Zoe and Emma stopped by at home to check on the boys before they made their way to the Royal Office nearby for a teleport to the lowest level lodestone dungeon Zoe knew of. A level fifty one dungeon called The Pillars of Power.

  At level twenty two, Zoe felt that the boss itself might be a little too challenging. But with it being a lodestone dungeon, there would be much lower level creatures for Zoe to find something suitable for herself. And with Emma’s help, the boss wouldn’t be able to pose any real threat to the rather frail feeling Zoe regardless.

  They appeared in a familiar looking square a ways outside the city to the north-west, with plenty of buildings surrounding them and other lower level individuals planning their attack on the dungeon. Some had escorts like Zoe, but most were smaller teams discussing which pillar they’d take on.

  A dungeoneering gate separated them from the dungeon proper — a large pit in the ground with a dozen tall stone pillars standing within it. Each one hundreds of feet tall, standing far above the nearby buildings even with their start deep within the pit. Colourful magic exploded on the top of several of the pillars as people fought on their peaks. One pillar stood above the rest, sat in the dead middle of the pit.

  The entrance fee as a paltry three gold, and with a couple golden coins handed to the guards Zoe and Emma were descending down the steep steps into the pit with a couple other groups following behind.

  “So what do you think it’s gonna be?" Emma asked.

  “Climb up the pillars and fight different bosses? Collect all the keys and tackle the final pillar?" Zoe suggested.

  “Maybe. Maybe each pillar is a separate dungeon, but you only get the real dungeon reward for clearing the highest level pillar?” Emma asked.

  “The first girl was right.” One of the women in the group behind Zoe and Emma said. “They’re not keys though, you just get teleported to the boss fight when you’ve beaten all the pillars.”

  “Oh. Huh. That’s different.” Zoe said.

  “First time at pop then?" The man next to her asked.

  “Pop?” Emma asked.

  “Pillars of Power? Pop?” He repeated.

  “Oh. Yeah. She just looped so we want to get her some easy levels first.” Emma said.

  The man nodded. “I figured she was a looper. Either that or one of those freaks that is going for something super specific for no reason, the first time.”

  “Ever see that work out for somebody?" Zoe asked.

  The woman scoffed. “Nope. Take a class and loop if you really want something good. I don’t see the point in waiting forever. Maybe for your first class, but the rest? You can change ‘em. Who cares?"

  They continued chatting a bit as they walked down the steps and split off to different pillars. Zoe and Emma walked to the nearest pillar, marked with an emblem of a rat over the entrance. Inside was a gray stone floor with matching walls each having thousands of different rats carved into them, overlaid on top of each other. To the back of the room was a staircase leading up to the floor above, with the pitter patter of dozens of tiny feet as a swarm of rats flooded down.

  “Well, get to it then.” Emma said as she stepped back.

  Zoe sighed and formed armour around her with her Elemental Arsenal, along with a shield that glowed with the burning cinders within. A quite small, pathetic feeling wave of water crashed down on the swarm of rats, slamming several of them into the walls — and through the walls, Zoe noticed. Their corpses vanishing, forming more of the carvings on the walls where they died.

  Each floor as Zoe and Emma climbed was much of the same, with the rats growing in size and quantity but even as the light shone in through the roof on the penultimate floor of the pillar they only reached level seventeen. With Zoe’s significantly reduced mana, it wasn’t quite a walk in the park but it wasn’t much more difficult.

  At the top was a much larger rat, taller than Zoe as it stood on four legs. It screeched, and a moment later exploded in a violent mess of blood, flesh and frost as a projectile Zoe prepared with much effort thanks to her loss of Enchanted Mirror smashed into it.

  *Ding* You have cleared the Pillar of Rats. Teleportation will begin in 60 seconds… 59… 58… 57…

  “Think this one’s a little too low level?” Emma asked while they waited for the system to move them to wherever it was taking them.

  “Maybe. We’ll see. May as well clear it since we paid for it already.” Zoe said, to a shrug from Emma.

  A minute later, the space around them twisted as they were left back down at the entrance to the pillar. Zoe and Emma went through the rest of the pillars with little more effort. Swarms of sheep and monkeys, chickens and pigs. It was almost the zodiac animals but it was missing the rabbits and dogs, and perhaps the dragon if it wasn’t the boss of the dungeon.

  When Zoe cleared the eleventh pillar by slaying the raging bull on the top of it, her and Emma were greeted with a slightly different system message.

  *Ding* You have destroyed the Guardian Pillars. Teleportation will begin in 60 seconds…

  “Guardian Pillars?” Emma asked.

  “I guess the eleven pillars surrounding that one in the middle?” Zoe pointed at the tallest pillar.

  “What do you think it’ll be?" Emma asked.

  “A dragon? Like a snake dragon, maybe? Not a real dragon dragon. I guess it’s still a real dragon dragon depending on where you’re from, but that wouldn’t be here. One way to find out, anyway.” Zoe shrugged.

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  Space twisted around them, leaving them in a dark circular room. The walls were covered in different engraved, very large toads. A croak drew Zoe’s attention to the stairs at the opposite side of the room as a toad hopped down the steps. Its tongue shot out, almost smashing into Zoe’s shoulder but Emma’s hand reached out and grabbed it a moment before it made contact. A loud thump rang through the stone room, and the tongue tensed as it tried to pull back against Emma’s clutch.

  “I’m fine.” Zoe said.

  Emma nodded and let go of the tongue. It slammed back into the toad’s mouth with a crack, before it shot back out again at Zoe. A wall of earth rose from the ground in front of Zoe, smashing the tongue off its trajectory towards Zoe.

  Zoe pushed mana into her Frost skill to form a conical projectile and pushed more mana into it to prepare her enchantment. The toad’s tongue continued shooting out, forcing Zoe to split her attention between enchanting the projectile and defending against its barrage of attacks. In a few minutes, her projectile was enchanted and she let it fly towards the toad. It pierced through it, leaving a hole through its body and scraping against the wall behind. The toad melted into the wall next to it, laying yet another engraving over the mass of details carved into the walls.

  “I’m gonna take a minute to prepare some more projectiles.” Zoe told Emma. Emma nodded and walked over to the stairs, watching up it for anything else that might approach. Nothing did, and after a few minutes Zoe had a dozen frost projectiles prepared for the coming floors.

  The higher floors were much the same, Zoe didn’t even notice a difference for the first three. On the fourth floor there were two toads, but both were taken out in an instant to her prepared projectiles. The seventh floor had three toads, and after that there was nothing new Zoe noticed before they saw the light shining in through the final staircase of the dungeon.

  Each of the toads likely had different styles, or maybe even magic available to them, Zoe assumed. But she never gave them a chance to show off their unique quirks, and if she was lucky, she wouldn’t give the boss a chance to show off either. Before she walked up the final staircase, Zoe spent a few minutes preparing another dozen projectiles. If it could survive twelve of her enchanted frost cones then it wasn’t worth the time regardless.

  On the roof of the tallest pillar was a wart ridden toad, standing heads and shoulders above even the three already very large toads Zoe was used to seeing standing next to it. The large toad croaked, and Zoe fired off all of her projectiles at the four toads standing on the other side of the pillar. They pierced through the toads, riddling their bodies with holes as they collapsed on the pillar, fading away to join the thousands of others that made up the pillar’s walls.

  *Ding* You have cleared the Pillars of Power dungeon. Would you like to claim your reward?

  Zoe pushed her approval to the system.

  *Ding* You have accepted the Kliggig dungeon reward. Teleportation will begin in 60 seconds… 59… 58… 57…

  A small pile of mostly silver coins appeared in front of Zoe, with a handful of gold coins and a ring with a purple gem set in it. Zoe split the coins with Emma and let her take the ring, then waited for the teleport to take them out.

  “That was underwhelming.” Emma said.

  Zoe chuckled. “Yeah I should’ve expected that, honestly. Moaning Point is pretty low level and the boss is like one fifty or something if I remember right? This dungeon’s boss is at around level fifty in comparison. Most of the dungeon itself is going to be basically nothing, I guess.”

  “So what’s the plan to get you to your next class then?" Emma asked.

  “Honestly? I’m half thinking it might be worth going back to Moaning Point. But with my mana regeneration I can’t travel all that fast now. Even with the better teleportation skill I doubt it comes remotely close to what I could do yesterday.” Zoe said.

  “Hmm. You could get on a caravan for the trip?" Emma suggested. ”Or I could carry you and run.“ She laughed.

  Zoe laughed as space twisted around them, dropping them off at the bottom of the central pillar. “Probably best to find another lodestone dungeon here. One around level one fifty, and work my way up instead. This wasn’t much of a challenge at all, really.”

  “You got a couple levels out of it at least, so it’s not all bad.” Emma said.

  Zoe checked her level. Twenty five — three levels from the dungeon, for almost a full days work? It wasn’t bad, but compared to Moaning Point wasn’t worth mentioning. If she could continue running the toad pillar over and over it might be worth considering but since she had to clear all of them, each time, it ended up being a lot of time spent on creatures that didn’t benefit her much.

  The two girls spent the rest of the night relaxing in the little shanty town set up outside the dungeon and were soon brought back to the royal office near their home. They walked back and spent some time with the cats as Zoe researched some other dungeons she could try her hand at. She settled on a lodestone dungeon at level one forty eight called Sorrowful Descent and made her way to it the following day, leaving Emma behind at home.

  Sorrowful Descent was a much better option for her needs, Zoe decided. It was a simple dungeon, a sloped descent through the earth, passing through various destroyed villages overrun with bears, goblins, drakes or other various creatures. Screams echoed through the caverns and Zoe’s Vampyric Empathy was overrun with feelings of despair and sorrow that only grew stronger as she delved deeper. She opted to shut the skill off, the feelings themselves seeping into Zoe’s despite her best efforts whenever she had it on.

  The boss itself was unapproachable for Zoe — the furthest she could do with comfort being a farming village that was taken over by burning drakes at about level sixty. But the levels came quick as she slew drake after drake, reaching level forty four within just a couple of days.

  She pushed the system to show her the classes she had available, and when the system did nothing she pushed it to replace her Cosmic Explorer class with Cosmic Explorer and tried again. Another few days were spent slaughtering swarms of drakes to get her back to forty four and she tried again, to no avail.

  The weeks flew by as Zoe repeated the entire process over again another dozen times. It was only a little bit better than a five percent chance for her to get her next class at level forty four, and it would only get worse as she continued to climb the tiers. Would she try to get her fifth class at exactly eighty eight? That would be about a two percent chance for each attempt — not quite impossible, but well within the realms of being frustrating. Maybe she could settle for level ninety or lower on her fifth class?

  If Zoe wanted to get her seventh class, then she’d need to set a cap on that instead, she thought. Level four hundred would be the highest she could get, if she really put in the effort. It was only a little beyond the highest level dungeon she could access, so it would still be within reach.

  That meant that two hundred was the absolute limit for her sixth class — and that would give her only a point five percent chance after possibly decades of effort to see her seventh class. Zoe shook her head. It didn’t matter how long it took to get the perfect rolls on her classes, if she wanted a seventh class then every level she could save now would be worth it. Even if it took months or years of work to shave off one or two levels that could be worth decades later on.

  Zoe sighed and reset her class for the fifteenth time. It would be worth it, she told herself. It would only be a few decades — or perhaps centuries, of work and she’d be the only person in the kingdom with their seventh class. Or at the very least, one of very very few.

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