The dungeon was not far from the Guild, by design probably, so it only took Notch and me about 3 minutes to get there. The dungeon entrance was well precisely what the weakest dungeon in the empire would look like, just a hole in the side of a hill next to the lake. There was a guard station to the right of the entrance and a single guard sitting in a chair to the left. I approach the guard with a wave.

“Good afternoon sir, can I enter the dungeon,” I ask when I get near him.

“That should be fine, but I gotta see your ID first,” answers the guard standing up and eyeing me up and down. I pass him my ID, and after only glancing at it for a second he hands it back. “Alright, go on in, but I gotta ask… do you have a weapon? Because I don’t see one,” he asks with a look of confusion.

I stand and stare at him for what can only be described as an awkward amount of time until I feel Notch poking me on the cheek and I finally answer the now even more confused guard, “I uh… don’t, but I can use magic…,” I say very embarrassedly and as if it made it any better I continue with, “Oh, and so can Notch.”

“Okay… just uh, be careful then,” says the guard now with a worried expression on his face.

“I will thank you,” I say while walking into the faintly glowing, musty smelling, hole in the hillside now more of a tremble in my step. The only thing I can think now is, I don’t have a god damned weapon… nothing, not even a sharp stick or heavy rock… What the hell am I even thinking of going into a dungeon only armed with a low leveled Mana Bolt? But I’m already here I may as well at least poke my head in and see what I’m up against.

Enter into the dungeon you can almost instantly feel the change in mana into the air, but that may be my mana sense activating, and there is a drastic change in the humidity, I feel like I just walked into a misting shower. The passageway leads down at an incline under the lake, there is luckily some kind of green bioluminescent moss, or maybe it’s algae I’m not sure, all over the walls and ceiling of this cave type dungeon. We keep walking for about 60 feet when I arrive at a corner that turns to my right, peeking my head around the corner I see that the path leads forwards into the darkness, but there seems to be another right turn only about 10 feet further and no monsters in sight.

I feel my heart beating at an increasing pace the longer I’m down here, crat an excruciatingly slow speed I make my way ahead to where the next right turn is. Before taking a glance down the new passage, I can see the end of the one I’m in ends in another right turn. Taking that glance around the corner, I see that it just leads off into the darkness with still no hide nor hair of a monster.

Whispering to Notch, “What do you think, to the right or straight?” He shrugs then points to the right. “Just guessing then?” He nods, so I shrug then creep as quietly as I can down the hall. Sneaking forward, over my heartbeat and heavy breathing I hear a few squeaks and some scratching ahead. With my heart now relocating itself to my throat I almost turn around and run, but Notch pats me on the back then heads down. Taking a deep breath and trying not to remember my first disastrous fight the Horned Rabbit I follow behind my brave little partner.

We do not have to go far when we see a small dripping wet rat walking towards us. Before I can react to the sight, it starts galloping at us screaming ask it comes. Notch being more prepared then I, shoots off a Mana Bolt right into the face of the rat. With the rat running full pelt towards us it doesn’t get the chance to dodge when the ball of mana hits him right in the head causing to stumble and fall.

Stopping myself from cheering at my formidable ally I shoot off my mana bolt… missing by a good two feet. Getting back to its feet the rat charges forward at a fast but more cautious pace, with only about 6 feet separating us Notch fires off another mana bolt. This time the rat seems to be ready for it and moves to the side so that the bolt only grazes its side. Stepping forward I try to kick the rat as he is pouncing to bite Notch.

I had better luck this time, and my foot catches it right in the ribs sending it into the wall. Knowing I only have five mp left, and it will take an hour just to get one point back, I decide the best I can do is try to keep kicking it while it’s down. The rat was able to recover faster this time and was on its feet before I was able to take the few steps towards it. Bring back my foot to kick it again the rat shakes it’s body sending water everywhere around it. Thinking nothing of it, I complete my kick only to see the rat slide on the water to my side and bite me on my other leg. Between missing the kick, being bitten on the other leg, and the water that seems to be more like an oil slick I lose balance and fall.

I seem to be getting better at falling on my ass, due to all the practice I’ve been receiving, that I didn’t get hurt from it. That’s what I was thinking when I see the ugly face of the rat appears before my face coming in for a bite on my neck. Notch then makes his presence known again with another mana bolt to the rats face causing it to be pushed back and miss me. Scrambling into a sitting position I kick out at the thing, kicking it into the wall and stunning it allowing me to gain my feet again. Before it can regain its senses, I smash its head against the wall over and over until I hear a crack and the rat becomes still.

After taking a few deep breaths, the adrenaline starts to fade, and I begin to feel the pain in my leg. Sitting back down I pull up my pant leg and see that the bite only just broke the skin. Ignoring the small amount of pain I let my pant leg fall and check in with Notch.

“You okay buddy?” He gives me a nod and then starts to kill all the blood off of me. Shrugging at my neat freak of a partner I thank him and start trying to pry the front teeth out of the rat's mouth for my commision. After a lot of effort Notch gets my attention by tapping me on the hand.

“What is it, Notch?” I asked. He slimes on top of the head of the rat, and I start to see it dissolve into him. Disgustedly I turn my head, but I understand what he wants to do is to dissolve everything leaving the teeth behind for us to collect. It only takes a short amount of time for Notch to finish with his meal, while I keep watch for anything approaching and avoid the what I’m sure is a gruesome sight of something being dissolved. When Notch is done, I reach down and pick up the teeth putting them into the makeshift sack Nic gave me and excitedly take out my ID card to see if my progress was updated.

Nox

Spirit Level 1*

Element: N/A

Herbs: 0/30

Ores: 0/30

Water Rat fangs: 0/30

Water Rat pelts: 0/30

“What the hell… it didn’t update,” I mutter angerly to myself, “I’ll just ask Adile when we get back.”

Standing back up with Notch again on my shoulder I ask. “So, what do you think we should do wait here until you get your mana back in about two hours or head back for dinner?”

Notch shrugs and then points at me, wanting me to decide I guess… “Alright, it’s still a little early for dinner lets wait here for an hour that should get you back up to seven mp I believe…,” opening Notch and my status just to check.

Name: Nox

Spirit Level: 1

Health: 9

Mana: 5

1 mp/per hour

Skills:

Weak Mana Sense Level 1

Magic:

Mana Bolt Level 1

Partnered Monsters:

Notch (Basic Green Slime) Spirit Level: 1

Partnered Monsters Skills/Magic:

Notch:

Weak Mana Sight Level 10 Weak Mana Sense Level 10 Dissolve MAX Mana Bolt Level 5

Tamed Monster: None

Tamed Monsters Skills/Magic: NA

Name: Notch (Basic Green Slime)

Spirit Level: 1

Health: 10

Mana: 4

3 mp/per hour

Skills:

Weak Mana Sight Level 10 Weak Mana Sense Level 10 Dissolve MAX

Magic:

Mana Bolt Level 5

Seeing that I was right, I sit back down, and we wait while I snack on the last of the stuff in my sack. Once I was done eating I decided to practice Weak Mana Sense so I start meditating and notice instead of the weak mana signatures I saw while we were traveling before now they are almost blinding with how much there is and how dense it is. Seeing this I try to breathe it in and mix it with the mana I see within me. After what feels like only moments Notch taps me on the head waking me from my stupor.

“Huh, what is it Notch is something coming?” I ask looking around worriedly, but he shakes his body and puts out two tentacles and makes it look like he’s flexing two arms. It takes me a minute to understand what he means but then I check his status, and I see he is at max mana… I was out for two hours, but it only felt like a second. While closing his menu, I happen to glance at mine and see that I am too at max mana. There’s no way I was out of it for five hours is all I can think when I finally notice a system alert in the corner of my vision. Opening it up I see...

Congratulations! Through practice and patience, you have learned the skill Meditation.

Meditation: This skill allows you to gain extra mana per hour while meditating. At level one, you gain two extra every hour.

Sure enough looking closer at my status I do see a new skill, but the weird thing is I was always told I would need someone to train me at a skill or have a tamed monster to give it to me to gain a skill… how did I get this on my own? I’ll have to search the library later for an answer I don’t want to ask anyone in case this has to do with me being a Zero initially. Shaking my head to clear these thoughts I turn to Notch.

“Alright, buddy lets continue,” I said reaching down to pick him up, but he shakes and starts leading the way down the hall. “I guess you want to be ready to fight,” I say shrugging and following.

Sneaking our way forward we come to another right turn, peeking around the corner again I see a blue slime moving away from us. Knowing it probably can’t see me due to Mana Sight working in all directions, and it’s not moving to attack us I decided to try and surprise attack it. Raising my hand and taking careful aim I fire my Mana Bolt. The bolt arcs across the air, after it gets to about ten feet away, the slime must see it coming because it starts to try and dodge it, but by then it was too late. Slamming into the slime, the mana bolt seems to barely even do damage to it.

Knowing the general direction to move in the slime starts heading our way moving at a fast walking pace. Knowing I only have one more bolt’s worth of mana I decide to hold off on casting another and I run towards the slime hoping to kick it to death like I did the rat. When I get within its sight range, I see a ball of what appears to be water form in front of it the fire off at me. I don’t know if it is just built in instincts at this point but either way, I fall to the ground and just barely dodge the ball of water. Rolling over and getting back to my feet I was just in time to be hit across my front with a whip of water.

The whip slams into my chest, and I feel ribs cracking under the pressure of the spell. I fly backward and out of its sight range, probably saving my life… I don’t think I could take another of whipping like that. Knowing I’m still in danger I roll back over just in time to see Notch, who has at some point got onto the ceiling, fire off two Mana Bolts right at what I now know is a Water Slime. Both hit the first one doing minimal damage but the second that was following the first seems to have made it deeper into the stronger slime.

In retaliation, the Water Slime fires a Water Ball at him, but Notch drops from the ceiling dodging the attack. Landing he shoots off another bolt scoring another hit. Seeing my badass buddy fighting like a champ against this slime I can get back to my feet ignoring the pain and fire off my last mana bolt right as he was about to whip Notch. My bolt hits right as it brought the whip up to attack causing it to splash down harmlessly.

After my bolt hits, Notch was able to get out of its sight range, unfortunately, his own too. I see him making his way back up to the ceiling and now knowing what he is going to do I try to distract the slime by just barely coming into range. Sure enough, as soon as it sees me, it fires off another Water Ball at me that I was able to dodge easily by being prepared for it. But what did surprise me is that after it shot off its last spell, it turned around and started to try and get away.

Notch just barely got it into his sight when it ran for it. Not wanting it to get away I chased after it and lucky for me, it must be out of mana because I got into kicking range without any spells being shot at me. Running in front of it I was able to kick it towards Notch who then fired off another bolt. This seemed to have stunned the slime, so I yell to Notch, “Save your mp I’ll take care of it.” Knowing it is out of magic I confidently do my best to stomp and kick it into oblivion, while also trying not to do to much damage to the core… I remember Nic said it was worth something.

With my boots starting to dissolve, the slime loses all viscosity and falls to the ground with a splash. Reaching down I retrieve the core and then almost collapse from the pain in my chest.

“Notch, I think we should be done here for today…,” I get out between my clenched teeth. With a nod Notch climbs back onto my shoulder and we leave with no problems.