Chapter 05

The following day saw Michael waking up earlier than usual, and by the time he would normally be having breakfast while struggling to make his brain work, he was already driving his truck back towards the section of the Trail closest to where he had found the dungeon. While there was no way to know if the dungeon was going to be there again, it would be the best place to start. With him he had generous rations, as well as rope, lights and his new gun.

He had some experience shooting, at least enough of it that he wouldn’t have to worry about not knowing how to handle the gun, or how to remove the safety. His aim, well, that had to be improved but as with all things in life he knew that it was practice that made perfect, and the dungeon offered a lot of it.

The drive was three hours long. Long and dull enough to make his brain spin around in circles, always gravitating towards the topic of the dungeon. He was fantasticating about all the things he would do with magic, about what he would buy first once he had enough money to make ends meet, and other related things. Perhaps buying a new truck would do him good, at least for as long as it would take him to put together enough money to buy property close enough to the Trail so that he wouldn’t have to go back and forth. Perhaps even on the Trail. He could become one of those Trail Angels, while also making sure nobody stumbled into the dungeon and got hurt by accident. Or gained magical powers by accident. It was hard to predict what a random person would do if they suddenly gained the power to summon fireballs.

How he was going to make that money was another matter altogether, one he didn’t want to think about just yet. Although his anomalous shopping spree, as well as his increased need for food might make it a necessity sooner than he had planned to.

He decided to take his problems one at a time.

One step at a time. Especially on the Trail.

The hike from the new parking spot to the dungeon—thankfully it was still there—took only three hours, bringing the total travel time to six, and only because Michael rushed on the path so fast he was almost running. In case he fell, he could heal himself with the last third of his mana, which he eventually did even though he wasn’t hurt in order to refresh himself before entering the first room of the dungeon. Only a single goblin would be there to meet him anyways, more than easy enough to handle with his gun.

Then he was inside. Again, there was no welcome message in the first room. Although, unexpectedly, the voice was back.

“Oh? He brings weapons! You think I haven’t seen a pistol before, twerp? People come in here all the time to die, and you aren’t different. Good like against those.”

Right on cue, the powerful light of the torch illuminated Michael’s foes. Foes, plural. And they were not goblins.

They were skeletons. Two of them. Almost six feet tall, they were made entirely out of polished bones, animated by magic that Michael could almost see with his naked eye as it radiated outwards from their bodies, only to be replenished by the mana-rich air of the dungeon. Just like he wouldn’t run out of mana for more than a few minutes while in here, the skeletons would never get tired either. The door had slammed shut behind him, but unlike the last time it happened he was ready. Despite what the dungeon’s voice had said, he was more than confident that his gun could take care of a couple of slow-moving skeletons. They were just bones.

Indeed, the bones were not reinforced, not in the first room at least. After Michael took careful aim—but it was hard to miss a target so big as a humanoid head that moved so slow—the high-calibre bullet smashed them into powder, leaving two gigantic holes where it had entered and then left the hollow cavity of the first cranium.

However, while Michael was expecting the shot skeleton to drop dead, the necromantic construct only winced at the recoil, soon after which it stabilized itself and started shambling towards him again. It was easy to walk in circles around it, but already Michael was seeing how this room could potentially be fatal.  There were two enemies, and they had to be carefully herded like in a zombie video game, otherwise one could sneak up on him while he was focused on the other. Meanwhile, he also had to keep an eye on the ground. His powerful new lights allowed him to see much more than he could before with only the light of his phone, so much so that he didn't even need to use his candlelight skill, but the ground was still treacherous. He needed to look down whenever he moved, giving the skeletons ample time to ambush him from behind. Their slow walk was not as slow as it first seemed, not when he had to split his focus in so many different directions.

Then there was the problem of how to actually kill them. They didn't seem to have any weak spots, not any that he could actually recognize. Smashing the skull of the first skeleton with a bullet had barely slowed it for a second, so what else could he do with the remaining bullets in his magazine so that they could buy him time enough to reload? He finally understood the real danger of the room, and why the voice of the dungeon was so sure he would die this time. A normal person who had never been to a dungeon before would probably panic at this point. Without a powerful gun like his, or a tool sturdy enough to break bone with, they would have to go melee against the skeletons. Then the uneven ground and the skeletons’ mechanical persistence would have the best of them.

Unfortunately, for the dungeon that is, he was not random people. He simply stepped back, took aim and shot at the closest skeleton’s tibia. The first shot missed its target and he cursed, but he knew he was a lousy shot and adrenaline was making it harder than usual to aim. Or perhaps it was the low light, which made his vision blurry enough that he wondered whether he would need glasses soon. He knew his father wore glasses, and perhaps he had inherited the blurry vision from him, the asshole.

But now was not the time to think these things. He shot again and this time the tibia exploded in a shower of splinters. The skeleton fell, its balance destroyed, and after a couple of tries it realized that it could not stand up again and started to crawl. A wicked smile came upon Michael's face. He crippled the other skeleton much in the same way, and stepped back. Now came the truly dangerous part. The skeletons had yet to attack him, and he knew he was in danger of being lured into a false sense of safety by the sight of them crippled and crawling on the ground miserably.

Still. Even if he had to smash every single one of their bones, he could just pick up a rock, walk up to them and do that. And perhaps that was the solution for the whole room given it was only just the first. Or perhaps there was a trick.

He decided to smash the bones from afar by throwing rocks just to be safe. He could heal his sore muscles all he wanted, now that he had access to mana and a lot of food. If anything, all of this could be classified as a workout, making him stronger. He didn't know for sure, but he had the feeling that healing his muscles was the same as resting, and that the proteins in his food would go there to make them stronger and bigger. Building muscle was something he had always struggled with, so he welcomed the workout.

And then the room was cleared. The door appeared, beckoning him to the depths of the dungeon. He looked around in search of loot, and saw with great disappointment that there was none. For a moment he wondered whether he had missed it, because he knew that the dungeon would absorb its own pieces like it was doing with the skeletons, which were evaporating into motes of magic that was being reabsorbed into the dungeon itself. But no. He knew that the dungeon had to play fair according to some rules he had no idea about. Had there been no rules, then last time the dungeon could have tricked him out of the loot, but it hadn't. There was no reason why it would start playing dirty now.

Then he remembered his own mindset. He recalled how he had been trying to live his life up until now, how he tried to see things so that he wouldn’t get overwhelmed by the sheer unfairness of reality. His mantra has always been all about overcoming hard challenges in order to gain power. Perhaps it had been something he told himself in order to avoid depression at his miserable life, at first, but with time he had found meaning in those words.

It was just that up until now, there hadn't been any real challenge to his life, comparatively speaking. Sure, he could stand up to lawyer guy, and receive a beating in the Dojo. He could grind at his job—former job—and delay the inevitable moment when he would have to return to his parents, defeated and begging. But that would hardly be considered a challenge compared to the risk of death that he was facing in the dungeon.

Heh. He almost laughed out loud at the cognitive shift that a real risk of death had forced upon his mind. His miserable life prior to the dungeon no longer seemed to miserable, simply dull and boring. Fear of death was a much hotter meal than the cold leftovers of a life at the edge of society.

Death was always a real risk in the dungeon. A risk that he had mitigated up until it was almost nonexistent, using his cowardly tactic.

The question was: would he be better off being cowardly, and receiving almost no loot for it—his current theory was that he had not received any loot because there had been almost no challenge to him, almost no risk to his life—or should he take more risks, and gain more loot for it?

He pondered on the question on his way to the second room. If he kept going through the dungeon without getting ways to be more powerful, he would soon meet enemies too strong for him to handle. Then no cowardly tactic could save him. In the end, he decided he would take risks now that the stakes were still low enough.

It was with resolve painted on his face that he faced the next room. There were four skeletons waiting for him there, and they were taller and bigger than the ones before. He could still face them without too much danger because they were slow, allowing him to try some more risky tactics.

A grin appeared on his face as he braced himself, holstered the gun and took out his shield. He bashed it against the first of the skeletons, applying his [Distortion Field] to it. For the first time since his tests, he could feel what it meant for a skill to exact a toll on his system in an instant, and he knew how a moderate mana cost felt like. It was nothing to scoff at, meaning that the skill had to be used sparingly while he kept an eye—so to speak—at his mana level. He could not see it as a number, of course, but he could feel how close he was to full or empty and act accordingly.

The skeleton exploded in splinters and shards of bone, a conical tornado of dead matter being forced to die all over again. The grin on Michael's face grew bigger. This was more like it. This felt right.

But then the other three were upon him and he was forced to defend himself, and stop thinking. Thinking too much in a fight would cost him his life, he knew. He had learned as much against the goblins the previous day, and that knowledge had been something that no amount of training in a dojo could ever teach him. He raised his shield against a strike, retaliating but forgetting to activate the distortion field due to inexperience. Then he had to twist away, finally understanding how the skeletons were meant to hurt him. Not just by blunt force, but by reconfiguring the bones in their hands and feet so that they became sharp claws. Claws he was barely avoiding. He ditched his pack, trading the protection on his back for more mobility. With it went the dagger, useless, but not the gun, which he kept.

Then the distortion field came up again. This time he used the skill after he had thrown a fist at the closest skeleton, chest height, choosing to use the skill in its bubble version, and the distortion field appeared right in the hollow space of its rib cage. The little sphere of repulsive force could not be summoned inside a solid material, but the rib cage was hollow. Then the skeleton moved just enough that its bones touched the sphere before the bubble popped. When it happened, the bones were immediately repelled outwards relative to the center of the bubble, with a force that was much bigger than it would have been if they had been hit by the shield. Probably because the surface area they were touching was smaller. Whatever was the case, the result was explosive.

Michael learned the hard way how dangerous shards of bones could be. He pulled the fragment from his cheek, refusing to think about what sort of pain he would have experienced had it hit him in the eye, and rethought his approach. No more matter between him and the sphere, or he would be caught in the crossfire.

He took out his gun. It might make the fight easier and reduce the amount of loot, but he felt like he had learned a lot from this room already, and he was aching for a heal.

Too bad he had lost sight of one of his foes for just a moment. Thinking it wasn't a big deal he prepared to strike against the one in front of him and was met with a sharp pain in his back. He realized in shock that he had been stabbed by a sharp claw, ripping out a chunk of flesh from his side. And while he was dazed, shock and pain and adrenaline making his vision blurry, the skeleton in front of him managed to get past his defense. It struck his arm, going around the protection of the shield, and Michael’s bones snapped as if they had been hit by a steel pipe. Then he understood. The skeletons he was facing were not constrained by muscles or tendons: they could strike as strong as they wanted, or at least as strong as their mana allowed them to.

Michael screamed in pain as he rolled backwards, ignoring what the sharp stones on the floor were doing to his back. After the fight, he would have all time in the world to lick his wounds. He didn't even heal, too much of a waste of mana now that he was quite low from repeated use of [Distortion Field], instead making use of the short window of time when the shock made the pain almost feel like it was far enough away that it wouldn't affect him.

He used his other hand, ditching the shield completely since he knew he was too weak to take another hit even with its protection, and made a repulsive bubble appear inside the closest skeleton’s skull. It exploded, as if it had been touched by death itself. Then Michael turned to face the last skeleton, hesitating for a moment as he took a step back. He felt for his mana. He thought he had enough in him for another use of the skill, if barely. That was the problem about not being able to quantify mana well enough, especially not in the heat of combat. Only practice would solve this issue.

Then his thoughts were cut short as the cool rock of the dungeon pressed against his back. He tried to raise his hand, but the skeleton was suddenly too fast for him to react to. His only good arm was shattered in an instant. Had it seen it coming, he could have reacted with a distortion field, blocking the blow and making the skeleton hurt itself in the process. Perhaps he could have made one appear even now, after he had been hit, and indeed he tried to do just that, but his aim was off. The skeleton stumbled for a moment, then righted itself.

Michael was too inexperienced. He was not yet at the point where he could make the bubble appear on reflex, at the exact time and location in space he needed it to be.

Arms useless, panting and out of mana, Michael stared at the manifestation of his own death in the face, unable to do anything about it.