After five minutes turned to ten, and it became obvious this wait might be a long one, Kai decided to work on his sloppy meditation skill.

  Settling down, trying to make sure he was as comfortable and relaxed as possible, he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing and on his mana.

  With the benefit of hours of casting one mana bolt after another, he had some idea of the feeling of mana as it passed through his channels.

  But he had not long woken up and devoured a slightly questionable stew, so his mana reserves were full. So despite breathing in deeply and concentrating for several minutes, he felt nothing but a deep refreshment.

  Cracking an eye and checking for Syl, he found himself all alone.

  “Alicia, you there?”

  ‘Yes.’

  “What is Syl up to? She told me to wait, and I’ve been here for a good twenty minutes.”

  ‘I do not know; I have been working on my core…’

  There was a long moment of silence.

  ‘Syl seems to be setting something up; it looks complicated. Should I tell her you are asking after her?’

  “No, don’t disturb her. I’ll find something to do; I suggest you get back to finding your core.”

  ‘Any advice? I feel like I am not getting anywhere.’

  Kai thought about it. It had been easy for him for reasons that wouldn’t work for Alicia. “I don’t know… You know the feeling you get when you have enough essence and are about to level.”

  ‘I do…’

  “Well, that essence should be circling your core, right; Maybe you could follow the feeling back to your core… I’m just making an uneducated guess here.

  ‘I have some essence, but I do not have that full feeling at the moment. I will give it some thought.’

  “Thanks, Alicia, I’m going to work on my meditation… You can meditate right.”

  ‘Of course.’

  “Any advice?” Kai asked, hoping for something more useful than clear your mind and take deep breaths.

  ‘It is one of my worst skills.’ Alicia said unapologetically.

  “I understand. Good luck, Alicia.”

  ‘Thank you… and good luck.’

  Knowing Syl was working on something, Kai set about his own little project while he waited.

  He constructed a small barrier and checked his mana. He had lost about two percent of his mana making the casting of the spell.

  Kai waited to see if his mana would continue to drop.

  When his mana actually jumped back up to full, he realised his barrier was so small that it actually took less mana than he naturally regenerated to maintain it. So he tried making the barrier larger, hoping to give himself the gradual deficit of mana he could train his meditation against whilst also learning to detect mana in his body.

  Unfortunately, the barrier distorted and shattered as he tried to make changes to it after he had constructed the spell.

  So starting again, he doubled the size of his barrier and monitored his mana pool. It took a little longer, but his mana ticked up again.

  He tried adjusting the barrier once more, but it broke again.

  Realising he would definitely be setting some time aside when they got out of the dungeon to work on barriers, he gave up on trying to be clever and constructed a full-size barrier. A foot taller and another foot wider on each side, it was more than large enough for him to stand behind and not worry about any ranged attack from the front.

  Checking his mana once again, he was pleased to see his mana finally tick down. He monitored it just long enough to ensure he wouldn’t completely deplete his mana while he meditated.

  His hope was he could either cancel out or overcome the mana demand of the barrier.

  The consumption of mana by his barrier and its subsequent replenishment should hopefully give him some kind of movement of mana in his system that he hoped he could detect.

  Closing his eyes again, he focused.

  Time passed, and he worked on his meditation. But he still wasn’t feeling anything. Well, maybe something; it was sluggish, hard to pin down.

  After a while he checked his mana pool; it was still going down but at a slightly slower rate.

  He went back to his meditation but kept a metaphorical eye on his mana; he noticed it actually started ticking down faster and faster.

  Realising he wasn't really meditating if he was too busy focusing on his mana levels, Kai went back to just focusing on his breathing. Then he realised that maybe focusing too hard on his breathing was another reason his meditation was sloppy.

  How he was supposed to work on detecting the flow of his mana whilst also meditating, Kai didn’t know. But Syl said it was possible, so he kept at it.

  Some time later, he felt something new. It wasn’t what he was expecting, a strange swaying.

  Wait a minute…

  Kai opened his eyes to find Alicia standing over him, her hand on his shoulder as she gently shook him.

  He was relieved to see she had squeezed herself back into her leathers. The t-shirt was a little too much.

  Kai checked his mana to see it was full. He was pleased until he realised his barrier had collapsed at some point.

  Either he had improved his meditation and he had improved his mana regeneration over the drain caused by his barrier, or he had lost control of the barrier spell before he made any improvements, and that was why his mana had regenerated.

  “How long was I meditating for?” Kai asked as he got up and stretched out his legs.

  “An hour or two,” Syl said as she drifted around from behind Alicia. “I had some kinks to work out. We saw that you were practicing; when your barrier finally collapsed, we thought it would be okay to rouse you.”

  “So my barrier just collapsed,” Kai said. “Nice... Are we good to go? ”

  “Just about, Alicia wants to tell us what to expect.”

  “Ah yes, the next room set is a little different. You’ll enter a forest; the forest is random, but there will always be a goblin sentry hidden in one of the trees where you enter. The moment it sees you, it will sound an alarm that will alert a goblin camp; they come running.” Alicia explained rapidly.

  “Anyway to stop the goblin alerting the others?” Kai asked as he already started to strategise.

  “I don’t think so; my old party reset several times since we were right next to the entrance. No matter what we tried, the goblin saw one of us and got the alert off before we could kill it. We also tried fighting off the goblin attack, but it was too much, and we had to retreat too.”

  “So how did you do the room?” Kai asked.

  “We killed the goblin and ran. We managed to get away from the entrance before the goblins arrived; the rest of the room was quietly taking out goblin search parties. It took a while, but we were also able to forage and hunt for better food supplies.”

  “What about the next rooms?”

  “Same sort of theme, except it progresses in difficulty and complexity. The number of goblins increases, and their types are more varied. In the fifth room there was a hobgoblin boss.”

  “Anything else?”

  Alicia shook her head.

  Kai looked over to Syl, who he couldn’t help but admit looked stunning in her own set of tight combat leathers.

  Syl coughed and caught his wandering eye. “See anything you would like to comment on? With all those skill books in you, you're the armour expert.”

  Realising he had been caught out, he decided to push back a little, “Is that even necessary? The armour's fake, and you’re not even a physical being. Going naked might be more effective; you could distract our enemies, possibly even stun-lock them with a sexy attack.”

  “You would like that too much.” Syl said seductively as she floated up beside him, “No… even this is probably a bit too distracting for you.” She sighed, “There are magical attacks that could potentially cause me lasting damage. It’s unlikely, but I’m not taking any risks.”

  There was a flare of cyan flame as Syl transformed into her usual wisp form. “If I’m blue like this, assume people can see me, but if I turn this colour,” Syl said as she turned the same vibrant fiery orange as her hair. She actually just looked like a floating ball of flame.

  “What about the light that form gives off?” Kai asked as he noted the dim flicker of light she cast around the small dungeon room.

  “Only you should see it,” Syl said, her flame pulsing in time with her words. “Projections are weird like that. I’m just glad Bob left the ability alone.”

  “So you’ll be like an invisible torch I can use to see in the dark.” He said, grinning at the little joke.

  “And you’re my meat suit.”

  Alicia chuckled.

  “Is Alicia going to be okay all on her own within the domain?”

  “She won't be alone; I don’t actually leave when I project myself out here. That’s why that tome was so important for me and why I had to take some time to set some things up.”

  “I will be okay,” Alicia said. “There is plenty I can do to keep myself busy. I have a lot I can work on, and your domain is a safe place to do it. Much better than waiting in the room behind you.”

  “You just like all the amenities.” Syl chided as she zipped around Alicia’s shoulders. “Besides, I may not have the full parallel processing I used to have as a system authority, but I can still somewhat split my attention. That ability goes deep into your main core, so it is hard to take back.”

  Hearing Syl so openly talk about what he knew was forbidden knowledge, Kai looked to Alicia; she seemed completely oblivious to Syl as she went in one of her ears and popped out the other.

  “Can you hear Syl?” Kai asked.

  “No, but she told me her plan a while ago. By your one-sided conversation, I assumed it was working.”

  “So everyone is ready?

  Syl bobbed up and down as Alicia nodded.

  Looting Alicia back to the domain, Kai moved into the corridor and watched as the smoke cleared. The glow of an early afternoon lit him up as a forest appeared before him.

  He stepped up to where the invisible barrier separated him and the dungeon room and looked about. Checking each of the trees meticulously for the goblin sentry, he realised their green skin was an annoyingly effective natural camouflage.

  “You see anything?” he asked after a minute of fruitless searching.

  “Nope. Give me a minute.” Syl's orange wisp shot off into the dungeon room to inspect the tree closer.

  “Syl, this is perfect; you have an inbuilt stealth skill. If you find it, you can kill it before it can alert.” Kai said enthusiastically as he watched Syl flit amongst the trees.

  The little orange orb pulsed in the distance as Syl replied; her voice carried over the distance like some kind of magical radio. “Unfortunately, all my spells will be cast through you as a proxy. Remote magic is far too costly to set up and use; I need a much larger store of mana before I can even consider it… ooh.” There was a bright flare off to the right as Syl lit up an unsuspecting goblin sentry.

  “He has a horn and a crossbow… only level one. A good clean hit with a mana bolt should do the trick,” Syl said as she disappeared from the tree and reappeared beside him.

  Kai couldn’t help but smile. “This is definitely cheating, by the way.”

  “Anyone with a decent detection skill could have done it, and besides, the range I can travel away from you is actually quite limited… Can I kill it? Never actually done anything like this before.”

  Kai remembered his many missed mana bolts as he looked off at the distant goblin. The sentry was easily three times further away than any goblin he had shot at before.

  “How about we both take a shot?” Kai said as he created a mana bolt to his side. “I’m a little worried we will miss. The winner gets bragging rights or something like that.

  “You mean you’re worried I’ll miss… But I guess that's fair,” Syl said as another mana bolt formed near where she floated by his side.

  Syl constructing the mana bolt felt weird; it was like he had cast the spell himself but had put no conscious thought into the process, and he lacked his usual control over it.

  Seeing Syl's rough mana bolt reminded him of the very first time he made his own. It gave him an idea he couldn’t help but try out. Constructing his own attack, he condensed the mana bolt, compacting the same amount of mana into a much tighter ball.

  “Are you ready? The spell's fighting me,” Syl said.

  “Stepping through,” Kai said as he moved out into the forest.

  They both released their spells the moment Kai was past the invincible wall. The bolts zipped off; Kai was moving at a considerably faster pace than Syls.

  Kai didn’t get to see if either hit the sentry as he felt something punch into his shoulder, followed by a sharp, piercing pain.

  “Did we get it? Kai said, grunting as he fell to one knee, clutching the crossbow bolt in his shoulder.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Yes! You whiffed your shot; it was faster, but it zipped right past him.” Syl said from afar in the distance where she had made her first successful kill.

  “I thought the little green fucker was supposed to set off an alarm every time. Not shoot me.”

  “You got shot!” Syl said as her full form appeared beside him. “Oh shit, you got shot!” Syl said as she fussed over him, her ethereal hands unable to even support him.

  “Whatever you do, don’t panic!” She panicked.

  “I’m not, Syl. I’m going to need you to calm down,” Kai said as he summoned a health potion. “You think your healing spell will work on a deep wound?”

  Syl shook her head. “It might stop the bleeding and close the wound, but you’ll still have torn muscles. I’ll use Clense; no telling what was on the bolt.

  There was a faint green haze near the wound, and Kai groaned as a whole new wave of pain flooded the area of the crossbow bolt.

  “What about the potion?” he asked as the tingling subsided.

  “That should work. Remove the bolt and pour as much as you can directly into the wound, then drink the rest. The only problem is if you black out, you could bleed to death; I can’t actually-.”

  “Then use heal,” Kai said as he gripped the bolt. “I just hope it isn't barbed.”

  He gave the bolt a light pull to try and gauge how bad it would be; it didn’t feel good to him. “It’s barbed…” he said as he clenched his jaw and yanked.

  Luckily the goblin had sacrificed armour penetration for the broader barbed head, and the bolt had wasted most of its energy getting through his leathers, meaning it wasn't actually that deep.

  Still, pulling it free hurt like hell, and he had to fight to remain upright as his vision closed in on him.

  Thankfully he didn’t actually black out, and he managed to uncork his health potion and pour the bottle over the wound that now bled profusely.

  Syl fussed uselessly; she seemed to be saying something, but he couldn’t quite hear her.

  Working on instinct, he ripped off a glove and poked two fingers past his armour to open the wound more so the potion could actually get in and do its work.

  That sent a whole new wave of pain through him, but a deep part of him knew it was necessary.

  Satisfied he had enough potion in his shoulder Kai chugged the rest of the bottle.

  The potion was thick and possibly the foulest thing he had ever drunk in his life; he coughed and spluttered as he struggled to swallow the gooey mixture.

  Syl had already moved to hold her hands over the wound, the golden light of a heal spell working alongside the potion to close things up.

  Done, Kai just lay down and tried to slow his rapid heart by going into a partial state of meditation.

  ‘Erm… why did you not just retreat? I could have helped; I even have higher quality potions.’ Alicia said, her voice coming from within the domain, cautiously pointing out something that was now obvious to Kai in hindsight.

  “There were a couple of injuries in my party, but we had each other. Alicia continued, ‘I just don’t understand why the sentry shot first. It is supposed to set off an alert.’

  Kai pulled his chalice stone free of his armour. “We forgot about this; I’m a threat that must be destroyed.”

  ‘The sentry must have prioritised killing you…’ Alicia said, ‘I’m going to take notes.’

  “You should have been working on finding your core,” Syl said as she wiped a tear from her cheek.

  ‘Did you not feel the demon shake? It was terrifying.’

  Kai thought for a moment, “Do we know for certain what will happen to Alicia if I were to buy it?”

  ‘Buy it?’

  “He means die. We already talked about this, and it's nothing too troubling. Your domain should spit out all the physical objects stored within. As your death would be inside a dungeon room, Alicia is not technically allowed inside the dungeon; she should spit her out.”

  Kai thought that sounded dangerously like a theory they had no way of testing.

  “What about you, Syl?”

  “Till death do us part. I’m fine with it.”

  Kai found himself fiddling with his soul ring.

  It didn't take that long for the potion to do its job, and when the pain subsided and he felt much better, Kai got to his feet and mentally checked his health; he was at about ninety-five percent. Good enough to go on.

  “So no alert, no patrols to worry about?”

  “I guess not.” Syl, as she literally shrugged off her full form and switched back into her orange wisp floating flame self.

  “Let's go look for a goblin camp.”

  “You got shot by the first goblin, and now you want to raid their camp?” Syl said, flaring angrily.

  “Alicia, any more tree sentries?”

  Silence.

  “Alicia?”

  ‘Pardon, Syl set me back to task.’

  “Sorry, last question: any more tree sentries to worry about?”

  ‘Not sure. When the alert went out, all the goblins in the forest came running. I would assume there might be some, but they abandoned their posts, so I cannot say for certain. The only thing I can say is there are more crossbowmen.’

  Kai felt through his armour, feeling for the freshly healed skin. “Okay, we take our time, but I think we have a plan for the camp if it turns out to be too much to just attack.”

  “You are the meat suit; lead on.”

  Kai took a mental note of his surroundings; he planned on coming back and restarting the room.

  The corridor was hidden in the mouth of a small cave. The sentry was probably placed there just to watch the cave. Or at least that was probably the dungeon's logic for why it had the little green fucker hidden in a tree.

  Satisfied knew what to look for on his return. Kai moved off deeper into the forest after asking Syl to go high and scout things out.

  The forest was actually quite open, the ground littered with leaves, fallen branches and the odd open glade full of grass.

  It was eerily quiet, and one wrong step could easily send the crunch of broken twigs ringing throughout the forest. So he tried his best to move silently using the lay of the land and the occasional rock formation to hide from anyone that might be on the lookout.

  Inevitably he put his foot down poorly, and the forest seemed to snap with the sound of a broken twig.

  But after a few tense moments, there was no response at all; no one came looking for the source of the sound.

  About a good twenty minutes later and a few more clumsy steps, he no longer worried so much and managed to relax a bit. He even heard an occasional snap off in the distance, which, when he investigated, he found nothing but scuff marks on the ground.

  Syl told him she saw a herd of deer and a few rabbits earlier and suggested they were the cause of the distant sounds.

  Kai clearly wasn’t any good at tracking, but he wasn’t worried; he planned on hunting only when food became an issue or he had cleared out the goblins.

  Eventually Syl floated down to his side and told him she found a promising trail.

  He had seen numerous animal trails, all of them slightly overgrown, clearly unused by anything but the local dungeon animals.

  The trail Syl had found was different; the small footprints were exactly what they should have been looking for.

  She actually apologised; she had actually seen similar trails but didn’t think too much of them. In her defence, from up high, the two different trails look similar.

  Following the new trail, they eventually started to work their way down into a small valley to finally find the goblin camp.

  A good dozen goblins were lazing about as what he thought was possibly a deer carcass cooked over a central campfire.

  ‘Did any of them spot us?’ Kai asked Syl to use their connection to silently communicate as he slid in behind a boulder.

  “Nope, totally oblivious. I’ll go scout it out. Don’t examine anyone, or you’ll alert them to our presence.”

  ‘My examinations are much better now; they kind of just flinch when I do it.’

  Syl had already drifted off to scout things out.

  It wasn’t long before she reappeared.

  “Well, this shouldn’t be hard at all. They don’t have any sentries set, and they seem to be stuck waiting for something to alert them. That or they are just plain lazy.” Syl said, “This boulder might serve as a good high spot to take out most of them with our mana bolts.”

  ‘What about counterattacks? Any shamans or ranged among them? He felt at his shoulder, ‘We should put up a barrier to shoot around just in case.’

  “There is a definite shaman; just kill the one in the robes. The others are a little harder to tell. Their camp's a mess. The equipment’s just dumped everywhere. I think there are at least four crossbowmen and another eight melee types…”

  ‘You didn’t examine them?’

  “Of course I did, but unless they are equipped or actively doing something, examine just tells me their race and level. Imagine if the system advertised your class as clueless no matter what you were doing.”

  ‘Well, that’s inconvenient,” Kai said, ignoring the jab. ‘Anyway, “For you to mark them for me, maybe I can use the system like a HUD and-‘

  “This isn’t a game… Actually, I hate to admit it, but with the right spell or item, it might be possible. There are some ranger-type skills that mark things. But how we could pass that through our connection or party setup, I don’t know.”

  ‘We should maybe look into it; with your scouting abilities, it would give us an advantage.’

  “Sadly, anyone with sharper senses might still be able to detect me. My projection is a skill like any other, not an infallible system function. At least not anymore.”

  ‘Ready when you are, I suppose.’

  “Okay, I'll focus on the ranged; you worry about any that get close.”

  Kai nodded as he prepared three mana bolts at once, condensing each into the more compact form.

  “Show off,” Syl said as another rough mana bolt crackled into life.

  Kai just grinned as he clambered up onto the top of his boulder.

  The goblins scrambled into action the moment Syl fired off her mana bolt into an unsuspecting robed goblin that was lounging on a bunch of furs.

  Kai fired off his mana bolts in quick succession, aiming for whichever goblin he thought posed the most threat to him.

  Turns out multicasting mana bolts took a little bit more concentration than he anticipated.

  His first shot zipped straight through a goblin as it frantically tried to pull back the string on its crossbow, but the other two shots completely missed. Still, what was equivalent to a magical bullet zipping right past your head had to be unnerving.

  Seeing the bolt shoot straight through the goblin he hit, leather jerkin and all.

  Kai wondered at the armour-piercing potential of his new bolt.

  The crack the bolt made upon contacting something solid enough to break the bolt apart was even louder.

  The goblins were starting to get organised and move towards him; Syl had taken down another goblin with a crossbow while Kai had been observing the effect of his own attack.

  He conjured up another two mana bolts, thinking three might have been pushing it a bit far for his first attempt.

  This time, however, he channelled more mana into the two of them just to see how they would react. They felt unstable, and as he wanted something explosive to use on groups, he decided not to mess with them any more than that.

  Picking out two targets that had bunched up, his two bolts shot off just fine; colliding, they cracked on impact just like his regular mana bolts.

  Kai wasn’t completely disappointed; sure, they didn’t explode the way he wanted, but they definitely tore limbs off. The only real issue was he wasn't aiming for limbs. The unstable bolts seemed sluggish and inaccurate.

  He would have to work out the kinks.

  “That’s all the ranged ones down.” Syl called out.

  “Okay, I think it's about time I get in close.” Kai said as he summoned a bastard sword and conjured another bolt.

  “Why we can-”

  Kai was already jumping off the boulder.

  “Can't abandon my melee skills just because we make an amazing turret.”

  The remaining four goblins were charging down a trail that came from their camp, trying to get to him. Nicely lined up as they avoided the brush on either side.

  It was almost too easy.

  The goblins had crude weapons with no real reach; if one of them had a spear, he might have had problems, but he would have just solved that with maybe a barrier and mana bolt.

  As it was, he slapped his prepared mana bolt into the face of the goblin that was first in line and stepped past it to cut down the next two.

  The fourth and final goblin Kai tripped with his blade and immediately constructed a small barrier on top of it. He used more mana than he needed and focused on pressing the spell down onto the green little man.

  He was pleased the barrier didn’t break as he moved it.

  When he was satisfied he had the goblin pinned, he turned to Syl. “Loot everything, and we will repeat; I think we can do better.”

  Syl flared and appeared in her full form, her hands already on her hips as she scowled at him, “We are not grinding essence, Kai. These kills aren't actually worth anything, and it will take too long to get back to the camp to rinse and repeat!”

  Kai waved her down, “We’re not doing it for essence. Hear me out.”

  Syl shifted her hips, and Kai took it as a sign to go on.

  “Alicia, what reward did you get for this section of this dungeon?” Kai asked, hoping he wasn’t disturbing her at a pivotal moment.

  ‘Boots…’

  “Did the boots do anything special?”

  ‘They absorb the sound of my footfalls.’

  “And was that a problem for you in this section of the dungeon? ”

  There was a long moment of silence before Alicia answered, ‘I was tasked with hunting the wildlife for food; I kept alerting my targets. Once I got the boots, I had little to no problem in the next set of rooms.”

  “What about your party? What did they get?”

  “Our defender got a charm that dampened the sound of his armour. Our mage made a ring that quieted his chanting to a murmur-“

  “Do your mages chant their spells? Kai interrupted, Chanting spells sounds like a pain in the ass.

  ‘Most people do,’ Alicia said in a tone that told him he probably should have known that.

  “How come-“

  “You had the benefit of skill books. Most people have to learn the hard way, and while chanting helps learn spell forms and can amplify the effects,. It’s also hard to break away from such rigid spellcasting.” Syl answered him before he could finish the question.

  ‘Master hated it when I even murmured something. He gave me a precious skill book on silent casting only after I could cast my first spell, reinforced durability, at will. Took me months…’

  Kai wondered why that particular spell and not Mana Bolt.

  Realising he could get bogged down in questions as Syl still scowled at him and a goblin clawed at the dirt trying to get free of his barrier, Kai decided to move on.

  “Did your party ever get any skill books?” he asked, continuing his line of questioning.

  ‘No…’

  “Is this dungeon known for giving out skill books?”

  ‘No… But people tend not to report skill books unless they are selling them. This dungeon gives you what you need. So unless the adventurer desperately needs money, I do not see anyone giving up something so precious.’ Alicia reasoned.

  “I think I got the skill book because I didn’t need anything else. Syl definitely got her tome because without it, she was effectively nothing but an essence drain.”

  “Hey!” Syl complained, “Well, you're not wrong.”

  “I think if we can show the dungeon, we don’t need anything else. We should get skill books or possibly something better. At the moment I’m probably going to get a piece of armour or something to help track down goblin camps; I would rather get something better.”

  “I am not grinding the dungeon with you; we could be in here for months. Don’t forget Thanric is waiting for Alicia outside.”

  “I’m not saying we should grind at all. Just challenge each room until we get as close to a perfect run as we think is possible before moving on. Syl, you can work on your spells, and we can get the essence we are losing to your core. We do things right; we should be able to get to level five by the time we catch up with where Alicia is.” Kai was unable to hide his grin as Syl finally let her scowl slip as she started to consider his plan.

  She didn’t seem convinced.

  “Alicia, when in the dungeon did you hit level three?” Kai asked.

  ‘The ninth room.’

  “Level four?”

  ‘The seventeenth, it was the twenty-fourth room when I reached level five… But I had fallen into a purely support role by then. The party was all around level seven to eight…’ Alicia trailed off, sounding a little defeated.

  She really didn’t connect with her last party by the sounds of it.

  “Don’t worry about that; those are our benchmarks. Level three before the tenth room, level four the seventeenth, and level five the twenty-fifth.”

  It took you hours to get me up to level one!

  “I have the challenge token; you can attack now; things should be a lot faster. Especially if I level up.”

  “Are you going to level up whenever you can?”

  Kai nodded.

  “You promise.”

  “If I don’t, you can just do it for me; you did it earlier.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  Kai just gave her a knowing look as he dismissed his sword and folded his arms.

  “Right fine, but if we don’t get something good in the next reward room, we just push through normally.”

  ‘This is an interesting experiment; the master will love to know the outcome.’

  “Core!” Syl cried.

  ‘Right, sorry.’

  They looted the goblin camp, finding nothing of note; still, they took everything that might have any value.

  Leaving the last goblin behind, they set off to find the corridor back to the reward room so they could reset things and try again.

  They found it in half the time it took them to find the goblin camp; still, Kai was a little worried that if this became a thing, he would end up with a reward that helped his sense of direction.

  Turning around as soon as the smoke cleared, Kai prepared a barrier as Syl once again scouted out the goblin sentry.

  They had discussed the sentry on the way back and already knew what to do.

  Kai would set up a protective barrier and only fire off his mana bolt if Syl missed.

  Odds were the sentry would continue to attack, but there was still a chance it would sound the alarm if it failed, so both Kai and Syl were prepared to take it down as fast as possible.

  Syl returned after signalling where the goblin was hidden, and Kai stepped out and immediately constructed his prepared barrier.

  Syl missed her bolt, but before she could construct another, Kai shot off his own, catching the goblin right where he was aiming as a crossbow bolt thwacked into his barrier.

  Syl wanted an immediate do-over, but she relented when Kai pointed out she might get the same mana bolt skill book he got if that was where she was lacking.

  They found a trail the sentry must have used now that Syl knew what to look for, and she guided Kai to the goblin camp in less than a third of the time it took them on their first run through.

  Seeing that the goblins were in the same lackadaisical state as last time, he summoned his longsword and just dove right into the middle of the camp.

  Syl wasn't pleased, but when all but one goblin was dead, Kai just pointed out the level difference and how they needed to be able to react on the fly if they got into a bad situation; they couldn't prepare for everything.

  Kai had taken a couple of hits, and Syl had missed a few shots as she scrambled to throw out some barriers.

  The surprise had been the stun spell she had used, but Syl was being moody and refused to elaborate on what other tricks she had in her bag.

  They retreated again and ran the forest another four times before Syl insisted they had performed well enough.

  Kai couldn't really argue. They had carved through the camp. Syl rapid-firing off a mix of spells while he carved through anything that got too close.

  He needed something more challenging, and more low-level goblins weren’t going to cut it with Syl working as his own personal spellcaster.

  The only thing that was odd about this last run was that his last few mana bolts all felt weird to him.

  As the fight was coming to a close, he could give the spell more of his attention, and he noticed as he fired off an attack at the retreating shaman that the spell was certainly off somehow, almost like he wasn’t actually pulling mana from quite the same place.

  But the spell had otherwise been flawless as it zipped through the shaman, its barrier and then exploded in the trunk of the tree it had tried to use as cover to close itself off from attack. So despite it being weird, he paid it no more attention.

  Kai had to admit, as he watched the goblin slump to the floor and then disappear into his storage, it was probably time to try something harder.

  The moment he agreed to move on, Syl picked up a large rock and dropped it on the last living goblin with some kind of telekinesis skill he hadn’t seen before.

  A little envious as he wanted a skill like that, he grumbled to himself again as Syl still refused to tell him what she had up her sleeve.

  Just as he was wondering if the camp was actually all the goblins in the forest, the goblin died and a Kai-sized portal appeared in the middle of the camp.

  It was then Syl suggested he eat something, and then maybe they could try and do some hunting before moving on.

  She needed to recover some mana before they pushed on to the next room anyway. While Kai had his arsenal of weapons to fall back on, Syl was pretty much useless in a fight without any mana to draw upon.

  Kai checked his own mana and paused.

  “Syl, what happens when you run completely out of mana?” Kai asked, trying not to let any sound of alarm creep into his voice.

  “You die. But don’t worry; it’s like running low on stamina; you’re so physically exhausted you usually collapse before you reach your limit. With mana, it's more of a headache, but you get the idea.”

  “I didn’t get a headache, but I am pretty sure the system is telling me I’m at negative sixty percent mana… give or take.”

  “That’s not possible… Sixty percent?”

  Kai called up his dreaded blue status screen and passed it to Syl.

  “What the...” Syl said as her mouth fell open and her brow creased in confusion.