The Morality System

We found Sally downstairs making breakfast. She gave us something to eat and then sent us on our way to our mercenary jobs. It turns out we would be working together. As dungeon porters.

Porters, if you don't know, haul supplies into the dungeon and haul loot out of the dungeon. They aren't supposed to do any fighting. Just carrying. That's the job we were stuck with.

It made sense though. We had no real monster-fighting experience unless you count the baker. We went into a dungeon that the mercenaries controlled.

It was cleverly hidden out of sight by a wall that looked like a rock wall, but it could be opened and closed. This dungeon, like most, but not all dungeons in this world, had a respawn rate.

The respawn rate of this dungeon was daily. So the mercenaries could come here every day, gain experience by killing all the enemies, and then loot the place.

This dungeon was supposed to be an abandoned beast-infested crystal mine. So we would encounter all kinds of magical beasts until we either died or defeated the boss at the bottom of the dungeon.

The entrance to the mine was well-lit and had a lot of crystals growing from the floor.

Henry, the leader of the mercenaries, said, "Don't pick up any of these crystals. They're junk compared to the stuff we'll find further in."

We followed a path that seemed to be designed for us. Every so often there was a junction where tunnels branched off, but all of them except one were always collapsed, so we only had one way to go.

After not too long, we ran into our first enemies, giant rats. Henry, Lloyd, and Stu were all warriors. They took the rats head-on and cut them down one by one while making sure to not let any past them so they couldn't get to us.

I wanted to fight so bad, but that wasn't what we were being paid to do. But you never knew, in these kinds of situations, sometimes the porters end up having to fight, run, or die.

I was hoping it would be the first one. After all the rats had been dispatched, we all cut the cores out of their bodies. They were quite small. About the size of a large marble.

They glowed and radiated energy. "Don't pop any of those cores. Those aren't for us. Those are for paying customers, ok?" Henry said.

"Yes, sir," I said, as I stuffed another core in one of my bags. I was carrying four mostly empty bags to fill with cores and loot. That extra muscle I gained overnight was going to be useful.

As we walked one or two bats that had crystals growing on their bodies would attack us. Henry would slice them out of the air like they were annoying flies. Abigail and I used the knives that Henry had given us to remove the cores from the bats.

We talked as we walked. Henry and Abigail switched off between explaining how the cores worked to me. Cores gave the person who absorbed them stats. Monster and beast cores added one of the four stats, strength, agility, stamina, and intelligence.

It started with monster and beast cores which only gave one type of stat per core. The amount of stats per core went by size. Tiny cores, like from the bats and giant rats, gave 2 to 3 stat points. Small cores gave 4 to 5 stat points.

Medium cores gave 6 to 7 stat points. Large cores gave 8 to 10 stat points. Huge cores, like from mini-bosses and bosses gave 11 to 50 stat points. Enemies would also sometimes drop loot, depending on the enemy and the dungeon.

Stu and Lloyd who seemed to be good friends, were walking ahead of us and chatting about their families and kids. I didn't use Soul Inquiry on any of the mercenaries because I just had a feeling they weren't bad people. They might have committed a crime or three, but that didn't make them evil.

Once we got a certain way in, wolves appeared to block our way and try to take bites out of us. Henry ran up to join Lloyd and Stu who were in the lead. They took out the wolves as a team.

Lloyd would injure one and Stu would finish it off, and vice versa. Henry was in a league of his own. He must have had a higher-tier potential than Lloyd and Stu because he was taking down wolves in a single strike every time.

Once they were finished, we retrieved the cores and carried on. Henry told me that Lloyd and Stu were D-rank warriors and he was a C-rank warrior. You were ranked by your potential and not your current growth or ability, so things could get a little confusing.

An inexperienced and low-stat A-rank adventurer could lose to an experienced C-rank adventurer who had popped more cores and built up his stats. For that reason, rank wasn't as well regarded as reputation, but it still factored into what people thought you were capable of.

There just wasn't a reliable way to rank people based on their current stats and experience. That said, the potential ranks weren't useless. People with higher potential could absorb more stats from a core than low-potential people, so after a few dungeons, most people fell into a general range around their potential ranks.

Lloyd, Stu, and Henry may have had a much lower potential than Abigail and I, but they were very experienced and had absorbed many cores. They were the real deal when it came to clearing dungeons of this danger rating.

"This is a blue-rated dungeon, which means it can be completed by a party of 4 to 6 with a mixture of C and D rankings. We're running with only three because we're very experienced and we stop before the boss. We'd need a larger and higher ranked group to take down the boss without any casualties and in this business, like in most businesses, you can't afford casualties," Henry said.

"There are green, blue, yellow, orange, red, purple, and black dungeons to anyone's knowledge, in increasing difficulty. I've heard rumors of rare different-colored dungeons, but if you ever come across one, I'd suggest you turn back. They'd likely be harder than black dungeons and black dungeons are only for S-ranks and above."

Oh, right. Sally never told them our potential ranks, which might've saved our lives. You could get killed over a high potential from jealous and angry lower-ranked adventurers. You could even get killed by higher-ranked adventurers for that. They didn't need the extra competition.

"Thanks. We'll keep that in mind," I said.

"By the way, I'm curious, what potential rank are you two?" Henry asked.

"F," I said.

"D!" Abigail said nervously right after.

Henry could tell Abigail was lying, but he couldn't tell with me because of my ability, despite my poor acting. Henry looked at Abigail and said, "You don't have to worry about me. I wouldn't gut you for having a high potential, but saying low is a good instinct. There are some pretty nasty people out there."

"Thanks," Abigail said.

Crystals on the walls and floor glowed as we made our way through the tunnels. At this level, there were multiple paths and only a few of them got you where you wanted to go. We had to turn back a few times because we had walked into dead ends.

I asked Henry why they didn't have the way memorized and he said it was because the path changed every time the dungeon respawned. We kept walking until a massive club came down, crushing Lloyd who didn't see it coming. A troll stepped out from behind a wall.