“This is soooo fun!” Valerie squealed, releasing the spell. Just as expected, the basketball-sized fireball sizzled down the staircase as it shot straight for the rearmost guard. The ball of flame smashed into the sleeping man’s face and then exploded outward in all directions, releasing a wave of heat that was noticeable even halfway up the staircase.

When the smoke cleared, all four of the guards were dead, and Nick’s side had been completely charred from the blast. The temporary Fighter had figured out what was happening, but the spell was simply too fast to dodge. Thankfully, the damage-over-time effect from the burn had been immediately nullified by Lucas’s healing spell, which landed at the perfect time to keep him alive.

“Son of a milkman, that hurt,” Nick swore before turning around. “Did you manage to hit anyone besides me, Valerie?”

“Maybe,” she giggled. “Or maybe my Firebolt was just as attracted to your backside as I was.”

“Come on, brothers. We have work to do!” Malik insisted, refusing to let them be sidetracked into more banter. “No time to worry about friendly fire.”

“Easy for you to say,” Nick grumbled.

Valerie hid her laughter even as she apologized. “Sorry! I’ll try better next fight,” she promised.

The group gathered on the landing at the bottom of the stairs, and Malik pointed out the next set of soldiers waiting for them down a short hallway. Valerie immediately began channeling Arcane Energy into her staff, and Nick looked at her and then sighed as Malik began shooting. Valerie’s ball of fire scorched through the air, exploding in the middle of the four soldiers and killing all of them.

Congratulations. You have reached Level -70.
You now have 10 stat points available to allocate.

Lucas blinked. That’s not right, he thought, opening up his status screen and looking at the point distribution. You typically get 10 stat points plus whatever bonuses your prestige class gives whenever you level up, but . . . my level was negative. How am I getting anything? He stared at the status message, incredibly confused. Every time someone lost a level, they also lost the accompanying stats that went along with it. Despite his negative level, however, this had never been an issue for him since stats couldn’t drop below 0, the base that everyone’s character started out at.

What the hell? This is a serious cheat. Lucas’s eyes slowly shifted toward the total experience needed to get to the next level. It hadn’t changed at all. He still only needed the incredibly small amount of experience a player normally required to grow from Level 1 to 2.

“Great! I guess I won’t get a chance at trying Fighter because they made the enemies too easy and gave the caster an overpowered ranged spell,” Nick complained, snapping Lucas back into reality.

“You’ve already picked your class, brother, so just thank Valerie for making the experience go faster and Negative for keeping you alive.”