Activating party chat Alan asked in a panicked voice, “Tamee, where did Cassidy go?”

  “She didn’t go anywhere, she is still in the guardian dungeon.”

  “You mean she’s trapped in there?” He started to go back in but when he tried to step into the shadows it felt like moving into jello. The more he pushed the more the surface deformed, but there was no penetration. He couldn’t seem to activate the entrance teleportation.

  “You will not be able to go back in, these starter dungeons are one time only opportunities. Once you have completed it you cannot return. As to whether she is trapped in there, it is kind of complicated.”

  “What do you mean, what is going on?” He was desperate for answers. He liked to think that he was cool under pressure but something had him really worked up. A pretty face wasn’t normally enough to get him so riled up. Alan had a strange feeling like a part of himself was missing and he desperately needed to get it back.

  “She can’t leave the dungeon until the tier closes. She is a volunteer who has chosen to be part of your tutorial.”

  “What? But she’s human, how could she have known what she was getting into to volunteer?”

  There was a pause and then a sigh from Tamee before she went on, “You really are good at pushing the boundaries. I too am human, that is one of the reasons I was chosen for this zone. Humans are not unique to Earth. While there are millions of inhabited planets in the system, there are only a little less than a thousand different races, and many of those are very similar to each other. For some reason the same sentient races keep appearing all over the universe. Cassidy is most likely a human without a class from a backwater system. She volunteered to be part of this dungeon in the hope of gaining a class stone for herself. She knows nothing about Earth”

  “I don’t understand, why would the Network need volunteers for its dungeons? I thought it just creates whatever it needs.”

  “The Network can indeed create life, like with the beasts you have been fighting. Sentient races, however, are not so easily duplicated. The Network can create their bodies, but without a soul to bind with they would have no motive force. Even the Network does not have the ability to create a fully grown soul. Therefore it must find people willing to be incorporated into its dungeons.”

  “But what if I had failed to break her free? Wouldn’t she have died? That seems like a huge risk.” He was starting to calm down but still couldn’t really grasp what Tamee was telling him.

  “Remember how I told you that in certain circumstances the Network could bring you back, like it did for everyone in your home system after absorbing their bodies? Well, this is one of those circumstances. Anyone who becomes part of a Network dungeon has their body scanned. Every time the dungeon resets they are reborn.”

  Alan was sitting on the rocky soil near the dungeon entrance with his back against a large rough boulder and his head in his hands. He could feel small ridges and points poking him through the thin fabric that was left of his tunic but he didn’t care. Tamee had finally finished explaining what was happening as well as she could. Cassidy was inside the dungeon right now and would stay there until the Network reset the dungeon. When that happened she would have her body absorbed and then reborn. She would lose any memories she had of him or what had happened. It was seen as a mercy to reset their memories so that they wouldn’t have to potentially relive dying over and over.

  To make it even more complicated, because of the strange rules here it was possible for there to be multiple Cassidys at the same time. The Network could create multiple copies of her body and her soul would be spread across them all. This would allow multiple people to run a dungeon at the same time and she could be there for all of them. The stronger the soul the more difficult this was, however. She had mentioned something about how the soul became more bound to the body as it grew and was less able to handle the strain of multiple copies.

  Because she had not even gained a class yet her soul was only lightly bound to her physical body and could be spread across thousands of iterations at a time. There was a reason more people didn’t volunteer for these opportunities though. The reward for something like a starter dungeon was usually at least a rare class stone, so you would think people would be lining up in droves.

  The issue is that while the memories of their many lives were blocked while inside the dungeon they weren’t lost. Once their time was complete the memories would return to them all at once. The brain often wasn’t able to deal with that much information coming in all together, so as a defense mechanism the memories usually were hazy and they would be unable to recall specific details. But that wasn’t the worst part, stretching the soul over too many bodies could cause a strain that resulted in permanent damage. Sometimes that damage to their soul was minor and no one would ever realize it was there, others would be permanently hobbled.

  The soul was integral to your class growth. Tamee was still vague on the details, but injuries to the soul could prevent you from being able to advance your class past a certain level. Some had even been stuck at quartz for the rest of their lives after soul trama. The damage to the soul could even affect someone’s personality. Apparently it was very rare, but not unheard of, for the person who returned to act completely different from how they went in. Their friends and family wouldn’t even recognize them anymore.

  There was another shocking revelation. Having achieved even one quartz class Alan had permanently altered his body and now had a life expectancy of almost double what he did before. The fact that he had more than one class extended his life further, but not much. After attaining eight quartz classes he could probably expect to live for almost 300 years assuming he didn’t progress any further. As he leveled up he would become almost immortal as the highest level classers could live for millions of years.

  The precis of all this was that he would never see Cassidy again. When her time was done in the dungeon she would return to her planet, one of the many in his new universe. Even worse was that her actions were not necessarily real, she was simply playing a role. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, Alan thought he had felt an instant connection when their eyes met and even something happening between their auras. Even thinking such thoughts felt silly so he was too embarrassed to mention that to Tamee. In the end it turned out that apparently she was simply doing her part to earn better rewards. It was time to move on.

  He resolved to try and get more out of Tamee about how dungeons worked later, but right now he was emotionally wiped out. After accepting the notification of completing the dungeon he inspected his latest reward.

  Item: Guardian Class Stone, rarity Epic. This stone can be used to gain the class Guardian, a constitution based class that specializes in protecting others. Because of this stone’s rarity it can be used as long as you have no classes above quartz level. Can be used at any time.

  He knew he was being stupid, especially after working so hard to get this, his eighth and final starting class, but he couldn’t deal with it right then. Alan put the pouch containing the stone on his belt and decided to deal with absorbing it later. Pushing himself to his feet he reflected on how lucky he was that nothing had attacked him while he was wallowing in self-pity. Turning to the north, he began the long trek back to the lake. With his improved speed he could probably make the trip in a little under two hours if he was running full out. That would of course result in his stamina crashing before he had made it halfway back. A more sustainable pace would see him back in around three hours. Feeling disheartened and with no sense of urgency he instead set off at a brisk walk. At this rate he should make it back by nightfall, but just barely.

  “Alan, are you alright?” Tamee asked in a soft voice. He could hear actual concern from her.

  “No, probably not. It’s weird, I died, my planet and everyone on it was broken down into parts for some alien program, then I was reborn and told that I was competing in the most high stakes survival game ever and I was fine. Well, not fine, but I was managing. Now I find out that some woman I knew for 45 seconds was an actor and didn’t really care about me. And it leaves me devastated. Now I know how Truman felt in that movie, and he had it for his whole life.” Truthfully Alan was a little confused about his emotions. After his ex, Jessica, broke up with him he had experienced some severe depression, but that was a long term relationship and the ending had left him feeling betrayed. This was a brief chance encounter, but something inside of himself felt broken. It was like his emotions were trying to lean on something for comfort and, finding nothing there, face planted in the dirt.

  “Look, you’re going to be ok. You have been in a kind of shock since this whole thing began. It happens all the time. Unlike most you have had no one other than my voice to interact with since the integration, so it makes sense that actually seeing and touching another person would have a profound impact on you.”

  That actually helped and he was feeling a little better. Her explanation made a lot of sense. Being in the military resulted in him almost always being around other people. Barracks life and then eventually the Teams meant that he rarely had time alone. It had only been four days since the Network arrived, but even before that Alan was alone on the space station. His brain had simply latched onto the first real seeming person he had encountered.

  This whole time he had been traveling in a gray haze and he now took a moment to observe his surroundings. He was deeper in the forest than at any time since the first day. While walking he had left the more barren edge of the valley and wandered well into the woods. The trees here were a far cry from when he started in the valley. Much more so than the ones he had seen on the perimeter. There were branches that were crooked and bent instead of picturesquely perfect and for the first time his identify actually registered on some of them.

  Alan saw an oak, some maples, and even a cherry tree. Others still failed to register. No matter how long he looked at them no message appeared. After the success of finding energy fields in rocks he moved closer to one of the maples and extended his senses.

  Sure enough there was a field inside the tree. It was much more complicated than the simple grid in the rock. This was more like what he had found inside his own body. The whole thing was a confusing mesh of energy lines with most of it flowing into the center of the tree. There was energy coming up from the roots and even slowly coming into the leaves of the tree from the air around it and then it circulated throughout the trunk and branches.

  Extending his senses toward one of the trees that didn’t trigger the identify skill he tried to sense a difference. There was still an energy field there but it was not as strong. It also seemed to be more regimented, more straight lines rather than the organic curves found in the other trees and his own body. There was less mana flowing in from the leaves as well. Running his hands over the two trees also let him feel a difference. The maple felt more solid than the non-differentiated tree, like it was harder, more dense.

  Alan continued moving north but now he was stopping to test out different trees with his senses. In every case the trees that couldn’t be identified had a weak and rigid field, but it seemed like once they crossed some threshold the tree would start to differentiate as the field lost its rigid structure and also started to gain in power. Once that happened he could use identify. He became a little worried that he would be walking around with his vision filled with identification messages now that more things were starting to register. However, his concern was soon allayed when he learned the trick of looking without focusing. Unless you gave something your full attention it wouldn’t trigger identify.

  Lost in testing out his senses and identify ability he failed to notice a beast sneaking up to ambush him. It was perched in the branches above, slowly making its way over until Alan was directly below it. This was the second time he had been ambushed, but this time he had no one to blame but himself.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Alan watch out!” Tamee's scream caught him off guard and he physically jumped. That may have saved his life and at least prevented a brutal mauling. A ball of fur sporting five sharp points came shooting down from the branches above. Because he had been startled and jerked just before it arrived, it missed his head and instead impacted on his hip. There was a burning pain as it bounced off and ran. With its ambush foiled Alan figured it must have decided to look for other prey. Probably a good call on its part as Alan had been a menace to the wildlife around here. Focusing on it he activated identify as it scurried away.

  Beast: Bobcat (rare) level 2, threat: mild.

  While still reeling from the surprise of the attack he failed to immediately chase after the beast and it soon disappeared into the woods. He also couldn’t believe that Tamee had given an actual warning. “Tamee, not that I don’t appreciate it, but wasn’t warning me breaking the rules?”

  “Yes, it most definitely was, but when I saw it about to maul you I didn’t think, I just reacted.”

  “Well thank you for the warning.” Alan hoped she wouldn’t get in trouble for two reasons. The first was selfish, if she didn’t get in trouble this time she would be more likely to break the rules again. The second was because he was thinking of her more as a friend lately and honestly did not want her to get punished.

  Checking his hip he found that the bobcat’s claws had left shallow slashes. That’s when he noticed a bigger problem. A small piece of string is all that remained of one of his pouches. A quick check confirmed that it was the newest one, the one that contained his last class stone.

  Feeling like an idiot he frantically searched the ground around the scene of the attack but couldn’t find it. Self-recriminations ran rampant through his mind. He should have been paying better attention and the cat never would have snuck up on him. If he hadn’t been moping around he would have absorbed the stone when he first got it. Instead that animal must have taken the pouch with it when it scampered off. Alan ran in the direction it went but after less than a minute realized that catching it this way was hopeless. He had no idea how fast it was, and it could have changed directions or climbed a tree at any point. It was time to be smart about this.

  Alan made his way back to the area where the attack occurred. He knew he was in the right place when he spotted the drops of blood from the ambush. Now it was time to try out his tracking skill. Doing it in the wild would be much harder than the easy trial in the dungeon, but his perception was higher now, so hopefully that would help.

  The area around him had been disturbed both by the attack and the initial search for the pouch. Luckily the bobcat had left clear furrows in the ground when it landed. Not only must those claws be sharp but it also must weigh almost fifty pounds to leave such deep marks. This might be easier than he originally thought.

  Within a few steps those claw marks disappeared. He was able to find a pad print, but it must have retracted its claws. That was going to make things trickier.Following along the trail it soon got worse. In the beginning it was running to get away from him and left deep imprints in the ground from the force of its bounds. However, once it was out of sight it must have slowed to a walk.

  In one sense this was good, its steps were now closer together and it wasn’t moving away as quickly which would allow him to catch up. On the other hand, it was no longer leaving an imprint in the dirt. If this had been the first day Alan would have been screwed. Now that the grass was growing higher though, he could occasionally catch a place where the longer grass had been crushed.

  Worried that these signs would also disappear he tried to see if he could sense the bobcat. Looking for any trace of its energy failed as he found nothing that he could say was the cat’s. Instead there was a small amount of energy suffusing the entire area. He continued to follow the few tracks that he could find but then the bobcat must have reentered the treetops. The signs pointed to the base of a tree and he soon found claw marks in the bark. After climbing the tree he was unable to find any other traces.

  It was hard to believe that an animal that weighed almost fifty pounds could make its way through the treetops with the trees so spread out, but the evidence was clear because it wasn’t here. Alan descended back to the ground and started moving out in a spiral pattern, hoping to see a place where it came back down. There wasn’t much hope in his heart, but he had to find that stone.

  With everything pointing to the creature vanishing you can imagine his surprise when he found the bobcat sitting against the base of a tree about five minutes later. His thoughts were already dark with the knowledge that he would never find this beast and he would lose the chance to gain all eight classes, so seeing it sitting before him hit like a meteor. A quick scan revealed no sign of the pouch, though. Now what? If he killed it and it turned out that beast had stuffed it in a burrow somewhere he was never going to find it. Trying to follow it back to a lair was also impossible since it already saw him and as an ambush hunter it probably had a higher perception than he did. It would surely know it was being followed.

  That left one longshot possability, he could try to charm it. His last attempt hadn’t gone so well, but Alan was left with no other choice. He pulled out some of the goat meat from his storage and tossed it over near the cat’s feet. There was a lot of goat meat in his pouch and he didn’t enjoy it himself so he figured why not get rid of that. The creature sniffed at it, but made no move to eat it. Apparently they both shared a similar pallet. Next Alan tried tossing one of the squirrel carcusses. The cat almost seemed giddy as it stalked over and sniffed it.

  It gently picked it up in its mouth. He, it might be sexist but the cat seemed like a he, looked up at Alan briefly and then scurried with its treat back up into the trees. He was afraid he would spook the cat if he ran after him, so he followed while walking as fast as he could manage. The whole time Alan was saying nice things about the bobcat. How sleek its fur was, how nimble it was in the trees, what sharp claws it had.

  If Alan was lucky the cat would lead him back to its burrow, and if not then maybe he would have another chance to charm it. After less than a minute the bobcat paused on a sturdy branch and proceeded to dissect and devour the carcass. The way he used his claws to slice off little pieces and place them in his mouth could only be called dainty. Entranced, Alan sat and watched while the cat took his time. It was probably twenty minutes before he finished.

  He turned as if to leave and Alan took out his last squirrel. “I have another treat for you, you wonderful majestic creature.”

  Whether his stomach or his vanity was leading the way the bobcat turned and slunk back down the tree trunk. He stared as if waiting for Alan to throw the body to him. “If you want this one, you’ll have to come closer.” And come closer he did. The cat walked up until he was maybe a meter away from him.

  It was close enough to lunge out and grab, but Alan thought that would have led to catastrophic results all around. Was that a pun? Maybe. Anyway, it also wouldn’t have accomplished anything since it didn’t have the stone on it. Instead Alan stared into its eyes and reached out with the squirrel. With their eyes locked he tried sending his mana toward the bobcat.

  He had once heard that animals didn’t like looking humans in the eyes, but this one was transfixed by his gaze. Alan could also see his nose going crazy, smelling the treat in front of him. Finally a tendril of his energy reached out from his extended hand and flowed toward the cat. Just before it reached him Alan saw the furry creature almost pull away. Then the energy pushed into his body and there was suddenly a connection. The bobcat shook twice and then settled down. Something was different in its eyes though. There had been an important change but Alan wasn’t sure exactly what it was and there was no notification.

  “Good boy, do you want this squirrel?”

  Alan could sense that it understood him. He, and Alan was now sure it was a he somehow, waited patiently as he slowly lay the squirrel down in front of the cat. Then the bobcat proceeded to pick it up in his mouth and start to walk away. After only a few steps the cat paused and looked back, as if to see if Alan was following. He didn’t need another invitation.

  Together they walked through the forest, the cat leading and Alan following, giddy with what had just happened. He had done it, he had charmed him. It wasn’t control, he wasn’t Alan’s pet and he couldn’t command it. Instead, it was more like a friend. They walked for almost a hundred meters and arrived at a tree that was much larger than the rest. It wasn’t as big as the one he had found in the mage dungeon, but it was much bigger than anything else he had seen since getting here.

  The bobcat looked back at him and then scurried up the trunk and crawled into a large hole in the tree that Alan had missed at first. Walking over he placed his hands against the bark, trying to sense the energy field. He really needed a better term for that, ‘energy field’ just felt clunky. This field was the strongest of anything he had sensed outside of a dungeon. There were more curves and lines than any other tree around. The energy entering it from its crown was also an order of magnitude greater even than the maple from earlier.

  A low growling noise alerted Alan to his new friend's return. The cat seemed like it had been sitting there for a while. He made a mental note to be careful when using these other senses, he was finding that he sometimes lost track of his surroundings. Looking down at the bobcat he saw it had his pouch in its mouth. The cat lowered it to the ground and then waited expectantly while Alan slowly bent down and retrieved it. He wasn’t worried about the animal attacking him, but something about the connection between them demanded respect.

  A quick peek inside confirmed that the stone was still there. Alan bowed his head slightly and thanked the cat who turned away and trotted into the forest. He stood there for at least five minutes marveling at what had just happened.

  “Alan, that was awesome.” Tamee finally broke the moment.

  “Yes it was. Now I feel a little bad about killing those other beasts.”

  “Remember, these are Network created for the purpose of testing recruits and helping them to grow. Also, it worked with this one, but not all animals can be charmed. You should not feel bad about killing the others just because you had an amazing experience with this one. And, you might want to absorb that stone before something else happens.”

  Alan Taylor

  Race: Human [W]

  Class:

  Fighter (29%) Quartz

  Guardian (0%) Quartz

  Healer (27%) Quartz

  Hunter (36%) Quartz

  Mage (9%) Quartz

  Rogue (30%) Quartz

  Scholar (0%) Quartz

  Seeker (6%) Quartz

  Health: 136 (14/hour)

  Stamina: 118 (24/minute)

  Mana: 98 (10/minute)

  Stats:

  Strength: 11

  Dexterity: 12

  Perception: 11

  Focus: 7

  Intelligence: 8

  Wisdom: 12

  Constitution: 8

  Spirit: 4

  Skills:

  Aura Reading: 6

  Cooking: 2

  Daggers: 15

  Dodging: 4

  First Aid: 11

  Harvesting: 7

  Herbology: 7

  Identify: 7

  Mana Drawing: 3

  Mana Enhancement: 1

  Running: 9

  Sneak: 3

  Tracking: 9

  Two Weapon Fighting: 7

  Unarmed Combat: 9

  Titles: [Top Recruit]

  Talents:

  Fighter: Parry

  Guardian: Hammer Blow

  Healer: Mend

  Hunter: Charm Animal

  Mage: Light Spinner

  Rogue: Quick Hands, Stealth

  Scholar: Understanding

  Seeker: Sensitivity

  Spells: Minor Healing (common), Light Bolt (common), Light (common)

  Tracking down and then taming that bobcat was really good for his hunter class, it went up about twenty percent and was now his highest leveled class. His tracking skill also went up a bunch, which made sense, and aura reading also went up. Maybe those energy patterns Alan was detecting are actually called auras. It seemed like a better term so he decided to try using that from now on.

  The new class seemed nice, absorbing it hadn’t even given him a headache. That one point of increased constitution caused both stamina and health to go up eight points. That would be a very useful stat to level. Hammer blow seemed fairly self explanatory, and it was also obvious why he got that one. Thinking back on it, almost all of his class talents made sense based on how he had gotten the class stones. Tamee must have known what she was talking about when she said your choices and actions affect your Path.

  That whole encounter had been a long one. Checking the sky it looked like he would have just enough time to get back to camp before sundown if he ran. Once more the idea of sprucing up his shelter would have to wait.

  “Tamee, we’ll talk more when I get back to the lake.” And with that he was running through the trees again.