Chapter 7: Chapter 6 – Goblin Shaman

It turned out: not a lot. The return back was uneventful, as the demoness confidently led him back home. When they had started walking he had felt a bit of pain in his thigh where he was stabbed, but it slowly cleared up. He had cleaned himself up and found to be mostly healed; the potion and the healing unguent were easily able to heal up what would have been stitches and weeks of healing during the time it took for him to return home. He was now on the [Multiverse Market], reviewing selling his gains. The goblin canines seemed to sell for a credit or two for what came from each goblin, and then the cores were only worth about two each in credits as well. As soon as he chose to sell the items, they would be enveloped in light and disappear.

All told, Jake had only made a little over 50 credits; effectively bringing him right back to 500 from what he spent on supplies; of which, he still had most of them. That means even if it turned out that the rest of the dungeon was simply crawling with goblins and their mouths full of canines, he simply couldn’t hope to reach 1,000 credits without receiving some sort of clear bonus.

Jake decided to relax a little. For nearly two full days, he seemed to live and breathe the dungeon. While he only entered the dungeon for the first time today, for nearly two days other than the time he slept, he spent all of his time thinking of or preparing for the dungeon. With that thought, he asked the demoness if she wanted to watch a movie.

After he described what it was, she seemed quite excited at the prospect, and he wondered if she would have any difficulty understanding it; she could understand his thoughts and speech, but that didn’t mean she could understand English. It seemed this was of no concern, as she floated about, quite happy about the idea.

The demoness didn’t seem to have a preference for a movie, just leaving it to Jake to pick. He picked an old sci-fi action flick that had a little romance, and five elements. It seemed like the demoness just wanted to enjoy time by Jake’s side doing something other than research or fighting, because she enjoyed it despite Jake’s thoughts probably ruining every plot point of the movie; knowing what was going to happen next. She floated around and struck poses through the air as they watched.

Jake got ready for bed, and realized he ached all over his body. It turned out that fighting goblins and all of his other activities were a great workout. He decided now was the time to spend his attribute points.

 

 

Nothing overly exciting with him spending his points, one each in intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. He thought he felt like something shifted in him, but he was not sure exactly what? When he only gained three attribute points and already had over 80 attributes between his six attributes, it did not feel like a lot. In the game, Elves would start with 2 or 3 more dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, but less strength and constitution.

Overall though, it would still take Jake nearly two or three levels just to make up the difference, a level 3 or 4 human being equal to a level 1 Elf in numbers of attributes. He didn’t want to think about what a Titan’s starting attributes looked like, a level 1 was probably superior or close to superior to a level 10 human in physical attributes. This was not like a game where everything was balanced, and everything was equal, though [The Labyrinth] was this way as well; that was why so few people played human, they were just not good.

As he laid in bed, he came up with a schedule that he would likely follow over the next few days. He would continue training the spear and the spiral. During the fight with the five goblins, his concentration on the spiral had lapsed. His goal was to keep it going at all times, though he was unsure if he could let it go during his sleep. If the demoness knew other spell-forms, he would learn those even if they were not particularly useful to him, or continue working on [Mana Bolt].

Jake would then spend more time in the dungeon, working through and clearing it. He had read that most of the time it took at least two beginner dungeons before he would move up to something more challenging, and that he would probably need to be at the next tier before he would receive a [Summoning Token]. He would plan on unwinding with research and a movie or show with the demoness after each day.

Jake went through his training when he woke up, and as it turned out, the demoness did know some other spell-forms for him to learn. He wanted to learn a mana shield type spell, but it appeared that it would be out of his reach until he improved his skill with lesser spell-forms. He was concerned about the goblin caster that was the boss of the dungeon, as he doubted his armor’s ability to protect himself from a fireball for example, but the demoness didn’t feel concerned about this at all.  Apparently, the damage the creature could put out was simply not enough to put him at significant risk; at least not with the demoness distracting it, or with Jake targeting it with [Mana Bolt].

The demoness showed him the spells he could learn next: a sort of push spell that would stagger enemies, a flame, a cleaning spell, and a blade of mana. [Mana Blade] was absolutely what he wanted to learn next, as it looked like it could work with his spear-staff. Jake would eventually learn all the spells, but that was what he wanted next.

Still, Jake was unable to learn it before entering the dungeon his first day, as the shape and application was much more challenging than forming a shape, wrapping it, and shoving it out. In this instance, he had to build the shape, wrap it and move it to his spear, then expand it and constantly channel mana into it and keep the shape with his intent, all while he was fighting or using the blade. Still, it was excellent training, and he had gotten the cast time of his [Mana Bolt] down even further when he was done, working on the [Mana Blade].

The dungeon run was uneventful, with Jake making easy work of all the goblins he ran into. There were larger groups, with no group smaller than 4 now. Still, after killing about 25 goblins this time, they had no luck discovering where the boss monster they needed to kill was located, and Jake had still not yet been wounded. Jake decided that this was fine; there was still nearly a week left, and clearing every enemy was gaining him experience and he was moving closer to the spiral being completed.

The next two days were a repeat of the previous, with one change: Jake had completed [Mana Blade] on the third day working on it. His [Lesser Spell-forms] skill reached the next level, as well. Jake wasn’t sure if he was talented, or if the demoness was just an excellent teacher. Still, reaching level 3 in a skill was not much to write home about; these were lesser spell-forms, after all. It seemed eventually he would move on to normal spell-forms and eventually greater ones, which had multiple stages and shapes.

The skill itself was amazingly effective, if a bit costly. Using it required Jake’s full focus, but it sliced through goblins like butter. Their limbs and bones provided no resistance for the blade, but he could only manage a few swings before he would need to cut it off.

It turned out Jake was very wrong about how many goblins were left. After the second day, goblins began roaming the dungeon, almost as if looking for who was slaughtering them. Still, the demoness easily kept Jake from getting surrounded, and the two of them took on fights that they could win. Jake had killed over one hundred goblins by the end of the fourth day dungeon diving overall.

Jake did take a few blows in one of the fights. The armor seemed to dull the blows from the crude clubs, giving Jake enough time to kick the goblins aside and finish them off without taking any major injury. This happened when he took on the largest group of eight goblins, the demoness only able to distract a few of them. 

The fifth day of dungeon diving, they finally reached the goal: the demoness had found the goblin shaman. Perhaps because of how much they had cleared the passages and killed so many goblins, there were not many other goblins in the room. Jake was now able to cast [Mana Bolt] in around 2 seconds, and his overcharged version now seemed to completely shatter goblins no matter where he hit them.

The demoness initiated the fight by lighting the goblin shaman’s crude clothes on fire, and when Jake released his [Mana Bolt] it knocked it several feet away from where it was standing. Jake wanted to finish the shaman, but found that the other goblins were getting in the way. Jake impaled one on his spear, then lifted the goblin and slammed it into another. He freed one of his hands and finished off the goblin shaman with another mana bolt, just as it was about to cast a spell.

Just as Jake was about to retract his spear and finish off the two bowled over goblins, a goblin had climbed some rocks near the wall and jumped on his back and stabbed him in the shoulder, underneath one of the thick plastic plates there. Jake tried to grab the goblin but found it hard to reach on his back so he found the nearest wall and used his body weight to crush the goblin.

Luckily, after the initial stab the goblin could not get much purchase for more stabs, allowing Jake to finish them without taking any more damage. From there, Jake meticulously kept his distance from the remaining goblins, keeping them at bay using his spear and he finished the rest of them without taking any damage. His shoulder wound did not provide a loss of his capability to kill the rest. He had received notifications but dismissed them until he was sure he was back in his [Refuge] safe.

The goblin had a wand that Jake believed was called a fetish that he would sell, and nothing else of value. Jake looted the bodies and the demoness led him back uneventfully. The dungeon was now completed, and Jake reached level 3. He had killed well over one-hundred goblins since he had hit level two at only a little over ten, and some of the last goblins were clearly higher leveled than the ones he started fighting early on in the dungeon.

Jake was very appreciative of the demoness. Going through the winding caves with a head-lamp would have been much more frustrating without a guide, and the last two days had felt like nothing more than a grind. With just a headlamp he guessed he would have wandered into countless ambushes, and probably would have been afraid of his own shadow.

Thanks to Fhesiah: the goblins provided no real challenge, and he felt like he would gain just as much practicing in his living room; perhaps more now that he was near completing the spiral.

Once the two of them arrived back in his living room, they went through their usual ritual of clean up and unwinding. The demoness would help him remove his gear and he would get into the shower, and she would help organize everything for when he put the items on the market, though this time she helped apply the healing unguent. The goblin’s knife couldn’t penetrate his bone, so it was only a long cut around it and not very deep.

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On top of that, she would use the cleaning spell-form to remove most of the grime from his armor and clothing. Once he had everything taken care of, he checked the notification that he got while they were heading back from the dungeon.

 

 

 

So, he had only reached level three thanks to the dungeon reward. Jake still had over half of his time remaining, so his middling rating was probably related to the fact that if he had really pushed hard, he probably could have cleared the dungeon in a single day. He was focused more on his training, instead.

Jake now had over 1,000 credits to his name. He could now purchase a basic skill guide that would let him learn something new. He really wanted a heal, as the demoness did not know any to teach him, but it looked like even those would be well outside of his budget. He hoped that his summoner class might eventually grant such a skill, like it did in the game.

In the game skills would be granted at certain levels through a class trainer, but it looked like Jake did not have access to such a service, but instead would be granted skills at the appropriate level. Information on this seemed to be limited, as it appeared [The Framework] would grant skills somewhat as it chose to, with some summoners receiving different skills than others at different times.

Jake knew he could pick his summon specialization at level five, but the spell specialization did not come until level ten. He was certain he would pick buffing spells, so getting as many as he could to take advantage of the specialization was his goal.

With that in mind, he reviewed the skills available for him to purchase and learn. It appeared all the spells he could learn related to buffing would all start out as quite minor. There were individual attribute increase spells, along with one that would increase the target’s speed of movement or provide a small amount of protection. The spell that most interested him for now was a stamina regeneration spell.

Jake could see that clearing the dungeon was very much like a job so far. By improving the stamina of himself and his allies, they could safely spend more time in the dungeon per day without getting tired. They would also stay more alert, or be able to better handle marathon style encounters. This spell would remain useful well into the future, especially with how many melee or other non-magical classes utilized this resource. 

Jake looked over to the demoness. In the almost week they spent together: she made almost no requests of him. She seemed content to do whatever Jake wanted to do, only seeming more excited about certain activities than others. She had even taken to helping Jake cook his meals, even if she could only barely grab small objects and ingredients, like a child helping their parents by grabbing the tool they requested. 

This made Jake feel a little bad. It was like he was taking advantage of her. On the other hand, she seemed to enjoy it, so what was the harm in that? Still, he felt she deserved a reward, or something for herself for the work she put in. There would still be funds remaining after he purchased his desired spell. He asked her if there was anything she wanted from the [Alliance Shop] or [Multiverse Market].

The demoness seemed hesitant, but she took control of the mouse for the first time, and she showed him what appeared to be mana crystals that were similar to the one that he used in the ritual that summoned her. A single one was 100 credits. Jake wasn’t sure what she wanted it for, but it did not matter; she wanted it, and for her hard work without any complaints she would get it.

He purchased the stamina regeneration spell and the mana crystal, confirming his purchase. There were still a little bit of funds remaining in case they needed something special to make the next dungeon safer or simpler to manage. A package emerged from his portal on the ground like always and he went over to collect it. He handed over the crystal to the demoness, to which she took it over to his nightstand next to the bed and returned. It seemed that she would do whatever she was going to do with it later.

They wrapped up their dungeon run a little earlier than they usually would, but Jake was at a loss of what to do with the spare time. He did want to celebrate for completing their first dungeon, but just what could they do? There were countless things he wished he could show the demoness back on Earth, but he could never go back.

Watching another movie didn’t seem very appealing, and the demoness didn’t eat, so it’s not like he could cook a feast for her to enjoy with him. Playing cards or most other games would be ruined by the thought link, and a gaming controller would be too large for her currently, it seemed. Jake tried his best to cut off these negative thoughts: of what they couldn’t do. The demoness had shown him that improving the bond and improving his mana would fix their link, so he would just have to work harder and be patient.

Jake was ashamed that they could not even celebrate his minor victory, but he would move on and focus on the things he can change. He settled in after a snack to continue with his spiral practice, to which the demoness joined him. He felt resolve and determination coming over the bond from her, so he did his best to match and focus his efforts.

A few hours later, it really felt like they were getting there. He couldn’t imagine it would take more than a few more days, but he’d certainly been wrong before. His [Mana Control] had finally improved as well, and he really felt he was on the cusp of forming something special. It was almost like he was turning the glob of mana in his chest into a sort of spell-form. Jake wondered what kind of effect this would have, but he trusted the demoness to act in his best interests, so he was not worried.

They did their usual evening rituals of dinner and some shows, then settled in for bed. Jake then spent his attribute points from his most recent level up.

 

 

Jake was surprised; it appeared that his physical attributes had improved on their own. His body was becoming stronger from the work-outs and dungeon crawling, and probably the assistance of [The Framework], or mana itself. He was in decent shape before, but the body by dungeon routine appeared to be a nominal improvement; his body was now cut, his muscles much more expressed than before.

While this was good, this made Jake even more worried. How high could this supposed Titan raise their attributes, being around mana while growing up? With how in-shape Jake already was, it would take months of high-intensity training to really have a measurable difference, but this took place in not even a week. He hoped that this effect was due to the spiral, whatever training it was doing to him. He remembered how exhausted he had gotten just learning [Mana Control] or working on it. 

Jake then reviewed his current skills:

 

 

While there would be a new dungeon for which Jake was interested in the morning, he was most excited about the spiral. He could tell that while utilizing it that it allowed his mana to flow better; it would likely be quite the qualitative improvement when it was completed. The demoness joined him on his chest like usual and he drifted off to sleep.

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