He did a few tests to gain a grasp of his new physical ability. Vertical jump, sprinting, weight lifting, etc, and came to a terrifying realization. He determined that his physical strength had grown to almost three times compared to what it was before.
'Judging by the time, it was little before sunset when I altered the dungeon, according to their regular distribution, there should have been between 8 to 15 adventurers who entered after I changed it till morning.'
'If all of them died, and I obtained this much power...' He inhaled sharply as his mind ran some calculations.
'The change in the dungeon will attract more adventurers, so there will be a short spike in their deaths due to them falling into my traps, or being overwhelmed by my wolves, at the very least, 30 people will die within a week, that means, my physical strength after absorbing all of that will be at least 6 times of what I had yesterday.'
He let out a long breath.
'No wonder people go to the dark paths easily.' He let out a throaty chuckle.
[Name: Relevant Reed Record] [Tier 3] [Level 9]
[STR: S AGI: S SPI: S VIT: S INT: S]
His speed had increased by a rough guess of 5 meters per second, which was quite a bit, however, as Reed looked through his status panel, he noticed that his spirit statistic had no change.
'S.P.I... Spirit. According to the books the difference between a tier 2 spirit and a tier 5 spirit is like the difference between a teacup and a beer mug.' He mulled over his thoughts. 'That means that in the early stages, there is little difference in spiritual power.'
...
It was nearing eleven in the morning when he first sighted the dungeon.
It had quite a crowd gathered around it, with at least 40 people from a rough glance.
'Maybe more than thirty people will die.' He walked forwards and accosted the nearest person.
"What's going on?" He asked, acting clueless, despite knowing exactly what the cause of the matter was.
"I guess you haven't been to the guild this morning have you?" The man Reed had questioned responded, than continued without waiting for a response. "The dungeon's changed, they're saying that someone took control of it."
"The core's been found?" Reed made his eyebrows rise as he asked the question, playing the part of the surprised adventurer. "That's what they're saying." The man walked away.
Reed walked towards the arch, and questioned a few more people about the current state of the dungeon. Then he talked to a guild official, asking whether the dungeon was open or not, before walking through the gathered crowd.
Reed looked around, and spotting his targets, walked towards them.
"Hey there!" He announced himself, which made the three of them look up at him from their seated position.
"It's you." One of them spoke, recognizing him from before. "The name's Reed, I see your legs doing okay?" Reed looked at the one seated the farthest from him while talking, the one he had made a mental note of being hot-blooded and inexperienced.
"It's doing just fine, what can we do for you?" He asked, and Reed could see that he was slightly angry at him for bringing that topic up.
'Wounded pride.' "I wanted to hire you to go into the dungeon with me." Reed let out a small smile. "Nothing dangerous, just the first two floors." He said, as the first one opened his mouth to speak.
"Why us? There's so many others here?" The leader of the group spoke, and the silent one nodded.
"Hmm..." Reed scratched his chin, putting on thinking space as he stared beyond them into the trees. "I don't really know anybody here, and as you can see, my regular party isn't here either, but I have met the three of you before, so I guess you can call it fate?"
Reed had seen them before while he was with Mordhal's students, and they had nodded at each other before, so he knew that they knew that he had people he went into the dungeon with, but he was betting that they didn't know that they had left.
Sure enough their leader spoke again. "What about our pay?"
Reed smiled, his plan was a success. "How about 5 gold?" The leader was surprised, then he stood up and held out his hand. "Deal." Reed took it.
After shaking hands, Reed pulled out 2 gold from his pouch. "Here, I'll give you the rest after we return. Now please do introduce yourselves."
The leader took the coins from his hand. "My name is Johnathan Vason, please just call me John." Reed nodded to show that he understood. "You can call me Tucker." Reed nodded again, and turned to the last one, who hadn't spoken a word since he had arrived. "I am Polter Brand, nice to make your acquaintance."
Reed nodded for the third time since the conversation began.
Than he spoke. "Shall we get to it then?" He maintained a small smile. "Sure, let's go." John said, motioning to the other two to get up as he stood up and dusted himself.
Reed waited for them to get up, and then started to walk with them by their right side as they began to move in the direction of the dungeon's entrance.
However, the three of them did not notice that for a moment, Reed's face, adorned with a soft smile, had changed into a face, filled with malicious intent, wait a full-blown maniacal grin plastered across his face, before quickly reverting.
Reed knew that the man named John was not stupid, and by all means, should not have accepted the offer, his grin was due to the fact, that now he knew how powerful, and useful, his skills [Mental suggestion] and [Persuasion] were.
They had managed to make a smart man make the error of trusting a man they knew next to nothing about, and made him feel like it was natural.
Reed knew that, had it not been for these two skills, the man known as Johnathan Vason would never had accepted his proposal.