The Reluctant Hero - Vol. 1 - Chapter 12

The night passed without incident. At most a normal animal or a weak monster could have come by, but after clearing the area of the goblins, nothing had come by. After a breakfast of leftover stew, Axel cast his new favorite utility spell, “Pack Camp.”

It was fascinating to watch as everything that made up his camp packed itself in a neat and orderly fashion. In moments his camp was packed up and back inside of his Magic Box. With all of that done, it was time for him to make some new magical items! He’d thought about it yesterday and had decided to make something to help him out before making more mana regeneration rings.

“Greater Create Magic Item.”

Material, a steel bracelet at least an inch wide. The enchantment, a simple readout of his available mana. Why he hadn’t thought of that first was beyond him. The spell let him know it was possible and it was surprisingly cheap, relatively speaking. He happily spent one hundred and fifty thousand, originally fifteen thousand, mana to create the item.

With the familiar golden glow, a wide bracelet appeared in his hand. It was quickly slipped onto his wrist and with a quick look, he finally got his first look at how much mana he currently had.

‘10.4M’

Well, he should have been more specific on how accurate he wanted it to be, but this worked just fine. Over the next few minutes, he spent five point six million mana to create five more copies of the ‘Mithril ring of Mana Regeneration.’ He’d realized that he didn’t want to remove his ‘Ring of Borrowed Power’ so after yesterday he only had three fingers and two thumbs left on his hands. Still, that gave him nine rings for a total of two hundred and twenty-five percent, plus another fifty from his staff for a grand total of two hundred and seventy-five percent. That was… Well, any other mage would kill for what he now had on his hands.

MP: 4.8M/— (3,540) (+157.9/sec)

Axel looked over his fingers and shook his head. Every finger and both thumbs were now adorned with rings. Nine of the rings matched perfectly with each other and looked rather plain. Only the tenth looked special and that was his dungeon drop item. In the future, he would have to figure out a better material to remake his rings with to get either a higher percentage of mana regeneration or figure something else out to increase it. Maybe give himself an enormous amount of Int? Something to think of in the future.

He decided today was going to be his last day of hunting for herbs. A few hours before sundown he’d head back to the city and turn in his quests tomorrow morning then pick out a new dungeon to raid. It was about time to get back to leveling up and getting his Rogue class.

With his determination set, Axel muttered his flight spell and took off into the air to head out for another area to collect more herbs. The day passed pretty quickly. He ran into a few wandering skeletons and another group of goblins but nothing that really posed a real threat to him. Not that much could as long as he had mana for his Mana Armor. The majority of his time was spent searching for herbs and collecting the few he could find.

As late afternoon came around, he decided it was time to head back to the city. He quickly took a look at his bracelet to gauge his available mana, seven point three million, and grinned. At the moment he earned a little over one point two million mana every two hours. It was pretty awesome, “Fly.”

Axel rose into the air with practiced ease and took off toward the city. He’d been using it a lot lately and had gotten it up to rank twenty-two. After it passed rank twenty, the cost had fallen by five mana a second and his current speed was a wonderful two-hundred and twenty feet per second. He was blazing across the sky at speeds a non-mage could never hope to achieve. Maybe being a Mage wasn’t so terrible…

No, it still sucked not to be a Rogue.

Thanks to his massively improved flight speed, Axel arrived back at the city gates rather quickly. He drew a few looks for flying to the city but nothing more than a glance. A mage flying around wasn’t rare, just not too common. Once within the city walls, he made his way to the inn he liked staying at. His dinner was wonderful, much better than rations outside. Not to mention how much softer the bed was compared to a sleeping bag on the ground.

Thanks to said soft bed, Axel woke up late the next day after sleeping in. Thankfully he didn’t sleep in too late and it was still morning by the time he got to the guild to turn in his quests. The drop-off area for quests was next to the area where quests could be accepted. That made things easy enough for him. Sleeping in turned out to be a rather nice thing as the line for a receptionist was rather short, with only a few people or groups ahead of him.

Coming in the morning to turn in quests was a pretty common thing to do. After all, why would anyone want to stand in line after returning to the city from a full day of work? Well, anyone that came back in the late afternoon would so early mornings and early evenings were the busiest time for the turn-in station.

Axel had very little to do as he waited in line. He did try to think of things he could do to exploit his Greater Create Magic Item spell along with his ever more rapidly growing mana pool. Well, he would need gear when he became a rogue. He did have the spells he’d made to help him out, but magical equipment on top of that would be amazing. But… he didn’t really know all that much about magical items. If it wasn’t for his ‘Staff of the Adventurous Youngster,’ he wouldn’t even know about making enhanced mana regeneration items.

He pondered on what he might be able to make to help himself grow stronger until it was his turn at the drop-off window. Axel smiled at the receptionist as he started pulling out bundles of herbs. Each bundle was a full-stack as the requests asked for. He’d found half a dozen different kinds of medicinal herbs but only managed to gather a few full stacks of three different ones. So, he set out three stacks of Hippika herbs, four Lettonen herbs, and one Griffeth herbs. Eight stacks of various herbs was actually a fairly decent haul for just a couple of days of work.

The receptionist watched as pile after pile of herbs was placed on the counter before raising his eyebrow and addressing Axel, “Anything else?”

In response, Axel pulled out his Status Plate and placed it on the counter while glancing at it himself.

Axel Voht

Level: 55

Class: Mage

Monsters: 5x Skeleton, 4x Zombie, 42x Goblin

Quests: 0

Rank: F

After taking the Status Plate and glancing it over, the receptionist gave Axel an incredulous look. The information on the Status Plate was rather weird. A level fifty-five with zero quests completed? How the hell did that happen? But, it wasn’t the receptionist's place to ask so aside from the look, he got to work.

The herbs were double-checked for quantity and quality. A destroyed or poorly harvested herb was worthless so they all had to be double-checked. As a professional, it took the receptionist very little time to go through all of the herbs. Axel wasn’t worried in the least, his parents had made sure to teach him how to harvest an herb properly.

With the herbs checked, the man behind the counter looked at Axel, “Alright. You’ve completed the request for Lettonen herbs four times for two silver per stack. Hippika herbs three times for three silver per stack. Griffeth herbs for ten silver per stack. And lastly, Goblin extermination four times for ten silver each time. If there is nothing else, your reward total comes to sixty-seven silver and twelve completed quests.”

After getting a negative from Axel, the receptionist got to work counting out the reward and passing it over to him along with his Status Plate, after it was updated. Axel pocketed the money and looked at his freshly updated Plate while the receptionist spoke, “Congrats on completing the ten quests required to leave F-rank. Now that you have reached E-rank you can take E-rank quests solo, or D-rank if you join or create a party of E-rank people.”

Axel looked over his updated Status Plate with a bright smile. It hadn’t changed a whole lot but what had changed was pretty important.

Axel Voht

Level: 55

Class: Mage

Monsters: 5x Skeleton, 4x Zombie, 2x Goblin

Quests: 12

Rank: E

It was nice that the Status Plate would update like that. In the old days, people would have to bring in proof of monster kills, like ears or something. The Status Plate would automatically keep track of all the monsters he killed. Though only the ones killed outside of a dungeon. Dungeon monsters just didn’t count since they couldn’t leave the dungeon and therefore posed no threat to anyone outside of it.

With his business done at the turn-in counter, Axel left and went to look at the information on dungeons once more. He planned to find out which nearby dungeon had the highest level monsters and conquer it on the hardest setting. A quick check showed he currently had thirteen point eight million mana stocked up and gained over six-hundred thousand every hour. Yeah, it was time to blow through level one hundred and pick his tier two class.

It didn’t take long to find the highest level dungeon and get directions to it. With the directions to it in hand, he quickly refilled his supplies, even grabbing a few extras. With how much stronger the monsters would be compared to himself, he expected it would take a large amount of mana to kill them. That meant he might have to take breaks more often and be stuck in the dungeon for several days, if not longer.

Once he was sure he had enough supplies stored inside of his Magic Box, he quickly made his way outside of the city. A quickly muttered, “Fly,” and he was blasting through the air at his fastest speed heading directly south.

The dungeon was located several miles directly south and should be pretty hard to miss. It was one of the few known as an ‘external’ dungeon. This meant that it was visible to the outside world. Rather than going through a portal standing in the middle of an arch or something, like the previous skeleton dungeon, this one was a portal leading into a tall tower. Spotting the tower from a distance would be a simple matter, especially from the air.

Thanks to the vastly improved, and still improving, speed of his ‘Fly’ spell, Axel made it to the tall tower of the dungeon in just a few minutes at the cost of a quarter of a million mana. He gently touched down in front of the tower. It stood several hundred feet tall while only being about one hundred feet in diameter. It would be impossible for humans to build, even with magic. The only entrance stood before him, massive double doors at least fifteen feet tall.

With a quick tug of ‘Telekinesis,’ Axel opened the massive doors to reveal the rainbow-colored portal leading to the interior of the tower. As he had done with the skeleton dungeon, he walked up and placed his hand on the shimmering curtain of colors.

Demonic Dungeon - DD8764319763684

Select Difficulty Level

Easy 40-50

Normal 51-75

Hard 76-90

Hardcore 91-110

Death Zone 111-125

His finger hovered over the ‘Death Zone’ option as his heartbeat started to increase. Even with his advantages, even with his Telekinesis and Mana Armor, the idea of entering a place labeled as a death zone was still a terrifying prospect. He took a deep breath…

Hardcore difficulty selected, entering the dungeon.

…And immediately chickened out.