The canyon emptied onto a high plateau, ringed with mountains on 3 sides and views back down toward the central forest of stage 2. It was a beautiful spot, covered in low grasses and scrub brush, interspersed with copses of smaller trees and a few solitary giants with crowns that each covered nearly an acre.

  The plateau stretched for over a mile and looked empty, but folds in the land could hide hundreds of monsters. Hours of night remained, and most of the clouds had drifted off, leaving the night sky ablaze with alien constellations and the two moons.

  My Perception had rocketed up to 113 tier-1 points, giving me the equivalent of 452 tier-0 points after my Efficiency reduction. That still left me with Perception that was 45 times better than anyone back on Earth. With that much Perception, the stars shone with stunning clarity and I could pick out vague patterns on the bright orange moon. With its beautiful blue rings, it reminded me of a tiny replica of Saturn.

  The other strange, black moon was still just wrong. It was like a void in the night sky, and I studied it more closely than I had since day one. For the first time, I noted a faint ring of light marking its borders, with brighter lights spaced around the perimeter. They reminded me of glowing teeth, as if the moon was really the open maw of a giant monster.

  Freaky. I looked away. I was having enough trouble dealing with werewolves. No need to consider a monster with a mouth big enough to look like a moon.

  The air was cool, but temperature changes didn’t bother me much any more. Better, I heard no howls of nearby wolves. I had hours to hunt, and wanted to maximize the time. So I triggered the upgrade of my Navigation utility spell I’d been itching to use ever since I got it.

  “Ping. Once per day, trigger an invisible pulse of energy to a distance of 100 yards times your current Perception. Effect: Update your map within the covered area with one of the following: Monsters, dungeons, rifts in the fabric of space, or loot boxes. Points will be marked for 60 seconds. Note: Monsters who pass a stealth check may remain hidden.”

  With a tier-0 equivalent Perception of 452, Ping would extend out to over 45,000 yards, or a bit over 41 kilometers total. Again, the math came easy to me. A circle with a diameter of just over 41 kilometers, or almost 25.5 miles, would result in an area covering roughly 1300 square kilometers, or about 500 square miles.

  That was huge, and so much bigger than what it would have been if I’d triggered the spell when I first got it. It was an eye-opening example of just how much growth I’d managed in just over a day. I wanted to revel in all that growth, but as much progress as I had made, the recent encounter with Alpha and Noctarus proved just how much farther I needed to go.

  Identifying all the monsters in the area was tempting, but I didn’t want to waste time hunting a bunch of potentially lower-leveled monsters. I was on stage 2, but barely inside the mountains. Better to maximize my time.

  “You have cast Ping. Any dungeons in the target area will be marked on your map.”

  How could I resist finding another dungeon to explore? Monsters, loot, and prizes always converged in dungeons, right? My first dungeon experience, as brief as it had been, had still won me several levels and unique prizes. I needed more of that, just without all the near-death experiences hopefully.

  My full-sized map popped open, entirely blocking my view. I rarely used the full map, and it had filled in a lot. It was zoomed out a lot farther than I’d ever tried before to cover the target area. The expanse of stage 2 I’d already explored, including the forest, lake, and castle took up a small portion along the right side of the map, while the plateau I stood on was clearly marked.

  Beyond that, the individual peaks I could see from where I stood were marked in broad pencil strokes with no details since I hadn’t actually visited them yet.

  And on those mostly-blank sections of map, two glowing dots appeared. One was pretty close, just on the far side of the plateau where I stood, while the other looked a few miles west up some of the higher mountains.

  Focusing on those glowing dots, I marked a couple of waypoints and labeled them with the dungeon names displayed on the map. Nice! Two dungeons within range. Hopefully they were packed with enough monsters to get me some levels. If they were big enough, I could even bring my team to help me clear them.

  Minimizing the map again, I accelerated into a run, heading for the nearer dungeon, located on the southwest corner of the plateau. The map labeled it only as Plateau Dungeon.

  I might not have Switchblade, but I’d learned that my running speed was insanely fast, so I poured on the speed. My stats had doubled since my run up to face Bristleback, so I decided to see if I could outrun my best pace before when I’d used the Road Runner potion. Grinning with the thrill of it, I accelerated until I was sprinting like a race car.

  Bugs pinged off my invisible face shield, widening my smile. I’d eaten more than one nasty alien bug running or riding Switchblade. Extra protein might always be good, especially with all the muscles I’d packed on, but mystery bug meat was not my preferred way to get it.

  I kept a sharp eye out for monsters and kept an eye on my mini map for any telltale red glows as I shot across the open plateau. I could smell something on the air. Some kind of monsters lived in the area, but none jumped out to attack me. Moving so fast, I could vault many of the narrow gullies, and several times I caught flashes of red on my mini map as I soared overhead.

  Other teams could explore them and kill the monsters lurking inside. Now that I knew the location of a dungeon, I didn’t want to get distracted. So I avoided any red dots and caught only brief glimpses of shadowy forms crouched behind bushes or boulders as I ran past. If any gave chase, they gave up quickly once it was clear I could outrun them.

  Way sooner than seemed possible, I reached the base of a high, sheer stone cliff that made up the lower front face of a taller peak rising from the southwest corner of the plateau. Hidden behind a fallen jumble of rocks, a thin gap in the stone was the only indication I’d found a dungeon.

  It would have been easy to walk right past. The gap could have just been an odd fold in the stone. I decided not to pre-cast Immolation again using Ace Arcana. The spell had saved me from the Puppetmaster, but it consumed such a vast area, I wasn’t sure what it would do inside a dungeon. I didn’t want to melt the stones and bring down the roof on myself.

  “You know, I sure could use some replacement weapons,” I muttered, glancing at the sky before extracting one of the steel spears I’d taken from the cows a few days ago.

  “Don’t look back, Lucas! Forward to the next adventure.”

  Dungeon diving would be more fun with Soulrend and Fang ready at hand. Then again, maybe a new sword was waiting for me down there. With a steadying breath, I slipped through the gap.

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  Nothing attacked me the instant I stepped into the dungeon, even though the memory of that weird squid bear yanking me into my first dungeon flashed through my mind. That had been nasty. I’d been lucky to survive. This time I was much better prepared.

  After surviving the Squid Bear and the Nightmare Gorger, the Essence Wights had nearly eaten my soul. Again, I’d only escaped by the slimmest margin.

  Hmm. I paused just inside the cave entrance. Now that I thought about it, dungeons had been non-stop death traps. Just what I needed to level up.

  So I crept forward, the soft sandy floor easy for my bare feet. Within a few paces, the darkness inside the cave grew so deep, even I struggled to see with Wolf Sight. I guess it granted me night vision, not absolute darkness vision.

  I didn’t exactly want to announce to the entire dungeon that I had arrived, but that was better than getting eaten by something I never saw coming. So I extracted my trusty flashlight, the Torch of the Mirrored Moon, and switched it on low.

  Even on that low setting, the beam pierced the darkness and lit up the narrow passageway I was following. The rough stone walls were dry and bare, the stone floor covered with a layer of fine sand. The passageway turned a few paces ahead, so I couldn’t see very far, even with the light.

  No sounds broke the stillness of the dungeon, so I crept forward, swapping out my spear for my basic fighting stick. It would shatter if I hit anything too hard with it, but it was a better option than my giant ogre club. That thing wouldn’t even fit in the passageway.

  Peeking around the corner, I shined the light around. The passageway expanded into a spacious cavern that stretched beyond my light, with a ceiling at least 50 feet high, complete with rocky stalactites.

  More room to move and fight was welcome, so I entered the cavern and risked increasing the power of my light until it blazed with several thousand lumens, lighting up the entire cavern.

  The rough chamber stretched at least 70 yards across and nearly 50 yards deep. The smooth, flat stone floor looked polished, but the light revealed no monsters.

  Lame. Another open passageway gaped in the far wall almost directly across the cavern from me. I marched toward it. So far, this dungeon was pretty disappointing.

  A squelching sound high above pulled me up short and I panned my light across the ceiling again. Nothing.

  So I activated Spellseer’s Gaze. Instantly the cavern started glowing with soft orange light of mana that felt sharp, like cayenne pepper. That was new, but I puzzled it out as I wrapped my hands in the billowing mana.

  Acid. The mana was acid-attuned. Maybe boring hadn’t been so bad after all.

  Another squelching sound snapped my head up and this time I spotted a thick, orange slimy gel oozing down one of the stalactites. It was like a giant had blown an enormous snot rocket onto the stone and it was dripping down, even though there’d been no indication of slimy ooze a moment ago.

  A second stalactite started oozing the same orange slime, and then dozens of stalactites all across the cavern did too. That was so weird.

  Maybe dangerous too, since the first slowly oozing slime rolled into a ball and fell off the stalactite, dropping to the flat stone floor with a loud splat. Within seconds, a rain of orange slime fell all around me. Each slime that splatted to the ground was about 2 feet in diameter, and they did not detonate into showers of goo when they hit, but bounced back up into spherical shapes.

  Identify finally triggered as I dodged one falling slime. It landed right at my feet with the same wet splat.

  “Cinder Jelly, level 28, common. These friendly slimes love to keep their cavern spotlessly clean. In fact, they’re so eager, they’ll clean you up with everything else. Forget the broom and mop, their acidic bodies can devour flesh and bone as easily as metal. Immune to most physical or spiritual attacks, they are weak against elements.”

  “Handel!” I cursed, dancing away from the round slime as it lurched toward me with surprising speed. I was surrounded by at least 50 of the little acidic devourers and they were rolling in from all sides.

  Out of pure reflex, I smacked the closest Cinder Jelly with my fighting stick. The wood drove deep into the monster before slowing, like I was trying to smack a big bowl of Jell-O. When I pulled it back out, the stick was already melting from the thin coating of orange slime clinging to it.

  “That was my last fighting stick!” I shouted as I backflipped over a fast-rolling slime barreling in from the side. It smacked into the first slime and the two simply fused together, forming a bigger monster.

  “Oh, Morricone!” I cursed. Each monster was only level 28, but all together, they could be deadly. Even with my insane Agility, I’d run out of places to jump all too soon.

  Three more rolling slimes made me jump into a sideways flip to land on an increasingly rare open patch of ground. They looked like they barely held together, so it shouldn’t take much to destroy them, but physical force wouldn’t help.

  So I triggered Energy Ward and Elemental Harmony at the same time, tossing in 2 potions of fire immunity and 1 of ice immunity. Energy Ward appeared around me, this time visible as a sphere of fire and ice. The elements swirled in a clockwise pattern, weaving in and out of each other, but not combining and not canceling each other out. It was like standing in the middle of a giant yin and yang of crimson and pale blue.

  Two Cinder Jellies barreled into the glowing barrier, but bounced right off as Energy Ward hit them with double rebound damage. One of them spun away already burning, while the second skidded across the stone floor, frozen solid. When it collided with another approaching Jelly, the newcomer flowed around it, totally encasing it.

  Instead of swelling to twice the size like when melding with another normal Jelly, the newcomer stopped and shuddered. Bands of ice slowly crept along its surface. Wow, they were weaker to elemental damage than I’d thought.

  Smiling, I strode forward with grim purpose, running my elemental-infused Energy Ward into one Cinder Jelly after another.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! You have defeated Cinder Jelly, level 28.”

  The notifications piled up as I worked my way through the annoying crowd of deadly jellies. They were too dumb to try fleeing, and in moments, I reduced them all to shattered bits of ice or drifting streamers of greasy smoke.

  I didn’t bother trying Harvest. I doubted they had a spell I wanted, and my two already-Harvested spells were really good. I did loot them and trigger Soul Feed, but used its upgraded area of effect option to funnel the clouds of white energy into Energy Ward.

  “You have added 1 additional use to Energy Ward.”

  “That’s it?” Not surprising, I guess. They weren’t that tough.

  There had been a lot of them, so I got a decent amount of energy. Problem was, my Life Points had grown to 851 tier-1 points. That was a huge pool to fill, and the stolen energy had to fill the entire bucket in order to generate a single additional use to Energy Ward. I guess I still needed to be careful how many times I activated the defensive aura.

  Looting proved pretty useless too. I got basic stuff, including some tier-3 mana crystals. The only interesting item was a pile of acid grenades. I bet those would be nasty. Hopefully the rest of the dungeon would prove more interesting. I marched toward the distant tunnel leading deeper.

  Nothing else attacked in that first cavern. I slowed when I reached the tunnel leading deeper. It was bigger than the entry tunnel at about 10 paces across and 15 feet high. I saw no monsters, but did find a bunch of softly glowing teal-colored mushrooms.

  They were huge too, like giant toadstools, and they covered both walls, growing in thick clumps that transformed the walls into strange, vertical mini forests.

  “Tasty Cake Mushroom. Common. These popular culinary delicacies are used all across the multiverse as the crowning touches to any dish. Sliced, chopped, or minced, it doesn’t matter. They add exactly the perfect complementary flavor for whoever eats the meal.”

  “Why not?” I laughed as I started harvesting mushrooms. They popped off the wall with a little snap and a spray of fine spores that made the passageway smell like a bakery.

  I breathed the wonderful smell in deep and started to smile. Of course I had to try one. The description made some pretty big claims.

  Extracting a chocolate chip cookie I’d gotten in one of the trays of pastries from Sam as payment for the liquor, I sprinkled some mushroom onto it and took a bite. I’m not one of those weirdos who moans when I eat, as if food is my lover. I always figured people who did that were a bit touched in the head.

  Not any more. I leaned against the stone wall and totally moaned as I chewed that cookie. I wasn’t even embarrassed to do it. The cookie tasted better than any cookie I’d ever tried. The chocolate chips melted on my tongue with a depth to their flavor I couldn’t even describe, while the soft cookie was like an explosion of perfection across my taste buds.

  Then somehow I tasted hot chocolate too. The best way to eat a chocolate chip cookie was with a frothy mug of hot chocolate. The mushroom somehow read my mind and it gave me a taste of the best double-chocolate I’d ever dreamed could exist.

  So of course, in that moment of total food nirvana distraction, the floor dropped away beneath me.