They quickly moved through the giant workspace, using the pillbox to kill and loot the golems till they reached the first mini-boss.

  Louie was uneasy, this was the place where his stupid mistake had cost Joe his hand and where he had met BOB.

  Looking through the opening, Louie saw that the room looked like an opulent gothic living room and there were two strange insects like creatures that resemble Count Orlok from an old black and white movie he saw, standing in front of a burning fireplace.

  

  "They are mosquitoes wrapped in their wings. That makes them look like vampires. Take out the short one first. That's the female and she got hypnotic powers. Shadow I want you to go into stealth as soon as the female is down. I'm going to try and take the male out with an airblade while you guys try and shoot it but I think it's got a charming effect, so if we fail then wait till you get a chance. Avoid eye contact."

  Louie placed the pillbox right in the door, blocking the opening. He made an opening for Shadow to slip through and she activated her stealth and disappeared. He then took one of the crossbows and aimed.

  "On 3". . . he took a deep breath. "1". . . he started channeling his mana through the crossbow. "2". . . concentrated his mana in the bolt. "3" he squeezed the trigger, releasing the bolt.

  The bolt together with three imbued steel balls impacted the female vampire disintegrating its head while the bolt tore a hole through the vampire's chest.

  Louie swapped his crossbow for his naginata and started channeling his mana into the blade as the male screeched. It looked at the twitching body of the female before its head snapped towards the pillbox and the attackers. It moved and then disappeared.

  Suddenly it was inside the pillbox with them.

  "FUCK!"

  Louie lifted his hand to his eyes and blocked the glare of the sun as he looked into her eyes.

  'Damn, she's more beautiful every day. "Let me in, open up let me in."

  He looked around with a puzzled expression before his eyes were drawn back to the beauty before him.

  He marveled at her smooth light brown skin and green eyes, her hair that nearly touches the paving of the stoep.

  Fear raced through his mind, 'why am I afraid?'

  "Do you love me, Louie?" She asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  "Open up the bloody door, let me in."

  Louie shook his head, before smiling at her. "Tray, I fell for you, the day I found you and Ellie hiding in my shed, ten years ago."

  She leaned in to kiss him and he felt ice water run through his veins.

  Then suddenly there was a roar and she disappeared in a spray of blood.

  Louie blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear the cobwebs from his mind. He looked around and saw everybody on the floor.

  'Shit, it mind-fucked me.'

  Louie struggled to his feet and woke the others up as BOB tore the vampire apart.

  He placed the pillbox in the panier and stomped up to the golem. On the floor next to the body were two wicked-looking hand axes.

  Shadow was pissed as she looked at him. "I have been banging at the wall, screaming for you to let me in."

  Louie nodded. "Sorry, I heard you, but it charmed us. If it wasn't for BOB I would have looked like a mummy. I wasn't expecting the fucker to be able to have "

  She shook her head. It wasn't Blink. I struck right as he disappeared. My report said that my strike failed because my target used " She shrugged. "I don't know what that is."

  Louie walked to the vampire on still shaking legs, damn that was close.

  He took one of the axes and went to town on the vampire, severing its wings, limbs, and abdomen only leaving its thorax behind as they walked up to the twitching headless female vampire.

  Louie took it apart and inventoried everything before they removed the cores and looted them.

  Louie removed the two books. And a BB appeared before him

  "What's this?" Louie looked slightly confused.

  "What's that? Can I have that? I loved reading." He gave the two books to Diedre.

  "All yours."

  She blinked as she received the quest. "Huh? Really. A quest to gather vampire fiction?"

  Louie smiled as Francine started laughing.

  He pointed to the bookcase against the wall. "Look through there. Maybe you will get lucky."

  Louie started to loot the room. Everything went into his inventory.

  It looked like the room was a theatre stage set, everything was loose pieces. The fireplace was one solid stone piece with a fire burning.

  Louie was skeptical about the fireplace but he inventoried it and then opened his inventory grid and saw that it took up 6sq and showed the fire still lit but it looked like it was a 2D picture of a fire.

  Shadow looked at him. "Really?"

  He stopped rolling the carpet.

  "What? My tower needs decorating." He looked at them. "Did you guys read the Dungeon Rules?"

  They gave him a confused look. "Rules?"

  He opened his journal and sent them each a copy of the rules.

  "Rule. 9: Loot everything that's not nailed down and then find a crowbar."

  Louie glanced at the two sisters as he continued rolling the carpet.

  "I am responsible for the two of you, for the next 10years, so you will have to go where I go. There is a bedroom for you in my tent. Decorating it is up to you."

  Louie cleared the room and looked at his clock on his interface.

  "We cleared this section in 6hours. Half the time it took us the first time, it helps that we didn't have to build traps and fortifications every couple of hours. So I suggest that we press on to the spider lair and the next restroom, we can spend a day there and then do the last section."

  They went back to the first vendor and stock up on potions. On their return to the spider warren, Louie reached up and removed all the lightstones as they went down the road.

  They stopped before the entrance to the warren.

  Louie made sure they all knew what kind of spiders and traps they can expect, but he emphasized that it depends if the dungeon hadn't changed the spiders also.

  He released a relieved breath as they reached the first web-covered room and Shadow showed them the hidden trapdoor with the spider.

  Knowing what to expect Louie placed them ready with their weapons and triggered one of the tripwires.

  The same as last time the spider rushed out so fast it looked like it teleported in facing the wrong way. They smashed its carapace as it turned around. Louie dismembered it and gathered the loot.

  This time he came prepared and on entering the trapdoor spider lair he removed the mana lathe that he had modified to fit a big wooden spool and started unraveling the spider silk. There were no eggs this time but there was a hidden cache of mana stones.

  He stood watching the lathe and marveled as it looked like somebody pulling the thread of a pullover as the spider silk unraveled onto the spools.

  They moved on, taking it slow and steady as Shadow led the way, Louie explained the working of the traps to her and she deactivated all the traps they found. Louie was to OP for the Dungeon as they cleared the spiders.

  The only changes were, there was no Queen consort and the Queen turned out to be some kind of multi-ton steampunk spider with what looked like white Neon veins covering her body.

  

  The Queen had a web-shooting ability that discharged lightning through the web she flung at you. Like a tazer.

  Louie and BOB took out the Queen while the ladies took care of the rest from the pillbox.

  All four of the ladies had reached level 9 and Louie was a quarter of the way to 12 when they entered the restroom. Louie went through the vendor and bought everything he could think of that might be useful to them on the road.

  Deidre got options for a class and chose since she has been meditating and trying to channel her mana through her sewing every spare moment she got.

  The other two options were and She whispered the last one, Louie raised an eyebrow before he remembered what she had told him about Paterson and his sick tendencies.

  'I should have taken my time to kill that fucker.'

  Shadow and Celia were shocked and had to be told about their enslavement by the pervert Paterson.

  Celia was trying for a merchant class and Francine was holding off for a jeweler or engraving class.

  Louie erected his tent in the workshop of the restroom and converted the storage room of the tent into two bedrooms and had the woman decorate their rooms with the restroom items. He removed two of the bunk beds and made a small partitioned space to act as a stock room.

  Louie went to the vendor and Inquired if it had an auction option and after he was told yes. He tried to sell the two cars that were under the covers in the school workshop. Which turned out to be a 2001 Lamborghini Diablo and a 1962 MG roadster.

  But was told that only System generated or items produced after the pulse could be sold or placed in the auction. His dreams of getting rich by selling all the thousands of dream cars left in the world were squashed.

  Louie sat on his bed and looked through his stats.

  'Nice my Weapons Schematics Level has gone up to 5.'

  He saw the stack of blueprints he had in his inventory and took it out to start sorting them by class and type before replacing them.

  He removed the spell cubes that he had bought.

  He took the cube of healing spell cube in his hand and started to squeeze it when a BB popped up

  'Fuck this, I want these spells, let's see if I can tweak the system.'

  Louie activates because he thought of the spells as weapons and allows him to use anything as a weapon, because he intends to make a weapon, and , because why the hell not.

  He struggles to hold all three skills active while he circulates his mana through his skills and through the spell cube with the intent to learn the spell even though the spell was not compatible with his affinity.

  He poured more and more mana into his mana channels till his upper body started to spasm and blood to seep through his skin.

  BOB sat next to the bed and whimpered softly as he couldn't understand why his master was hurting himself.

  Suddenly Louie groaned and dropped the cube as a BB appeared.

   '

  'Ok so if I want to raise my Seeker Class then I must learn a certain amount of knowledge, no. . . otherwise, I could just raise my level by learning spells. Ok, so that means that I must gain knowledge by experience and understand how something works? I will try to think more on this later.'

  'Damn, why can anything just be straightforward?' Y

  He crushed the next spell.

  'I will have to rely on my or make a torch with one of the lightstones.'

  'Really, , , , and ? This system sucks.'

  'At least these last two are normal.'

  Louie shook his head, looking around for a shadow to try his shadow step, but there were no shadows around. He moved to the door and looked at the living room.

  He saw Shadow drop one of her throwing knives that slide under the dining table. As she bends down to remove it he smiled.

  Louie looked down at his shadow and the space below the table and he crouched down and touched his shadow and he appeared under the table. "Ouch." He hit his head on the underside of the table. There were a couple of shrieks as the woman all fell over their feet to back away from the table.

  He came out only to be faced with drawn weapons.

  "Louie? What the hell?" Shadow wasn't impressed. He rubbed his head while looking chagrined.

  "Sorry I was testing a spell and this was the only shadow in the room."

  They shook their heads as they picked up the chairs and sat down again.

  As a way to apologize, he gave them each a Cook's pantry bracelet and told them about how he used it to store the frog directly after he had looted it and it was still good to harvest.

  Louie went to the training ground and decided to practice with his naginata and see if he couldn't improve on the only kata he knew. He has been relying on his spell too much and needs to get in more melee practice.

  The moment he equipped his polearm and took a stance, an apparition with a spear appeared next to him.

  "Shit!" He jumped to the left and readied his weapon to defend himself but saw the apparition was facing away from him and started through a set of movements.

  As he stood frozen the apparition repeated the movements. He unequipped his naginata and the apparition disappeared.

  'Huh, can this be like a VR dojo? Joe did say that there were moving targets in here but I never expected this.'

  He equipped his polearm again and the apparition was back.

  'So it's an instructor, Nice.'

  He stabbed at an imagery target with his spear and the instructor performed the same movement and then followed up with a set that flowed from his thrust.

  Louie stabbed again and tried to follow the moves that the instructor performed.

  When he stopped, the instructor performed the same moves again and he could walk around the instructor to observe the movements.

  After two sets the instructor stood back and waited for him to do the movements or unequip his weapon, when he unequipped his weapon the instructor disappeared.

  'Ok, so it is meant to teach. Better get the women in here.'

  He got the women and explained to them how he thinks the practice yard works and they all set to train for 2 hours and planned to practice the whole of the next day before tackling the last section of the Dungeon.

  Not surprisingly Shadow started throwing her shuriken at targets and the instructor appeared, she watched closely at the way it held its weapons and the wrist movement as it released. She started copying the movements and her accuracy increased.

  Diedre and Celia both took up target practice with bows and slingshots.

  Louie advised them to practice with melee weapons also since there is an instructor that can help and they already know how to use a slingshot but the surprise was Francine, who practiced with a katana and a couple of daggers that she had bought from the vendor.

  They took one whole day to practice their weapons and raised their skill levels before they took on the Dungeon again.

  That night everybody, except Shadow's spiders, hatched. Diedre's spider was an orb weaver and Francine had some kind of see-through crystal spider, Celia had a tarantula, a really big tarantula.

  The next morning they tackled the Dungeon again. They spend some time harvesting spears and shields from the Bulwark golems. The stealth assassin waited for them, but Shadow was ready for it, six imbued shuriken to the chest and face before it even moved from the shadows, took care of it.

  Louie was disappointed, because of all the spells he had bought, none were really effective against the Golems except electrocute and he had to be within 10meter of the target. I will have to look at the last vendor for more complex spells or skills.

  They cleared the minefield and, he had received another 27 concussions and 35 spine traps.

  The biggest surprise was Shadow who stole the core from a mimic out of its engine compartment without it noticing before it died. Louie remembered that he had read somewhere that mimic parts had various magical properties so he inventoried the whole mimic to see if he could dismantle it later.

  They reached the boss room later that evening and before anybody could touch the energy field he had them return to the restroom to prepare for the fight.

  On the way back to the room, Louie removed all the lightstones and on reaching the restroom he told everybody to set their clocks for 24 and to take the next day off.

  He went into the workshop to prepare. He was seen entering and leaving the practice yard multiple times. The ladies were starting to think that he was going crazy.

  They asked if they could come to practice and he told them to give him two hours then they can come practice for 6hours while he takes a break and catches up on some sleep.

  Shadow had discovered that the practice yard has an option to create targets that you can envision, the yard is the same size as the boss room so he created the three golems like he remembered them and had the ladies practice against them while he went to sleep.

  Later that night, or just before the last rest period, since there is no night in the Dungeon, Louie was laying on his bed. A deep feeling of restlessness had come over him the last couple of days.

  'I got to get done with this place. Every time I look south it's like something is pulling me, it's getting harder to ignore. Luckily it seemed to be nearly gone when I'm in here, must be the fact that the dungeon is in a different dimension, but I can still feel a vague pull in the direction of the entrance.'

  'If everything goes as planned then we will be done soon and we can get out of here. Monday morning then, I want to be on the road 24hours after I get out here. I can't think of anything that can be over there, what is it that my class is forcing me to seek, it can't be just to grow in levels.'

  'I can raise my levels doing Dungeons if I have to, I have no friends and family, except Joe and Sher, and they are right here. So what am I searching for? Maybe a way back? A way to fill this black hole that is my missing 20years?'

  Louie rolled around but couldn't find any answers to his questions. It took a while before he fell asleep and his dreams were full of little crying girls and strange women with long beautiful hair.

  The 24hours had flowed past and they were ready to set out for the final fight.

  Shadow walked up to Louie and sat down, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her head on them. "Why didn't you want us to be in the yard while you practice?"

  "I wasn't practicing, I was preparing a surprise for the big Boss, if everything works out then we will be done in an hour or two, touch wood." He knocked on the table twice.

  Everybody looked at him. He sighed as he decided to come clean.

  "I have done you all a disservice, I haven't brought you all here to learn to fight or to learn to use spells and stuff, but I'm glad you all got in some practice, I brought you here to power level you. To get your level up to ten, so that you all have a chance to survive when we go around the mountain. That's why I have been rushing us to get through the Dungeon."

  Celia spoke up first. "So what's wrong with that? Levels are good, levels will keep you alive."

  Louie shook his head. "Let me ask you this. If there is a fight between a.... let's say a level 10 guy who is a T2 blacksmith that has been power leveled and a level 3 guy who has a T2 in sword proficiency, who would win?"

  Shadow answered. "The swordsman"

  Nodding Louie asked. "Why?"

  Shadow adjusted her mask. "Because the swordsman has the skill."

  "Correct." Louie looked at them all. "Levels are good, they give you more health, more speed, let you run longer, let you think clearer, and let you notice things that you wouldn't have noticed before, but it is the skills that will help keep you alive in a fight, and in this new reality of ours, it's all about the fight."

  He took a deep breath.

  "That's why I apologize for rushing you through the Dungeon. Because it doesn't give you time to train. Ideally, I would have liked to stay at this restroom another 5days so you guys can train your weapons skills, that's one day outside, but something is pulling me, urging me to be done with this dungeon."

  They shrugged. "We will be ok."

  "I have already leveled my and my up two levels," Francine said. "And we all got levels and accuracy in our . So I think we will be ok, let's just finish this next fight."

  "Louie, how does the ranking of skills work?" Diedre wanted to know.

  Louie scratched the back of his head. "Well from what I could figure out. Every Time you use a skill, say for instance you use 20 times then that counts towards 1℅ of skill growth. Once you reach level 1 then you receive a reduction in cost to using the skill or spell, say 1℅. That means that you would use less mana to cast the same spell. Each spell's mana cost differs of course."

  "Then when you reach Level 10 your spell or skill will go over to Tier 1 which is classified as Novice and then the experience you will need to level will be 50% more for T2 which is considered Apprentice class.

  T1 also gives you 1AP in that relevant Attribute like if you reach T1 in , then you will receive 1AP to your Strength."

  "So that means that your spells will become better as they level up, but it will get harder to level them up with every Tier," Shadow said.

  "Precisely."

  "OK, Any more questions?" When they shook their heads. "OK, Let's go over our plan of action."

  Louie looked at them and each nodded.

  After Louie modified the pillbox a bit they practiced what they were going to do.

  "So everybody ready?"

  They left the safe zone in front of the restroom and Louie removed every Lightstone as they moved towards the final boss fight. They reached the blue shield and touched it.

  He pressed Y and the shield disappeared and they saw the two golems with the big Rotator Boss and moved slowly into the room.

  They jumped forwards as the door slammed shut behind them. Louie dropped a bigger, more sturdy pillbox around them.

  The pillbox shuddered and cracks appeared throughout the structure as the boss's morning star crashed into it.

  They looked anxiously at Louie as he removed the paniers from his inventory.

  He nodded at Celia and she popped a shield over the loophole. Louie placed his hand through the shield and emptied the panier into the room. The pillbox was shoved back till it was against the closed door and the shield strained before it broke.

  The whole room was filled to the rafters with sand.

  A nervous Shadow looked at the sand that flowed through the loophole. "What is this?. Sand?"

  "Yes, I took all the sand in the practice yard and placed it in the paniers. The most time-consuming process was forming the sand in blocks and leaving the yard every time so that the yard could reset and spawn the sand again."

  Louie used to solidify the sand and open a tunnel through the sand and using his engraving pen he cut the trapped golems into pieces and removed their cores.

  Louie liquefied the sand and formed all the liquid into long rectangular blocks of stone that he inventoried in the paniers. Waste not want not.

  "Damn nice." There were many notifications, but they waved it away and looked on as a big spell circle appeared with five chests in front of it.

  One was black and looked as if it would fade away at any moment. One was black with a bone motif and one was a plain chest with a set of scales engraved on them, of the other two, one was red with buttons and ribbons for decorations and the other looked like a treasure chest decorated with jewelry. "I think that is all self-explanatory except the plain one, Celia. I think that one is yours, you did say that you are going for a trader class."

  Shadow opened her chest and reached inside. And removed a pistol crossbow

  Louie sighed in relief when he saw that the weapon doesn't look like the ridiculous stuff they got for clearing the Dungeon.

  

  Deidre got a loom that had a strange square receptacle at the back.

  Francine got a jewelers loupe.

  Celia smiled as she opened her chest. it was empty. "Huh? There is nothing in here."

  Louie used analyse on the chest.

  

  "Damn that's nice." Louie shared the BB with Celia. "Your prize is the chest. You all got nice items so let me see what I got. I see that since my analyse has reached T1 my reports show item durability and a mana charge indicated for magical items."

  "Nice that is good, the fact that you can see how much mana is left in an item., now you can work out how long it will take to recharge, especially those magic traps of yours." shadow said.

  He stepped up and opened his chest.

  It was also empty except for a BB

  'Ok, I get the hint. Better think of something fast.' Louie placed the chest in his inventory before it could disappear.

  "It's the same as Celia's chest."

  They nodded. They started looking through the room and discovered a cache of mana stones behind one of the wall panels.

  They chose the safezone where they visited the vendor and bought everything they could think of that they might need, Celia used her 1000G to stock up on cheap armor and weapons, tents, utilities, and also level 0 skills and spells.

  Louie used his coin to buy charms and skill cubes with crafter starter kits, and spell cubes, Create Water, Darkbolt, Sense Death, Raise Skeletal Minion, Sense Life, Call Lightning, Dark shield, Camouflage, and many more, he also found one spell that he liked but was unsure if it would even work for him, even with his transform skill, Elemental bomb, he bought it anyway, it cost a whopping 150G, he also found books on the anatomy of multiple other races and thought it would be good to know more about what other races were out there and their weaknesses.

  There were also a couple of books about what plants one can use to speed up the healing of a wound by soaking bandages in their concoctions, he also got a couple of books about poisons and antidotes and their uses that he bought for himself.

  He made sure that he bought anything that people might want to use to survive out in the wild. With his last money, he bought a couple of big chests that he can use to transport merchandise. It wasn't as good as the Merchants chest Celia got but it was damn close.

  Francine and Diedre bought materials and tools as well as skills to further their trades, they also bought any garment with self-repair and autofit enchantments that they could find. Shadow got as many skills as she could to help her survive. Thief Skills like pickpocketing and lockpicking together with all the tools necessary, she also bought one of every fire spell that she could find, she practically cleared out the section on throwing weapons, from knives to throwing axes."

  They woke up an hour before their time expired and made sure that they have everything that they might need for themselves or to trade.

  The first thing they noticed is that Shadow's spider egg had hatched and it was the strangest spider Louie has ever seen. It looked like the offspring of a pelican and a spider. Unlike other spiders, this one had what appeared to be a long neck and two big eyes looking forward from the head and its fangs resembled the scythes of a mantis.

  "Shadow, are you going to introduce us to the new member of our party?" Shadow stroked the strange spider that she cradled in her arms.

  "This is Selina."

  "Welcome to the party, Selina. You sure are uniquely beautiful." The strange-looking spider bobbed up and down as she looked at him.

  "Selina Kyle was one of my favorite comic characters, that Selina was a thief and I hope that my little Selina will forsake her path to become a thief like me."

  The teleport circle appeared. Louie raised a brow. "What is her 'Path'?"

  "Selina is an Assassin spider."