Austin was now sitting at the patio of a small café that was near one of the Crawler’s Association’s exchange locations. These were the places dotted strategically around the city where Crawlers could turn in their hard earned mana crystals in exchange for cash.

While they were waiting for Griggs to come back from the exchange, Austin and Ray were engaged in idle conversation, both still wearing full armor, and Julie was trying her hardest to inject herself into the middle of the two. Zander was seated across from them sipping tea with a bemused look on his face, silent as ever.

After about a half hour of waiting, Griggs approached where the quartet was seated and slapped five separate checks down onto the table.

“20% for everyone comes out to about $1,000 a person. You guys earned it!”

Everyone around the table grabbed their share, and made to leave.

Austin reluctantly got up to leave, but Griggs called out to him, “Hey, mate, I know you’re gonna be up to much bigger things than this little outfit, but keep us in mind if you ever need a crew.” He began laughing heartily as he clapped Austin on the back.

Austin smiled, and thanked everyone once more before leaving.

“I gotta stop at the bank to deposit the check, then head home and give this month’s rent to Mrs. Green.”

After he arrived home, Austin got to thinking,

“That 1-Star dungeon was really easy, and I leveled up even more since the beginning… Plus the fact that I didn’t have Avatar active for most of it, maybe I could try to solo clear one…”

He reached his decision, Austin was going to try and clear a 1-Star dungeon by himself.

This kind of feat wasn’t unheard of, some of the stronger 3-Star Crawlers were even known to clear 2-Star dungeons all alone in order to monopolize both experience and profit, but Austin had a clear advantage over those people. In just one dungeon, he would get the same amount of experience as someone else clearing ten of them.

“When I stop to think about it, it really is like I’m cheating. This skill is insanely efficient.”

Before he registered for another dungeon, however, Austin wanted to get his equipment in order. He had taken off the iron armor and laid it neatly out across his floor, and set his longsword alongside it.

“Champion’s Inventory.” He muttered, watching the screen pop up in front of him. He proceeded to remove the leather armor and the clothes that he had inside of it and laid them next to everything else.

Austin had always been a heavy armor kind of guy, even when he was little, playing video games he had always preferred the bulky plate stuff to the lightweight gear.

Comparing the chest plates of the two,

Battered Iron Breastplate:

Weight: Heavy, Defence +10

Torn Leather Hauberk:

Weight: Light, Defense +2

“The iron stuff sure is much heftier, but I think my strength is high enough to ignore most of that. Plus the defense is so much better, it’s not even really a contest.” He decided on the iron armor, and stowed that inside of the champion’s inventory. He then went over to his closet and picked out a pair of moveable pants, and a hoodie to go alongside the armor and the mask and placed those in the inventory as well.

He didn’t quite know why, but he was dead set on keeping his powers secret if he had to use the Avatar in public.

He then went over to his desk and opened up his laptop to the Crawler’s Association page, logged in with the information that was on his ID card, and looked at available 1-Star dungeons near his location.

He found one that hadn’t been booked yet, as there weren’t many groups clamoring for 1-Stars while there were more profitable ventures nearby, and registered his name for it under a solo raid.

The website popped up a warning message, “Are you sure you want to attempt a dungeon by yourself? The Association takes no liability if you are seriously injured.”

Austin clicked the “Yes” icon and his name popped up on the registry for the dungeon.

He had until tomorrow afternoon before he was scheduled to clear it, but he could show up at any time before that and the employees guarding it would let him in.

Since it was only 5 PM, he decided to use the rest of the funds from his first dungeon to do some much needed clothes shopping, so he packed the leather armor into his bag to sell, stowed his sword in the Champion’s Inventory, and headed to the mall.

When he arrived, Austin made a beeline for the Crawler’s section of the department store. Here there were all sorts of weapons and armor on display, most of which had some magical effect or other, and most of which were taken from the dungeon.

After the dungeons started popping up, the main source of gear for Crawlers became loot from the dungeon, but that loot only constituted around 70% of higher ranked gear out there. Some people took to smithing, and the most talented smiths figured out over time how to imbue their creations with magic attributes just like the gear found inside the dungeon.

This became a major trade, and the top crafters were able to sell their gear for hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars.

Materials also became an issue, because, of course, the best crafting materials were found inside higher ranked dungeons. Sometimes monsters dropped ores, and sometimes Crawlers would be able to mine inside cave type dungeons, but it really was true that the modern economy was all about the dungeons.

Austin approached the sales counter and plopped the set of leather armor down onto it.

The man behind the desk looked incredulous, and spoke in a voice laced with barely repressed contempt. “May I help you, sir.” He looked at Austin in his ill fitting clothes like he was a plague on society.

Austin responded meekly, “I’d-um-I’d like to sell this armor, and also buy some new plain clothes to go under my armor.”

The clerk sighed, incensed that he was being made to serve someone he thought so poorly of. “Very well,” he began chanting a spell while holding his hand over the leather armor on the counter. It was identification magic, and most merchants in the modern day that dealt with Crawlers had some access to it. Not everybody who awakened as a Conduit became a Crawler, some went into jobs like this one, where they could use their skills in a less dangerous environment.

The man finished up with his spell, and looked down his nose at Austin. “I can give you $40 for the whole set. It is very poor quality, but we may be able to recycle the materials somehow.”

Austin responded in stride, “That’s fine, I wasn’t expecting much for it anyways.”

He finished with the transaction and went to the clothes section. Austin happened upon a long, silver cloak with golden trim accents that he thought looked like the coolest piece of kit ever.

“If I wore that over my armor, with the mask nobody would be able to recognize me. Plus it looks very moveable so I don’t think it would hinder combat too much. Come to think of it, wasn’t Daniel wearing a cloak over that super shiny armor of his?”

Austin decided that he just had to have this cloak, and when he tried it on it was nearly a perfect fit. The tail fell just below his shins, the perfect height that he wouldn’t trip on it while moving, and the price was a quite reasonable $60 since it didn’t have any special effects to it.

He also bought a set of nylon underclothes to wear underneath his armor, and bought some regular street clothes like t-shirts and jeans so that he would have stuff that fit him. All in all, it was a pretty good haul.

After paying for everything, Austin went to get changed into a new set of clothes, and put the nylon gear and the cloak inside the Champion’s Inventory. He proceeded to place his old clothes in the bin, as he had no use for them anymore, and left the store to head home.

As he left the mall and began walking down the street, Austin heard a scream. Then he heard a lot more screaming.

He turned to where the sound was coming from and bolted. Austin looked at his immediate vicinity and saw too many people near him, all looking confused, so he ducked into an alley. When he was sure that nobody was watching him, he called out, “Avatar, activate!”

“Boy, I’m glad that I changed that phrase. This one is short and easy, plus it’s less embarrassing.”

After he was enveloped by the golden aura, and then his cloak and armor, he drew his sword and decided to test something.

“If all my stats are doubled right now, that means my strength is over 100…”

With that thought in his head, he broke out into a sprint at the dead end wall of the alley, and before he collided with it, he lept upwards, landing safely on a first story roof.

“That was freaking awesome!” Austin couldn’t even believe what he had just done, sure he had grown a lot stronger recently, but with his Avatar active, he felt unstoppable.

He didn’t have time to muse on this though, he jumped once more onto a second story roof adjacent to him and began running along the rooftops towards where the screams had come from.

It wasn’t long before he was on the scene. Below him in a plaza, were a group of orcs, identical to the one he fought inside of Daniel’s Dream, with one key difference. These orcs were very real, and they were about to kill a lot of people if he didn’t step in.

At the moment, two of the orcs were engaged with a Crawler that was trying to keep them back from where a woman had fallen onto the ground, but he was being pushed back quickly. The rest of the orcs were just standing in a ring, watching the fight and laughing.

The man was fighting his hardest, but he was just outmatched in the two-on-one situation. Austin had to get in there, so he jumped off the roof, cracking the pavement where he landed and drawing everyone present’s attention to his entrance, including the orcs.

Not wasting a moment, Austin dashed in and grabbed the woman off the ground before any of the orcs could react to him, and placed her at a safe distance before returning to the group of enemies.

Austin decided to deal with the two fighting the other Crawler first, and so he lept into the air once more and landed in the center of their makeshift ring.

The man looked at Austin in bewilderment, “Who-who the hell are you?”

Austin chuckled to himself behind his mask, “I guess you could call me your savior.”

Without trading any more words, the two orcs charged at Austin, completely ignoring their previous partner.

One of them lunged at him with a clumsy diagonal slash, which Austin paid no mind to as he sidestepped the orc and responded with a slash of his own.

The orc wouldn’t have even had time to react if he had been on guard, let alone the off balance position he was in at the moment. Austin’s slash separated the orc’s head from his body in a brilliant flash of steel, and not letting the momentum of the slash go to waste, Austin pirouetted, carrying forward to destroy the second orc in one fell swoop.

Level Up!

“Sword Mastery must be helping me, because I have no idea how I just did that.” Austin thought, a giddy grin spread across his face behind the mask.

With their two comrades now slain, the rest of the orcs stood dumbfounded for a second, an opportunity which Austin used to grab the other Crawler and hop back over the ring, placing him safely next to the woman.

“Keep her safe for a minute, things are about to get ugly.” Austin commanded, to which the Crawler he had just rescued gave him a slight nod.

Austin wanted to keep the orc’s attention on himself, so before they could get their bearings, he charged back to where the mob was, taking off another head in the process.

From there it devolved into a melee. Every time Austin swung his sword, another orc fell, and it seemed that their strikes couldn’t even graze him.

It was weird, but every time a blade was about to hit him, Austin could feel it. He guessed it was because his Intelligence stat was being boosted, so he was more perceptive than usual, but it was still kind of uncanny.

In the end, Austin stood alone among the corpses of 20 or so orcs, not a scratch on him, victoriously waiting for the level up messages to clear from his sight.

He then heard more shouting, and into the plazma burst several armored men, and at the head, one that Austin recognized.

The man approached where Austin stood, admiring his handiwork.

“I’m agent Adam White, with the Crawler’s Association. We got word of some monsters that escaped through a Door, and came to take care of it… But I see that we aren’t needed.”

Austin thought back, Agent White was the one who interrogated him when he first woke up from the ant incident, and if he remembered correctly, White was a 6-Star Crawler.

Even in his powered up form, White was still probably more than a match for him, which Austin confirmed with warrior’s sense.

Adam White: Level 67

Class: Martial Artist

“Oh,” Austin thought, “That’s why he’s not carrying a weapon when he was expecting a fight.”

White came even closer to Austin, “Who exactly are you, and why are you wearing a mask?”

“Uhhhh…” Austin blanched, not knowing what to do, simultaneously trying to plan his escape.

“This’ll certainly be interesting…”