Ed was jolted awake by what felt like a vacuum. It was a feeling he quickly became accustomed to. The vacuum swallowed him up and returned him to the dungeon.
The groggy feeling of entering a body hit him once more. He found himself on the ground this time, however.
'What just happened?' He asked himself.
While still on the ground as a pile of bones he noticed an envelope with an exclamation mark in the corner of his field of vision.
'How do I check that? Is it like missed messages or something' He got up unsteadily and set all of his bones in the right place.
'Ummm... notification? Messages?' He asked unsurely.
[Opening missed messages]
A chain of glowing texts appeared in rapid succession.
[Recalling Champion's soul]
[<Mental Fortitude lvl. 1> Acquired]
[Champion has leveled up]
[<Basic Transmission lvl. 0> Acquired]
[Summoning Champion]
It seemed a lot happened while he was knocked out. He wasted no time trying to find out the effect of his knew skills.
'Status'
[Name: Ed$#&!]
Type: Skeleton
Health: 100/100
Strength: 0
Agility: 0
Constitution: 0
Dexterity: 0
~Skills:~
[Hurl lvl. 2] -Show info-
[Swordsmanship lvl. -1] -Show info-
[Hoarding lvl. 1] -Show info-
[Mental Fortitude lvl. 1]
Increased resistance to emotional and mental impacts.
[Basic Transmission Lvl. 0]
Skill holder can send their intent to conscious things.
~Achievements~
[First Kill]
The reality of killing for the first time lessens the mental impact of subsequent kills
'What about my level up?' He noticed that there was no level indicator in his status so he couldn't help but ask.
[Champion has become a level 1 consciousness]
'What do I get for leveling up?'
[Leveling up unlocks more skills.]
Putting all of that aside, Ed quickly took in his surroundings. He expected to be in a new room but since he didn't die this time he ended up in the exact same place.
That reminded him of the magician, whose body should be near one the room's entrances.
He took a quick glance around and found a dirtied blue robe on the ground. The body was nowhere to be found. Ed didn't know if he should be thankful or not.
'Did you eat his body?' He curiously asked.
The system didn't reply. He approached the robe and picked it up, it was heavier than he expected.
The robe was in a very poor state. He checked the contents and found some empty vials of what he presumes were potions.
'Can Skeletons use potions?' Ignoring that thought he continued to observe the ground where the corpse used to lay.
'No weird necklaces or bracelets...' He still hadn't realized that the robe was full of all sorts of enchantments.
'Should I wear it?' He looked at his bare and boney body. He found no reason not to. The tattered and bloodied robe would give him a unique fear factor.
He put the robe on but felt no differences.
'I expected a magician's robe to be more special' Unbeknownst to Ed, the reason none of the previous enchantments worked was due to its broken state.
'Hold on a minute... Who opened all the chests?' He found no items from chests in the robe or the floor so who opened the chest? Do the adventurers have an inventory function?
'Maybe magicians can store items or something...' He wasn't entirely convinced since he believed if that was the case the items would drop after the caster dies but in the end, how was he supposed to know?
'Let's put this issue aside for now' As much as he would love to steal the dungeon's treasures and keep them for himself he decided to test out his level 0 Basic Transmission skill on his allies.
He saw one of the basic skeletons standing near a pile of stones. It seemed the dungeon doesn't reset, or maybe it just hasn't yet.
'Give me a rock' He tried to send a message from his current distance. It wasn't a large distance to any extent but the Skeleton didn't respond.
He slowly drew closer while sending that same message. The skeleton finally responded when he was just a few steps away.
They were both standing next to the pile and the Skeleton gave him one rock.
'Thanks...' The skill was far too limited. He would need to level it up considerably if he wanted to gather a skeleton army.
'Follow me!' The skeleton slowly followed after him as he walked circles around the room. He picked up his speed slowly but the Skeleton stopped following him once he got too far.
'Either these guys are too stupid or they are too lazy' He wouldn't be able to gather bone shields erm- allies if the range was too small.
'Now what?'
He never considered what dungeon mobs do when there was no one in the dungeon.
After a few seconds of silence and the rattling of bones. He decided on what to do, he would set up a base somewhere.
He would need to find a large room with a lot of resources. All the resources the dungeon had were stones and decorative items. After setting up a base he would need to map out the dungeon floor.
'That should work to kill time' He could place the stones all over the hypothetical large room to map out the dungeon. As long as no allied Skeletons kicked the stones around he would never get lost as long as he remembers the way back to the base.
He tried to remember if there was such a suitable room nearby.
'I can't remember anything and I can't ask the locals.' Would a zombie have more brains?
Taking a final glance around the room he got ready to leave. He wished he could see his new look using a mirror.
He grabbed his untrusty shield and left in a random direction.
***
A couple of days passed since William entered the dungeon. The freedom union was starting to get worried.
Adventurers would not be able to carry all of their loot when clearing a dungeon for the first time so it isn't unusual to make multiple trips.
They didn't know that William had a way to store things.
"Any sightings?" Samuel the representative of the Freedom Union in Arbor town asked one of his subordinates.
"No sir." A simple reply but that was more than enough to sour his mood.
He let out a small sigh and dismissed his subordinate with a wave of his hand.
He stood up from his office chair and walked up to a shelf. He pulled out a file labeled 'Special Dungeons' He flipped a few pages while thinking about the issue. As of late, uncleared dungeons in the area had become quite treacherous.
The file that listed the findings of successful parties talked about unique monsters whose intellect surpassed the regular ones. The only difference was that all of those dungeons were high leveled ones. The danger was almost entirely expected!
'Could this one be a special dungeon too?' The chances of that were small given the expected difficulty but he couldn't think of much else.
The reason the Freedom Union was so hurried was that they were keeping this information under wraps. Only their area was affected by the strange occurrence so far at least as far as they knew.
The Freedom union has had made many technological advances thanks to the special drops of intelligent monsters.
Their latest product allowed adventurers that were affiliated to them to locate the next floors with ease, it was a revolutionary breakthrough in adventuring.
That device allowed adventurers to skip the mapping process and just head straight to where it mattered.
Dungeons that were not cleared are always expanding! New rooms, new monsters, new dangers!
That's why it became important to clear dungeons away from cities and towns if they let them expand too much they could pose problems.
Dungeons that expand beyond their capabilities start spawning monsters outside of the dungeon. That phenomenon was usually seen in high leveled dungeons since they are so hard to clear.
The new treasures were obviously enticing but not worth the risk! The last time an organization let a high-level dungeon expand to satisfy its greed the organization ceased to exist.
Humanity had to clean up after them losing a lot of valued adventurers in the process. If the dungeon didn't finish off that organization they would instead!
"Tsk, this auction thing is not worth the risk anymore" Rather than moving resources and personnel to clear a dungeon that may or may not be worth the cost, it was much more beneficial to let adventurers pay them to explore them. Nonetheless, Samuel was starting to have his doubts about this method.
He put the file away and decided to send in one of their affiliated parties, their first priority would be recon.