I let out a heavy sigh, stepping back into normal reality.

  Well, as normal as anything is between magic, the System, and dungeons. Oh, and turning into a giant spider that would send even the Australians into fits.

  For all that life had certainly become strange these days, in many ways, it was so much better than it had ever been previously. The Banner paid well, better than well, really. These days, I was probably making six figures easily. The family was more united than ever. Sean finally grew the hell up. Despite the circumstances that led to it, getting him involved with the Banner seemed to have been the best thing that could have happened to him. The last time I checked in on him, he was clearing out every dungeon he could get involved with. To the point that he wasn't approaching Banner teams to be a hanger-on anymore, and was instead being approached to join in on dungeon runs. By all accounts, he'd become someone reliable. That last one was quite possibly more surprising than even the existence of magic.

  There was only a single source of constant frustration in my life currently, and it was more of a recent occurrence.

  "Only a single level." I groaned out loud, grinding my palms into my eyes as if that would change the numbers staring back at me from my status sheet. The 2 months since the Incident had been a period of frustration. I'd been running dungeons almost daily, wiping out hordes of monsters. In all that time and on the other side of a mountain of monster corpses, I had only gained a couple of levels. My progress was grinding to a slow, halting death. There wasn't much I could do about it; thankfully I could mollify myself with my progress in the Skills department. There, I had been making steady progress with everything I had access to. I was well and truly acclimated to [Fell Gaze] and the opportunities it offered me, even if I was also slightly frustrated with the doors it closed as well.

  For levels, however, I was stuck hard at a bottleneck. I appreciated far more why an organization like the Banner would have a need for someone like me in the first place. It was part and parcel of the same problem that older MMOs experienced when an area became overcrowded. There just weren't enough monsters to go around. That problem made it difficult to move people through the levels and get them to a point where they could solve harder problems. Thus, while the Banner had a large amount of personnel, there was always going to be a larger proportion of them that were weaker. Someone like me sidestepped that issue to a degree by being stronger than my levels and stats would otherwise suggest. Being able to punch well above my weight class came with benefits.

  Unfortunately, everything I knew, could glean from the archives, or get out of Argyle, said that the problem only became worse the higher someone's level became. Many of the members of the Unseen suffered similar problems, apparently, but with a different sort of nuance for each different species. Each new level gained required an increase in the strength of the monster slain or an increase in the number of monsters slain. That meant that the available supply dwindled rapidly as an individual grew stronger.

  At least this was the case in southern Canada currently. If the rumour mill was to be believed, the issue in the north that had been occupying the Banner's attention for months now was the opposite type of problem. Which was interestingly what had led to my ability to run amok to a degree. Most of the Banner's higher level personnel were tied up in that situation, which was also what had stripped southern Ontario of all the folks who would normally be fixing the problems I was often called in for.

  In the north, the problem, according to rumour, was that there was an ever escalating number of dungeons appearing both in the wilderness and in the population centers. Dungeons where the monsters they contained were growing in strength at a rapid pace to match the number of dungeons. From the whispers I'd been hearing more and more of over the last couple of weeks, the situation was only growing worse.

  By this point, I had begun to suspect I was actively being kept out of the ongoing situation in the north. Which was irritating for its own reasons, separate from my recent frustrations. However, it did come with at least some benefit. One of them stumbled out of the dungeon entrance behind me.

  "In and out, you said, 20 minute adventure you said." The familiar voice groaned out from behind me.

  "I get you fantastical magic powers and a T-Shirt to go with them, and this is the thanks I get?" I barked out a laugh and turned to face my best friend, while Cade tried to keep up the glare he had fixed on me. "That's cold, brother."

  "Oh, please. Maybe if you had feelings, I'd worry about hurting them." We both laughed. It felt good to finally have my oldest friend in on the secret and able to benefit from it. I'd often felt over the years that I didn't give back enough to our friendship, given my propensity for disappearing both before and after the Soul-Sheer. This went some way to ameliorating that feeling. Besides, what kind of evil bastard went and got magic powers and didn't figure out a way to do the same for his best friend?

  An evil little shit I might be, but not that much of a prick.

  "Well, better than a naked hedge maze experience and multiple concussions at least." I pointed out.

  “Might not have been if I’d ended up in that goblin shit pile, I don’t understand how something that’s supposed to be made of pure magic can produce something that vile.”

  "Oh, please, you're just mad you don't sparkle." I retorted. I knew what his priorities really were. If he'd had to, he would have cannonballed into that shit pile for anime magic powers. It wasn't even in question. Fortunately, that hadn't been a requirement, and thus I would not have to tolerate that particular brand of pungency in the car on the ride home.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Such bullshit.”

  “Cade, my guy, your inner fan girl is showing.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “It’s literally tattooed on your body, you are the definition of a 2000’s fan girl.”

  "On that note, could we…"

  “Nope, I’m not flying to Australia.”

  We could have gone on for hours. It felt good talking shit back and forth with my best friend. He'd never get me to admit it, but I had missed the bastard. Silence fell between us as we walked back towards where the car had been parked a few minutes' walk away. Unfortunately, the dungeon had appeared in a place with easy access, so we'd had to hoof it.

  This time around, it looked like Cade was having a much easier time of it. Then again, the dungeon run we finished had pushed him all the way to level 4, and stats were a hell of a drug. He was something of a changed man, already having gone from being a hefty sort of individual, much like I had been before my run in the Soul-Sheer, to a much thinner man. The transformation wasn't as extreme as my own had ended up being thanks to my bloodline, but still, it looked like he'd spent a year locked in a gym with nothing but a treadmill and protein powder.

  Soon enough, the vehicle came into sight. The GMC SUV I'd purchased a few weeks previously. I wasn't much a fan of bumming a ride from the banner motor pool every time I had to get somewhere, or borrowing my father's car like I was a teenager all over again. It wasn't like I didn't have the money for it after all. I doubted money was going to be an issue for me for a while. Unless I did something insane like build a fortified compound for my family and friends. That would stretch even my current budget.

  We clambered into the vehicle, and I turned the key. We zipped off down the dirt road that would lead back out to the highway.

  "Well, that was an experience." I glanced over at Cade. There was a note in the way he said it that told me my friend wasn't quite as settled with everything as he was trying to appear. Not that I could blame him. A dungeon was kind of a lot to just throw at someone. It had been hilarious the way his eyes had boggled when we stepped through the entrance, though.

  “You good?”

  “Processing.”

  Trees whizzed by outside the car as I pressed on the throttle, the steady hum of the motor filling the car. “Deep thoughts?”

  "Magic is real, monsters too. Somehow, there's a mystical computer program in charge of it all. Oh, and goblins. Shit slinging goblins, can't forget them."

  "Yup." was the most eloquent response that I could come up with. There really wasn't much else to say. All those things were real, even if the shit slinging goblins sounded like they belonged in a B movie. They were horrifyingly real.

  “It’s a lot to process.”

  “That’s fair,” I sighed. “I think I did too much running and screaming to do any real processing during my introduction to all this shit.”

  “Of course you did, you fucking psycho.” Cade chuckled from the passenger seat.

  “You’re friends with the psycho, bud, what’s that say about you?” We stared at each other for a moment before breaking down into laughter.

  “I can’t imagine what it was like for you. Dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no idea what was going on.”

  "It was pretty shit for a while there, but I figured things out, one thing at a time. Thanks in no small part to Vipera, she helped keep me sane. Mostly." Deep down, though, I knew that the system and magic and monsters were more like a homecoming for me. It was like I'd been missing a part of myself my entire life, a piece I hadn't known existed. Cade knew me well, and while he joked that I was a psycho, we both knew it wasn't far off the mark. I was a monster in the making, tinder soaked in gasoline just waiting for the right spark. A catalyst. It just so happened that now there was a good direction to point that explosion waiting to happen. Somewhere that wouldn't hurt any innocent people and would actually do some good.

  Dungeon monsters were a hell of an outlet.

  ——-

  The ride back into the city was quick. Benefits of a dungeon that was courteous enough to appear near a highway. Even if the entrance itself had required a bit of a hike to get to.

  “So what now?”

  "For you or me?" I looked over to Cade as I drew the SUV up out front of his apartment building. "Or in general?"

  “All of the above.”

  "Well, for you, that's simple. Whatever you want to do, really. You can keep your head down, never touch a dungeon again, and ride out your days as a civilian who happens to have a few extra tricks up his sleeve. The System doesn't force you to keep levelling—just means you get a few extra perks for the rest of your life." I said with a simple shrug, "Or, you can call Uncle Wolfe, start working with the Banner, keep running dungeons, get stronger. It's all up to you. Nobody's going to drag you into anything if you don't want it."

  Cade was silent for a moment, then snorted. “You think I’m going to turn this down? I’m a beast now, gonna get me a big ass anime sword.”

  I let out a snort of my own, of course the first thing he wanted to do was get a big ass sword. To be fair, that big ass sword would complement his Skills and Class pretty well.

  “Weeb.”

  “Damn right.”

  "As for me," A contemplative look fell over me as I took a moment to take stock of things. I'd been just plugging away, trucking on for weeks now. "I'm not sure, I'm at something of a plateau with my levels, even if I am making progress in other areas. That's not a problem I can solve easily right now; the monsters are too weak here."

  A brief pause, Cade ticking his jaw left and right like he was processing a hangnail. “Canada too safe for you now, eh?”

  "Unironically, it's the opposite; it's more dangerous here than it is elsewhere, just not southern Canada right now." That was something that had surprised me in my endless trawling of the Banner's archives. Canada was actually more dangerous than both the United States and Europe on average. Europe had a long history, and the states had a larger population, which contributed to different problems when it came to Monsters and the System. Canada, with all the different cultures that called it home, drew from a well that was both wide and deep when it came to monsters. Something to do with cultural beliefs forming a sort of template that the system poured magic into. To be honest, a lot of the literature in the archive on the subject went so far over my head it may as well have been on a plane.

  "The real action's up north right now. I get the sense they're trying to keep me out of it for the moment." I shrugged, "Which has been fine since it gave me an excuse to get you moving. Now you don't have any good excuses for slacking off. Low level scrub." I grinned at him, but that faded when I saw Cade's expression. He looked out the window, glasses catching the streetlight, face shadowed, the lines around his mouth tight.

  “You ever think about what it means?” he said, so quietly I almost missed it. “The way these dungeons just… appear? The monsters, the power. If it’s as dangerous as you say in the north, what happens if it spreads?”

  I’d thought about it. I’d seen the plans, too—whole cities blacked out, quarantine zones mapped out for extreme loss of life. I’d seen the projections of how quickly a breach could overrun a city, or a town, or, given the right circumstances, a whole damn region.

  “It’s not my job to save the world,” I said, but the words sounded hollow, even to me. “I’m just a blunt instrument. They point me at a problem, I make it go away, and that suits me fine. For now.”