## Chapter ten, Rules Revenge, part two

I woke up approximately 8 hours later and felt better than ever. I checked my status pages first.

Status:

Name: Green Raven

Level: 15

Coins: 1795 gold, 47 silver,

51 rusty copper.

Attributes:

Strength 12

Dexterity 10

Endurance 7

Vitality 10

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 50

Available points: 7

Health: 100/100

Stamina: 70/70

Mana: 500/500

Skills:

[Inspect item] level 2/10

[Inspect being] level 4/10

[Telekinesis] level 3

[Copy] level 1

Mana 500/500 now we’re talking I thought! For sure I’d use [Telekinesis] on the boss that was in the next room. Apparently, the boss was called Greenby. A hulk-like creature that looks like the hulk on the upper body but has spinky human legs. It has three small arrows on each hand. You need to avoid getting hit by all three, because the first hit hurts, 2nd you get nauseous and dizzy, third, you barf for three seconds. The good thing about it from our point of view was that it was rather slow to move.

“Green Raven, you’re awake,” I heard Rondellen say, “rise up gently and see how it feels.”

I did as he said, but to be honest, I felt great! I told them that and at the same time asked if we should hit the boss now?

“Yes, let's hit the boss now. When we enter the room, I want to try my skill [Focused Hit], and then we can see if you can copy it.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Let me first try the skill out here and see if I get any prompt that will help me understand how I copy a skill.”

Both Rondellen and Eonde thought that was worth trying.

I focused on [Copy]

Nothing happened, at all.

I activated all my bars.

Health bar:

100/100

Mana bar:

500/500

Stamina bar:

100/100

At least it didn’t take any mana when I tried it.

“That didn’t do squat, but it didn’t use any mana either. Let’s go with your suggestion, Rondellen.” I said to him, while we moved from the corridor we were in and into the boss room. The room was quite large, larger than the other four we’ve been in by at least half. It had a circular shape with a high ceiling. I soon located stones I probably could throw on the boss. I hadn’t really tried throwing things per se, but now when I had the mana for it, why not try it, I thought.

Greneby was sitting on a log next to a large stone in the other end of the room. It looked right at us and slowly rose when two things happened.

Greneby was one second from rising up. He was tall, over 220 cm. Suddenly, he was up in the ceiling upside down, with a confused expression on his monster face. Until he fell face first in the hard ground, Rondellens skill was quite fun to see in a action.

The second thing that happened was that a light started to blink in my vision and at the same time the word Lock in skill [Focused Hit] started to blink rapidly. So I focused on the words.

Want to lock in [Focused Hit] level 20, cost 100 mana to use, as [Copy] Y/N?

Yes

[Copy] slot 1/1

Slot 1: [Focused Hit]

“Yes!” I yelled, “it worked Rondellen, I copied your skill [Focused Hit]”.

“Great lad!” he yelled back,” Now let’s get this monster.”

Greneby meanwhile had got his bearings, stood up and looked right at me. He shot one of his arrows, and I was able to narrowly dodge it.

Now, it's my turn, I thought and used [Telekinesis]. I picked up one of the round stones I had seen earlier. I tried to throw it with my mind. The first attempt was nothing to write home about. The second attempt worked better. It hit Greneby right in his chest just as he was about to launch another of his arrows. That got me thinking, maybe if I could ‘catch’ the arrow as he shot it, and with [Telekinesis], I could shoot it back at him. When he launched the next arrow, I did just that. It was harder than I thought it would be, much harder. I barely managed to catch it, and was even less successful flinging it back. You could say that I stopped it in the air and then it dropped on the ground. Well, it was a first at least. It also confused the hell out of Greneby, I could see how he didn’t get how the arrow, that was one second, going straight for me, just dropped to the ground. The next arrow he shot I managed to catch, stop the momentum of it going forward, turn it around and then I dropped it. I looked at my bars, and thought I just had to try my copied skill too before I ran out of mana.

Health bar:

100/100

Mana bar:

320/500

Stamina bar:

100/100

I tried [Copy, slot 1] and focused on Greneby and where I wanted him to reappear which was upside down with his spinky legs sticking out of the large stone next to the log where we found him. That worked out better than I could’ve thought. The stone did not like that half a monster ‘tried’ to come inside it, so it got chopped off at the legs.

Congratulations, you have received:

29 experience points

You have defeated Greneby, a level 25 boss. Experience earned is reduced due to being in a group.

Rondellen just laughed and looked with amusement at me, “I have never thought of using my skill that way. It was really effective. How much did it cost to use for you?”

I glanced at my bars again, before answering him.

Health bar:

100/100

Mana bar:

170/500

Stamina bar:

100/100

“It cost me 150 mana to use. Kinda expensive, but since I now rock a whopping 500 mana, I can use it a few times in a fight depending on what else I do.”

I almost, almost, forgot to inspect the boss, [Inspect Being]

Dead, boss, Rules Revenge, level 25, 50 Gold, 3 Arrows of Judgment

Loot all

You have received 30 Gold, 3 Arrows of Judgment

[Inspect Item]

Arrows of Judgment, Greneby’s fabled arrow that when it hits all three arrows, the first hit hurts, 2nd you get nauseous and dizzy, third, you barf for three seconds.

“Uhm guys, I got three of Greneby’s arrows.”

Eonde answered this time, “yes, you always loot some of his arrows. Some alchemists will happily buy them from you, but other than that, well with a skill like yours, you could probably shoot them at enemies. I usually just drop them.”

“We normally stop and rest at this time, but since we did that already, my suggestion is that we go on for floor two and the first room there. What do you guys think?” Rondellen asked.

“I’m all for going forward,” I said. Eonde just gave a thumbs up and started walking to a door that held stairs inside. The stairs were long, narrow and twisty but with relatively good steps. Soon, we found ourselves up on a platform leading into, once more, a corridor. In the end of the corridor, you guessed it, was a door leading into the first room of the second floor of the dungeon called Rules Revenge. Thinking of the name got me thinking, I need to ask the guys if they knew why it was called that. The monster in this room was called Steeko. It was a creature all made of frying pans that it throws at its enemies. He is vulnerable when he takes a pan from his body until a new one slides in place.The plan from the beginning was the same as the way we handled the KingaFants, but things had changed since then. Before Eonde had the opportunity to open the door, I stopped her.

“Eonde, Rondellen, can we try something different than we planned? I was thinking that I could try to do the same thing I did to the boss on the first floor and teleport him into a wall or something?” I asked.

“I have no objections,” answered Eonde and Rondellen just shrugged and then nodded and gave me a thumbs up.

“Good,” I said with a smile and moved past Eonde and opened the door. I stepped through. The room was quite small compared to the others, and there was barely any light. When we all three were inside, at first we didn’t see Steeko anywhere. Eonde camly took out a couple of torches and lit them. She started throwing them to different spots around the room. One of them landed on top of a dark pile of something that all of a sudden started to move.

“Found it,” she said with a laugh.

I stepped in front of her and activated [Copy slot 1]. My thoughts were to teleport Steeko, like I did with the floor boss of the first floor. I saw no big rocks but maybe a wall would do the same trick. At first, it looked like it would work, but when I teleported him half inside the wall, he just disappeared. Like *poof* and nothing else happened. No notifications or anything.

“What the fuck!” I swore and looked around the room, “Where did he go? Okay, so my Imba move maybe wasn’t that all great?”

Rondellen responded first, “We need to check the whole room. Could you have teleported all of him into a wall?”

“Well, I don’t think so. We didn’t get any notification,” Eonde answered.

We all searched high and low, but there were no monsters anywhere. Shit, I thought, this is not good. We searched some more but soon realized that he was gone, at least from this room. It felt strange to just move on to the next room, but that’s what we did.

In the second room of the second floor, there were two kinds of monsters. First, Wingnuts. It was a miniature head on four legs with a gigantic mouth that eats all in its path. They attack in a pack of 20-25 at the same time and descend from the ceiling. Nothing graceful in any way. They just drop down and land on the floor when they feel enemies in the vicinity. The other monster this room contains was a Feathercrax, and if I understood Rondellen correctly, it seems to be like a Leopard with an eagle's head that can fly and attacks by throwing feathers. The feathers fly like arrows and damage its target on impact.

We entered the room carefully because the Wingnuts could drop from the ceiling at any moment. When we all had come into the room, we heard the doors from where we came close and lock.

“Huh, that was new,” was all I managed to hear until a frying pan hit me square in the head.

Damage taken:

45 HP

A quick glance at my bars:

Health bar:

55/100

Mana bar:

350/500

Stamina bar:

60/100

Time to put some more points into vitality, I thought, before I got hit again. This time it was Wingut that had decided to start nibbling on my foot.

Damage taken:

30 HP

I drew my sword and, with a swift move, it was one less Wingnut to worry about.

“Okay, guys, I need to fall back and level up for healing” I said with a hoarse voice, “only have 25 HP left.”

“Eonde, cover Green Raven while he levels up. I’ll take care of the mobs for now.” Rondellen said and pulled out another crossbow. As the situation looked now, it had not been so bad in any of the other rooms, now we felt that all of a sudden it was serious.

### Rondellen ###

While Green Raven fell back, I cursed my stupidity. When the other rooms had gone so well to solve, I had forgotten that he was a beginner and that this was his first dungeon. It was a cardinal rule to never allow a noob to take point or put them in danger. Now, I have done that twice. Thank the gods that he had saved a level up each time.

Damage taken:

45 HP

Okay, no time to focus on what I should have done better. I need to take care of this. Afterwords, we need to figure out what the fuck happened with his [Copy slot 1] skill. Now, all of a sudden, we have three different mobs to fight, I thought while I activated [Broom's helper] a skill that worked really well with sweeping away mobs like the Wingnuts. While I concentrated on killing off the ‘nuts, I saw that also Eonde had mentally beaten herself and was in the process of dodging a frying pan that came right for her. She then slid in and hit Steeko before he got the chance to get invulnerable again. I saw that Green Raven was full in the process to level up. When Steeko had thrown his last frying pan, at least for today, it was time to focus on the last enemy still standing, or in his case flying, the Feathercrax. It wasn’t really a hard monster to kill, it just needed to get a few crossbow bolts in it.

Congratulations, you have received:

172 experience points

You have defeated 20 level 15 Wingnuts, 1 level 24 Steeko and 1 level 20 Feathercrax. Experience earned is reduced due to being in a group.

At the same time as I started in on the Feathercrax, I saw a shimmering light around Green Raven, and soon thereafter he seemed to be adding some points in his stats. By the time the notification came, all the monsters were dead, he was done.

### Green Raven ###

Congratulations you have reached level 16.

You have 3 unspent points to spend on your stats. An additional 2 points for being from another world.

I felt once more how the world all of a sudden came back in color and it didn’t hurt anymore. I activated my status bars once again, apparently they disappeared when leveling up, maybe something I could fix by going through settings, but now was nor the time or the place for it.

Health bar:

100/100

Mana bar:

500/500

Stamina bar:

100/100

But I thought I’d try something new.

Points available:

12 points

I had been running with 10 in vitality for so long now. I didn't remember if it hurt to add to it, but thought that 2 points might be worth a bit of pain.

Add 2 points in vitality

Normally, this interface always came with a Y/N-question before doing anything, but this seemed to be some kind of shortcut. Straight away, I was in a world of pain, and as always as soon as it began, it was over. It kinda worked. I had forgotten when I only increased my health in this case to 120 health points, it was not replenished until I leveled up or took a health potion. Since I haven't tried any potions yet, I thought I’d wait for when I really needed one or until I got the opportunity to speak to Rondellen or Eonde about it. When I looked up, I realized that the fight was over. I saw the notification that we got as well. It seemed that some notifications you couldn’t choose when you checked them, they just appeared. I was grateful that my level-up notifications were not among them. If the blinking in the right hand corner of my view, then I had at least one more level to go.

“Okay, that did not go as planned,” Rondellen said and sighed, “I’m so sorry, Green Raven. Everything went so well, I forgot that this is your first dungeon. I wonder what the fuck happened with your skill [Copy slot 1] because I have never seen a Steeko in this room before.”

Eonde chipped in too and said, “I’m also sorry, Green Raven, same as Rondellen is saying, everything went so smoothly. I forgot that dungeons can be dangerous for noobs even if this one is considered a beginners dungeon. I’ve been thinking about what went wrong with the skill. Can it be that when you use a copied skill that the magic that controls it changes in some ways? Or what do you say, Rondellen, since it’s your skill, have you noticed any problems when using it?”

“Yes, you might be onto something here, Eonde,” Rondellen said. “I have never used the skill that much since it’s such an expensive skill to use for me. I usually don’t bother with it.”

“No need to apologize,” I said with a tired smile, “I should have known better. It seems that you are right, or I don’t know for sure, because I only used [Copy slot 1] twice, but it wouldn’t be strange if magic misbehaves when the skill is copied, or if the power of the skill somehow changes when it’s copied. Now I must admit that I’m quite beaten. Is it possible to camp here and continue tomorrow?”

They both agreed that it was a good idea to camp now and start fresh in the morning. It was with mixed feelings that I went to bed. I mean I was tired as a galley slave after crossing the Atlantic, but at the same time, I was really looking forward to the third room. Apparently, it was nothing like the others.