“Wake up kid,” I heard a voice call out for me.

  When I opened my eyes, the light blinded me before my eyes adjusted. I was lying on the ground surrounded by the whole group. Everyone was looking at me with different expressions.

  “I thought we lost you for a second there, kid,” Black Eye said.

  “W-water,” I said weakly, feeling famished.

  Art put a water container in my mouth and helped me drink.

  “Ah.” ‘Water is a blessing,’ I thought.

  After drinking the water, I tried to remember what had happened when…

  “My arm!” I looked at my right arm but found nothing, the only thing remaining was a short stump.

  “We tried saving it but your life was more important. Your blood loss was extensive, It took us our two healing potions to save you,” Art said apologetically.

  I was shocked upon hearing this news and didn’t know how to respond.

  “Don’t worry Adventurer Haitham, I have seen many one-handed adventurers, who were strong and valiant,” the Count said, trying to comfort me.

  “We can remorse later, let’s move on,” said Black Eye as he turned his back and started walking.

  ‘That bastard, I just lost an arm and he wants me to move on. I’ll kill you one day, one day for sure!’

  I stood up with the help of Art. Looking around I saw the devastation of the battle, there were dead Gnolls everywhere. The smell of the burnt behemoth was strong. I looked back and found the gnoll I had fought.

  “Are you in pain?” Art asked.

  “No, I’m all good,” I replied. I was sad at the loss of my hand, but my happiness at surviving overwhelmed my sadness.

  “I know the captain seemed harsh, but-” I interrupted Art before he could continue, “I don’t want to hear your excuses,” I said, coldly.

  Art just sighed, not saying anything further.

  “What about our food? It was my responsibility as the team’s porter,” I asked Art as we followed the group. Walking was hard, and I felt weak. ‘Ah, how much would I pay to sleep right now?’

  “Don’t worry, Hugo got your stuff and the groups’ too. Also, eat this, it should help with recovery,” said Art as he handed me some nuts and dates.

  “Thanks. By the way, where are we going?”

  “As I told you before, we will scare the core so it sends its defenders at us, and to do that we have to march till the end of the illusionary world.”

  “What about the reward for clearing the dungeon?” I asked.

  “We rejected the reward, Captain destroyed it.” Art replied.

  “What was the reward?” I asked, curious.

  “It wasn’t anything important, just some refined Lio.” Art replied, dismissively.

  “Oh, you reminded me,” I said, remembering I got 1 liter of Lio after killing the gnoll. “The dungeon told me that my Lio counter is one, how can I use that?”

  “You can use it in different ways. If you want, you can allocate the Lio to your various stats or directly upgrade your ability. But, be careful, when we exit the dungeon the Lio counter will reset so you have to spend your Lio while we are still in the dungeon. By the way, what are your stats?”

  “Wait, let me check again.”

  ‘Status.’

  Human (Early Rank 1):

  Ability Name: Perfect being.

  Rank 1 skill: Awareness Shaper.

  Lio needed till Mid Rank 1: 98%.

  Stats:

  -Physical: 7

  -Mental: 9

  -Magical: 0

  -Spiritual: 23

  Lio counter: 1 liter

  I told Art my stats after reading them.

  “What do you think?” I asked upon seeing Art’s shocked expression.

  “Your physical and mental stats are impressive, but what is outstanding is your spiritual stat,” Art said.

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  “What does the spiritual stat do anyways? And why is my magical stat at zero?”

  “Don’t worry, your magical stat is normal as you haven’t formed your core yet. Mine is also at zero, and I can’t raise it till I reach rank 2 as that is when you form a core. About the spiritual stat I’m not sure what it does, I think it has to do with affinities. The higher the spiritual stat, the higher the affinities.”

  “What are affinities?” I asked.

  “Affinities are varied. There is a fire affinity, ice affinity, and many more. After one gets to rank 3, he can use magic and the magic one uses depends on his affinities.”

  “So, if I reach rank 3, my affinities will be high?”

  “Yes,” Art replied shortly.

  “Then, should I put my Lio into my spiritual stat? Do you have any suggestions?” I asked, wanting to spend it before we got out of the dungeon.

  “No, your spiritual stat is already too high. You’d need a lot of Lio to upgrade it, way more than you got. You should spend it either on the mental or physical stats. I suggest physical as it is more important for you now.”

  "What about my ability, shouldn't I upgrade it?"

  "Yes, you should. But, it will take you a lot of Lio to get mid-rank 1, so focus on your stats for now."

  "Is mid-rank 1 after the early rank?"

  "Yes, and after that you got late rank 1, then rank 2."

  “How do I spend it exactly?” I asked, unsure of how to allocate my Lio.

  “Open your status, and think of the stat you want to upgrade. After that, choose the amount of Lio you want to use on the upgrade. If you want, you can allocate half a liter to mental and the other half to physical stats.”

  “Thanks.” I thanked Art for his help. I still hated him and didn’t want to become friendly with him or anyone from the party, but to achieve my goals, I had to maintain a certain relationship with the group.

  “No problem Haitham. You can ask me whatever you want,” Art said while beaming a smile.

  ‘Status’

  Human (Early Rank 1):

  Ability Name: Perfect being.

  Rank 1 skill: Awareness Shaper.

  Lio needed till Mid Rank 1: 98%.

  Stats:

  -Physical: 7

  -Mental: 9

  -Magical: 0

  -Spiritual: 23

  Lio counter: 1 liter.

  ‘I want to put one liter of Lio into my physical stat.’

  -1 liter spent on physical.

  Immediately, a wave of strength washed over. My tiredness went away as a moan of satisfaction escaped my lips. It felt like I was… reborn.

  “This is amazing!”

  “Yeah, some people even get addicted to Lio. I once heard that the king of Babylon drinks Lio instead of water,” Art said.

  “I wouldn’t blame him.”

  I decided to look at my status and was amazed.

  -Physical: 9.5

  ‘My physical stat increased by 2.5 points!’

  I decided to do some simple tests, so I went to Hugo to get my weapons back. Hugo gave me my weapons and the bag holding our food. I didn’t mind, as I was excited about the strength increase. After taking hold of the bags, I felt a noticeable decrease in their weight.

  I wanted to draw my bow to test my new strength, but I remembered that I had lost my hand, which made me a bit dejected. Art noticed my sad face and decided to cheer me up: “Don’t worry, Haitham. There is a way to get your hand back. If in the future you chance upon a rank 3 healing potion, then use it. I heard it can regrow limbs.”

  My face brightened at that. “Is it hard to get these rank 3 potions?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard as you’d have to enter a D-rank dungeon and get lucky to get it as a reward. But I'm sure you'll find one with a bit of luck.”

  “Isn’t there any other way to get a potion of the 3rd rank?” I asked hopeful.

  “Yes, there is. But they are much harder. Your best bet is on the dungeon.”

  “Sigh.”

  ‘If the dungeon we just entered was E-rank and I barely survived, I could only imagine what higher dungeons held,’ I thought

  Art noticed that his tactic wasn’t improving my mood, so he changed the subject, “By the way, Haitham, what does your rank one skill do?”

  I didn’t want to tell Art about my new skill, but after giving it a thought I decided to share it with him. Black Eye would probably ask me about it later, and then he would share what I told him with the group.

  “The status paper says it’s called Awareness Shaper, but I’m not sure what it does. I think- “Art interrupted me before I could continue, “Then ask the dungeon about what it does.”

  “What? How could the dungeon know what my ability does?”

  “As I told you before, dungeons have many affinities, one of them is the illusion affinity, hence this illusionary world, and another is divination. Using divination is what allows dungeons to know our stats.”

  “That’s incredible.” I was impressed by what dungeons could do.

  “Yeah, it’s amazing. But what I’m telling you is only a small part of what people have discovered about dungeons.”

  At that, a thirst awakened inside me. Thirst for knowledge. Thirst for adventure.

  'I wonder if one day I can become a real adventurer, not a kidnapped one. A free one!'

  Without asking Art how to use the dungeon to see what my ability did, I opened my statues and thought, ‘Awareness shaper’

  -Awareness Shaper: awareness shaper is the rank one skill of the innate ability *Divination Fighter* this rank one skill has a simple use; it allows one to perceive a certain area through different movable shapes. The shapes can be changed as the user likes.

  After reading the description, I was confused. ‘What does the dungeon mean by movable shapes?’

  “So, what does it do?” Art asked.

  “I’m still not sure. I’ll try to figure it out.”

  “Take your time. Sometimes, dungeon descriptions are hard to understand.”

  I quickly came up with an idea on how to use my ability. I took a bit of grass from the ground, then closed my eyes. I thought about perceiving the grass and suddenly… I started to see.

  Well, to be precise it wasn’t that I was seeing, it was more like I had a sphere of perception that allowed me to see everything within its confines. This sphere of perception was swimming in an ocean of darkness all around it. I decided that I wanted to perceive my leg and the sphere, which was the size of a toddler, went from perceiving my hand to my leg.

  ‘This is amazing. I wonder how far I could get it to go.’

  I thought about perceiving Black Eye and…

  ‘It worked!' I was seeing Black Eye's hideous face from behind him!

  'Well, his face isn't hideous, but to me, it will always be.'

  After that, I did some experimentation and came to a few conclusions:

  The first conclusion was I could only perceive with it things that weren’t too far away, 15 feet was my limit, as when I tried perceiving Hugo -who was far ahead- I got nothing but darkness.

  The second conclusion was, I could change the shape of the sphere of perception! I got the idea from the ability’s name “Awareness Shaper”. The first shape I made the sphere turn into was a smaller sphere, after that, I played with a few shapes like a hollow sphere or an elongated sphere. However, I didn’t manage to expand the sphere more than its original size, and the different shapes that I made had to be either the same size or smaller than the original sphere. I also had a hard time turning the sphere into complex shapes. 'I think, with training, I should get more comfortable with using different shapes.'

  As I was doing more experimentation, the group stopped moving.

  “We have reached the end of the illusion world,” Black Eye said. I was surprised as we had been walking for only an hour.

  ‘It seems this illusion world is smaller than I thought.’

  “Get into formation. Any step we take from now on might be our last before we get kicked out of the dungeon.”

  It seems round two of the fight with the Gnolls is about to begin…