That is such a cheat, Lucas thought, noticing that none of his companions had leveled yet. The experience requirement for each level was always higher than the last, making it significantly harder to get from Level 11 to 12 than it would be to get from Level 1 to 2. He had received the same amount of experience as the other two, roughly 250, yet he had gotten two levels, and they had only gotten one and a half.

“Does this dungeon ever get harder?” Nick asked, obviously forgetting that games often loved to start players off with what were essentially single-button fights. This particular game was famous for being a step above the rest, and many automatically assumed this meant that the incredibly difficult, awe-inspiring dungeons found in the late-game translated to the starting area as well. Unfortunately for Nick, a starter area was a starter area for a reason: a player could literally kite an entire zone of mobs together and blast them down with a single area-of-effect spell if he wanted to.

“Sorry, brother,” Malik answered. “It’s the first quest. This is it.”

“If you wanna make it fun, we could just unequip our items and punch our way through to the final boss,” Valerie suggested. “With her difficulty, we could even punch the final boss to death.”

“That would make things more interesting,” Nick agreed, “but I really want to try out this staff and cast a spell.”

Valerie nodded. “Cool, cool! You do that. I’ll just . . .” She gave a wry smile and then darted farther into the dungeon, slamming the door behind her.

Nick’s mouth dropped as he stared at the door. Then, after a second, he recovered and darted after her, slamming the door behind him as soon as he left the room too.

Lucas, having not really wanted to do anything in the first place, was fine watching them tear ahead and do all the work for him. As far as he was concerned, he was content with watching the status messages in the bottom right corner of his vision scroll past. Based on how quickly the experience messages accumulated, it was obvious how many kills one of the two was getting.

“Sorry, brother.” Malik sighed as he reached his hand out and opened the door for Lucas. “She likes to tease him . . . a little too much sometimes.”

“No problem,” Lucas said, walking through the door. “It’s no big deal.”

“You sure? Since you don’t know what class you want to be yet, this is a very important stage for you. You should learn what you like and put together a plan for your character.”

“Nah,” Lucas replied dismissively. “I’m just gonna help you all finish this quest, go back to my usual spot on the hill, and enjoy my wine.”