Oz stumbled into the corridor as he finally stopped throwing up. Even behind the shut lids of his eyes the magic was blinding. Thankfully, now he was out in the corridor the magical nonsense was subdued.

  As an upside of his upgrade he could sense magic now, as a downside he could sense magic now.

  Magic, it turned out, was visually overwhelming. Like watching a lightning storm through a kaleidoscope while having a migraine. The sudden boost to his awareness hadn’t helped. All his other senses had kicked up into a higher gear, so the chemical smell of the room had made him lose his breakfast or dinner, or whatever the last meal he ate that wasn’t fucking essence was.

  Oz was pretty certain you couldn’t throw up essence, but his body had sure as hell tried.

  In the corridor he could smell the stink of the burned room, his own puke, the laboratory, all set to a background of blood. Still, now that he was out of the room with all its magical apparatus he felt a bit calmer.

  Chops came up to him and nuzzled him softly, checking he was alright. As he pet him, Oz marvelled at the texture of the fur, losing himself in it in a way that usually required recreational drugs.

  His dog was so fuzzy.

  He cursed his earlier confidence. He should’ve quit while he was ahead and just left with the skill and the Authority upgrade. The Other snapped back at him, and for a minute Oz lost himself to an internal squabble, till Chops nudged him.

  “You know, Chops, I think this next bit might go badly.” He sighed. The dog only whined in response.

  “Let’s hope it stabilises after a while. I should sort myself out for the big fight.”

  Oz stalked through the dungeon, getting back to the big room which had all the Jackals in it. Now that the initial overwhelming burst of power was done he could appreciate what it’d done for him. While the initial jump in Awareness before hadn’t seemed particularly noticeable, though on reflection his dark vision was much better than it used to be, this shift had amped up his vision to a point that it felt like he’d been stumbling around in desperate need of glasses his entire life and finally found them.

  Only applied to every sense.

  It went beyond the senses one traditionally thought of, though. Sure, his ears and nose felt unclogged for the first time, but what really stood out was his awareness of himself.

  Given his workouts he knew his body well. He knew how to align every movement for maximum gain, the angles needed to work each muscle, but that was a conscious decision, one that could become natural over time.

  Without a thought he dropped into a push-up that offered perfect form, before transitioning through a series of stretches and exercises that challenged his balance and control.

  At the end he found himself doing a single-armed handstand, his body perfectly balanced, blending the power of his Physique, the reactions from his Deftness, and the control offered by his Awareness to hold the form perfectly with barely a wobble.

  He only fell over when Chops took the opportunity to start licking his face.

  Oz laughed to himself. What with the murder dungeon, assassination plot, the deranged ruby-eating Jackals, and fairies with an obsession with being eaten, he’d somewhat forgotten that getting his class was meant to be a good thing.

  The Other gave him the mental equivalent of a slow clap, pointing out that yes, the true wonder of his transformation wasn’t the magic, the powers, or the familiar, but the fact that he could now exercise better.

  Oz ignored him and grinned to himself, continuing on to the big room where the horde of Jackals had been. He wanted to examine the big double doors again, with his enhanced skills.

  On his return he could see the remains of the fire trap as clear as day, the ghost of the now-discharged spell form sitting just inside the room, slowly recharging itself. Though he guessed it would be a long time till it was ready to fire again.

  Passing that by, he nudged one of the doors open with a spear, his “shield” in hand. Nothing immediately exploded, but his intuition was screaming at him.

  He looked down the clearly trapped corridor. If it had been suspicious before without magic perception, it was out and out threatening now.

  The walls pulsed with neon waves of energy, and pulsing runes and spell forms flickered across the flagstone floor. Oz decided to ignore it, and turned to the other side of the room where he’d spotted a table stacked with books earlier. A quick check found no new clues, no mentions of the champion Jackal or Molmest for that matter.

  One fresh find was a book with traces of magic in it, but a quick skim through showed it was just a spell tome, providing him a load of diagrams that he recognised as spell forms.

  The Other was not impressed when he just slipped that right into his satchel. It wasn’t like Oz understood spell forms at all, so he had no idea what it even did. It wasn’t even his fault this time. The school taught runes and spellwork in the same time slot.

  With the table clear, and the room otherwise empty of mana, he could at least settle in and take stock of what he had for the coming combat.

  The first thing he noticed was that both the coat and gloves were magical. The gloves more so than the coat. A quick inspection found gnomish runes sewn into them, which made Oz curse. He’d never had a chance to study the gnomes’ rune structure, so had no idea what he was looking at. Still, the inspection helped. Oz suspected that he was starting to get used to the new awareness, as things felt more natural and less like they were trying to burn his brain out like he was a Nazi at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Oz paused, pulling back from trying to investigate the thought. The alien slew of images and concepts made his soul ache. He’d been ignoring the dribble of otherworldly memories that kept trying to infect his mind, but this was on a new level. Oz’s knowledge of the soul began and ended with “don’t fuck with it”. He needed a professional.

  His new awareness helped him sense how tired he was getting. He was hungry and burning energy. Magic was there to help pick up the slack, but that didn’t substitute for actual food. The water in the laboratory had offered some refreshment, but Oz was going to really start to feel his energy levels fall soon, and unlike Chops he wasn’t able to snack on their fallen enemies.

  He grimaced. He really hoped that wasn’t what he was meant to be doing.

  His exhaustion probably accounted for how the strange thought had slipped so naturally to the forefront of his mind, and felt so natural when it did so.

  Oz didn’t like that one bit. If he didn’t get a handle on this, he’d wake up tomorrow and start calling his knife “Voidblade” and not notice.

  “I want out of this sodding dungeon, Chops.” Oz straightened up, petting his companion. Time to make a plan. The last one had gone well, if you ignored all the unintended incineration.

  He looked at what he had before him, at the weapons he’d collected, and even the door he’d dragged here with him. He needed to get this done soon.

  The first thing was to get things sorted to work with his skills. The alien part of his soul might terrify him, but it had been dead on the money for things that worked with Hoodlum, and it had ideas for the gloves. Plus Oz also wanted to test his latest skill. He pulled out a knife and got to work on some modifications, guided by the Other.

  [Vandal]

  The power rippled and he cut through the leather like it wasn’t even there, before sinking into the table like he’d sliced into cheese. Oz blinked. Vandal did not mess around. The Other was keen to point out how useful this could be against armour or non-living targets, but then he fell silent as Oz slipped the gloves on and saw a new pop-up.

  [Vandalized fingerless combat gloves has exceptional conductivity with Hoodlum]

  [You have discovered a synergy, items with the Vandalized debuff have greater conductivity with Hoodlum, this does not negate the negative effects of the debuff]

  Oz grinned. That was a good bit of news.

  Synergies were important. There had been a whole series of classes he hadn’t paid attention to on them. What he did remember was it was a function of two of his skills gaining additional benefits when combined, and not like the deliberate nature of Aura of Menace.

  Considering the lessons on the subject had been aimed at locals, his only example went something like this. If you were a miner and had [Rock Splitter] and [Ore Harvest] which helped you harvest it quickly, you might end up with a synergy where rocks you split were even easier to harvest.

  Greywater was a practical place.

  Finding a synergy was meant to be a big thing. Oz just paused to pet Chops for a moment to celebrate. This whole experience had been surreal. He’d not even had time to enjoy Vandal. It’d been part of his breakthrough, which Oz had not really known how to process.

  There was too much to think about, and that was ignoring the fact he’d been poisoned earlier today.

  And that he had long fallen out of the practice of thinking.

  Everything from getting his class to passing the thresholds were things that had been so built up in society. People had parties to celebrate this kind of stuff. Yet here he was alone, with his only companion a two-headed dog who would not stop trying to eat the crystals in his satchel, and a voice in his head that constantly whined about “his build”. It barely felt real.

  Yet it felt good. And he had a growing suspicion that he might actually be good at this. Could the Ranger Corps be this rewarding. And had his backup plan really been mining.

  He distractedly finished cutting the gloves, trying to get a sense of [Vandal]’s recharge. Good news, it had a much shorter cooldown than [Twice for Flinching], though when he played around and tried to damage the stone walls he felt a much greater pull on his energy.

  Clearly the quality of what he vandalised mattered.

  [Hoodlum conductivity has been significantly increased with Vandalized fingerless combat gloves]

  He also slid on the coat, but wasn’t surprised when the text appeared.

  [Hoodlum conductivity is middling with Reinforced Great Coat]

  Before Oz could start cutting the coat, the Other suggested one last change, and Oz, willing to accept that it had not been wrong so far about Hoodlum’s expectations, dutifully took his arms out of the sleeves of the coat and wore it more like a cape.

  [Hoodlum conductivity is good with Reinforced Great Coat]

  Oz didn’t want to know why that worked, even as he could feel the Other fizzing away in smug satisfaction.

  Right now he was more worried about getting to the end of the dungeon rather than how, even if his arms were in the sleeves or not, let alone why it cared. He also held off vandalising it. Oz’s new senses also told him the coat was magic in some manner, and he didn’t want to risk damaging the enchantments if he could avoid it.

  He looked back to the weapon rack. There was the buckler he’d considered briefly.

  A quick use of [Vandal] to slash up the design and leave it looking haggard, and he found the vandalised version only reached middling, which was a disappointment.

  Given that the big Jackals’ attack on the door had left it with gouges and tears, and that was exceptional synergy, he didn’t want to trust his life to something “middling”.

  Besides, it just wasn’t that big a shield, and given he’d not trained for this, bigger seemed better. He really just wanted something reliably solid to put between him and his enemy. He looked at the door again. No matter how ridiculous it looked, it had been a life-saver before. It was just a pity that there was no way he was fitting it down the corridor.

  He tried to push on, but then the Other prodded him. Oz prepared to shove off another bout of cowardice, but then he felt the image appear in his head. If he couldn’t get the door down here now, why not change the door. Oz looked back at where he’d cut through the table with ease. Yeah, that could work.

  Five minutes later, Oz picked up his new shield, the door now half its original size. He’d kept the iron bands that held it together, and, using the pick side of a warhammer and [Vandal] to punch holes through it, bound it to his arm with belts taken from the Jackals. If this thing didn’t work with Hoodlum, he had no idea what it wanted.

  [Hoodlum conductivity is at maximum with Vandalised Dread Portal Shield]

  Oz looked around at the scraps. He felt ready. But one last concern reared its head as he pushed away Chops, who was nuzzling at the satchel again. He still hadn’t found a way to use the crystals, which bothered him. There had to be a reason behind them.

  What was he meant to do, throw them at him. They didn’t look healthy. Now that he could look at them, they shone a faint blue to his magical senses, extra lights coming out of the points.

  Was he meant to stab the boss with them.

  The Other popped up. It had a suggestion.

  Oz resisted a lot of what the Other said, but this, this he could work with. Plus, if this stupid school was going to call him a delinquent, who was he to disappoint.

  He headed over to the weapon rack. Time to improvise.