Kairos remembered when he had broken Elliot’s arm over the back of his chair.
He apologized furtively afterwards, and when the principal found out, he was both humble in apologizing and even self-demeaning while he did so.
In the end, the principal was convinced that it was an accident, but because Elliot was complaining Kairos still received a light punishment.
Most of the people in class thought it was an accident as well, and became afraid of the fragility of their own bodies considering how easy it looked like one could break their arm.
Elliot was definitely pissed off, but also had to deal with his broken arm. Though he tried to egg on his other friends to harass Kairos, there was something about the way that Kairos had smiled all the time that made the others avoid him.
And the entire time, though he had a distraught expression on his face, he was desperately trying to hold back his laughter, lest he let it out and expose himself.
This side of Kairos wasn’t created by his environment. Rather, it was something that always existed within him, but just not far deep below. The only thing that his situation did was wake it out of him.
And it was that very side of him that had come out just now.
As he ran through the toxic gas, feeling his body withering away, there was not even a slight sensation of pain.
Instead, there was a feeling of rage.
Kairos had gotten angry not at the fact his situation was dire, and not at how people had treated him in the past.
Instead, he was angry at himself for having such negative thoughts.
Kairos never really knew why, but whenever he felt that he was slipping down to the bottom of the abyss, it was his anger that would force him out, almost like magma rising from an active volcano.
His entire body was filled with extremely large amounts of adrenaline and began to heat up on its own.
He began running even though it was painful.
He began running even when his body shouldn’t have been able to.
He began running to prove to himself that he was greater than this, that he could overcome it.
It was a rather arrogant mentality, but Kairos was never a humble person.
And soon enough, his shoulder hit the mana crystal, after climbing up the bones that littered the ground.
Almost immediately, mana began surging around him, coating him entirely.
Then before he knew it, he had vanished from his original position.
Once Kairos reappeared, he had found himself in a rather dark and dingy room. Considering how large the crystal was on the outside, it was surprisingly cramped in here.
Though, Kairos couldn’t really be focused on all that.
Because his body was still in a terrible state right now. In fact, while the toxic gas had disappeared, the poison was still running rampant within his flesh.
Kairos immediately opened up the sack. He took out the green orb and sliced it as he was bringing it up to his face.
Without delay, he began drinking the healing liquid.
The effects were immediately apparent as Kairos could feel the decay slow down tremendously. By the time he finished drinking the entirety of the contents, the poison had disappeared entirely.
Kairos noted that one of the uses of this green orb was to nullify the effects of poison. And right after that, he took out another one and sliced it open as well.
Though the poison was gone, his injuries were still bad. The effects of the green orb only slightly healed his injuries after dealing with the poison.
As Kairos drank the healing liquid once more, he could feel his aching body be soothed.
Blackened parts of his body began shedding. As for whether it was flesh or skin, Kairos could not tell. Weakened hairs also began falling out of his head while new ones came to replace it.
Kairos felt the stress he had from abusing his future vision also melt away, like ice cream on a sunny day.
His bright red muscles reappeared, while skin coated over them soon after.
Kairos didn’t have much fat before, but a lot of it had disappeared from the decay. As such, his muscles were now very sharply defined.
Because he was relatively lanky beforehand, he didn’t look that bulky, but still looked like a professional bodybuilder nonetheless.
It did not take long for his entire body to be restored to functioning condition.
Kairos let out a soft sigh, staring at the two tiny green marbles that were on the cold stone floor next to him. He picked them up and pocketed them without too much hesitation, now having three of these marbles.
Kairos did a quick count of the green orbs he had and counted twelve in total.
As he wondered what would’ve happened if he didn’t collect these green orbs, he couldn’t help but shudder.
His death would’ve been inevitable, because the system was so unforgiving that it wouldn’t even get rid of the poison after he had obeyed its command.
[Entered Dungeon – 1.0 points awarded]
Kairos raised an eyebrow after seeing those rewards. Although it wasn’t an exaggerated amount of points, it was still a healthy amount. He could only imagine each point would matter far more once one rose in grade.
He cracked his neck and opened his status panel to get a grasp over his situation.
[Status]
[ID: 345315364923]
[Rank: 467/1500 Evolution Energy – 500 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Clear Dungeon]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 3.0]
[Stats –
Strength – 11.0
Endurance – 10.0
Agility – 11.6
Willpower – 4.9
Mana Capacity – 9.0
Magic Affinity – 7.2]
[Special Abilities: Fire Spell (F), Pulse Spell (F)]
[Inborn Abilities: Shattered Truth (F)]
[Hide]
Kairos noticed the objective changed to clear the dungeon, but didn’t place too much emphasis on it.
Instead, he began thinking about what he should invest his points into.
His first instinct was to put more into his mana capacity, as having more magic seemed to be quite beneficial to him. However, he also thought about where he was.
Wasn’t this the interior of a mana crystal?
Logically, there should be at least some source of mana somewhere.
With those thoughts in mind, Kairos stood up and observed his surroundings a little more closely.
The room was just a tad larger than the room in his own house. It was in the shape of a square and made out of gray stone. Embedded in the roof was a small blue crystal that emitted a strong light that lit up the room. Despite being blue itself, the light that it emitted was white.
Unlike a normal room, there wasn’t a single piece of furniture, almost making it as bad as the average college dorm.
Almost.
On the other hand, there was a rather foreboding-looking cased opening that led into a giant swirl of misty blue mana. The mana was so dense that Kairos couldn’t see further behind it.
On the opposite side, was… what looked like a reception area.
There was a square hole carved out in the middle of the wall to reveal another room, and behind it was what looked like a person. It appeared to be a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman that was wearing a suit for whatever reason.
She had a cordial smile on her face while both hands were clasped together and at her waist.
In just a second, Kairos was able to tell that it wasn’t a real person. That was because he immediately realized that shadows on her body didn’t make any sense given the lighting in the room.
He walked closer to it and was even more convinced.
His depth perception told him that it was actually completely flat, instead of an actual projection. Once Kairos was next to the image of the person, it began to talk rather robotically.
“Hello! Welcome to the dungeon!”
The mouth of the image shifted between an open mouth and closed mouth sporadically to imitate talking. It was almost like Kairos was watching an unbelievably low-budget anime that couldn’t bother using more than two frames for any form of speech.
Kairos walked to the side and saw that the person really was two-dimensional. He concluded that it was a holographic projection, then posed a question.
“How do I leave this place?”
The projection replied immediately.
“Just leave that hallway, and you will be taken to the first floor! You can view your floor progress and currency just by asking me!”
A status panel appeared next to the projection.
[Floor Level: 0]
[Dungeon Currency: 1]
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“What can the currency be used for?”
The projection replied curtly.
“For buying products from the shop! Do you want to be redirected to the shop page?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Um, ok?”
The status panel changed.
[Shop]
[Bread and Water – 1 point]
[Fried Rice and Milk – 3 points]
[Steak and Wine – 5 points]
[Blanket – 4 points]
[Bed – 10 points]
[More]
Kairos’ eyelid twitched. It was becoming quite clear to him that this was more of a prison compared to anything else. Now, it seemed like he was going to have to pay for his own basic necessities.
His only hope was that he would be able to acquire them anyway through other methods, but decided not to think about it too much.
Out of curiosity, he tapped on the more option.
[Insufficient Floor Level]
Kairos cracked his neck.
“…So, how do I get points?”
The projection eagerly spoke up.
“Clearing floors will award points!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…How many?”
The projection paused for a moment.
“Different amounts depending on the difficulty!”
Kairos took a deep breath.
“How do I leave this dungeon? Not just going to a different floor.”
The projection did not respond for thirty seconds, just standing there awkwardly. Then, it responded.
“Upon clearing all floors, the participant will naturally be granted leave from the dungeon!”
Kairos pressed his lips together.
“And how many floors are there?”
The projection did not respond. Kairos waited for a while, but it didn’t seem to want to give an answer any time soon.
He was beginning to realize what this place meant by dungeon. It wasn’t the video game definition, a place to get loot.
Instead, it was the literal definition, a prison cell.
After letting out a soft sigh Kairos walked away from the projection and had another look at his status panel. He currently had three points to work with.
His physical stats were the highest right now, with magic lagging behind slightly. His willpower was the lowest, but Kairos felt that the willpower stat seemed to be rather low performance compared to the others.
Kairos guessed that it might become useful later on, but as of right now, he couldn’t be bothered to increase it.
Once again, he naturally gravitated towards increasing his magical stats, in particular the mana capacity.
But then he remembered that the green orbs were able to restore mana. Though Kairos was definitely concerned about his limited supply of green orbs, it would probably be inevitable that he was going to use them.
As such, mana would naturally come with it.
That left increasing his magic affinity, or more into his physical stats.
Kairos thought back to when he charged his pulse spell nearly to its limits. The sheer force of it was able to essentially blow away the walls of a building like it was made out of sand.
…And that discouraged him from putting more points into magic affinity.
Because wasn’t that already powerful enough?
With those thoughts in mind, Kairos found himself eyeing his physical stats, even when he never really valued them before.
With a sigh, he put in those points.
[Strength: 11.0 – 12.0 | 3.0 – 2.0]
[Endurance: 10.0 – 11.0 | 2.0 – 1.0]
[Agility: 11.6 – 12.6 | 1.0 – 0]
And so, Kairos began walking towards the foreboding door, on his way to the first floor.