Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army
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Chapter 1 : "..... in Tartarus you will find fame and riches only if you live long enough, and
These aspiring youngsters will be, in the next 5 years, filtered and cla.s.sified according to performance and become the next batch of adventurer to explore Tartarus and bring its riches to the surface world, as well as clean up the monsters that keep sp.a.w.ning inside from becoming too many and thus invade the surface world.
"When you first enter the dungeon, you will be granted the mark of the adventurer by the dungeon itself, this mark is named by the first adventurer - Adun the twilight star- as status, it shows you your current attribute and skills and level, the status can be locked or shared depending on your will, but there is a drawback to the mark, once you are an adventurer you can only progress inside Tartarus."
The kids were listening intently, after all their life depended on it, well all except one, Yunan, he looked very bored and yawned a few times while instructor Mark was giving his speech, he already read most of this information and was waiting for more interesting things that only adventurers knew but he was disappointed so far.
Trying to ignore the bored kid, instructor Mark continued explaining in a long winded speech that those marked by the dungeon can no longer gain skills or strength outside the dungeon, any learning is almost futile and all training is fruitless, those adventurers must venture inside and face the dangers Tartarus has hidden to grow stronger.
On the other hand, only inside the dungeon can one grow and learn faster than those outside by leaps and bounds, if one was lucky to get a book as a drop item they could immediately learn the skill or magic it contains, also magic can only be learned by the marked ones, and it can be used outside after being learned. Although skills can be pa.s.sed on, magic on the other hand needs a book or a grimoire to learn.
Adventurers and the guild have a mutual benefit relations.h.i.+p, the adventurers bring drop items and monster cores back and the guild buys it from them. The guild can also provide lodging and food, as well as training camps and team matching for a fee, those fees go to the running of the guild and its subsidiaries to groom even more adventurers and gain more profit.
And since instructor Mark was a mere guild employee he would not know the secrets of Tartarus that ordinary adventurers knew, a flower in a gla.s.s house basically, trained in a standardized way and barely any adventuring in the treacherous depths of Tartarus.
Thus the bored Yunan kept yawning for the 4 hour long lecture instructor Mark gave, and when midday came it was time to decide the future of the kids, something instructor Mark looked forward to every year. He signaled towards the door and 5 other instructors came inside and with them servants brought a crystal ball on a half meter long pilar.
"These gentlemen are specialist instructors, once you touch the ball a screen will project your status, just like the mark of Tartarus, and according to your dominant attributes your cla.s.s will be selected, now lineup so you can start your training" and so the kids rushed to line up all discussing about which cla.s.s they want to be in and how they will have better status than the other kids.
When the first kid touched the screen instructor Mark went on to explain " as you can see the screen shows your four attributes: Strength, Const.i.tution, Dexterity and Wisdom, since you are only ten your stats will be between 1 and 5, adults of 15 years old will have stats between 1 and 10. 10 is the maximum ordinary humans can achieve, while adventurers have unlimited potential" he then looked at the kid' status.
Instructor mark loudly read the status of the kid "strength 4, const.i.tution 4, dexterity 2, wisdom 1. Not bad kid, you can be a s.h.i.+eldsman or a supporter, go on to the instructor with the s.h.i.+eld badge" he basically shooed the kid away and beckoned the next one in line "next" after a look at the attribute he said "swordsman" shooed the kid away and continued the selection.
According to the guild manual, there are 5 categories to cla.s.sify attributes, those with higher const.i.tution would be tanks, taking the damage for the party, those with higher dexterity, are damage dealers, either bowmen or swordsmen depending on the secondary attributes wisdom or strength respectively, those with higher wisdom can be mages, and those with raw strength will be either supporters (strength and const.i.tution) who carry the luggage or front line sweepers(strength and dexterity) and finally specialist, those who have 3 high attributes and they can be leaders and tacticians added to a role, and then all rounders with equal stats all over.
Soon enough came the time to check young Yunan and the bored look on his face finally cleared, replaced with a look of antic.i.p.ation and expectations, his stats caught instructor Mark off guard, as he was planning on giving Yunan a bit of a hard time for not listening to his lecture he stared at the screen for 10 long seconds then ushered yunan speechlessly to the last instructor mumbling to himself the words "perfect all rounder".
What the screen showed was "strength 5, const.i.tution 5, dexterity 5, wisdom 5". One can understand what instructor Mark went through if one knew that perfect all rounders were rare enough they pop up once in a million or even rarer, those royalty and n.o.bles can train their kids to be all rounders but there will always be an attribute short thanks to their tendencies and natural endowment.
Quite understandable really as perfection is extremely rare in nature, as one must lean towards something or the other, those with high strength are hot headed and rarely have high wisdom, equally their muscles are stronger making them lose some flexibility. The smarter ones have higher wisdom but would lack either strength or vitality, and so perfect all rounders do cause a bit of shock when they appear, as they can be whatever they want, or do everything just as well as the other roles.
Yunan made his way silently to the specialist instructor, he was the only specialist in his cla.s.s of 50 newly enrolled students, and stood behind his teacher wordlessly. After the cla.s.sification finished each instructor took away his charges into either a field or a cla.s.s or a library depending or their roles while Yunan and his instructor stood there staring at each other.
Finally the instructor sighed and said "what do you want to learn?". Yunan simply answered "everything". The instructor looked at him as if this kid was taking something precious from him and heaved another heavy sigh with a reluctant look on his face. "Fine, call me Bai. Each day you will have one cla.s.s in the morning and one in the afternoon, you can take each cla.s.s only once per week and you can choose what to do in your free time, choose your cla.s.ses as you like. Come find me tomorrow at the teachers lounge" with that he left without waiting for Yunan to answer, he did not even ask for his name.
'I got the lazy one, perfect' thought Yunan as he watched Bai leave and started thinking about how he would arrange his cla.s.ses for the week, after all that would be his next 5 years worth of studies and he did not want it to be boring in any way.
