Sylas sucked a deep breath in as his consciousness returned.
Pain radiated from his chest and back causing his entire body to ache.
Sam was sitting on his right, smiling as she watched her husband rejoin the land of the living.
"Hey sleepy head," Sam giggled uncontrollably as Sylas could only groan in response. "We beat the boss after you took a nap," Sam paused for a moment as a look of grief and worry flashed across her sky blue eyes.
Resuming her soft smile, "We think your rot got in its brain because it just fell over after another minute of fighting."
Sylas saw the quickly decomposing body of the baron ranked level 9 [Juvenile Hellhound]. Its skull was mostly missing from the combined effects of his [Rotting Bolt] and the dungeon's faster absorption method.
[35:21]
[35:20]
He glanced at the remaining rest period and assumed they would be kicked out of the dungeon if they hadn't chosen to exit by selecting the [Exit Dungeon] button he could now see at the top right of his vision.
Glancing around, he took stock of his team. Swain had an extra gauze wrapping around his left arm as he rested with his eyes closed. Diana and Jackie looked unscathed and were quietly chatting about ten feet away from the rest of the team.
[Congratulations! You have completed the dungeon. You have 1:00:00 as a rest period before you will be removed from the dungeon.]
[You have completed the first dungeon in 10 miles. Your reward has been increased.]
[You have completed the first dungeon in 100 miles. Your reward has been increased.]
[You have completed the first dungeon in 1000 miles. Your reward has been increased.]
[Dungeon Completion Reward Available!]
[Would you like to open the reward?]
Sylas went ahead and clicked [Yes] with his mind.
[You have obtained [Mana Slow Cooker].]
Interested in what the item, which had been upgraded three times, could be, Sylas quickly used [Analyze] on it in his inventory.
[Your [Analyze] is not strong enough to see through this item. The System empowered your [Analyze] to allow you to view your reward.]
Sylas felt a larger amount of mana than normal leave his core and rush towards his eyes. The amount of mana caused pain, but Sylas did his best to ignore the pain as he focused on the path the mana was taking.
Unfortunately, he had less than a second to try and map the path as the results of the empowered [Analyze] popped in front of his eyes as quickly as the normal [Analyze] results would.
[Mana Slow Cooker]
[Grade: Epic]
[Insert a container with food into the Slow Cooker and receive the contained back cooked after a set time. There are 20 inventory slots available that can cook separate containers. Powered through ambient mana.]
Sylas forgot about his inability to successfully map the channels the strengthened mana took after he read the description of the [Mana Slow Cooker]. 'This is great! It solves the problem of cooking food for ourselves while we travel.' Sylas mused.
'It sounds like as long as someone knows what ingredients should be put in together then the meal will be good, but even if I just put some meat in there it'll be better than starving.'
[Dungeon Extermination Completed. Reward for removing the looming threat of this dungeon from your fledgling world granted to each member of the party.]
[Mana Manipulation for Dummies]
[Grade: Common]
[This book introduces the most basic concepts of mana and how to manipulate it.]
Although the description was brief, Sylas was ecstatic about his reward. 'This book can help me not fumble around in my core constantly and I'll be able to progress so much faster than I would on my own.'
Satisfied with the reward from the dungeon, Sylas moved on to the rest of his notifications, but there wasn't anything valuable there. There were many hellhound kill and assist notifications, and a couple level ups, but those weren't interesting so he directly cleared them.
[Name: Sylas Redstone]
[Race: Human]
[Class: ]
[Level: 9]
[Tier: 0]
[Rank: Commoner]
[Strength: 12]
[Vitality: 11]
[Dexterity: 12]
[Agility: 12]
[Intelligence: 30(4)]
[Equipped: Rotting Wand, Cloak of Death]
Sylas gawked as he got down to his Intelligence. It had increased by 18 points since the last time he looked at his stats.
'Incredible… I've only been using [Bossy Words] and [Rotting Bolt] while fighting so it makes sense my Int increased, but that much is crazy.' Sylas was still in shock as he thought. 'But, if I've really only used mana in fights, other than that boss fight, why have the rest of my stats gone up too?'
Sylas pondered reasons until he came up with a plausible theory. 'Is it because I'm training them? I haven't used any of those stats in fights, but I have been running around, lifting objects, pulling a full wagon, and other mundane actions. So can we train stats?'
He put the thought on the back burner for now since he didn't want to test the theory by purposefully training while he was still a bit injured. Instead, he turned his attention to Sam.
"Hey beautiful." Sylas's smile widened as he saw Sam blush at his words even though he had been saying them for a decade now. After a second he shared the information about the [Mana Slow Cooker], the book, his stats, and him reaching level 9 during the dungeon.
She listened patiently and then reciprocated by showing him her stat screen.
[Name: Sam Redstone]
[Race: Human]
[Class: ]
[Level: 8]
[Tier: 0]
[Rank: Commoner]
[Strength: 14]
[Vitality: 12]
[Dexterity: 14]
[Agility: 14]
[Intelligence: 18(1)]
[Equipped: Ring of Intelligence]
Sylas nodded at her stats. They were much more balanced than his though he had more stat points overall. Sam then shared the item she gained from the dungeon extermination as well.
[Ring of Intelligence]
[Grade: Common]
[+1 Intelligence]
"You're getting strong!" Sylas beamed while staring into Sam's sky blue eyes. Sam replied with a loving look in her eyes, "No, we're getting strong."
A boisterous voice was heard a second later as Swain stepped over the couple's legs to plop down next to Sylas. "Yeah we are!" Swain laughed loudly. "My turn to share!"
Sylas looked at Swain for a second, noticing his new shirt, or maybe he should call it a tunic. It was black with orangish-red streaks and was fashioned like medieval leather armor. He shook his head lightly as a blue screen appeared in front of him.
[Name: Swain Shieldgrove]
[Race: Human]
[Class: ]
[Level: 9]
[Tier: 0]
[Rank: Commoner]
[Strength: 20(3)]
[Vitality: 20(4)]
[Dexterity: 14]
[Agility: 16]
[Intelligence: 10]
[Equipped: Swinger's Axe, Hellhound's Hide]
Then the black tunic's information appeared.
[Hellhound's Hide]
[Grade: Uncommon]
[+3 Vitality]
[Hellhounds are born in fire and brimstone. Their hide is resilient to heat.]
Sylas nodded his head after reading through Swain's information. He and Sam shared their info with him so he could be in the loop as well. Sylas was looking over all three of their stats when he realized they all had a pretty even amount of stats total when equipment was counted.
"I wonder how many stats we need to be considered barons. Sam has 72, Swain 73, and I have 77 total stat points… Would we need 100?" Sylas mumbled to himself. Sam and Swain heard, but kept quiet as they weren't sure either.
He sat there contemplating for a few minutes before he suddenly slapped his forehead. "Duh! There's a baron right in front of us that we could look at!"
[Juvenile Hellhound]
[Level: 9]
[Tier: 0]
[Rank: Baron]
[Strength: 20]
[Vitality: 25]
[Dexterity: 15]
[Agility: 25]
[Intelligence: 9]
"95," Sylas mumbled, "That's more than us. You need 10 stat points per level?" He quickly shook his head, "No, then we'd all be barons at level 1. So then it has to change per level and the requirement should grow each time, but probably not by too much or there wouldn't be any ranks above baron."
Sylas just didn't have enough information to come to any real conclusions for now so he quickly set it aside for later. Instead, he stood up and stretched, looking to see they had another 25 minutes in the dungeon before they were kicked out.
He winced as he leaned further into some stretches because his chest was sore from the boss bucking him into the wall. Glancing in Diana and Jackie's direction, he now saw two daggers sitting next to Diana.
They were much nicer than the knives she had been using from the cafeteria and he was glad her fighting strength was raised. He thought about using [Analyze] on them, but figured he'd respect her privacy and let her decide if she wanted to share.
Jackie had black leather boots on with the same orangish-red markings as Swain's tunic so he assumed they were also hellhound themed.
"Is anyone hurt?" Sylas asked even though he could see Diana still only had one injury wrapped, and Jackie didn't have any. He received the shaking of heads in return and quickly settled back down between Sam and Swain.
He pulled out [Mana Manipulation for Dummies] for the first time. The front cover looked like any other book with the name in golden letters on a blue background. The blue was the same color as the portal to the dungeon so Sylas wondered if mana itself was blue.
Sylas tried to open the book, but it was completely solid. There were no pages for him to flip through. He turned it over, but nothing was on the back either. With frustration, Sylas thought "How am I supposed to learn anything from this?"
A blue screen appeared:
[Would you like to learn [Mana Manipulation for Dummies]? WARNING: This is your first time encountering a knowledge tome. Knowledge from knowledge tomes is learnt directly and may overwhelm the user for a time. The System suggests you use the knowledge tome in an area that will be safe for a long period.]
Sylas wasn't sure how long a long period was for the System, but decided against learning the tome right then. They only had a little over 20 minutes of rest time before they were removed from the dungeon and he thought a long period should be at least an hour.
He didn't want to risk his life by being incapacitated when they left the dungeon. He trusted his team, some of them more than others, but didn't want to put them in a position where they had to risk their own lives for him when he could just wait until later to become defenseless.
"I'll learn the tome tonight when we're in the relative safety of the study room." Sylas thought was a calm, yet eager, mind. He relaxed against the wall behind him and focused on his core trying to manipulate his mana.
He slowly drew it out of his core, steadily expanding its range while noticing the mana expanded much easier in some areas than others. The mana only managed to reach an inch away from its origin point before dissipating, but it was progress and Sylas was happy with it.
Stopping with three minutes left on the timer, Sylas stood and had everyone gather before deciding to leave the dungeon before the timer expired. He noticed Swain's axe was now resting on his back like it was strapped in.
Swain noticed Sylas looking and, with exaggerated facial expressions of shock and awe, easily grabbed the axe off his back and placed it back several times before chuckling and saying "I don't know either, but it's like my chest piece is magnetic so my axe just stays there."
Sylas nodded his head in understanding. The mana in the chest piece must be programmed, somehow, to attach to the weapon for storage. That takes care of the delay of having to take a weapon out of your inventory or carrying it at all times.
With that last thought, Sylas nodded and the team selected to leave the dungeon together.