From Player To Npc

Chapter 40: First Dungeon - Part 1

Shingi, during the week, had worked on Ranking up his MANA SENSE as he knew it could make a significant difference in the Dungeon. There were things that even his PERCEPTION wasn't able to detect. No matter what he tried, he couldn't pass the wall that was separating the Base Rank and Master Rank of MANA SENSE, though.

His VISUALIZATION was upgraded to Master Rank since he was overusing it every night to enable his TRANCE ROOM. This led to lower the cooldown of it by 1 hour.

As for the rest of his skills, there weren't any changes on their Ranks, but he had become more proficient in using them, especially his ACCELERATION.

Before, he could use it for almost 10 seconds without any breaks and would use all his SP, but now his limit was 30 seconds.

Same with his spells.

There weren't any new spells added to the list other than making the Earth version of his Light Blade, but both weren't considered spells from the System, just an effect of Enchantments. His casting time on it was lowered to 15 seconds, but he could hold them at most 7 seconds, and that is if his mind wasn't too strained.

As for his Mana Tree is grew a little but not enough to change his maximum mana. Still, his Mana Seeds, even if there weren't any new addition to them, they grew in power, and he could tell that they had almost enough for the cast of one of his Base Grade spell which should be their limit. He could also use one of them to 'feed' the Magnet Enchantment of his and make a Light or Earth blade right away. The cost of Mana of his Spells has been decreased as he got more familiar with them. However, his Base Grade one was still quite expensive, so having 14 Seeds to cover most or all of the cost could help when things go very wrong. Mana Fruits yet didn't have any, but since his Seeds didn't completely reach their limit, it made sense.

He worked on his Mithril Dagger by 'feeding' his mana at it the same way he was doing to purify a piece of metal. Still, in the Mithril, it had the effect of slowly becoming more familiar with the specific kind of mana and having more significant effects on the particular elements. It was also gradually increasing its quality. Of course, advancing its quality was very slow as there wasn't any noticeable change during the week. To make a piece of Mithril, it was needed to be exposed for years in mana and even more years to increase its quality. Still, at least it was making his mana move through the dagger easier, leading to a decrease in his casting speed on his spells as long as he used his dagger as a conductor.

And so he made it to the shop but this time without Annoue as he told her that she should train at home and work on her cooking skill and prepare dinner. He gave her a few gold coins to buy ingredients saying that it was the payment of one of the big orders. Still, in reality, it was a few of the coins he had taken from Varic and the Spatial Ring of the Players.

Outside the shop, there were the four students he spoke with them yesterday to make sure to meet.

During the week that passed, each of them had made some progress, but only one of them had finished its task.

Hineko's class had changed from Rogue to Thief Doctor.

To do that, he had to pickpocket quite a few individuals and use the earnings of those to get herbs and make medicines to help cure people who needed them without payment. With that class, his speed has been improved quite a lot as also he got the ALCHEMIST profession. He also got the POTION MAKING skill to create potions as long as he had the herbs needed and knew their recipe.

But for now, he knew how to create three potions, which were basic ones, and one usually wouldn't be able to learn all together as even if they were considered basic, they were somewhat expensive for a normal player to buy them all but Shingi covered the cost.

The potions were HP, MP, and SP regeneration potions. Each one would give a regeneration of the specific stat during a battle and increase it during less stressful times. Of course, some potions could restore a quantity of them right away as you drank them, but they were harder to find as they also needed at least Base Rank of Alchemy. Hineko's was still at Low Rank but was close to Base Rank as it was at level 9.

As for Mizuneko and Little Phoenix, who had a similar type of training but for different elements, they had improved quite a bit to be considered to have passed that test barely. Still, they had to do more, but at least from now on, they could raise their levels without worry as they took the first step they needed to take early on.

Wild Tycoon still needed to fulfill the requirements since the only enemies that had the requirements were the monsters of the dungeons. However, with the fight with the players the other day, she had taken two kills from there, but she still had a long way to get enough kills, but hopefully, in the Dungeon, she would find enough opponents.

After they were ready, they made their way towards the Dungeon but not before they make a party through the System, but it seemed they weren't able to add Shingi on it, most likely since he still didn't have a class cause it wasn't unheard of for an NPC to be at a party with Players.

The Party System could be enabled only by the Players, and it was considered one of the gifts to them from the Gods. It allowed them to share exp between them for each kill of the party and watched the HP and SP or MP bar of each other, which was useful for the healer of the group but didn't have any way of healing other than Hineko's potions and resting.

But even so, Shingi didn't consider it a problem as with his vast knowledge only by their current state and visual he could understand if one was in a good or bad state and also since the Dungeon was of a Low Level of 5-20 with over 15 being way deep in it there wouldn't be any high INT monsters so they could talk to each other without any worries.

Shingi explained what the plan was and the formation they would go with.

He and Hineko being the two with the higher STEALTH and similar abilities would scout ahead for monsters and any other encounters. One one is found they would follow a similar plan as he did in the Goblin Cave with Tycoon and Phoenix of letting Tycoon face some suitable opponents for her challenge, and they would be dealing with the rest. Also, Shingi and Mizuneko would keep any extra monsters for Tycoon's challenge that she couldn't fight if there were too many until she could fight them. Still, they had to use ways that wouldn't damage them. Still, both of them have a few ways as Mizuneko had a few Water spells that weren't dealing damage like WATER SPHERE that would surround the whole body of the target and normally drown them, but he could choose to let air getting in there so as not to cause damage but trap the target.

Mizuneko also shared what information gathered over the Dungeon and its monsters which weren't that hard to gather since most of the players that were in the town had come for the Dungeon and most likely had visited it a few times.

It seemed the theme of the Dungeon was of Ooze monsters.

There were a few troublesome ones to deal with, but as long as you found its main core and destroyed it, you would kill it unless it had multiple cores, but that was a scarce thing for that range of level.

Early on, they would mostly face Plain Slimes around 5 to 8 level, so they should handle them quite easily, especially by having that many Arcane users but even Hineko and Tycoon won't have much trouble as long as they find their cores.

After them, there would be some Acid Slimes that would be of a little higher level, and their body would be similar to acid but not that strong but still wouldn't be much of a problem.

But after that, they should face Oozes of high enough level to fit their need, and the deeper in the Dungeon they got, the more dangerous it would get. As for the Dungeon boss, no one had seen it, and no one was looking for it.

Every Dungeon had a Boss that fitted its theme.

If one were defeated, it would get a possible great reward out of it. A lot were trying to find them but only in the non-permanent ones. The case was because even when you killed the boss at a Dungeon, the Dungeon would disappear after an hour. It wasn't known why there were some permanent ones and some non-permanent ones even though both had Bosses and would both disappear when their Boss was killed while the non-permanent ones would also disappear after some time even if the Boss is still alive.

So since the permanents ones had many resources and a way to level up that was stable players had made the rule among them not to kill the Boss of a non-permanent Dungeon since everyone, in the long run, would benefit more than the possible reward they would get from the Boss since either way those dungeons weren't very high level either way so the possible reward wouldn't be that good.

And so they made their way and, as expected, didn't have much trouble passing the Plain Slimes and Acid Slimes as they adapted on them quite fast, especially after following the orders of Shingi. These monsters were too easy to learn how to deal with for him, so it didn't take him long to form plans for his team.

Then the first real group of opponents appeared.

They were 5 Black Oozes and two Yellow Oozes. Shingi and the party knew what they were as Mizuneko had mentioned them.

The Black Oozes could split themselves into many pieces, and each one would act as its entity. They could also drain the energy of mana-made attacks like spells and lessen their effects. This energy would cause them to heal, and most of the time, the heal would be more than the leftover damage.

The Yellow Oozes had a similar split power to the Black Oozes. They also strengthened their body and were as heavy and tough as being made of metal, making physical attacks almost useless.

The Yellow Oozes were lower level than the Black ones as both of them were at Level 11, and the Black Oozes were 12-14 and was decided to let all 5 of them be killed by Tycoon as even if their split ability would be hard to deal with it wouldn't be impossible to do. She had to deal a certain amount of damage quickly for it to split, so as long as she was careful, she would be ok. Also, this Oozes didn't have a lot of health and could deal with them in 3-5 hits from what they have gathered, so she didn't have to get a lot of damage from them, but they were somewhat slow but could deal some damage but not too much to possible put her in danger. She probably could handle 20 or so hits from them; that would be enough to deal with all of them without any healing.

So Shingi made his move first to get their attention and tried to separate the group by grabbing with his MANA HANDS and pushing three of the Black Oozes away from the rest, letting Tycoon deal with them as he and the rest of the party kept distracted the other two Black Oozes and decided to kill the Yellow Oozes. They could also let Wild Tycoon deal with the Yellow Oozes since they were at the right level, but it would take them too long cause of their nature to resist attacks from physical weapons.

The Yellow Oozes were dealt by Mizuneko and Phoenix, while Shingi helped a little by throwing a few ROCK THROWS here and there. At the same time, Hineko kept the two Black Oozes distracted by pushing them and getting away and kept avoiding them by jumping around and doing unnecessary flips now and then, mostly to increase his ACROBATIC skill and cause it was fun for him. Shingi also helped on it mostly with his MANA HAND, which wasn't getting affected by the Oozes special ability as it would only work on cases of spells that would try to damage them, and the MANA HAND didn't have that effect.

After close to five minutes, they were able to deal with all of them, and Tycoon, who had less than half her health cause she had to be hit quite a few times, had 5 more kills at what she needed for her challenge. Of course, she still kept using the exp she earned to her skills instead of her level. Still, fortunately, since this time there were three people instead of one at the party she was earning less exp than before but was getting the bigger part, at least for killing the Black Oozes since she was the only one who dealt damage on them.

As for Shingi, he didn't earn any exp cause he didn't have a class. He didn't have a level to raise and couldn't use the give exp to his Skill since that was something only Players could do. Still, he was getting more used and familiar with his Skills and use of his Spells during the battle, which had some great effects, as shown in the past, so it wasn't like he didn't earn anything out of it.

So after taking a short break and Tycoon drinking some of the HP Potions Hineko had prepared just for her, they continued. Shingi gave him money to prepare to quiet a few of those potions and had them on his Spatial Ring so they wouldn't be hard to have them.

Of course, he had to explain how he came to have a Spatial Ring to the party since they would at some point notice him using it. They understood why the Players were after him, but they didn't know that it wasn't really the ring they were after all, but Shingi himself and his strange power, and he let it like that.

So they made their way and carefully finishing one encounter after the other with a needed break between each depending mostly on the situation of Tycoon's HP.