First Dungeon - Part 1

Shingi, during the week, had worked on Ranking up his MANA SENSE as he knew it could make a significant difference in the Dungeon. However, there were things that even his PERCEPTION wasn't able to detect. No matter what he tried, he couldn't pass the wall that separated the Base Rank and Master Rank of MANA SENSE, though.

It upgraded his VISUALIZATION to Master Rank since he was overusing it every night to enable his TRANCE ROOM. This led to lower the cooldown by 1 hour.

As for the rest of his skills, there weren't any changes on their Ranks, but he had become more proficient in using them, especially his ACCELERATION.

Before, he could use it for almost 10 seconds with no breaks and would use all his SP, but now his limit was 30 seconds.

Same with his spells.

There weren't any new spells added to the list other than making the Earth version of his Light Blade, but the System did not consider them as Spells, just an effect of Enchantments. The training lowered his casting time on it to 15 seconds, but he could hold it at most for 7 seconds, and that is if his mind wasn't too strained.

As for his Mana Tree grew a little, but not enough to change his maximum mana. Still, his Mana Seeds, even if there weren't any recent additions to them, grew in power, and he could tell that they had almost enough for the cast of one of his Base Grade spells, which should be their limit. He could also use one of them to 'feed' the Magnet Enchantment and make a Light or Earth blade right away. It had decreased the cost of Mana of his Spells as he got more familiar with them. However, his Base Grade one was still quite expensive, so having 14 Seeds to cover most or all of the cost could help when things go very wrong. He didn't have any Mana Fruits, but since his Seeds didn't wholly reach their limit but were close, so he should earn some soon.

He worked on his Mithril Dagger by 'feeding' his mana the same way he purified a piece of metal. Still, in the Mithril, it had the effect of slowly becoming more familiar with the specific type of mana and having more significant effects on the particular elements. It was also accumulating its quality. But, of course, advancing its quality was very slow as there wasn't any noticeable change during the week. To make a piece of Mithril, they needed it to expose it for years in mana and even more years to increase its quality. Still, at least it was making his mana move through the dagger easier, leading to a decrease in his casting speed on his spells as long as he used his dagger as a conductor.

And so he made it to the shop, but this time without Annoue, as he told her, she should train at home and work on her cooking skill and prepare dinner. He gave her a few gold coins to buy ingredients, saying that it was the payment of one of the big orders. Still, in reality, it was a few of the coins he had taken from Varic and the Spatial Ring of the Players.

Outside the shop, there were the four students he spoke with them yesterday to meet.

During the week that passed, each of them had made some progress. But only one of them had finished all their tasks entirely.

Hineko's class had changed from Rogue to Thief Doctor.

To do that, he had to pickpocket quite a few individuals and use those earnings to get herbs and make medicines to help cure people who needed them without payment. With that class, he had improved his speed a lot as also he got the ALCHEMIST profession. He also got the POTION MAKING Skill to create potions, as long as he knew their recipe and the herbs needed.

But for now, he knew how to create three potions, which were basic ones, and one usually wouldn't be able to learn all together as if they were essential, and they were expensive for an average player to buy them all Shingi covered the cost.

The potions were HP, MP, and SP regeneration potions. Each one would regenerate the specific stat during a battle and increase it during less stressful times. Of course, some potions could restore a quantity of them right away as you drank them, but they were harder to find as they also needed at least the Base Rank of Alchemy. Hineko's was still at Low Rank but was close to Base Rank, with it being level 9.

As for Mizuneko and Little Phoenix, who had a similar type of training but for distinct elements, they had improved to be considered, having passed that test barely. Still, they had to do more, but at least from now on, they could raise their levels without worry as they took the first step they needed to take early on.

Wild Tycoon still needed to fulfill the requirements since the only enemies that had the criteria were the monsters of the dungeons. However, with the fight with the players the other day, she had taken two kills from there, but she still had a long way to get enough kills, but hopefully, in the Dungeon, she would find enough opponents.

After they were ready, they made their way towards the Dungeon but not before they made a party through the System, but it seemed they weren't able to add Shingi on it, most likely since he still didn't have a class cause it wasn't unheard of for an NPC to be at a party with Players.

The Players only could activate the Party System, and it was one gift to them from the Gods. It allowed them to share exp between them for each kill of the party and watched the HP and SP or MP bar of each other, which was helpful for the group's healer but didn't have any way of healing other than Hineko's potions and resting.

Shingi didn't consider it a problem since he could only understand if one was in a good or bad condition with his vast knowledge, only by their current state and visual. Also, since the Dungeon was of a Low Level of 5-20 with over 15 being way deep in it, there wouldn't be any high INT monsters, so they could talk to each other with no worries.

Shingi explained what the plan was and the formation they would go with.

He and Hineko were the two with the higher STEALTH and similar abilities to scout ahead for monsters and other encounters. When they would find a group of enemies, they would follow a similar plan as he did in the Goblin Cave with Tycoon and Phoenix of letting Tycoon face some suitable opponents for her challenge, and they would deal with the rest. Also, Shingi and Mizuneko would keep any extra monsters for Tycoon's challenge that she couldn't fight if there were too many until she could fight them. Still, they had to use ways that wouldn't damage them. Still, both had a few ways, as Mizuneko had few Water spells that weren't dealing damage. Like WATER SPHERE that would surround the whole body of the target and usually drown them, but he could choose to let air getting in there so as not to cause damage but trap the target.

Mizuneko also shared what information they gathered over the Dungeon and its monsters. It wasn't that hard to gather. Most of the players in the town had come for the Dungeon and most likely had visited it a few times.

It seemed the theme of the Dungeon was of Ooze monsters.

There were a few troublesome ones to deal with, but as long as you found its central core and destroyed it, you would kill it unless it had multiple cores, but that was a scarce thing for that range of level.

Early on, they would mostly face Plain Slimes around 5 to 8 level, so they should handle them easily, especially by having that many Arcane users, but even Hineko and Tycoon won't have much trouble as long as they find their cores.

After them, some Acid Slimes would be of a little higher level, and their body would be closer to acid but not that strong but still wouldn't be much of a problem.

But after that, they should face Oozes of high enough level to fit their need, and the deeper in the Dungeon they got, the more dangerous it would get. As for the Dungeon boss, no one had seen it, and no one was looking for it.

Every Dungeon had a Boss that fitted its theme.

If one got defeated, they might get a substantial reward out of it. So many tried to find them, but only in the non-permanent ones. The case was because even when you killed the Boss at a Dungeon, the Dungeon would disappear after an hour. Nobody knew why there were some permanent and some non-permanent ones, even though both had Bosses and would disappear when their Boss was dead. But the non-permanent ones would also disappear after some time, even if the Boss was still alive.

So since the permanents ones had many resources and a way to level up that was stable, players had made the rule not to kill the Boss of a permanent Dungeon. In the long run, everyone would benefit more than the reward they would get from the Boss since, either way, those dungeons weren't very high level either way, so the prize wouldn't be that good.

And so they made their way and, as expected, had little trouble passing the plain Slimes and Acid Slimes as they adapted on them quite fast, especially after following the orders of Shingi. These monsters were too easy to learn how to deal with for him, so it didn't take him long to form plans for his team.

Then the first real group of opponents appeared.

They were 5 Black Oozes and two Yellow Oozes. Shingi and the party knew what they were, as Mizuneko had mentioned them.

The Black Oozes could split themselves into many pieces, and each one would act as its entity. They could also drain the energy of mana-made attacks like spells and lessen their effects. This energy would cause them to heal, and most of the time, the heal would be more than the leftover damage.

The Yellow Oozes had a similar split power to the Black Oozes. However, they also strengthened their bodies and were as heavy and tough as metal, making physical attacks almost useless.

The Yellow Oozes were lower level than the Black ones as both of them were at Level 11, and the Black Oozes were 12-14 and let all 5 of them get killed by Tycoon as even if their split ability would be hard to deal with it wouldn't be impossible to do. She had to deal a certain amount of damage quickly for it to split, so as long as she was careful, she would be ok. Also, these Oozes had little health and could deal with them in 3-5 hits from what they have gathered, so she didn't have to get a lot of damage from them, but they were slow but could deal some damage but not too much to put her in danger. She probably could handle close to 20 hits from them; that would be enough to deal with all of them with no healing.

So Shingi made his move first to get their attention and tried to separate the group by grabbing with his MANA HANDS and pushing three of the Black Oozes away from the rest. This action let Wild Tycoon deal with them as he and the rest of the party kept distracted the other two Black Oozes and killed the Yellow Oozes. They could also let Wild Tycoon deal with the Yellow Oozes since they were at the right level, but it would take them too long cause of their nature to resist attacks from physical weapons.

Mizuneko and Phoenix dealt with the Yellow Oozes, while Shingi helped a little by throwing a few ROCK THROWS here and there. Hineko kept the two Black Oozes distracted by pushing them and getting away and kept avoiding them by jumping around and doing unnecessary flips now and then, mainly to increase his ACROBATIC Skill and cause it was fun for him. Shingi also helped on it mostly with his MANA HAND, which wasn't getting affected by the Oozes' unique ability as it would only work on cases of spells that would try to damage them, and the MANA HAND didn't have that effect.

After close to five minutes, they could deal with all of them, and Tycoon, who had less than half her health cause she had to be hit quite a few times, had five more kills at what she needed for her challenge. But, of course, she still kept using the exp she earned to her skills instead of her level. Still, fortunately, since this time there were three people instead of one at the party, she was gaining less exp than before but was getting the more significant part, at least for killing the Black Oozes since she was the only one who dealt damage on them.

As for Shingi, he didn't earn any exp cause he didn't have a class. He didn't have a level to raise and couldn't use the give exp to his Skill since only Players could do that. Still, he got more used to and familiar with his Skills and his Spells during the battle. As shown in the past, the battle had significant effects, so it wasn't like he didn't earn something.

So after taking a brief break and Tycoon drinking some of the HP Potions Hineko had prepared just for her, they continued. Shingi gave him money to prepare to quiet a few of those potions and had them on his Spatial Ring so they wouldn't be hard to have them.

Of course, he had to explain how he came to have a Spatial Ring to the party since they would at some point notice him using it. They understood why the Players were after him, but they didn't know that it wasn't really the Spatial Ring they were after, but Shingi himself and his strange power.

So they made their way and carefully finishing one encounter after the other with a needed break between each, mainly depending on the situation of Tycoon's HP.