“So, what did you get with your class selection?” I ask, excitement clear in my voice.
“It gave me a new trait called [Child of the Sun], which increases my mana regeneration when I’m in contact with sunlight. It also gave me a bunch of insights into my [Berserker Rage] skill and my sunlight energy, but I need to practice with those to implement them. Other than that, I have greater access to the [System] now.” Corvax answers.
More mana during the day? That sounds powerful. I wonder if he needs direct access to the sun, or if just having stored sunlight energy is enough. No new skills is kind of disappointing, but Merrick said that each class selection is tailored to the individual, so mine could very well be different.
The next few hours pass peacefully as we sit around the fire and chat about what we want to see for our class selection. Daniel is hoping for something that allows him to create that mana-conductive metal, as it is leagues above regular metal for making magic items. He also mentions trying to gain some kind of stone or earth affinity, which seems like it would pair well with a metal affinity, and he already has a skill called [Stone Sense], so he can’t be that far off.
I don’t even know what I want. Something to do with space, obviously, but maybe something with raw mana manipulation as well, or item creation. I figure that what I want doesn’t really matter. I get the options it gives me, which are based on my actions. So the best way to get a good class is to keep pushing myself to my limits.
After my mana has regenerated enough, we all get up and prepare ourselves for the research lab. I warn them that it is a dungeon and to be ready in case it has monsters inside. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, but it never hurts to be careful. Once we’re all packed and ready to go, I open the first portal, and we all step through.
It takes me only three portals to get back to the shack, mostly because I push my spatial perception to its limits to reach as far as possible with each portal. The cost of my spatial magic depends on size and how long it’s kept open for, not distance, making this the most efficient way to travel. The final portal opens up just outside the shack, and we all step out into the courtyard.
I lead us down the now open hatch and into the room with the bodies of the Kryntari. They are all just as I left them, with a little extra of their blood on the floor now.
“Damn, you weren’t lying when you said they look like praying mantises.” Daniel says as he kneels down next to one and starts poking it with his knife. “Did you loot them?”
“No, I left almost as soon as I killed them. The only thing I took was some kind of magic item that led them here.”
“Well, let’s loot then!” Daniel says as he starts rummaging through the bags attached to one of the bodies.
Corvax and I immediately start looting the other two. It doesn’t have much on it that’s worth keeping, just a few of the smooth red crystals, likely from a dungeon. I leave the rest of its stuff, which is mostly some kind of raw meat that smells off and a few dirty strips of animal hide. The other two bodies have much of the same, with the exception of the one Corvax loots, which has a small and bloody coin pouch in one of the pockets. In the end, we ended up with five perfectly sphere-shaped red crystals, exactly the same as the ones we got from the forest labyrinth dungeon, and about a dozen silver and gold coins. All of it goes into my storage core for later.
The three of us walk through the black fog one after another, filling up the small room on the other side to the point we all have our backs to the walls.
“Are we all ready?” I ask, putting my only hand on the array.
The other two give me nods and move to place a hand each on the floor. I mentally accept the invitation into the dungeon, getting teleported almost instantly into an identical room. A few moments later, the other two also pop into the room with me.
“Looks like we get to enter together this time.” Daniel says as we get up.
I turn to look at the black fog along one of the walls in the room. “I’ll go first, since it’s my [Quest].”
“We’ll be right behind you.” Corvax responds.
Stepping through the obscuring fog, I find myself in an all-white, brightly lit room. I take a few steps forward, and Corvax exits the fog right behind me with Daniel following closely behind. My spatial perception tells me that the room is lined in some kind of tile, and the regular dungeon wall lies behind it, once again blocking my spatial field.
The room is a big rectangle, probably fifty feet in length and twenty in width. The fog wall is on one of the shorter sides, and directly across from us is a set of double doors, also blocking my spatial perception from passing. The right side of the room has a line of workbenches running the entire length, still messy with materials and half-finished prototypes, like the people who worked here expected to come back and finish them. The other side of the room is lined with cages, nine of them, mostly empty. The last cage, however, has a human skeleton in it. At least I think it’s human. It could be an elf or something. I’m not really sure how to distinguish them.
Based on the bones and the fact that all of the cages have shackles in them, I’m guessing this lab was used for some kind of human experimentation or something. We agree not to touch anything until we have a better idea of what this place was used for. Despite everything looking valuable, it could be dangerous just to touch it.
Moving to the double doors at the other end of the room, I find out that they aren’t an actual part of the dungeon but a set of manmade and enchanted doors. They are both locked and resist all attempts Daniel and I make at getting through them without damaging them.
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“I think I know how to get through,” Corvax says as he steps up to the door.
“You do? This door is pretty tricky, Corvax. It’s going to take a steady hand and a few more hours at least to get past the enchantments on it.” I say.
Corvax turns on the spatial edge to his axe and slams it into the door with enough force to make me take a few steps back in case something breaks and goes flying. The edge sinks into the door and stops after about a centimeter. He rips the axe out and swings it again, making the cut just a little deeper and wider. After a few more swings, the edge reaches something important inside the door, and a small hole in its magical protections opens, allowing my spatial perception to flood into the other side. I stop Corvax before he swings again.
“Wow, I didn’t think that would work so well. I have access to the other side.” I say as I open a portal on either side of this door.
Corvax is beaming with pride and steps through the portal first. Daniel chuckles and slaps me on the shoulder as he passes by, saying, “Not everything has to be so complicated, Ray. Sometimes you just need to brute force the door down.”
The room seems to be for storage, as it’s full of shelves lined with all kinds of materials and items. A few things immediately grab my attention. One shelf has a few crystals inside of a box labeled ‘Skill removal research.’ There are several such boxes, all labeled with different things about skill research. The next thing to catch my eye is the set of four bags hanging on the wall next to the door, all enchanted based on the feeling I get from my [Mana Sense]. The last thing I notice is a small sphere sitting on a pedestal on the opposite side of the room.
The sphere has no mana coming off of it, but my spatial perception tells me that the inside of the sphere is heavily enchanted, far more than anything else I’ve seen so far. It’s so far outside of my limited capabilities, I’m not even sure how impressed I should be. That alone makes me pretty confident that this is the Research Core that I’ve been sent to disconnect and retrieve.
Walking up to it, I place my hand on its smooth mirror finish.
[You have found a dungeon core]
[Lab Research Core]
[Would you like to disconnect this core? Y/N]
[Disconnecting this core will count as defeating this dungeon]
I don’t know what defeating a dungeon does, but I’d be willing to bet it starts some kind of self-destruction or collapse or something. I’ll hold off on that until we loot this entire place. That’s my reward after all.
“Well, good news, fellas. This is what I’m after.” I say to the other two, who are examining items on the shelves.
“Does that mean we can loot now?” Daniel asks.
“Yes, but be careful. We still don’t know what any of this stuff really is.”
I walk over to where the bags are hanging and take one off the hook. It's a backpack made out of some kind of thick, light brown leather, with two adjustable straps made out of the same material. It only has one main compartment, no small pockets or anything like that. I push some of my mana into the bag and find a lattice of fine wires and crystals inside of the bag, but not in the storage area of the bag, but inside of the actual leather. I can immediately tell that these exist in some kind of expanded space, which makes sense. If you don’t have the space for it, just expand what you have until it fits. It’s what I would do.
After examining it some more, I think I figured out how it works. The lattice of wire and crystals is the real magic item, and the leather bag is mostly just a housing for it all. The enchantments work by expanding and isolating the space in the middle of the lattice, not necessarily the inside of the bag. It’s a genius system, and it has a lot of quality of life and safety features added into it as well. With how it’s set up, even if it runs out of mana, the storage space will draw from a backup source that should last several days, but it locks away the space in order to keep it stable for longer, so you’d have to recharge it to get anything out again.
The storage space inside seems to range from whatever it is unpowered up to about two hundred cubic feet or so, about the size of a closet or so. It seems like you can either set it to a specific size within that range, or it will just automatically adjust whenever you store something inside.
Both the main battery array and the backup array are completely drained, but luckily it was completely empty, so it’s still in working condition. I check the other three bags and find all of them are also perfectly functional, and hand them out to my teammates. I give Corvax two, mostly because he should be able to carry both of them no problem, even if they both end up quite heavy.
After showing them how to use the bags and telling them that they need to charge them up with as much mana as possible, we begin looting the place like there is no tomorrow. The first thing that I grab is all of the research crystals, then I move over to a shelf full of animal skins and scales. The hides range quite a bit in terms of thickness and patterns, but all of them seem high quality, so they get swept into the bag. The scales are all quite big, ranging from the size of my palm all the way to some that are the size of dinner plates. Most of them are purple, but some are green or yellow instead. All of them end up inside my bag.
We loot shelf by shelf, taking everything that isn’t nailed down. By the end, all of the shelves are empty, and we move out back into the other room through my portal and start looting. I take half-finished crystals, broken prototypes, and anything else I can get my hands on that looks even slightly valuable. By the time we finish looting everything, our bags are all over halfway full. Daniel ends up separating the legs from the tops of a few of the tables and packs them into Corvax’s other bag, saying we need a table at the tower.
After making sure we have everything, I gather the bones that are in the last cage and wrap them up in a towel and place them in my storage core. I don’t know how long he or she has been dead, but they deserve a proper burial at least. We move back through the portal and into the storage room to remove the Research Core.
[Lab Research Core]
[Would you like to disconnect this core? Y/N]
[Disconnecting this core will count as defeating this dungeon]
I mentally select yes, and the orb instantly comes free from the pedestal.
[You have defeated a dungeon]
[Skill Core Research Lab]
[This dungeon will collapse in: 9 minutes 57 seconds]
[You have leveled up to level 25]
[System upgrade will commence with the completion of class selection]
[You have reached your first class selection]
[Would you like to begin class selection now? Y/N]
We must all get the notification for the dungeon collapsing, as all of our eyes go wide, and we all silently agree to get out as fast as possible. I ignore the class selection for now, and also the [Quest] completion notification. I’ll check both of those out once we are back at the tower.