When Daniel woke up, he only felt pain. His right side was hurting like hell. After opening his eyes, he saw that he was bound to a makeshift stretcher that was pulled by someone. The other end was dragging on the ground. Each bump in their path sent shivers of pain through his side.

“Look, he’s woken up!” Anna noticed with a smile.

Daniel had a hard time answering, even breathing was hurting.

“How bad is it?” He asked with a groan.

“Well, John is a trained medic. If you ask me, his time in the military taught him a lot of stuff that is useful on this world. He said your right arm is shattered, your collarbone broken and a few of your ribs, too. Oh, and you have some internal bleeding. On earth you would probably have died without an emergency operation.” Anna summarized.

Daniel cursed himself that he had been that careless in the fight. As far as he knew if a bone was shattered, it would be difficult to grow back together, even with access to the best medical care.

“Don’t make a face like that. We are moving to Irondeep. It’s a dwarven mining city and Jacob told us that they have an experienced healer. She is called the bone shaper and will fix you up in no time.” Anna explained with a smile.

Great, bone shaper sounded like some kind of torture expert, Daniel thought. He kept quiet for a moment and tried to look like he shared Anna’s enthusiasm about the news.

“That sounds good, to be healed and all, but why are you so happy?” Daniel asked confused.

“There is healing magic. It’s called life magic and you gain access to it at level 25.” Anna explained.

Ok, that was really good news. Well, it probably depended on how fast it worked and how effective it was, Daniel contemplated.

“Sounds great, but what do we tell the healer about my injury. The old story, he fell down the stairs, will not be very believable. If it comes out that I was injured on the way from Crossing and the other group went missing at the same time, we have a problem.” Daniel determined.

“Yes, sure, we’ve already come up with a solution. You and Fedor were sparring and you wanted to convince him that speed is way better than strength. But, when you tried to dodge, you slipped and were hit by his mace.” Anna explained proudly.

Great, that will make him look like a moron, Daniel thought. He sighted and sank back on the stretcher. The little talk had already exhausted him. When he opened his status, he was shocked.

Life 28%

In addition he reached level 15 and got access to a new skill slot. Hopefully, he wouldn’t get some useless skill like resting was the last thing in his mind, before he went back to sleep.

“Wake up boy, I don’t treat sleeping patients.” Daniel heard from the gruff voice that woke him up again.

When he opened his eyes, he looked at a small hairy woman. She was probably the healer Anna had talked about, but she was more dressed like a butcher than a healer. She was probably 1.4 meters tall and had a thin beard. If it weren’t for her huge breasts, Daniel would have confused her with a small and ugly man. But, who knew, maybe for dwarven tastes she was a beauty.

“Why, wouldn`t it make the treatment much easier?” He asked still confused from just waking up.

“Well if the healing is painless, you won’t be careful in the future and I will have to heal you again and again. But, if it creates a lasting expression, you will take better care of yourself in the future.” She explained with a huge grin.

“Great, a sadistic healer.” Daniel murmered.

“What?” The dwarf asked.

“Nothing.”

She started to have a look at his injuries and cast some magic Daniel couldn’t identify. Then she looked back at him.

“You are one of these morons that don’t level vitality because they are so arrogant that they think they can just dodge everything? A bit of toughness is no help if you have no health to back it up.” The healer determined.

“It not like I didn’t try to train vitality, but I didn’t find a good way to do it. Letting myself getting hit just for the fun of it, doesn’t really appeal to me.” Daniel protested.

“The fact that you are injured this heavily from that mace blow, suggest that your vitality is below 20. How is that even possible? You should have leveled that as a child or when you first started to experiment with magic.” She asked.

Daniel felt like a lightning bolt hit his mind. What the healer said gave him an idea.

“Let me try something, please.” He requested and the woman only shrugged.

With that Daniel started to meditate and gather mana while his mana pool was still full. It was a lot more difficult than replenishing used mana, but he was slowly able to gather more mana in his body. The drawback was that it created pain. It felt like his body was on fire and became worse the more mana he gathered.

Life 27%

Mana 101%

Despite the pain, he grinned when he saw the result. This should train his vitality and mana cap at the same time. The only question was if he would get the skill he wanted or a pain resistance skill first.

“I have a free skill slot, would you allow me to fill it up before you start your healing? I wouldn’t want to get a random skill.” Daniel asked.

“Well, what you just did was kind of interesting. I will wait, but you’ll have to pay me 20 silver coins for every hour.” The woman said.

Daniel went back to gathering mana and after a bit, he was rewarded.

Vitality +1

Vitality +1

Vitality +1

Mana Capacity +1

He was starting to feel weaker and the pain was increasing more and more. When he looked at his status, he cursed.

Life 18%

Mana 106%

Despite of him running low on health, he decided to keep going. A few moments later, he was rewarded.

Skill created

Mana compression Novice 0%

The skill improves efficiency of gathering mana more over your limit. The higher the skill level, the easier it will become, the slower the mana will dissipate and the less you damage your body in the process.

He smiled, this was the thing he missed. But, he should probably get pain resistance at level 25.

The healer looked at him with a thoughtful expression.

“You know that you are a bit insane? Your life force is very low and you went on depleting it more just for testing? In my estimation you should be under 25% right now. Did you consider that fixing your bones might injure you some more before you get better?” The woman asked him.

Daniel thought about his actions for a moment. While he had an excuse that his mind wasn’t 100 percent there because of the injury, he really hadn’t thought much about the danger on running low on health if it meant that he would optimize his skills selection. With the level up and attribute increase notifications, improving himself felt kind of addictive.

“You might be right, my actions might have looked idiotic. On the other hand, if I had waited I might have gotten a useless skill. But, you are right that I should be more conscious of my actions related to self-improvement.” Daniel admitted and then added with a smile: “I don’t think it should be a real problem for a doctor like you that my life is at 18% right now.”

“Thanks, but nice words don’t work on me. My name is Athna by the way.” She said, but her ears getting red told a different story. Maybe, she is one of those people who have a hard time dealing with compliments, Daniel thought.

“By the way, do you know where my friends are? The ones that brought me here?” Daniel asked.

This made Athna look annoyed.

“I kicked them out. The redhead, I think her name is Anna, wouldn’t shut up. All the questions about healing magic and her good mood were intolerable.” She explained

Daniel started to laugh and then cough from pain. He had felt a bit the same when he had first woken up after losing consciousness.

“We start the healing now. While you are my only customer right now, I have more important things to do than to chat with you.” Athna decided.

After the healing was finished, Daniel decided that he would never talk to anyone about what he experienced in the 30 minutes before. He had thought of himself as a reasonably tough man, but he had cried like a baby when Athna started to mend his bones. It didn’t help that she was enjoying her work. He did became very verbally abusive to the woman that was healing him. The good news was that his life force was back at 60 percent. If hadn’t gotten his new skill, he was 100 percent sure that he would have gotten pain resistance right now.

“We are finished. You’ve hold up pretty well, but you need more exercise in cursing people. You owe me 70 silver. Oh and remember, all injuries are all different. It takes far longer to heal 10 percent of your life back that is from a broken bone than if it were from some cuts. Try to spread your injuries over your body and you’ll heal much faster.” Athma adviced him in a sagely voice.

Sure, next time I just ask the asshole not to hit my side that hard and spare some of his attacks for the rest of my body, Daniel thought.

He supressed his anger, got up, paid the silver and left the room while shaking his head. She had accused him of being insane, but she was way worse.

“Oh Daniel, you are already finished. Your arm looks good. Was the healing as awesome as I think it was?” Anna asked, just as he had closed the door. Athma’s room probably had some kind of sound protection if they didn’t hear his screams. He had a hard time holding himself back from cursing at Anna. The word he would use to describe the experience wasn’t exactly awesome.

“Yes, it was a unique experience. It was like nothing I have ever felt before.” Daniel answered ambiguously.

He looked at his friends and saw that they had reached level 15, too.

“Do you already have your new skills?” He asked interested.

“Yes, Anna shot me with her Mana Missile until I got at basic mana resistance skill. Your idea that you talked about on the way out of Crossing was good.” Fedor explained with a cheerful smile.

“I didn’t decide, yet.” Anna added.

“What about keeping your skills secret, like Jacob told us?” Daniel asked.

“Who cares, that skill is probably wide spread anyway. By the way, Jacob left. He said he needed to go back to Northhill to manage the traveler situation if problems pop up. Before he left, he told us that this was the best place to convert gold into coins and to get weapons. Oh, and we should try to find another person for the second dungeon level. Dwarves seem to have an honor code that they never break their word, otherwise they get expelled from their clan. So, if we talk about it with a dwarf and he says us he’ll keep the dungeon secret, we should be fine. John went with him, he told us that his job was done and that he wanted to start to live a quiet life with Azza now.” Fedor explained.

“Wow, John and Azza, when did that happen? I mean I saw that they were close, but I didn’t notice anything like that.” Daniel asked surprised.

“Well, maybe it is because they’ve had a similar experience and had already checked out off their life before the dungeon gave them a new one.” Anna reasoned.

Daniel looked around to see if there was anyone that might be in a distance to listen to their conversation.

“So, did we get some good stuff from our dead friends?” He asked when he saw that nobody was near.

“Their boss had a good plate armor, but it is way too small for me. I took the mace from the guy that hit you. You can take his armor. It is some kind of chainmail with extra plate protection in some places. Shouldn’t weight as much as real plate armor, but offer a lot of protection. Oh, and you should have a look at the longsword from the boss.” Fedor outlined.

“I’m taking one of the hatchets from the man John shot first. It is a lot better than mine. They were all men, so the light armor of the other three won’t fit Isabella and me. It is some kind of very tough leather. Seems pretty expensive, maybe we could sell it.” Anna suggested.

“I will just take one of the swords that dropped and the arm protectors of the man you shocked with your lightning at the start of the fight. I can feel magic inside them and they have some weird runes on them. Maybe, they are useful. Otherwise, they dropped around ten gold coins. Doesn’t seem like much for people at their level, but maybe we were just lucky to find that much wealth in the dungeon?” Isabella added.

“Could be that they were running out of money and that is why they wanted to go after a dungeon. They probably went to Irondeep to get our bearded man some gear. He probably had made a deal with them about our dungeon. What an idiot, I’m pretty sure they would’ve killed him after he showed them the location.” Fedor assessed.

“We should convert the rest of our gold and silver to coins, sell the gear and equip ourselves. I don’t really like this town. It’s much to confined. What kind of idiot builds parts of their town underground if they have more than enough space outside?” Isabella asked.

Daniel looked around. She was right, while he could see daylight above one side of the town, right now they were in what seemed like a large cave entrance. Further in, he was able to see that the cave was completely walled of. The wall was only interrupted by some gates and holes that looked a bit like barbicans in medieval castles. It seemed like this place was built purely for defense. Right now, they were behind the first wall and the cave was protecting them from above. All houses were made of stone and had tiled roofs. Either the dwarves were paranoid, or there were some real dangers outside that Daniel and his friends didn’t know about. He shrugged after deciding that while this information was interesting, it didn’t really matter because they’d leave soon anyway. He followed after the rest of his party to find a smith. Meanwhile, he spent his attribute points at regeneration and had a look at his status.

Status Daniel Krieger

Level

XP

Free Attribute Points

15

152960

0

Attributes Efficiency bonus

Strength

Agility

Vitality

Endurance

Mana Capacity

Regeneration

Mana Regeneration

Toughness

34

63

25

67

64

104

12

45

-

+30%

-

-

+35%

-

-

-

Skills

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Slot 5

Slot 6

Swordsmanship

Meditation

Self Improvement

Channeler

Mana Compression

unlocked at Level 25

Novice 59%

Novice 24%

Novice 23%

Novice 20%

Novice 0%

-

Class Skills:

Slot 1

Slot 2

Domain

unlocked at Level 20

Novice 22%

Spells

Basic:

Magic Missile

2

Air:

Windshield

Air Wave

Air Bomb

Blade Storm

Gas Recombination

12

9

16

4

0

Earth:

Earth Wall

Quicksand

0

0

Lightning:

Ark Lightning

Lightning Edge (A)

Advanced Haste (A)

Lightning Armor (A)

9

21

17

11