by Brent Tyman
Grotsanik let out a small chuckle as he pondered this.
“Oh, Gods no. I assure you that any tunnel to the surface has collapsed entirely. I suppose you are just back from verifying this yourself?”
I nodded at that and he continued.
“I’m afraid it is impossible to leave for the surface at the moment. Please feel free to idle here as my guests until such time that we have the resources to clear a path through the rubble for you.”
“Right, but what about my question? Any other tunnels that lead in Tringall’s direction.”
“I already… hmm…” Grotsanik paused as his fur bristled in thought. “In that direction… I would imagine the tunnel the Ogres emerged from would fit that criteria. Its collapse was not so severe as to make it impassable.”
“That might just work for us.”
Both Grotsanik and my women were silent as they pondered this for a moment, then all three of them recoiled in shock at my suggestion.
“You can’t be serious, handsome?” Clarissa was the first to protest.
“It would be highly dangerous,” Juliana agreed. “But… would it even be viable?”
“May I clarify,” Grotsanik said, easing forward. “You wish to traverse down towards the Dungeon, to leave Valdura?”
“It was just a thought,” I admitted, shrugging. “I mean, those Ogres had to have come from somewhere, and if their route leads us down to the same Dungeon I had been grinding in before, then it should lead up to Tringall eventually, right?”
“That would mean skipping past a multitude of floors,” Juliana said, crossing her arms. “And require us to camp in the confines of the Dungeon.”
“In the Dungeon?” Clarissa questioned. “A deep, dark place with little light, monsters everywhere, and my handsome Alex sleeping beside me? Sounds very perilous and… exhilarating. I could do with a tad of danger to spice things up.”
Clarissa gave me a sly wink and I couldn’t help but grin back at her.
“You sure you didn’t get your fill of danger when the Titan showed up?” I asked and she shrugged.
“Back then, I really thought it might be my last hours, but you came in to save the day, handsome. Compared to that, sleeping in the Dungeon is nothing. As long as you promise to wear me out beforehand, with… you know what.”
“Must you really? In front of our host, of all people,” Juliana bristled as she tried to hide her red cheeks. “And we would need plenty of supplies to survive in the Dungeon at all. Most of our foodstuffs were lost when the roof of the cavern caved in, with all but one of the pack horses perishing, as well.”
Yeah, that was a downside I hadn’t considered. We had travelled here with lots of supplies, tents, food and water, all packed onto the horses. Many had either bolted or perished in the cave in.
It would be rough to head back to Tringall as we were right now, never mind getting there underground.
“I may be able to offer some assistance after all,” Grotsanik said, drawing our attention to a piece of parchment he pulled from a stack off his desk.
“With the number of losses sustained during the attack, our… intake of necessities has decreased significantly, resulting in a sizeable surplus. We would be happy to provide you with anything you might need, in terms of goods, for this venture.”
“Really?” Juliana asked, her eyebrows lowering into a pretty frown. “While this is welcome, I have been asking for your help for quite some time. What has changed?”
“I can’t very well refuse the man who felled a Titan and saved us all,” Grotsanik said as he scratched at his white fur. “Only the Heroes of old have accomplished such a feat, after all.”
“Ha!” Clarissa cheered as she pointed a finger at Juliana. “I told you this would work.”
“You refused him for the tunnel request,” Juliana hissed, and I even saw her eye twitch.
Grotsanik looked sheepish, all of a sudden, but before he could reply, a loud commotion behind us caught my attention. A swirl of dust was accompanied by a high-pitched squeak, then a crash, as something—or someone—crashed at a high rate of speed into a stone sideboard next to the entryway.
“Sorry!”
I looked back over my shoulder to watch as Anny picked herself out of what was now nothing more than a pile of gravel. Catching sight of me, she darted my way, the small trails of her typical blur receding as she huffed and puffed.
“Alex, everyone,” she breathed. “Have you seen my stats? It’s incredible, inconceivable. Something must be wrong!”
“Take a breath, would you?” Clarissa said as she moved to pat Anny on the shoulder. “And then it’s probably best we figure out how much you owe our host for destroying his sideboard.” Clarissa smirked at first, then frowned. “I’ve never seen you tire out this fast after using your Speed.”
“I’ve been looking for you all over town,” Anny assured her, brushing a stray dark lock of hair behind her ear. “Sorry about your furniture, Sir.” She winced as she bowed to Grotsanik. “But look at my stats! In fact, look at your stats!”
Anny’s wiggling threatened to cause the other women to drop to the floor from the burst of frenetic energy, so I followed Clarissa’s example and held the woman at arms’ length by both shoulders.
“Take a breather Anny,” I said, and she eased down, taking slow, deep breaths as her wiggling slowed down a bit.
“What’s up with your stats anyway?” I asked, although now that I thought about it, I hadn’t checked my own stats in a while. The past few days had been a bit of a blur and Clarissa and Juliana occupied my time each night…
“Check, check!” Anny insisted. “Check your own first, but it looks like everyone’s strength stat has increased. First, Daiver checked his, then Karl, then Vencia and then…”
“Alright, alright,” I laughed, interrupting her before she got going again. “Let me have a look.”
I pulled up the Clan Management Interface, since from there, I could view both my own and Anny’s stats on the same screen.
When the numbers appeared, my breath caught in my throat and my mouth dropped open in utter surprise.
This couldn’t be right.
Once again, this system really made zero sense.
I was still waiting for that tutorial…
2
I blinked at the screen and tried to process exactly what it was I was seeing.
Stats
Strength: 139
Speed: 3
Defense: 96
Magical Power: 1
Magical Capacity: 1
Luck: 1
Instantly, the absolutely massive boost to my Strength stat had me questioning how it had ever gotten that high in the first place.
It had more than doubled since we’d left Tringall, and I had no idea how.
“No way!” I breathed, “My Strength is at one hundred and thirty-nine now.”
I had expected the women to comment, but when I looked back at Juliana and Clarissa, both of them had distant looks in their eyes, signaling that they were busy checking out their own interfaces.
“This… This can’t be right,” Juliana muttered to herself. “What could be going on?”
“My Gods!” Clarissa shouted before grinning. “I must be the most powerful healer in the three nations now. My Strength stat has shot up by seventy, handsome. A very… lengthy increase.”
She threw a quick wink at me and seemed far more accepting of this crazy increase in stats than Juliana. The pretty, green-eyed brunette wasn’t taking it nearly as much in stride.
“How could such an increase be possible? It can’t be so… not in such a short space of time,” Juliana said, continuing to mutter to herself.
“Don’t overthink it too much, Juliana,” Clarissa said, snapping her out of her daze. “You will learn my Alex has many talents, talents I’ve come to appreciate, especially in bed.”
“I knew of his skill, but even knowing what it does, this does not seem possible,” Juliana coun
tered, crossing her arms and tapping her finger absently against her chin. “Perhaps we should… discuss this with the others?”
Grotsanik, for his part, looked thoroughly confused at our conversation. His bewilderment showed on his face. He did seem suitably surprised at my high Strength stat, when I’d mentioned it, but hadn’t commented on it.
“By all means, I am always here. If you wish to discuss this venture of yours further, I will be waiting,” Grotsanik said.
We bid farewell to him and Anny walked with us back to the house where we were staying. Anny couldn’t seem to stop wiggling, even while walking, somehow.
“Alex, Alex,” she bubbled excitedly. “Check my stats!”
“Haha,” I laughed. “I’ve got it, one sec.”
Anaisia Fardonna
Stats
Strength: 81
Speed: 72
Defense: 9
Magical Power: 35
Magical Capacity: 9
Luck: 3
Anny’s Strength was comparable to what my own had been before this latest boost! She had become quite formidable in a relatively brief space of time. No wonder she’d trashed the poor stone furniture when she’d careened into it.
“Eighty one Strength,” I said, impressed. “That’s incredible, Anny. You could probably knock out Daiver in just one punch.”
“Ahh, this increase feels a little overwhelming,” Anny admitted, as we walked. “I don’t know how to explain it to the Academy when we get back.”
“Just say that you trained really, really hard and I’m sure they will let it slide,” Clarissa assured her. She made a point of whipping back a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “Lady Kotobara is all talk, after all. She will try to dig deeper into it, of course, but will only end up complaining to anyone who will listen once she finds nothing out.”
Lady Kotobara was the only teacher I’d met from Juliana’s and Clarissa’s classes and she seemed to be quite stern, from all accounts.
At least she had let me off the hook when I had knocked Daiver out, though.
The women talked amongst themselves about this amazing stat increase, with Juliana keeping surprisingly silent about hers.
If I had it right, once you joined a party, everyone essentially shared experience that would level up not only your own stats, but also the rest of the party’s.
That was why Clarissa, even as a healer, had a more balanced distribution of stats when the only one she would normally increase through her healing spells would be her magical ones.
Well, it seemed like it wasn’t balanced now, not in the slightest. I wondered if either she or Anny would be able to lift up those giant rocks blocking some of the tunnels on their own. That would be interesting to see.
We arrived at our assigned quarters, a fairly large stone house that was two stories tall, where we found the rest of Juliana’s retinue in a heated squabble. I heard bursts of shrill voices just outside the front door. The two guards stationed in front of the residence sheepishly gave us apologetic looks as they opened the door for us.
“It must have been all those Ogres I vanquished,” Daiver declared triumphantly, placing both hands on his hips in what I assumed was his ‘heroic’ pose. “I must have put down hundreds… Nay, thousands of them and that would be exactly why my Strength is so superior to the rest of you.”
Vencia let out a disdainful huff while Kesara looked bored, as usual, with this type of conversation. Karl just looked annoyed.
“If I recall, Daiver, you only took down four Ogres, maybe five at best. I’m fairly sure the soldiers did most of the heavy lifting,” Kesara replied absently, adding an exaggerated yawn to her snarky comment.
“Hundreds, I say,” Daiver said, already stepping back from the ‘thousands’ remark. “I didn’t see any of you using Strength based attacks, so naturally this can only be my heroics at work.”
“Again,” Karl said, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration as he re-adjusted his glasses, “this sort of increase is far too big to be tied simply to dispatching those Ogres. Something else must be at work.”
“What Karl said,” Vencia affirmed. “Keep your boasting to yourself, Daiver, when My Lady returns.”
“Oh,” Kesara said as she noticed us. “I think it’s a bit late for that. Hello there, Alex.”
The entire group turned to face us, and Daiver instantly approached me, glee in his eyes.
“Have you heard about my heroics, Alex?” he questioned. “My Strength has shot up by a solid thirty five. I’m sitting on a very noble eighty eight. What was yours again?”
I could tell from the smug look on his face, that he really wanted mine to be much lower.
“One hundred and thirty-nine, now,” I said. “We just discovered that everyone’s seems to have increased.”
Daiver’s expression instantly fell as if I had struck him in the face, although this could probably be counted as a strike to his massive ego. He hunched forward and let out a long sigh.
“Outdone once again. Is life so cruel?” he lamented.
“It is most definitely not a contest,” Juliana remarked, but her words seemed to fall on deaf ears as Daiver continued to complain.
“Eighty eight Strength is quite the number, I’ll have you know,” Daiver grumped.
“Yes, your math skills are truly a wonder,” Karl remarked. “And I see Anny has filled you in on what has happened. It seems our Strength stats have ballooned to quite disproportional heights in the past week.”
Juliana prompted us all to sit at a large table in the center of the stone room, which was also made out of stone. Juliana and Clarissa naturally flanked me, with Clarissa even cutting off Kesara when she tried to sit next to me. Once we did so, Vencia spoke up.
“Daiver was the one who discovered it first,” Vencia said. “And then, we all checked our stats and saw how our Strength stats had… grown.”
I should probably fess up and tell everyone that it was definitely my Growth skill that had done this, but I wondered why no one had noticed their stats earlier than this.
A few days had passed since we had felled the Titan, after all.
“It’s been a couple days since the battle, didn’t any of you check their stats before now?” I asked.
“Ha!” Kesara laughed. “I haven’t had a chance to go shopping, never mind checking my stats. Not that I could go looking for new clothes with all the shops in ruins.”
Clarissa nodded at this, commiserating with Kesara.
“The past few days have been very hectic, handsome. I believe only…” Clarissa wiggled her fingers at Daiver, “that one would check his stats on a regular basis.”
“Oi!” Daiver protested. “Its Daiver Vos Hexladanis, heir to the Dukedom of Favona. Surely it is not a difficult name to remember, Lady Hoganna?”
“Ohhhh, look at him being all formal,” Kesara beamed, grinning.
“And while I do check my stats on a constant basis,” he continued, furrowing his brow. “I have… been busy. To think these Beastkin would work a noble like me to the bone is almost inconceivable.”
“I would agree, but you consistently reminded them of your rank and rarely kept your displeasure in check this entire time,” Karl remarked, turning to us. “I’m sure that might have had something to do with the type of tasks you received. He complained after every single task he accomplished, too.” The studious man rolled his eyes and snorted. “I assure you, there weren’t many.”
Daiver protested yet again and got into an argument with Karl over his ‘many’ accomplishments over the past few days.
It was probably best to leave them alone to sort it out amongst themselves.
“Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat with a gentle cough to get everyone else’s attention to get more information. “How big has everyone’s stat increases been?”
“Mine was a flat thirty five,” Vencia replied.
“Thirty four for me,” Kesara chirped.
�
�Ahh, you have already seen mine,” Anny replied.
Daiver and Karl were still arguing, but Kesara confirmed it was thirty six for Karl while Daiver had already boasted of his at thirty five.
“And you Juliana?” I asked, and she seemed to be engrossed in her interface as she responded.
“Hmm? Ah, yes, it was thirty five for mine as well, Alex,” she replied.
I found it a tad strange there seemed to be such a wild range here. Clarissa’s and Anny’s increases were pretty much double what Juliana’s retinue had achieved.
There was also variance within her party, with some getting thirty four and others getting thirty five and Karl’s thirty six. If the experience was shared, wouldn’t that mean it should be a flat increase for everyone?
This was just yet another thing I’d have to figure out on my own, as no one had provided me with a tutorial or guide book for this world.
In any case, it was a strange observation.
“I believe it must have been the Titan,” Vencia argued, rolling her eyes at Daiver and Karl, who were still squabbling. “It is a monster that hails from the far depths of the Dungeon. It makes logical sense for it to be worth many stat increases.”
“I agree with Vencia,” Kesara chirped. “Alex taking out that Titan with his manly frame and shiny armor must have been quite a sight. If only Daiver hadn’t delayed us, then I would have been able to see him be all heroic.”
Karl rubbed his forehead as his conversation with Daiver finally ended. I hadn’t been paying attention to it, but from the look on his face, it hadn’t been very productive.
“The Titan? Hmm… While a reasonable conclusion, there are records of such monsters yielding only a fraction of what we achieved. There has to be another explanation,” Karl noted, tapping his chin absently. “And mind you, Alex’s Strength stat seems to have increased significantly more than our own, if I remember the original values correctly.”
