Chapter 47: Entering the dungeon…

Once we all said we were ready to go, Melody turned to one of the two S tiers. This one had long brown hair and brown eyes. She was a couple inches taller than Melody. Not many defining features when everyone is wearing the same clothes. “Can you head to the east entrance and just… casually kill things?”

“Sure,” the S tier replied, spinning on her heels and walking to her left, which was east.

“And now, everyone follow me,” Melody said, walking straight ahead toward the rows of empty queues.

There were about ten straight queues formed by stanchions and the belt thingies in between. We all filed into the center one, and went straight toward the dungeon entrance, which was a large metal door covered in latches with a security guard in front. Melody spoke to him, and then waved us forward while he got up from a blue chair and pressed a button that made the door swing open into the space beyond.

The space beyond turned out to be a fairly large field of grass. At the center, was the actual dungeon, which was basically a stone cube sticking out of the ground. The edges weren’t perfectly straight, but the general shape was a cube. The side of the cube we were facing, and I assume all other sides as well, had a purple veil-ish thing.

It formed a doorway that looked like a curtain blowing in the wind, except it just wasn’t right. There was no wind, and the shadows weren’t coming from the sun. Even then, when it blew it… like… extended itself? Instead of showing the space behind, the curtain just grew longer. And then it shrunk when it returned to the normal position. The type of thing that doesn’t look real when you see a photo or video of it.

It looks weird even when you see it in person. Doesn’t look like something that should exist in this world. And definitely doesn’t follow the laws of physics that we know of. Maybe it does somehow, but for sure not the stuff they teach in high school.

But it does exist, it’s a dungeon entrance. Not all are the same, yet they all have the same uncanny feeling of just being wrong.

Once we walked the short distance to the portal, Melody spun around and delightfully asked, “Who wants to go first?”

Not me. Really Melody or the S tier should go first since they actually know what they’re doing. For all we know, there could be monsters right beyond the veil. It’s not like those fairy tales where there’s safe zones on each floor and the benevolent dungeon donates presents and challenges you to help you level up.

I don't think anyone knows what the fuck it is, but it sure as hell isn’t nice. I remember looking up the statistic at some point. If I remember correctly, around six hundred thousand dungeon divers die each year, so like fifteen hundred a day or something… Yeah… it’s a lot. Hell, I’m surprised we even have people diving in dungeons… although I guess ten billion people in the world outweighs the six hundred thousand dying each year. I should look up more of those stats… but for now…

“I’ll go if you tell us how to use our stats,” Fara replied to Melody’s question.

“Oh shit, I forgot,” Melody replied. Simultaneously, the dungeon door on the east opened and that brown-haired brown-eyed S tier walked toward the dungeon cube. She walked straight toward the cube and entered the dungeon from the east side. Why did Melody tell her to walk around if the dungeon cube was this small? She could’ve just walked with us, and saved like ten minutes.

Anyway, Melody began explaining. “Imagine your stats are like an ability. When you want to activate, say, agility, you need to picture the stat in your head like an ability, but also picture the action associated with that stat, like running, or whatever other agility things there are.

“With that in mind, sort of just… do it? Like how you have that mental push to say, ‘Ability Activate!’” Melody explained, making air quotes with her fingers. “Just do that and pretend there’s an actual trigger for it, even though it’s just a stat.

“That was enough for me to trigger my first one and get my body used to the feeling of power sorta surging out of nowhere, then after a few repetitions it should become natural and you won’t need to think much,” Melody finished. Sounded simple enough… just pretend it’s an ability basically. It’s just… more internal… so it needs more focus? I don’t know what I’m thinking.

I did think about what Melody said though, picturing the stat as a system window in front of me… and then pictured my elbow bending super fast as I pulled my fist into the air… and ‘activated’ it while swinging my arm.

It moved faster. Not by much, but a little bit faster… I think. Unless my eyes and senses are playing tricks on me. It was an odd sensation, feeling like some ghost was pushing my arm upwards but from my joints, from inside me and it definitely felt faster. I think. Maybe like a few percentage points faster?

“Okay, I’ll go if you go with me,” Fara decided after dashing a few steps forward… although I doubt she felt much of a difference with stats at ten, considering mine at one twenty felt only a few percentage points faster. Although if you have higher base stats, like human base stats, then the difference might be more noticeable?

The percentage is the same, but if your human body has the equivalent of twenty points and your stats add a ten percent multiplier, you might feel a larger difference since the actual value increases by two points, instead of one point if you’re a weak human. Does that make sense? Eh. Maybe.

“Get over here, Fara.” Melody agreed, and moved to stand right in front of the portal. “The rest of you, follow quickly in case we encounter monsters immediately.”

After the S tier guard person agreed, Melody and Fara stepped through the portal. The curtain-like thing bent for them, but… they just sort of melded into more curtains. After that, the S tier walked straight through. Then Silvia walked through with Elle. And then there was just me and Amane.

“Ready?” I asked, approaching the portal and holding out my hand, which was grabbed by Amane a few seconds later.

“Yea,” Amane nodded.

“Three… two… one.” As I said ‘one,’ I closed my eyes and took a step forward.

I felt absolutely no strange sensations or anything. Just normal walking. When I opened my eyes, there I was, in the dungeon. In front of Amane and I were the other five people, thankfully not fighting yet. Guess the dungeon was distracted by bigger threats. Probably that other S tier.

However, Melody was smirking at me for some reason… I let go of Amane’s hand and looked around. It looked like a cave. We were in some fairly large chamber, somewhat circular with a diameter of around twenty meters-ish. I couldn’t get a great estimate since it was dark as fuck. There were some lamps along the walls and through the two hallways or pathways or corridors that led out of this room. The lamps were probably placed by who or whatever owns this dungeon to make it easier for casual delvers since I’m fairly certain dungeons don’t spawn with lamps inside of them.

Moving on from the lights, there were a couple lamps placed above us, and the ceiling was another twenty or so meters up. Right behind us, or me at least, was the portal I’d just walked out of, with its same purple curtains that weren’t glowing. They were only lit up by the dim yellow light that was strung right above it.

“So…” Melody began, pulling something out of a spatial storage… probably my spatial storage. She unfurled the paper and it opened into a large map. “Where do we want to go?”

“You have the map,” Fara replied, taking a step closer so she could look.

“I know,” Melody said as she rotated the map ninety degrees. “But we can go anywhere, this is just so we don’t get lost.”

“Then…” Fara thought for a bit before asking, “Someone pick a number, any number.”

Naturally, I replied with “Sixty-nine.”

“Left it is!” Fara exclaimed, and began heading left, while the rest of us slowly followed behind.

This left hallway was about three meters wide and three tall, large enough for us to walk in a straight line if we really wanted to. We didn’t though, walking three-three-one with the S tier at the back.

Fara and Silvia took the lead with Melody, while Amane, Elle and I were in the back. A little weird, considering Amane and Elle are the tanks… but I guess it's fine in this situation. I doubt we’d get jumped by some deadly creature here.

After a minute or so of walking, Fara shouted out, “Two slimes!”

The random chatting silenced as we all followed her arm, pointing at two slimes right where the hallway ended and opened up to a larger cavern again, probably a hundred feet away. They were very slowly bouncing toward us. Very very slowly… like a foot per bounce… and each bounce took like three seconds.

“Well.” Melody cleared her throat. “Let’s figure out how we can get the most experience out of this.

“Silvia, I’m not exactly sure how you level up? So… just look at them or something? Maybe enter the next room and keep an eye out for more?” Silvia nodded, and started heading off immediately.

Then, Melody turned to me. “When I move closer, create that temporal field around me, just make it as big as the hallway.

“Then, Amane, you stand in front of one. Elle, distract the other. Make sure you both stay in Scarlet's circle though.

“Finally, Fara, deal the killing blow on Amane’s and I’ll take out Elle’s. I think that should get us all one kill or the equivalent for our systems.” Done with her planning, Melody looked at all of us while we nodded or voiced our agreement.

After that, Melody ran forward until the slimes were twenty feet away and gave me a thumbs up and I activated my ability.