The weeks passed, and soon turned to months, and then years as Zoe continued wandering through the city, building memories of all the places she could see on the dungeon laden map. She stopped in at dungeon after dungeon, building up her hoard of wealth hidden away within her Storage skill, and even after so many long years began to get consistent levels again.

  In four years, she’d managed to get up to level three hundred forty. Higher than almost anybody she’d seen back in Foizo, and even higher than most of the people she saw in the dungeons she frequented. But she still hadn’t reached her cap, the system still refusing to show her any new classes.

  She found the pink library again — it wasn’t all that far away in reality, even though she felt like she’d been teleported across the world to a whole new culture. About two hours if she walked quick, and three at a more casual pace. A decent walk, but not the mystery she expected it to be at first.

  Zoe looked for more books by the same author, just to see if she could find something about whatever he thought the Great Disaster was, but they didn’t seem to have anything. Or at least not anything important, she did find one other book written by Jeremy Sprong but it was not one of his numerous guidebooks, to Zoe’s dismay.

  Rent was a simple thing, at the end of every month a piece of paper was slipped under her front door and she took it to the nearest royal office — a short thirty minute walk away, to pay. Zoe asked if she could pay all of her rent upfront, but they had no means to handle that so she just made sure to just always keep a year of rent separate from her other money. Not all that necessary in particular after the first year, as she had well over a thousand gold stored away in her various Storage options. But it did make her feel more comfortable with the bills.

  The sound of the alchemy district surprised her — Herbert had well over stated how frequent the noises would be, but just as much understated how loud they would be. Every month or two, if she happened to be in the district at the time, the world seemed to quake beneath her feet as some explosion wracked the land.

  And the smell, oh the smell. Not all of the explosions smelled, but the ones that did were horrendous. A rotting, festering pool of death and burnt hair would be a breath of fresh air compared to whatever it was that flooded the district on some days. And it would linger, for days. Seeping into everything around her, overwhelming her sense of smell with a pungent, wretched scent.

  It had only happened three times in the four years she’d spent in the city, but whenever it did, Zoe found any excuse to spend her time somewhere else until the smell had passed. How other people survived in that district, living their normal lives while that stench crept in to every part of their lives was beyond her.

  Or maybe they just didn’t have a Vampyric Senses skill and didn’t find it as bad as she did. Turning off her Vampyric Senses flashed by her for a moment when she first smelled it, but leaving seemed easier than getting used to the poor, normal human senses again.

  Zoe spent a decent bit of time over at Bruce’s, for the most part with his bunnies. But he was a kind person and Zoe found her getting along with him even without the bunnies. He was an alchemist — most of the people she spoke to in the district were, and worked at one of the few labs in the district mass producing potions for their shop.

  He even let Zoe feed the bunnies after a few months, when they seemed to be used to her. They’d hop up against the wooden gate at their door whenever she was over, and Bugs even let her pet him. Spot never did, hopping away whenever she stuck out her finger to scratch him.

  Both of the bunnies loved being fed various leaves Zoe brought back from her time in the dungeons outside. Different herbs and stems she found that looked fun to feed them. She’d hold them out, and they’d nibble away at the leaves then gnaw up the stem like a short piece of green spaghetti.

  She did meet her neighbour on the other side too, a week after she’d moved in. Lee and Perry, husbands who worked together in a small garden in a neighbouring district growing various alchemical reagents. They were nice, but they often slept overnight in the garden they worked at so weren’t home all that much. And when they were, they tended to keep to themselves and enjoy their private time together, which Zoe tried to respect as much as she could.

  She checked out a few of the alchemy shops and found they sold a wide variety of potions with far more interesting effects than she had expected. Waterbreathing potions, potions that provided resistance to certain elements — and even one very expensive one that provided immunity to fire. Potions of flight and strength. Healing potions seemed to be the main seller for most of the shops Zoe stopped at, but alchemy seemed so much more than she thought it was.

  One shop didn’t sell healing potions at all, choosing instead to carry almost exclusively potions related to mana. Ones that boosted mana regeneration, or even maximum capacity. Potions that empowered various elements she used. Their main seller seemed to be the mana regeneration potions, but fire magic potions seemed to be the distant second.

  But most of her time for the first few years was spent in dungeons, she stopped in at almost every lodestone dungeon she’d marked down and even most of the higher level ones she’d marked. They were all interesting, in their own ways. The best one she’d found was a level three hundred twenty six ruins dungeon called Enkindled Caverns.

  The dungeon entrance was a dirt mound in the middle of an otherwise pristine looking paved square, surrounding by buildings. A hole at the bottom of the mound led deeper into the ground, far below the underbelly of a district about a six hour walk from where Zoe was staying, twisting and winding around.

  At first, within the dungeon, it felt like a normal cavern. The brown dirt turned to different colours of clay and large slabs of rock, with dripping water forming stalagmites and stalagtites. But as she descended deeper, the warmth began to creep in. The water vanished and the caves turned dry, with dirt crumbling from the walls.

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  And the stones came to life, peeling away from the ceilings and walls to pummel her with rocky appendages and lava magic. Deeper even still, the walls began to melt, with bright orange streams of lava flowing across the floor and down the walls. The rocky creatures — Enkindled Golems to Zoe’s identify, glowed as their bodies were heated and on the verge of melting. Their blows left deep scorch marks on anything they touched, leaving behind burning bits of magma that clung to Zoe’s armour.

  The boss was a larger golem, called an Igneous Guardian, and hurled massive plumes of burning rock at Zoe, filling the room with an intense overbearing heat. But even at her lower level when she first tried the dungeon, it just didn’t threaten her all that much.

  Zoe’s magic covered the weaknesses many who faced the dungeon would have to contend with. The narrow spaces were no problem when Zoe could enlarge the spaces by overwhelming the dungeon with her own mana, pushing the walls back to form a temporary reprieve. The heat chipped away at her health, but with her resistances and cool water to help bring her body back to a comfortable temperature, was little more than an annoyance.

  And the threat of the molten golems deeper in? Subdued almost immediately by a sudden tsunami of water crashing down over them, causing them to explode in bursts of steam and rock that Zoe held back with her own magic. The larger golem at the end took a bit more, but even that was handled by her magic easily.

  She did find a number of dungeons that countered her just as well as she countered Flester’s Might and the Enkindled Caverns. The most annoying being only at level two hundred thirty nine — Aghuli’s Woes, a jungle filled with annoying birds that fluttered around, peppering her with blasts of wind.

  Managing to catch even just one of the lower level birds was a feat enough for her, taking hours of effort. Blocking herself off with a cube of dirt to heal up from the constant barrage of wind and then chasing them down, hurling her own powerful magic at them to try and knock them from the sky. Even her Cosmic Step was too slow to catch them, the instant she vanished they would be several meters away with a flap of their powerful wings.

  The danger was small — even if she let them fill her with their attacks for a while, she could almost out heal them, if there was only one of them. And they didn’t have much health either, a single hit from any of Zoe’s projectiles would take them out, even with a mediocre enchantment. But she just couldn’t catch up to them.

  She tried her hand at the boss once, an even smaller bird about the size of her fist that may as well have been invisible to Zoe’s eyes while in motion and summoned dozens of other birds as it flew around. She spent a few minutes teleporting around and throwing magic at it, trying to predict its path and form walls. But she could barely even see it, let alone begin thinking about where it would be going next.

  Speed was not her strong suit. Even with time classes, and even with Alacrity, she was built more for power than speed she found. Faster and stronger than most mages she found, but for creatures that focused on speed, and speed alone? Zoe stood no chance, she found.

  Zoe sat at a table she’d purchased from a furniture store in a nearby carpentry district, with piles of papers laid out in front of her. She’d been going back and forth the past few months on whether she should keep going and hope she could reach her next class, or reset and try for an earlier cap. The papers were filled with different pros and cons she could think of.

  On one hand, if she waited longer, she’d end up getting an incredible sixth class. Just the sheer amount of stats she’d have if she made it to the theoretical limit would be huge for class requirements, let alone all of the other feats and accomplishments she’d have by the time she got there.

  But on the other hand, she hadn’t looked through a class in so long. It had been years. Ten? Fifteen? She couldn’t even remember how long it had been since she got her Elemental Shaman anymore. And with so many dungeons are her disposal, it might be faster to try and keep resetting her class whenever she reached a specific breakpoint.

  She’d get a less powerful sixth class, but she’d get a sixth class. Did she need all of those stats and accomplishments for her first time getting a sixth class? It almost felt wasteful, in a way. She wasn’t going to be keeping her Everlasting Enchanter forever, nor would she probably be keeping her Elemental Shaman forever. At some point, even if she got the perfect sixth class, she’d be resetting again anyway.

  Then again, if she did get the perfect sixth class, she might be able to reset her Everlasting Enchanter with an incredibly powerful enchanting class and solidify her fourth class for the next few decades.

  Zoe scratched her head, pushing off from the table so her chair balanced on the back two legs. There were too many arguments for both sides. Too many ways to justify both choices. Whoever made the system was cruel and nasty, she decided. If she could ever find them, she’d punch them. If she could. She hoped she could.

  Why couldn’t they have included some way of knowing what her cap would be? Even if she wanted to just have the most fun and hurry up to get her sixth class, there was no way of knowing which would be faster. Maybe she’d get her next class at her next level. Maybe it would take another hundred levels and even more years of looking for higher level dungeons.

  She sighed as she rested her head on the table. She had to make a decision one way or the other, wasting time stressing over the decision was unhealthy and unproductive. At the end of the day, whatever she chose, she’d be getting her sixth class, someday.

  Zoe looked over the sheets in front of her. At the end of the day, the best dungeon for her to clear for levels was the Enkindled Caverns. She could clear it quickly, easily, and even at a lower level thanks to her elemental advantage. With some potions from a nearby shop, or perhaps brewed herself when she took the time to learn, she might even be able to start clearing it as soon as she replaced her fifth class.

  And at level three hundred forty, her levels were slowing dramatically. The level difference between her and the dungeon was just too great, with a week between each one and no signs of it getting any faster. If she kept running the same dungeon over and over, she’d get to three hundred thirty very quick, which gave a decent chance of finding her next level cap.

  She stored away all the papers strewn about on her table and nodded to herself. There was no way of knowing how far away her cap would be, she had to make a decision at some point. And with a dungeon so well suited to getting her back to where she was, she decided it only made sense to reset her class.

  Zoe pushed the system to give her the Elemental Shaman class again, and cringed as the system’s magic raced through her body and soul, ripping almost two hundred levels worth of stats away.

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