229, 1/2

Erick glanced toward the guildhouse-like structure sitting at the southern side of the main courtyard, opposite the ironcrystal castle that held the dungeon entrance. Except for the construction material, which was a facade of ironcrystal over normal grey stone, the guildhouse was a rather normal space meant for gathering and coordination. There weren’t any normal guildhouse structures, like a library or adventurer clerks, or all of the normal accoutrements, but there were a few large leaderboards, and a large restaurant and bar space that took up most of the main floor. Some offices in the back looked like they were for dungeon guides and other paperwork spaces, but there were only two actual clerks working right now, and they were both arguing with a team about their place on the boards. It looked like a complicated argument about depth versus ‘decoration’.

‘Depth’ was easy enough to understand, but ‘decoration’, in this context, seemed to mean the amount of metiron and metamonds that a team could field, in full. The very fact that ‘decoration’ existed as a stat meant that there was some sort of limit to the amount of power a person could wield on the field, which was good to know.

That was very different from Veird, where everyone had access to their full Status whenever they wanted.

Erick glanced at the leaderboards again.

There were actually a few leaderboards, and looking at the argument between delvers and guides, Erick realized that they wanted to add another leaderboard to the mix. Which was whatever, Erick supposed. Anyway. The two main leaderboards were Depth and Decoration.

A team called the Iron Bandits was down to depth 191, and Erick disliked their naming immensely. Bandits? Seriously? Well whatever. The closest team behind them was at 159, with a bunch of people at 149. One of the ‘teams’ at 149 was actually an individual delver named ‘Clarice Icewind’.

Was there a 10 floor breakpoint? Or something? Probably.

The Decoration board was listed by individual name first, team name second, if applicable. Clarice Icewind was in the lead there with no team name, and with a ‘metiron cap’ listing of ‘3450’ and a ‘spells known’ of ‘239’. The next person behind her was from Iron Bandits, with a ‘3250’ and a ‘108’. A big drop off in spellwork, for sure.

A few other team names popped up, but there was no repeat from Iron Bandits, and most people on the Decoration board had numbers similar to the guy from Iron Bandits, but lower. The guy from the Iron Bandits was named ‘Bob Woodvale’, and since he was the highest decorated Iron Bandit, and that team was at the top of the depth board, Erick made a mental note of his name, and moved on.

Erick rapidly deduced a few things.

Clarice was probably an archmage, or equivalent. Everyone on the Decoration board was probably a mage of some sort, with a focus on spellwork.

And the ‘metiron cap’ was the amount of mana that a person could draw upon; the amount of metiron bits and bobs they had on their person. So like their mana well. 3000 mana was about the top range for a delver, for whatever reason. Erick suspected most people were far below that number.

The ‘spells known’ was rather clear; it was the number of metamonds a person had on themselves. Probably.

For comparison, Erick glanced at his Status, here on Veird. Mana comparisons were easy to find. Erick’s current mana well stood at a maximum of 55,800 mana. His spells known was a metric that was a bit harder to suss out of his Status, because Erick knew a lot of spells.

Well over 450.

According to the basic numbers, Erick was a lot more learned than the top delvers, but Clarice Icewind, which was probably not her real name, was either an archmage or a wizard or a dragon, and she was rather competent… Probably. Erick wasn’t sure how the Gem Dungeon worked, exactly, but Clarice was rather far up there… Or ‘down there’. Hmm.

Whichever!

Erick furrowed his brow, and suspected he was probably wrong about something to do with ‘Decoration’, because the people in the courtyard, under the morning light, did not have hundreds of little colored-gems stuck into their ironcrystal armor. The most Erick saw was…

Ten.

Quite a few people had ten gems stuck into their gear here and there, and none had more than that. A few people had seven or even four gems. Many had none; they looked like first time delvers, ready to get into the dungeon for the first time, just like him.

Hmm.

The most impressive display of ironcrystal was on the woman with the large shield and the ironcrystal tunic, who was surrounded by people. She was not, as Erick had first suspected, talking to her team, for her ‘team members’ each only had a few metiron and metamond pieces to them; they were rookies. She was instructing the lot of them on this and that, but mostly on various tactics for fighting a boss on floor 5, and for progressing fast through the first floors, and she was doing it with a beer in her hand. Day drinking, this early in the morning. She was truly enthusiastic about her instruction, but her charges were not. They were ready to get in there and go.

Erick was ready to go, too, but there was just one more piece of information he needed before he stepped into the dungeon. Now where could he find… Ah. There. That conversation.

“I’m at my limit and I told you this already. I said what I said before we even went in there!” said an exasperated woman, coming out of the dungeon castle. She and her younger male partner had come out of the dungeon itself not two seconds ago. Both of them only had two metairons apiece, each with a single gem stuck in them; they were rookies. “I’m not dying in a dungeon. I hit my 10 saves, and I’m done.”

The younger man was exasperated, but he tried to keep his voice even as he said, “This is the easiest dungeon we’ve ever done and we can live here if we can get past floor 5. We can brute force the boss with a few more tries.”

“No, Jono. I’m done with this place.”

“Please, Kerri. We can…”

Their conversation turned into a quiet quarrel, and Erick stopped paying attention because he had heard enough. Based on that conversation and a few more conversations across the courtyard, he suspected that there was a special system to prevent the need of [True Resurrection] all the time. A ‘saving’ system.

He wouldn’t need to [Time Stop] or [Return] when he was in there, which was good.

And that was enough information gathering for now.

Erick strode forward with confidence, right into the open doors to the ironcrystal castle.

Beyond the large, thick open doors, the black [Gate] into Darkness loomed in the center of the otherwise-empty-looking, shadowy space. The castle doors could be closed and the main entrance locked down in case of a dungeon break, but a quick check through the manasphere revealed that the doors to the main castle hadn’t been shut in at least the last week. They probably hadn’t ever been closed, since a properly maintained dungeon never broke, and the Gem Dungeon was a Grand Dungeon and therefore incredibly stable.

A much more thorough check of the manasphere and a flexing of his [Water Domain] revealed a monster hanging in the shadows above and all around. It was not an amalgamation moon reacher, like Quilatalap had at the entrance to his Grand Dungeon of Candlepoint, but instead a massive spider of a hundred legs, standing over and around the interior space of the dungeon gatehouse, with the shadows acting as its web. That unseen monster held above the black [Gate], unmoving, waiting for something untoward to happen below, and then it would strike.

Erick ignored the massive not-monster, but he did note the perfectly-formed core within the center of its head. The ‘monster’ itself was hidden through a bunch of magics, but that core was definitely a core, and not a grand rad. So it wasn’t a monster at all.

The spider was either a person, like a dragon doing a job, or a sacred beast.

Probably a sacred beast.

Sacred beasts sometimes happened these days, since dungeons and their arcane rules allowed for the safe accretion of uniform mana. Dungeons were made (partially) in order to allow people to grow their own magical production, and eventually their own cores, so the advent of sacred beasts was a rather normal ‘side effect’ of that allowance.

Not many people had cores these days aside from shadelings and Shades, so there was still a lot of stigma about a person making their own core. Dragons didn’t even have to have cores in their human forms; that was just an option for them. Erick always had a core, though. Anyone who had a core these days was either an extreme xoatist, or one of the rarer cultists of Melemizargo who didn’t care about being open about their ties to the Cult. Or a shadeling.

… Reluctantly, Erick decided that ‘Ashes’ would be a xoatist, if his core should be revealed, and it probably would, if Script-based spellwork eventually eroded further down in the Gem Dungeon.

Erick glanced around.

People walked in and out of the dungeon without worry about anything snatching them up, and the sacred beast didn’t move at all, even when people accidentally tripped the few shadow webs that lay across the path. Erick put his own worries out of his mind.

Beyond the black portal, the dungeon itself was grassland.

Erick stepped forward, into the dungeon gatehouse, under the spider.

The spider didn’t move.

A few strides later and Erick stepped across the [Gate] threshold.

He was in the dungeon now, upon a dirt path where others walked in and out of the dungeon. Yet again, Erick was reminded of Quilatalap’s Grand Dungeon, back at Candlepoint. Everywhere Erick looked was grasslands, but a forest held in the far, far distance, and beyond that lay mountains.

Down the dirt path lay what looked to be hillsides, raised up here and there. According to what a few people were saying around him, those hills were where he would find the entrances to the first floor, or whatever passed for a ‘first floor’ around here. Some people were even talking about stepping into the hills and arriving directly at floor 5… Because that was a thing they could do? Well sure.

This grassland was simply the entrance zone.

He’d get to all that eventually.

First, though: Just ahead of Erick, about twenty meters distant and ringing the entrance like a low fog, lay a ring of shadows. That demarcation was the true separation point between the ever-safe entrance, and the unknown.

People stepped across those shadows without worry or care.

… And so Erick stepped to the side of the path and watched for a while. As people entered the dungeon from outside, their ironcrystal bits and bobs remained ironcrystal, until they were inside the dungeon space for maybe ten seconds. After that, those jagged crystals transformed into almost-shiny, smooth iron. Going the other way, headed from the hills to the dungeon exit, it took people about three seconds of being in this safe space for their bits and bobs to transform the other way, from smooth, shiny iron, into jagged, hard grey crystal. The same thing happened to their gemstones. Smooth gemstones turned into jagged twists of colored crystal, or jagged crystals turned into smooth gemstones of every color, filled with fractal light, depending on which way the person was walking.

A lot of people had spellwork on them, too, and the change there was perhaps stronger than the change taking place in their ironcrystal.

Going into the dungeon, nothing much happened; [Personal Ward]s remained.

For those stepping out of the dungeon, their spellwork gained inside the dungeon washed away like broken glitters, as people stepped back into normal, Script-based reality.

So the dungeon had [Personal Ward]s of its own? Looked like.

Physically, there were also changes.

Going from reality to dungeon, a lot of people seemed to stand taller, and walk surer, gaining power inside the dungeon that they didn’t have under the Script.

Going from dungeon to reality was much more pronounced, though. Many people seemed to gain an inner strength in that transformation, with shoulders evening and eyes clearing and backs straightening. Just as many people had just as many transformations in a negative way, seeming to lose power and ability as they stepped back into reality.

Looked like the Gem Dungeon had systems similar to Strength and Vitality and otherwise. Going away from the Script would cause people to gradually lose Script power, but they would gain Gem Dungeon power.

Erick watched for a while to confirm what he was seeing, and yes, all his initial observations looked to be correct.

A few people looked at him, wondering what he was doing. A few of the more veteran delvers knew what he was doing; he was new, and he was checking out the dungeon, trying to see what was happening to everyone as they walked through.

A guy and his friend walked by, and the guy tried to be helpful, “The first floor is safe! Just go on in!”

Erick smiled, saying, “There’s no way any dungeon is ever safe, but I get your meaning.”

That earned him a few chuckles from the guys, and from other people all around, but nothing more than that.

Erick rapidly decided at least one thing:

All these people are way too comfortable with dungeons.

… But this one seemed safe enough. Erick even saw some people step off the dirt path, to head into the grasslands. And sure, that was one option. Just go out there and see what was what. Always a valid choice, unless ‘what was what’ was the emptiness of space which would lead to explosive decompression…

But then again, the first floors weren’t that bad according to the guide back there; Blacksmith. This entrance zone was certainly fine.

Erick gazed across the inner world of the dungeon. Ophiel, on his shoulder, did the same. Soon the little guy would need to step off, because he was a mana construct and this dungeon would kill him, as most dungeons would do to all ongoing magical effects. For now, though, Erick studied his greater surroundings, with Ophiel on his shoulder.

Grassland in every direction. A dirt road that went toward some hills. And then one more nearby thing that Erick didn’t know about.

Behind the [Gate], on the other side of where people came out, there was a squat fort over there. It sat about a hundred meters away from the backside of the entrance. It was off on its own, and Erick wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, for no one was headed there for some bizarre reason.

Erick asked a passerby who looked competent, with all his silver pieces, “Pardon me. Why does no one go to the castle over there?”

The passerby didn’t even look back as he said, “That’s the start of the Eternal Depths… Sorry, you look new and I’d love to help, but I gotta catch up to my friends. Good luck! Just do the tutorial!” The guy kept walking.

Erick pulled back from further interactions.

He people-watched for a while. Mostly, all he saw were people heading either into the hills, or away from the hills, where black shadows formed doorways leading elsewhere. Sometimes some people stepped off the path, to hunt for what looked to be slime/lizard things, hiding in the green.

The amorphous lizards dashed across the ground, praying that the heavy grass overhead would protect them from the hunting delvers. Mostly, they got away.

People just kept trying to kill them, though.

One guy who was chasing a slime-lizard couldn’t quite catch the darned thing, so he flickered through the air, almost like he was airstepping, his bracelet flickering with white light. The guy caught and killed the beastie, and the beastie shattered into light and mana. That mana then soaked into the man, and then into his bracelet. The man smiled.

Erick was rather sure he understood what was happening there, too.

The guy had a bracelet that was mostly dull iron, with a single white gem insert, and the gem had flashed when he did that airstep. When he actually caught the slime lizard, driving a sword through the thing and as the thing popped like broken magic —and not like a living thing at all— the animal vanished and the guy’s bracelet turned almost cleaner. The gem was brighter, for sure.

And then the guy went back to his friends, who were waiting for him to finish.

Not many people were hunting the slime lizards, but those who were hunting all had some dull bit of metal on them. Successful hunts made their metal shiny again.

They were recharging their metals? Through basic monster kills? Maybe. Seemed logical.

Anyway. Erick silently bade Ophiel farewell, and the little guy fluttered off of his shoulder. Intangible and invisible, the little guy hovered in the air on this side of the [Gate], outside of the way of others, while another Ophiel sat on the roof of the building on the other side of the courtyard, outside the dungeon [Gate] house. Ophiel had line of sight to himself, so if Poi or anyone else needed to send Erick an emergency message, they could. Erick wondered how valid this whole setup was, because Script magics failed deeper into the dungeon and if the mana got too thin… Eh. Erick would be fine for a few hours.

If Ophiel revealed himself, things would rapidly turn serious for a great many people here, and they could contact ‘Ashes’, for sure. Erick soundlessly told Ophiel that and Ophiel fluffed up, prepared for duty.

Erick smiled at that, feeling an inner warmth, knowing that Ophiel could do this task. For a moment, he lingered. Ophiel gave him a salute. Erick chuckled a little, and probably looked like a crazy person to those walking by, but whatever!

And then he turned and walked into the grass, prepared for death, and to fight death off.

And then…

He was in the grass.

No big deal.

Stepping off of the path would have caused some monsters to attempt to kill him over in Quilatalap’s dungeon.

… Erick kept walking, right through the smoky line of shadows encircling the safe space around the entrance—

Erick almost jolted as words appeared in the air before him. There was no box; just words, untethered.

Hello, <NEW DELVER>. Welcome to the Gem Dungeon.

We see you are a new user. There are a great many differences between the Second Script here in the Glittering Depths and the Script out there on Veird. We suggest you try the tutorial, though it is not required. Do you wish to experience the tutorial?

If you have any questions or concerns, or if you wish to engage the tutorial, speak to the dungeon, and the dungeon will respond.

Well that was a change.

“No blue boxes,” Erick said to himself, feeling some kinda way about that.

… He probably would do the tutorial. But first, he wanted to test out some things and he needed to be further out of sight of the traffic at the entrance. So Erick stepped deeper into the tall grass. The green came up to his knees, and slime-lizards scurried around under the tall fronds, but only to get away; nothing attacked.

Out a good fifty meters from the entrance, Erick made sure of a few things before he selected ‘yes’ to the tutorial. First, he checked out his mana sense, stressing his ability to be ‘one with the mana’ to his current limit… and his range was about 400 meters. Less than usual, but not too much lower than normal. He couldn’t mana sense beyond any of the nearby entrances to the first floor, though, and some people had some sort of weirdness on them that completely prevented mana sensing around them, but other than that, mana sense worked exactly how it should.

The mana sense blocking mostly pertained to those who came out of the black doorway to the first floor, which meant that anti-sensing spellwork was probably necessary further down.

Erick supposed in a dungeon devoid of mana, that mana was the most important resource, and so monsters and people would need to learn how to cloak themselves from mana sensing, completely.

Erick suspected the range and usefulness of his mana sense was probably going to go way down, but not too much down, and not because of any actual dungeon restriction, either.

A dungeon could very much limit one’s mana sense, like they did at the Pit at Storm’s Edge, but that was not normal. The purpose of leaving mana sense alone, as Quilatalap had explained to him a few times before, was to reward those people who actually learned that most basic of skills; not to punish everyone who had the skill, to make that learning useless. It seemed the Gem Dungeon followed Quilatalap’s guidelines more than they followed the guidelines of the Pit, at Storm’s Edge, or other similar places. There were surely places inside the Gem Dungeon where mana sense was actually blocked; security places, and such. But other than that…

If the density of mana went way, way down, which it was supposed to do, Erick’s mana sensing range would go down, too.

Moving on.

For the next test, Erick tried casting a [Force Bolt] through the Script, as he normally would.

Nothing. Not even a flick of mana and a premature spell break. Erick’s mana felt dead to him; it was there, he could feel it, and he could also feel the mana he kept inside his core, but casting as he would with the Script was right out. Not happening.

To be expected, really.

A few people were watching him from over by the entrance, but not too intently; they were new, too, and they were watching everyone, everywhere that they could, just like Erick had been doing minutes ago.

Erick ignored it.

Next, Erick kept his [Water Domain] tight around his core as he flowed his aura out of his core, into the air, to use the mana he kept inside his core to manually cast a spell—

His Domain-enhanced aura ripped apart before he could extend it more than a centimeter past his skin. All intent was… scrubbed from it? Whatever was happening, it was clear that manual casting outside his body didn’t work.

Erick could still shape mana inside his body, where his soul fully encapsulated the area where he would work his spells. Interior magic would therefore work. Stuff like [Greater Treat Wounds] would even work, but since the Script was not here, then it would be a rather shitty heal job. Not something to rely upon for anything outside of emergencies, and trying to cast Healing Magic on himself would likely result in cancers. Erick knew he could flex his Domains a lot harder than he was and actually cast normally if necessary, for a spell like [Return], but for now, this was fine.

Erick tried a trick.

He conjured a [Force Bolt] in his mouth, where his soul fully encapsulated the space, and then spat the Bolt onto the ground.

So that was good. Manual casting worked if he could fully enclose the space. He could probably [Benevolence Breath] too, if—

Manual caster detected.

Congratulations! You have passed the test for floor 2!

But not really.

You have also found a known vulnerability in our Rules. This vulnerability exists here on the entrance zone, but it does not exist on floor 3 and below. We suggest you don’t rely on this method going forward, or else you will have a bad time once the mana saturation falls below naturally fluctuating levels, and your soul covering a space will not protect that space from the Rules of the Glittering Depths.

NOTICE: All mana you attempt to exude into the air will be sucked away by the dungeon soon enough! Use the mana gained inside the dungeon to work magic inside the dungeon!

NOTICE: Since you haven’t done the tutorial or gained any meta-irons or meta-diamonds, you will not be able to actually use any real magic beyond this entrance zone. Please try the tutorial to gain your first bits of casting iron and diamonds, to then brave the Glittering Depths!

Well okay then.

So ‘mouth casting’ wasn’t going to get him through all of this, and eventually, even casting inside his body wasn’t going to work, because all the mana he tried to flow from his core would be wisped away by the dungeon…

Soooo…

Erick still had his core and all of his mana therein, so he could use any of his Domains and create a space for his own magic to work, but that would be about as bad as trying to cast spellwork out in the middle of space…

Which had been horrific.

He’d save that for an actual emergency.

“Let’s do this how they want,” Erick said, “Let’s do the tutorial.”

The ground opened up.

Erick let himself fall.

– – – –

Erick landed on his feet in the dead end of a white hallway.

His mana sense ended ten centimeters into the walls, floor, and ceiling, which was how it was going to be going forward, Erick thought. Whatever the case with that, the hallway was empty, and it led off into an open room ahead.

Words shimmered into the air.

Welcome, <NEW DELVER>! Please pick a unique name for yourself, and clearly speak that name to the dungeon, for the dungeon does not know what you are thinking or doing at all.

NOTICE: All commands must be said verbally to be understood by the dungeon.

“Ashes Woodfield is my name.”

Accepted! Name is not taken. You are now Ashes Woodfield.

Your current status:

– –

Ashes Woodfield.

Mana Production (MP): 1 per day.

– –

That is your entire Status for now. More parts will unlock later.

Don’t worry about having a low MP right now. 10 mana per day is the average mana production for a normal person on Veird, and you will reach that soon.

Your MP here in the Glittering Depths will increase rapidly as you complete challenges and reach new floors, and if you gain a [Meditation] meta-diamond, you can turn that ‘per day’ into ‘per hour’, just as under the Script.

The current maximum mana production of the deepest delvers in the Glittering Depths is around 100,000 per day.

There is no Health until you get a metamond for Health and can channel Mana into Health.

Erick tried to mentally dismiss the messages in front of him, but nothing happened.

So he looked away, and that did it. The messages vanished.

Erick reconsidered the leaderboards he had seen before. That ‘metiron cap’ of 3200-ish was a mana well cap, but a person’s mana production was personal… Which, yes, that’s of course how it worked.

Another message popped up.

NOTICE: The tutorial has robust messaging. Robust messaging does not exist inside the actual dungeon, except in special locations. The quantity of messages you receive will go down drastically beyond this tutorial.

NOTICE: Without an [Identify] meta-diamond, you won’t get much information outside of this tutorial.

NOTICE: The robust messaging of the tutorial will change based on your actions herein.

Do you acknowledge these notices?

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“… I acknowledge these messages.”

Please continue forward into the main testing room. There is little lethality in the tutorial, but it does exist. This is mostly a measure of your own capability for violence.

… Erick did as he was told, he supposed, and walked forward into the large room ahead.

The large room was simply that; large and featureless and a dome, about 20 meters in diameter, with no exits except the one he came in fro—

The wall behind Erick slid shut, and now the room was completely featureless.

A different wall opened up on the other side of the room and a standard green slime rolled out. The wall shut again, and then it was just Erick and the slime, each about 18 meters away from the other—

The slime rolled toward Erick, menacingly.

Erick almost laughed at the little guy. That little tilt of its tiny core, that little rumple on its front side where it was rolling forward too fast for its slime body to keep up, the way it was moving with purpose; everything about it spoke of menace. Rage and hate.

All that menace in a form barely the size of a toddler.

Erick let it come to him. He let the slime attack a little, but all it managed to do was climb onto his shoe and then flop off when it couldn’t climb him at all. It struggled, oh how did it struggle!

“Sorry little guy.”

Erick stomped it.

The slime became a splat of green goo that rapidly turned to motes of mana, to vanish into the ether. It wasn’t a real monster; just a facsimile of one, like the ones above ground. Erick wondered if there would be any real monsters going forward, or if the entire dungeon was filled with fakes.

Real monsters couldn’t exist inside a mana vacuum, after all. If all of the Glittering Depths was a near-vacuum, then… Where were the monsters? Because there were surely monsters in a dungeon; that’s just how it worked.

Erick filed away that query for later, because words appeared in the air.

Test 1 of 5 complete!

MP up! +1 mana production per day!

Erick furrowed his brow at the message. His mana production went up? Just like that?

Well okay then.

Another door opened up and a mangy dog launched into the room. The door shut behind the beast, and the beast yipped and squeaked at Erick. The dog was the size of a large toddler.

It attacked, as best it could, aiming right for Erick’s groin.

Erick slapped the back of the dog’s neck with the edge of his palm. The dog fell to the ground, limp and dead and rapidly turning into mana. A part of Erick was ashamed for killing a dog, even if it was a summoned creature, but there was an instinctive reaction that happened when the beast went for his family jewels—

The dog vanished into motes of mana.

Test 2 of 5 complete!

MP up! +1 mana production per day!

Another, different door opened, and out walked a teenager with a big stick and grubby clothes. Erick’s eyes went wide. A person? Well. Person-shaped. Probably not a person—

The skinny, 40-kilo-at-the-most teenager, rushed at Erick with his big stick. Erick caught the stick, took it from the kid’s grip, hip checked the boy to the ground, and then stepped back, holding the stick; it was his weapon now.

He waited for the kid to attack again.

But the kid just sat there on the ground, and smirked. The kid turned into a splash of broken mana. The big stick remained in Erick’s hands—

Test 3 of 5 complete!

MP up! +1 mana production per day!

Another, different door opened, and out stepped a full-grown man, the size and shape of Erick. He wore leather armor and had a stick big enough to be classified as a club. That club even had some nails driven into the head and out the other side. It was almost a morningstar.

The man did not rush at Erick; he took a measured walk—

He exploded into motion, crossing the distance in a matter of a second, his mace swinging down, aiming for Erick’s head.

Erick casually raised his stick and adjusted the course of the man’s attack, opening the man’s side up to a punching counter, which Erick expertly delivered into the space just below the man’s armpit. The man crumpled under Erick’s Strength, his breath stolen from him, and Erick helped him down to the floor. The makeshift-mace skittered across the room, away from both of them.

The man vanished into motes of mana before Erick fully put him down.

Test 4 of 5 complete!

MP up! +1 mana production per day!