I see that you’ve completed Gehennia’s Dungeon challenge hehe, if you don’t know me, I’m the god of knowledge and history, Clikchia. Let’s Talk!

Those words were currently floating on the green screen filling Dylan’s vision.

Clik…chia? Dylan thought to himself. Interesting name, Mr. God of knowledge and history. Oh, wait.

Composing himself, Dylan immediately asked Clikchia the most important thing he could think of.

“Where am I?”

The green screen changed, and began to explain everything that Dylan asked.

After several questions which helped to pinpoint Dylan’s location and some brief knowledge of the surrounding wildlife, Clikchia left with a friendly goodbye, leaving Dylan to ponder.

From what he had gathered from Clikchia, he was currently an unknown dungeon whose entrance could be found somewhere in the shallow area of the Bleak Forest. The Bleak Forest surrounded the Tallin Mountain range which extended through half of the sub-continent he was currently situated in, known as the Luren Sub-Continent. Currently, there were three countries located on the sub-continent, each of them unique and located in different areas of the sub-continent.

Firstly, was the Aspean Kingdom, a monarchy situated in the fertile plains with surrounding forests such as the Bleak Forest located in the North-Western half of the sub-continent. Clikchia hadn’t explained much from there, but instead noted some of the common species which Dylan may end up acquiring, such as wolves, deer, birds and even horses. In fact, the Aspean Kingdom and its plains connected directly to the Bleak Forest, placing Dylan in the middle of their territory essentially.

The second country located on the sub-continent would be the Karazan Alliance, made up of many tribes of war-monger barbarians and other people who lived in the harsh savannah and deserts located on the Eastern half of the sub-continent. Some animals which Dylan realized could be found in Africa back on Earth could be found there, along with other species in the desert lands.

The Tallin mountain range stretched from the Western side of the sub-continent and meandered its way through the middle of the land mass before making a curve and ending somewhere in the South, giving the Karazan Alliance a much larger yet much less fertile land to live in, drawing conflict between them and the fertile Aspean Kingdom bordering their territory.

Hidden beyond the Tallin mountain range was some country according to Clikchia with mysterious origins, but Dylan wasn’t able to get much more than that out of him before he left. Now Dylan was just looking through the skills he received from the humans as he prepared to level up.

There isn’t much, but whoever had that earth magic, thank you! Dylan hummed to himself as he looked through the new skills.

Out of the few skills he had gained from the humans, all of them were quite useful, but the [Earth Magic Affinity] and [Earth Magic Proficiency] (E) seemed pretty good. There was also the [Bloody Euphoria] skill, which heightened the power and killing intent of its user right before they attacked a target. The rest of the skills seemed to be passives which granted higher stamina and other physical capabilities.

Oh, now’s the time! Dylan realized that his mana capacity had completely filled, so he ordered Kuraura and his entourage of monsters to take him to the stone forest. He decided to leave the humans around, as their conditions seemed to be pretty stable. As Kuraura and the other monsters fulfilled his orders, Dylan triggered the level-up sequence and fell unconscious.

In that dark level-up zone, Dylan walked forward, the only direction he was allowed to. Seeing the pinpoints of light up ahead, Dylan ran towards them as quickly as possible before arriving before the orbs of light again. This time, there was the absence of both Lurewich and a blue orb, leaving Dylan with options between choosing another quest or ‘monster knowledge’ as Lurewich had described it to Dylan. He wasn’t really sure which one was the best option to choose, but he definitely did not want to go through another quest, and so chose the orange orb. Decisively grabbing it, Dylan felt his senses coming back, when suddenly his head was filled with knowledge of a specific monster.

It appeared to be a large hermit crab-like monster with massive claws, fitted with several passive skills which made its shell as hard as stone. The shell it lived in apparently was a part of its body, and would grow and change in size along with the crab, which could grow to a maximum height of 5 feet at the top of its shell. The creature wasn’t very mobile, but could survive both on land and underwater, and was able to consume both organic material and stone due to one of its skills. Overall, its defense was fairly high for a monster of its grade, yet its other capabilities didn’t seem to be much. It was a [D+] ranked monster known as Stone-Eating Hermit Crab.

Following that, Dylan received a message as he completely came to.

Ding!

You can now [Summon]: Stone-Eating Hermit Crab (D+)

Eh? It gives you the monster? Isn’t this pretty good? This monster isn’t related to anything I already have too… Dylan quickly glanced over at the new monster with mild surprise before checking out his maximum mana and attempting to summon the monster. Although he still had no mana, he could at least see the required amount to summon the monster and compare it to his capacity.

You have insufficient mana. 450 mana required for summon.

Dylan immediately checked his mana after, and found that he had reached 525 mana capacity. He was quite pumped. Even Kuraura, who was standing nearby, turned as he noticed that Dylan was fully awake now.

“M-My Lord,” Kuraura stumbled upon his words as he turned. “Humans awake, they’re awake now, my Lord…Help?”

Dylan immediately moved his vision over to where he could sense the three humans who had been subordinated to him. As he reached them, he saw a strange scene. The three humans were standing back to back whilst surrounded by a group of goblins.

The three looked highly agitated and confused as they barked warnings and curses at each other and the goblins. Dylan didn’t even bother trying to make sense of what they were saying even though he had the [Common Language] skill. The goblins themselves were doing the same, but Dylan saw that a few of them were wounded, with cuts and small cones of stone poking into their shoulders and the like. Luckily, there hadn’t been any casualties yet.

Dylan immediately gave the mob an order to stop fighting, causing the goblins to fall back with their wounded while the humans froze before slumping to the ground.

“W-What the hell!?” The man with blondish hair yelled out. “Did you guys feel that? I couldn’t even move after hearing that voice!”

The short girl next to him shakily nodded the affirmative, while the large tan man beside him muttered.

“It sounded like a person…Right?”

The three stared at each other for a moment, and Dylan sighed after listening to this scene.

“Hey hey…Y’all know I can hear you right…” He said.

Three heads simultaneously turned towards him at his prompting, seeing what appeared to be the spectral form of a human floating above them.

Three spontaneous confused cries rose from them as Dylan sighed in exasperation.

The Black Feather group was a (C ) ranked group of adventurers made up of 5 people; a warrior, tank, mage, thief, and healer. They were one of the above-average groups of adventurers which could be found in the Aspean Kingdom, and they were currently exploring the wreckage of a village. With its wooden gate blown open, most of the houses had been burnt to ashes, while the remaining few had severe damage to their walls and doors. Dozens of burned corpses in twisted positions lay everywhere, and body parts and blood were strewn all over the place. It was a horrible sight which made even the hardened members of the group feel a sense of sickness. After all, they were adventurers who were more used to seeing monster corpses than those of humans.

Their warrior, an average heighted young blonde man ripped a poster out of his pocket, which illustrated the crude images of two human males along with several listings of monster species.

The poster was a request by the Adventurer’s Guild of the Aspean Kingdom for the capture of the two males leading an army of wolves, and the subjugation of said wolves. The request had been sent in by an identified village hunter named Senth who had returned from a long hunt only to find his home village in ruins while being occupied by the wolves. Senth had only a few coppers to his name, and even the blue deer pelt he offered for a reward simply wasn’t a huge enticement to adventurers, not even being able to buy enough supplies to cover injuries and maintenance. That was until the Viscount who ruled over the territory offered a higher monetary reward which enticed the Black Feather and a few other groups to complete the quest, and not just for the reward, as getting good favor with the Viscount could allow them to get better missions or other benefits.

“One of them’s a mage then. Fire I would presume. Wolf species appear to be Dire and Black from the description, presumably other types as well, possibly grey.” He called out to his companions.

“Alright then, Allen, shall I now?” The healer of the group, a young woman with short brown hair wearing light leather armor, nodded at the affirmation from the warrior and her other teammates. Taking her stave from her back, she concentrated and started to chant, forming a summoning circle in the ground before her. A shape began to distort and rise out of the ground before forming a small Black Feather Sparrow monster, which took to the skies after receiving some simple instructions.

The group of adventurers began to make their way after the sparrow, who had been tasked with finding the trail of destruction the wolves had paved.