There weren’t many other people standing around the Trial table when the three of them walked up to it. He counted five, other than the instructors. They looked uncertain.

“That’s everyone. Welcome to the first Trial. As you all know, this Trial is optional. You may back out at any time before it actually begins by telling your guide. I am Entherys; this is Sillon. We will be the two Guides for this Trial. All Trials for the first four days are Guided; after that, a few will be but most will not. It depends on the style of the Trial.”

“Today’s Trial is a relatively straightforward Dungeon Quest Trial. This means that you will need to complete a quest while at the same time completing a dungeon. In this case, the Quest is to collect and turn in five monster cores each after completing the dungeon. Additional monster cores may be turned in for currency, or saved for other purposes, such as trading or crafting.”

“Now, we have three groups signed up - a group of four, a group of three, and an individual. Normally I’d suggest balancing the groups, but -”

“Hey, where’s Raymond? He was supposed to be helping us through this.” A black-haired woman dressed in wrinkled office clothes stepped forward from the group of four. “We can’t leave without him.”

Entherys looked at her, then stated, “Raymond has unfortunately disqualified himself from any Trial prior to the mandatory Trial by attacking another Tutorial attendee. If you do not wish to attend the Trial without him, I recommend withdrawing and waiting.”

“Well I never!” The woman turned and flounced away from the Trial desk.

Sillon spoke for the first time. “I’m going to count that as a withdrawal.”

“As funny as it would be to have her end up in a dungeon unexpectedly ... I agree.” Entherys was clearly not sympathetic. “As I was saying. Echo, you have two groups you can choose between. Either way, it looks like you will be the fourth member.”

Echo was a slim girl who looked like she couldn’t be much over sixteen. “I’d like to join his group,” she said, pointing at Serenity. “He sounds like he’ll be sure to keep everyone safe.”

Entherys and Sillon looked at each other, then Sillon pulled out a coin and flipped it.

“Heads!” was Entherys’s guess.

Serenity felt something odd. Was that his Luck? Something was happening, but he wasn’t sure what.

Sillon looked at the coin. “Tails.”

Sillon gestured to the four of them and said, “You’re with me. Now, there are only a few questions I can answer; the point of this is training, after all, not a class. So pretend I’m not here unless it’s something you really need to know - like directions. Those I can give you.”

He led them to a door set in open space, then opened the door. Even though there was nothing behind it, the doorway clearly led to a dark cave. “In order to get out, you need to beat the dungeon. Please remember that you need five monster cores each, so twenty total, to complete the Trial.”

Serenity led them off. He could see despite the dark, so it was a surprise to him when Echo asked “Does anyone have a flashlight?”

He turned to her and asked, “Did you unlock your Affinities?”

“Yeah, but … I just got Sound.”

Sound was an interesting one - Serenity would generally use Energy for it, but it was related to several other high-level Affinities as well. “Actually, that’s a very good one. With practice, you should be able to navigate by sound alone - sonar. For now, though - Lancaster, Rissa, I didn’t think to ask. Did either of you get Light or Fire?”

Neither of them had, so Serenity called a spark of Energy to his hand and concentrated to make it ‘feel’ like a globe on the outside with a light source inside. He then handed it to Echo. “You’re now our designated lantern!”

Echo seemed thrilled.

It wasn’t long before they discovered that the monsters were Slimes. Serenity used his staff to knock the cores out of a couple of them before standing back to let the others give it a try.

When they went in to pick up the cores, Serenity made a chilling discovery. The cores made him hungry. After a little thought, he realized that although he still felt hungry because of the healing, this hunger wasn’t coming from his stomach. It was coming from the node in his brain.

Unprocessed monster cores are toxic to humans, really only useful for power or in crafting. With proper processing, they could be used for anything from potions to enchanting ink, but really only monsters used them as they were. Monsters would eat them to gain power or to evolve.

Serenity felt like he’d been blind. The points were even called Ev.

Ev

Raw, unaspected points available to be used for directed evolution. Ev can be gained through several methods. Note that aspected or otherwise limited Ev may not be able to be directed and will not appear on this screen.

I guess I’m a monster. Not sure what that means.

A healing stomach does sound kinda like something a monster would have.

And it did explain why adding Might gave him more pronounced muscles. Monsters tended to visibly “show” what they were good at - one that was unbalanced towards Might would have obvious muscles. He wondered if his muscles would shrink if he increased other stats more.

Well, it was either that or he was going to end up a slab of muscle pretty quickly. So … probably.

Should I stop using it? Or - should I take advantage of everything it can offer? It is power, but power at a cost.

He couldn’t stop using his stomach. That would mean starving to death. Well, after his display the previous night, it probably meant “starving until his hunger drove him to eat everything in sight.” Which didn’t make him feel better.

The Ev points, though, he could stop deliberately using them. He suspected they’d get used anyway, though. That was how he’d found out about them after all.

So he’d keep using them. He knew he was just justifying what he wanted to do, but he also didn’t feel like it was wrong.

While he’d been musing, they’d moved through several more rooms in the dungeon and cleared out a bunch of slimes. They just weren’t threatening to this group. They were rotating who was in the lead to give everyone practice, and Echo was in the lead when she jumped back.

“Big slime! Really really big slime!”

Serenity looked into the room. This had to be the dungeon boss. It was indeed a giant Slime - five feet tall and probably ten wide. They weren’t going to be able to just flick the core out the way they’d done to all the little slimes. Just like the little slimes, it was just sitting there - but Serenity suspected that it would get a bit more active when they started poking it.

“Okay … Lancaster, Rissa, around back. Rissa, I need you to try to hold it in place. Lancaster, your sword should be good for slashing holes in its skin. If you can do that, it should start draining and lose power. Echo, light is going to be vital for this one, so that’s your job.”

Rissa probably spoke for everyone when she asked “And what’s your job?”

“I … get to go swimming. The fastest way to kill it is still to remove the core, so someone has to go in there to get it. As the only one here with self-healing, that’s me.”

Lancaster looked at the slime, then at Serenity. “I bet the slow way - the usual way - is to cut it open til the innards leak out so you can collect the core?”

“That’s my guess too. But I don’t see any reason to wait.”

“It’s your skin.” Lancaster was all too literal with that statement.

“Yeah, not really looking forward to that part.” Serenity wasn’t actually sure how much damage he’d take; Slime acid was fairly weak, and he was pretty sturdy. But if he did actually take damage, well, some food would probably set him to rights. He was confident it wouldn’t be comfortable, though, and he wished he had some goggles.

The plan went off without a hitch. Serenity punched his way in, dove into the Slime, and pulled out the Core. The acid was only a mild irritant on his skin. Once the Core was out, the Slime started to disintegrate, and everyone jumped away from it.

Everyone looked over at Serenity to see the prize - but it wasn’t the core that grabbed everyone’s attention. Echo put it into words. “Your eyes…”

“Hm? They’re a bit sore, but - “

“They’re missing.”

Serenity paused. It did seem like colors were a bit off in the light from the energy spark he’d given to Echo. He could still track it by its Affinity, but … it didn’t really seem to shed much light anymore. He put his hand on his face, and felt his closed eyelids. They were the wrong shape, like there was nothing beneath them.

Well, he had a solution for that, even if it was one he wasn’t looking forward to using. This was why he’d picked himself as the swimmer, after all. “Can anyone rinse me off? I’d really like to not be covered in acid when I heal myself.”

“I can do that.” Sillon hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the dungeon. “Well done by the way, other than the side effects. I think that’s the fastest I’ve seen this boss cleared.”

He pointed an item at Serenity. It glowed a little with Water Affinity, then he found himself getting hosed down thoroughly. After a few minutes, he told Sillon it was good enough, and retreated to a spot of less wet floor to sit down.

After the last time he hit what he was starting to think of as the emergency button, he was going to sit down first - facing away from the others, just in case.

Now that he’d found it, it was easy enough to trigger the heal. He felt the stamina drain, and then the loss of fat. He suspected he looked like a starvation victim again. He felt under his ribcage, and found that he had nothing in front of his spine other than some skin and a little muscle until he got close to his hips. He wasn’t entirely sure what was gone, but he suspected it was just the area that had once held his intestines and was now a fat reserve.

Actually, that might mean that he looked less starved elsewhere than he’d assumed. He’d have to see a mirror to be sure.

He pulled his clothes around him carefully so no one would be able to see how much he’d lost around the waist. Moving was more difficult - apparently he’d depended on muscles that seemed to be a bit displaced now more than he’d realized - but he was still able to make it work.

“Well, that’s my last heal until I eat something.” He looked over at the others, and could see their relief when they saw his eyes. “Sorry about the scare. I didn’t realize it would be that bad.”

Slime Dungeon 0.0 Complete

4 Participants

Rewards increased for reduced party size.

Monster extermination: 156 XP

Boss Killed: 62 XP

Total Extermination Bonus: 62 XP, 62 Ev

Dungeon Cleared: 62 XP, 62 Ev

Individual Dungeon Quest ‘Slime Dungeon 0.0 Core Collection’ Complete

Quest Rewards: 50 XP, 50 Ev

Serenity looked at the rewards. Either he was getting bonus Ev, or it was taking away from his XP. There was an easy way to find out. “Hey, Rissa … how much XP did you get for the core collection quest?”

“A hundred, why?”

“Just making sure how it works. Looks like we all got the same rewards.” Well, except that his rewards for everything except monster kills were given half in XP and half in Ev. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy about that or not. He needed all the XP he could get, but at the same time the Ev was a direct boost to his power.

And maybe that meant it was counting him as half a monster and half a person? Serenity wasn’t sure monsters got XP.

“Hey, I’m level 10! And it says I have Path options available!” Echo was overjoyed.

Serenity knew he needed to calm her down. “You can hold off on picking a Path. It’ll take some time to go through them anyway, and … if you wait, stuff you do can continue to add new Paths. There’s nothing wrong with picking one you really like, but it’s an option.”

Sillon supported him “He’s right. If you have the absolute perfect Path already available you can go ahead and take it, but a lot of people get better Paths if they wait a bit. You don’t have to pick at Tier 0 until you’re level 100 or the Tutorial ends. Outside the Tutorial, you need a Path to gain levels. With that said ... would you like to do another dungeon? You did that so quickly there’s plenty of time left. Lunch isn’t even open yet.”

Serenity had hoped to go directly to lunch, but Sillon was right - it was too early. “I could go for another as long as it’s fast. And no slimes!”

Everyone laughed and agreed.

Lillene

You've probably noticed I like writing notes at the end of chapters. It's not every chapter, especially early on, but it's certainly most chapters. This was one of the ones without one so I thought I'd do the meta thing and comment on it ;-)