• 3^rd Person POV

The crystalline maiden stood from the mound made from stones  covered with snow. Its slender and perfectly sculptured limbs outstretched to the air as if trying to catch something.

*Crackle *Crackle

Immediately after, icicle spikes that’s 1-metre-wide formed & hover in the air. With Evan & Umbra looking at it in shock. “It has begun!” Evan quickly side-step as it fell crashing down and shattering into tiny pieces of ice.

More and more of the spikes fell, as Umbra with his quick agility dodges some and went straight to the maiden.

He lunges and bite the shoulder of that maiden as it cracks but not shatter. Evan moved outside of the field maintaining range with Umbra and the maiden while avoiding the falling icicle spikes.

The maiden retaliated Umbra’s attack by slapping the dog with a backhand. Rather than a normal slap, ice crystals started to form on where the point of contact.

[Authors Note: Remember this is just a beginner’s dungeon, so the monsters don’t have a lot of mechanics. Similar to FFXIV low-level dungeons]

As Umbra yelped in pain, Evan focuses the threads of mana to coalesce to Umbra healing the wounds as he uses another free hand to command the motes of fire surrounding him to hurl itself to the maiden.

Several of them hits as it emits a loud hiss & steam. With the faceless maiden just ignoring it and made a gesture of lifting her hand like someone wanted to blow dandelion. Strange with no mouth and eyes.

As the maiden did, a cone of ice mist aimed directly to Evan with him taking no damage but his whole-body shivers from the cold.

You’ve been Inflicted with [Cold] De-buff

 

Evan noticing that commanded the motes of fire surrounding Umbra and him to comes closer, but the de-buff does not go away.

“Its not removed?” Evan weaved another healing spell to Umbra noticing that his chanting time and the way he’s weaving mana getting slower. “Damn… its getting harder to modify spells at the get go and that’s just a single de-buff.”

Evan calmed himself down as he hears Umbra bark and bite another shoulder of the maiden. “Yeah! Umbra is here with me”. Evan hurl another firebolt barrage at the maiden several of them connects emitting steam and hiss.

The maiden made the same gesture again to blow a cone of white cold mist to Evan direction. Its unavoidable as Evan had another stack of cold. Umbra meanwhile gain his own stack of cold from the Maiden’s close-range attack.

Umbra lunge again a bit slower this time as he crunch the maiden’s crystalline hand as it shatters. In doing so, icicle spikes formed from above and starts raining down around the maiden. “Umbra get back” The dog obeyed the command from Evan.

The maiden outstretched one of her hands from the rain of icicles that covered her as she shoot a big spike of ice towards Umbra. It hits dealing significant damage as Umbra yelped in pain and knocked down for a second.

Evan sees it happening quickly weaved more mana into Umbra even if he’s slowed by the cold stacks. He can feel his hands shiver as Umbra quickly get up and his HP went back to full.

The rain of ice spikes still continue surrounding her, preventing Umbra to comes closer as her hands begin to form a thick spike of ice to the dog’s direction. “Umbra dodge!” The dog side-stepped as the spike stab through the walls.

Evan hurled another firebolt barrage but its blocked by the constant rain of ice spikes surrounding her as if each of the mote of fire hit their corresponding spikes of ice. She retaliated by blowing another cone of cold mist stacking [Cold] de-buffs.

Evan & Umbra can feel their limbs starting to feel numb from the cold.  “Okay that doesn’t work… think, how to beat her. I think I already pushed her to below 50% HP.” An idea appeared on Evan’s mind as he told Umbra to distract & kite her attacks away from him.

*BARK* Umbra understood as the dog move sideways in a circle as her hand continues to shoot spikes of ice that misses and hit the back wall.

*WOOF?* Umbra tilted his head while running as the motes of fire surrounding him leave and condenses into a thick ball of fire. Evan surrounding motes also combined with that as it gets bigger and bigger. Evan grasped something on air as he imagine a javelin.

It takes quite a while for the ball of fire to thinned into something shaped like a javelin thanks to the cold stacks he had. “HAAAH!!” Evan exclaimed as he flung the flame spear, it shoots at an incredible speed.

Piecing the rain of ice spikes to the maiden as burst of steam come out from it with the unmistakable sounds of dropping water.

 

Umbra stopped in his tracks after noticing the threat is long gone as Evan sat down on his butt to the frozen lake. “Fiuf… I need a bit of rest” He ignores the cold seeping through his rear as he feels something fluffy on his cheeks.

Umbra seems to stay beside Evan as he ruffles the dog’s fur before waving his hands as motes of fire appeared again surrounding them giving them warmth.

Multiple pings can be heard, Signifying that he and umbra levelled up but Evan’s exceptional tuning out skill override it as he enjoyed butting his head to the soft fur of Umbra with the warmth from the motes of fire. He also gives a lot of treats to Umbra with the dog happily chomps them down.

Finally getting his dose of fluffiness, Evan opened his inventory panel wandering what he gets from defeating the boss of <Icy Cavern>. There are items dropped from ice elementals quite good for selling. “Hmm?” One item caught his eye.

 

[Authors Note: Evan’s spellcasting is unique rather than normal players who just utter the spells name and it would trigger. He needed to weave it together combined with his mind to create the same effect akin to what NPC would do. Rather than the MP deducted after spell is casted, The act of weaving consumes MP continuously until the spell is casted.]

“Hmmm… it would be nice to grow this plant and who knows I might be able to sell them. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get the maiden tears. It fetches quite a high price in the market” Evan thought as he scrolls the inventory panel. He can feel a rush of wind blowing through the right side of him with Umbra tilted his head and his ears twitched from the breeze.

“I guess that’s the exit” Evan takes some time to look around the field. Everything is still… in ice crystals with a small amount of light coming from the top making the whole area feels tranquil.

Before he left though, Evan took a screenshot with Umbra like a selfie with the dog panting and wagging his tail.

Coming out from the dungeon, he was left on the same spot he entered the dungeon. Away from the prying sight of the scouts above. Upon exiting the dungeon, the entrance closes as the stone walls return.

“It seems that there are multiple entrances to a dungeon. I’m getting curious, I’ll try <Moving Library> next” Evan decided his next decision as he tap the recall function.

All characters have recall function allowing them to return to their respawn point. It is not suited for combat as it requires a lot of time until the function activates.

“I guess, that person finally get the screenshots he wanted” A scout mentioned that green robed figure as the recall circle completed with that the figure disappears to thin air.

“Anyone suspicious lately?” A calm & collected voice comes from behind the scouts. Taking them by surprise.

A tall Asian male with long black hair being tied into a pony tail. His body stature is slender but muscular possibly focusing on dexterity rather than strength.

His clothing and demeanour closely resembles a Japanese samurai with a katana strapped on his right hip. “There’s no one in particular, Sir Kaze. Just occasional newbies taking screenshots” a scout replies to his question while bowing his head. Kaze has his eyebrows raised and looked down below through his dark brown eyes from the mountain top upon hearing that.

Kaze is a ranker, meaning he is a player that competes with the ranks of ‘Eidolon’ players. There are different type of rankings but mostly it is divided into two.

PVP (Where players fighting against another players) and PVE (Where players fighting against monsters such as dungeons but also other non-combative areas such as crafting) although usually they coexist together meaning PVP ranker is also good at PVE, there are exceptions such as crafters. A player that dedicate their character to a non-combative skill such as tailoring, smithing, and many more in the world of ‘Eidolon’.

Although he isn’t one of the top most ranker in terms of PVP nor PVE, the fact that he is one of the member of the guild ‘Murim Alliance’ is some kind of an achievement as they have strict rules in recruiting. One of the prominent and well-known rule is knowing a martial art IRL.

“Sigh… why did the sect leader told me to guard this place. A dungeon for beginners” Kaze pursed his lips annoyed, as he turn around to where he was originally posted. In the guild ‘Murim Alliance’ as the name suggest it consist of several vice-leaders known as ‘Sect Leader’ with the guild leader called as ‘Murim Alliance Leader’.

Obviously, the guild tries to copy a famous genre of novel Wuxia as there are many ‘Sect Leaders’ each handling their own team. For Kaze, he’s in the sect known as ‘Falling Snow Sect’ who’s consists of primarily katana wielders having pure white clothing that looks like snow and fast when they attack.

Some say the rumours of the guild ‘Murim Alliance’ is because their sect leaders and guild leader are martial arts teacher IRL. As they continue to guard the dungeon with some entering & completing the dungeon just for fun and loot knowing they have ‘privilege’ to access the dungeon

--

Meanwhile, Evan appeared right at the plaza of Novitas after the recall function finishes. It went into a recharging state lasting for an hour. As he had a goal in mind. “I’m going to explore <Moving Library>! I want to know the other entrance.” He continue to ponders as he already dismissed Umbra from the start.

“I wonder if I need to access the entrance outside first to discover other passages. Well… I can find them when I’m inside the dungeon” Evan is thankful that non-combative dungeon is not very profitable in the eyes of rankers or high rankers so much so that it isn’t being monopolized.

But also due to their monopolization of combative dungeon, the newbies started to pool on the entrance of <Moving Library> as Evan tries to hide himself by pulling up his green hood. Heaving a breath of relief that no one is bothering him, Evan entered the dungeon.

The familiar structure of the library and its golem constructs greeted Evan as he sharpened his senses to mana. Trying to figure out the trails that is off, “I see… I can see the 4 books that’s overflowing with mana” He picked up the books that serve as a key to deactivate the orb in the centre quite quickly thanks to that skill.

After deactivating them, Evan checked again by putting his hand to the orb as it just hits a hard surface of the golem. “Yeah… makes sense” Feeling quite stupid by doing that, Evan continues to use his skill to detect mana seeing their flows until he caught something on the top floor.

Going to the topmost floor of the <Moving Library> he can see the same puzzle to complete the dungeon as he did. Faster than usual as he already know where to put given the hint from the blue light and his own sense of mana.

There’s breeze coming from the back of the large bookshelves as he knew it’s the exit. Opting to not use that, Evan look at the threads of mana trying to find one that is off or coming from another source.

“AHA! I KNEW IT!!!” He managed to find one lead, coming from his right as he follows it. Leading to an empty alcove as he reaches to the threads of mana coming from there. As if his hand plunge into water a ripple begin to form from the walls as it reveals a dark passageway. Another exit have been revealed.

Evan can’t help it but his lips curving upward as he used that passage, his figure vanishing to thin air as notification that he has completed the dungeon appeared.

Then another notification slammed right on his face.

 

“Eh?” Evan doesn’t know what will happen to him now.

[Authors Note: Oh no!]