Abel gasped as he glanced at the aftermath of his recent slaughter. He had been through 7 burrows on this floor alone, they all held six Level 4 Stone-toothed Rats each.

*Ding*

+Level Up

+1 to All Stats

+10 HP

+10 Mana

‘huh… I’ve already leveled up?’

Abel was somewhat surprised as he had barely gotten through half the first floor in the past hour he’d been at it.

‘Open Character Stats’

Name: Red Sky

Level: 3

Profession: None

Alignment: Neutral

Title: None

Reputation: 20

Health (HP): 130/200

Mana (MP): 120

Attack: 54-57

Defense: 24

Strength (STR): 22

Agility (AGI): 22 (+2)

Endurance (END): 20

Toughness (TGH): 14

Vitality (VIT): 20

Wisdom (WDM): 12

Intelligence (INT): 12

Resilience (RES): 9

Dexterity (DEX): 12

Luck: 2

Satiety: 72

Stamina: 33

‘I should heal up and rest for a few minutes, while earning EXP is important, keeping my life and level is even more important.’

Abel sat down and put his torch to the side so he could drink some water and eat his bread, he then pulled out his fifth roll of bandages.

These items were simple to use, you had to be out of combat and roll it around your place of injury, it would automatically add +1 HP every second for 30 seconds.

There were higher grade bandages that would add more HP and work for longer but they were more expensive, these ones only cost 3 copper coins per roll and were adequate for his current level and HP.

If his HP truly dropped greatly then he still had the 3 bottles of ointment with 5 uses each. This alchemical product was viewed as a failed minor healing potion and was sold for 30 copper coins per bottle. It would also have to be used outside of combat but would add 50 HP at once then 5 HP every 5 seconds for 30 seconds. It would suffice to fill up his current HP bar after 2 uses.

Lastly, he had bought 3 minor healing potions just in case. It could be used in the middle of battle and would instantly add +200 HP with an increase of +10 HP every 5 seconds for 1 minute. It had cost him a whopping 1 silver and 20 copper coins per bottle.

A single bottle was worth nearly as much as the boots he’d purchased. Abel had actually been quite reluctant to spend so much on a consumable but he steeled his heart and went through with it anyway as it was better to err on the side of caution when completing such a hidden chain quest.

‘I only have 23 hours of double EXP left’

Abel felt torn between caution and EXP rewards. Although he was leveling up at lightning speed compared to the average player, he knew the deeper he went into the dungeon, the higher the level of monsters. There was a very large possibility of a Boss showing up too.

In the end, he figured he’d pick up the pace since these monsters were quite weak. He had put the matter of skinning the monsters till the very end, monsters wouldn’t rot in-game. They would simply disappear after 12 hours so he had ample time to kill them all before coming back to skin them.

The dungeon would also require a full clearing before it would take another 12 to 24 hours to reset. Small dungeons such as this would refresh quicker and wouldn’t spawn new monsters unless it was fully cleared while higher dungeons operated by slightly different rules.

Abel got up and carried on clearing out the burrows on each side. There were 5 normal burrows left along with a central room that seemed to either hold a higher levelled monster or the way to the second level. Dungeons would always differ in Faeron but one thing held true for all of them, they had several floors or levels.

Small scale dungeons would have as little as 3 floors but never exceeding 5. Medium scaled dungeons would hold a lot more, Abel didn’t know how many but the minimum would be 5 floors. As for Large scale dungeons? No one knew as barely any players were qualified to start exploring medium scaled ones.

-45

-50

-40

-1

-1

-1

+20 EXP…

Abel mowed through the monsters before him, killing each one with 3 or 4 swings before moving onto the next room. When his health was at the halfway point he’d rest and pull up his HP.

They had started to give even less EXP now that he was just a level below them but the double EXP reward still made it worthwhile. He had been practicing his footwork along his killing spree and it had been slightly improving. Although he found it a pity that he couldn’t practice his archery, he knew what to prioritize when it came to such a quest.

‘Open Skill Stats’

+97/1000 Basic Sword Proficiency- Greenhorn (9.7%)

+3/1000 Basic Bow Proficiency- Greenhorn (0.3%)

By the time another half an hour had passed, Abel found himself standing before the final room within the dungeon. He had gone through another 3 rolls of bandages but he had saved himself quite a bit of time.

When he stepped through the archway, he saw a slightly larger stone-toothed rat on top of what looked like a wooden chest while 6 ‘henchmen’ surrounded it.

“Inspect”

[Stone-toothed Rat Sergeant] (Normal Monster)

Level: 5

Attack: 20-23

Defense: 16

HP:220

[Stone-toothed Rat] (Normal Monster)

Level: 4

Attack: 11-14

Defense: 10

HP:160

It didn’t seem to be a Boss, more like an evolved rat surrounded by his underlings. Although it’s attack was much greater than its lesser brethren, Abel wasn’t too worried. He was wondering whether all the monsters on the second floor would be levelled at 5 and how many of these sergeant variants he’d find down there.

His inspect seemed to enrage the monsters into attacking which Abel welcomed with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. He had been practicing different steps in between the attacking monsters and was starting to create a rhythm of his own when he was surrounded.

Although the instructor had told him not make it a habit into following certain steps when in a specific situation, he had also reminded him to try and make his footwork both natural and instinctual when swinging a sword.

-45

-40

-90

+30 EXP

+30 EXP…

When half of the stone toothed rats had been slain, their boss jumped into the fray, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. Even if his attack was higher than his underlings, it was still too low to truly affect Abel. He had too high a defense for his current level, although his equipment was low levelled, it still lifted his overall defense by 150%.

Not a lot of people would be willing to spend more than 6 silver coins on temporary, low-level armor when they needed 10 silvers for a profession and much more for active skills and weapons. Just the 10 silvers for the profession was the same as a minimum wage workers week worth of salary in coalition credits!

-5

-5

Clang

After getting scratched by the sergeant rat a couple of times, Abel was finally done dealing with the fodder and paid attention to him. He had dodged the attacks at first but later decided to tank a hit to see how much damage he’d take, he ended up getting hit twice before he could block.

‘Not much difference in speed but twice as fast in attack speed’

With this new piece of information, Abel danced around the new variant and blocked any further strikes. After whittling down his HP he went in for the kill with a swift stab to its gut.

+ 80 EXP

He was slightly disappointed at the low EXP and couldn’t help but look down on the monster, if it wasn’t for the double EXP buff then it would’ve given less than a similar leveled Umber Wolf.

But he quickly realized how stupid such a thought was, the monster was quite easy to kill. Other than having a fast attack speed, there wasn’t anything different about it from the average stone-toothed rat.

‘Alright, let’s take a look at what’s inside this box…’

 Abel cautiously opened up the chest with the tip of his sword. He had read about plenty of traps online where players thought they’d found a treasure chest, only for it to spray poisonous powder all over them. The poor hapless players ran around like headless chickens before succumbing to the drain on their HP.

Although it was unlikely for it to be a trap, his guts would probably turn green in regret if he stupidly died here.

Creeeaak

The lid slid open and everything seemed fine, so he slowly crept up to take a look.

‘Huh? A rock…?’ Surprised at the lone rock-looking object inside, he looked around for anything else but found nothing but a single shiny black rock.

“Inspect”

*Ding*

Inspect Failed

‘Wha-… how could inspect fail on a rock.’ Feeling slightly confused, Abel tried to check it again.

“Inspect”

*Ding*

Inspect Failed

‘This has to be a treasure, probably an ingredient of some kind perhaps’

Feeling some anticipation build up, Abel reached out to grab it when he heard a small click sound out. Without even thinking, he jumped back as though he had sprouted springs within his legs but he still took damage from the small explosion.

-100

“Ughhhh, damn it.. ugh I knew it!”

He had a feeling something was amiss, even when the chest opened normally, he knew it couldn’t be that simple.

‘Thankfully I had gotten further away, if I was any closer I would’ve definitely died’

A feeling of dread welled up within him when he saw his low HP. He quickly took out some minor healing ointment and applied it.

‘Ughh.. the durability of my chest piece fell by half...’

Feeling even further pain at the need to fix his new leather armor, he angrily stared at the unidentifiable “rock” in his hand.

‘You better be worth a gold coin at least!’

As Abel rested and recuperated his HP and stamina, he slowly thought about how much money he could make from his loot so far.

‘I should skin the monster carcasses to approximate how much I can make, judging by the prices from last time, the tails seem pretty useless while the teeth are a bit better. The meat is worth the most at 12 copper coins… I need to get as much rat meat as I can.’

He slowly thought about a way to make more money and he came up with an idea that he didn’t really want to do but it would aid him tremendously in the short-term, or the long-term depending how he went about it.

‘I definitely made enough money from just the first floor to fix up my equipment with a lot left over. I’ll lay out the foundation for the future. Even if it doesn’t pan out, then I’ll just consider it as a thank you for their help’

Abel pulled out the panel menu but instead of logging out, he went to the friends’ tab and paid 5 copper coins to create a “whisper”. It was the built-in messaging function that players could use to send messages.

The cheapest was to send a message to a friend in the same Kingdom and would cost 5 copper coins. A message to friends in the same region would cost between 10-30 copper coins depending on the distance. The most expensive would be sending a message to someone from another region and it would range from 50 copper coins to 1 silver coin depending on how far you were from the recipient.

“I have a piece of information I thought you’d want to know. Don’t disrespect your instructor in the training citadel, its easy to earn their ire. If you’re humble then you might be able to build up favorability and get a better reward.

-Red Sky”

At first, he wanted to sell this bit of information to Sophie and her friends but he didn’t think it would be worth much. They could easily find this out themselves when they started training.

Instead, he figured he’d phrase it in a way where he was doing them a favor and merely helping out. They’d be more inclined to believe him if he came across something he wanted to sell in the future.

In truth, he felt he had earned quite the sum earlier on and that this information really wasn’t worth much. After all, 15 silver coins would currently be around 55 coalition credits which was approximately half a month’s salary at his old job. What he didn’t know was that Sophie and her friends would easily spend double that amount on an average meal outside.

‘Alright, I should get to skinning these monsters quickly so I can head down to the next level!’ Abel got out his skinning knife and quickly started getting to work.