Level One God

[Common Accomplishment] Defeat [1] enemy within [Beastden] dungeon without the help of allies. [Reward - Common Lone Dungeon Diver’s Token] “I feel like I’m really starting to get to know you, Brynn. Again, that is.

“There’s something in the way you frown and grunt when you read these achievements that has become like a language of its own. I’m imagining you right now as you read this one.

“Yes, all you’ll do aloud is grunt, and I unfortunately can’t read your mind. But I’ll know what you’re really thinking. ‘Without the help of allies, you’ll wonder? How is that possible when I was surrounded by allies! And wasn’t that handsome sekmeti man’s music magic on my legs during the fight?’

“Lucky for you, nope! He cut it off before the fight began to conserve his mana. Technically, you had allies nearby, but none of them touched that nightmaw. You soloed it, and rules are rules. So enjoy your lone diver token. If you’re wondering, they’re better than the normal ones. Now, I bet you’re thinking that once you hit Iron, you’ll come find some dungeon full of Woods and just go to town for these accomplishments, right?

“I’ll save you the trip. You only earn these dungeon accomplishments if the enemies are your rank or higher. Sorry! Contrary to what people believe, we’re not made of resources over here. Anyway, congrats!”

“Hmm,” I said quietly. Then I caught myself and grinned. I was even thinking pretty much exactly what my secret messenger said. “Okay,” I whispered. “You got me.”

It was all good information to have, either way. That meant you could technically have an ally on standby to bail you out if you wanted to farm for solo accomplishments. Worst case, they step in, save your ass, and you don’t get credit toward the solo accomplishment. Maybe Lyria and I could take turns later.

And what did they mean when they said, “we’re not made of resources over here?” It was a pretty eye-opening statement, and I wondered if they had intentionally slipped it into their message.

Of course they had. The voice seemed flippant and casual, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was part of an act designed to provide me helpful information when possible. Whoever was behind the messages, I was grateful to them. Their tip about the curse on that first day had been the final push to get me to claim it. While I couldn’t say the cursed bed was a resounding success just yet, I had a feeling I’d figure out how to make this work and be glad I did.

But what did that bit about limited resources mean? If the rewards we earned were somehow limited or hard to come by for… whoever was sending them, it raised one very obvious, confusing question.

Why?

What motivation could explain something like that? It wasn’t as if the rewards benefited one faction or one type of person, as far as I could tell. There had to be an explanation. I just wondered if I had enough information to piece it together, or if there were still too many things I didn’t know to make a proper guess.

“Pardon,” Zahra said, sinking down to crouch beside me. Her voice was velvety, almost like a soft growl. “I do not mean to interrupt your meditation, Sir, but I wanted to informally thank you.”

Was the kiss on my forehead not enough thanks? The way these sekmeti people looked was eye-catching, to say the least. Their skin had the same kind of enchanting quality of rare rocks and gems. Every shred of light seemed to reveal new sparkles and features.

I gave a small smile. “It’s alright,” I said.

Zahra raised her silver eyes to meet mine. They were almost white, but when I looked closer, I could see streaks of sparkly silver streaking through her irises. “You’re Iron, no? I don’t… feel it, but the way you fought means you must be.”

“Just Wood,” I admitted.

Her cat-like eyes widened. “Surely you try me as a fool.”

Ramzi was looking up now. Apparently, he had been listening to the conversation. “Wood? Is this what he claims? Does he also speak with mirages?” The faint smile the man wore told me the jest was at least in good humor.

“I’ve had some good luck with items,” I said. “And I think my poison was especially strong against the nightmaws. And I caught it off guard. That’s all it was.”

Zahra was watching me carefully. “He is powerful and he is modest. Why are more humans not as you are, Sir?”

Sylara and Thorn were a little ways off. He spoke quietly to her between strained breaths, and she listened carefully, paying no mind to our conversation.

Lyria was sitting to my other side and sighed. “You should believe him. He’s not being modest. He’s just really not that special.”

I grinned at the tease, but Zahra scowled. The cat-like woman already seemed to have a bit of protective loyalty toward me.

“You should not speak of him so,” she snapped at Lyria.

“It’s alright,” I said softly. “Lyria and I are good friends. She’s just teasing me. It’s, uh… how humans show affection sometimes.”

“Sekmeti show affection with respect and deference,” Zahra said. There was a clipped note to her words that told me she still didn’t approve of the whole teasing thing.

“Unless it’s an enemy,” Ramzi noted. “The respect they earn is a clean death.” The man’s voice was a deep, rumbling baritone. I had only heard him whistle but imagined his singing voice was probably impressive.

Zahra gave him a sheepish look, then lowered her eyes. “Better than we will earn if they find us.”

“What brought you here to Beastden, anyway?” I asked. I wanted to directly ask who was looking for them, but thought it might be a little too nosy. Better to start vague and let them open up if they chose, I decided.

“Power and wealth,” Ramzi said. He was sitting cross-legged, long limbs gracefully folded beneath his body as he sat with perfect posture. “When we have it, we’ll return to the Sekmet Sands and free our families.”

Zahra nodded, but looked less confident than the man. “With enough strength, even the greatest challenge will bow before you.” She spoke the words with the tone of an old, cultural wisdom.

I couldn’t disagree, though. Wasn’t that exactly the philosophy I was operating with at the moment? Maybe I could get along with these sekmeti people.

“Back to where?” I asked carefully. I had read the tooltip about their race largely being enslaved to the kiergard. I didn’t want to risk offending them by asking the wrong questions, so I was still keeping it vague.

“All four of us were gladiator slaves,” Zahra said, indicating Sylara and Thorn.

“Come see the exotic sekmeti fight for their life,” Ramzi said with a rueful laugh.

“Families who offer up a fighter get better treatment,” Zahra explained softly. “More rations. Lighter workloads. We went willingly. But we were being transported, and our caravan was attacked.”

I studied the woman. Why did she look ashamed about that? Ramzi wasn’t looking up, either.

“Escaping means their families lose the benefits,” Lyria said, reading my confusion.

Ramzi nodded, expression bitter. “Only a year of fighting in the games, and I could do it no longer. I killed the slaver in the fighting, stole his clothes, and managed to get Zahra, Sylara, and Thorn with me before we escaped.”

“Some of our sekmeti brothers and sisters fought to stop us,” Zahra said. Her face twitched and she curled in on herself slightly.

The dark look on Ramzi’s face told me what happened to anyone who had tried to stop them.

Damn. Their story was tragic, and it was a reminder of how little I had seen of Eros. There was an entire world full of struggle and problems beyond the little bubble I had been in so far. It was another reminder of how much might be resting on my shoulders. Did all those people depend on me getting my power back, or had I done this solely for the benefit of humanity?

Unless something had dramatically changed me along the way, I couldn’t picture myself caring about only my own race.

“It sounds like you did the right thing,” I said, dragging myself from my thoughts. “I’m guessing whoever attacked your caravan was planning to put you to some other kind of work, right? It’s not as if your families would’ve still earned their rewards if you went to serve another master—willingly or not.”

“You hear it now from another’s lips,” Zahra said, giving Ramzi a sharp look, as if she had already tried to convince him of this.

He clutched his big fists tightly, nostrils flaring. “We will go back for them. Whether we buy their freedom with coin or blood.”

“What about you two?” I asked Sylara and Thorn. Even as I asked, I extended my focus to Thorn and found a fresh drop of mana in his core. I squeezed it out, urging it to his lungs, which were almost fully healed. After the lungs, the rest of the damage was to his torn skin, which I knew wouldn’t require as much mana to heal.

“Our reasons aren’t so noble,” Sylara said. “Wood rank gladiators are for show matches. They use Woods as fodder to stage historic battles, demonstrate the powers of exotic beasts, or let powerful adventurers show off their abilities on us. My sister was forced to dress as a golem, only to be cut down by a Silver showing off his famous “Scorched Earth” ability.” Her face twisted as she spoke. “Iron rank gladiators are a step above fodder. They’re saved for matches of skill. Usually, they are given a fair chance, and the mortality rate is far lower.”

“Why go back to being a gladiator at all?” I asked.

She pointed to the marks on her face. “These tattoos are imbued with magic. They’ll come for us before long. It’s why we are here. The dark magic interferes with their tracking. So long as we keep to dungeons, we’ll be able to avoid them. But eventually, they will come for us. We intend to put up a fight when they do.”

“Did they tattoo you as well?” I asked the sekmeti.

Zahra raised her robe to show me a triangular tattoo on her thigh. It looked like a sand dune or a pyramid. “Yes,” she said. “They spare our faces only because they parade us for show.” She spread her arms, giving a smile that was somehow wry and sad at the same time. “Come and see.”

Carefully, I extended my focus into the tattoos and was surprised to feel something. It was incredibly complex, though, like a tangled knot of power. The knots were anchored in some way I couldn’t quite sense, and the knot itself was so tight that I wasn’t sure how I could pull it apart.

I was prodding the tattoo on Zahra’s thigh when she idly itched it, making me think it was better to stop messing with things I didn’t understand for now. Maybe there was a way, though. Maybe if I was more powerful…

I looked at Lyria, silently asking her if we could offer to help them. She knew me well enough by now to see it in my eyes. She took a deep breath, sighed, and gave the slightest shrug.

“We could stick together for now,” I suggested. “I don’t know where our path goes after this dungeon, but we would be stronger as a team. I’m hoping to reach Iron. If I do, I thought about maybe even going after the dungeon guardian and the corestone it guards.” I hadn’t voiced my plans yet, but I imagined Lyria could guess as much.

I must have guessed wrong because she bulged her eyes at me. “Do you mind if I speak to my friend for just a moment?” Lyria said, smiling at the others.

Zahra smirked. “Yes, of course. Love is like sand. Abrasive when cool, but with enough heat, it can grow as smooth and beautiful as glass. If you need more privacy, we can look away.”

Lyria’s cheeks went bright red. “We’re not in love. I just need to speak with him in private.”

Zahra and Ramzi shared a knowing smile, then nodded and turned their backs.

Lyria took my arm and pulled me toward the collapse in the cave.

“The dungeon guardian?” she whisper-yelled once we were a few steps away.

“We’re both getting stronger,” I said. “You heard them back there. They thought I was Iron already.”

“And you heard yourself, right? You got lucky. Your poison happened to be strong against the nightmaw.”

“I was just being modest,” I said with a half-smile. “I kicked that thing’s ass. And as soon as you get a little better at recovering mana, you’re going to be a force of nature, too. Soulbound, remember?” I gave her arm a soft punch.

“Did you already forget the infested ruins?” she asked.

Her question instantly quenched any enthusiasm and excitement I felt. I lowered my eyes. Still, I spoke with a touch of irritated defiance. I didn’t appreciate her throwing what happened there in my face. “Of course I haven’t,” I said.

I also hadn’t forgotten the feeling those ruins left me with—that if I had only been stronger, I could have saved everyone. I could have gone in there by myself and cleared the whole infestation, preventing anybody from needing to go through that terror in the first place.

“I said I would come along to protect you,” Lyria said, softening her voice. “Do you remember that? And you promised you would listen if I said something was too dangerous. Well, I’m saying it’s too dangerous. I’m not going to watch you get killed by a dungeon guardian. It will be Iron. Even if you’re Iron, the rest of us probably won’t be.” She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, Brynn. I don’t want to see you get killed.”

I thought about telling her I had been careful not to actually promise any such thing to her. I only listened to her statement and changed the subject. “Let’s see where things go,” I said.

“Brynn…”

“I know it’s scary,” I said. “I’m constantly scared. But I’ve gotten used to it. And so far, all the things we’ve done worth doing have started out from a place of fear. So, if you ask me, fear is a pretty good sign that we’re headed in the right direction.”

“That’s… not logical.”

I grinned. “I don’t have a death wish, okay? I just know I probably can’t afford to take my time. Something out there pushed me to be in this position. This dungeon is an opportunity, and I want us to make the most of it. And with Zahra’s shadow web thing, we could probably escape from a fight if it gets too bad.”

“That’s one hell of an assumption.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I think we can handle it. If I don’t by the time we get there, we’ll back out. Okay? But I want to at least try to get to the guardian, assuming someone else doesn’t beat us there first.”

“I doubt they will, considering they don’t have a map,” she whispered.

I shrugged, smiling a little.

Lyria sighed. “Dammit, Brynn.”

I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Good. So it’s settled. We’ll kick our ass on the way to the guardian and then reassess if we make it.”

“That’s not what I agreed to.”

“We should get back, or they’ll think we’re doing more than talking back here.”

Lyria looked annoyed but probably realized I was right. She stalked back to her spot by the wall and sank down, arms folded.

Ramzi heard us come back and turned to look.

I went to Thorn’s side and knelt. He opened his mouth to accept the Healing Potion I projected from my fingertip. It seemed like the cooldown had passed and it was working again. Roughly fifteen minutes between doses, then.

“Hah,” Ramzi said in his deep voice. “She does not look happy. My grandmother used to say a lover’s spat can be mended three ways. Time, a bed, or a knife. I think she is considering the knife, my friend.”

“We’re really not lovers,” I said, looking up as Thorn drank more Healing Potion.

“Hmm,” Ramzi said. “Maybe you should be. You both appear young and fertile.”

I grinned. “We’re partners. Young and fertile or not. We have each other’s backs, and we fight well together. There’s no need to make it more than that.”

Lyria gave me an appreciative look.

Zahra and Ramzi just looked confused.

I watched Thorn’s skin slowly start to knit itself back together, checked him for more mana, and then went to wander to the scene of our battle, which was maybe a hundred feet or so from where the group was sitting.

Nobody followed me, so I very casually kicked around debris and moved the dead monsters until I found what I was looking for. By the time I was done, I had gathered three small mana crystals. I turned my back, set them behind the large corpse of a nightmaw, and summoned my bedroll. I set it on the ground in front of the crystals and gave it a nudge.

From this distance and with the corpse, there was no risk of the others being able to see.

“Go on, Boy. Eat up,” I whispered.

The bedroll unzipped its hidden mouth and the tiny bed bugs rolled out in a thick carpet, hoisting the crystals and carrying them back inside.

I listened to it crunch on the crystals as it groaned softly.

There was something satisfying about feeding a hungry pet. I had to admit I kind of liked it.

I even caught myself giving the hideous thing a soft pat on the top of its… bedroll head. Then I pulled my hand back and shook my head at myself.

The cursed bedroll is not cute, Brynn. You will not ever pet it again. Probably.

I mean, sure, it was creepy as hell. But it was my creepy as hell bedroll. And, really, it was just hungry. Did the bedroll get to decide that it only liked to eat dangerous forms of mana?

It reminded me of the cat my parents had when I was a kid. It had some kind of problem with its skin, so the hair grew in patches and its skin would scab over and smell in places. The cat also hated affection, so it really just lurked in various places around the house, looming and glaring at us like a living, shitting, eating gargoyle.

But I kind of liked our creepy gargoyle cat.

My nasty, bug-infested bed roll reminded me of it. Just a little bit.

I sighed. I still wasn’t looking forward to sleeping on it again. I wondered if it had been a full day yet. I would have to figure out how to explain this thing to the others. I figured I could either make an excuse to split off from the group for an hour, like say I was going to scout ahead, or simply tell them I had a cursed bed.

After all, it wasn’t as if having a cursed bed was a dead giveaway that I was a god who had activated prestige mode.

The only thing I needed to do was come up with a non-repeatable fake accomplishment that had earned me the bed. I could use that trick kids in middle-school used and simply claim my accomplishment was from a different region, just like that “girlfriend” I told everybody about in 7th grade that I met on a family vacation in Greece. Yes, she was smoking hot, and no, they couldn’t talk to her.

Something like that would probably work to explain how I earned a cursed bed. And I could claim to be reckless or crazy for claiming it instead of throwing the token off a cliff somewhere.

After that, all the weirdness of the bed would just be what it was. I’d simply tell them, “yes, I have this super weird bed, and I have to feed it dark mana. It’s full of bugs, but I get great benefits from sleeping on it. Oh, and don’t sleep on it yourself. Or you’ll be haunted to death.”

Ultimately, I would choose the simplest option first and save the complicated “tell them everything” option for later.

In other words, I’d try to pretend to scout ahead and sneak naps for the time being. If it got too hard to keep up the act, I’d just come clean and say I was embarrassed to admit how weird my bed was.

Problem solved.

I sent the bedroll back to my slip space and checked the hunger.

[Hunger 0%]

Hell, yeah.

The next order of business was to see what reaching Tier 3 with Forge Echo had done. Despite helping Thorn heal, I had enough to summon one or two Forge Echoes. Since I didn’t have enough to make an Elemental Spike and use Forge Echo, I summoned my Silver Scream bow from my slip space. I didn’t bother creating an arrow, since I was only practicing.

The Echo formed before me, and I immediately felt… something.

Usually, the ability felt like an extra, slightly reluctant limb. If I thought too hard about it, the effect would get screwy, and the Echo would do things I didn’t want.

But none of that explained my odd feeling as I stared at the Echo of my Silver Scream bow. This was different. It felt as though my Soul corestone was trying to communicate with me.

I closed my eyes, driving my focus into the feeling.

I sensed it, then.

It was a choice. I knew it was a choice. I knew it as surely as I knew a room was hot or cold. The understanding was simply there, leaving no room for doubt.

I was being shown the first choice in my mind. I saw two Echoes side by side.

That same kind of automatic understanding settled over me.

I could feel what it would be like to control two Echoes. I felt the way I would need to split my focus between them and the difficulty of it. It was twice as powerful but twice as difficult to use effectively. I was also certain I couldn’t Echo different weapons. The duplicates had to be of the same weapon. Forming two Echoes didn’t use twice as much mana, though, which I found interesting. If anything, it only felt like it was using slightly more than usual.

The second choice appeared. This time, the image showed a single Echo following after me, bobbing along and moving as if it had a mind of its own—almost like a pet or a summoned minion.

That same knowing feeling told me this version of the ability would cost more mana—almost twice as much as maintaining a single Forge Echo and still quite a bit more than the first ability I had seen. I could activate the Echoes intelligence or leave it off, but the cost would be increased mana drain so long as it was acting autonomously.

Was this like an evolution? Was I getting to pick between two paths for my Echo? Or was I simply seeing two new ways I could use the ability?

The knowing came again as if answering my question.

I was making a choice, and it would be a permanent one.

It was a choice between summoning two Echoes of my weapon, or turning my Echo into an autonomous servant, which required more mana.

Damn it.

I wanted both.

Having two Echoes of my Elemental Spike, for example, would let me pump that much more elementally charged attacks into my enemies. The nightmaw in the last fight would have died even faster.

Then again, an autonomous Elemental Spike fighting on its own meant I could have stayed back and focused more on filling a support role for the group. I could have been throwing Mana Shields or keeping a closer eye on everybody’s damage levels while my knife worked on its own.

As it was, all of my abilities required quite a bit of mental focus. It was like trying to juggle while drawing a picture with my toes and reciting a poem aloud. And that was only with the abilities I had at this low level and rank. I still didn’t know how much more complicated and focus-demanding the abilities I might evolve down the line would be.

I decided to think of it like this: Doubling my Echo would be the more offensive option. It was more firepower, and arguably more control if I ever got my hands on some kind of paralysis potion or more crowd-control oriented elements.

The autonomous Echo would be the more well-rounded option. I already could see how difficult it was to split my focus between so many things in a chaotic fight. Letting my Echo work on its own was a pretty huge boon. If mana was tight, I could still use it manually, too.

I spent a few more minutes mentally going over my logic and searching for holes. There were problems with both options and benefits of both. In the end, I decided both options were better than what I had right now, and I would want every advantage I could have. It would be hard to really make a wrong choice.

In the end, I decided to go with the autonomous option.

If Tier 3 unlocked some kind of branching point for abilities to evolve, then it was rational to assume higher Tiers would offer even more complex and powerful evolutions. If that was the case, I didn’t want to go the path that would possibly lead to swarms of Echoed weapons. While it sounded really powerful—and honestly pretty cool—I imagined it would take almost all of my focus to control an ability like that.

I didn’t want to be a one-trick-pony.

In an ideal world, I saw myself more like… fantasy batman with an awesome toolbelt full of shit for every situation.

I also really hoped further evolutions of my Forge Echo would become fully fledged summons who were wielding the weapon I summoned them with. I imagined frost elementals with Elemental Spikes or shadow beasts firing my Silver Scream bow. Or maybe I could go back and pick that first evolution once I hit Tier 6, granting intelligence to two Forge Echoes.

I smiled at the thought.

Whatever it wound up being, I decided it was going to be badass.

With my decision in mind, I willed the core toward the autonomous path.

There was a brief, warm rush in my center, and I could feel it was done.

If I was crazy enough to start over, I wondered what would happen if I bound to a brand new Soul stone at this point. Yes, Circa said I would get the exact same starting abilities. But I could theoretically power level it and choose different evolutions for my skills, right? If only it didn’t apparently take years to max out corestones, I thought the idea would be a nice way to have some extra options in a pinch. I could swap to the appropriately specced out corestone based on the fight.

Unfortunately, I doubted that was going to be an option. Training up these stones took too much time, and I suspected I would always be better off growing my main stones instead of splitting my training making backup stones.

I looked at the bow. It was still under my manual control. I considered for a moment, then decided to try simply feeding it more mana.

As soon as I extended the thread of mana, it twitched to life, rotating to face me. At the same time, my own sense of feeling the distant phantom limb snapped off.

“Woah,” I whispered. “Please follow me,” I said, taking a step backward.

The bow drifted after me.

“This is awesome. Protect me,” I said.

The bow fully drew itself, even though there was no arrow nocked. It swiveled, aiming up and down the tunnel as if checking for threats. It aimed at Sylara, who was closest, and the string snapped as if it was trying to fire an arrow at her.

Oh. “Bad, bow!” I hissed. “Those are my friends. We don’t shoot friends. Do you understand?”

The bow sagged a little, as if I had hurt its feelings.

“Ah, it’s alright. I could have been more specific,” I said awkwardly. Am I apologizing to my magic bow, now?

The bow seemed to float a little higher, though.

Awkwardness aside, this was awesome. I could hardly wait to get Elemental Projection, Chain, Elemental Body, Devour Mana, Mana Shield, Mana Leech, and Sense Mana all to Tier 3. It felt a little bit like realizing I had a pile of Christmas presents I had forgotten to open.

Now, I just needed to push them to Tier 3 to see what I would get.