¡¯t be to bad. When we get enough points we might be able to get everyone their own tent, but that might not happen until we can break the seal, since we have been delaying that for a while.¡± They all nodded slightly and I walked over to them. ¡°So you can just make things appear?¡± Chad asked. ¡°It¡¯s part of that shop thing we talked about. I can make changes to our equipment, hire new goblins, sell extra resources. All sorts of stuff.¡± ¡°Wait your saying that you can just make goblins appear out of thin air, just buy paying these points?¡± ¡°Yeah, among other things.¡± I replied. We sat around the campfire for a time while we waited for Tamani and the other volunteers to return with dinner. We taught them about the interface as much as possible, helping each other fill in as many gaps in the details as we could. After a while the volunteers got back with more than enough fish and we enjoyed a nice meal together, giving all the extra cooked fish to the core when we were all full We divvied up the tents for the night and all turned in, a rotating watch of warriors making sure the camp wasn¡¯t attacked. Status update While "Its Not So Bad To Wake Up In A Goblin Dungeon" is on Hiatus until I can figure out what I want to do with it/get more inspiration, I am still working in that universe and will be sharing more details on my discord server (link in the post notes) as I continue to build around it and the RPG. I am not done with the story and plan to continue on it as there are several key elements of the RPG that it is forcing me to come up with and build. That being said, as I continue to write in the universe I will be updating here as often as I think is justified.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. If I find a way to share the progress on the RPG here I will, but I think they will mostly be kept to discord itself for the time being. If you want to keep up with the universe and the lore, feel free to join the discord server. Otherwise I will probably only be uploading future stories in bulk (Probably 5+ chapter incriments) also if there is anyone who wants to get chapters early to provide feedback send me a message.