Large piles of ashes and scattered skeletal limbs lay strewn about within this massive room of the dungeon. On each side of the room held five metallic trapdoors, the edges now charred with black smoke billowing through the openings. Not one undead remained moving after the counter-offensive that the group had launched. It certainly took a while, but they were now finished.

Right now, the party was now searching the room for any treasure, traps, entrances, and such. With Kayden’s knowledge of traps and Ezekiel’s sight, they advanced swiftly through the room, leaving not a single stone unturned, or in this case, bone.

A skull split open under Kayden’s foot, crumbling into pieces and causing him to flinch. Due to the sheer volume of skeletons that had roamed this room before, their remains piled up very high. Three of the party members were doing their best to sweep all the ashes into the trapdoors, treating it as convenient trash bins.

“Ugh… This room is practically empty…” Kayden complained as he punted another skull. It flew directly into one of the trapdoors.

“You’re right. There’s nothing of value here. The only thing that could be worth something are those magic circles inside the chutes under the trapdoor. Unfortunately, all of them are now destroyed.”

It seemed that this entire room had been built for one singular purpose, and it was to ward off any intruders. This was one of the problems of going first, you become the first to take the hit, allowing those that come after to explore the dungeon safer.

Although it was disappointing that their fight had yielded nothing for the party, Kayden did gain a benefit. From the vast number of assists and kills he got, his experience gain had shot up, pushing him over the threshold for another level up.

Name:	Kayden
Title:	Pest of Babylon
Level:	15
Health:	186/186
Mana:	9/108

 

“Congrats! Kayden! You’ve leveled up!” The cheery voice of the System filled his ears.

It had been some time since he had last conversed with the System, and he wasn’t about to start now since Ezekiel could hear him speaking to it. He didn’t want to leave it hanging, so he simply smiled and nodded in reply.

It took them a while, but eventually, the room was cleared out and every corner was examined. To no one’s surprise at this point, there was nothing of value, even the undead corpses weren’t worth taking.

“Agh! What a waste! I used up way too much mana for this fight.” Alice complained.

That was true for everyone. Their mana reserves were used up and they had no choice but to rest for a while, recovering their lost mana. The only person who still had a lot of mana left was Cathy, as she didn’t do much during the fight itself. After the fight, however, was when her abilities truly shined.

Using her ‘Damage Transfer’ spell, she completely recovered any injuries they sustained, mostly on Aisha and Louis. Although she needed to take a short break between each cast, and they needed to hold down a lively skeleton for the damage to be transferred to, nobody could argue with the effectiveness of the healing. Altogether, she saved them gold equivalent to that of eight potions of healing. Now that was something Kayden could respect.

Ezekiel gave a suggestion to the party. “I think we should rest in this room where we know it’s safe. Who knows what lies ahead of us?” he looked over at Aisha for a response, but she once more remained silent

Conner spoke up on behalf of the quiet Aisha.

“We’ll take a short break then. We can recover our mana a little faster with the potions of mana recovery. We’ve just spent a huge portion of our head start just fighting skeletons, so we’ll need to speed things up a bit.”

“Agreed.”

The party all agreed on the decision to stay, and Kayden began distributing the potions to everyone in the party. After everyone got their share, he sat down, popped the cap off a bottle, and drank one himself.

Name:	Potion of Lesser Mana Recovery
Item type:	Consumable
Description:	Boosts mana recovery for the next four hours. Consume it directly for it to take effect.

 

Very similar taste to the potions of healing, which is a disgusting minty flavor. Once the liquid was drained from the bottle and made its way down his throat, Kayden could feel his mana regenerate faster. If he had to give an estimate, he roughly recovered mana fifty percent faster, though he was sure that the effects could vary slightly from person to person.

“Fuuuu…”

Kayden rested his exhausted legs and arms by letting them fall limp, and he closed his eyes. The fight had taken nearly an hour and it had finally begun to take its toll on him. Although he could proudly say that he was unharmed throughout the entire battle, the stamina it took from him to dodge all the swarm of attacks made the victory a lot less satisfying.

‘I’m sure they won’t mind if I just take a little nap… I mean, I definitely deserved it, don’t I?’

He began to nod off, his head constantly bobbing up and down as he fought to keep himself awake. However, sleep eventually took hold of him, and he gradually lost consciousness.

“Zzz…”

Deep underneath the mountain within the walls of the dungeon, Kayden fell into a deep slumber.

***

Once he came to, he awoke in total darkness. The place he was in was pitch-black, and no matter which direction he faced, everything looked the same, just the same inky darkness, void of any light. He rubbed his tired eyes and looked around the room, trying to comprehend what was happening.

“How long have I been asleep? Man… That fight must have taken a toll on me.”

He waited for his tired eyes to adjust to the darkness, and hopefully, then he would be able to see something. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be happening.

“Has this place always been this dark?” he glanced around once more and shouted into the darkness. “Alice! I’m awake now! You can light up the room again!”

But no one replied.

“Alice?”

He shouted once more into the void, yet there was not any semblance of a reply. He almost thought that the party had come together to collectively pull a prank on him, but he knew that wasn’t possible, they weren’t familiar with him enough to do this sort of thing.

“This is strange…”

Kayden began to stand up, using one hand to push himself upward. It was then that he realized something.

“My hand… I can see it?”

Despite the absolute absence of light in the room, he could still see his hand—No,— his entire body. In fact, there were several inconsistencies that he began to quickly notice as well.

His voice didn’t echo, even though it should have with how loud he had shouted. When he took a few steps forward, there wasn’t any sound, even though the floor had been made of metal in the room he was in before, and clanging sounds should have been heard.

“Hold on…”

He placed his hand right underneath his nose. Not breathing. Check. No smell. Check. Unnecessarily dark all the time. Check.

There was no mistaking it. He was back at the location where he had first met the God of Thieves and was eventually granted the System.

“Although… Where’s the cave? The torches? Things are way different compared to last time.”

He half-expected the God of Thieves to appear once more with his silly hat and weird poses to timely answer his question when he spoke aloud, but in the end, nothing happened. Now he felt kinda stupid for talking to himself.

‘The first time this happened. I had to walk through a hallway before meeting him. Maybe this time’s the same. I’ll just have to find him… somehow.”

With doubt and confusion in his mind, Kayden decided to explore the area around him. There wasn’t any difference in which direction he was heading since it was all pitch-black anyway, so he randomly picked one and moved forward.

The scenery around him never changed, even after what felt like an eternity. More than once he wondered if he had accidentally made a turn and walked around in circles instead, but being able to see himself calmed him down significantly.

‘I definitely exist in this space, right here, right now. Holy crap… I hope that time doesn’t pass at the same rate as in the real world.’

If that were the case, wouldn’t he be slowing the entire group down? If he were to be dead asleep in real life, the hard-earned head start they got would go completely down the drain.

“Or maybe not. They would continue onward without me… though I would need to be dragged around, effectively slowing down the entire party still.”

Kayden sighed. He certainly talked big about his abilities as a rogue, but rarely had it come into play. The only time he was useful was to sneak them to the barrier, which honestly wasn’t that big of a deal, yet it still took him so much mana to do so.

His recent level up merely increased his total mana value by seven. Seven! If he wanted Cathy or Alice’s levels of mana, he would need nearly thirty more levels. Thirty!

Talent. He must have been born with not much talent. Even though Alice had told him that he was a genius since he had three different abilities, it certainly did not feel like it. What’s the point of so many abilities if you don’t have enough mana to use them?

He shook his head and sighed. How could he become the God of Thieves if he didn’t make any sacrifices? He had to train, level up, experiment, and do all kinds of things before he could reach his goal. The System was merely an aid, not a ticket, to power. Everything that has to be done he still had to do himself.

“Hah! If only there was such a convenient cheat…”

Suddenly, Kayden stopped in his tracks. Far, far off into the distance glowed a dim light, a stark difference from the never-ending void that seemed to consume him. Without skipping a beat, he quickened his footsteps are rushed off into the light.

As he got closer, he began to make out what was giving off that light. It was a sleek black box of an unknown material with some kind of stand that hoisted the entire thing up. What was interesting about this box was that light was coming out from the other side of the box. Never in his life did he ever see such a thing, and he wondered what it was doing all the way here.

Kayden inched closer to the black box, anxious to know what would happen. Perhaps it would attack him if he got too close? Well, even if it did he wasn’t sure if he would die. After all, the God of Thieves had explicitly said that he couldn’t be harmed in dreams.

Wanting to be safe, Kayden cautiously circled around the box so that he could see the box from the other side. He wanted to know where the light was coming from, and if it could potentially be the exit to this place. However, just as he was about to reach the other side, his eyes caught sight of a figure, sitting down cross-legged on the ground.

The figure sat sideways, her eyes glued to the black box in front of her. Although he could only see one side of her face, it was enough to make his jaw drop. It was a breathtakingly beautiful young lady, full of vigor and vitality. Her skin was flawless with not a single blemish to be found, and her hair was a pearly white, contrasting heavily with the dark void that surrounded her.

She looked timeless like she hasn’t aged a bit since reaching her peak beauty. If the statues and paintings depicting the beautiful goddesses came to life, she would look just like them. Truly a sight to behold.

“W-what… Who are you?”

The lady, having heard his voice, turned her head around to look at him.

A terrible chill ran down his spine as he finally he finally got to see her full face. It was too horrifying to describe, and his jaw dropped even further upon seeing it.

It was a face so rotten and wrinkled that all he could attribute it to was a rotting corpse. The skin was a ghastly blue and very thin, so much so that he could see the skull that lay beneath. The most unsettling was her left eye, for there was nothing in there. Nothing but an empty void not unlike their surroundings.

“WHAT IN THE HELL—?”

The figure instantly looked shocked, or at least the right side of her face did. He couldn’t tell with those skeletal teeth and empty eyes. She stood up in a massive panic and pointed a bony finger straight at him.

“What are you—?”

The scene before him faded to nothing, and he fell unconscious once more.