Travelers are not inherently stronger, faster, or smarter than others. What makes travelers unique is the ability to bring forth potential in the universe and act on it.

  -Traveler’s saying

  The next segment of the dungeon looks like it’s an outdoor museum with its combination of sculptures, pools of water, and shaped shrubberies. The sculpted landscape gives me a sense of unease. I know beneath the beauty is life-threatening danger.

  My eyes roam the landscape, searching for monsters or traps lying in wait. Up to this point, I hadn’t seen any traps in the dungeons. The cave dungeon on the island and the path through the maze were simple, sparse spaces. The only way to travel through the narrow pathways. Now this dungeon has a large open space to navigate, filled with extraneous decorations. I wonder how many are for show and how many have a darker purpose.

  There are large shallow pools made of tiles and overflowing with vibrant foliage. In the fountain and littered around the garden are stone fountains featuring feminine forms, flowers, shells, and fish. The less prominent statues strategically take up any space not filled by the fountains and trees. While the art of the fountains speaks to the plants and sea life, the free-standing statues take the fearsome form of powerful predators. The stone sculptures range from imperious felines to large, ominous birds.

  The pools of water and decoration of the fountains make me suspicious there’s something with a kind of water affinity in the area. My eyes are drawn to the lilypads. The first section had multiple earth elementals and a root elemental. Is there a root elemental hiding in the water, or some other creature hiding in the shadow of the lilypads?

  Then my eyes fix on the statues. Are they Earth elemental silently watching me? Is it a warning of what monsters are stalking me, or are they only there to mislead me so another threat might strike me unaware?

  Best to assume the worst and be happily surprised when something doesn’t try to kill me. I don’t activate my stealth spells; it would be useless with the clanking knights behind me, but I carefully move through the area, mindfully trying to keep my distance from the statues in case they turn out to be more than inert rock.

  It turns out I’m wrong about the statues but not about the predators lying in wait; I only get a split second of warning before I feel sharp points digging into my back. I turn around to see a feline form that is, for lack of a better word, misty. It looks like it’s wearing a boa, but instead of feathers, it is made of fluffy clouds that look like giant cotton balls.

  I desperately pull ten gallons of water out of the pool to knock my attacker off. I direct the water to hit the cat, but it’s too agile, jumping away before I get close to striking it. I see, at the last minute, a cloud form under its feet, aiding it as it leaps away. It cheats; the cat can double jump! I’m so surprised and jealous that I stand there with my mouth open. At least until I remember a storm cloud of angry claws and fangs is coming back at me.

  I pull the floating water to me and have it spin as fast as I can control it around my body. The spinning orb of water takes most of the bite out of the attack. The cat gets a claw through my impromptu defense, making new rips in my robe before it’s flung away. I feel a sting on my chest as the robe grows hot and sticky.

  My chest and back sting, and the rips in my battle robe look gruesome, but the sight of my chest being covered in my own lifeblood drives home how dangerous the situation is. Getting my head into the game, I grab the armor training stone and channel my shadow affinity. The cat is far too agile to forgo the magical armor, even if it does split my focus.

  I sharpen my focus as I point my staff at the cat and command the magically controlled water to chase after it. The cat hisses at its worst nightmare: a weaponized bath. It jumps away, slipping into the coverage of tree limbs. Not willing to let it go, the tide of water wraps around the tree like a snake in pursuit. The cat tries to cloud step to fake my pursuing attack, but the animal forgets it’s not dealing with a beast.

  The cat cloud steps toward the base of the tree as the bulk of my attack misses, going high. I simply stop channeling for a brief second and let gravity take hold. The water rains down instead of continuing in the wrong direction. As the water falls, the cat yelps, flailing as it becomes soaked. Before the spell form can completely collapse, I begin channeling again, willing the collapsing magic to reorient into a water prison. The oversized cat pumps its legs, trying to paddle its way out of the liquid sphere. The cat channels the cloud step ability and jumps out of the sphere.

  The skill doesn’t activate as it should have; instead of a graceful escape, the cat shoots out of the sphere, spinning wildly. It looks like the skill was partially activated, pushing off the water mana, but without any air mana, it fails mid-step. Still, the water sphere won’t spell the end for the wily feline. I’m jealous of that cloud step ability. Maybe I should have chosen the air affinity back on the island.

  It’s clear that the cat is outclassed. I’m keeping it on the ropes, but I don’t have the magical finesse to finish the fight definitively. With the channeling reduction of my items, I can also keep up my attacks for hours. The amount of water I’m using is a little less than half of what I can use comfortably. I can use far more, but quantity isn’t my issue.

  The cat starts throwing feints at me, trying to find a hole in my defenses to close the distance. I’m confident that it doesn’t have any ranged abilities. This fight would be much different if it did. Knowing my adversary will need to close the distance to attack, I decide to split my attention a little to plan a surprise.

  I sneak a small amount of water behind my back and take my time forming the sharp point of the projectile. I have to continuously adjust the ice behind my back to keep it out of sight as the agile cat bounces about. It’s risky trying to channel three spells at once, and my channel spell begins moving lethargically. The cat easily keeps from being caught by the floating water, but that’s fine. I’m going to keep up the attack, so it doesn’t get suspicious. My plan is to give the predator an opening to attack me. The closer it gets to me, the harder it will be to dodge the ice spear.

  Sweat forms on my brow as I stretch my concentration to its limit, keeping all three spells going at once. I mentally pull up my mana and see it’s closing in on ten percent. Suddenly, I don’t feel so confident and curse myself for not waiting longer to recover. Once my mana hits nine percent, I’m about to drop the water spell form, but moments before I drop it, the cat takes the bait. It races toward me, dancing across clouds with its claws ready. It can only cloud step twice, so it gains speed by using some of the trees as leverage.

  I wait until after it closes with me, within sword range. Smiling, I drop the stream spell and launch the Ice lance. I’ve been watching the cat closely and see that it never cloud steps twice in a row. When I see the cat try to cloud jump again, to change its trajectory, I tense.

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  Like when it escaped the water prison, the skill is only halfway activated. The cloud condenses, but instead of a platform, the cat’s paws pierce through like it’s paper. The Ice lance misses its heart, instead carving a large gash on its side.

  The cat flops on the ground a few times before meekly yowling. Before it can get up again, I have it wrapped in shadows. Realizing the end of its life is nearing, the cat desperately bites and claws at the blobs of shadow. I don’t mind, I just need a few moments to form another ice spear. By now, I’m shaking from adrenaline, as I try not to mess up what’s a clear kill shot.

  When the cat clears enough of the shadow restraints to stand, I know I need to act now or lose my chance. Half a dozen new bands of shadows wrap around in a bid to hold it in place as a giant shard of ice hurdles towards it. The sheer force of the ice rips the cat from the shadow tendrils.

  I walk over and look at the cat lying lifeless on the ground.

  I use the free points to add two points to wisdom, two to intelligence, and one to constitution. After I clear the notification, I look down at the dead cat. During the first stretch of the dungeon, I was fighting mindless constructions, which greatly limited my capabilities.

  One of the biggest is my ability to summon undead. I’ve never tried to raise a dungeon creature and wonder about it. Would it be possible to raise dungeon bosses? Can I farm dungeons to get an army of undead dungeon bosses at my command?

  I get my answer moments later. I receive a notification while raising the cat.

  The undead feline clumsily gets to its paws. I only raise it to the first level. I’m planning to invest in it once I recover some mana. Speaking of badly needing mana, I need to try to re-establish the connection to Morgana. I can feel her prowling around in the maze behind us. I will need to find an opening to meet with her soon.

  Exhausted from the fight and confident I will be safe as long as I don’t trek deeper, I lie down on the raised lip. I stretch my arms and let out a big sigh as I relax from the stressful fight.

  I hear the clink of the knights as they walk up to me. “Hey, you ok?”

  “Yeah, just tired. I need to rest a while.”

  “We are getting close to the boss now, and it is getting close to midday. We need to head back, but we can finish the dungeon after lunch.”

  I shake my head. “I raised the cat, and if I leave it will disappear.”

  “Right. I need to inform you that we will need to get a mage member to supervise the boss fight. We are going to grab the mage when we head back for lunch.”

  I wave away his concerns. “I am going to be here for a while; my mana is low. Do what you need to do.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You forgot to bring mana potions?”

  It takes me a moment to swallow my anger. His fellow knights didn’t even want to take me to the armorer to get proper protection, so how am I supposed to get a mana potion? Not that I could have paid for the armor or the potions if I were taken. “Something like that. Bring some food for lunch when you come back.”

  At first, I’m surprised the hammer knight doesn’t balk at the request, but with my empathy, I can sense that he is just being opportunistic. He plans to snag a few of the sandwiches for themselves. A small price to pay for hand-delivered food. The hammer knight nods in acquiescence before taking the journey back to the entrance to get sustenance… and yet another minder.

  The shield knight stays, sitting twenty feet away and keeping me in his peripheral vision. After taking a few moments to recover, I work on my quest. I’m going to hold off on learning a new spell form since I’m low on mana, but I can feel I’m close to the constitution buff. I completed the objective to learn a new skill, but I still need to raise one more skill by one level.

  I look at my physical skills and sigh. The only two that look like they might work are stealth and swordsmanship. I don’t like the idea of trying to sneak up on a cloud cougar, and I’m not confident in raising my sword skill without hours of additional training. Then my eyes fall on the shield knight, as he throws stones in the pond. Maybe I can tackle two problems at once.

  Moving in a slow, controlled motion, I sneak to the side of the clearing. Knowing there’s no way I can sneak past him without magic, I decide to use the little mana I have recovered to put on my stealth spell forms before sneaking away.

  As I move, I also try to concentrate on controlling my posture to increase my chances of sneaking, in hopes that it might aid me in triggering a skill level up. I crouch to lower my profile, grab my sword to keep it from swinging, and use my empathy to sense any creature that is looking for me. Achingly slowly, I move away from the pool to the edge where the walls of plants are. Keeping as much distance as I can between the shield knight and myself, I move around the edge to the exit from the maze.

  Morgana waits for me just around the corner. Despite knowing she is there, I still almost cry out when I see her. In her hands is some kind of hawk, but instead of feathers, it has wide blue leaves that are so prominent on Hortis.

  I silently review my system messages and see I have a few points of experience for my familiar killing an “axe leaf hawk”. What catches me off guard is the hole in the hawk’s chest and the blood that shows she had just eaten the avian heart.

  ‘Don't scare me like that.’ Despite the scene, I want to hug her. It's good to see her safe, but I hold back. It would be strange to walk back to where I’m suddenly covered in blood. She tilts her head in confusion like a puppy.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ I sense concern that she has upset me. I send reassurance over the bond.

  Ignoring the question I ask, ‘Why are you eating that hawk?’

  ‘Once the connection was cut, I started to feel weak, then I remembered that eating that elf’s heart made me feel strong. The smaller animals didn’t make me feel very strong, but they staved off the weakness.’

  Well, that’s horrifying. It’s one thing to hear about it through our mental connection, but it's another to see the results up close. I reach out with my meager mana and reform the link between us. It’s a bit clumsy since she’s already raised, but eventually, I get it. With the link restored, I feed her mana. She doesn’t sigh in relief, but I can feel the echo of relief across the bond.

  ‘Does that feel better?’ I ask.

  ‘A little.’ She says with a small conciliatory smile. I had never seen her do that. I wonder if the hearts have had other effects than just staving off decay. I look her up and down. She still has that porcelain doll appearance, but otherwise, she might pass for a human. I don’t see any other changes from the outside, but I also remember the way she was able to transform in the sewer. Maybe there are other changes I don’t see. With my mission accomplished, I have Morgana dispose of the bird and continue to hide out of sight of the knights, for now.

  As I feel the hint of panic from the knight, I decide it’s time to go back. I sneak my way back in until I hear the ping of my stealth skill leveling. It takes all my control not to jump up and shout with joy. With my goals accomplished, I drop the spell forms and walk back to my spot.

  Seeing me now, the shield knight asks, “Where’d you go?”

  I put a thumb over my shoulder as I say, “I walked just around the corner to take a pee break.”

  He gives me a strange look as he mumbles about nobles and how decorum is going to get me killed. I don’t care what he thinks, except now that I think about it, I really do need to go. Time for another quick stealth mission.