Cierin frowned. “You said we died?”

  “In a dungeon,” I said.

  “I find that hard to believe,” he grumbled. “Since we don’t even know where to find the them”

  “Sup, cutie.”

  The party turned toward a crusty middle-aged man with a mug full of frothing pink liquid. He grunted. “Hey, wanna map?”

  “I would love a map!” Dexten cackled.

  The older gentleman tossed a map at Dexten, winked at the Mall, belched, scratched his rear, and hobbled off.

  Mall cleared her throat. “What exactly just happened?”

  “Trust the system!” Dexten shouted, slamming the map on the table. “When an NPC gives you a map, you don’t ask questions!”

  “Yes, yes you should!” I said, snatching the map from their hands. “We died in that dungeon!”

  “Aw, man,” he groaned. “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I snapped. This was thre same map with the winding path through the depths of the forest, leading to a large rocky wall, where the entrance portal had been. “But you’re here, so…”

  “How exactly do you know we died?” Cierin asked. “Were you with us?”

  “Yes. I died too.”

  The three of them squinted.

  “I can respawn,” I stated. “When I die, I wake back up in a forest.”

  Cierin frowned. “That’s not a thing.”

  “Yes it is,” I said, with a nod.

  “No it’s not,” Cierin stated. “Dead players die.”

  “I don’t.”

  Dexten nodded, scratching his chin. “I think he’s onto something.”

  Cierin frowned. “This is ridiculous.”

  I smoothed over the map, then folded it into my pocket. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Us?” Dexten paused. “We’ve been traveling around for a couple weeks, doing quests here and there. We met Mall in the forest a day ago, and then we realized we were really poor, and we went here to give dungeons a try, so we’ve been here for a couple days.” He grinned. “That’s about it. Who’s that guy?”

  Quin started, clutching his head in his hands. “What happened?”

  {Quin : 39 Hp}

  “We got some new recruits,” I stated, nodding to Dexten, Cierin, and Mall. “They’re not actually dead, by the way.”

  “No, no, no, hang on a second” Cierin barked, on hand on his head. He slumped down in the booth opposite from us, staring at Quin, then at me. “You’ve seen us before?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But we never died.”

  “I guess not,” I agreed.

  “But you know a lot about us, so something is going on.”

  “It would seem so.”

  He groaned, running his hands through his hair. “This is a mess.”

  “I know, right?” Dexten cackled. “This is awesome!”

  “Wait, hang on!” Quin snapped. “You can't just let some random sociopaths into the squad! There's a process to this!

  He demonstrated, pulling up his stat window.

  {Quin}

  Level 9

  Rank : ~Common~

  [20 Str 40 Hp]

  [50% AtkSp 5 Mana]

  “We must have standards,” Quin grumbled. “These folk clear haven’t been in a dungeon before. Look how cheerful they are!”

  “You’ve got me there, blue hair,” Dexten grinned. “Wanna see my stats?”

  He scoffed. “From running quests? Don’t bother—”

  ~unmasked~

  {Dexten}

  Level 7

  Rank : ~Uncommon~

  [35 Str 70 Hp]

  [150% AtkSp]

  Quin rubbed his eyes. “You gained….that many stats…questing?”

  Mall sighed. “He loves questing,”

  “I love questing,” Dexten cackled. “Now that we’ve joined, where’s the rest of our group?”

  Quin took a deep breath. “I’ll get Irion.”

  {Cierin}

  Level 5

  Rank : ~Common~

  [17 Str 50 Hp 2 Dex]

  [45% AtkSp]

  {Mall}

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Level 1

  Rank : ~Common~

  [5 Str 15 Hp]

  “I mean…” Irion trailed off, glancing over their stats again.

  Our raid party had taken up camp in a little motel, with cheap rent and enough space for ten to twelve people. It wasn’t that nice—the walls were rotting and you could hear everyone in the entire building at any given time—but when you spend most of your time mucking through the dungeon, you’re not so picky.

  Irion cleared his throat. “Ciercin, you seem reasonably capable, and it’s obvious that Dexten’s good too—”

  “But I’m level 1 and I have the stats of a goldfish?” Mall hissed. “Believe me, I’m well aware.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Dexten laughed, patting Mall on the back. “You’ve got good instincts and good technique. It’s just a matter of time before you become a formidable opponent.”

  Throttle scoffed, kicking her legs up onto a chair. “She’ll need a lot of stats. Do you seriously expect us to give her a better share of the loot?”

  Irion shook his head. “Maybe you could take care of Sern?”

  “I don’t have patience for babysitting,” Mall snapped.

  “Yeah we know,” Quin muttered.

  “Besides, she seems just fine with Eere,” Bruce said, with a nod over his shoulder.

  The two sat in a little corner. Here kept making gestures, then Sern would tilt her head, and repeat them. Then Eere would giggle, and move to another string of gestures and expressions.

  I didn’t understand a word between them.

  “---For the record, I’m fine with giving up a portion of the stats.” Bruce said. “It’s not like they’re in short supply.”

  “The dungeons are getting harder, so we need to get stronger,” Throttle hissed. “Be practical.”

  “If the dungeons get harder, we need to focus on the people most likely to get hurt raiding,” Irion said, holding up a hand. “Dexten, that sounds about right?”

  “Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “But, why don’t we just have one person with a ridiculous amount of power—maybe me or Grind or me—and they’d get all the cores, and they’d basically just clear the entire dungeon on their own, with everyone else forming a backup support team. Then the rest of us would split the stats so we’d have a better chance of not dying.”

  Quin frowned. “That sounds horrible.”

  “Now don’t be a grump,” Dexten snapped. “Once a person reaches a certain point in an aera, they become more or less unkillable. Besides, buffs work best with a central carry. Eere’s already got a buff that triples damage. On her, it’s useless, but on Grind—or myself—we can one-shot a Dungeon Core. Imagine if the entire team had buffs like that, all given to one person.”

  Irion blinked. “It’s not an awful idea. Stats make stats stronger, after all.”

  Eere huffed, snapping her fingers to get Sern’s attention. Sern was lying on the ground, watching a bug. Then she fell asleep. Eere threw her hands in the air, wandering over to Quin.

  Bruce sighed. “It’s a good idea, sure, but it sounds awfully tedious, both for the person fighting everything and the people supplying buffs. And besides, we’d need a lot of scrolls and free skill points to get decent abilities.”

  “There’s worse things than a little tedium,” Irion gruffed. “And we don’t have to be totally out of the fight. We’ll just get some buff-centered skills and fight as normal, albeit with a stronger front.”

  “Speaking of the future,” I started, taking the map from my pocket and unfurling it on the table. “We need to get rid of this dungeon. Now, preferably.”

  “You don’t get rid of a dungeon,” Mall corrected. “You just weaken them a little.”

  “Then I want the dungeon weakened," I said. “If we don’t break this dungeon, someone else is going to wander into it, and they’re going to die.”

  Quin read over the map, before scoffing. “Who’d be stupid enough to wander into a two-star dungeon?”

  I glanced at Dexten, and he shrugged, mouth splitting into a smile. “It does sound like fun, doesn’t it?”

  “Exactly how hard is a two-star dungeon?” I asked. “For reference.”

  “Well that depends,” Irion said. “Stars measure raw power, not how its used. It’s like archery. A bigger bow shoots an arrow harder, but that isn’t nearly as important as how you aim it.”

  “So,” I paused. “It’s like intelligence? Smarter Cores are more dangerous?””

  Mall shuddered. “They don’t start talking, do they?”

  Irion ignored her, continuing on. “When it comes to Cores, intelligence has certain limits, which require power to move past. With those limits comes things like mouths, eyes, ears, noses, wings, etc. But both power and intelligence have a maximum cap per star, until the dungeon breaks. Still following?”

  I scratched the back of my head. “Yeah. I think.”

  Irion sighed. “Now when I say ‘break’ I mean like when a butterfly breaking from its old cocoon. There’s a certain point where a Core becomes so strong that it outgrows its dungeon and must set off to make a new one.”

  Mall gagged. “These things leave their dungeon?!”

  “Of course not,” Quin scoffed.

  Irion glared.

  “Wait.” Quin froze. “That’s a thing?”

  “Yes. When a dungeon is too weak for the Core inside, then the Core is unable to grow stronger, because of a lack of mana, which is a whole nother thing we could get into. Basically, when a dungeon starts leaking mana, raid unions get involved, to kill it before it stars up. Practically speaking, we can assume that a core in any given dungeon is stronger than anything in a weaker dungeon, and weaker than anything in a stronger dungeon, otherwise the Core would have left its dungeon in search of another.

  I blinked. “What do you mean by mana?”

  “Dungeons are the mana-based shell a Core uses in defense, but you can ignore just about everything I’m saying, really,” Irion huffed. “The important thing is that unless the dungeon is actively expanding, or is in the process of being deserted, there are fundamental limits to how strong a two-star Dungeon Core can be. We’ve fought this one before, actually.”

  I glanced back on the map. “I assume you won?”

  “Yes, and by quite a landslide,” Irion stated. “It was a month ago, before I formed my own raid party. Back then, we had fifteen decent adventures, from five smaller raid parties—one for a raid union. Thanks to them, we beat them and entered the dungeon in twenty-six minutes. It was pathetically easy really. Just run to the top and skewer the Core. That said, the goblins are definitely new.”

  “Score,” Quin laughed. “You’ve already beat the dungeon, so this should be a breeze, right?”

  “Easy dungeons never stay that way. Remember what I said about Dungeon Cores getting stronger?” Irion asked. “How do you think that happens?”

  “Over time?” Quin guessed.

  Bruce shrugged.

  Throttle smirked. “Players. Dungeon cores eat players.”

  “Not ‘eat’ necessarily, but it’s similar,” Irion corrected.

  He took a deep breath in.

  “Other than players, they’ll settle for weapons, or, in a pinch, wild animals. In a pinch, they can rarely cannibalize the monsters they create. Regardless, food source is key to a dungeon's growth, and that’s what I’m worried about. Somehow, within the past month, this dungeon’s gotten its maps circulating through a tavern. Because of that, drunks and idiot rookies tend to wander into the dungeon trail, go too far in, only to become stuck, and die, unable to warn others around them about the dungeon's difficulty. What I’m saying is that this dungeon is remarkably clever, even for a two-star, and that, despite our successful raid a month ago, it’s repaired itself and gotten stronger. A Dungeon Core with the intelligence to improve past mistakes is something uniquely dangerous.”

  He turned to me. “So when you ask, ‘how dangerous is a two-star?’ it’s less like a finite amount, or even a range, and more like a landmine. When it’s out in the open, and when you go in with proper knowledge and equipment they’re virtually harmless, but when they’ve sat buried in a high traffic area, you have a crisis on your hands.”

  Dexten grinned. “If this thing’s strong, that means a lot of loot, right?”

  “Probably enough to make anyone here union-level material,” Irion said, with a nod. “If it’s split up among the eight of us, it’ll be more than enough power to safely transition to a new area, if we want. So, yeah, the loot’s going to be worth the risk.”

  “Do we even have enough members?” Mall asked, arms crossed. “It’s just the nine of us.”

  “There’s Serenity too” I said, pointing. “She’s the sleeping elf in the corner.”

  “Oh. She’s so quiet I didn’t—” Mall yelped, running to her side, gesturing angrily but vaguely. “What are these?!”

  I wandered over, and made a guess. “Her clothes?”

  She reached for the ragged fabric, then stopped. “This is unacceptable.” She glared at me, clicking her tongue. “And you call yourself a father.”

  “I don’t.”

  Mall planted her hands on her hips, addressing the adventurers gathered. “I’m going to take her shopping. Any objections?”

  Irion frowned. “Sern’s in Grind’s party, so you’d have to drag him along too. But we need him running dungeons if we want to get stronger fast enough to fight the two-star in a reasonable amount of time—”

  “---I didn’t think so,” Mall huffed, sitting down by Sern’s side. “When she wakes up, we shall go shopping.”

  Irion groaned. “She does realize I’m her boss, right?”

  “Good luck,” Cierin sighed, rolling his eyes. “Mall's a free spirit, that’s all. If this dungeon is a threat, shouldn’t you notify—what’d you call them—unions?”

  “Yes,” Irion agreed. “Unions are larger groups that manage lots of raid parties, for the benefit of all of them, and for a small fee.”

  Dexten frowned. “Like taxes? I hate taxes.”

  “They’re worth their weight in gold,” Irion stated. “Much better than bribing town guards. Besides, I know some of the people working in our district's union. I’ll get them to block off the dungeon path, and they should be willing to sponsor our expedition. In fact, with a possible two-star break, they might go so far as to send a group of their own.” He checked our team, smiling. “In the meantime, we’ll run as many dungeons as possible. If we get lucky, we could double or triple our stats by the operation’s start.

  Sern jolted, finding Mall beside her.

  Mall smiled, radiating maternal affection, scooping the poor girls hand into hers. “How’d you like to go dress hunting?”

  Serenity perked up, and she was out the door, dragging Mall along for the ride.

  I looked at the rest of the party, sighing. “See you later, I guess.”