Matt soon appeared on the next floor, and the first thing to greet him was a set of razor-sharp teeth in a giant maw only inches away from his face.

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  “AHHHH–” he screamed in a higher pitch than he was proud to admit, almost taking a step back in surprise, his hand touching the portal.

  A checkpoint is needed to exit Tier 9 dungeon Tomb of the Guardian of the Dunes (floor 3) as it is within your level range.

  The system message knocked some sense back into him, making him realize what he was looking it. It was a giant ten foot long statue of some kind of dog creature, but for some reason only a few inches separated them. If he was larger, just being teleported in would’ve been enough to touch the damn thing. Heck, even Jackson would’ve probably been teleported into it, and he wasn’t that large of a man.

  “Fucking fuck,” he breathed out in relief, his heart still hammering in his chest from the unexpected surprise. “Not funny you fucking would’ve-been-the-gps-in-my-car-if-it-wasn’t-for-whatever-the-fuck-this-was sorry excuse for a system,” he continued his verbal assault, making sure not to take a single step during his tirade.

  With a hand on his heart, he started taking deeper breaths in an attempt to get his breathing, and hammering heart, under control. It was definitely a shocking scene, some people would’ve needed a change of pants just from being teleported in, but Matt was made of sturdier stuff. Also, his lack of a functioning pair of pants after his last fight definitely had nothing to do with it. Nope. Not at all. Dandy Matt was just that, dandy.

  Finally feeling both his breathing and heartbeat normalize, he took one more deep breath and identified the dog-like beast.

  Enraged Desert Jackal (level 16)

  “What happened to the ‘dune’ theme?” He questioned as his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He learned a long time ago not to trust dungeons, and the dog… or well, Jackal’s placement was oddly… convenient. Too convenient.

  It did present him with a target to practice his new mana technique on though, as well as a way to alleviate some of the built up anger and resentment for everything that had happened so far. Some would call it a 2-in-1 special, he preferred the term ‘happy accident’.

  In reality, he wasn’t really that bothered though, the progress he had made these past three days with his mana control was honestly ridiculous.

  At first, he felt that having a passive skill was a complete waste, since he was already controlling his mana just fine without it, so what was the point? Wouldn’t it be better to get an active skill instead while sticking to manual mana control?

  That was his thought process at the time, but the difference was night and day. Before unlocking [Advanced Mana Control], controlling his mana was like trying to push a loaded cart in the busy streets of a bustling city, sometimes the roads were uneven, sometimes you were pushing uphill, other times downhill, and there were always obstacles trying to impede the way, either people, other carts, random animals, or just random crap strewn around, difficult but definitely navigable, and the more you practiced the easier the maneuvering would be. You were, however, still limited by many factors, and while most of them you had no control over, the biggest limiter was your own pushing strength, which was coincidentally one of the things that could be improved.

  With [Advanced Mana Control] the process turned into something akin to driving a carriage, where the skill was the horses and he the driver. It made his job much easier, and took one of the biggest limiters out of the equation. There was still mental strain when trying to control mana, but everything was just much more compliant. The more his new skill leveled, the more theoretical horses would probably be added, making it easier to pull a larger carriage, or go faster. While it didn’t solve any of the other problems, like traffic, a blocked or uneven road, or even narrow tunnels, it did help immensely. It wasn’t as exhausting or mentally straining as before, which meant nothing was holding him back anymore.

  Realizing that, he dove into it with wild abandon, not stopping until he had almost fainted from lack of sleep. The results, however, definitely spoke for themselves. He wasn’t only able to consistently summon the mana wave, which in his opinion was a much better knockback than [Knockback], but he was also able to channel mana outside of his body. Granted, he could only do it where there was a mana gate, which did limit his options, but it was a far cry from where he had started, and the system seemed to recognize his efforts.

  [Advanced Mana Control (passive)] (rare) → [Advanced Mana Control (passive)] (rare 4)

  He had wondered why he was offered the Advanced version of the skill, as opposed to a basic one, especially since he was fairly new to all of this, but from his practice, he came to realize something, that every attempt, even if it had been a catastrophic failure, had made him better at mana control. It was all still part of controlling mana, he was just going about it the wrong way, so when he was finally able to do what the system recognized as successful enough to warrant a skill, his own level of mana control was good enough for the skill to be the advanced version, instead of the basic.

  Now, none of this was factual, it was just him trying to find logic in the illogical. For all he knew, it could be something else entirely, or even just the luck of the draw, but he liked it when things made sense. It made him feel that everything was right in this fucked up mess of a world. It also made him much happier knowing that his hard work had been rewarded. Putting in the effort never bothered him, but getting rewarded for it, especially when he hadn’t even expected it, now that was a euphoric feeling.

  He grinned as he started channeling mana into both palms, aiming them at the poor jackal’s wide open maw. “Someone’s in for a rude awakening.”

  Jackson was clutching his head with both hands as he woke up. It was throbbing like crazy. He was never good with hangovers back on Earth, but this one was on a whole different level. He wasn’t thirsty nor hungry, but the headache was like a rock band that was all drummers, going to town on his poor skull. It was dreadful, to say the least, but not unearned.

  He was in the grand library, in one of the private rooms reserved for the elite of the empire. It was a small space with a medium sized wooden table and four comfortable armchairs. It had a dome-shaped window with a view of the royal castle far in the distance, and attached to it was a slightly larger windowless room, enchanted from top to bottom, for testing purposes. He hadn’t done much testing himself, choosing to focus more on the theoretical part for now, trying to catch up on information since the trainers were unhelpful as they straight out refused to teach him anything about magic and mages, probably hoping he’d drop it and choose a ‘more suitable path’ according to them, which while annoying, didn’t bother him as much as they thought it would. He enjoyed reading and doing his own research, so this was right up his alley.

  He slowly opened his eyes, thanking every deity that the curtains weren’t open. What caught his eye though, were the books scattered around him. He had spent almost every waking minute of the last week reading, studying, and researching. Being level 4 meant that his next level would be his class offering, and so he needed one or two mage spells before then in order to guarantee a magic-based class as one of the offered options.

  He had hoped he could learn some form of mana manipulation or mana control to give him more versatility with his spells later, but every author and researcher were adamantly against it, citing how much more powerful and easier a spell was to control if learned through the system instead of performed through mana control, and if that skill was to be one of your core skills, then a passive mana control was a waste of a slot, unless you were fine with weaker versions of the spells in order to have more options, but that was almost never the case. A big boom was better than many tiny booms after all.

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  It would’ve been a lot easier if he had an instructor teaching him, but he had to make do. While he hated the fact that they were trying to force a class on him, he understood where they were coming from. From their perspective, a heavy armor class would fit him perfectly, giving him the highest chance of doing well, which meant more rewards for them. Yes, he did know they weren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and that they had a fat horse in the race. But while he did understand their position, he couldn’t care less. He wanted to be a mage, and if they didn’t want him to, then they’re gonna have to pry the books out of his cold dead hands.

  He chuckled a little, the movement causing the chair to squeak, a sound that felt like nails on a chalkboard, causing him to wince in pain and regret.

  The reason he had laughed was Izzy. He remembered how she had reacted when she found out what they were trying to do. She simply grabbed two blades and started walking towards the courtyard to try to… ‘reason’ with the instructor. If not, then to sheath the blades somewhere the sun wouldn’t reach. Her words.

  It took all his effort, and stamina, to stop her, claiming it wasn’t that big of a deal and how he already had a plan in the works, both very obvious lies that he was sure she didn’t buy, yet she relented. What followed was her forming a party that evening before going on a seven day wildlife cleansing spree, returning only yesterday as a level 8 striker. She brought booze with her, and they drank the night away, sharing their activities over the last week, with some jabs at the instructors and the empire as a whole that could probably lead to trouble if heard by others.

  While fun at the time, it was the reason for the state he currently found himself in, full of shame and regret. Shame for how she wiped the floor with him, drinking more than double what he did, and regret for even trying to out-drink her.

  He closed his eyes, hoping a few more hours of sleep would help make it all better, thinking the same thought every avid drinker has had at least once in their life, I’m never getting this drunk again.

  Matt was lying on the cold, hard floor, arms crossed, staring at the ceiling as he wondered where it had all gone wrong.

  Things had started off well, he was channeling mana in his palms, ready to unleash a tsunami on the poor frozen jackal. When he felt he’d reached his limit, he let all the mana go, causing a wave of destruction to collide with the canine statue.

  To his surprise, and horror, the statue crumbled into a heap of polished white stone as soon as the mana tsunami washed over it. It felt so anticlimactic that he didn’t even know what to do. He wasn’t sure if he had straight out killed it, or simply fucked the whole thing up, because for some reason, there was no kill notification.

  He had assumed the jackal was the enemy, so he hadn’t bothered scanning the room. With no kill notification, he changed course, doing just that.

  It was fairly large compared to the other two floors, at least a hundred feet across, with a twenty foot high ceiling. The walls this time were smooth slabs of sand-colored stones spanning from floor to ceiling, each with a torch of unflickering fire embedded in it. This meant that there were at least fifty torches across the room, lighting it up like the desert at noon. And yet there was nothing else to see. No portal, no other monster to fight, and no indication of what he was supposed to do.

  Feeling stuck, he did the only logical thing he could think of, he moved around the statue in order to examine it, exposing his back to the hundred foot room.

  Big Mistake. The next thing he felt was the impact of a sharp object burying itself in his shoulder. He started channeling mana into the scepter while turning around, but that same sharp object was pulled with such force that it had him flying off of his feet and into his current position of reluctantly lying flat on the floor, with his shoulder bleeding.

  He cast another [Minor Heal] and increased the mana channeled into [Mend]. He was honestly tired of the dungeon outsmarting him every step of the way. Every time he thought the next floor would be easier thanks to the rate at which he was improving, it just kicked his ass even harder. Am I just too cocky for my own good? He asked himself while still focusing on the footsteps that were running towards him.

  It wasn’t about him being cocky. He was a healer. What was there to be cocky about? Neither was it about him being dumb. In hindsight, maybe exposing his back to a wide open room in a dungeon wasn’t his smartest idea, but that was such a cheap shot. Baiting him with an actual statue had to be cheating.

  The footsteps were getting closer now, probably twenty to thirty feet away, which meant a second or two at most.

  Thinking about it more, dungeons did have traps, so this could simply be considered a trap of some sort. It didn’t make it any less of a cheap shot, but that was an inherent part of traps, so he couldn’t really complain about it.

  The footsteps were now a few feet away, and not slowing down, which was surprising. He had thought they’d be more wary the closer they got, but apparently not.

  The perpetrator came to a stop. Matt braced himself for the pain from his back as he spun around on his side a few times, the bladed weapon that was coming for his head hitting the hard floor with a clang.

  He got back up on his feet and finally saw his assailant for what it-- what she truly was.

  Dune Desert Huntress (level 16)

  The huntress stood at least two feet taller than he was, which put her at around eight feet in height. She had olive-colored skin, no hair, and was wearing a blindfold, which Matt found incredibly odd. Her arms were covered in white paint, making both appendages stand out, while her midsection had a large circle pattern drawn with the same white-colored paint. She was barefoot with two pieces of cloth covering her waist and chest, and a jagged dagger in each hand. Matt also noticed a weird contraption strapped to her back that looked very similar to a harpoon gun. If he was a betting man, which he was, he would bet that the contraption was the reason for his yet to recover shoulder.

  All in all, she looked very intimidating. And while it did explain why the floor hadn’t ended yet, it didn’t really say much about the jackal. Sure, hunters had companions, but where was his kill notification? Or was it simply a statue to bait him? It had done its job if so, because baited he was.

  The stare-down lasted for a mere second as Matt made his move.

  He started slowly charging his scepter, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

  She reacted immediately as soon as the first point of mana was charged into the scepter, sprinting towards him.

  Matt jumped backwards and fired the mana orb at her before channeling mana into his palm, preparing another mana wave.

  She plunged her daggers into the incoming orb. The ensuing mana explosion pushed her back a few steps while doing some surface level damage to her once unmarred skin.

  Matt took advantage of her lapse and fired another orb at her feet, while still channeling mana into his palm. Fighting her at close range wasn’t to his advantage, so he planned on keeping her at bay as much as possible.

  The huntress, surprisingly agile for her size, jumped over the orb.

  Matt smiled, expecting her to dodge, as he made the orb explode mid-air, a perk of his new mana control skill as well as three days’ worth of practice.

  Not expecting the explosion, she tripped mid-jump but her skill showed when she was able to put her arms in front of her and use the force of the explosion to roll forward as she landed, getting back onto her feet in an amazing show of agility that left her mere steps away from Matt.

  The impressive maneuver flabbergasted Matt, yet he didn’t let it distract him, instantly reacting by throwing another mana orb her way along with the mana wave that he had been channeling, trying to catch her before she could fully steady herself.

  The mana wave left his palm like a tsunami, increasing the mana orb’s speed substantially as it carried it with it, a wave of terror and destruction making its way towards the huntress.

  The huntress tried dodging, but she was simply too close, and the wave was too fast.

  His mana tsunami fully contained the orb’s explosion, directing all the force towards the huntress, but that wasn’t all. The mana was also able to carry her across the entire hundred foot room before slamming her into the wall, leaving the large huntress pinned and unable to move.

  The power of the mana wave shocked Matt, leaving him stunned in place for at least a second. Long enough for the mana pinning the huntress to finally run out of power, causing her to drop to the floor with a thud.

  Realizing his mistake, Matt started running towards the downed huntress. She wasn’t dead yet, but she was definitely reeling, and this was his chance to put an end to this fight.

  It had taken him a mere few seconds to make his way across the room, his enhanced body showing its worth, but to his terror, the huntress was nowhere to be found. He was exactly where her body had landed, but there was nothing, not even a single drop of blood.

  What’s going on? Matt tensed up, turning around to put his back against the wall, expecting the huntress to have somehow circled around him, but there was nothing.

  He started channeling mana in his hand in preparation for when she showed herself, but just as soon as he did, he felt something.

  Pain.

  A pain in his chest that he had never felt before. One that was slowly spreading to the rest of his body, every part of him feeling weaker and weaker.

  He lowered his gaze, his eyes falling on the culprit for the agony he was in, two bladed points sticking out of his chest, blood ever so slowly dripping from them. The only sounds remaining were his heavy breathing and the blood hitting the floor.

  He felt his knees buckle as he coughed a mouthful of blood, trying but unable to process what had just happened.

  Did I just… die?