System Change

The team standing before Derek was a shadow of its former self. All ten members had made it back, but other than Vanessa and Elena, everyone else looked bad… really bad. Derek opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off before he could.

“Where is everyone? Where is Tristan Allister? We need him,” Elena Webb, the group’s main healer, said.

Sensing the urgency in her voice, Derek didn’t dally. He moved a bit away and quickly opened his Time Prison. Which caused an entirely different commotion.

“What is this?” He heard from inside the prison.

“Did you get the notifications too?” someone else asked.

He would figure out what they were talking about later, but now wasn’t the time. Derek poked his head inside and, with a loud voice, said, “They are back! The trial is complete. Tristan Allister, Elena said she needs you, quickly.”

Everyone inside quieted down at the sound of his voice and realized what was going on. Soon, they all came rushing out.

Tristan, the healer with the light element, was among the group. He swiftly moved through everyone else.

“What is it?” he asked, but after taking a look, and before Elena could answer, he immediately got to work.

When he saw what was going on, it all clicked for Derek. Tristan was reattaching limbs. Louise Bonilla, the archer, and John Newman, a support class, were both missing an arm. Luckily, they had managed to keep the detached piece and Tristan had quickly stitched them back on with some form of light based stitching.

The same couldn’t be said for Ciera Cook, the dual blade swordswoman. Both of her legs were cut, or rather bit, off at the knees. She lay unconscious, tourniquets strapped around the stumps to stall the bleeding.

“What about her?” Derek asked Elena, who was working on the woman.

“It’s going to be a lot harder for her,” Elena said. “We don’t have her limbs to reattach, so Tristan will have to work overtime to regrow them for her. It’s not something that’s easy, and most healers don’t have that ability. If a regular healer closed the wounds, she wouldn’t be able to regrow them anymore, so I had to tourniquet them during the battle.”

“Tough decision,” Derek said.

“If the fight had gone on any longer, I would have been forced to heal her. Being crippled is still better than losing your life.” She continued. “I’m glad I didn’t have to, though.”

Derek nodded. She had done the right thing. It was a blessing for Ciera that they managed to complete the trial in time. Derek also made a mental note to not lose any limbs. Though, with his Vitality and Endurance, it was possible they would regrow themselves. He didn’t want to take that chance, though.

“That trial was only an uncommon ranked one, right?” Derek turned to see Edgar standing next to him, with a slight worry in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Derek said.

Edgar and Derek then stepped back and let the healers do their work. They weren’t needed in all the fuss. Finally, after over thirty minutes, everyone was at least stable and had calmed down. Nobody was fully healed, but they no longer had to worry about anyone losing their lives. Ciera was, however, still unconscious, and Tristan was working himself to exhaustion by helping her slowly regrow her legs.

The process was… gory, even for Derek. There was just something about the wriggling flesh knitting itself back together as the bones, veins, and arteries slowly grew back into place. That could cause even the most iron stomached person to feel nauseous.

“It will take about a week, but there shouldn’t be any permanent loss,” Tristan said as he placed bandages over his work. Ciera’s legs had grown back around an inch or two since he began his work. “I need to refresh my mana and my mind before I continue.”

The young man wiped the sweat off his forehead and headed off to the outside camp to rest. He needed it. He would be busy for the foreseeable future. Derek was just glad that a healer with such a specialization had joined the dungeon team.

Once everything was taken care of, Edgar had everyone gather around for a report. “So. What exactly happened during the trial?” he asked Vanessa, who had been the leader of the first trial.

“As you know, it was a trial with beast waves,” she said, and received a nod in return. “What the trial orb didn’t say was that it had a timer, which was for us to survive for ten days. The first five days weren’t too bad. We spent most of it getting those of us at lower level some experience points. Things were going well up until the sixth day.”

“What happened on the sixth day?” Edgar asked.

“That was when a few of the party members began receiving the system notifications.” Vanessa eyed everyone around. “They caused a bit of a panic, but we were able to get back under control pretty quickly.”

“System notifications?” Derek asked.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” Edgar answered. He and Vanessa apparently knew something that he did not. “Continue,” he told Vanessa.

“Anyway. Once we got all that under control, everything proceeded smoothly for the next few days. But today, the final day of the trial, things heated up.” She continued to explain. “At the beginning, there was 20 minutes of rest between beast waves, and the waves weren’t too hard. They were mostly one type of beast… wolves, bears, boar, the usual. The first wave of a beast type would start at a lower level, then increase as time went on.”

“That’s basically what I expected of an uncommon beast trial,” Edgar said. “Nothing too terrible. So, what happened? It certainly doesn’t look like you had it that easy.”

“The final day happened,” Vanessa explained. “On the final 12 hours, the rest time disappeared. Waves began spawning before the previous one was complete. The beasts also combined, so strategy became much more difficult. It became an all out slaughter where we couldn’t get any rest. We’re lucky we had so many potions between us.

“Then, during the last hour, an elite, max level beast of each species spawned as a boss. When that happened, I had to fight them myself, and could no longer look after the rest of the party. If I had split my attention, it would have been a disaster.”

“Well, at least you got out without anyone dying,” Edgar said.

“We’re lucky the boss monsters were still of the uncommon variety. If they had gotten elemental abilities, I don’t know if we would have been able to make it. Combined beast waves of level 250 monsters being led by elites are not an easy task to manage. Especially when you’re so tired after fighting for nine and a half days.” She sighed.

“That’s true…” Edgar said. “Was it worth it, though?”

Finally, a smile broke out on Vanessa’s face. “In my opinion, especially since we didn’t have any casualties, it was one hundred percent worth it.”

“What did you get?” Derek asked.

“On top of whatever beasts we looted at the end, which will provide a good amount of gold as a reward itself, we all received 25 free stat points.”

Derek frowned. 25 free stat points didn’t seem like such a great reward to him. Then again, his view on things may have been skewed because of his cheat like beginning and legendary class. Not to mention a buffet of Void Beast for stat enhancement.

However, it didn’t seem to be that way with anyone else, as even Tyron had a glow in his eyes. He hadn’t even stopped hammering when the team had appeared, but when he heard the reward, he was all ears.

“That is a great reward. Especially for those already maxed out.” Edgar agreed. “And if that was the reward for an uncommon trial…” It was true that the only way to obtain stat points after maxing out a class was from Achievements (Awards), Void Beasts, and very, very rare dungeon rewards.

“Exactly.” Vanessa agreed as she looked back at the trial orbs.

Out of the six trial orbs up front, the first one had gone dim, and the one next to it had an increased glow. It even looked like it was surging. It was all Derek could do to not to go forward and examined the next trial. Still, he was more concerned about whatever system notifications they were talking about.

“Now, what about the system notifications?” he asked.

“That… would be my father’s doing,” Edgar replied before bringing his finger up, telling Derek and everyone else who had begun to chatter to calm down. Once everyone was quiet, he began. “I’m sure there are a few of you who know, Vanessa and Avery included, why received the flood of messages when Derek opened his prison for us to leave, and why the others received the notifications five days into their trial.”

“First, as it has been said, Derek’s skill cuts off our contact with the Great System when we are inside. So, really, we would have received the notifications at the same time, but since we were cut off, we didn’t get them until it was opened. And then, we got them all at once.” Edgar began to explain.

Derek still had no clue what he was talking about, but what he said about his skill was true. However, Derek hadn’t received any concerning notifications. The only ones he had gotten was related to his skill level increasing multiple times. Still, he stayed quiet and listened.

“Who all here received a notification about a contract being broken or annulled?” Edgar finally asked. With that question, just over half the participants raised their hands. “The likely scenario is that those you were contracted with are now dead.”

That statement brought up another round of chatter. Edgar waited for everyone to quieten down again before he continued.

“Before we left, the Royal Family, Alanah Swan, and Natalie Savannah, along with Derek here, all worked together to stop Gerald Torith. It was found out that he had done many despicable things, along with many others in the kingdom. I will not go into detail. But, needless to say, the kingdom has been working hard to cull any of those deeply involved in his schemes.”

Oh… Derek thought. It now made sense why he hadn’t received any notification. He only had a few contracts, and they were with trustworthy people. Well, all but his Adventurer’s Guild contract.

“So… House Aarden?” A voice called out from the crowd.

“Cliff Aarden was captured alongside Gerald Torith,” Edgar explained. “I personally do not know how deep it all runs. We will not know until we finish this dungeon. Natalie Savannah has been hard at work obtaining information. As I have been in the dungeon with you all for what amounts to around four months on the outside, I am not privy to that obtained information yet.”

“For now, we need to look forward, to the next trial. This is not a chance we need to miss.” With that, even though everyone may not have accepted everything, they pushed it to the back of their minds. There was nothing they could do about what was going on outside.

When Edgar explained what was going on, Derek made sure to examine everyone’s reactions closely. From what he could gather, though he was no professional in judging people, it hadn’t seemed like anyone was worried about being associated with Gerald. Everything seemed good, at least for now.

Derek watched as Edgar took the first step forward to the second dungeon trial. He placed his hand on it, then let out a giant sigh.

“Well… that’s just great.”