Chapter 4: 1.04

[ 462 mana converted to 462 experience. ]

Logan waited.

Nothing happened.

He sighed. Not enough? 

Is there a way to check how close I am? 

Hey, [Inspect]. Help a guy out?

[ Level 1->2: 46.2% ]

Ah. Neat. He hadn’t expected it to work. 

Basic math indicated there was a thousand experience to level one. So five hundred and thirty-eight more mana. Half an hour of work. Better get to it.

He eyed the shovel. His muscles ached. Stop being a baby.

He returned to his manual labor. The tunnel was taking shape nicely; he could walk a few dozen steps in. With a shovel cutting through the material like loose dirt, he had made a lot of progress in a short time. 

He considered the leveling system as he worked. A thousand mana to a level. Probably scales exponentially, like most video games. He had no intentions of treating this new life like a game, but there was wisdom he could draw. The world had been modeled around them for a reason. Maybe he would have insights the general populace wouldn’t.

If I ever find the ‘general populace’. He had a feeling it would be a while before he was out wandering around on the surface … if ever. As a Core Avatar, would he be stuck in these depths forever? Bound to the core in a literal sense? He hoped not. He wanted to see the world, once he got a chance. 

Or maybe this was the world. Maybe the entirety of this planet lived underground, in branching dungeons. Who knew? The musings were entertaining, but also pointless. With how little information he had available, anything and everything was a possibility. Maybe Logan was alone down here, now and forever. Though that doesn’t make sense with my [Bind] ability. 

So he could rule a few things out.

Half an hour later, he’d carved out more of the hallway, and fed enough stone into the core to finish his level up.

[ Level gained. 1->2 ]

[ Skill earned: [Empowered Strike] ]

[ Skill earned: [Seductive Look] ]

Seductive Look … of course. Logan wiped a hand down his face. That confirms that. His class was perverted, not that he’d held any real hope it wouldn’t be. It’s named incubus, for god’s sake.

He checked his status page.

[ 

Logan Tonekirk
Lv. 1 Incubus / Demon
====
Stats
====
STR: 9 (+3)
INT: 5 (+1)
AGI: 6 (+2)
MAG: 4 (+1)
====
Skills
====
[Interface: Core], [Inspect], [Empowered Strike], [Seductive Look]

[

Based on the distribution of how his stats had increased, it seemed he was a physical fighter. A strength-based one. Or maybe INT and MAG simply advanced slower? He’d have to wait and see. He didn’t even know what each stat did, yet.

Onto his skills.

[Empowered Strike]: Amplify the striking potency of user’s next attack.

Nothing groundbreaking there. At least his class included fighting skills—it wouldn’t entirely be based on sex.

Now, the less palatable one.

[Seductive Look]: Attempts to raise [Lust], a stackable, debilitating debuff on selected target.

A debuff. Useful, from a removed perspective. And not something Logan would feel immoral to use. As long as I use my skills to overcome someone, but not take advantage of them, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. 

He paused, considering what his future looked like. 

Would it be up to him to defend against invaders?

I wonder if there’s cute elf rangers running around, delving dungeons. 

He shook his head to clear it.

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How ridiculous would using this skill be, anyway? What, was he supposed to level a steamy look her way, and suddenly she’d be tripping over her feet? Blushing up a storm and not able to meet his eyes, and thus thoroughly lose the fight?

That would be … funny, he guessed. Ridiculous, too. Logan might not have major self esteem issues, but leveling a seductive look randomly, in the middle of the fight? It would feel way too stupid. He didn’t have that level of confidence.

Maybe he’d have to cultivate it. This did seem to be his life.

But again … maybe he was making too many assumptions.

He couldn’t help having his thoughts wander. All there was to do down here was dig, and think.

The level-up hadn’t been underwhelming, but it hadn’t blown his socks off. About what he’d expected.

So, all skills tested. What now?

… back to digging.

===

He tested a few iterations of shovels, but it turned out Earth had gotten it right—there weren’t many improvements to make. He widened the head, but otherwise left the tool the same.

The addition that did improve efficiency was a wooden wheelbarrow. It took some fumbling around with [Construct] and his memories of what a wheelbarrow looked like to get it right. He’d thought he’d had a good idea of what a wheelbarrow was, until he’d gone and tried to make one. 

Kind of like trying to draw something. He’d taken an art credit in high school, and his teacher, on the first day, and made everyone try to draw a bike. Almost everyone had gotten it horrifically—and comically—incorrect. Memory was pretty terrible, as a universal rule, had been the lesson. It took active effort to remember something clearly. His wheelbarrow attempts turned out as well as his bike attempts.

But he got it functional, eventually. They weren’t that complicated. Getting the wheel to work was the hardest part. 

With how long the tunnel had grown, carrying back every scoop was highly inefficient. The wheelbarrow speeded things up massively.

He was headed toward one of the pricks of light he’d seen in [Ephemeral Form]. He might as well be working toward as many goals as possible.

I could really use some worker bees for this. Digging was getting old, fast.

===

Hours later, his shovel impacted stone, then carried forward—he’d broken into a hollow space.

Lost in the haze of repetitive labor, Logan almost fell as he tried to steady himself with his shovel, as he did every scoop. He corrected himself, but it was a close thing. He yanked out the shovel and started working on clearing an entrance for himself.

I wonder what’s in here? 

It had been glowing to his senses for a reason. Something valuable? He hoped so. Surely he wasn’t expected to just dig, and dig, and dig—forever. That would be horrible game design, he thought. That’d be how you get bad reviews, no matter how good the late game is.

Whatever was in here, though—dangerous? The idea made him pause.

Better safe than sorry. He stopped widening the hole, then stepped back and checked his mana.

[

Core of Eros
Mana: 2.6k/50k
Tier: 1

[

Plenty mana to do what he wanted. He couldn’t make armor, but he could at least form a weapon. The question is, what type? A sword was out; he could make it sharp with [Construct], but why not a mace, or a club, or a staff? Much better weapons for a novice. And Logan couldn’t pretend to be anything but a novice. He hadn’t been classically trained in swordsmanship in twenty-first century modern life.

A club will do. Not the most refined—or flashy—of weapons, but solid and practical. Idiot-proof. Logan had plenty of flaws, but he didn’t think arrogance was one; he would do what he needed to, not what made him look good.

Weapon propped up against the wall, he continued to dig.

He peered into darkness. This far from the core, there was almost no light. His eyes could make out the barest details—he must have some minor form of night vision—but visibility was still poor. He’d have to go in, and explore. 

Risky.

Also no choice, unless he wanted to spend his life digging.

He picked up his club and stepped through the hole.

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