To protect the surrounding areas, and to prevent the dungeon from evolving into Stage 3—the point where it affected the areas adjacent to the original structures—once a dungeon was found, a barrier with limited entry points would be placed around it. Ryan had just stepped through one of those entry points. Turning around, Ryan noticed the refracting light on the surface of the barrier, like that shifting rainbow hue you would see on soap bubbles.

  Ryan placed his backpack onto the ground, first grabbing the pickaxe. He needed to try out both, but using this initially seemed a bit safer. From inside of his bag, he grabbed a few things. A pair of gloves, an energy drink, and a protein bar. He put on the well-fitted gloves with rubber pads on the palm and fingers. Hopefully, these should improve the grip he had on the pickaxe and hammer, and also make the whole thing a bit easier on his hands in general. Depending on how long he was going to be here today, his hands could suffer quite a bit. Ryan was confident in his stamina, but things like this always took more than you would expect.

  With a wave of his hand, a flow of red wisps flowed out from Ryan’s arm and hands, and Maximus appeared next to him. Ryan handed him one of the hammers, formerly a spiked meat tenderizer, and then leaned back against the brick wall next to him. Silvia had pried off the old handle and then wrapped the metal rod that acted as the handle’s core in some fabric. Since Maximus’s hands were gloved anyway, it didn’t need to be super comfortable. Maximus seemed quite happy with it as well, especially since he could wrap both his hands around it well enough. Silvia had really outdone herself, again.

  “We’ll head inside in a bit. I just need to get used to this air first …” Ryan explained to him, and Maximus replied with a slow nod. Taking a deep breath that left his throat weirdly warm, Ryan pulled on the energy drink’s tab and drank a mouthful. He tore off the protein bar’s wrapper with his teeth and quickly took a bite. Maximus was watching this intensely.

  “Hm? What, you want one as well?”

  Maximus slowly shook his head, and Ryan raised his brow for a moment. It didn’t take him long to understand why Maximus seemed confused. “Right, sorry. So basically, a ton of Dungeoneers suggest this before you head into a dungeon, especially for beginners. These don’t really do much once your physical stats get high enough, but for me right now, the extra energy won’t hurt, at least.”

  As though he agreed, Maximus nodded his head in understanding, and then slowly turned toward the dungeon itself. It was a large run-down factory that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. Though, it wasn’t a terrible sight, and Ryan understood why urban explorers came here; the whole plot was filled completely with wildflowers. The factory’s brick walls, as well as its smokestacks, were covered in vines and ivy. Quite impressed by the view, Ryan pulled out his phone. The gloves he bought could be used with touch screens, luckily. He pulled up the camera and tried to take a picture of the building, but the photo ended up somewhat distorted. Dungeon air tended to do that to regular cameras, and Ryan didn’t care enough about taking pictures to buy a phone with a mana-sensitive camera, so this would have to do. Though, these distorted pictures also had their own charm to them.

  He continued to take long, deep breaths until he seemed to get adjusted to the dungeon air.

  “You remember the signs we agreed on?” Ryan asked, and Maximus nodded his head. Since Maximus wasn’t able to talk, and Ryan could only really understand rough ideas when interacting with the spirit, they agreed on some very simple hand signs that Maximus would show to Ryan if he wanted to swap to a different weapon. Similarly, Ryan had a hand sign that he would show to Maximus for a single specific reason.

  To let Maximus know that he was about to activate the Spirit Link skill, usually he would just tell him, but it would be a lot safer to be quiet inside of the dungeon whenever possible.

  Over the past few days, Ryan had used the Spirit Link skill a few times in preparation for today.

  Though it was mostly useful for a few specific circumstances, this skill would be very important for today.

  “And remember, just use your skills at your own discretion, don’t wait for my signal. I trust your judgement,” Ryan reminded Maximus as he slowly stepped away from the wall. He tightened his grip around the pickaxe’s handle with a smile, leaning down one more time to pick up Maximus.

  “You ready?”

  Maximus replied with a quick nod, and the two made their way toward the large door that was the factory’s entrance. Squatting down next to the door, Ryan carefully pushed it open and peeked inside. There was nothing there, so he carefully made his way inside while glancing at his phone screen. He had opened the Awakened Forum app, specifically the page for this dungeon. There was a rudimentary map on here spanning about five hundred by seven hundred meters, though of course that probably wasn’t the full extent of the dungeon’s interior.

  A dungeon, once it reached Stage 2, would start distorting the space of the structure it infested. While it also changed the outside, to an extent, most of the change happened within the physical space in the dungeon. Most of the time, especially for dungeons like this that were still fairly young within Stage 2, the original structure’s spaces would be repeated and folded upon each other, almost as if seen through a broken kaleidoscope.

  The worst part was that they could change over time, though at least not without warning. This map should still be fine for now. If Ryan had better funds, he could have bought a dungeon-mapper. Though, it might be worth investing in if he ended up going into dungeons more anyway. Depending on how much you mapped out, you could get a decent chunk of money from the DMB, the Dungeon Management Bureau.

  Ryan stepped farther into the building, keeping low as he did. Soon, he came by some rails on the ground. After glancing over at Maximus, who was also looking back at him, Ryan slowly and quietly moved forward. Luckily, the ground was covered in grass, weeds, and moss, so his footsteps were almost completely silent.

  However, it didn’t take long for him to hear a sound from a whole other source. Rusted metal scratching against even more rusted metal, and the reverberating sound of rocks being hit against steel repeatedly. Ryan peered around the corner, and spotted the first monster he had ever seen. His heart was almost ready to jump out through his throat as he looked at the back of that figure.

  It was a person made completely out of stone, as if someone took a pile of bricks and molded it into the shape of something that should resemble what seemed like a dwarf. It was trying to push a minecart filled with the green of deeply oxidized copper, but it seemed like something was blocking its way along the rails. Looking around, Ryan spotted a piece of ore that had probably dropped out of that very cart just earlier, and picked it up.

  He looked over at Maximus, who nodded his head. Carefully, Ryan moved farther around the corner, and threw the piece of ore at the back of the stone monster. Almost instantly, the monster turned around. Its legs were in the same position as before but its back twisted around 180 degrees, until it was looking straight at Ryan, who was squatting just barely in view. Once its legs and feet caught up to the rotation, the monster started running at Ryan; not particularly fast, but considering it was a dwarf-sized mass of stone, it was still pretty terrifying.

  While its heavy footsteps approached, Ryan and Maximus retreated into the area they were in before, where it seemed a safer to fight this monster. Ryan tightened his grip on the pickaxe, but he wasn’t the one that was going to fight.

  Maximus grasped the former meat tenderizer, now an improvised war hammer, with both of his hands, and Ryan could see a thin red light envelop the weapon and Maximus’s Knight’s Attack skill was activated.

  Chapter Nine

  First Takedown

  Maximus ran at the approaching stone dwarf, both hands holding tightly on to the improvised war hammer’s handle. The hammer impacted on the monster’s ankle, and splinters of the brick that made up its whole body were flung into every direction. The hammer itself was swung back after the impact as the monster was momentarily stunned, though not for all too long.

  Taking the opportunity, Maximus jumped backward slightly while the monster stomped its injured foot down at the small Knight. The moment of the impact that Maximus had skillfully dodged, the hammer was once more swung at the exact same spot as earlier. A flurry of attacks started to unfold as Maximus used the strength and expertise that filled that small body of his. And before long, the stone was damaged too much to carry the monster’s weight, and its ankle fully cracked and it fell to its knee. From where he was standing, Ryan was able to see everything unfold, ready to intervene with his pickaxe should he ever need to. However, there was a very important reason why he wasn’t doing so right away.

  While Ryan’s main purpose for coming here was to complete the quest that Maximus had given him, he thought that it was the best opportunity he was going to get to let Maximus level up. Every class had different ways of leveling up, adhering to the “purpose” of the class. Combat classes did so by fighting, and in particular a Knight leveled up by “vanquishing evil.” Though Ryan wasn’t a big fan of the idea of assigning the concept of “evil” to anything, he knew that hunting dungeon monsters was one of the best ways of leveling up the Knight class. And since Ryan’s class wasn’t a direct combat one, he most likely wouldn’t see a massive amount of growth from fighting directly.

  If he had to guess, considering that his class was completely built around supporting spirits, at least thus far, his class would most likely grow if he did exactly that: act in a way that allowed Maximus to do what he did best.

  And to do that, Ryan was currently looking out for the way to kill this monster. He spotted roots slithering around the crevices of the monster’s stone body, as if those were the thing holding it all together. They were also already growing and trying to pick up the parts that splintered off through Maximus’s attack, most likely to repair itself.

  However, as he looked around, there was one part of this plant that was actually exposed. A small, faint red bud that had yet to bloom, just barely peeking out from the bricks right where this thing’s ear should be.

  “Maximus,” Ryan said, trying to stay just under yelling volume so that his voice would echo as little as possible. He had purposefully moved to a place where Maximus could look at him without leaving himself open, as he pointed to his ear. The knight replied with a quick nod as he ran around the monster’s body, which twisted around to continue keeping track of its tiny opponent. If it kept doing this, then Maximus wouldn’t be able to properly attack the bud, so Ryan quickly ran in and kicked away the monster’s foot, purposefully crushing the plant’s roots under his boot.

  The monster quickly turned its attention toward Ryan and reached out to him, grabbing the end of the pickaxe’s handle. However, before Ryan even needed to do anything like pry the tool away, Maximus jumped up.

  With the physical strength he had combined with the low weight of his body, Maximus should be able to jump right onto Ryan’s head with ease, so reaching a kneeling dwarf’s ear was an easy matter.

  Maximus swung his hammer straight at the bud, angling it just right so that the unprotected, juvenile flower was torn off. The moment that this happened, Ryan could see the roots within the monster’s body wither away, leaving only a pile of bricks behind.

  [Maximus has killed a Level 1 -Dungeon Monster-]

  As the system message appeared, Ryan experienced something he hadn’t noticed before.

  Small particles of dim light, so dim that it would be impossible to spot if it weren’t for the shadows of this ruined structure, surrounded Maximus like a cloud of dust releasing from a surface all at once, before soon flowing back inside of the armor. But it wasn’t just Maximus; as he looked down at his hand, Ryan spotted similar grains of dimly glowing dust surround him for a brief instant. It felt both warm and cold, almost like frostbite, just without any sort of pain connected to it. He had gathered some “experience.” It seemed like he was on the right track; simply supporting Maximus was going to let him level up.

  And now that he properly realized this, he could recognize this sensation from when he was actually building Maximus’s body. He had been feeling a lot of new things then, since he had been using magic for the first time, but he most likely gained some experience then as well. That being the case, Ryan did wonder how close he had been to leveling up.

  He stepped over to the pile of bricks and picked one of them up. It was a lot lighter than it should be. Curiously, Ryan tightened his grip on the brick and watched it crumble away like it was made of foam. These bricks had been created by the dungeon specifically for this monster, and now that it was “dead,” it was reclaiming the materials it used, which was making it as weak as foam. It should take a few more minutes until it was fully gone, but Ryan didn’t want to wait that long. He took the bricks and placed them on a pile next to him, searching through the monster’s stone remains. And then, on the ground below them, amongst some crumbs of that foam-brick, Ryan found what he was looking for.

  Some … seeds? Those are the drops … ? Ryan thought to himself, though he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A monster like this wouldn’t drop anything special. Though he doubted he could sell these seeds to anyone for more than some spare change, maybe he could try planting them in some pots on the balcony. Runar did love plants, so maybe this was going to help smooth things over with him.

  Ryan opened up the small pouch hanging off his belt and placed all of the tiny seeds inside. He stood back up and wiped the dust off his gloves, looking back over at Maximus. “Good to go?”

  The Knight nodded his head, and Ryan and Maximus continued on through the dungeon. Though, it didn’t take long until they ended up in a slightly worrisome situation. Just behind the minecart that the monster had been trying to push forward was a door that seemed to lead into a larger hall. According to the map, this was one of the rooms corresponding to the part of the old foundry where the metal was actually smelted down and cast into ingots. Ryan could hear some footsteps beyond the door. So, he had two options.

  One, turn around and go to another part of the dungeon that was easier to look over. However, avoiding spaces like this didn’t seem like a good option at all. The quest that Maximus gave him was to investigate this place, and staying in the safe parts wouldn’t really make for a great investigation. He needed to go to places where things were actually happening.

  So, number two it was. Ryan looked over at Maximus and gave him the hand sign they had decided on, before the knight quickly nodded his head. And so, Ryan activated one of his skills, Spirit Link.

  [Spirit Link]

  [Level - 3] [Proficiency – 56%]

  [Allows for the user to mentally link with the target Spirit, guiding their actions. During the activation period, the user has an extremely strong understanding of the target Spirit’s body and the effect of their skills.]

  [Effect – Spirit Link for 10 Minutes 40 Seconds]

  [Cost – 10.5 MP] [Cooldown – 40 Minutes 20 Seconds]

  It was already at 56 percent, so it might level up today, depending on how much he was going to end up needing to use it. He concentrated on the skill’s effect and watched as those red wisps of magic flowed out from his chest and over to Maximus. They thinned out and flowed around each other, slowly forming a thread as thin as spider’s silk.

  The moment that the thread fully formed, Ryan felt a wave of dizziness come over him. He didn’t exactly share Maximus’s senses now, but he simply “knew” what it was that the spirit was seeing and hearing. As if the processed information that you would gather by looking at things was simply given to him. It was a bit awkward to keep track of, but that was the main thing that Ryan and Maximus had been practicing so that Ryan could actually make use of this skill decently.

  There were some other effects, like allowing Maximus to copy Ryan’s movement almost perfectly, but there wasn’t a real use for that right now. Maximus was more than skilled at fighting on his own. However, due to the way that senses were shared, this skill could be used in a very specific way.

  Maximus walked through the small gap in the ajar door, quickly rushing over to one of the rusted minecarts that had been left standing nearby. Using it as cover, he moved around it and then made his way to one of the other pieces of machinery within this large room, until he positioned himself in a way where he could safely see the area around the door that he had just left. Seeing that there was no monster nearby, Ryan slowly pushed open the door, waited a second, and, while crouched, rushed toward the minecart. Like this, the two continued making their way through the room. And it didn’t take long until a few of the monsters popped up, walking through the rows between the heavy machinery and broken-down carts. And whenever they did, Maximus would look for them, taking advantage of his small size, and Ryan would use the information given to him through Spirit Link to navigate safely. However, the skill effect only lasted for a bit more than ten minutes.

  Luckily, there was a catwalk nearby, and the stairway was positioned so that Ryan was able to make his way up there without being spotted. There were some other monsters on the catwalk in other parts of the room, but there were plenty of crates to allow Ryan to hide himself without being spotted, and most of the monsters were over by the crucible anyway, and not back here where Ryan and Maximus were hiding out.

  Ryan carefully sneaked over the catwalk, trying to get to a better position to see what was going on. All the monsters were walking around that massive crucible on the other side of the room. The heat in here was already unbearable, but it was clearly a lot worse right over there. Ryan was able to see the monsters carry the heavily oxidized copper to the top of the crucible, throwing it into the red-hot liquid inside. And now that he was here, Ryan could actually see the differences in the monsters; they weren’t all dwarves, at least.