Garret The st in the sewer was surprisingly fresh, and the damp crumbling brick was covered with a lush carpet of moss and mushrooms. As they traced the path indicated on their map, the monsters became progressively higher and higher in level, but they were all easily dispatched, usually with a sirike of Dak’resh’s Spear Rush.

  Garret loped alongside in his Feral Puma form, not even b with stealth in such a low-level dungeon. As dungeo, this one was a big yawn.

  “Trap on the left,” Caspian called out, and Garret sidestepped to avoid it. He had to respect the dungeon for its effective pt of the traps, but against Caspian’s Trap Se was mostly worthless.

  “Excellent,” Dak’resh crowed, deliberately walking right through the trap, ughing as he ripped the roots from the ground with brute force wheried to entangle him. “Barely tickles!”

  Idiot. What the hells are we doing on a job newbies could waltz through?

  But Garret bit his tongue – provoking a fight in the middle of a job would likely get Caspian pissed off, and the st time he had do, he had had his share docked. Instead, he passed the time iing nerogressively more sophisticated insults for the Kel’darran, while watg him systematically stomp through every sirap Caspian pointed out, leaping on some of them several times to get them ter.

  “Final chamber,” Caspian announced.

  Garret rouhe er to the final sewer chamber listed on their map and stopped. Guarding the stairwell down into what the map called the ‘Forest Cavern’ and their goal, were fer Kobolds, kitted in armor and holding ons that seemed to be a cut above the rest.

  “Raid boss,” Caspian announced. “Level ten, shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

  “Bah, bloody waste of time,” Dak’resh decred, stomping his foot on the ground.

  “Ooh!” Ixora cooed, her voice dripping with sensuality and pyfulness. “I want the mage! I have him? Please, Caspy?”

  Garret shivered, having personally experienced her ‘pyfulness’.

  “Ok. Ixora on the mage, everyone else, kill the healer first and then just destroy the rest.” Caspian vanished into the shadows, and Garret did the same, sneaking silently into the chamber.

  Dak’resh did not hesitate. Hissing loudly, he blurred into motion, stabbing forward with his giant spear. There was a great crash and a cacophony of chirping arm calls from the surprised Kobolds, and Dak’resh’s spear burst out from the healer’s back, spraying blood across its panions.

  At least the lizard is good in a fight, Garret grudgingly admitted.

  Bck streamers of shadow magic sprung from Ixora’s garishly rhioned fingernails, and the Kobold mage was hers. Garret ignored her; she would py with the creature, toying with it before she mind-fyed it to death. He could already hear her cag in the background.

  He dropped out of stealth with an Ambush attack, drawing a spray of blood from the Kobold healer’s back. Even against such pos, Garret ired of the rush of bat, relishing the feel of his cws tearing the creature’s flesh and its screeches of pain. Firebolts began raining around the room striking the other Kobolds randomly as Ixora abused her pything. He dodged backward as Dak’resh wound up for his whirling strike, barely avoiding the whistling spear tip as it tashes in every Kobold around him. Sheesh, he could give more warning. It was a good thing Garret had seen the bloody lizard fight many times and had reized the skill before he got clipped.

  Raid boss or not, the fight was over quickly. Kobolds were pathetically weak enemies, barely worth the stamina to put them down. Fortunately, they were too small and low-level for a loot dispute, and Caspian just handed each of them something to sell ter while Ixora poked at her new Fire Mage with a dagger. Fuck, is she carving her initials on its arm? Garret looked areferring not to watch her drawing blood from the helpless monster.

  The passage downward was a jagged hole in the ground, lit by a remarkable glowing staircase, but his natural paranoia proved unfounded when Caspian decred that it was safe and there were no traps. Still a pushover. His initial assessment proved to be quite accurate. He shifted back – two legs were better on stairs – and gnced out into the cavern sprawled below them.

  It’s literally a forest, he thought in surprise. Many bed dead trunks rose from the floor, immense pilrs that seemed to be holding up the rock overhead. However, even though it was underground, there were living trees dotted amongst them, growing everywhere he looked. Everything was lit by tless green olden lights, some of which darted about iient. In the distance, his sharp vision picked out a group of people gathered around a glowing stone.

  “I see the shrine,” Garret said – aled between them and their mark was a rge ke glowing with soft blue magic.

  In spite of himself, he stopped and stared, until Dak’resh poked him with his spear.

  “Piss off,” he snapped, ahat he had been caught distracted, and fihe dest.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Caspian said. “Don’t give them a ce to prepare.”

  “Kill everything,” Ixora cooed.

  Dak’resh just grunted and broke into a sprint.

  Garret dropped into stealth and stretched his body into a fast-loping run, using a small trickle of his stamina to keep up with the others. He ignored Dak’resh and the whirling spear that took care of the Timber Wolves as they ran, or the firebolts and mind fys from Ixora to take out the bats diving from above, and instead, he identified the curious ke as they passed.

  Mana-Purified Water

  Holy shit!

  Garret boggled at the sight, barely able to tain his surprise. A whole fug ke of the stuff! He was suddenly eager to be doh this job and fill up everything he had at the ke on the way out. There was more than enough to set him up for life – vastly more than this job would pay.

  “Hey boys,” Ixora’s sultry voiterrupted his visions of retirement and a wealthy life. “We’re here.”

  Dak’resh charged the group surrounding the shrine, and Garret pursued ih, his first target already picked out.

  Nathaniel Sunstrider

  Nathaniel appeared in a crumbling brick tunnel, his feet h several inches above the water in a slow-flowing el. Thick green moss covered the damp ground, only allowing the a brick to peek through in occasional scuff marks and scars that appeared to be the slowly fading signs of battle.

  A green-scaled Kobold chirped loudly, drawing a bone sword – and a pair of friends from around the er.

  None of them were strong enough to even touch him, but he still summoned his book of prepared spells and paged through it, seleg Greater Shroud. With an infusion of his are-affinity mana, he activated the inscribed runes, and the page disied into tiny purple sparks. He grimaced at the cost and the time it would take to remake that spell, but it was the best cealment spell that he had ever entered in all his turies of study. His body shimmered, being translut even to his own eyes and he khat nothing would be able to detect him.

  Three Kobolds abruptly stopped, yipping in fusion and searg the tunnel.

  A squeal of iron across stone drew Nathaniel’s attention to a side passage filled with broken furniture, offcuts, and rotting trash. Swarming down a rusted iron dder were four people with grim looks on their faces.

  Adventurers? He studied them for a moment. This was a dungeon, and a delve would be expected, but something seemed off. For ohing, they were all above level fifty and there were only four in the group, not to mention the apparent position of their csses. Meraries, he cluded. He guessed the Druid shifting into a Feral Puma form might be able to fill the role of a healer, but this was far from the typical strategy for the Adventurers Guild.

  The moment the group entered the Kobolds, the Kel’darran spearman charged, impaling the first, and cutting dowher two in a fsh.

  Nathaniel sighed, sending his senses ranging outward – and, downward. There. He teleported again; this time, he appeared floating in the middle of a vast underground cavern. Trees sprouted among giant bed pilrs, but the first thiiced was a sea of thousands of are-affinity mushrooms, casting a golden radiant gloushed back the darkness.

  So, Lyeneru was right.

  The domain ectacur – denser dowhan it had been in the sewer – an unbelievably subtle and plex structure of powerful nature mana, woven together with the golden strands of the unfamiliar are mana to form a tapestry that pulsed with vibrand energy. It sparkled. Somewhere in the distance, a t pilr of nature mana beed to him through the intervening rock beyond the cavern. But it was to the opposite side that his eyes were drawn.

  There, led in a small grove of trees and mushrooms stood a Great Shrine. All about, Nathaniel sehe remnants of an inprehensibly powerful are spell that must have beeohere. Mana traces and glowing golden shards bzed with dying energy embedded into the rod dirt, mostly covered now by the moss and mushrooms that grew vibrant, feeding off the mana. When he gnced up, he could clearly see that same mana residue bsted into the rocky cavern roof hundreds of feet above.

  What kind of spell could do that?

  Several figures sat beside the shrine, watg while three others battled a dungeon boss, but Nathaniel’s eyes were drawn, not to the two most powerful auras, but to the smallest figure, perched on a disk of the very same golden magic with her legs dangling over the edge.

  That must be her.

  Mage [A] – Fae – level 51 (Are / Nature)

  I could just kill her from Greater Shroud, and she would never know I was there. But then, the phenomenon that was her domain would unravel. It was abundantly clear from the mana flowing through the creature that she was the dungeon. The very structure of the domain emanated directly from her and flowed through her like it beloo her.

  No, the dungeon wait. I must study this first, he thought, pulling out Elowynn’s magical tome from where he had tucked it under his robe. He floated past the figures watg the fight i on the shriself, and the remnants of magic all around it. To his surprise, quite a few of the people sitting around and spectating, cheering the fighters on, were all level one, and many of them had surprisingly powerful mana affinities.

  Is that Vivian Ross? But he was suddenly distracted by the powerful pulse of magi the weathered old man beside her, and he reized an Elder of the Ahn Khen.

  What is this? Rezan Jin? What is he doing here?

  Yes, he would stay his hand for now. He bent dolucked out a shard of golden magid immediately sulted the book held in his other hand to try and uhe exquisite structure of the spell fragment. Shogly, it eluded his prehension – all that was revealed by his vaunted perception skills auries of study was that this small fragment was a – far beyond his years. How it still held potency after so long was a mystery he would dearly love to unravel. What couldn’t I achieve with something like this? He slipped the shard into his pocket, not b to try to use his ste entment.

  He ighe banging of stone and the brilliant fsh and thunder of lightning magi the background, choosing to examihe shri. It, too, was an enigma – far more advahan any level fifty-one dungeon had any right to be. His schorly side yearo study it – he had not had such a shrine avaible when he had created the syies that had led to the Css Renaissance across the kingdoms. What is this? An attu option?

  When I kill her, I should bind this shrine. Even if it took decades of hard work to refill su enormous mana reservoir, it would still be worth it. Then those Trolls won’t have the monopoly. An alternative to the Aman Rak shrine would catapult the Elves to unheard-of heights of power. In a few short decades, he could unlock dozens of potent css evolutions, seleg among the most powerful who remaiuck at the threshold of the sed tier. Not to mention the unpreted opportunity to study su artifad us secrets – something those arrogant Trolls had never allowed.

  He goward the Fae, but immediately backed up as he saw her approag. His Greater Shroud was good, but it didn’t make him incorporeal. Stumbling along behind her followed several rather beaten-up cssless people.

  Are they dug a Css Adva ceremony? Typically ceremonies were rather mundane affairs, ducted with the syic shrines he had painstakingly crafted aowed on the Kingdoms. The only time dungeon shrines were used was when the dungeon itself was defeated and the shrine became temporarily avaible for use – a strategy only used by those most desperate to advance beyond level one hundred without risking a Natural Path evolution.

  And then, without fahe dungeon activated her shrine. Dazzled by the plexity of the formations, Nathaniel could only stare as the immense power of the artifact ed the very mana around it. Again and again, she activated it, and each time one of the five initiates earned a mana affinity and then a css. Nathaniel suddenly gnced back at the crowd, recalling all the level-one spectators with affinities. Did she do… all of them? At once?

  Suddenly the Fae looked directly at him and spoke.

  “Malika, something is here!”

  Aliandra

  Your Forest Guardian has beeed.

  Ali felt a tiny pang of disappoi when her Forest Guardian finally died, but then immediately felt guilty about it. After all, Malika had been part of the training fight, and she didn’t want to actally hurt her friend.

  “Good boss,” Mato said, nodding his approval.

  “Thanks,” Ali said. She had tried to emute the stro bination of minions she had faced when she created it, and for the enormous cost of more than two thousand mana, she had hoped she would have a strong defender. But it had surpassed even her most optimistic hopes, fighting the three powerful Ahn Khen fighters to a standstill for over three-quarters of an hour. It’s very strong, she thought – and that had been with Malika already knowing the surprises beforehand. “It’s probably a bit weak against ratackers, though,” Ali observed, sidering the incredible Lightning Javelin attacks that Ha had unleashed.

  “Yes,” Mato said. “But the bats seem to help with that.”

  Suddenly something prickled in Ali’s senses – nothing was seen, just arigle along the back of her ned down her arms. The sense of powerful mana flowing nearby. Quickly, she focused on her nearby Luminous Slime, trying to catch a glimpse of what it might be – the fleeting feeling of a nearby heartbeat. But it was gone before she could pinpoint anything unusual. Did I imagi?

  Ali quickly cycled through the perceptions of her nearby bats and wolves, but she was uo find anything out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing more than the novices excitedly discussing the battle they had just witnessed or pying with their brand-new skills.

  She turo the bedraggled and tired members of the st group to return from their trial. It looked like they had had a rough time.

  “e o’s get you guys your csses,” Ali said, gesturing them toward the shrine, her thoughts shifting to excited anticipation at what they might unlock. Despite her worries yesterday, her versation with Lira had really cleared up the muddled fusion in her heart, and today she had beeed, even eager to see what csses everyone would get. Many of the adventurers had already gained csses with enormous potential and the entire event had already been a great success. Being more open about who she was and stepping a little more into the public eye would be fraught with challenges, but she had a strong boss now, and she was still growing.

  Ali expihe shrio them as she led them up to the giant stoifact. “Who wants to go first?”

  “I’m ready.”

  The Gnome was the first one in their group to step forward, and Ali instantly reized Donel Novaspark’s daughter. Brena. She was the spitting image of her mother, but perhaps not quite as fed and tempered yet. Something irial had spooked her though, and her mood had lost some of the edge Ali had seen when she had first led them down through the sewers.

  “Here you go,” Ali said, smiling at the downcast but determined Gnome. As Brena unlocked her lightning affinity in a spectacur dispy of magical energy, Ali felt the same prickle in the back of her mind a sed time.

  There! Someone, or something, was watg from nearby.

  She focused on all the minions in the area simultaneously, feeling the flood of sensory input, but it felt like trying to pin down one of Naia’s Stinging Jellies – transparent ier. Invisible, felt by the fai brush on the skin before vanishing once again.

  What is that?

  Again, she was uo find it when she searched, but now she was alerted to the fact that something strange was happening nearby. Is it just the number of people? An effect of the mana? But she knew somehow that was not it, and she kept her sensory e to all her monsters while she worked her way through the remaining applits. All of them unlocked impressive csses, but she felt a little too distracted to truly enjoy the experieo the fullest.

  Your Kobold Warrior has beeed.

  What? That’s not… It happened moments after the st girl, Sabri, had finished choosing her extraordinary soul magik css, and the shrine’s energy had begun to dim. Ali flipped her awareness up into the sewer, but most of her monsters were already dead, and by the time she had eyes in the Kobold chambers, it was empty of everything except three corpses of her Kobolds. Even her domain respawn recharges firmed that both her bosses were dead and had almost six hours remaining before they were respawned.

  “Malika, something is here!”

  Malika was on her feet and instantly alert the moment she spoke, and Mato too, a fra of a sed ter.

  “Where?”

  “I’ve been sensing something shrouded nearby, and just now something killed my Kobold warrior boss. I ’t see them.”

  “I’ll get Rezan and Vivian to help look,” Malika said, sprinting off to where they stood among the novices, answering css-reted questions.

  “I’ll look too,” Mato said, immediately pnting himself on the spot and growing into his Tree Form.

  Ali darted through the senses of her minions, pulsing the echolocation of her bats, and drawing several Timber Wolves in closer to see if she could catch the st of the intruder.

  A sudden flurry of activity broke out when Mato’s roots erupted from the grouhe shrine, and an explosion of violet are energy tore them to shreds. Instantly, Rezan and Vivian rushed toward the disturbance, but Ali still could not perceive it. Even the pulse of magic had been far too quick for her hasted reas to identify it.

  She sed everywhere, ranging wider with all the se her disposal, and that was the only reason she found the sed group of intruders. The rge reptilian form of a Kel’darran Spear Warrior, and a priest of some kind, trolling the Kobold Fire Mage with a leash of dark shadow magic ed around its neck. They approached at high speed, rushing through the forest on a collision course with the group of worried level-one bat csses. her of them looked friendly, with spells and ons held at the ready ao attack. The pulse of a swooping Giant Bat picked up two additional intruders, both ih.

  They’re going to be killed! Ali had no idea why, but the intruders’ i was abundantly clear. They charged for the newly initiated with hard expressions fixed on their faces. Rezan and the group of high-level csses hunting for the elusive shrouded figure were too far away to reach the hreat in the seds that remaihe only other person who noticed the intruders was the hesitant little Ahn Khen girl, Sabri. She readied her scored bone shield with a grim expression on her face.

  Good instincts, Ali thought, but they would need much more than a level one warrior with a shield. She used her Are Recall and stopped time.

  It was only the vaguest notion of a pn, and Ali had absolutely no idea if it would work. She froze, mentally as well as physically, as her powerful spell took hold. The entire Grove darkened and faded to gray, and she could see every single person frozen. The ndscape flickered to an earlier moment in time, briefly showing ay Grove, before flickering back to the present. It was not the first time Ali paused to wonder what it might mean.

  Out on the moss, near Vivian and Rezan, Ali beheld the stra disturbance she had ever seen. It was as if a gray, glowing cloud hovered above the ground taking a vaguely humanoid form. Streaming from it were long unduting ribbons of midnight bck, attached to the figure with mprey-like barbs and hooks. The… tentacles… writhed slowly – uling movement in the frozen ndscape, as they trailed away from their anchor into the distance.

  Ali would have shivered in fear at the sight, but her body was uo move. What the thing was, she had no idea, but she was certain it was what had been prig at her senses all this time. She almost Identified it automatically but caught herself before she wasted her Are Recall on something so trivial.

  Whie? With two sets of intruders on opposite sides, she had to decide. The apparition was terrifying, but… Vivian and Rezan take care of themselves. The novices had no ce against fh-level attackers bent on murder.

  I just hope this works. Are Recall explicitly said it ignored recharge timers, so she called up her Domain Mastery and triggered her Domain Respawn, trying tet her Forest Guardian. For a sed, she was certain it wasn’t going to work, but then time restarted with a lurch. Immediately, she pulsed her mana into a domain-enhanced barrier sphere around the shrouded figure she had seen irange gray vision moments before.

  An immense quake of mana surged through her entire domain. Every single domain-powered minion respawned instantly. The retly defeated Forest Guardian, and all its minions, suddenly appeared right in front of the crowd of novices. The little Ahn Khen defender yelped in surprise. Ali’s Kobold Warrior boss respawned. Every defeated monster in the sewer respawned, and even several goblins down by the Emberfe Mines reappeared. The force of the mana surge staggered her, but she held her focus with an iron grip.

  “Protect them,” she anded her Guardian, sending her i firmly through her e. But her boss was just a little too far away. The Kel’darran leveled his spear, and Sabri raised her bone buckler, stepping forward to protect her panions. There was a rush and a loud crack as the Kel’darran blurred, appearing before Sabri, t above her with his spear pierg through the shield, leather armor, and her chest, emerging from her back with a spray of crimson blood.

  The Guardian roared and charged, making the ground bud shake with the weight of its stamina-empowered stride. The Kel’darran warrior ripped his spear out of his victim’s chest, tossing her aside and turo meet it, skillfully brag the spear against the ground, impaling it through the Guardian’s thick chest ptes of bark armor using the momentum of its own charge against it. But the Guardian did not falter. Roots, thick brambles, and thorny branches burst forth from the grouangliwining, and crushing.

  Ali gasped in horror at the sight of the girl flung from the warrior’s spear like discarded trash, but Sabri rolled to her feet, coughing up blood and gasping in surprise. Ali gnced sideways to find blood dripping from a great sympathetic hole in Mato’s trunk, already slowly growing closed, and a palpable relief flooded through her as she realized Mato had caught the damage. Thanks, Mato. Incredible.

  The Forest Guardian roared, and the Kel’darran roared bad, as they cshed, the strange priestess made the Kobold mage shoot firebolts at it. Bats screeched, swooping in from nowhere while an explosion of petals filled the air. Novices scattered, screaming and panig. The two stealthed intruders revealed themselves with powerful ambush attacks, but the Forest Guardian’s enormous health pool barely budged.

  “Dreamclouds,” Ali said, but the Spore Spreaders were already growing their rapidly spreading hyphae down into the moss-covered dirt. Tiny glowing purple mushrooms sprang up from the ground, unheeded by the attackers, quickly maturing uhe powerful nature-affinity magic of growth and vitality, and suddenly all of them exploded simultaneously with an audible cascade of popping. A vast cloud of spores filled the space betweeals.

  The priest colpsed, releasing her shadowy leash on the Kobold mage, followed by the druid shifting back from his puma shape to human as he fell unscious. The assassin colpsed uhe soporific effects of the Dreamushrooms , but the Kel’darran warrior staggered, ging tenaciously to sciousness. Two Giant Bats swooped down to dive-bomb the spear-wielder with sonic attacks, and he dropped to the ground with a thud, visible to her only via echolocation and the strange senses of her slime.

  The Forest Guardian’s roar caused the pial cloud to quiver and vibrate. Heavy stomps and crashes shook the ground, punctuated by the distinct sounds of bones crag. A few more stomps and the crag sounds were repced by sii spts, and then a series of notifications chimes sounded.

  Whoops, did I… oh. Ali shivered reflexively. Her deliberate hesitation had sealed their fate.

  Silence desded as the petals slowly drifted to the ground, revealing the giant Forest Guardian with blood stains up to its knees walking calmly among fuely humanoid, petal-covered lumps on the ground.

  Your Forest Guardian has defeated Feral Druid – Human – level 54 (Nature)Your Forest Guardian has defeated Spear Warrior – Kel’darran – level 56Your Forest Guardian has defeated Shadow Priest – Human – level 52 (Shadow)Your Forest Guardian has defeated Assassin – Human – level 57

  Are Recall has reached level 8.Martial Insight has reached level 31.Domain Mastery has reached level 23.

  Something stirred within the empty sphere of barrier magic Ali had created, slowly resolving into a tall Elf with a robe covered in ruhat pulsed with potent mana. He made an idly dismissive wave with one hand and caused a flicker of a plex violet are magic to appear. Ali’s Sage of Learning drew heavily from her mana pool, trying to memorize it, st it, struggling to uhe forms and floating runes, and suddenly he released it and her barrier popped into thousands of tiny golden sparks that drifted away, fading as they lost form and substance.

  Archmage – Sun Elf – level ??? (Are)

  “Well, that was impressive,” he said, appuding softly.

  But Ali only had eyes for the book he was holding open in his hand. A book she reized instantly.

  “Nathaniel Sunstrider,” Vivian said, clearly reizing the Elf. “To what do we owe this honor?”

  “I am following up on a report from Lyeneru Silverleaf about a strange dungeon she found below Myrin’s Keep,” he said. “Elder,” he ined his head toward Rezan.

  Although Ali refused to lower her guard before the strange Elf, the body nguage of both Rezan and Vivian clearly indicated that they reized him and didn’t sider him to be a threat. While the three of them talked, Ali picked her way through the battlefield and the gruesome lumps strewn around it, grateful that Malika chose to join her as she set about destrug the dead and dismembered.

  Imprint: Human pleted.

  Ali froze, a sudden revulsion rising like bile from her gut.

  Human.

  Has it been that many? The implications were clear – she had killed and destructed enough people that her Grimoire was allowio add humans to her repertoire. Dungeons kill people. Part of the disgust that gripped her was the certain knowledge that the imprint would be extremely valuable and powerful – the sapient races had the broadest access to csses and affinities. Any duhat could, would definitely summon humans to defend their domains.

  “You doing ok, Ali?” Malika looked up from her gory work of s the gear.

  “I just got the human imprint. It’s the smart choice. I know I should take it, but I just ’t…” She wao throw up, run, or scream. She felt disgusting.

  “You don’t have to take it if it makes you unfortable,” Malika said. “I would feel weirded out too.”

  Right in the midst of her discussion, she was interrupted. “You must be Aliandra.”

  The mellifluous, cultured voice spoke on with only the slightest hint of his native Elvish at, and Ali gnced up to find the Sun Elf, Nathaniel Sunstrider, approag with Rezan and Vivian in tow.

  “I am,” she said, her tone guarded, tearihoughts away from her dilemma. Somehow, she couldn’t shake the image of the shadowy barbs and hooks of an unknown sinister-looking magic that had seemed to be feeding on his image when she saw him during her Are Recall spell.

  “I am curious how you were able to pierce my Greater Shroud,” Nathaniel said.

  “My ooze felt your heartbeat,” Ali said. It was teically true, but she wasn’t ready to trust him enough to expin her magid how she’d really found him.

  “This age’s greatest Archmage, id low by the lowliest of monsters.”

  Ali offered a smile at his attempted humor, but with everything that had just happened, she had to force it. At least she was relieved to see Sabri chatting away with Mato, amazingly alive and showing off a fresh hole through the ter of her leather armor to her panions.

  “I would like to discuss your dungeon with you if you have the time,” Nathaniel said.

  Ugh. Not now. “Holy, I’m feeling terrible. I was just forced to kill four people who were no doubt hired to assassinate me and kill all these novices, for what reason I have no clue,” Ali said, earning several surprised looks from Vivian, Rezan, and the three-mark Elf. She knew he was important and all, especially being an Archmage, but she simply couldn’t face it today. She still struggled to keep her roiling stomader trol. “ you e baorrow?”

  “Very well,” Nathaniel said, clearly disappointed, but too polite to make anything of it. “Vivian, would you like my services to teleport everyone back up to town?”

  “That would be great,” she answered.

  Ali carefully studied the extraordinarily intricate formation of are magic as Nathaniel weaved his teleportation spell, feeling her Sage of Learning once again draining her mana rapidly.

  Ali waited till his spell neared pletion, and then said, “When you e, please bring my mother’s book with you.”

  “Your… mother?” He gnced down at the book he was still holding in his hand, and his eyes snapped back to her, registering shod surprise as he and everyone visiting for the css adva vanished.

  She smiled grimly at the emptiness, then slowly wrung out her trembling hands. This did not bode well. Of all the shocks she had received today, seeing her mother’s book was easily the most poignant, the most uling. How dare he – how dare he even hold it so casually?

  Malika

  Malika felt the ued lurch of teleportation in her gut and realized that Nathaniel Sunstrider had literally meant everybody except Ali. She appeared in the guild hall, somewhat stunned by the raw power of the archmage, able to teleport the entire group on a whim – and not even needing to make use of the locus.

  She ighe elf, leaving him to his discussion about aodation with Vivian Ross, and sat herself down beside Basir and Ha. Holy, after the battle of attrition in which they had eked out a victainst Ali’s ridiculous Forest Guardian, followed by the chaos of the assassins and Nathaniel Sunstrider showing up, she was quite worn out.

  “gratutions, you all earned a css level,” Rezan said, sitting down on the floor o them with the natural cross-legged posture of a lifetime of his personal meditation style.

  Surprised, Malika g her notifications, and sure enough, she had reached level forty-two. “Only ohough,” she said, frowning a little. It had been three of them against a raid boss, and although they were a little higher in level than it was, she, at least, was not that much higher.

  “It is extraordinary to gain any css levels from a sparring match,” Rezan answered.

  “Sparring?” It certainly hadn’t felt like a friendly spar in the ring. Although she had earned many broken bones in her spars against Basir and his frustrating rocks.

  “Supervised fights don’t typically earn css experiehe Elder expined. “You never leveled up from sparring with Basir and Ha. They would not have killed you even if you were pletely incapacitated.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Malika said. Ali had been quite focused on the fight most of the time, and she would never have let her monster kill any of them. And Rezan and Vivian too. Perhaps there had been real risk while the others had been distracted, and therefore the reaso even the single level.

  “I got some good skills growth,” she said, studying the notifications.

  “Me too,” Basir said, a big smile on his face.

  Soul Monk has reached level 42.+10 attribute points.

  Soul Strike has reached level 25.Healing Mantra has reached level 26 (+2).Diviep has reached level 24.Sed Wind has reached level 12.Crity has reached level 11.Soul Sight has reached level 7.

  Recalling Rezan’s advice about her attributes, she split her points carefully, putting two of them into raisirength. Two more each went to endurand wisdom, leaving three for dexterity and one for perception. Hopefully, she would have enough power to get through Basir’s armor soon.

  “That is good,” Rezan said, “but it was not the true purpose of the match.”

  She sidered his words and all the teag he had offered duriay in Kezda before asking, “Was it for training teamwork?”

  “So, you were listening,” he said with a grin. “The purpose of sparring with your allies is not just to practice your skills. How easy was it to team up with Basir and Ha?”

  “Effortless,” she said, realizing they hadn’t needed a whole lot of preparation for the challenging battle. “I already knew what they could do, mostly.”

  What they would do, she corrected. She uood their bat styles and how they reacted well enough to form a cohesive team with vastly less preparation time than she would have expected.

  “Exactly,” Rezan smiled. “Whenever you have the opportunity, spar together to enhance your uanding of teamwork and cooperation. You never know when you might .”

  She nodded slowly. “I value this lesson, Elder.”

  It had been a good lesson, delivered with Rezan’s particur style of teag, hrowing her in the deep end and only expining afterward. As Malika pted what she had learned about teamwork, she smiled to see Sabri and Brena chattiedly as they walked back from Mieriel’s desk, both wearing a copper version of what looked remarkably like her own guild ring. I’m gd everyone made it.

  Rezan

  Rezan would never have admitted it to anyone, but he had beeremely anxious waiting for the applits to return from their trial. More anxious than he remembered being for anything i memory, and as more and more of the didates had trickled in, aill hadn’t seen Sabri, he had almost given in and searched for her with his sight. However, such supervision would have most likely interfered with their ability to earn experience properly and could have ively affected their trial and css sele. Or worse, forced them to e for much longer.

  His sed challenge came when Sabri was struggling to make her css choice. Such a crucial decision in anyone’s life and he had had to ruthlessly suppress the urge to advise her. With her difficult life, she would have chosen whatever he reended, not because it was the right choice, but because he was the Elder. It was a harsh way to teach the lesson, but if she came out of it with more self-assurance for her own deaking, it would be worth it.

  He noticed the new ring she was wearing as she said goodbye to her new friend and headed over to join them. So, she has made another choice. Sabri would not be returning home with him when he left.

  Her mother will be sad, he thought. But this guild was a good pce with a lot of promising people, and it would be the perfeviro for Sabri to grow, both in level and in the depth of her iions with others. Teamwork was such a great tutor.

  Malika would have been his pick for a mentorship role with her levelheadedness, but he hadn’t missed how quickly Sabri had bonded with the unruly Beastkin boy who had saved her life from the Kel’darran spear. Nor how she had ected with the Gnomish lightning mage – it seemed she would have friends when he left.

  And she chose a powerful css. His right fist ched deliberately by his side. Our people need more like her. Many more. He gnced around the guild hall, w if this pce – and Aliandra’s generosity – may be the catalyst of a new hope for his people.

  He gnced up as she approached, pretending to have just noticed her, but he had been studying her vastly more powerful aura through his sight.

  She will be ok. Perhaps such thoughts were more to reassure himself than for her.

  “Elder Rezan,” she begaantly, waiting for him to aowledge her before she tinued. “Would you please give this to my mother?” led in the palm of her outstretched hand he saw a couple of dull copper pieces and a small gleaming silver , and he knew in an instant that she had sold everything she had earned from their bat trial to send money home.

  “Sabri, you have a great heart looking out for your mother. But I ot do this for you.” Her smile at his pliment faded as he finished.

  “I… why?”

  “How I tell your mother that you gave everything to her when you will be fighting monsters without any equipment to protect you? Your mother loves you and she will want you to be safe. You shared your css with me – spend that money on the best armor and shield you afford, and I will tell your mother that you are being careful.”

  “But she will starve without me to help on the fields.” She was clearly feeling the anguish of this decision.

  “She will strangle me if I don’t teach you how to be safe,” Rezan said, hiding his amusement. “How about this; I will take care of your mother for now, but you must promise me you will only send money bae if you don’t to protect yourself from the monsters. Ok?”

  Sabri looked at him with a frown on her brow, but eventually nodded and closed her fingers around the pitifully small of s. The girl and her mother were cut from the same cloth – both would starve themselves just to see the other with something to eat.

  “Sabri, I want you to visit Kezda when you earn a bloodline skill. Don’t be like Malika here a go so te that it breaks.” Malika, sitting nearby, had the decy to look embarrassed. “And please let Malika or the Guildmaster know if you need help.”

  Sabri looked at Malika and they both nodded.

  “Sabri, before I go, I would like to offer you my mentorship.” He had the capacity for only one more protégé, and such things usually took a lot of thought and sideration – a process of months or even years. But life sometimes had a way of hurrying you along – first with Malika and now with Sabri. He had watched her grow up from a serious little toddler to the adult that stood before him wearing a shocked expression. He khe dedication aermination she had for learning and the passion with which she approached the martial arts. But it was in that moment when she had readied her buckler and stepped in front of her new friends to defend them, fag down the level fifty-six Kel’darran spearman without a hope of winning that all Rezan’s doubt had vanished.

  He expected her to immediately accept, given that he was the Elder, but to his surprise, and no small amount of pride, she appeared to give his words serious sideration.

  “I know I’m not the perfect fit for your new css, I am not a tank. But we share a soul magic affinity and I think my mana help you grow," he expined.

  “I would be honored, Elder,” she said finally, giving him a bow.

  He reached out and pced his palm above her heart and released his mana – certainly a lot gehis time than with Malika.

  Your patronage has been accepted.Sabri added as a Protégé.Protégé – SabriCss: Soul Deferaits: Soul, Defense, Bloodline, Melee, Strength, Wisdom, Endurance, Mastery.Your experience, mana, and traits will influehe experience gain of your protégé. Experiehed back to you via the mentorship tithe may influence your own traits and growth.Entment – Tithe

  Reza relief and pride mingling within him. At least with this, he was certain she had the best opportunities he could create for her, and the rest would be up to her.

  “Ok, I will e back every now and then to che you, and I’ll watch yrowth with my sight.”

  “Thank you, Elder,” Sabri replied in Ahn Khen, using the traditional farewell blessing and a simple bow.

  “Be strong,” Rezan answered, using the same nguage and g his palms together in front of his chest as he returhe bow.

  Vivian Ross

  Vivian rubbed her temples and sat down beside Mieriel.

  What a day. Of all things, she had not expected to be hosting the highly accimed Archmage and Guildmaster of the legendary Elven Pathfinders at her fledgling guild. Nathaniel Sunstrider had a presehat defied expnation – not eveories did him justice.

  She had just finished indug all the newly cssed members as novices in the guild, giving them their rings and expining their new roles and the facilities and training avaible to them. She would not admit just how worried she had been about how it would all go, assuming the results from the first time must have been atypical. However, Aliandra’s shrine had once again unlocked an abundanagical affinities and powerful css choices for every single applit – eveisans and crafters would grow into powerhouses in their chosen fields. It was unreal. The typical proportion of magical affinities aed csses was vastly lower, and this was the sed time Aliandra’s shrine had shattered her expectations.

  Perhaps there’s something to that old tale that dungeon mana causes magical affio arise in people? It was a s thought.

  Furthermore, of the fifteen bat applits, ten had chosen to join the guild immediately – including all the didates she had enrolled in preparatory bat training under Malika. The most surprising being the girl Rezan had brought, Sabri. And, of course, Brena Novaspark. Vivian had no idea how the girl was going to break that o her mother, but that was not her problem. Even the css distribution was close to ideal; she had been able to break the novices into two teams of five, both groups having a tank and a healer.

  There was suddenly a lot to do! She had to out the dorm room below – at least three of the novices had o stay.

  Hopefully, I talk Aliandra and her friends into a more active mentorship role… She had seen how Sabri looked to Malika and Mato for advice, and it had immediately givehe idea of using the more advanced guild members to help the new novices grow. She was sure Aiden and Havok would help too, and perhaps Teagan for the healers, especially now that they were closing in on level twenty.

  Then her expression soured. Not fetting that I have to deal with someohat seems to have unlimited hatred for Aliandra and resources to throw away to murder her. And now the Archmage himself.

  Guildmaster of a small guild in a small town. She allowed herself a brief snort of amusement before knug down to her work.

  ----------

  https:///DungeonOfKnowledge

  https:///series/1135403/dungeon-of-knowledge

  https:///fi/80744/dungeon-of-knowledge-raid-bat-litrpg

  timewalk