“It’ll be my treasure!” the Mage shouted, sticking to his previous script. Unfortunately for him, that new script ended seconds later with his own demise when the archer next to him pulled out a dagger and slit his throat.

Lucas unleashed the three charges of Chain Lightning he had been preparing, but a Force Shield instantly sprang up in front of him, causing the spells to rebound toward him. He gained half a point of Lightning attunement, but it was little comfort as the Lightning magic arced through his body.

Agony rippled through his every nerve, and his muscles involuntarily contracted against his will. Unable to move, all he could do was watch helplessly as his health plummeted from damage dealt by his own spells. He grunted through the pain and watched his impending death, certain of the fact that he was finally going to die due to his own carelessness, but the second his health hit 1 HP, the scenario changed. The enemies disappeared, and he was once more back in his own chamber with a full Hit Point gauge. He had suffered a humiliating defeat, but he was unharmed.

“You’ll get used to it,” Xun Guan said, a knowing smile on her face. “The pain fades with the scenario, which is a good thing when it’s basically your job to die nearly every encounter. If this dungeon gets as busy as we hope, there’s a good chance you’ll end up having to fight one group after the other for hours on end. The system compensates by stopping you from dying and healing you up after each defeat.”

Lucas looked down at his body. The memory of the pain from having his Chain Lightning backfire, like what happened to a certain evil magic user in his favorite space war saga, still lingered. “Let’s see what my penalty is,” he said, pulling up the HUD.

His first attempt at trying to beat Level 3 had been free. It hadn’t cost him anything, but where the button had originally just said “Level 3,” it now had additional text under it. It had “5 gold worth of monthly territorial income” underneath the icon, and Lucas knew what that meant. “Five gold doesn’t seem too bad,” he said.

“It doubles if you lose again. You don’t have six more tries; you’ve got two more at best,” she said. “But it will reset to free if you manage to finish off Level 3, but I recommend holding off on trying until you’re more competent.”

“Does the dungeon’s difficulty scale up with my level?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Xun Guan began. “At the moment, you’re not even Level 1, and you’re on the noob island. This means that the enemies, while more skillful and with better stats, will still be geared toward a Level 1 dungeon master. As you level up more and more, however, you’ll find that they reach a cap of 30 since this is the beginner’s zone. If you were on the mainland, the cap would be 100.”