Chapter: 10

As went to the exit he noticed a colourful map on the wall – it was a dungeon board showing all the closest dungeons to the village.

This was probably only meant to be seen by the new adventurers after enough training. He was level 1 so he knew he probably shouldn’t bother looking, but he did anyway.

“It wouldn’t hurt to know,” he smiled.

Looking at the map, he found a single level 1 dungeon: Stink-Rat Marsh.

“Hmm, perhaps they get people to train up in the courtyard so they don’t have to go there? Obviously marshes stink, and rat’s stink, so stink-rat marsh must be an absolute shit-hole.

“It would be a stain in any adventurer’s memory to start here. But I suppose I have no choice.” Jay sighed.

“The less attention I draw, the better, and there will be no one there to witness my class in action.”

A small smile appeared on his face, thinking about his bone goblin skeleton tearing the rats to pieces.

There were various other dungeons on the map but they were not ‘instanced’ dungeons – meaning anyone would be able to go into the dungeon and find you there, whereas the instanced dungeons would create separate pockets of reality in which only you and your party could enter.

Jay added the location to his map, along with a level 5 dungeon named ‘Wolf’s Quarry’.

“Gosh, I wonder what kind of monsters will be at WOLF’S quarry?” he chuckled to himself in the lobby.

His poor attempts at humorous sarcasm had no restraint. Thankfully, it fell of deaf ears as no one was in the lobby today.

Jay decided to grind to level 4 in stink-rat marsh then head to the quarry to level up some more before returning a few days later, he thought that hopefully by then he will have a better chance at succeeding when he would have to lie about his adventurer paper work being lost.

“I may as well get some training in while I’m here” he thought as he exited the building.

Looking around the courtyard, he noticed people with swords, clubs, shields and hatchets were on his right, sparring with each other while some of them attacked helpless training dummies.

Others nearby did push-ups and sit-ups under the guise of their trainer.

“Hmm, perhaps they’re being punished for losing?” Jay reckoned.

On the left side were people with javelins, daggers, whips and bows. They were all attacking targets from their respective distances.

Some of the more talented rangers would attempt to attack wooden birds that an assistant mage had summoned while the ranged trainer looked on, periodically giving pointers to the slightly more inept.

The assistant mage looked bored as her whole job was to collect scraps of wood from the melee training dummies, add magic to them, and convert them into wooden birds which she sent to fly around the archery range.

“Damn, some magic sure is cool. Sucks to do something so boring with it though” Jay wearily smiled, continuing to look around.

“Hmm, I wonder where the mana craft training is being held” Jay thought before noticing in the far right corner.

Beyond the 150-strong mass of melee disciples was a small garden where people were sitting as still as statues.

There were about 60 of them, sitting cross-legged while the trainer sitting cross-legged floating, a few small rocks seemed to defy gravity around him.

As soon as Jay looked at him, he suddenly heard a voice in his head.