Thinking about things I can't affect won't help me survive the next week.
Danica's stomach soured but she pushed on. "Alright. Level 5 is about not dying from mana poisoning. Does anything else happen when I hit it, or is that the only perk?"
Eenax's wings gave a lazy, ghostly twitch. "There are additional benefits. Though you must survive to reach them, which remains the rather significant prerequisite."
Danica felt like she was missing something. "I'm not too worried. The dungeon's been manageable so far."
"That," Eenax said, in the tone of someone correcting a dangerous misconception, "is entirely by design. The entry area of a personal tutorial dungeon is calibrated to be a slow start."
She thought about the two hit points she'd been standing on after the rat fight. Calibrated slow. "Why?"
"Approximately fifty million years ago, the System made certain adjustments to improve Initiate survival rates." He watched her with the faint satisfaction of someone who enjoys saying fifty million years in casual conversation. "Prior to those adjustments, the attrition rate was… not ideal. Too many individuals panicked, rushed into encounters they couldn't survive, or simply froze. The buffer period was introduced as a corrective measure."
Danica narrowed her eyes. "A buffer period."
"The first twenty-four hours are designed to limit aggressive encounters and allow time for adaptation. The difficulty will begin to escalate after that." He tilted his head. "Not everyone, it turns out, is psychologically prepared to be deposited in a dungeon immediately after watching their world restructure itself."
"So the first day is purposefully easy," she said flatly. "And it still almost killed me."
Eenax said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"With properly prepared worlds," he continued, "the adjusted system yields a survival rate in excess of eighty percent for Stage One."
Danica went still. Her fingers pressed against the stone.
"My world wasn't properly prepared."
Eenax's wings stilled. "No," he said. "It was not."
"So what's Earth's actual survival rate looking like?"
He hesitated. A beat too long.
"Current projections estimate fifty percent survival through Stage One."
The number landed like something physical.
Fifty percent. Half. Half of everyone dropped into a dungeon today was not going to walk out of it.
She swallowed hard and did not do the math. Did not translate the percentage into faces or names or the image of Mark in an orange Goku wig trying to charm his way past something with teeth.
"And Stage Two?" she asked. Her voice came out level. She was proud of that.
Eenax's gaze dropped briefly. "Less than thirty percent."
Her stomach turned over completely.
She sat with it for exactly three seconds. Children. Billions. Every person who hadn't been raised by paranoid survivalists in the woods. She could not carry all of that and still function, and she needed to function, so she set it down in the same mental vault where she'd put the rest of the horrible things from the last 24 hours. The vault was getting a little too full.
Later she would think about the ugliness. Hopefully when she had power to do something about it.
Eenax cleared his throat with the energy of someone grateful for the subject change. "At Level 5, beyond stabilization, you will receive modest stat increases — whichever attributes you have been developing will see a boost. Additionally—" he let the silence stretch, apparently deciding how to frame this "Food becomes considerably less of a concern. Your body will process energy more efficiently. You will not need to eat as frequently."
Danica thought of the rat meat cooling on the stone beside her. "How infrequently?"
"That depends on your Stamina score. The higher it climbs, the longer between meals. Eventually—" another pause, this one with a faint gleam of anticipation "—waste elimination ceases entirely."
Danica stared at him.
"Your body," he continued, with the composure of a man delivering genuinely excellent news, "will convert everything consumed into something useful. No byproducts. No biological inconveniences." He tilted his head. "I rather thought you'd appreciate that, given this morning's ordeal with the moss."
Why did he know about that? Was he watching her? Danica opened her mouth. Closed it. "The System gives you a biological efficiency upgrade and nobody leads with that?"
"It tends to raise questions the orientation materials aren't designed to address." He folded his hands with quiet satisfaction. "But yes. No more bathrooms."
"That is the single most useful piece of information you've given me."
"I shall pass your feedback along."
She shook her head slowly. "What happens after Level 5? Higher levels?"
"Restricted until you reach Harmonic."
"Of course it is." She looked at him flatly. "You already know, don't you."
"Naturally."
"And you won't tell me."
"I could trigger several System errors attempting to do so," Eenax said pleasantly. "I suspect you would find the experience unpleasant. I would find it mildly entertaining. On balance, perhaps we wait."
Danica groaned. "Fine."
She studied him for a moment. The firelight moved through his projection without catching, the way it moved through smoke.
"You didn't wait for me to call you," she said. "So why are you here?"
Something moved behind his expression. Just a fraction. There and then smoothed away. "You amuse me," he said. "Most initiates either comply without question or collapse entirely. You argue. You demand better answers." A slight pause. "It is refreshing, in its way."
"And?"
His wings gave a small, precise adjustment. "Speaking with you also provides useful first-hand intelligence on how your world is processing integration. An arrangement of mutual benefit."
"You're using me for data."
"I am providing guidance in exchange for observational access," he corrected, with the air of someone who considered the distinction important. "It is an entirely standard arrangement."
Danica held his gaze for a moment. He wasn't lying. He also wasn't telling her everything.
"Since you're here," she said, "I've got twenty-nine free points I haven't assigned. And I need to know whether I should be grinding combat or skills."
Eenax's gaze moved to her interface with the look of someone who had noticed those points some time ago and had been waiting to be asked. "I had been wondering when you would address those." He settled, his projection shifting into the posture of someone preparing to be useful. "What is your priority? And I mean genuinely. Not survive the tutorial. After."
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Danica didn't hesitate. "Find my family. Get strong enough that nothing can stop me from doing that."
Eenax nodded once. "Then we approach this deliberately." He brought up what appeared to be her stat sheet, visible to him even if she couldn't see what he was reading. "Your Dexterity is already exceptional at twenty-nine, which is well above baseline for your level. Your Constitution is the problem. You have been walking around this dungeon on a health pool that would embarrass most people at Body Level one." His tone wasn't unkind. It was simply accurate. "You know what nearly killed you."
"The rats," she said. "Yeah."
"Constitution purchases now will compound. Every point raises your HP ceiling, which raises your survivability in every encounter from this point forward." He paused. "That said, your class is built on Dexterity. The gap between what your class requires and what your body can currently execute is the central problem of your build. Closing that gap faster means more points toward Dexterity."
Danica turned it over. "So Constitution keeps me alive long enough to use the class. Dexterity makes the class worth having."
"Succinctly, yes."
"Split it," she said. "Fifteen into Constitution. Sixteen into Dexterity."
Eenax tilted his head. "Not into Strength? Your melee output—"
"My class isn't built on Strength.” Or at least she didn’t think it was. "I'm not learning to write with the wrong hand."
Something moved in Eenax's expression, the same almost-approval she'd seen from Sorvain, quieter and less expected here. "As you like," he said, and gestured.
She committed to it.
The change arrived differently than she expected. The Constitution gains from the rat fight had landed like a door closing, sudden, her HP ceiling jumping without ceremony. This felt like the opposite. The Dexterity points settled in slowly, like water finding its level, each one clicking into place with a precision that felt less like gaining something new and more like becoming more accurately herself. Like the stats were confirming something that had always been true.
[FREE POINTS ASSIGNED]
+14 Constitution
+15 Dexterity
STR: 9
CON: 22(25)
DEX: 39(47)
INT: 13
WIS: 11(13)
HP: 85/85
Stamina: 1280/1380
Free Points Remaining: 4
She read the new numbers twice.
Eighty-five hit points. She'd gone into that rat fight with ten.
"Huh," she said quietly.
"Indeed," Eenax said, with the satisfaction of someone whose advice had been taken and had immediately proven correct.
She was about to close the interface when the remaining balance caught her eye. "Wait — I still have four points."
She turned it over for a moment, tracing back through the day. The mushrooms. The Soul level ticking up alongside the Mind level. Points she'd been awarded and apparently hadn't counted.
She was about to split them the same way, half and half, tidy and practical, when Eenax spoke.
"If I might suggest something."
She glanced at him. "Go ahead."
"Your Umbral Points are calculated from Wisdom." He said it without pressure, as information rather than instruction. "At present your UP pool is functional but limited. More Wisdom means more to spend, which means more healing. Given that your class is built around that resource, the return on investment is considerable."
Danica considered it. He wasn't wrong. The UP had already saved her once. Spending it after the rat fight, feeling the cold wrongness of Shadow Siphon doing its work, watching the HP number climb back from the edge. More of that was not a philosophical question.
She put all four into Wisdom.
[FREE POINTS ASSIGNED]
+4 Wisdom
WIS: 15(18)
UP: 42/64
Free Points Remaining: 0
She flexed her right hand. The sigils caught the firelight, shifting faintly against her skin.
The numbers felt real in a way the earlier ones hadn't. Maybe because she understood what they meant now. Not just bigger stats on a sheet. Actual capacity. The difference between having enough to get through something and running dry at the wrong moment.
"Better," she said.
Eenax inclined his head. "Considerably."
"Combat or skills?" she asked. "Going forward."
"Both," Eenax said. "Combat is faster in the early levels. Skills matter more once you pass ten. Keep them roughly even and neither will bottleneck the other." He paused. "The curve steepens considerably as you advance. What takes an hour to advance now will take a week at Level 20, and a month at Level 40. Most people reach a comfortable threshold and stop pushing."
"What threshold?"
"Thirty. Perhaps fifty. Strong enough for everyday life in an integrated world, no longer motivated to go further." His wings settled. "They find work. Have families. Grow old. The System does not compel advancement beyond what survival requires."
Danica watched the fire. Thought about her father's voice, patient and certain, on trails she'd thought were just hiking trips.
"My father used to quote Frederick Douglass," she said. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
Eenax was quiet for a moment. "A rare conviction," he said. "And one most people abandon when comfort becomes available."
"He didn't." She looked at the fire. "Neither will I."
Eenax studied her with an expression she couldn't fully read. Then, quietly: "No. I don't believe you will."
It wasn't flattery. It was an assessment. She appreciated the difference.
A comfortable silence settled over them. Or at least the closest thing to comfortable that a holographic demon and a woman sitting in a dungeon could manage. The fire popped. The crystals shifted their light.
"How do I tell time down here?" she asked. "No sun, no watch. I have no idea how long I've been in this place."
Eenax tilted his head and gestured. A small translucent display appeared in front of her without ceremony.
[TIME TRACKER]
Personal Elapsed Time Since Integration: 27 hours, 42 minutes
Dungeon Time Dilation Factor: 4x standard planetary time
Relative Earth Time Passed: 6 hours, 55 minutes
Danica's mouth went dry.
Twenty-seven hours. When was the last time she slept? She'd been moving for over a day, not counting however long she'd been awake before the Integration. No wonder her body felt like it was filing a formal complaint. She'd thought she was tired. She hadn't understood the full scope of it until this moment.
Then the second line landed.
Six hours and fifty-five minutes on Earth.
While she'd been fighting rats and shopping in a dungeon store and learning to spar with a being older than human civilization, barely seven hours had passed on the surface. Mark had been in his dungeon for less than a morning. Zelimir had been wherever he was for an afternoon.
She didn't finish that line of thinking. She couldn't afford to.
"Time moves differently in here," she said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Time is not universal across dungeons," Eenax said. "Each operates according to its own parameters. Some run faster than the surface, some slower. The variance can be considerable." A brief pause. "There are dungeons where days outside correspond to years within."
Danica looked at him. "Years."
"Which is why," he said, with the precision of someone delivering information they consider genuinely important rather than dramatic, "you should always verify the time dilation ratio before entering any sub-dungeon. The display you just saw will update automatically. Consult it before you commit to anything with an uncertain exit."
She absorbed that. "This is the worst onboarding experience of my life."
"It is the worst onboarding experience of everyone's life," Eenax said. "You are merely navigating it better than most." He considered that for a moment. "Considerably better, if I'm being precise."
Danica wasn't sure if that was reassuring or simply a measure of how badly everything had gone for everyone else. Possibly both.
She looked at the fire. The crystals. The narrow entrance she'd blocked with stones. Everything she'd built in a single day that was almost three.
She was tired in a way that had stopped being about muscles and started being about the weight of it. All of it, stacked and compressed into twenty-seven hours that felt like a week and apparently only counted as seven on the surface.
"I need to sleep," she said.
"An eminently sensible decision," Eenax said. "For once."
She gave him a flat look. He looked entirely untroubled by it.
She shifted her pack and lay back, using it as a pillow, and looked up at the crystals in the ceiling. They caught the dying firelight and threw it back in slow patterns, pale blues, deep silvers, the occasional flicker of violet moving across the stone like something breathing.
Two more Soul Levels. That was the immediate problem. Everything else, Mark, Zelimir, her parents, the thirty percent, the children she hadn't asked about, all of it waited in the vault. She'd deal with it when she had the power to do something about it. Not before.
The fire settled lower. The crystals kept their slow light show for no one in particular.
She closed her eyes.
Tomorrow, she thought, and was asleep before she could finish it.
Chapter 11A
Status Sheet
[USER: DANICA INOY]
Mind Level: 4
Body Level: 3
Soul Level: 3
BASE STATS
STR: 11
CON: 24(27)
DEX: 41(48)
INT: 15
WIS: 17(20)
FREE POINTS AVAILABLE: 0
DERIVED STATS
HP: 91/91
MP: 70/70
Stamina: 1280/1400
UP: 42/70
General Skills:
Climbing (0)
Daggers (1)
Decryption Savant (0)
Forager's Eye (2)
Identify (2)
Jury-Rigging (0)
Looting (2)
Silent Step (2)
Situational Awareness (2)
Survival Tinkerer (0)
Translation (1)
Unarmed Combat (1)
Wilderness Navigation (2)
Will of Steel (1)
Class Abilities:
Shadow Siphon
Silent Requital
Veil of the Umbral Path