Rudely awoken by his Captain Vinda's voice booming outside his and his fellow soldier's tent as the mountain of a woman made her rounds around the encampment, Isaak groggily sat up in the little bedroll, that was basically just two planks with some cloth covers, and donned the newly polished armor he'd been allotted by the Kingdom for this expedition.

  Typically, he wore a leather armor that was somewhere inbetween typical leather armor, made of only leather, and heavy armor with metal plates and such.

  It had a breastplate, thinner than what was typical of heavy armor, but had thicker than normal leather padding, making it something like a "heavy armor for dexterous people". At least, that's what the smith had called it. To him, though, it was Bertha, his lovely shield against the monsters of the Dungeon.

  It pained him somewhat to be parted from his love, his mock–heavy armor, but he had to say... Proper heavy armor was pretty nice.

  Though, it was really heavy... Like, really, really heavy. He felt like just standing up while wearing it would break his glankle.

  Still, it fif have that kind of gleams-in-the-light effect that only true heavy armors had, and he felt dang dapper with it on.

  He glanced over at his tent-mate, Melsa, who was already fully decked out in her own steely armor. He'd never beaten her on time, ever, and he figured he never would, either.

  Which he, frankly, was fine with.

  He could live with leaving the full marks for the sweats just fine. He was only doing this because there was literally nothing or him to do back home other than farm and, the majority of the time, getting an earful from his mother.

  Of course, if he'd known what kind of earfuls he'd get from the Commander here in the Legion of Expedition, he'd very much have thought twice before entering. The Captain was worse than his mother.

  Maybe.

  Okay, no, she wasn't - but she was scarier, that was for sure. Maybe.

  "Come on, or the Captain is gonna kill you. I think literally, this time, too," Melsa said as she exited the tent, armor on and her equipment spotless and at the ready.

  Isaak sighed.

  "Yeah, probably..."

  He got up and left the tent a few paces behind his tent-mate, just in time to line up before the Captain turned around and glared at the troops.

  She narrowed her eyes and scrutinized each and every soldier like she had never seen anything that met her standards in her life. She tsk-ed when she came to Isaak, but then paused a bit when she came to Melsa, obviously pleased with her nearly compulsive cleanliness and upkeep of her armor and gear.

  Isaak looked away, ignoring the Captain's viscous glare like he had been for the past week, focusing his attention on a stone protruding from the dirt wall of the cavern instead. It would have to keep him entertained for the next half-hour as his Captain yelled the troop out.

  ...

  It did not. But the dissosiacion it offered was appreciated. Isaak imagined it like a great, big steak - not the hard, dry rations he'd been chained to - and he could practically see it waving at him with dainty arms, just begging to be eaten by him.

  When he was about to have autitory hallucinations of it speasking magically into his mind, the holy vision was interrupted by his Captains face, the lack of distance between their faces a she yelled at him jarring.

  "MUNIFEX ISAAK, IS THAT CLEAR?"

  "GAH! No, steak-"

  "IF YOU WANT TO KEEP DAWDLING AROUND, STARING AT ROCKS, THEN I THINK IT'D BE BEST IF YOU REJOINED THE TRIONED IN YOUR BELOVED HOME VILLAGE. WHAT DO YOU THINK, MUNIFEX ISAAK?"

  Isaak snapped a crisp salute. "No, Captain! I have the will, Captain!"

  "IS THAT SO?"

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  The Captain scoffed.

  "WELL THEN I THINK IT'S HIGH TIME YOU START ACTING LIKE IT! Munifex Melsa!"

  "Yes, Captain!" she responded, already having saluted the whole time.

  "He will take over your carry-duty for the day!"

  Isaak could practically hear the smug grin in the other soldier's voice as she answered. "Of course, Captain!"

  The next half-hour was spent taking down the camp they'd put up the day before, Melsa gleefully placing her fully loaded backpack full of weapons, healing kits and extra armor pieces and the like right next to Isaaks own pack.

  Welp.

  At least he'd only have to carry his own tower-shield, as Melsa would be using her own at the front, while he, with the supplies, would move in the back. With his own backpack, Melsa's and a portion of the Legions food-supply, that is.

  Yay.

  With devilish benevolence, Melsa helped him suit up with his torture-packs for the day - one pack on his back, one on his front and the food supply, not sure where she should put it, simply splatted onto his head, forcing him into a grand, and frankly, uncalled for, balancing act. If he leaned slightly backwards, he would fall. If he leaned slightly forwards, he would - you guessed it - fall. If he leaned at all in any of the other heavenly directions, the food supply would fall, and probably be ruined, with his luck. He only had a small slit to see through between the supply sack and Melsa's backpack, which would definetly make him extremely capable of not tripping, he was sure.

  Sighing, he tried to look on the bright side.

  If he did a good, or well, desent enough job here, he would make enough money to move to the city and perhaps join the Guard there.

  As this expedition was organized in a rush and the grand majority of the soldiers across the country that were signed up to join had only reacently enlisted, the King himself had declared that every soldier that excelled in their service would get a bonus, or in the higher-ups cases, a raise. It would be a hefty blow to the kingdom's treasury - many a royal trearurer would weep, Isaak was sure - but the King had little choise. After the sudden magica influx yesterday evening, there were only so many ways the guy could motivate thousands upon thousands of people out of their homes in the middle of dinner time to armor up and march head first into the Dungeon.

  Though Isaak would have loved, loved, to have gotten a full night's rest - or even just eat the rest of his mothers balwer soup - he understood the urgency. Such magica spikes had only occoured a few times before in the history of Miraeal. What, five... nine times? He honestly didn't know, as he'd spent most of his time at school growing up doing something like what he did with that rock back there.

  'Steak... No!'

  Snapping himself out of it, he mentally slapped himself across the cheek, as his real cheek was currently buried, and started marching along with the rest of the supply carriers at the back of the proscession.

  'If I so much as stumble, I'll probs never be allowed to eat steak again! Shape up!'

  While something happening five, or nine, times didn't exactly seem all that rare, if most certainly was. When you take into consideration that the history of the planet goes back hundreds of thousands of years, that is as rare as him not getting called stupid for a day.

  Which had never happened before.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  So, best believe, it was not something that the kingdom, or any other world powers, could ignore.

  Even he'd felt it, like a great wave of incomprihensible amounts of magica pulsing from the core of the planet, and he hadn't even trained his magica-receptors properly. Given it had been more like a tingle, but for the mana to get that potent, somthing big, probably awful must have happened. He'd heard a few of his fellow Munifexes gossiping about wether it was one of the Universe grade enteties that had woken up, or something, but Isaak doubted it.

  Or, more like he just really didn't want that to be the reason. He'd be stuck as a foot soldier in the Legion for years - if not his whole life, if he even lived a 'whole life' - dragging his sorry behing this way and that in the Dungeon, trying his best not to die.

  The thought made him frown, and for the first time in his life, he fully concentrated on a task task he'd been given - not falling on his backside.

  ??~??~??

  After two hours of trecking through narrow and winding dirt tunnels, his troop finally made it to the next encampment site. The tunnel opened up to a similar cavern as the previous encampment, though a bit smaller in size.

  Melsa rejoined him, looking worse for wear as she'd just slain the last of the monsters that had occupied the area with the rest of their little team of rookie soldiers, and helped him take off the supply pack, that had, for reasons unbeknownst to Isaak, not fallen off during transport, even with the pointy helmet sticking into it.

  To bith of their horror, however, removing the sack from his head revealed the hole said point had torn into bottom of the fabrick, and now that it was unobstructed by his helmet, all the supplies romptly fell to the dirt floor.

  "..."

  "..."

  "I'm blaming this on you."

  "No, you're bloody not-"

  "Captain, ma-am!" Melsa called out, encasing Isaaks fate in stone.

  Alas, what felt like, and might actually have been, two hours of being called stupid and being sentences to an eternity on the front lines, Isaak was sent out with a scouting team to check the side tunnels that led to a part of the Dungeon they weren't even technically supposed to be investigating this expedition.

  Feeling less will for life than he had the past few years, Isaak left the besties and tredged into the small side-tunnel along with a handful of other soldiers that were probably sent for a similar reason as him.

  ??~??~??

  "Do we have to check that way? There's literally nothing here," one of the Munifexes asked. "Even the grass seems disinterested in the dirt it's growing from."

  "It's not grass, idiot," another said. "They're Felitos plants. More like bushes than grass."

  The first soldier rolled his eyes. "Gods have mercy, Gullicah, you're boringer than the dirt the grass grows from! How about you and your technicalities go back to camp and leave the rest of us to it."

  Gullicah scoffed. "Boringer? Yeah, I think I'll stick to my technicalities and maybe reccomend you stick to a bloody grammar book, how about that?"

  "Uh, guys?" Issak said, and the other two turned to stare at him.

  The small gaggle of rookies had decided to split up some while back as the tunnels forked, and lucky winner Isaak had been stuck with these two geniuses for the past hour.

  "Huh?" The two soldiers turned simultaneously to look at him, and Isaak couldn't help but be reminded of Perkas, a species found on the third layer of the Dungeon, renouned for their... 'special' charm. Essentially, they were known for being the monsters with the lowest Intelligence stat in the whole Dungeon, so much so that anyone who glanced at them were surprized the species thrived as much as they did.

  As for the people who studied them, they were positively baffled.

  "I, uh, I'll be going this way?" he said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of an even smaller side passage. It was large enough to not have to bend one's back, but even if it hadn't been, Isaak wouldn't have cared.

  Ha couldn't, physically couldn't listen to these two bofoons scuffle with eachother any longer - it was getting to the point where it was affecting his sanity.

  "Huh? Yeah, sure." They answered, again, simultaneously, but Isaak pushed the images of little Parkas out of his mind and entered the tunnel before he heard anything else that made his Intelligence stat drop more than it already had.

  Now blessedly free of the duo of despair, Isaak slowed his pace and gripped his torch tighter.

  As a common, low-levelled soldier, he hadn't yet trained his Perception enough to have dark vision, so he relied on his trusty torch to light the way. Although he'd happily parted from the other two, he had to admit it was a stupid move. Moving in the dungeonalone, alone - espescially if you were, well, Isaak - was a good way to put yourself on the fast path to death. He was even approaching the entrance to the second layer, a place someone like him had no place being.

  For once listening to his better judgement, he was about to turn around and head back, when he saw something he had never expected to encounter so deep into the first layer - a shed.

  Or, well, whether it was a shed or a shack or a room or a whatever else was up for discussion, but it was certainly some kind of room.

  The wall was made of a grey, smooth stone, so smooth it looked like whomever had made it had spent a dang long time on it, and a simple, wooden door.

  But there was only the door; No windows or embellishments, not even as much as a sign saying who this little oddity belonged to.

  With knitted brows, the soldier approached the shed, his reserve dagger at the ready should any monsters jump out at him. When he reached the door without issue, he used his elbow to check if the door was closed. To his immence surprize, the door opened without issue, raising his apprehention through the roof. He took several quick steps back and entered what he hoped was a threatening pose, knife at the ready.

  After a few minutes of nothing happening, Isaak breathed out a slightly unsteady breath, and decided to just go for it.

  Reaching the door a second time, he lowered in the head of the torch, looking from side to side to see if there were any dangers he could see, and, seeing it was empty, took a step inside. Once inside, Isaak's eyes knitted even more, the torch dropping to the ground in surprize.

  It was difficult to explain, but he felt a subtle shift in energy the second his foot stepped into this small, cramped space. This small, cramped room felt like it was in a different world, and oddly, Isaak felt... better. Sharper. It felt like he had lived a life of chaos, senseless, mind-numbing chaos up until this point, and only now arrived at what he could only describe as true peace.

  It was... it was exstatic.

  His eyes were drawn, as if by magic, to a meduim-sized, green book on the table on the left-most side of the room. He took a shaky step towards it, and, with odd fluidity, pulled out the chair and sat down.

  His heart trembled in his chest, with what emotion, he did not know, as he picked up the book and looked at the cover.

  The Felitos Plant

  by

  The Librarian

  A shudder ran through him as he read the name of the author, and the odd energy he'd been feeling doubled in intensity for a moment.

  He took a few seconds to centre himself, blinking hard, before he opened the book to the first page, revealing the foreword, looking like it had been hand-written by this 'Librarian' themselves.

  Welcome, Visitor.

  It was strange. The simple greeting was worded to refer to anyone, any 'Visitor', but Isaak felt acutely that these few opening words were aimed directly at him.

  There are many places one can go to attain the knowledge of the Cosmos, I imagine,

  thus I am eternally grateful my humble library has been graced with your visitation.

  May knowledge prevail.

  A great warmth radiated from each word, as if they were the words of a great, benevolent entity that was truly grateful that he, exactly he had come here.

  Isaak sucked in his lips. He'd never felt anything close to this sensation before. He'd never met anyone who said anything with even approaching the amount of warmth and welcoming of these few words. It was... It felt... Strange. Foreign.

  ... Good.

  Flipping the page, more politely, this time, Isaak finally laid his eyes on the contents of the book, and the second he did, his hands involuntarily gripped the book as if it were a lifeline.

  From each word shone a regal, green energy that, without warning, shot out from the page and into the soldiers mind, each word suffusing itself into his brain, engraving its contents deep into it so that it could never be forgotten. Isaak felt unparallelled focus, one he had never experienced before, as the knowledge of the book streamed into his mind.

  Then, as abruptly as it had started, it ended. His head flew back as if a rope had been cut, and the book fell onto the table with a dull thud.

  "Haa, haa, haa, haa..."

  Isaak breathed heavily, as if he'd just finished a million training exercises, and strangely, now found his mind suddenly full of useless facts about some random common weed.

  "...What?"