Mik took in a long deep breath.

  And then threw up, quickly falling to his knees in exhaustion.

  The use of his spell in tandem with fighting the foxes had drained him while filling him up with such adrenaline that finishing the battle brought him to his knees.

  He continued to wretch between breaths, struggling to stay sitting up and cwing at the chains on his arms.

  The heat from the metal being used with the spell had begun to sear his skin. But the adrenaline had numbed the pain until the fight was finished.

  He tried to remove the metal but his skin was still tender, the foxes in an even worse condition as he began to realize the smell emanating from them.

  The smell of burnt hair and skin forced him to bend over again, emptying his already cavernous stomach.

  Mik took a look at the monsters at either end of the chains on his arms, another sick feeling filling the pit of his stomach. Realization that he could have died with one wrong step.

  “Oh Gods… I’m way over my head here-” he held back himself, his hand going to his mouth, the motion bringing a sting of pain, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

  He took in another breath, holding it for a moment to steady himself, but he was about to feel the true brutality of the dungeon.

  Mik heard in the distance sand shuffling and small yips.

  He raised his head, seeing three more foxes in the distance. And then two more, then another three. All of them either drawn by the fight or the smell of burning flesh.

  “No….No no no!” Mik cried as he got to his feet and turned to run in the other direction.

  He pushed to put one foot in front of the other. But he couldn’t help hearing James’s voice.

  “Don’t you want them to write stories about you?”

  No! I want to live! I know what I said, I know what I said I would do! But! Mik thought, tripping as the foxes closed in on him and scrambling to get back to his feet, cwing at the sand. The foxes trapped in the chains dragging in the sand.

  He looked over his shoulder, the foxes closing in.

  “I-I’m scared James, I can’t fight this many alone! I don’t want to die!”

  Mik didn’t want to admit it, the sudden creeping feeling of death crawling up his back as if to suffocate him was drowning him. He thought he could handle it. He had read about it in the books, the logs, the stories, but nothing he read could prepare him for the real thing.

  Why did I have to come here alone! Why did I think I could handle this! He cursed internally.

  He struggled to run, trying to gain whatever distance he could from the pack of foxes trailing after him, but he was suddenly stopped by a small squirrel on top of a small dune, holding to sharp looking stones in both its hands.

  Mik panicked, filing an arm and catching the squirrel against the side, smacking it to the ground. A moment ter he heard the crunching of bones and flesh being torn behind him, but he didn’t turn to look. The only thing on his mind was surviving as he continued to run.

  He ran and he ran, until his legs would take him no further. Mik colpsed in a heap cursing that he had gone out of his way to distance himself from the other Climbers now that he was in dire straits.

  Mik didn’t know if he had time to rest, but his body refused to move forward even one more step.

  He tried his best to steady his breathing, feeling the heat beat down on him from above adding insult to injury. The sweat ran down his whole body while covered with patches of sand from falling.

  He needed to do something. Get his head on straight. But Mik’s body shook in fear, he had been so close to dying if it wasn’t for the squirrel distracting the pack of foxes.

  “I have to increase my stats…” he said to himself, trying to calm down, “But first I need to remove these monsters from the chains.”

  Mik grimaced as he moved his arms, pulling his right arm up to see the chain and the fox at the end of it.

  He grabbed at it, doing his best to unravel the metal from the monster but the sound of the skin peeling from the seared flesh of the monster almost forced him to retch once more.

  The whole experience had broken his delusion of making easy money and becoming strong enough to support his entire orphanage. The reality was he was frightened. The first fight he had with the monsters was easy enough.

  However the aftermath had left him exhausted, disgusted, and feeling guilty. Mik had never killed anything before, let alone gotten into a real fight.

  He felt his eyes water, thinking over the event again, but quickly wiped them away.

  “I need to get to the shard inside.”

  Trying to tell himself to act he said his thoughts aloud. But he was interrupted. The sound of sand being moved behind him.

  Mik immediately tried to flip around on the ground but was smmed into by a fox, his raised arm in sudden piercing pain.

  He screamed in agony as the fox bit down on his arm with untold ferocity almost trying to bite it clean off.

  Thankfully, Mik still had the chains wrapped around his forearm keeping the fox from digging too deeply.

  He roared again, unable to focus to activate his spell.

  I’m scared. I’m scared! He repeated in his head, seeing the monster up close and blood dripping off his arm, the pain wracking his mind.

  The face of James, Mary, and the kids fshed across his vision.

  And Mik steeled himself, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “I’m not dying here!”

  Mik pulled in the fox, wrapping his other arm around its neck into a chokehold and focused with all his might for his spell to activate.

  The monster struggled tearing at his chest with its cws but Mik clenched his teeth only thinking of activating the spell.

  And with stark determination he finally did it. His spell activated and Mik could feel the chains heat up as the electricity ran across them with more power and strength than before.

  The new stats from his level up had turned his spell into something much more, charring the skin and fur of the fox, instead of just searing it. Killing the monster instantly as it smoldered and burned in his arms.

  [You have killed Laurel Fox Level 1] [Experience Earned]

  Mik let out his breath in a gasp, throwing the fox to the ground away from him and patting himself down thinking he had caught on fire.

  His breaths came in shaky spurts, but Mik had once again survived. His shoulders shuddered with each breath and his hands shaking from exerting as much strength as they were able. He was still frightened.

  But now he remembered the reason he had entered the tower in the first pce. A reason strong enough to overcome the fear.

  Mik wasted no time, pulling up his status and putting the extra free point into his resistance stat.

  Mikhail

  Moniker: None

  Race: Human

  Level: 2

  Css: Lightning Mage

  G - STR: 1

  G - VIT: 1

  G - DEX: 1

  G - MAG: 5

  G - STAM: 1

  G - RES: 2

  Free Points: 0

  Skill Points: 1

  Titles

  None

  Skills

  Static Shock G-Rank 1

  He needed the extra point of resistance. Right now he had no wand or staff to amplify his spell and send it outward. He was ill-prepared and could only rely on the chains which would also cause him harm with each use.

  The resistance would allow him to alleviate that slightly, hopefully to the point his own spell wouldn’t harm him anymore when he used it.

  “Each point counts,” he said to himself remembering what he had read, “Each point is a massive boost to each stat.”

  During his studies he had read each description of each stat. Strength increased physical prowess. Vitality, how much damage he could take, as well as allowing him to recover more quickly. Dexterity increased how quickly he could move, cast spells and skills, and increase the amount of damage a skill could do; if he was lucky. Magic increased his mana pool, its recovery, and base damage of spells. Stamina was how long he could exert himself and how quickly that energy would recover. And resistance helped him against abnormal effects as well as mitigated damage from physical attacks and magical attacks.

  And right now, the chains are hurting me more than they are helping.

  Mik looked at the chains, seeing them tight against his skin from burning into his flesh as a result of the st two times he had used his spell.

  He braced himself and peeled them away from his flesh, stifling a scream as he did.

  Mik needed to remove them now before they would most assuredly burn their way to his bones the more he was forced to use his spell.

  At least this way I can heal the wounds and hopefully my new resistance will keep them from burning anymore after they’ve healed.

  He repeated the process on the other hand and draped the chains now removed of the monsters and his arms over his shoulder momentarily.

  Mik looked at the monsters on the ground but didn’t wait to contempte further, wary of more monsters finding him from the sound of the fight or smell of the burnt flesh.

  He couldn’t do it now, but he still needed to extract the crystal fragments from the monsters eventually. The only problem was he was worn down, exhausted, wounded, exposed and didn’t have anything sharp enough to cut open the monsters.

  He bit his lip, but turned away, running deeping into the floor, in the opposite direction of the pack of foxes. He would have to give them up for now.

  I have to find a pce to recover first and then level up enough I can get back to the exit teleport crystal. Or find another group to help me leave.

  Still recovering from his frantic run previously, he trudged through the desert. However this time the effects of the heat were diminished. His increased resistance bearing fruit already.

  Mik looked down at his arms. The bleeding had stopped but he was far from being fully healed.

  Maybe investing a few points in vitality considering I’m alone would help… He thought absentmindedly.

  But first he needed to find some kind of shelter or at the very least somewhere defendable.

  Mik had known how unforgiving the dungeon was from his reading, but experiencing it firsthand was a completely different matter. He surveyed constantly, putting his mental state on edge, as he searched for somewhere to rest for more than a few seconds.

  Finally he found a small boulder jutting from the ground, carved from either sand or wind with a small arch in the center.

  He gave a sigh of relief moving to sit underneath the arch, the small bit of shade being a welcomed reprieve.

  Mik closed his eyes and tried to rex as best he could, teetering on the fence of over exhaustion and passing out.

  But once again the dungeon proved just how unforgiving it was.

  He quickly opened his eyes hearing something scrape against the sand a few feet away.

  Focusing on the sound he saw a deer, its fur bck as night with antlers just as void of color. That was except for the crimson red running down the tips of them.

  Mik held his breath seeing the intimidating antlers, pointed and sleek with fresh blood.

  This wasn’t like the small foxes. The deer stood shoulder height with Mik making it the rgest monster he had seen so far in the dungeon.

  The deer dug at the ground again with a foreleg, obviously irritated that Mik was in the shade of the boulder.

  He gripped at the chains on his shoulder, taking an audible gulp as he tightened his grip on them.

  The deer charged, kicking up sand as it barreled forward and angling its head.

  Mik dove out of the way, finding cover behind the boulder as the deer stampeded past him.

  He hadn’t had nearly enough time to recover, but the monster didn’t care. The deer turned on its heels and began charging at him once more.

  Mik panicked, throwing the chain in his right hand at the monster.

  The deer had no time to turn its forward momentum already at full force and took the chains to the side of the head, wrapping them around it.

  But this time Mik’s legs gave out as he tried to dodge the beast, his stamina and energy spent. The deer kicked into him, tripping over itself as it smmed into the boulder.

  Mik grunted in agony, hugging his side where the monster’s legs had hit him, but grimaced as he saw the monster on the ground as well. The deer was bloodied and filing, broken bck antlers on the sand and impaled into the boulder’s stone side.

  He couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Mik crawled towards the monster, focusing as best he could to activate his spell into his hands. He felt the pull of mana from his body, his hands igniting with a shimmer of electricity. One lingering at his fingertips the other running up the chains in his left hand as they dragged along.

  Mik finally got close enough to the beast but quickly took a blow to his shoulder from the filing monster.

  Screaming in pain he threw his left hand down the chains connecting to its hind leg and beginning to electrocute the deer.

  Mik crawled forward focusing to activate the spell one more time as he grabbed onto the bck fur with all he had.

  And with another pull of mana from his body the shock intensified and the familiar smell of burning fur with flesh filled his nose.

  [You have killed Bck Deer Level 2] [Experience Earned]

  [You have reached Lightning Mage Level 3] [+1 FP, +1 SP, +2 MAG]

  This time Mik rolled onto his back a smile on his face as he ughed a sigh of relief.

  “I-I think I’m getting the hang of this!”