Day 71, 6:30 AM

  My lids feel like they are burning as Lucy shakes me from my sleep. I struggle to crack them open, but they resist, wanting nothing more than to stay shut for another hour or two.

  “Leave him be, he worked hard last night.” Edna comes to my rescue, and I’m grateful. Learning magic is surprisingly taxing, and my body demands rest. Don’t know why.

  “Griff, you can skip breakfast, but then we are heading down to the next floor.”

  I mumble an incoherent grunt of general acknowledgement, and doze off. My eyes are sore, lids glued together, but my ears are working just fine. Gila is warming the remains of our stew, Edna wrings moisture out of the air and sprouting greenery, turning it into water for us to drink, meanwhile, Lucy is singing the dirge of the dead climbing from the ocean trench. She’s doing a decent job, and she’s already mastered the other song we used as a whetstone to sharpen our voices.

  “I did it!” she cheers, and I force myself up and open my crusted eyes.

  “Congratulations! I knew you could do it.” She beams a smile, her eyes locked with mine even though Gila skipped over to hug her and congratulate her.

  I don’t know what she sees in me. My looks at the moment are comparable to a median toad, what with greasy hair, sandy eyes, and probably a bit of snot sticking out of my nose. I turn, pick at the damn thing with my thumb, and go back to sleep. Or at least I try to, but excitement and positive energy fill the air, and I know there would be no rest after this, so I get up.

  I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms, clearing most of the sand, and take my bowl of warm sustenance.

  “So, what’s your next level up condition?” Edna asks. “I didn’t want to bother you last night. You looked beat after withering that patch of grass.”

  Yeah, that was a useful experiment, one which confirmed that BSD considers plants creatures. I bring up my class screen.

  [Name - Fyoor Enchanterson

  Class - journeyman mage level 5

  Health 25/25, Strength - 25, Agility - 25, Physique - 25, Wisdom - 28, Intellect - 32, Willpower - 26, Presence - 22, Charisma - 23, Composure - 25

  Abilities - See Abilities for more information.

  Attribute points remaining - 6

  To level up, cast a spell by relying almost exclusively on inner mana.

  Statuses - none]

  “Cast a spell by relying almost exclusively on inner mana.”

  Edna rolls her eyes. “Just cast Hyper-stimulator. It runs exclusively on inner mana.”

  I leave my bowl to the side and sing the songs of the slowing pebble and of human senses catching up with speeds they found too high a moment before.

  BSD answers with a level up notice. A choice between Advanced Focus and Advanced Draw Mana. I pick the latter, and check the level up condition.

  “Another slogger; learn fifty different spells.” I immediately note the extra adjective. “I’m guessing I can’t learn fifty different spells for starting fires, but they have to have different purposes.”

  “That’s gonna take a day or four.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  It takes five. I’m not really bothered by it, learning magic is fun, if exhausting, but I am surprisingly slow on the uptake. Both Gila and Lucy are catching up, gingerly trying to find the impossibly fragile marbles, or whatever image they see for the scanner spell.

  Edna’s been working around the clock too, and in five days we have turned the first thirty-two floors to ash with no resistance. The one benefit is that I have received a single bonus attribute point, while the girls got three each. The only one without them is Edna.

  “I got the level!” I tell her after she teaches me the forty-first spell in five days.

  It should have only taken thirty-eight new spells, given that I already know twelve very different spells, but BSD somehow through three overlapped, even though neither Edna nor I saw the logic. We don’t even know which spells are the troublemakers.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Edna shrugs. “I’ll jot down that to reach the next level a journeyman mage needs to learn fifty spells, with the sample pool of fifty three, which did the trick for you.”

  I barely listen to her, focused on my choices.

  Stable Mind, which advertises resistance towards mental degradation. The skill lacks a more specific description, but if it does what it so broadly advertises, it’s probably the one to keep my twisted mind whole.

  The other one is even more obscure. Mental Mapping, allows you to mentally map a process you are about to undertake. Sounds useful for running experiments and research, I guess? It should certainly help you find flaws in whatever you’re about to do. But I believe my mind is in desperate need of a stabilizing influence.

  I make my choice just as the Guide appears.

  BSD flicks into view with a thought, and the level up condition makes my guts churn.

  “Cast spells of at least six different elements in a single hour.” I look at Edna. “I’ll do that tomorrow, all right?”

  I head to sit down near the girls, then realize they are learning how to peek under the clothes, so I give them a bit of privacy and watch Edna incinerate the monster infested forest, the orb-weavers and phasmids screeching in terror before collapsing in a pile of ash.

  Edna unleashes another firewave and comes over to sit next to me.

  “So, what were your level up choices?”

  I give her the rundown, as well as my reasoning. She nods, her eyes glassing just a fraction. Had she known about the skill, and the conditions to reach it, she might not have needed to fear her eternal memories.

  “You’re right,” she says out of the blue. “I think I’m going to restart my classes. Too many mistakes. I don’t have to redo all of it, but it would be foolish to leave useful skills behind for no good reason.”

  I nod.

  “I’ve been thinking. Have you noticed that there’s a striking similarity between apprentice mage and journeyman mage skills and choices at certain levels?” She considers the question and nods. “Journeyman is a bit more advanced, but since they are doing the same job and have the same aspirations, you get the same set of tools.”

  I glance at her? “What about mage skills?”

  Edna gives me one of her rare awkward faces.

  “They are a secret. My parents told me, naturally, but mages kept them a secret from one another. I know them only up to level five, and they can be considered being an improvement to the skills a journeyman mage gets, but there is little overlap—” I’m certain Edna wished to share more with me, but I catch a scuttling from the direction of the stairway.

  “Gila, Lucy!” I bellow jumping off the ground and sprinting towards the stairway leading down. “Head up, now! Edna, protect them, I’ll handle whatever’s coming.”

  I don’t wait to check whether they are doing as I told them. They are adults; they should know how to stay alive and follow a protocol we previously agreed upon.

  My heart drums. The monsters overflowing from a lower level must be powerful, and there’s a bunch of them, judging by the countless chitinous feet scuttling their way towards me.

  I don’t know whether to sigh in relief of curse when a gigantic centipede surges out of the stairway, scuttling sideways on the wall. The monster’s tall enough to reach my waist, six feet wide, and it’s already thirty feet long and still slithering out of the tunnel, crumbling rock beneath its serrated feet.

  Violet ichor dribbles from a maw wide enough to gobble me up, while inside I can see serrated plates ready to mill anything the centipede swallows. The monster’s bulldozing its way towards me, when an orb of fire flies past me, flashes into its open maw, and detonates the creature from within.

  “Three more are coming,” Edna says. “I can handle them.”

  I want to shout at her that we had a plan, she had agreed to it before we first entered the dungeon, and now she’s flat out ignoring it.

  “Edna, protect the girls. I’ll handle this.”

  She doesn’t budge. “Edna, we had a deal.”

  A centipede bursts out from the passage, and an orb of fire disappears inside its gaping maw, bursting the creature.

  I can fight Edna or let her do as she wants, and since I’m the grownup and we’re in a potentially lethal situation, I let her fry the giant centipedes.

  I open my mouth to argue, but she speaks first. “Those were four minor abominations. I didn’t know how many of them there were when I sensed the sudden spike of mana at the edge of my perception, so I had to come over and help. All right?”

  I think about what she just said and nod. Our contingency was for the case of monsters ascending from the depths. We have agreed all abominations were too dangerous to face alone.

  “Thanks. What do we do now?”

  If a minor abomination found its way here, then there must be more on the lower floors.

  “We keep going down. There are a few more types of abominations that can squeeze up the stairway, and we should be fine as long as we sweep each floor properly.”

  I nod and trot towards the stairway leading up.

  “Lucy, Gila, it’s fine! You can come down now!”