Author’s Corner: That feeling when you get the urge to write at four in the morning and can’t sleep till you take care of it.

You have leveled up.

That message was waiting for me after we had defeated the swarm of bats in the first room. While I can’t exactly say that the battle was difficult once Sharon brought out her big monsters, it was still a pain for me. Once my legs were recovered, I stood up and took a look at my status.

NameJohn HulettRaceWood ElfTitlesVengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer, Starship CaptainFame20,000Level 548%ClassDruidAdvanced ClassXeno-ShifterDeityMalthanHealth350/350Health Regen0.58Mana1400/1400Mana Regen8.38Strength15Wisdom200Agility26Intelligence140Dexterity37Charisma35Vitality35Luck20Points Remaining5Earth 24%Fire 23%Wind 24%Water 24%Lightning 23%Light 23%Dark 24%Plant 23%Void 23%Metal 23%Magnetism 23%Plasma 22%Time 5%

Although my affinities had been able to slowly increase thanks to creating and then refining elemental seeds, it was still fairly slow since it had taken a few weeks just to increase everything by 2-4%. Maybe after we get back to Hydra, there will be enough seeds waiting for me to go all the way to 40% affinities. Well, I could hope for that anyways. For now, I simply deposited these five points into my Vitality, since I was rather desperate for health.

Feeling the rush of my stats increasing, I decided that I was ready to move on to the next room. However, my first action was to activate my combat aspects, and set my breath weapon to the light attribute. “Alright, let’s move.”

“Are you sure?” Sharon looked at me in concern, even though Yo was happy to hear me say I was ready, and almost left without us again.

“Injured fast… not turn back?” Yin asked, looking to me while still in her bird form.

“We know what we’re dealing with now. If it’s monsters of this level, then they won’t pose a problem now that we can anticipate them.” I spoke with a smile, moving up to Yo. “As for you, try not to leave us behind again. If they are dark monsters, they might have tricks that can hurt you.”

Yo pouted for a moment, but nodded her head. “Okay, daddy…”

Yin and Sharon seemed to talk about something at the back for a minute, but I didn’t pay attention. Instead, I activated my Aura Sight and Mana Sense in order to scout the next room. I was tempted to use my Spatial Comprehension skill again, but disabling the limiter… did not sound good to me. It wasn’t so bad when I did it in the last fight, because Sharon’s rabbit was moving so fast that things did not look frozen anymore. But if I did it casually, it would come too close to what I felt on Hydra. Even just thinking about it made my hand shake slightly.

“Let’s go…” I said again, determining that the next room had a heavy aura of dark mana as well. Though actually, there were two passageways out from this room, aside from the one we made. It would have been way too coincidental to come in right at the beginning of the dungeon, right? Most likely, we were somewhere between the beginning of this floor and the boss room. The problem was that we didn’t know which way led where, and we could end up going the wrong way when the boss is just a room or two behind us.

Since these creatures were attuned to the Dark Affinity, I decided to see if they would respond to an attempt at communication. In the same way I had spoken with Tessa when she was a wind elemental, or Arianne when I was on Hydra the first time in the future, I sent my thoughts out with a small surge of dark mana. Is anyone there?

It was a long shot, but it would be good to find out early on if there was an intelligent monster in this dungeon. If there was, then it would be possible to befriend it. However, I received no response, so either there was no such thing, or it was not within range of my communication.

In the next room, we once again found bats. This time, I did not even give them the chance to swoop down at us. Taking a deep breath, I opened my mouth and looked at the ceiling, releasing my light breath. So far, the only other time I had used this attack had been against the cliff tigers back in NeoLife. And at that point, I had determined this to be an overpowered attack.

I didn’t want to take any chances, so I poured a full thousand points into this one breath attack. However, like the first time I used it, there was no visual effect. Merely, the bats began falling down from the ceiling one by one, smoke rising from their bodies. If you can’t remember, the light breath is an invisible laser attack, and although I spread it to cover almost the entire ceiling, it still had considerable destructive power since I poured so much of my energy into it.

After my breath finished, the smell of burnt flesh was evident throughout the room. Of the over a hundred bats that were camped on the ceiling, less than twenty remained along the edges of my attack. These bats were quickly rounded up by Sharon and Yin, with Yo not having the chance to do anything in this room.

“Sharon… want?” Yin asked as she held a pair of bats in her talons, occasionally sending an electric shock into them to prevent them from using their magic abilities.

“Hmm…” She thought about it for a moment. “Sure. Thanks, Yin.” She smiled brightly and walked over to the large bird, crouching down and talking to the bats. “You two, you have two choices. Come with me, or be killed. Choose.”

Hearing her words, and seeming to understand them, the bats that had been struggling in Yin’s grip suddenly let out a horrified shriek as they stared at Sharon. Afterwards, they turned into streams of light that flew into her chest, being added to her grove inhabitants.

“Hmm… what’s this…?” I heard Yo’s voice coming from the corner of the room, and turned to look at what she was asking about. On the ground, there was a pair of pitch black gloves. With my Aura Sight, I could see that they were magical items. Likely, they were something created by this dungeon.

“Let me see.” Sharon said as she walked over. “I’ve been wanting an excuse to try this spell.”

After she leaned down and picked up the gloves, I saw a surge of mana flowing from Sharon into the gloves, and then back to her. She furrowed her brow, apparently not getting the answer she wanted, and tried again. This time, the mana lingered on the gloves a bit longer, before returning to her slightly changed.

“Aha. Shadetouch gloves. They let you interact with shadows and other incorporeal creatures as if they were tangible.” She smiled as her spell seemed to work.

“An identify spell?” I asked curiously, and she nodded.

“It’s the reason I asked for Divination magic. If I can use this to identify items, then we won’t be left unsure when we pick up something.”

Suddenly, I thought back to the marbles that I had gotten from the Toy Chest quest, and pulled them out of my grove to hand to her. “Can you identify these?”

Cheater

Oh hush, mad god. Sharon took the bag, and pulled out one of the marbles, doing the same spell she had used on the gloves. “Huh… They’re called Newton’s Marbles, according to this. If you throw them at someone, they will be thrown back as if they had been struck by an object of equal size and weight to them. However, each marble is consumed after use, and there are a limited number.”

Get it? Newton's Marbles? Come on, this is gold!

I sighed, ignoring the god that was trying to get a reaction out of me. “Well, at least they sound useful.” I collected the marbles, and put them back in my grove. “Though it figures that they are the only items we got from that quest with a usage limit.”

Sharon nodded her head. “Just think, you could throw one of those at a dragon and still get the full effect.”

I chuckled slightly. “Now we need a slingshot, or a marble cannon to shoot them out of.”

She smiled at the idea, and the discussion had given me time to replenish my mana. As such, we continued. Once again, I unleashed a laser breath at the bats clinging to the ceiling of the next room. However, there were less of them this time, not even a hundred.

Seeing that the numbers were going down, we decided to turn around, and headed back in the direction we came. From all of the dungeon reports I read, monsters grew greater in numbers or power as you got closer to the boss room. Since that was not happening here, it could only mean that we were going the wrong way.

And sure enough, after we got into the next room from where we first entered, there was a new type of monster waiting for us among the two hundred shadow bats. This one was… a slime. That’s really it, just a shadow slime. I took care of the majority of the bats with a laser breath, Yin blasted the slime, and Sharon shot down the remaining bats with her magic.

“Shadow slime… Wonder if there are elementals on the lower floors?” Sharon thought curiously, but I shook my head.

“If there are, we’ll leave immediately. Even if it is a low level elemental, its control over shadows would be practically absolute. With our abilities, I’m not confident we can counter one.” Unlike most races that began at level one, elementals were born at level twenty, and weren’t even considered to be ‘fully grown’ until level fifty. With monsters tending to be born in their adult state, I could only assume that elementals would be created by that standard.

Yin nodded her head slightly, but Sharon frowned at the thought. I smiled and comforted her the best I could. “You might be able to take one on with your animals, but can you guarantee that they wouldn’t die fighting? Unlike us, your animals won’t come back. If we can’t handle it on our own, we should turn back.”

Hearing that, Sharon let out a long sigh, nodding her head. “Fine… But I at least want to see what the boss of this floor is.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the chance.” I chuckled lightly, waiting until my mana was restored before we moved on to the next room. I could still remember back when I first started in NeoLife, when it would take over an hour just for my mana to come back. If that were still the case, I would be doomed.

In the next room, there was no slime, but among the bats was a large one, about three feet tall hanging from the ceiling. Thankfully, that put it within the range of my laser attack. Although it didn’t die outright, it was screaming in pain from the invisible attack, and was quickly killed by Sharon and Yin.

You have leveled up.

I smiled as I got that message, figuring that these individual bats had to be extremely low level. Although there were four of us, we still had to kill over five hundred bats for me to level up. At most, they should be level ten creatures.

From there on, the dungeon crawl proceeded normally. In each room, there were countless small shadow bats, between one and five large bats, and sometimes a shadow slime. We also picked up three more items. One was a staff that amplified shadow magic, one was a ring that stored dark mana, and the final one was a dagger that was able to paralyze a creature by stabbing its shadow.

After every other room, I sent out my mental call through the dark mana, curious to see if there would be anything. Maybe a vampire, given the number of bats here? That would certainly be interesting. However, before I got a response, I received a call from the ship.

“Captain, be advised, there is a high chance that the boss monster is within your immediate vicinity. I would suggest proceeding with extreme caution.” Another warning. Most likely, even though they couldn’t tell exactly where it was, they were able to tell when we were getting close. That, or our presence and killing so many monsters somehow made it easier for them to scan. I wasn’t sure, but the next thing worried me.

Help, somebody please help me! Is anyone out there? A young boy’s cry could be heard in my mind, and it was answered by a series of high pitched shrieks that made me put my hand over my ears to try and block out the noise.

So, there was someone here… And this was not how I wanted to find them. Was the boss monster attacking the little boy, or was the scared little boy a boss monster...? I honestly wasn't sure which one scared me more.