When the system had made her buy energy recycling, Alice didn't pay it too much mind. Now, watching plastic dishes leisurely dissipating in the blue scentless flames, the girl had to reconsider. Certain questions arose, certain connections to a certain dungeon were drawn...

In the safe room, invisible pressure was slowly building up. Mana. Magic. Alice looked in the corridor and saw her old blood had burned out.

"I was never really spooked by the fact that maybe all my blood was drained away."

Alice marveled, blinked and breathed the air deeply in. She sensed something for the first time. A whiff of energy entered her body and the girl focused intently. The mystic drop circulated around and settled in her heart, aiding to her blood energy. Insignificant like a drop of water to the ocean, an indistinguishable fraction of a percent, yet...

I can force my blood integration...

Doubts and suspicions naturally filled her mind. Should she really? Her analysis of Leviathan was neat by all means, but should Alice really...

"I cannot afford to ignore this power."

The girl's mindset really changed after the two dungeon crusades and a strange dream.

[Emerald Dungeon (Dungeon Lvl. 0-18)], the system promptly displayed when she stared at the entrance.

"When they have reached level 20 and another evolution occurred my odds will be slim."

Then Alice remembered her desperate run from the centipedes, how this power had saved her.

"True army doesn't need suicide soldiers..."

Sitting down with her legs crossed, the girl peered into the distance, trying to pierce the grey mist with her gaze and foresee beyond. Would there be an ambush? Nothing? A nest of centipedes, or ants, or some spiders? The girl didn't know and soon she forcefully closed her eyes.

Breath in, breath out.

Whisp of mana entered her lungs and into her bloodstream. None on the second breath. None again. None. Then two whisps. Then one, but a bit bigger. Little by little Alice experimented with pauses, timings. Gradually she adjusted her breathing to the point she was confidently pulling five whisps of mana at a time.

The ability itself never smote Alice. Not after that dream. It felt natural more than anything. Half of the chatroom could manipulate mana one way or the other and, frankly, her way was rather dull and had too little special effects to blow off the mind of a modern girl who shared the world with Hollywood and Japan animation.

Ten minutes later Alice stopped and sighed. Not because she grew bored though, good ol' training and whatnot, but because the speed was not up to her satisfaction. The session netted her not even a tenth percent of the current blood energy in the girl's heart. The magic pressure in the safe zone was too weak to drew much mana from it and the girl reasonably suspected most of it'd come from her old, 'contaminated' blood anyway and wouldn't last long.

Alice sighed, looked at the dungeon entrance and slipped out of the karategi, lain it down carefully and very attentively put on her armor. By now, it was dry and without a spot of blood – energy recycling took care of it. The system shop had also patched the leather pants for 100 BP.

Before wearing on her helmet, the girl reached out with her hand for a pole and remembered with a smile,

Knight: No naginata.

"WHY?"

Nomad17: Agreed.
Knight: Naginata is a fine weapon, but it's more about slashing, not stabbing. Same point as katana, sharpy but not really a triangle you need.
Nomad17: Start from the European poleaxe category, choose what you like with a long blade and spear-like tip. Then you just call it naginata.
PR3DAT0R_696: look at these geeks 8-)

...such a conversation might or might not have happened.

Alice lifted her new weapon and placed it on her knees. Meter and a half long shaft made of wood and braided with black leather. It had a metallic lower tip and half a meter long curved blade with a very sharp point. There was no guard or any ornaments and the whole thing was heavy because of a flexible metal rod the wood shaft was hiding.

As advised, Alice had started from the poleaxes category and worked her way into it until she saw something really naginata-like among the shop's images.

"I won't call you naginata, that would be stupid. Sovnya¹For better imagination: breaks my tongue, too... glaive will do."

The glaive's tip was pointing up, which was actually a good thing since Alice meant to attack close to the ground.

> Battle Points: 1,813->1,713->713

And it cost her whopping 1,000 points. Alice's Level 5 didn't deliver magic weaponry to shop indeed, but advanced were added for post-Strength and Agility limits. The glaive was extra durable, extra sharp, many extras as if it was made to travel to space.

Or vivisect monsters.

"System shop!" The girl put admiring her new weapon aside. "Arrow holster. Twenty-one arrows with piercing heads."

> Battle Points: 713->213->3

With sorrow Alice watched her points being washed away. Nonetheless, the item was an important one. It looked like a quiver yet according to the system's description in her notebook it was able to 'always hold arrows and the bow inside until the user needs them'.  Like most thing Alice had purchased, it was dark in colour. The arrows were to be put in three rows, eight arrows in each, and the bow was also clenched inside nicely.

"Here I go," the girl exhaled and put on her helmet. "Centipedes, centipedes."

Spear-like, she glanced at the glaive again. No matter how thirsty Alice was for promised skills in the shop, they were too expensive. Plus the girl had her own plans. Stealth, level up, she gave up on a single little skill point before walking out of her safe zone.

Fifty meters of the corridor to the dungeon felt very long, the atmosphere growing heavier with every passing foot. Alice gulped somewhere in the middle, slackened the pace unwittingly. Her thoughts were jumping between the centipedes and the visions in her dream. There were some concerns about what awaited her. Fear-to-bones, no. The last wars in the memories of Leviathan had given Alice a perspective. Tempered the girl unbeknown to herself.

Quest log.

[#1: Destroy the closest nest of monsters. Time restriction: 49h 11m. Reward: 10,000 BP]

"It really doesn't seem much anymore..."

The moment Alice stepped into the dungeon, an ambush met her. Triple of [Hunter Centipedes lvl. 8] reacted a second late, presumably obstructed by the mist wall. They bent up and splashed the girl with an acid shower.

Blood burned and the world slowed down in Alice's eyes as she focused on dynamic vision. In a flash, she saw corrosive drops falling off the yellow jets, spotted a big normal centipede to the left, one to the right, heard a clatter of a pair above the head. The girl dashed diagonally, avoiding the acid. A centipede on the right lashed out with a forcipule, Alice slashed down with the glaive at the same moment the poisonous sprout stabbed in and was repelled by a plate on her shin.

The blade cleaved through the carapace diagonally. Alice led it up in a smooth flourish with the right hand, and the centipede fell, two halves connected with a thin line of flesh. The glaive's twirl continued with an arc that swept through a centipede that had leaped down from the ceiling, too late, too far behind Alice's back for the girl was too fast.

One of the hunter centipedes went into a frontal assault while the others retreated with opened mouths and in the spitting stand. When the glaive, having made a full circle, dropped down, the pair spurted more acid and the first hunter lunged forward to its death under the blade hacking its head into unappetizing chanks. 

Alice had only turned her body to slay the giant rodent but never stopped, on the contrary, she accelerated, pulling the glaive out of the stiff carcass, and stooped, avoiding the spurts. The girl crossed the whole cave, stepped on the wall, put every ounce of her strength into toes, foot, and ankle. Twisted herself; her weapon swished through the air.

Two hunter centipedes, one regular, one heavily injured remained, all running at the girl as by a signal. Down the wall near the misty exit, another enemy was crawling down, a bulky one, covered in spikes, coloured in metallic brown.

[Armoured Centipede, Lvl. 9]

In a low starting position, Alice bent down calmly, clenching the glaive, its very tip almost touching the ground, the edge squinting upwards and her foot still on the wall.

Five left.