The morning only brought peace and food. The anger Ada felt about being a slave had simmered during the two weeks that followed. Dane was having a hard time tracking the moles in the tunnel system; unlike the slimes and wolves, the moles would dig and set up ambush points. They were never out in the open and could sometimes dig fake tunnels that spanned miles for Dane to traverse, only to reach the end and have to portal out as they used their earth magic to collapse the whole fake cavity. Dane made up the difference in level between himself and Ada after his 5th skirmish with the blind bandits.

  Congratulations on reaching level 50. Five options for skill selection are available

  Psychopath: Watch out there, killer, you have spent much time slaying your fellow humanoids. You receive a 25% damage bonus when fighting your fellow sapients.

  Vacuum: This spell utilizes the space affinity to create a vacuum around an area. Congratulations! Since I offered you the spell, it will no longer be eligible for you to learn on your own.

  Huntsman: This is a direct upgrade to your caveman skill. You have spent a considerable amount of time setting traps and hunting for prey. With this skill, not only will it show you a target's weakness, but you will be able to track a target that you have marked for up to five hours. Also grants a small.

  Arcane Warrior: You have spent a lot of time for a physical class studying the Arcane arts. With this skill, it will open a path to use your magic with your weapons, imbuing melee attacks with the energies of the universe. Caution: Accepting this skill will override spirit magic.

  Leader: You are the party leader. This skill increases morale and damage output of those that serve you. Allies receive +5% damage while fighting in your presence.

  The skill selection was abnormal. Dane had grown accustomed to receiving previous selections; maybe his path had deviated too far from the achievements that unlocked the skills to begin with. It was a no-brainer, and he selected Huntsman. The Psychopath skill would be what he needed later for his crusade against his empire. However, it seemed that the system would always give him two excellent options: one was instantly helpful, and the other was good for the future. There was no future if he couldn't clear the floor in the next week. Terrible dreams plagued him; he would finish defeating the moles. Then would look to the left at his companion, ready to celebrate, only to see her skewered from behind by an elf in all black robes, a red snake embroidered on the left sleeve. Shortly after waking up in his childhood home, Dane would run to the kitchen where his mother was baking cookies. Screaming, the same questions over and over, not making any sense, his mother never knew what he was talking about. The dream played out the same way each night. Powerless to stop the ninjas, Dane would try to duck, dodge, and fight back. But the same result was guaranteed; he would end up back home now recognizing it as his final slumber.

  The new skill came in handy. The moles that went to the water quickly became fodder for Dane and Ada. They followed a group of moles down a small tunnel. It was suffocating. If it wasn't easy to just portal out, Ada seriously wondered if this was a good idea. She had heard many stories about spelunkers getting wedged into cracks and not making it out. They decided to back out while they still could and had to go back to the drawing board.

  "I got it, we can use my water affinity and drown them out," Dane said with too much excitement for the cruel activity he was suggesting. He knew it was a long shot, Water affinity wasn't his strong suit, and the cost of using the mana was three times the cost of using cosmic energy.

  "Dane, don't you only use that when filing a pot for stew and filling the canteens? You're talking about some biblical-type flooding." Ada said. She had seen the strain Dane had when trying to conjure water and didn't want him to become mana-starved. From how it was explained to her in the tutorial, when someone entered a mana-starved state, they had a 50% chance of floating off into the astral, the place that souls went after death. These wizards remained comatose until they starved to death, or if they were lucky enough to be placed on life support. There was another way to save them, but the risk was high that you would miss the right spirit. A necromancer could try to summon your spirit from the other side using your lifeless body as a conduit. The problem was that sometimes another spirit would jump in; technically, the person was alive, but they weren't the same anymore.

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  "If I start draining too much mana, I'll just stop and I'll top off on mana later," Dana said nonchalantly.

  "You have Mana potions?!" Ada exclaimed, her excitement palpable.

  "Not exactly, I can drain the Mana from mana stones." Dane still remembered trying to pass the stone the first time; he didn't want to experience that kind of pain again.

  Dane placed both hands into the tunnel, lying on his stomach. He pictured the cave river, how violently it had swept him away in the current. The feelings of hopelessness he felt as he was racked by the current over and over again. Both hands began to glow a dark blue, radiating a cool breeze. A water cannon sprang forth from his hands and sent him hurdling back, slamming him into the wall behind him.

  New spell acquired: Jetting Geyser. Congratulations on reaching the understanding of a true water mage.

  "What the fuck was that?" Ada said in disbelief.

  "A new spell I just unlocked.." Dane said in astonishment, he knew eventually he would gain some spells, but thought it would be from something more often used, like his gravity increase, which was activated whenever he swung the pickaxe."Can you sit on my back? I'm going to try that again, but I think the water is too powerful for my strength stat right now." It was ridiculous; his strength was almost 200. Ada sat on his back, and he activated his spell again. It was different from how skills were activated. Usually, it was enough to think about the name of the skill, and it activated, but when he did that with magic, it worked for a second, then fizzled out. So, running back through the visualization, he blasted water into the dog-sized hole. Dane nearly emptied his entire mana pool, just hovering at 5 MP. Then the notifications started rolling in; the main colony must have been underwater.

  Achievement Awarded: Baby Killer. You are as cold as you are calculated. Most people would shy away from committing genocide. You even killed the women and children too. You now receive +25% damage when unleashing a crowd attack, where bystanders will be in the crossfire.

  Dane shuddered, the information bringing to light that these monsters in the dungeon were real and not just some AI-generated foe in a video game. It was too late to take back what he had done; this was something one must live with.

  "We need to go," Dane said to Ada, and the pair walked down the only tunnel big enough for a human to walk down.

  The Tunnel King, LVL ???, HP ??, MP ??, Threat level immense. Suggested course of action. Run

  The King was not a fellow mole but what looked like a mixture between a pet rat and an overweight washed-up football player. His face was free from hair, except for the bushy eyebrows and the wispy whiskers that he fashioned like a Fu Manchu. Instead of a football helmet, a yellow construction hat with a head lamp adorned his head. The moleman looked at the two intruders and shot out earthen spikes from the ground. The diamond shards peppered the area using Ada and Danes' first two charges of the life ward, launching a follow-up strike of a mud wall to encase them. Ada began running down the hall in a full retreat, leaving Dane to fend off the brown sludge that was creating a dome around him.

  "Where the fuck are you going?" Dane yelled after the short Hawaiian.

  "Just keep him busy, I want to try something," Ada replied in a no-nonsense way that reminded him of his mother.

  The mud began to dry and was as hard as concrete. The whole structure was made of mana, so Dane had to turn off his Mana Eyes temporarily. He was still running low on mana from the floods summoned to wash away the tunnel creatures, so using any portal magic was out of the question. Gravity magic might work, but if applied too much, he was liable to hurt himself in the collapse. Running out of options, he analyzed the walls that confined him.

  Mana-infused slurry, this stone has been created with water mana and rock mana. There is very little water mana in the rock, but trace amounts remain.

  The stone tasted horrible, like a mix of pennies and sand, but the mana began filling the almost empty MP bar in Danes' top right vision. He stopped gorging himself on the rock after reaching 50% of the pool. Now 50lbs heavier.