Jack's POV

  Three days in, and I was ready to kill Jensen for good.

  All the pretences of him being a wise old man were chucked as it was just him and me. We had bickered and bickered so much that now I felt more at ease with him than with my own parents.

  Three days ago, we had left floor two and climbed up to floor one to avoid the adventurers from attacking us again. The decision was made by Jensen because of what the blonde mage had said before her death. Now, things could play out in two ways. Firstly, the big shot dungeon council member could heed the advice of a low-level party member and come after me. Or he could just ignore it. But we couldn't afford to take such a gamble just yet.

  So we climbed to floor one with Jensen blasting a hole for us near the dungeon staircase. The dungeon reacted to the breach by closing the hole behind us and spawning a dozen goblins for us to deal with.

  I got some good XP and had crossed over to level two that same day. But the thing was that the floor one had no safe zone anymore. So Jensen and I had been on constant alert for any random thing walking in from the surface and into the dungeon while also keeping an eye on the goblins spawning around me.

  The plan was to stay here until I reached level five and unlocked the map feature. But the goblins here were of level one, and they bought lesser xp. So I had to grind a lot harder than before.

  On the plus side. The goblin's attacks were less painful as well, and they were perfect training partners as per Jensen. In the downtime, we would get. He taught me stances and combos that I could use when fighting. For a mage, he happened to know a lot about hand to hand combat.

  Despite three days having gone by. I was yet to master even one of the things that he had taught me, and my default was still balling up and letting things hit me.

  "Just how badly did they bully you?" asked Jensen, and I dropped my guard to look at him while we practiced one on one.

  He was standing a couple of feet away with a long stick in his hand which was supposed to be a sword, and he was teaching me how to fight against a weapon while being unarmed.

  "I was never bullied," I shrugged.

  He placed his hands on his hips.

  "I'm not lying," I said.

  But he wasn't buying it.

  "We played," I said, lowering my arms. "Me and the other kids—"

  "Who were inducted?" he asked.

  I nodded.

  Even though it had been close to thirteen years now. I still remember all of them. Many of them had been inducted quite early, and back then, the system wasn't that adamant about having everyone inducted at birth.

  "So let me get this straight," said Jensen, standing tall. "A bunch of your friends came back after two years and started beating you up?"

  "It was training," I said. "It wasn't bullying…" I corrected him. But looking back on how it was always me who was made to be the monster, and they got to be the heroes. And how they would beat me up until I begged them to stop the game.

  A lump formed in my throat as memories resurfaced out of nowhere, and I held my tongue from saying anything anymore.

  Were they really bullying me? I asked myself, recalling how I would get the shit kicked out of me every day.

  Was that the reason my parents asked me to stop playing out when Ellie left? I asked myself next.

  Ellie was the one who looked after me. Moreover, Karaa was already inducted and frankly much stronger than me by the time she turned three. Now that I thought about it, there was no reason for me to have continued to baby sit her as Tuma's took care of her more than me.

  Wait… where are all these memories coming back from? I asked myself. He didn't hit me that hard on the head, did he now? I thought.

  But the memories were here, and they told a different story than the one I believed to be true. I took in a breath and sighed as I saw my entire childhood in a new light, all because of Jensen's one question.

  "Ah, now you see it," said Jensen, with a chuckle.

  He had read the expression on my face again.

  "Fine, they beat me up," I said to him. "The people who I had always thought of as my friends may not have seen me the same way." I paused. "But my past has no bearing on my present or on my future," I said.

  That being said, having recalled those memories. It sort of felt strange in my chest. Like my childhood wasn't all giggles and fun like I had thought it to be. And that suffocating feeling. It grew, and it made me want to leave this dungeon behind even more.

  "How much longer before you reach level five?" asked Jensen, in a bid to change the topic.

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  I looked at him, and he was standing with his arms crossed. The tunnel was still there around us, and the glowing orb had lit out surrounding.

  Dungeon Lord, I thought, and the screen popped up in front of me.

  "I'm still short of killing forty goblins," I said.

  "That's roughly eighty xp," he said.

  I nodded.

  I had gotten stat points, but they were locked because of all the penalties. Jensen had asked me to keep grinding, nonetheless, and keep pushing forward. But the thing was that I wasn't inducted. I didn't even know if those stat points could be assigned into strength and other parameters like he had said.

  As a matter of fact, the grind from level zero to level one was ignored from the count altogether. Because the xp count started from level one when I checked the system.

  I called on forth the xp I needed to climb each level to confirm my calculation.

  Ping!

  Level 1 -> Level 2 -> 100xp

  Level 2 -> Level 3 -> 200xp

  Level 3 -> Level 4 -> 425xp

  Level 4 -> Level 5 -> 650xp

  Current xp: 1295xp

  xp required to reach next level: 80xp

  Note: Cumulative XP needed to reach Level 5 is 1375xp

  "Status," I said, and a new screen popped up.

  Name: Jack

  Age: Nineteen

  Class: Nil

  Title: Lord of the Dungeon

  Level: Four

  Stat Points: Twenty five

  Strength: Zero | Mana: Zero | Speed: Zero | Stamina: Zero

  Regen: Zero

  Skills (Active): None

  System Restriction: Bad boy dungeon lord!

  The bottom part of the status could be scrolled endlessly, which highlighted all the restrictions I was under, thanks to the penalties from the system. There were over a hundred red lines of text, and I stopped reading after a dozen or so.

  I know I should have been bothered about the restrictions placed on me. About the dungeon dying if it ate itself out one floor at a time. About the deal with Jensen going south and a hundred other things.

  But what outweighed all of that was the fact that I was nineteen years old. Not seventeen as I had thought. I mean, I had the pocket watch to tell me the time of the day. And it wasn't like we had drastic seasonal changes like in a few of the books I had read in the library about the outside world.

  So, where did I lose two years of my life? I asked myself.

  My parents had celebrated my birthday every year. Did they miss out on a few? I mean, that was quiet unlikely, as even when mom was gone when Karaa was about to be born. My dad had made an effort to make those birthdays special.

  "Uu-huu…" said Jensen. "What's wrong?" he asked me.

  I didn't want to tell him that how he had lost track of time inside the dungeon. The same thing had happened to me, and I was about two years older than I had initially thought. That my mom and dad by this age were parents to me and my sister. And here I was, stumbling in the dark with no hope for the future.

  Seriously, how could I be nineteen?

  I had asked myself the same question for the last three days, ever since I had seen my status for the first time. But then again, there was no point in fussing about it. It was my age, not a death sentence. Moreover, if I had told Jensen about this. He would have laughed. There was no way I wanted that. So I just changed the topic.

  "I don't think anything would change when I reach level five," I said, not willing to talk about the real issue that was bothering me, and shut the interface.

  Jensen furrowed his eyebrows.

  "Frankly, I think the stat points are going to be useless for me," I added, and looked up at him. "I'm not even inducted…" I said, hoping Jensen would say that I was wrong. But he didn't say it.

  Instead, he just eyed me, as if he was out of ideas on how to deflect this question.

  "Let's not lose sight of our goal," he said instead. "We one shot the final boss. Take control of the dungeon. You hand over the reins to me. I do what I have to do with it. Then you, me, your family, and the Tumas." He paused. "We all move to the city with the tower for good."

  I nodded at that. But I could feel the hopelessness welling up inside me. It was one thing to know the path, and a whole other thing to walk on it. I had lost count of just how many goblins I had killed. Sometimes I just let them get in a hit or two to keep things interesting.

  Jensen put up a bonfire, and we both sat facing each other again. My wounds were healing much faster, and if and when a goblin would spawn. Jensen would kill it for me.

  I sat there quietly for a long time staring at the flames, and Jensen must have seen the doom and gloom on my face. Because he was being extra annoying than usual in a bid to cheer me up.

  "Tell me about this girl that you were thinking and blushing about," he asked, and all my thoughts came to a halt.

  I looked up at him, and he tossed me a hot bun. This one filled with sweet jam on the inside.

  "What was her name?"

  "Why are you bringing that up?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

  "Come on, you can tell me…" he said. "What was she like? What was her name?" he asked.

  I didn't budge.

  "It's important to stop and unwind from time to time," he said, while munching. "Or else we risk a burnout." He smiled wide. "So what was her name?" he asked.

  "Ellie," I said, and took a bite. "And I wasn't blushing," I added.

  "Did she bully—"

  "No," I shook my head at him. "She was good to my sister and me," I added. "In fact, their family and ours were really close."

  He nodded at that and munched on.

  "You think Ellie and her family went to the tower?" I asked him, before taking a bite.

  "It's possible," he said, while munching. "The tower has a way of gathering the strong towards it. Everyone eventually gets there sooner or later."

  "So she could be in the tower?" I asked him, with my heart picking up a pace just with the thought of getting to see her again.

  "Yes," said Jensen. "But the tower is much bigger than this dungeon," he added. "It won't be easy to find her—"

  "I think it will be easy," I said, taking a bite.

  "How so?" he arched an eyebrow.

  "She has an aura about her," I said. "She has a way of having people rally right behind her."

  Jensen smiled at that.

  "What about you?" I asked him. "Do you have a family—"

  "Nope," he said, dusting his hands off the crumbs. "Born an orphan, raised an orphan, and lived an orphan," he said. "I just go wherever I want, whenever I want, and the place I choose to stay." He paused. "It becomes my home." He spread his arms wide to declare the area around the bonfire as his home.

  I blinked at that.

  Jensen tossed me another bun and had one himself.

  "So you don't have anyone?" I asked, and that made him stop mid bite and eye me.

  "No," he said, with no smile on his face, and munched on the bread.

  For a moment, I felt sorry for him. But then…

  Ping!

  "Liar, liar, now your pants are on fire"

  Note: You just lied to the baby lord of the dungeon. Throwing you to the nearest ceiling in…

  I wasn't even done reading the prompt when Jensen was lifted by his leg and was slammed to the eight foot high ceiling, and he came crashing back down onto the dungeon floor.

  He was plastered on the wet dungeon floors face first, and he remained there for a long moment. He then lifted his face, caked in wet mud, and spat some of it before saying.

  "Damn, you, system…"

  *****