Waiting for the system to connect her to Eenax, Danica exhaled slowly, crossing her arms. "Alright, let's see how long—"
A holographic projection flickered into existence in front of her, and it took her several long seconds to understand what she was seeing.
Eenax was cooking.
She stared.
The demon was hovering over a pot, flicking his clawed fingers through the air like he was adjusting an invisible dial, while steam curled up from whatever he was making. There was flour on his sleeves. A rolling pin floated lazily off to one side. A small pile of diced vegetables sat arranged beside him with the kind of deliberate neatness that suggested genuine opinions about mise en place.
For a moment, Danica said nothing.
She laughed. Real and sudden. It caught her off guard.
Because of course. Of course the first time she actually reached for contact, the System just dropped her directly into his kitchen.
"Well," she managed, "this is not what I expected."
Eenax glanced up. A flicker of surprise crossed his face before settling into his usual constrained dignity. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "System," he muttered, "Bloody hell."
"Am I interrupting something?"
"Yes," he said, with great precision. "But that is entirely my own fault. I granted you unrestricted access at all hours. I simply failed to anticipate the System being quite so literal about it." He gestured around his kitchen. Impressively immaculate, and inexplicably well-lit. "Welcome."
Danica grinned. "You can cook."
"Of course I can cook." He drew himself up, which was impressive given his dimensions. "I have standards. Unlike the vast majority of initiates who subject themselves to the System's nutritionally adequate yet deeply uninspired rations, I enjoy food. I refuse to spend an immortal existence eating something that tastes like compressed obligation."
She laughed again. Her translation ability was doing its best, but she was fairly certain the word he'd actually used wasn't obligation. Nonetheless, the meaning landed clean.
"So what you're saying," she said, "is you've got a side quest in fine dining."
Eenax pointedly ignored her. He gave his pot a delicate stir.
"Alright, Chef Hellspawn." She settled more comfortably against the wall. "I'll let you get back to your artisanal demon cuisine in a minute. But I need your help first."
"Chef Hellspawn," he repeated flatly. "Original. Shall I call you Dungeon Rations Enthusiast?"
"Hey, rat meat isn’t actually half bad, but I did forget to check the store for spices. But that isn’t what I called about." She shook her head. "I just hit Harmonic. I've got three skill slots, and I genuinely don't know what to pick."
The flat look dissolved. His eyes sharpened with a gleam of someone who was locked in. He set down his spoon with care, the kitchen fading into the background as his full attention shifted to her.
"Three slots," he said. "At Harmonic. Excellent." He clasped his hands. "And I assume you've been spinning on this for a while before condescending to ask for help."
"I've been fine."
"Of course you have." He gestured for her to continue.
"I could reinvest in skills I already have—"
"No."
She raised an eyebrow. "That fast?"
"The early levels of any skill can be ground out through repetition in a matter of days. If you spend a free pick on something you could develop by simply continuing to exist, you are wasting a resource that cannot be replaced." His wings gave a precise adjustment. "What you want, what you should always want at this stage, is something you could not learn efficiently on your own. Something the System will simply install."
Danica sat with that for a moment. "The download thing. Like what happened in the rune room."
"Precisely. Fundamentals, directly transferred. No fumbling through basics, no months of failed attempts at something that requires decades of practice to develop naturally." He tilted his head. "So. What skills are you thinking?"
She pulled up her interface.
"You might try Alchemy Basics," he said first.
Danica's face moved before she could stop it.
Eenax sighed. "I'll take that as a no."
"Hard no. I spent two years in a chemistry lab at university actively resenting every second of it. The only thing I learned is that I have no business being in a room with flammable materials and the expectation that I'll stay calm." She paused. "Also, I don't want to melt my face off."
"With your exceptional healing potential," he said. "It wouldn’t be an issue."
"Next."
He let it go with the grace of someone filing it away for later. "Instinct — Dangersense."
She stilled. "Tell me."
"It’s rare," he said, as if impressed. "Most humanoid initiates never qualify. You must have a survival instinct that cannot be trained in the conventional sense, it has to be present, latent, waiting for a framework." He looked at her steadily. "The System must be offering it to you because you already have the instincts. This skill doesn't create the ability. It refines and amplifies it."
Danica thought about every time a sound had awoken her before she understood why. Every fight she'd seen coming half a second before it started. Every room she'd walked into and quietly catalogued the exits.
"So, it's not paranoia," she said. "It's a feature."
"Properly developed," Eenax said, "yes."
[SKILL: INSTINCT — DANGERSENSE]
Heightened awareness of immediate threats — before conscious recognition fires. Detects hostile intent, environmental hazards, structural instability, incoming attacks. Functions as an early warning system, triggering instinctive reaction ahead of conscious thought. Most effective against physical threats and natural hazards. Develops resistance to illusion-based deception with experience.
She read it twice. Then she set it aside in the mental column labeled yes without ceremony.
"Cold Reading," Eenax continued.
She looked up.
"Advanced social pattern recognition," he said. "Body language, micro-expressions, speech patterns — the skill doesn't read minds. It reads people. What they're hiding, what they want, where the cracks are. Useful for negotiation, interrogation, reading a room before you've said a word."
Danica didn't answer immediately.
[SKILL: COLD READING]
Analyzes body language, behavioral patterns, speech, and attire to discern emotional state, background, and intent. Predicts likely behavior from social cues. Effective for persuasion, interrogation, and detecting deception. Grows more accurate with experience and interpersonal exposure.
Mark could do this.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Not from a skill, just from being Mark. He could walk into any room, clock everyone in it inside thirty seconds, and know exactly what each person needed to hear. It wasn't manipulation, or it wasn't only manipulation. It was something closer to genuine fluency in people. The way some people were fluent in music or code, he was fluent in human beings.
She'd watched him talk a furious stranger down from a parking lot confrontation using nothing but humor and a disarming amount of eye contact. Get useful information from people who had no reason to give it. Watch as he made every person in a room feel, somehow, like they were the most interesting person he'd ever met.
She had never been able to do that. She wasn't bad with people. She just wasn't Mark.
And right now, Mark was somewhere in a dungeon that didn't care how charming he was.
The thought arrived the way the bad ones always did — quiet, specific, clinical. Not a fear so much as a calculation. She'd been doing it for two days now, every time something in here had nearly killed her. Every close call got filed, and the file was labeled and Mark had none of this.
He didn't have the instincts. Didn't have the training. Hadn't grown up with parents who treated weekend hikes like rehearsals for the end of the world. He was funny and brilliant and one of the best people she knew, and absolutely none of that mattered when something with too many legs came out of the dark and the only right answer was to kill it before it killed you.
She'd been telling herself he'd be fine.
She was getting less sure she believed it.
Her chest tightened. She let herself feel the fear, just for a second, because pretending it wasn't there wasn't the same as being strong.
Then she filed it. Locked the vault. Came back.
Picking this skill because it reminded her of him wasn't a reason to pick it. It was a reason to notice what she was doing.
"Not right now," she said. Her voice was steady. "Maybe later."
Eenax looked at her for a moment. He didn't push.
"Dungeon Cartography," he said.
She blinked, grateful for the redirect. "Tell me."
"Automatic mapping as you explore. Hidden passages, false walls, structural weaknesses — the skill builds a running map in your peripheral awareness. You'll always know exactly where you are and where you've been."
Danica's expression shifted into something that was almost a smile. "I hate getting lost."
[SKILL: DUNGEON CARTOGRAPHY]
Automatically maps explored spaces in real time. Detects hidden pathways, false walls, and structural weaknesses. Enables faster navigation and route optimization. Map persists and updates with each visit.
"Ethereal Tracking," he continued.
"What does it do?"
"Senses energy disturbances. Recent movement, hidden entities, residual magic. Someone passed through a tunnel an hour ago. You'll feel the trace. Something is hiding in the dark ahead, you'll know before you see it." He paused. "More effective in high-magic environments. Dungeons, ruins, anywhere the ambient energy is dense."
"So, I can track things that shouldn't be trackable."
"Succinctly, yes."
"That's in," she said immediately.
[SKILL: ETHEREAL TRACKING]
Senses energy disturbances, recent movement, hidden presences, and residual magical traces. Can identify recently traveled paths and detect active concealment. Effectiveness scales with ambient magical density.
"Multiversal Geography and Politics," Eenax said, his tone deliberately neutral.
Danica gave him a look.
"Perhaps not now," he agreed. "But you will need it eventually. The multiverse is large and unless you want to be someone’s pawn you need to know the game."
"Put it on the list for when I'm not fighting for my life in a personal tutorial dungeon."
"Noted." He moved on without argument. "Celestial Entities and Divine Hierarchy."
"No."
"You said that very quickly."
"Gods are trouble. I don't want to know their names. If you don't know their names you can't accidentally say them out loud, and if you can't say them out loud they theoretically can't notice you." She paused. "That's how it works, right?"
Eenax opened his mouth. Closed it. "That is a creative interpretation of theological mechanics."
"I'll take it as a yes." She gestured. "Next."
A small pause, the kind that meant he was choosing not to have that argument right now. "Vital Points and Lethal Targeting."
She straightened slightly. "Now we're talking."
"Knowledge of weak points across species, humanoid and otherwise. Faster kills, more efficient strikes, less energy spent on brute force." He tilted his head. "Given your class, the efficiency gains would be considerable. You've been finding these spots by instinct. This would simply remove the guesswork.”
She wanted it. That was the honest truth. She wanted it the way you wanted the thing that slotted perfectly into the gap you'd been working around. Every fight she'd been in, she'd found the right spot through trial and instinct. Having that as knowledge rather than guesswork felt like the difference between driving somewhere new and driving somewhere you'd been a hundred times.
But she thought about what he'd told her at the start.
The first few levels of any skill can be ground out through repetition. Spend your free picks on what you can't learn on your own.
She could learn this through fighting. She was already learning it through fighting. It was slower without the skill, but it wasn't impossible and three levels from now, when she had another slot, it would still be here.
"Next time," she said. It cost her something to say it.
Eenax nodded, and she got the sense he'd expected that. "Battlefield Awareness and Tactics."
She tilted her head. "Group combat analysis? Predicting enemy movements, controlling engagements?"
"Correct."
Her mind went to Zelimir before she could stop it, which was different from the Mark thought, quieter and less sharp. Her brother at a chessboard, studying it with the patient certainty of someone who already knew how the game ended. He'd have loved this skill. Would have picked it first, probably, before anything else, because Zelimir approached every situation like a problem to be solved three steps ahead of where everyone else was looking.
She missed that. His steadiness. The way he made her feel like things had a shape even when they were falling apart.
He'd be fine. He was built for fine in a way that she'd resented when they were younger and was profoundly grateful for now.
"Solo for the foreseeable future," she said. "I'll come back to it."
Eenax inclined his head.
She looked at her mental list.
Dangersense — yes. Dungeon Cartography — yes. Ethereal Tracking — yes.
She ran the logic one more time, the way she always did, not because she doubted the answer but because she didn't trust decisions that didn't survive a second look.
Dangersense was infrastructure — it would make everything else she did safer, and it was something the System was offering because she'd already earned it. Dungeon Cartography was practical in the immediate term and would compound for every dungeon she ever set foot in going forward. Ethereal Tracking was the one that felt most like her class — hunting things in the dark, knowing what was there before she could see it.
Vital Points could wait. Cold Reading could wait. Everything else could wait.
"Alright," she said. "Locking in Dangersense, Dungeon Cartography, and Ethereal Tracking."
"Intelligent choices," Eenax said.
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm not surprised," he said. "I'm satisfied. There is a difference."
She rolled her eyes and turned back to her interface. "I'll make sure to cherish the distinction."
She made the selections.
[SYSTEM SKILL ACQUIRED: INSTINCT — DANGERSENSE]
[SYSTEM SKILL ACQUIRED: DUNGEON CARTOGRAPHY]
[SYSTEM SKILL ACQUIRED: ETHEREAL TRACKING]
It hit all at once, a dense, sudden pressure behind her eyes, like someone had shoved a library's worth of information through a door that was only built for one book at a time. Her vision blurred. Her breath caught. For a moment the cavern smeared at the edges and the information wasn't quite information yet, just weight, just mass, sitting behind her thoughts and waiting to settle into something she could actually use.
She braced a hand against the wall.
Then it eased. Slowly, like water finding its level, the knowledge organizing itself into something that felt, improbably, like it had always been there.
"Ugh." She pressed two fingers to her temple. "That is deeply unpleasant every single time."
"The alternative is several years of frustration and a great deal of wasted potential," Eenax said.
"Barely." She straightened, rolling her neck, feeling the new weight of it — not heavy exactly, just present. Like a door in the back of her mind that hadn't been there before, standing slightly open.
She glanced around the cavern and felt Dungeon Cartography flicker to life immediately, the space assembling itself in her peripheral awareness like a blueprint drawing itself in real time. The tunnel mouth. The hidden passage entrance. The distances between them, accurate and automatic.
"Huh," she said softly.
"Indeed," Eenax said.
She pulled her cloak off the ground, shook the dust from it, and began to pack up camp. The fire went down in two efficient kicks.
"Go finish your food," she said. "I've got a secret passage to check out."
Eenax's projection had already begun to fade, the kitchen reassembling itself faintly in the background. "Try not to trigger anything," he said. "Statistically, you seem drawn to mechanisms that should not be touched."
"The lever worked out fine."
"The lever," he said, "is the exact example I was thinking of."
She laughed, and his form dissolved.
She stood alone in the cavern, daggers at her sides, the new map of the space humming quietly at the edge of her awareness.
Time to see what was on the other side.
Chapter 13A
Status Sheet
[USER: DANICA INOY]
Mind Level: 5
Body Level: 5
Soul Level: 5
BASE STATS
STR: 18
CON: 31(34)
DEX: 51(58)
INT: 21
WIS: 24(27)
FREE POINTS AVAILABLE: 12
DERIVED STATS
HP: 142/180
MP: 74/115
Stamina: 1280/2900
UP: 105/145
General Skills:
Climbing (0)
Daggers (2)
Decryption Savant (0)
Dungeon Cartography (1)
Etheral Tracking (1)
Forager's Eye (2)
Identify (3)
Instinct – Dangersense (1)
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
Veil Step