Cass came to on the floor with a pounding headache and a deep-seated exhaustion.

  Oh, she’d passed out again.

  She sat up and immediately regretted it. The whole world spun around her. Her body was heavy, and there was a soreness that was entirely sourceless but also all-encompassing.

  She didn’t usually wake up feeling this bad.

  Stamina: 102/138

  Focus: 47/504

  Health: 7/130

  Hmm… She usually woke up with more resources than that.

  “She’s up,” Salos said from her lap. He was loafed up on top of her, his tail coiled around her knee.

  They were in a small room in the catacombs. Pellen leaned against a wall with a book in her lap while Alyx and Marco sat in the center of the room, several pieces of their armor spread over the floor between them.

  They all looked up at Salos’s words.

  “About time.” Alyx’s arms crossed over her chest.

  “How yah feeling?” Marco asked.

  “Are you okay?” Pellen asked.

  Cass nodded and again regretted it immediately as her brains sloshed about in her skull. “I’m alive. Did you win?”

  Alyx smirked. “Of course. How could I lose when you were holding back my competition?”

  “Good,” Cass said. She held her head, hoping it would stop the spinning. And the aching.

  “How are you feeling?” Alyx asked, repeating the question of the other two.

  “I could sleep for a month,” Cass said, “But we still need to find Pellen concept gems, right? We should—“

  “You are going to sit where you are,” Alyx cut her off. “And you will do as little as possible to activate your camp skill. And you are going to recover before we move on. I’ve won. We can take our time from here.”

  “But don’t you need to go impress a dragon or something?” Cass asked.

  “Sure. But I have the time-sensitive thing. They’ll pick me for sure,” Alyx said, though there was a slight hesitation in her voice.

  Cass didn’t push it because, frankly, it was too much energy to argue further. She pulled a log from her bag and lit it with one of her firestarters. In a few minutes, she was shrouded in Beacon of Hearth and Home, and the world was a little bit warmer.

  The immediate issues dealt with, she opened up her notifications.

  Level Up!

  + 1 Dex

  + 1 End

  + 1 Wll

  + 1 Ala

  + 4 Free Points

  Atmospheric Sense has increased to level 17.

  Confounding Mists has increased to level 10.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Confounding Mists has increased to level 11.

  Staff Mastery has increased to level 15.

  Dodge has increased to level 22.

  Stormstride Sprint has increased to level 15.

  Stormstride Sprint has increased to level 16.

  Elemental Manipulation has increased to level 22.

  Tempest Blade has increased to level 15.

  She’d gotten a level? But she hadn’t killed anything. Why had she—

  Recent Experience Log:

  [For your part in slaying Obsidian Golem, experience has been awarded (x3)

  For your part in slaying Gophers, experience has been awarded (x12)

  …

  For increasing your skill level, experience has been awarded (x26)

  …

  For defeating the 32nd Fang in a game of Cat and Mouse, experience has been awarded. You played with your life on the line. The 32nd Fang played with time on the line. Unequal stakes have awarded you 1/16th experience of Slaying 32nd Fang.

  For defeating Vaisom Swordswoman in a game of Cat and Mouse, experience has been awarded. You played with your life on the line. Vaisom Swordswoman played with pride on the line. Unequal stakes have awarded you half experience of Slaying Vaisom Swordswoman.]

  Well, that was interesting. She hadn’t known there were logs. She supposed she had never looked.

  More interestingly, she appeared to have gotten experience from helping Fioreya kill the golems even though she hadn’t been there for the final blow for most of them. She wondered how much she had gotten for that. But the logs didn’t give any specific numbers on how much experience was earned.

  Increasing her skills had also given her experience. Alyx or Salos had mentioned it happened but that it provided very little. She’d leveled up a lot of skills all at once, though. Perhaps that many all at once added up.

  But the last two entries were the most interesting. The system had decided that her stalling Fioreya and her team had been a game. A game Cass had won. Cass wasn’t sure how that tracked. She was the one who’d passed out at the end there. Then again, perhaps her stalling had been the difference between Alyx getting the blessing or Fioreya beating her to it. In which case, it was definitely Fioreya’s loss.

  Though, Cass still wasn’t sure whether she had actually been ‘playing’ with her ‘life on the line.’ They hadn’t killed her in the end, after all. Was that because she’d won?

  Her blood ran cold.

  Was that why they hadn’t killed her? Was it the system enforcing the results of their contest? If she had lost, would they have killed her on their way down as part of their prize?

  No. This was silly.

  They just hadn’t had the time to finish her off. She’d already wasted too much of their time. It couldn’t have been the system’s tendrils deciding for them she should keep her life as her prize for winning.

  But it had dictated what the lords of Uvana could and couldn’t do, hadn’t it? Salos had said once she defeated the Lord of the Deep, no other Lord of the Deep could fight her. Wasn’t that the system pushing things around as it pleased?

  But those were ‘nameless’ monsters. Fioreya was Fioreya. Presumably, her soldiers had names of their own, even if Cass didn’t know them.

  The system shouldn’t be able to control people like that.

  Her hand clenched into a fist over her chest. She was worrying about nothing. This wasn’t an indication of anything.

  It was just a reflection of the fact they had been ready to kill her to get through. Once they could, there was no reason to do so.

  That was all.

  In any case, she had four points to allocate. Her limited mental Focus was better spent deciding what to do with those than wildly speculating on the nature and powers of the system.

  That last fight would have been much easier if she’d had more Focus. She had three times as much as someone her level should have, and she was still running out. How did ordinary mages cope? Perhaps that was why there weren’t many combat mages at their level.

  Was she going to put all of it into Res? It was tempting. It wasn’t even entirely unreasonable. But there was also the matter of her Health…

  Health: 7/130

  Yeah. That wasn’t good.

  She was pretty sure it was lower now than it had been before she’d fainted. But then again, Health was consumed as the body healed, and she had no shortages of injuries. The wound in her shoulder was still a gaping hole, for example. How much Health would a wound like that take to close up?

  Maybe she should put all her points into Vit. It would bring her up to 19/142, which would be a welcome boost in the short term.

  In the long term, though, she wasn’t sure. Health and Focus did not have equal value. Focus recovered faster than Health did. Much faster.

  But Health kept her from dying, and the more of it she had, the faster Focus would recover in turn.

  Also, with Hearth applied to her Depth column, she could burn the Health for Focus and Stamina in emergencies. Though, perhaps it would be better to have that in Focus in the first place.

  She’d split it, she decided eventually. Most would go into Res; one would go to Vit.

  Res 56 -> 59

  Vit 36 -> 37

  The single point of Vit was little more than a drop in the bucket, but it would be a little more she could burn if it came down to that later and a little more Health now.

  Stamina: 102/138

  Focus: 74/531

  Health: 10/133