Congratulations! You have achieved level 1! You have been awarded 30 skill points!

Ian's smirk turned into a wince as he took in his new status. His points had dropped to around two-thirds of their former glory. Even though he knew this would lead to him becoming even stronger, it still hurt to actually see the difference.

Name: Ian Spelling (Hidden)

Alias: Zero

LVL: 1

Status:

STR: 4642

END: 4108

AGI: 4783

WIL: 4272

INT: 4351

Skills: Prestige Mode (Awakened), Prestige War Leader (Inherent), Statistical Synchronization (Inherent), Everything the Light Touches (Inherent)

Common: Enhanced Body (M), Enhanced Mind (M),

Uncommon: Conceal Identity, Analyze 1/5, Poison Resistance 1/5, Basic Item Storage (M), Strength 3/10, Agility 5/10, Endurance 2/10, Willpower 4/10, Intelligence 4/10, Basic Mana Regeneration 3/5, Soothing Touch 1/5

Rare: Magic Soul

Available SP: 30

"Wow, our stats are still amazing even after you reset," Tram said with a whistle.

Lana sighed, "They are higher than ours were before we reset. This is going to be absolutely ridiculous."

"Stop commenting on it while you stare at the screens I can't see," Ashlyn whined playfully.

"I cannot wait to see status screens like you all can," Selenia added, staring at the portal in front of them.

"Well, this dungeon is the Mithum Plains," Claire said as she motioned to the entrance. "As mentioned this morning, it has a larger level range than most base dungeons with monsters going from level 0 to 60. It is, however, fairly unpopular because the mobs have a tendency to swarm once we go into the cave that makes up the final zone."

"You said the first part has sand beetles, and the wooded area right after the grassy part has some sort of puffy frogs with teeth. What is in the cavern? Will there be scorpions? Scorpions are awesome!"

"No scorpions," Ian said, shuddering at the flashbacks.

"No, there are no scorpions in here," Claire said, giving Ian a knowing smirk. "They are actually giant sugar ants. The workers can scratch you up quite a bit, but the soldiers have stingers. They are the dangerous ones. The boss is the queen and her royal guards—which are like soldier ants on steroids."

"Bugs are so cool!" Ashlyn shouted as she began pointing towards the portal. "Let's go, people! Our future awaits!"

Ian looked around to see if she was attracting attention, and sighed when he saw there were only a few other people who seemed to be waiting for others. Seeing that her antics hadn't bothered anyone, he sighed and shook his head. Ashlyn would always be Ashlyn.

"Alright, let's do it, though you should probably calm down a bit, sis," he said, starting towards the portal.

"Embarrassed, oh brother dearest?"

"Not even close," he said, giving her a smirk.

"Tsk. I must be losing my touch."

When Ian stepped onto the threshold of the portal, the scene shifted from the dungeon enclosure to a grassland trapped in a valley. Just like in the Horker Village, there was an extremely tall and smooth cliffside that encircled the dungeon area. About halfway through the valley, trees started popping up here and there until they became dense enough for a forest.

"Wow, look at all the fall colors," Lana said, looking at the orange, red, and yellow leaves that were on the trees. "I can't believe we skipped this dungeon the first time."

"Fequnia les morita viie lium," Selenia screamed, causing Ian and the party to jump and draw weapons.

"Ian!" Ashlyn yelled a second later, pointing at the area in front of her.

"Don't do that!" Claire yelled, putting a dagger back into its sheath. "Did the status screen shock you that much? I would have thought you were both ready for it."

"No, no, no," Ashlyn said, shaking her arms and waving her hands back and forth. "I've got a message that says I need to kill ten monsters in a row with critical hits from a ranged weapon, and I need to hit level one hundred in under twenty-four real-world hours."

"What!?" Ian said, deeply wishing he could see her status screen.

"I have an awakening challenge! We need to get moving if I am going to complete it!"

"Hold on a second," Claire said, from where she was standing next to Selenia.

Everyone turned to see the Faeorcen woman still standing there, muttering in her native tongue, staring at the area right in front of her. She kept shaking her head, rubbing her eyes, and then trying to poke the air in front of her.

"Nia?" Ian asked gently, moving to stand in front of the young woman. "Are you alright?"

The woman's eyes jumped from the status screen only she could see to his face. Then she broke down and turned to Claire who wrapped her up in a hug.

"It is going to be alright, Nia," Claire said in a soothing tone as she rubbed the sobbing woman's back. "You just need to let us know what is going on so that we can help fix it. We are here for you."

"My father is going to come back and take me," she managed to say through her sobs.

"Why would he do that?" Lana said, coming up and patting Nia on the shoulder.

"He's going to be watching Ian's stream, an-and when he sees that I have an awakening challenge, he is going to come back and get me," she said, trying to control her crying.

"That doesn't make any sense," Ian said. "You told us last night that most of your siblings also received awakening challenges. Besides, we have plenty of time to figure something out because we aren't streaming today. All of us who reset sent in the requests to prevent streaming until we get out of the novice tier. It's essential to keep part of my skills hidden."

Ian watched as both Claire and Lana grabbed Nia, and relief visibly washed through her body as she began to lightly laugh, tears still streaming down her face.

Stolen story; please report.

"Thank the Mood Goddess for such blessings," she whispered before giving both Claire and Lana hugs. "But my father will want me back if he knows that I have the awakening I have. I am tempted to not finish it and let it expire just to be safe."

"What do you need to do?" Ashlyn asked, coming over to give Nia a hug as well.

"I need to kill twenty-five monsters with them only taking damage from my self-cast spells, and I need to hit level one hundred in under twenty-four hours."

"You have one too," Ian stated, the situation suddenly making a lot more sense. "If you have a hard mode challenge like we do, then your father will bring you back because he doesn't even have one, and most of your siblings were given easy mode challenges. He believes that you can breed adventurers with awakening challenges."

"And he can see rapid changes in status with one of his inherent skills," Selenia said, looking defeated. "What am I going to do?"

"How does his skill work?" Claire asked. "Can he see names and skills? What does it show?"

Selenia opened her mouth, before closing it and looking thoughtful.

"That is a good question," she said. "I know that he can't see names, nor can he evaluate skills. If I remember correctly, it helps him evaluate your fighting strength, and probably lets him see your stat levels. Though it only works if you are fighting something. He was only able to see Ian's actual level through the leader board when we watched him on the holo deck."

"Huh, I wonder if you can just do what Ian did and get a concealing skill," Ashlyn murmured.

"Actually," Ian said, thinking of a conversation he had with Nia the night prior, "what do you think about pretending to be a human when we dive? You can take an alias and pick up a skill that changes your appearance. I'd find it hard to believe that it is a human-only thing."

"No, we have them," she said with a small blush. "Most of the ones I have seen are used by my father's wives for…special occasions."

"Oh damn, that sounds kinky," Ashlyn said. "Please, feel free to share more."

"I'd rather not, he is my father," Selenia said with a shocked expression.

"I'm kinda impressed," Tram said. "Sounds like your pops really knows how to party. They say variety is the spice of life, and it sounds like he has that in spades."

Ashlyn gave Tram a high five as Lana sighed.

"A-hem," Claire said, as Ian chuckled. "So, we now have a lot to do in the next twenty-four hours, so we should probably get started?"

Ashlyn pulled out her bow. "Alright, let me get my ten critical kills finished…though, where is the critical point on a beetle?"

"Well, bugs have a hardened exoskeleton, but the weak point in that is usually the back of the thorax, where they would split to shed their skin. However, the bugs in here are a bit sturdier and never shed skin. According to the AO's dungeon info, the only critical location is damaging the eyes, which are larger and more central than on normal beetles, but I'm not sure you will kill them that way."

"Eh, we'll give it a shot. There is a counter, so I'll be able to see if it works or not," Ashlyn said with a shrug.

Tram took the lead with Ian a few steps behind him to the right. Ashlyn took the position opposite of Ian while the remaining three took up the center position in the triangle. Claire had gone over the starting formation in the car on the way over and explained how it would eventually be adjusted as they progressed. Once the group had awakened at one hundred and received their inherent skills, they could adjust the formation to better suit their needs.

"Hold up, we have a couple of beetles in front of us," Tram said, holding his shield out at the ready. "Huh, they don't seem to have dangerous mandibles like the giant ones at higher levels. Honestly, they don't seem to be that intimidating."

Ian saw a couple of black beetles with brown stripes crawling through the knee-high grass in front of them. They were wide enough that the grass separated to give away their positions, even if only a few inches of their body stuck out of the ground coverage.

Pulling two arrows from her quiver, Ashlyn walked forward to stand next to Tram. In a quick, fluid motion, she drew and loosed twice at the slowly advancing creatures.

Congratulations! You have achieved level 2. You have been awarded 30 skill points!

Congratulations! You have achieved level 3. You have been awarded 30 skill points!

"Alright, that counted as two," Ashlyn said, smiling at Ian as the group advanced on the now very dead insects. "If they all move that slow, it will be easy to get my ten in a row out of the way."

"It is one thing to know about the SP gain, but it is another to see it show up in our logs," Tram said, doing a shoulder dance in his armor. "The amount of skills that can be purchased is going to make hitting the ultra-tier a real possibility."

"Yup, we just need to get everyone into the low-tier so we can start really progressing," Claire said with a smile. "I already have our authorizations to enter any dungeon under level six hundred, they just can't be utilized until we are no longer in the novice-tier."

"It will only take us a few months to catch up to where we were," Lana said with a smile.

"We'll probably do that in a week," Ian said, before he stopped walking and whistled.

"Wow, I didn't realize that you could do that much damage to something with a bow," Tram said, taking in the dead monsters.

The two beetles Ashlyn had shot had their heads completely crushed, with the arrow's fletching sticking out of the front of the monster. Smiling, Ashlyn looted the two creatures, and grabbed her arrows. Holding one up, the group saw that the end didn't have a normal arrowhead attached.

"I'm using blunted arrows I got from Jen called battering rams," she said, pointing to the two-inch metal slug that widened out to a flat end with a single small point in the center. "They lower the accuracy at long range but are much wider than normal blunts for small game. Jen said she was able to use them to crush a giant turtle monster's shell a few days ago, so they will crush through these things easily.

"And best of all, they seem to count as crits against these monsters."

"I never thought of using a bow for blunt force damage," Claire said with a smile. "We need to pick it up, though. Let's keep moving straight towards the cavern with the ants. Ashlyn, you kill until you finish your crit chain, and then we'll have Nia start picking off her kills."

"Yeah, we need to get their secondary requirements done quickly," Lana agreed. "Our stats are too high to not just bulldoze this place and crush it. Each of us is like a titan in here."

"Well, let's pick up the pace then. After you, Mr. Tanky," Ashlyn said, taking off at a jog with Tram.

*~*~*

The ice bolt embedded itself directly into the grenkil's eye.

Congratulations! You have achieved level 24. You have been awarded 30 skill points!

"Alright, almost a quarter of the way there, and we're only three hours in," Claire said, looting the grotesquely bloated frog. "I forgot how large the newbie dungeons are. A normal dungeon wouldn't have taken us so long to move between the different zones."

"At least these grenkils were higher level than the beetles. We stopped getting meaningful experience from them after we hit level ten," Tram said.

"I still have six more monsters to kill for my challenge, but I think I need to take another break from casting," Selenia said, rubbing her temples.

Ian patted her on the shoulder, "Trust me when I say that I know the feeling. We have lots of time, and your spells are a lot stronger than they should be right now."

"I know, I just hoped I would be a little bit stronger than this," she said, though she wore a smile.

"Trust me when I say you are doing amazing," Claire said with a light laugh. "Most mages can't cast more than a few spells at a time until they have quite a few skills under their belt. We'll need to get you the mana capacity and regeneration skills we talked about yesterday."

"Now I understand why my sisters all were gifted mana regeneration skills for their coming-of-age ceremonies," Nia said as she nodded in agreement.

"Gifted?" Ian said, eyebrows raising.

"Yes, gifted. My father and his wives occasionally find skill crystals in the dungeon. I thought that was a common thing? My father said that they make quite a bit of money off of the ones they do not need. Though…from the looks you are all giving me, I am starting to think that it isn't as commonplace as I thought it was."

"I'll have to make some inquiries," Claire replied. "I've never heard of skill crystals, but my knowledge is by no means complete. If it's something we can get, I would bet very few humans are high enough to run the dungeons they drop in. Diana's clan has some of the highest-level adventurers in the country, and they would have shared that kind of information with the AO already."

Everyone just nodded. Having access to something like a skill crystal would change the landscape for dungeons, especially if it were possible to give them to brand-new adventurers, as Selenia mentioned.

"Just think of how many different builds would open up to lower-level adventurers if they could purchase some of the precursor skills before they even started?" Claire said. "Actually, this makes a lot of sense. It explains why the adventurers on Selenia's world are so much higher than ours as a baseline. It would be like the materials used to create armor from the dungeon. Each new tier we conquer provides us with new materials that make the previous ones even easier."

"I'd say you are onto something, Claire," Tram said, while going through what looked like a stretching routine. "However, there isn't anything we can do about that information until we push higher."

"True," she said. "But the thought of what we may be able to accomplish in the future is exciting!"

"Yeah, but we have a long way to go, and we can talk about this over at dinner tonight," he said. "Besides, there is something incredibly wrong with leveling up in a dungeon and not doing anything. How about you all follow me in? I want to see if I can't crush a few of those ants with my shield."

Ian smiled as Lana rolled her eyes from her spot in the middle of the formation.

"Oh, use the point on the bottom," Ashlyn suggested, pushing him towards the cavern. "I bet you could even cleave them in half if you hit them right."

Ian began to follow as Claire walked up next to him.

"The next dungeon we are gonna do is about two hours away by metro," she said with a frown. "I'll call ahead and get us expedited through the entrance when we beat the queen. We'll save some time on that, but we still need to finish this run as quickly as possible. All the travel time in this dungeon is really slowing us down."

"I'm still sitting on twice the stats you all are," Ian said. "As soon as we get inside, we'll just plow through those pathways. They don't seem to be wide, so we can probably just full clear everything at a jog. If the map was right, we'll be out of here in half an hour."

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