07
It was another week before he decided to step outside of the dungeon. He had filled his ring to the brim with various kinds of materials and monster corpses, but the ring's level was still the same. His level too had barely raised two times even with the LAI methodically eradicating all life in the floors, showing just how weak the monsters had become this close to the exit.
The reason he decided it was time to head out was simple. He was fed up with this place. The leveling was going too slow and he was against attempting to go on higher floors. The monsters got too strong too quickly, and he wasn't that much better off now than he was when he had fought the fire wolf before. In fact, the only difference was that he had a lot more weapons to potentially destroy, because his gain in levels was still too little to actually matter. He suspected that the monsters got this much stronger because the dungeon tried to weed out useless people who only wanted to farm in safety, and indeed he saw that by challenging only weaker foes his gains were almost zero in terms of experience towards the next level.
Which led him to the decision to leave. His plan was to build a workshop and begin building up a nice technological base in this world, and smelting a couple iron rods to use with the railgun would be quite easy with the right tools. As soon as he had his ammo, then going against even the higher floors would be child's play.
It was this powerlessness that made him restless. It was the knowledge that he was basically a weakling in this world, and everything that could help him was locked beyond the metaphorical door of having the right equipment and resources. He wanted to go the technological route, and he was forced to since he had no system, but to do so he needed to get out of here and get his hands on some stuff first.
He wished he could talk to Eve. He missed her, and missed the peace of mind that her presence always brought him. He was aware of these flares of anger and impulsive behavior that he was having, but at the same time found himself at a loss about what to do about them. He was confident that he could fix almost any machine, build exquisite weaponry and understand the very fabric of a world but his own mind? It was an inscrutable abyss that he was not sure he even wanted to explore.
He could ask the LAI to unpack some psychological know-how in his brain to help him act upon his shortcomings, but decided against it. This was him, and he didn't want to change his personality just because he felt that it was not the nicest that it could be. If people didn't like him then it was their problem, at least it would be as soon as he was powerful enough to do whatever he wanted.
He reached the stairway and descended down another level. The monsters here were almost inconsequential to him, as the LAI made short work of them on the way to the next ramp. There were a few parties of people here and there, but without his advantage Charles did not feel like approaching them and kept his distance. They looked weak, but looks can be deceiving. It was only a momentary setback, just until he had his lasers. Then he would walk with his head up high and just disregard anything and everything.
The more he went down, the more people appeared. Many of them did not look strong in the slightest, struggling even against creatures that not even he would ever consider dangerous. Their equipment was almost nonexistent and their techniques crude and overall bad. It led Charles to think that those people were not professional delvers like the party he met on the higher floors, but rather poor people trying to make some coin by hunting here. Perhaps they even tried to get stronger, but were being slowed down to almost a crawl by the dungeon's very rules. Only the rich who could afford good equipment could make the jump to the higher floors and earn real levels. Or, perhaps, it took a lot of time. He had made more than fifty levels in a couple of weeks, but he suspected that the overpowered party that he killed had been dungeoneering for decades at least. If he had a decade here, then he too would become quite powerful.
This was just his theory, though, since he had no idea about what kind of society he would find once he stepped out of this place. He predicted that it would be a middle ages cliché fantasy society, considering the swords and armor, but he was not sure.
Finally, the first floor. There was a tall white archway in the middle of an empty room. People were appearing out of thin air in the middle of the archway, where a dark mist hid what laid beyond. The rest of the floor was populated with parties who had just gotten here and were fixing their equipment before proceeding. The vast majority of people were human, and even though all of them were definitely humanoid, there were a few notable mentions.
Beast people. They existed here in this world, apparently. The wet dream of all those Japanese manga characters was actual reality here, and Charles wasn't sure what to think of them. Yes, the fluffy ears were cute and all, but that was it. A tail here and there, perhaps. Slitted eyes too, but those were not new to him as a few people in the Empire had them as well. He could have had them, but he refused the implant when it was offered to him. In hindsight it was a bad choice, but he had no idea at the time that he would have been transported into a dungeon.
There was an elf together with a party of humans. A human with a party of elves too. Some other strange people, but in truth Charles was so annoyed at the place and at the considerable amount of chatting people that he decided to barrel through the crowd ignoring them all. The fucking crowd. He hated crowds, they were unruly, stupid and overall disgusting. The amalgam of people, each and every one of them seemingly working actively towards annoying him the greatest amount possible.
Some were in his way, some others did not notice him and went in the way, others still elbowed him while talking among themselves and seemed completely oblivious to their surroundings. A well-placed railgun shot would do miracles here, too bad he only had one bullet. Or Eve. Eve would have regulated the flow of people into the most optimal configuration. But here it was just chaos.
After a long minute of walking among the moving bodies of people that he considered to be less than objects, he arrived at the gate. He stopped for a moment before deciding to unceremoniously step through.
LAI hyperfocus active. Assuming direct control. Hostile action detected. Two armored men, weapons are spears of decent quality. Danger level unknown due to supernatural factors. Considering best course of action. De-escalation. User anger level is high, advising against impulsive action.
It was supposed to be the moment when he finally stepped out of the dark caves after so much time. The moment when a person born a raised in space finally could see the sky and the sun from a real planet for the first time. And those two people ruined it. Charles had to suppress the urge to end their life here and now, but still the anger was rising. He had no idea how strong those two were, and he supposed that they had to be quite strong in order to be here as guards. This he hated about this world. He was but an ant, and he had to swallow his pride and his anger and just stay silent.
Charles nodded, or at least performed the action while he was watching from the virtual space of the LAI's existence. He knew very well that he should not act upon the violent desires within him, and for once decided to listen to the advice given to him. The LAI had his body move to a defensive stance, but threw the sword on the ground and raised the hands in the air. The guards stood in place but relaxed a bit.
"I'm not hostile." The LAI told them with his voice. Charles could feel the calculations going on in his head, and the threads of probability that led the machine to selecting this sentence out of many possible ones.
The rightmost guard lifted the shiny metal helmet to reveal his face. He was a handsome young man, but with a nasty scar running all across his face. His expression was relaxed and confident, but at the same time curious and inquisitive.
"Why are you without your token?" The man asked.
Seeing that the situation was returning to normal, and that Charles was no longer boiling with anger and thoughts of death and destruction, the LAI returned the control of his body to him.
"I lost it." He said.
The guard tensed. "Impossible. The tokens are bound, they cannot be lost."
Good information, Charles thought. But irrelevant right now. He had to gamble. "Well, I entered the dungeon, didn't I? Could I have done that without a token?" He asked smirking.
The guard pondered the situation for a moment. "Come with me." He said, and after motioning to the other soldier to fetch a replacement, he led Charles away.
The smirk remained. He had gambled and his gamble had paid off. Those people were illiterate simpletons, after all, and they should be quite easy to play. At least as long as he was dealing with the general populace. Personal strength did not mean that they were smart, in fact most of the time strength made people dumber by leading them into thinking that thinking was useless.
As he walked beside the guard, Charles took the time to take in the surroundings. The dungeon was shaped like black cylinder and after a few hundred meters it disappeared into an unmoving cloud. Looking beyond that point he could see the sky but no trace of the construction itself, making him wonder if the cloud was actually a sort of portal that took the rest of the dungeon into another dimension. Doing so would allow the place to be virtually endless, so it made some sort of sense, and at the same time it made for a very interesting phenomenon to study.
The rest of the sights were dull and boring. He was in the middle of a filthy, smelly and damp medieval city. The constructions were made out of stone at the bottom, then wood for the higher stories. None were higher than three of four stories, however. There was a fountain in the middle of the square that housed the dungeon, but it was crumbling and no longer working. The houses that faced the square looked cleaner and overall better off than the rest, as it was evident as soon as the two stepped into the main road.
The road was straight and gave them line of sight to the city gates a few hundred meters away, and was surrounded by tall houses in various states of disrepair and damage. The wall of the city was made of stone as well, and despite being impressively tall it too featured damage and even holes at various places. The gate was a simple wooden thing that was evidently not the original one.
They arrived at a construction near the gate, something that resembled a tavern with a sloped roof and solid stone walls. As they entered, he saw that indeed there was a tavern inside, but also other things that made him think of only one thing. The adventurer's guild.
There were counters with clerks, and a small queue of people with various levels of equipment waiting for their turn. There was a wall with papers hung there, presumably quests issued by the guild or by some people asking for dungeon materials and such.
The guard escorting him stopped to talk for a moment. The man who stopped them was tall, impressively tall actually, and quite muscular. He featured a nicely trimmed beard and short hair, which reminded Charles of the fact that he had not checked his own appearance for a while now. He dreaded that moment, because then he'd have to cut his hair and beard by himself.
"I'll take it from here." The man said and dismissed the guard, who reverently stepped away and hurried back to his post.
"Who the fu-" Charles began but then stopped himself with a cough. No need to antagonize people before knowing who they were. "Who are you?"
The man smiled warmly at him, a smile so patronizing and dismissive that it almost made him raise his gun. "I'm Giona. The guild master."
"Nice to meet you." Charles said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" He asked, taking great steps to hide his own patronizing tone. He had all the rights to be patronizing, he thought, as these were just barbarians who didn't even know what laid beyond their crumbling walls. Unlike the man, the man was just being an ass.
"Why don't you come to my office." The man said, and then began to walk without waiting for an answer.
The office was just that. An office. Made of wood and with a wooden desk in the middle. The guild master sat on his chair and motioned for Charles to sit on the one opposite to his. It was just a basic, hard chair, he noted with a sigh. He also noted that he should stop complaining and comparing the stuff here to his old world, but shelved the thought. He would bring forth the change, if he decided. He would never adapt to the world, but rather it was the world that should adapt to him.
"So, I've been told that you appeared outside the dungeon without a guild token." The man began. Charles had already unholstered his gun and was pointing its barrel at the man from under the desk.
The gun was not something some middle ages idiots should recognize. It was made of four black rods of metal welded to the battery and ammo clip mechanisms. The trigger was in the usual location for a gun, right under the barrel. The four rods had a hole in the center where the bullet was accelerated by the shifting electrical fields the rods themselves produced. It was capable of accelerating the ten-centimeter rods of metal that were its ammo to supersonic speeds in less than a millisecond. The man would never even know what hit him.
"Look," Charles began. He had his weapon trained on the man, so he decided that he could risk telling him the whole story and then just kill him if things went out of hand. "I come, with all probability, from another world." He paused, waiting for a reaction that never came. The man instead motioned him to go on. "I appeared in the dungeon, so that's why I have no token."
"As I suspected." The master said.
"Did you, now?" Charles asked, hiding his surprise. Perhaps the man was bluffing, the LAI told him, and he agreed.
"I did. You're not the first traveler to come to our plane, you know? And you said 'world'?" The man asked in the end.
"Yeah?" Charles said, this time quite surprised at the question. This world seemed to be even more barbaric than he thought, not having even the idea of what a world is. "World, as in the ball of mud and rock where we all live on?" Charles said annoyed.
"Ah, yes. I've heard that dimensional travelers usually come from round planets. Universes without magic do not seem to like the idea of planes. This one, however, is a plane." The master said. It was his turn to speak like he was talking to a small kid, a thing that irritated Charles greatly.
"A fucking plane. Not even a disc? A fucking rectangle floating in space?"
"I fear that I'm unable to answer that question. I have no idea about what lies beyond the boundaries, and neither do I know of this thing you call space. But I am just a minor master in a minor guild at the edge of a minor plane, which itself is but a minor existence compared to planets." The master said smiling.
"So, I'm in bumblefuck. Fucking nice. Where are the other travelers from, and where are they now?" Charles demanded. It did not occur to him that he was not in a position to make demands, in fact he felt that he had the right to demand whatever he felt like he needed.
"Ah, they are so rare I've never even met one before. They are rare, but also very valuable to the right people. You are lucky to have appeared here, and inside the dungeon at that. Many others are not so fortunate, some even appearing inside summoning circles and instantly having their souls shackled. It is a common belief that otherworlders usually bring forth great changes, and the powers that be try to keep the potential to themselves." The master said, sighing at the end.
"So I should not reveal my identity." Charles asked.
"Indeed. You better not."
"And what about the system?"
"What about it? Have you not done the tutorial?"
"I received a message stating that I cannot access the functions beyond the level system. Have you ever heard of this?"
The master looked at Charles for a moment. He studied him as if he was an alien, which was in a sense the truth.
"I'm afraid not."
"Alright. Could you give me a rundown of the system?"
The master frowned for a moment then composed his face. "The system has been a part of this universe for countless years, but it has not existed forever. Once upon a time, people used to learn magic… real magic. Not skills granted to them by the system. Magic has been all but lost ever since the skills came. Ah, right, skills are granted by the system to aid in the use of mana. They can be of any kind. Some are like magic spells, while others are more unique. It depends on the class. Classes are given by the system as well, and grant large bonuses in exchange for large sacrifices in other areas. A warrior could never learn magic, but a mage could never break boulders with his own hands. And the skills, too, depend on what class you have. You? I have no idea. I've never heard of something like this before."
"The fuck."
"I'm afraid I cannot help you more than this. Take this." He handed Charles a token. As soon as he took it, the token exploded in a shower of little lights that entered his body. "That is an iron rank token. It gives you access to all that the guild provides. Complete quests, and your rank will rise."
He got up.
"Just another two things. First is this. You might think that you are strong, and that your weapon is mighty. And you would be right, in a little rundown village like this." He looked at the hidden railgun below the desk. "But there are far stronger entities even as close as beyond the walls."
"Second thing you should keep in mind is cultivation. I do not know how you learned to do it, or how you manage to do it while not meditating… but I advise against doing it in public. That would be all. Now go and never bother me again."
Charles left. The man managed to thoroughly surprise him, but also provided a huge deal of valuable information. He was a bit annoyed about the treatment he received, but at the same time he knew that he should not complain. He got a basic tutorial for free, so complaining would just make him a dick.
His next stop was just on the floor below. It was time to sell the mountain of corpses he had in his ring.
***
Giona, the guild master, slumped back into his chair. It was too small for his large frame, but he never bothered to get another one. He was almost never here, after all. In fact, it was a very odd thing that in the rare occasion when he decided to visit a worthless village like this, an otherworlder appeared. The man seemed quite a dick, granted, but at least he was being reasonable.
There were stories about other people who destroyed entire cities just because they wanted to. He hoped that this man would not be one of them. At least the token allowed Giona to track this man, and while he couldn't do much he would at least know where the man was.
He'd have to keep an eye on him. Giona knew that this traveler could be his greatest fortune, or the tool of his demise. Whatever that may be, the village of Unica just got much more interesting.