24/25, is it Finally Time?

"F—" Joseph bit the word off and sprang into action. With quick, practiced motions he snuffed the fire in his makeshift pit. Bow placed in one hand, battered staff in the other and he crouched with the heavy rivets within arm’s reach.

He locked his gaze on the door. Minutes gruelingly dragged by. Then the floor shuddered, dozens of steps overlapped and echoed. Ten hulking orcs, snarling and bellowing blasted into the room, nearly all that remained. They fanned out with loud primal grunts, sniffing the air thick with char and iron, grunting to each other as they swept the chamber.

The group split. Several clustered around the darkened crater and the ash where a corpse had been; the others combed the scattered debris. Joseph’s grip tightened as he fought the urge to take advantage of the situation. His mana was low and he had not prepared in the slightest.

He quickly ran numbers in his head.

‘One drop here hits the pack below. Might not finish them all because they’re spread, but lingering fire should keep burning. That still leaves three across the room.’

A plan took shape, slowly reinforcing his impulsive decision with confidence.

‘Blast the group under me. Then throw down a cloth-wrapped corpse as a decoy to pull the rest. Survivors converge on the dummy; I hit them again.’

His mouth twitched, with saliva starting to pool in his mouth.

‘Downside: fewer opportunities to grind the skills I want. But the levels, the rank-ups… and I’m done living on this scaffolding… plus it sounds pretty fun.’

Decision made, he moved with painstaking care. He wrapped an orc corpse in torn cloth, fashioning a crude dummy, and edged it toward the drop. Below, the orcs’ rasping breaths and rough snarls kept his movements masked as he got everything in place. He called a fireball to life, with a cloth to his side to reduce the light pollution and forced as much mana and spirit as he dared into the spell.

He swallowed hard. No one looked up. ‘Good.’

He dropped the orb and guided it down.

BOOM!

The explosion hammered the chamber. Heat billowed; flame rolled. The few at the center vanished in the blast, the stone beneath blackened and cracked. Those farther out staggered as fire washed over them, their hides catching as pressure and heat slammed outward.

The chorus of roars and howls tore at his focus, but he stuck to the plan. He lowered the cloth-wrapped dummy through the settling dust and smoke, holding it upright by the rope.

Every head snapped toward it. Even the scorched ones charged, pain forgotten, fury overriding thought. In seconds they swarmed the decoy, tearing it apart.

They were exactly where he needed them.

Teeth clenched, Joseph spent the last of his safe reserves, conjuring a second condensed magic–spirit fireball and willing it to detonate in the center of the crush. The backlash of depletion hit like a hammer—skull throbbing, vision swimming—but he rode it out, tossed the staff aside, and nocked an arrow in case anything moved.

Smoke stung his eyes. When the haze thinned, the floor below was a ruin—scorched fragments, scattered bones, heat shimmer. Nothing else stood.

Only then did his knees give way. He sank onto the boards, breath ragged, nerves scalded by the strain. He forced himself to keep watch on the entry for as long as he could. Ten minutes of stubborn vigilance passed before darkness won.

…

He woke much later with a pounding head and a body that ached from scalp to soles. He drank deeply, the familiar metallic tang steadying him, then peered down. The chamber was a map of ash, bone, and char, slowly sinking into the stone as if the dungeon itself were tidying away the remains.

With no sign of the final straggler, not a single print, mark or even noise his confidence wavered.

'Too far away maybe, or someone else got it? I’ll rest today and check tomorrow. First—stats. Ten in one go should mean a solid jump.'

Name: Joseph

Class: Spirit Ranger [E+] (+3 Spirit, +2 Dexterity, +2 Agility, +1 Magic)

Title: Survivor of the Unsurvivable

Level: 11 > 14

Vitality: 5
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 32 > 38
Agility: 17 > 23
Magic: 26 > 29
Spirit: 18 > 27

Available Stat Points: 0 > 15

Active Skills: Channel Spirits (D), Spirit Sight (E), Magic-Spirit Communion (D), Condensed Fireball (E)

Passive Skills: Survivor (E), Spirit’s Affection (E), Exploit Weak Point (F), Mana Control (E)

Joseph exhaled, studying the screen.

‘Part of me regrets not aiming for more skills first. These gains are solid, but they’re the kind I’d get anyway with time. Maybe I could’ve picked up targeted skills if I’d stretched it out—but there was no guarantee the orcs would yield more. Fine. I chose; I’ll live with it. And I can finally move on from this starting box.’

He checked the highlighted skill’s descriptions—mostly the same, a stage stronger but nothing actually new. Mana Control read “slightly increase” now instead of “minimally.” The others had no new lines, but upgrades meant greater effects, whether it is flat or linear remains to be seen.

Spirit was catching up to Magic fast—soon to pass it. Dexterity was climbing nicely. Vitality remained… humble.

He hovered over his points, tempted.
‘I could toss five or ten into Vitality. But from those dummy tests, a bare-handed hit wouldn’t end me outright. It’d hurt, sure, but I’d still move… but maybe that’s just innocent arrogance speaking. Luck aside, I’m better off not getting hit at all.’

He nodded to himself.
‘I’m avoiding melee when possible. What I need now is speed—hunt, strike, reposition. Agility it is.’

Name: Joseph

Class: Spirit Ranger [E+] (+3 Spirit, +2 Dexterity, +2 Agility, +1 Magic)

Title: Survivor of the Unsurvivable

Level: 14

Vitality: 5
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 38
Agility: 23 > 38
Magic: 29
Spirit: 27

Available Stat Points: 15 > 0

Active Skills: Channel Spirits (D), Spirit Sight (E), Magic-Spirit Communion (D), Condensed Fireball (E)

Passive Skills: Survivor (E), Spirit’s Affection (E), Exploit Weak Point (F), Mana Control (E)

'Whoa. My body feels absurdly light—despite the extra… padding.' He bounced on his toes. 'Time to test it. Those orcs crossed corner to corner in around three seconds.'

He climbed down, picked a clear line, and sprinted diagonally. Despite his still-broad frame—leaning out thanks to constant training and thin meals—he crossed in roughly two seconds. With more weight gone, he’d be faster.

Compared to the orcs’ best bursts, he could outrun them now, even without a movement skill. He knew better than to linger on the floor, but curiosity tugged. He ran laps along the perimeter, getting a feel for his new stride as well as just enjoying the freedom of movement.

Then he experimented. The skills said “imbue an object,” so he tested his boots first. Spirit flowed into the material, the dull grey brightening. He ran again—cleaner acceleration, about ten percent faster.

Next, he added mana. The pace jumped to around twenty-five percent over baseline, but the feel was different: spirit felt like natural improvement; mana felt like rockets—fast, but twitchier with worse cornering.

He cut the boosts and tried channeling mana directly into muscles, blood, and skin, holding the image of stronger, steadier movement. His strength and stamina rose, skin and bone hardened when he fed more in—but the drain was brutal, and he let it go before he burned through his reserves.

He briefly tried channeling spirit as well, but it didn’t seem to bind with his flesh so he quickly moved on.

Finally, he tried channeling spirit or mana into the stone itself. Nothing. The floor drank the energy without any effect no matter the image or technique.

He climbed back up to his perch and turned to something practical: earth magic.

'I need a way to control crowds and create my own escape routes. Earth magic is usually quite versatile: pillars to corral, ramps to climb, walls for cover. Scan the ground, fields of slowing mud, reshaping terrain—lots of options if I can get a handle on it. Problem is, unlike fire where I piggybacked on physics, I’ve got no anchor point here.'

He frowned.

'If I can’t push the existing floor, maybe I create the material outright—like conjuring fire. Some systems do that: floating rocks, conjured pillars. No magic circles here, no clear physics-based rules—so I’ll lean on imagination and see if my mana will play along.'

He focused as if shaping a fireball, but pictured clumps of rock gathering and fusing into a sphere. Staff in hand to ease the mana flow, he channeled a clump of mana from within his body.

The mana pooled above the wood. Pebbles and fist-sized stones seemed to be pulled from the air itself, snapping into place and compressing together.

After a short while, a basketball-sized ball of fused stone hovered before him. The cost felt similar to an equivalently sized fireball, with a slightly higher maintenance cost to keep it floating.

He eased it down onto the boards and inspected it—tough, the pieces bonded into a single whole, but not dramatically harder than the surrounding walls. With the iron rivet he could chip flakes away. Usable, but not ideal.

He adjusted the mental model. Instead of “rock clump,” he envisioned ingredients: a composite mix and a separate sphere of mana-water. Dust-like mana streams flowed inward, blended with the liquid, and solidified into a perfect orb—magical concrete.

This time it was denser, harder—but a bit more expensive on mana. Even with a Strength stat of 20, he could barely scuff it bare-handed; while the small rivet took a fair amount of strikes to slightly flake it. Pleased, he started shaping different forms and setting them onto various surfaces.

But eventually fatigue crept in. He stopped before he pushed too far, tidied up, and slept. By morning, his head was clear again.

No new notifications. No skill pings from yesterday’s experiments. He baited the floor again, listening for the last orc. Nothing. He tried again, louder. Still nothing.

After enough wearing on his patience, he sighed and began packing his gear, running through possibilities.

‘Either it’s too far to patrol here… or someone else got to it first.’

Either way, he decided it was time to move on.