It was like Jack was riding a rollercoaster inside a mirrored funhouse during a fireworks show. The room was spinning, and he simultaneously felt like he was falling. Objects around him would be stretched, distorted into impossible shapes. Flashes of bright colors would appear out of nowhere, in the wake of each flash something in his surroundings would change to an entirely different color. The branches on the walls would distort into familiar faces and whisper conversations long forgotten.

While some might find joy in the experience, all Jack wanted was for it to be over.

Not being able to trust your own perception was not something Jack enjoyed.

He attempted to tune out the hallucinations by using Focused Senses to feel his hair grow, but immediately withdrew from the skill when he started feeling worms crawling out of his body.

Note to self, general hallucinations are annoying and disorienting. Focused hallucinations are terrifying.

When the poison finally wore off, he had no idea how much time had passed. His mind felt worn out and all he wanted to do was sleep.

Jack woke to the sounds of Lucy hissing. He scrambled to his feet and looked towards her to see what kind of enemy was approaching. Only to see her standing off with the crowned prince.

They were a dozen feet down the tunnel; Lucy was blocking the path of the frog from going back to the main dungeon. Every time the frog would move to try to go around her, she would hiss and jump in the way.

The crowned prince seemed to not find her threatening at all and just continued its slow hops towards the swampy area.

Current mood: Hungry

Jack quickly calmed down when he realized there was no immediate danger. Lucy must have somehow picked up that he wanted to keep the frog and was trying to keep it from escaping.

Grabbing his rubber gloves from his inventory, he walked over and picked up the frog who seemed to be annoyed at being prevented from leaving.

Bringing the frog back to his little camp, he placed it back on the ground. Reaching into his inventory, he threw a chunk of owl meat in front of the frog.

The crowned prince greedily shot out his tongue, eating the meat without any care of where it came from.

“Thanks for keeping him here, Lucy.” He threw another piece of meat to the spider, who ate it up along with his praise.

Turning to the prince, he pointedly asked, “You really aren’t a genie or anything, right? If you are, just give me some sign and I will try to help you.”

The frog stared blankly back at him.

“In that case, Lucy, I know you can loosely talk to Kai and I’m pretty sure the other bonded can communicate with you as well. Please don’t tell anyone I kissed a frog.”

Lucy returned a confused, innocent stare.

“Ugh, never mind. Now what to do with you Mr. not-really-a-prince.” He had brought it with him after being poisoned for a few reasons.

At the time, he still hoped it might grant him a wish. It obviously had a toxin it could produce that could affect you just by touch. Its highest stat was Luck. He didn’t want to pass on the chance to see its effects. He wanted to see if it had any hidden abilities he could copy.

“Ok, here’s the deal. I am going to try to learn some of your skills and harvest your poison. If you cooperate, I will give you food and when I’m done, I will let you go. Deal?”

He didn’t really know why he was acting like the frog would understand him. Maybe it was because the last two creatures he captured to study, he basically cut off their limbs, watched them suffer then killed them.

One was a plant and the other a zombie, while the fact that they were seemingly mindless helped, he still felt horrible. Plus, both monsters tried to kill him; this frog was minding its own business, and he just scooped it up and took it back to camp.

Just outright killing something seemed to be kinder than experimenting on them. He wasn’t planning on torturing the frog to get a skill from it, but he felt like if he was going to use it, he at least owed it something. Food and a promise of a safe return to where he grabbed it.

The frog on the other hand didn’t give any visual reaction to the offered deal. But its mood changed back to bored.

“I’ll take that as though you agree. Let's get started then.”

The crowned prince was laying in one of the water pouches, seemingly content with its new puddle.

Jack had spent a while carefully scraping off some of its mucus that coated its entire body and stored them in his six oz. metal flasks. It was hard to get the slime inside the small opening and he knew it would be hard to get it out, but they screwed shut. He didn’t want there to be any chance the slime spilled.

After the collection of the mucus and failing to learn any new skills, he did some tests on the luck of the frog by playing a game.

When he found Emily’s bracelet he had tried testing what Luck did, but could never get a tangible result. He figured since that was the frog’s best attribute, he might be able to get some actual information.

Holding ten small pieces of food, he spoke the rules of the game out loud, so both Lucy and the frog could hear him. He honestly thought that as long as he knew the rules of the game, his experiment would work, but didn’t want to count on whatever controlled “Luck” to be able to read his mind.

“I have ten pieces of meat in my hand.” He pulled out a skill coin. “Each round I will flip this coin. In round one he needs it to land on the treasure side once to get a piece of meat. In round two, he needs the treasure side twice and so on for each round. If the coin lands on the other side twice during a round, its game over and no more meat.”

Essentially, to get the fifth piece it would have to land treasure side up five times before it landed on the other side twice.

Math and probability had always been a strong suit for him, so he did a quick probability calculation.

Chances of winning an indivual round.

Round 1. 3/4

Round 2. 4/8 or 1/2

Round 3. 5/16

Round 4. 6/32 or 3/16

Round 5. 7/64

Round 6. 8/128 or 1/16

Round 7. 9/256

Round 8. 10/512

Round 9. 11/1024

Round 10. 12/2048

He fully expected the frog to win the first few rounds, but was completely flabbergasted when he made it all the way to round eight before it was game over.

The chance of just passing round seven was roughly four percent, let alone all of them up to that point.

Obviously, he figured it would do better in a game of chance, but to that extent was ridiculous. He didn’t even want to think about the butterfly effects that Luck must have on the entire world. It was crazy.

He would have to repeat the game another time to see if this one time was just a fluke, but he doubted it was.

Jack was panting as he pinned the rabbit on the ground. It had taken a while, but he finally caught it. He needed to test how to apply the Prince’s Surprise, and even if he could find one on this side of the river, he didn’t think a drone would give him the answers he needed.

Pulling out a flask, he unscrewed the cap. “Sorry about this little guy, but it shouldn’t hurt.” A large glob poured out of the flask and onto the rabbit’s side. It wasn’t long before its eyes dilated.

Once a day, Jack would go to the front of the dungeon. The wolf wasn’t always right out front, but it was close enough that he couldn’t make a run for it.

One of the things he found out about the dungeon was that the barrier worked both ways. If Jack tried to throw something outside, it would bounce off an invisible wall and back at him.

The same went for him shooting a barrier he had to physically step past the barrier and shoot it to get it outside the dungeon.

Every day he would come out and use one of his charges on his pistol to “feed” the wolf. While his longshot goal was that he could possibly tame the Spell Seeker, he really just wanted to copy its ability to absorb the mana.

A goal he was losing hope in everyday.

Spell Seeker Level: 19 Current mood: Tired

A grey wolf that has gained the class Spell Seeker. While most wolves hunt and live in packs, a Spell Seeker, by its very nature, travels alone. A Spell Seeker has one purpose in life: find and absorb mana. Usually, this means finding a location with a high density of mana and claiming it as its territory. The only thing that will make a Spell Seeker leave its territory is being attacked or if they sense a creature with a large magical affinity. Its class ability to absorb most spells thrown at it makes them the bane of mages.

Age: 12 years.

Highest attribute: Perception.

Highest skill: Sonic Howl.

After his experience with trying to learn Battle Frenzy from the Boarbarian and rereading what Identify said about the wolf, he concluded the skill was from its class and he really couldn’t learn class skills.

Well, at least not now. He hoped that an evolution of Mimicry could change that.

Today he had another gift for the wolf. The rabbit he had captured earlier in the day had long since worn itself out trying to escape his grip. It wasn’t poisoned, but he wanted to see what the wolf would do to a small non-magical creature.

Jack stepped forward to pass the invisible barrier when he was pushed back. The rabbit in his arms would not pass through. He had not expected that.

Lucy had no problems leaving her original dungeon. That might be because Jack bonded with her. Do all the creatures in a dungeon have some innate connection to it? Does bonding break that connection?

The question of why a dungeon periodically breaks had been bothering Jack for a while as well. What purpose does it serve? If there is some benefit to having its monsters run free, why would a dungeon prevent them from leaving?

So many questions and no real way to find an answer right now.

He had a flash of an idea before he remembered it wouldn’t work. The thought was to put the rabbit into his inventory and see if he could get it out that way.

Unfortunately, his inventory wouldn’t close if he had something living inside of it.

At least he thought that was the stipulation. It wouldn’t close on a living animal, but it would close with seeds inside of it. So there might be a grey area.

Well, he still needed to see if the wolf would go for the rabbit. He pulled out a knife.

Your party has slain a Swamp Hare Level: 1

Your contribution 100%

You are awarded 9 Experience.

He threw the body out to where the wolf should be able to see it. The wolf currently wasn’t visible, but he knew it liked to hang out on top of the dome.

After a few minutes and nothing happening, Jack leaned out and shot the barrier. The response was quick. Cracking of twigs could be heard, followed by a loud thump. The wolf appeared and immediately started sucking up the mana like an addict.

Once it was done with the barrier it briefly looked at the dead rabbit before jumping back on top of the dungeon.

“Damn, there goes the plan of poisoning it through food.”

Feeling the annoyance from a failed plan he hadn’t even gotten to attempt yet, he headed back. It was time to cross the river.

Lucy was riding on the top of his head. Ever since he lost his hair, she thought it was a fun place to stand. Jack thought she might be doing it to make fun of him, but couldn’t confirm it.

All Jack could see around him was fog and water. It unnerved him greatly, not being able to see anything around him. This was the perfect time for an ambush, and he could practically feel something watching them.

The water came about a half foot above his waist. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to get any deeper.

He had his staff poking at the ground under the water in front of him. He was thankful for his forethought when he found a patch of ground that was less dense than everywhere around it. If he had walked through it, he could have gotten a foot stuck or worse, sunk deep into the ground.

The further he walked, the worse his paranoia got, though he almost wished something would just jump out and attack him just to release the tension.

Surprisingly though, he reached a similar shore as the one he had left with no ambush.

There was about a foot between the surface of the water and the ledge of the ground. So he was going to have to hop out of the water like he was in a pool.

When he jumped out of the water and stood up on the ground, he realized his paranoia was not in vain. He just seemed to have not noticed the ambush.

On his leg was a small slug-like creature. It was a sickly green color that reminded him of seaweed and it had tiny red dots all over it. A leech. It was hanging off of his leg, but he couldn’t even feel it there. Nor could he feel the two dozen other leeches all over his legs.

Carmilla’s Chosen Level: 1 Current mood: Hungry

A bloodsucking parasite, a Carmilla’s Chosen lives in murky waters waiting for their next meal.

They attach to a creature by biting into soft flesh where they will gorge themselves on the creature's blood.

It is said an ancient vampire bred these leeches and kept them as pets.

Highest Skill: Blood Drain

Highest Attribute: Vitality