A [Magic Bolt] shoots forward from my finger, striking the nearby rat soldier in the chest. The monster stumbles back, clutching its heavily-dented armor as it struggles to breathe and Adam strikes, killing it. Adam and I have spent most of the day carefully navigating our way through the hills so that I can train more, and I've reached the point where I'm about on-par with a normal magician in terms of Magic and Affinity.

By 'normal magician', I mean one who comes from a magical family and is Level 5 in their magic-based Class, which I reached a little while ago as we began making our way toward the bridge more blatantly.

As it turns out, most mages don't actually fight a whole lot in battle. Archers handle ranged enemies, warriors handle close-quarters combat. A mage will act only when their magic is needed due to the more limited nature of their magic – if they burn up all their Mana clearing out easy monsters, they might not have any for a tougher one.

Most mages will simply attack to disable, unbalance, disorient, or distract while the rest of the party actually goes for the kill. They also tend to specialize in a single type of magic, even a single spell in some cases, because it's easier to become useful as a specialist than a generalist due to the difficulty of learning and Leveling Skills.

Normally, adventurers will work together as a team to kill something stronger to earn them more Experience than fighting a bunch of weaker things that they can more easily kill. Even once the Experience is split, it's still beneficial to them.

Someone with Adam's Attribute equivalent in Classes wouldn't come to a Tier I Dungeon for a reason other than the same as Adam – to get that Bonus Experience if they haven't already. Unlike Adam, though, they would probably run it several times to do every possible route. The Experience is apparently split between the Classes active, so it's less effective for people with several Classes still earning Experience, but it still helps out some.

People will look for a less risky way to get stronger if it's available. After hunting here for hours, I can safely say that I'm probably not going to be one of those. Not because I'm planning on sticking with Adam if he'll let me, but because I actually found myself enjoying the fights where I actually had to struggle.

As few of them as there were.

"Are we going to rest so I can recover some of my Mana before going down there?" I indicate the bridge now that we've finally arrived.

The bridge is slightly-arched and probably over two hundred yards long. It spans from one side of the river to the other, and it really is packed with monsters, all of them rats.

Some of the rats stand on the short walls of the bridge, carrying bows or staffs. They're the archers and magicians who will attack us from a range while we try to battle our way across. The ones standing on the bridge itself are all rat soldiers, wearing decent armor and wielding swords, some of them even holding shields. Adam told me to only worry about them while crossing the bridge, not the ranged attackers.

On the other bank of it, the Second Avatar of the Rat God stands, waiting, and past that, a hill leading up to the forest. This boss looks just like the First Avatar of the Rat God in every way, but Adam's told me that it's significantly stronger than the first.

At the edge of the forest is a stone archway, which Adam already told me about. If we pass through it, we'll enter into the safe zone. If we don't, we'll move on to the next Stage immediately.

"Yeah," Adam answers my question about resting. "Don't worry about too much fighting on the bridge, and save some of your Mana for the fight against the avatar."

"I thought you said you could kill it immediately?" I ask.

"I can," he tells me. "This is so that you can get a few hits in on it. The better you do, the more Experience you'll get once I kill it."

"Ah," I plop myself down on the grassy hill. "You never finished telling me about the Level estimates for each Stage. Stage One is Level 0-5. What's this one?"

"The first segment of Stage Two," he tells me. "Is roughly Levels 5-8. The second segment is roughly Levels 8-10, and the third is roughly Levels 10-12. For Stage Three, the first segment is roughly Levels 12-15, the second is roughly Levels 15-18, and the third is roughly Levels 18-20."

"And these are the recommended Levels to do them?" I ask.

"In a team of about ten members, yes," he confirms. "But you can have up to fifteen total and it's entirely possible to run the entire Dungeon from start to finish with lower Levels than that if you're lucky or have a full party."

Or ridiculously powerful, like Adam is. He had to have known I would slow him down a bit when offering to take me in with him. I know it's because he's hoping to have someone with as much potential for being ridiculously powerful as me as his ally and teammate, and I don't blame him. In a way, I'm using him as well since I wouldn't be getting all of this Experience right away without him. I'm also kind of using him as a sort of tutorial guide.

Also as eye candy.

Adam keeps watch while I recover my stamina and Mana and let my legs rest. There's a little bit of blood on him here and there, but not as much as after the gauntlet we faced in the first Stage. Back there, he was just slaughtering everything in a whirlwind of destruction. Here, he's been killing them a lot more cleanly. A few times, he's created fire to burn off the blood as well, so most of it is on his pants rather than his torso.

Unlike me, he's not sweating at all. The stamina of a Deminhuman (Dragon) really is something else to be able to walk so much without losing his breath or sweating. I'm pretty sure he can sweat, though.

His tail moves from side to side a little as he watches for and stops potential attacks while I rest, sometimes only a flick at the tip, sometimes the entire tail moving from side to side. The latter happens every time he looks at me, which I'm pretty sure is a sign.

"You've been focusing on decreasing the Mana cost, right?" Adam asks after about ten minutes.

"Yeah," I answer. "That way, I can cast more of them from full."

"A good idea," he says. "You're down to 1.7 Mana per standard cast, right?"

I'm not going to ask how he knew I'd brought [Magic Bolt] up another Level through decreasing its cost. All of my effort so far has been on either decreasing its cost or quickening my casting time for it so far. Honestly, he can probably sense the Mana I'm putting into the spell.

"Yeah," I answer. "It's slightly-above that if I make it as strong as I can."

"Okay," he says. "Work on seeing if you can increase the structural integrity of the spell. Once you gain a Level from doing that, you can put more Mana into it for the power aspect. The maximum power threshold you can give it at the next Level gained through training it is more than double it currently is, and for less than double the Mana. This will happen each time you strengthen the spell's power structure. Based on how much you've worked on the spell so far, you should manage this within 5 Mana's worth of attempting it. That won't be much extra recovery time."

Nodding, I get to work on improving the spell's structural integrity. Adam's right in that I'm probably close to managing it, since I've already worked on it a little bit and haven't gained a Level for it yet.

I have a rough ability to make out the spell's structure through [Mana Sense] and [Magic Sense], and stretch them as much as I can at the moment as I pour as much Mana into the spell as I can. Focusing on the part where the spell begins to destabilize when I do, I try my best to smooth out the issues there, finding success after about a minute of trying and 3.8 Mana spent.

Skill Improved: [Magic Bolt] is now Level 6

"Done," I announce.

"Good," Adam says as he catches another arrow and snaps it with his hand. "We don't have enough time for you to recover to full judging by how frequent the attacks are right now, but you should be able to get a fair bit of the way there."

"Alright."

I massage my legs a little as we rest a bit more. Though I'm used to walking around all the time and being on my feet all day when not in school thanks to having to care for my younger siblings, there's a difference between that and this. Back on Earth, I wasn't going up and down and between hills for hours on end, dodging attacks from giant rats on top of that.

Adam's already assured me that we'll be taking the full ten-hour rest given to us in the next safe zone. That rest will be quite useful, though I know I'm going to be sore after I wake up due to the way recovery from physical exercise works.

"Is the rest always ten hours?" I ask. "In the safe zones, I mean? That seems like barely enough time to wash up, eat, and get eight hours of sleep."

"Outside of special circumstances," he says. "It's always ten hours in a Tier I Dungeon, and two hours more per Tier above that. So a Tier II would give twelve, and a Tier III would give fourteen."

"And sixteen for a Tier IV," I say.

"Correct."

"Are there Dungeons above that?" I ask.

"I know of Tier V Dungeons," he confirms. "And most of them haven't been fully-explored because of the sheer difficulty of actually completing even their first Stage and how few people are powerful enough to try. I'm hoping to become strong enough to challenge them."

"If the first four Tiers," I say. "Are based on Class Tier, what's Tier V based on, since there isn't a Tier IV Class? Or does it require being a Ranker?"

"It requires being Tier I in an Advanced Class," he answers. "Which means it's possible there are more powerful Dungeons out there, but they'd be even rarer and less-known. My grandpa used to claim he'd come across a Tier IX Dungeon, but no one ever believed him."

A Tier IX Dungeon would be beyond an Advanced Class. What's the next stage of Classes?

"Used to?" I ask instead.

"He passed away recently," Adam informs me as he slaps a [Fireball] out of the air. "We should probably head to the bridge now."

Nice subject change there, though the attacks are growing more frequent now. Enough that he'd probably have to stop protecting me in order to deal with them. I stand and follow Adam down the hill to the bridge.

Immediately, he begins firing off spells at the ranged rats and using his sword to cut down those that draw too close to us. The bridge itself is about thirty feet wide, creating space for the rat monsters to gang up on us.

If we had a bigger party, we could defend against that by having one group focus on the front and one on each side, the latter two groups also handling anything that managed to make it to the back. We don't have that here, though, and I'm not powerful enough on my own to deal with anything that would make it past Adam.

Just as with the first gauntlet, however, it doesn't really matter all that much. Adam turns into a whirlwind of death, any rat soldier that draws too close dying either by his sword or his sheer strength. [Fire Bolt]s are shot seemingly at random yet with precise aim, taking down every rat archer and mage that's close enough to attack.

Blood sprays everywhere as a result of the sheer violence and force with which Adam kills the rats, coating Adam and occasionally hitting me. Just as I start to wonder if I'm actually going to get to attack anything, a rat soldier somehow makes it past Adam and charges toward me.

Pointing at it, I fire off a [Magic Bolt] before stepping to the side, avoiding its sword while performing a palm strike that Adam taught me as we battled through the hills. My spell hits the rat soldier in the face, while my palm strike connects with the rat monster's arm. I use the moment it's disoriented from both attacks to grab its arm and point at its face again.

Another [Magic Bolt] flares, connecting from point-blank range. This one was charged up more than I could manage before Adam's advice, and it turns out that the increase is strong enough to obliterate the monster's face.

[Apprentice Wizard] Experience Acquired: +7%

Choking on the blood that quite literally sprayed into my face, I do my best to hack and spit it out.

"Fucking gross!"

Why was my mouth open, and is Adam laughing at me?

About a dozen more yards down the bridge, and another rat soldier makes it past Adam. This time, I attack before it gets too close to me and prepare a second [Magic Bolt], hitting it in the back as it passes by. The attack doesn't do all that much to it, though, probably because of its armor. I summon another [Magic Bolt] and blast the rat soldier in the face with it, gaining 8% Experience for [Apprentice Wizard].

A few more fights for me later, and I begin to notice a pattern. We're moving slowly and steadily across the bridge, with enough time for me to recover a bit of Mana between fights. However, they all seem to be at the same rate – once every dozen or so yards. That's too consistent, which suggests that Adam is actually letting them past for me to handle entirely on my own.

"Gak!" I exclaim as one of the rat soldiers manages to slash my left arm as it passes by me. "Fuck you, you dumb beast!"

I grab it by the arm and jerk it toward me, and as it attempts to bite my hand, I punch it in the face, then blast its head with a fully-charged [Magic Bolt] for good measure.

[Apprentice Wizard] Experience Acquired: +9%

The further across the bridge we go, the more Experience I earn from each. It's a slow increase, only improving every three or four fights, but I've noticed this despite how easily I'm taking out each one. Is Adam intentionally selecting ones like that, or are they just getting stronger?

My wounded left arm makes my original strategy a bit hard, as it's the one I was using to grab them with if I needed to. Fortunately, adapting to moving to the other side and using my right arm for that while shooting with my left arm only takes me a couple of fights.

However, I'm losing blood steadily in my left arm. Adam doesn't seem to have noticed it and stopping to treat it will probably be a bad idea. After another fight, I rip part of my tunic and start wrapping my arm, hoping that this is enough for now. It seems to work, and fortunately, we're nearly to the end of the bridge as well.

"Finally," I gasp as we exit the bridge, no more rat monsters attacking us. I feel really dizzy, which means I probably lost more blood than I thought. "Adam… can we… rest a few minutes?"

"It would probably be best if we just killed the avatar and then went to the safe zone to rest," he says as he turns to look at me. "The avatar will wait until we get within a certain range of it or the forest, but-"

He cuts off as he sees my unsteady state.

"Oh, shit," he steps forward. "I didn't realize you'd lost that much blood. Sit."

Adam helps me to the ground, then rips off the cloth binding my arm. A bowl appears in his hands, and he uses it to scoop water out of the river, heating it up with fire he makes. I hiss a little as he starts cleaning my wound. The cut runs across the width as a slight angle, stretching about three inches in total. It continues to steadily bleed even as he washes it.

"Hm," Adam muses. "It may have been cut with a poisoned sword. I could have sworn I only let past ones that weren't."

"So you were intentionally letting monsters past."

"Yeah," he says. "I felt you'd probably get more Experience that way."

"I reached Level 6," I confirm. "Though barely got much after that due to the increased Experience cost. The 20% from completing the zone helped, though."

"I didn't think to buy anything to counter the poison," Adam gives me an apologetic look. "I can bind it up, but-"

"Adam," I say. "I was just moving about a lot. My blood is still flowing faster as a result of that. Let me still my heart and it will probably stop bleeding so much."

He nods, then gets to work on binding it with bandages he has in his Inventory. So he has more than clothes and food in there, then?

While he works on that, I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, slowing it down as I feel my heart beating, slowing. Part of it was adrenaline, part of it was activity. I learned years ago how to calm my heart through simple meditation, though.

After finish taking care of my injury, and once I've calmed my heart, Adam gives me some food as well, just a handful of nuts and berries. The fact that someone who is part-dragon has nuts and berries in his Inventory amuses me a little, and Adam just gives me a curious look when I try not to laugh at it.

While I eat those, Adam uses fire to burn off the blood from his body. Judging by the heat I can feel as he does that, I'm certain I don't want him using that on me. I'm impressed that he's able to resist it so well with only twice as much Constitution as me. Does being part-dragon afford him an extra resistance to heat?

"Ready?" Adam asks a few minutes after I eat the snack.

"Yeah," I stand. "Let's take care of this thing, then get some proper rest."

"Want some Experience from the kill, or no?"

"Yeah," I answer. "It'll help some."

Adam nods, then rolls his shoulders a little.

"I'll keep it occupied while you hit it a few times," he tells me. "Then I'll kill it."

"Let's go."