Edge awoke with the rising sun, filled with a heady surge of anticipation. He spent a few minutes listening to the vibrant melody of the jungle before slipping out of his bedroll. He took a sip from his canteen, ducked out of his tent, and walked over to the communal showers the crafters had finished building while he was asleep.

  While he scrubbed the grime from his skin, he reviewed his performance from the day before. He had an hour until he was scheduled to enter the dungeon—plenty of time to do some maintenance on his gear, then head to the mess hall to eat breakfast. When his belly was full, he stopped to chat with Violet and Sasha, then stepped inside the command structure to check in with Gram and meet up with the other members of Team Arrow.

  When he walked through the door, there was a surprise waiting for him. The senior members of the Crafters’, Merchants’, and Alchemists’ Associations had studied the reports that the clearing crews had submitted. They had pooled their resources to provide each team with a supply kit designed to help battle the monsters lurking within the Savage Garden.

  Edge unzipped the pouch and checked out the contents while he waited for his team to arrive. The first item was a double-strength flashbang. The device was powerful enough to stun most stage-three monsters for at least a few seconds, although Gram warned him that the blast would impair his allies too if he wasn’t careful how he used it.

  There were two blood-restoration pills—glossy crimson spheres the size of a grape. He had already topped off his blood supply with Regeneration while he slept, so he kept them both. Everyone else ate one to restore their bodies to peak condition. He was thrilled to learn that there was a jar of high-grade scent-erasing ointment for each of them, which had been skill crafted to muffle their heat signatures too.

  Next was a small pile of smokeless charcoal bricks. They would burn for hours and provide a decent amount of heat without creating any smoke that might give his location away. The final item was a cleansing tonic, which would help purge the body of foreign mana, in case anyone got hit with a skill that they couldn’t resist on their own.

  By now, all four clearing crews had arrived. Before they got ready to head inside the dungeon, Gram shared highlights from each team’s report, along with what the night crews had discovered. Team Arrow was the only crew to set foot outside the maze, but the others had run into some sleep-inducing mushrooms, a glade filled with pit traps, and a few unusual monsters that the hunters might encounter while passing through the zone.

  As he had promised, Gram handed Fox a pack of modified flares, in case she spotted the blob or another powerful elite. In addition to the flares’ special color, they would linger in air far longer than the others, so that no one stumbled across the killer creatures unaware. He had also added a mana seed to her pouch, to replace the one they had eaten the day before. With that, the hunters were dismissed and granted permission to enter the dungeon.

  Today, their mission was to continue clearing the jungle, while scouting the swamp from the periphery of the zone. The crews had already taken out all the peak stage-two monsters lurking in the maze as far as they knew, and the remaining residents could be handled by the night teams.

  When everyone was ready, Team Arrow, Spear, Hammer, and Sword met outside the entrance to the Savage Garden. They wished each other good luck, then stepped through the fog door. The hunters moved with purpose, buoyed by yesterday’s success—ready to take the next step toward conquering the Savage Garden and claim the core manufactory for Puppet Town.

  After Fox and Snake conducted a quick strategy session that incorporated everything they’d learned thus far, the crew went to work, heading for the jungle on the far side of the maze. As they made their way from clearing to clearing, Edge realized that he was practically vibrating with excitement. In part because he was hitting his stride with his new crew and was eager to explore more of the dungeon. But he was even more stoked about his Epic skill Intimidating Roar, which would finish digesting a little after sunset.

  He might not get to use it today, especially since he needed to keep Roar’s existence a secret, but having a powerful new ace in the hole would be a comforting addition to his bag of tricks—a means of dealing with unforeseen circumstances that could save his life in a pinch. At the very least, Edge could meet Roar’s avatar inside his skill garden and learn the details of how it worked.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Team Arrow had been hoping to head straight into the jungle, then start clearing the zone while scouting the swamp beyond. But it turned out that crossing the maze wasn’t going to be quite so simple after all. More monsters had migrated into the clearings, even though the night crews had been hard at work thinning their numbers while he slept.

  On the bright side, these creatures were noticeably weaker than the ones they had fought the day before—monsters that hadn’t been strong enough to claim a corrupted pool until the hunters eliminated the competition. Better still, Edge didn’t feel nearly as stressed while walking through the overgrowth now that he had Penetrate Foliage to spot any monsters waiting in ambush. As a bonus, they didn’t run into any of the oversized mosquitoes this time around.

  Two hours and four fights later, they found themselves back in the final clearing along their route—the glade where they had battled the demon the day before. After taking out a disgusting slug monster that spat wads of caustic green goo, they were ready to enter the jungle. But before Team Arrow crossed into the region, he had a decision to make.

  As he had hoped, the series of fights had granted him sufficient experience to cycle up. He broke into a broad grin as he summoned his Guide, reading the update while pondering how to spend his points.

  You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle-up your core. Your new cycle is: 20.

  You have 3 attribute points awaiting allocation.

  Edge only had one more cycle to go before he reached the peak of stage one, at which point he would learn the requirements to evolve Skill-Eater to stage two. With any luck, they wouldn’t be too hard to complete while clearing the jungle and swamp, and he would be able to evolve before the teams came together to tackle the elite monsters and the dungeon’s boss.

  Since he had invested in Perception last cycle, and had Penetrate Foliage to help spot trouble coming, he decided to shore up what he considered to be his biggest weakness—getting hit by a skill that could incapacitate him or end his life in a flash. Thus, he decided to put all three points into Disruption.

  He loved the sensations that came with raising Disruption, and they always taught him something interesting. This time, Edge felt the buffer that extended a few inches past the boundary of his body thicken, which made him feel cleaner, despite the sweat suffusing his skin.

  When he focused on the sensation, he realized that his disruptive field was actively filtering out corrupted magicytes from the environment, allowing him to refill his reservoir inside the Savage Garden without drawing contaminants into his core in the process.

  The dungeon’s taint had been slowing down his rate of recovery without him being aware of it. Now that his field could do a better job of straining out the corrupted elements, he was able to absorb magicytes faster—effectively giving him a free boost to Generation on top of the other benefits, at least in this environment.

  When everyone had finished consolidating their gains, Team Arrow stepped out of the maze and entered the jungle. Over the next few hours, they were hoping to take out more peak stage-two monsters, possibly even a few that had reached early stage three. That being said, Fox and Snake wanted to gather some intel and learn more about the lay of the land before committing to another difficult encounter.

  As they explored the aquamarine rainforest, the crew learned that the zone did indeed have its own corrupted resource. Black vines with pulsing red veins grew where the magicytes were thickest. They nurtured a single fruit each, which was invariably guarded by a powerful monster until it reached maturity.

  The details of these dynamics were beyond him, although Edge had a hunch that it helped accelerate their evolution. He assumed that when the fruit ripened, the monster would consume it and then set off in search of fresh prey.

  This system created a competition for resources that was similar to the maze. But instead of a fixed layout with clear points of contention, the locations of the ripe fruits kept changing. It forced the monsters to scour the zone while precipitating the endless series of conflicts that gave the Savage Garden its name.

  Along the way, Team Arrow fought another peak stage-two monster, which resembled a lion with the head of a crocodile. It was a fearsome opponent, but after being hit by the full range of Snake’s disables and poisons, the hunters were able to keep it from closing the distance and whittled it down from range. As they fought, the team kited the creature back along the route they had taken, reducing the chance of running into anything else in the process.

  Fortunately, they didn’t encounter the blob that Gram had named the “bone slime” again, or any of the other elite monsters for that matter. The other clearing crews hadn’t either, judging by the lack of signal flares in the air.

  After they recovered from the fight, the hunters followed the bamboo wall until they reached the swamp. Since it was a bad idea to delve deeper into the Savage Garden until more of the jungle was cleared, they decided to walk along the border of the zone and scout as much of the swamp as they could before the end of their shift.

  Edge kept his eyes open for more skills to steal as his stomach rumbled with a hunger that had nothing to do with his next meal.