Chương 12: Apparently, Eight Skills Isn’t That Many

Matt woke up on his second morning in Ashfield Orchard to the sounds of a functioning Delver Camp. A heavy-duty diesel truck rumbled past site C-87. Someone two spaces over was running a generator. A dog barked in the distance, and the faint high-pitched hum of the Dungeon Gate terminal area carried across the fields. Then, right outside his window, he heard it. Caw. Matt opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"…No." He threw off the blankets, crossed the trailer, and pulled back the blinds over the kitchenette window. A crow sat on a wooden utility pole fifty yards away. Just an ordinary, completely non-magical Earth-native crow. Its feathers did not glow. It did not breathe fire. It was not currently stealing a Mana Stone. Matt narrowed his eyes.

"We're fine." The crow cawed.

"Don't." The bird ignored him. Matt lowered the blinds. By the time breakfast was ready, he had already decided what he needed from Ashfield. Movement. Range. Leap Slam could solve the first problem. A cheap physical projectile Skill could solve the second. Both were affordable. Then Matt looked at Cleave. His only Active Skill Gem Slot was already occupied.

"Right." That was the actual problem. Matt opened the full Skill Gem interface. ACTIVE SKILL GEM SLOTS Current Slots Unlocked: 1 Maximum Capacity: 8 Slot 1: Cleave Matt stopped.

"Eight?" He had assumed additional Slots would appear automatically through Level milestones. Level Ten. Level Twenty. Something like that. The interface said nothing about future Levels. It simply said: Maximum Capacity: 8 Matt searched how additional Slots were unlocked. Beginner FAQs, Dungeon Wikis, forums, Gear Shops, and video guides all gave approximately the same answer. You didn't Level your way into more Slots. You bought them. Matt sighed.

"…Of course there's an item." He searched the market again. SKILL SLOT EXPANSION CRYSTAL Item Type: Character Upgrade Effect Permanently unlocks one additional Active Skill Gem Slot. Maximum Active Skill Gem Slots: 8. Cannot be used once all eight Slots are unlocked. Average Market Price: ≈ $500 Matt stared at the price. One additional Slot for five hundred dollars wasn't terrible. Seven additional Slots meant roughly thirty-five hundred.

"…Five hundred sounds much cheaper before you multiply it by seven." He took a drink of coffee.

"This economy really likes five hundred dollars." Passive refunds. Skill Slot expansion. Apparently five hundred was the official price of regret and infrastructure. There was one important difference, though. A Passive refund paid to undo a previous choice. An Expansion Crystal permanently increased what his character could equip. Buy it once. Use it once. The Slot remained. Unlike a Respec, none of that money would be spent repairing a mistake. Matt could afford all seven.

The question was whether buying all seven immediately was actually useful.

"Does a Warrior even need eight?" Matt searched. The first video result belonged to @RookDelves. Matt smiled.

"Of course." WARRIOR SKILL GEMS: EIGHT SLOTS, EIGHT PROBLEMS The thumbnail featured Rook wearing the same expression of exhausted disappointment he seemed to use for everything, with a large red 8 floating beside his head. Matt clicked. Rook appeared in front of a digital whiteboard.

"Eight sounds like a lot."

"It does," Matt agreed.

"It isn't." Matt paused. Rook pointed at the board.

"A Skill Gem Slot is not a damage slot." He tapped once.

"It is an answer slot." Matt leaned forward.

"Every Gem you equip is one question your build knows how to answer." Four questions appeared beside Rook. What if one monster is very tough? What if there are twenty monsters? What if the monster is over there? What if the monster refuses to come over here? Matt slowly put down his coffee.

"…Okay." That was uncomfortably accurate.

"I'm talking about physical Warriors today," Rook continued.

"Caster builds have different priorities. Rogues have different priorities. Your weird Unique Skill build has different priorities. This is the boring Warrior baseline." Matt raised his mug again.

"Even better." Rook raised one finger. SINGLE-TARGET ATTACK"You need an answer for Bosses, Elites, and anything else with enough Life or mitigation to make your normal clear Skill inefficient." Footage appeared of a Warrior striking a heavily armored monster with one concentrated blow.

"For beginners, Heavy Strike remains one of the simplest answers. Cheap. Reliable. Hits one thing hard." Matt remembered looking at the Gem in Black Hollow. Cleave had been the right first Skill for a Dungeon full of packs. Now he didn't necessarily have to choose between them. Rook raised a second finger. AREA CLEAR"If your answer to six Cave Rats is six individual attacks, you have built unemployment." Matt laughed.

"Got that one." The familiar red arc of Cleave appeared in the demonstration footage. Multiple monsters. One attack. Efficient. Rook raised a third finger. MOVEMENT He stared directly into the camera.

"Your legs are not a movement Skill." Matt frowned.

"That's rude."

"You need an answer for closing gaps, leaving hazard zones, crossing broken terrain, reaching ranged enemies, and moving between packs." A Warrior activated Leap Slam and launched across several yards of open ground, landing beside a ranged monster.

"Yes, Leap Slam does damage. No, that does not automatically make it your clear Skill. Its job in this setup is to move you." Matt nodded. Yesterday, an Ash Rabbit thirty feet away hadn't presented a damage problem. It had presented thirty feet. Rook raised a fourth finger. RANGED OPTION"Warriors love pretending everything will eventually walk into sword range." Matt grimaced.

"Some things have wings."

"Birds."

"Some things stand across hazards."

"Still birds."

"Some things kite."

"Probably birds."

"Some things are simply annoying."

"Definitely birds." Rook, tragically, could not hear him.

"You do not need a ranged option capable of beating a dedicated Ranger or Mage. You need enough ranged damage to solve the problem of something you cannot physically reach." The board changed. SOLO WARRIOR CORE 1. Single Target 2. Area Clear 3. Movement 4. Ranged"Four," Rook said.

"That is the minimum toolkit I recommend before you start pretending you're a specialist." Matt stared at the list. Eight maximum Slots. The basic solo package already consumed half of them. Eight suddenly felt much smaller.

"This is specifically for solo play," Rook continued.

"Parties distribute problems." Icons appeared for a Tank, Mage, Ranger, and Rogue.

"If someone else handles range, packs, scouting, or support, you can specialize around them." The party icons vanished. One Warrior remained.

"But if you're entering a Dungeon alone—congratulations." Rook paused.

"Every problem is yours." Matt nodded slowly.

"Right." Rook's mouth shifted into the faintest smile.

"Now we get to the expensive part." Matt narrowed his eyes.

"Expensive?"

"Choices." Matt sighed.

"Of course." The whiteboard filled with other possibilities: emergency defensive Skills, Auras, detection and scouting, Stealth, gathering, mining, debuffs, Crowd Control, utility, recovery, escape tools, and more. Rook erased the list and left only eight boxes.

"You have eight Slots." He pointed toward where the categories had been.

"You do not have eight categories." Matt stopped.

"…Ah." This morning, eight had sounded generous. Now it sounded restrictive. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Eight is nothing."

"Correct," Rook said. Matt laughed. The timing was getting suspicious. Rook changed the board one final time. Equipment, Passives, Support Gems, and Unique Items appeared around the eight Skill boxes.

"Higher-Level builds do not solve this by magically gaining twenty Active Skill Slots. They solve it by making one Slot answer more than one question." A Movement Skill that also dealt useful damage. A defensive Skill that generated another resource. An Aura granted by Gear instead of occupying a Gem Slot. Support effects and synergies that let one Skill cover multiple needs. Every layer of the build could reduce pressure on another. Matt instinctively touched Pure Element at his collarbone.

Elemental Shield came from Gear. It didn't consume one of his eight Active Skill Gem Slots. Slot economy. That made Gear-granted Skills more interesting than he had realized. Then he thought about COPY. The eight Skill Gem Slots could form the reliable baseline. COPY's active slots were a separate, flexible layer that could change from Dungeon to Dungeon.

"That changes things." Not enough to replace Skill Gems. Enough to make their interaction much more interesting. Matt finished the video, then stared at his single occupied Slot. Slot 1: Cleave The financially conservative option was obvious. Buy one Expansion Crystal. Add Leap Slam. Run Ashfield. Buy more only when he actually needed them. There was no rule saying a Level Seven beginner had to maximize all eight immediately. Matt considered that. Then considered the word permanent.

He was going to use more than one Skill if he kept Delving. Almost certainly more than four. The Crystals didn't commit him to a weapon, Skill, build, or Job direction. They created room. Unlike a Respec, there was nothing to undo later. Matt stood.

"I'm buying all of them." He paused.

"I don't like how easy that was to say." ◆ Ashfield's Gear Shop looked like two modified shipping containers joined beneath a wooden awning—smaller and more practical than Gear & Gem in Black Hollow. Matt walked inside. The clerk looked up.

"Morning."

"Seven Skill Slot Expansion Crystals." The clerk paused halfway toward a locked cabinet.

"Maxing out at Level Seven?"

"Permanent infrastructure." The man considered that, then shrugged.

"Can't argue with it." He pulled out a small lockbox. Matt blinked.

"No sales pitch?"

"You already asked for seven." The clerk unlocked the box.

"I'm not talking you out of my commission."

"Fair." Seven small white Crystals rested inside. They weren't particularly impressive objects for something that permanently altered the System. Polished glass marbles with light trapped inside. The clerk rang them up.

"Thirty-five hundred." Matt tapped his card. Payment Approved $3, 500 No Dungeon withholding. Just a normal retail purchase. Matt picked up the first Crystal. SKILL SLOT EXPANSION CRYSTAL Type: Character Upgrade Effect Permanently unlocks 1 additional Active Skill Gem Slot. Maximum Active Skill Gem Slots: 8.

"Permanent?" Matt asked.

"Permanent."

"Support Sockets?"

"Different item." Matt stared at him.

"Entirely?"

"Entirely."

"Of course they are." Matt focused on the Crystals. He used the first three. White light dissolved into his hands. Active Skill Gem Slots: 1 → 4 Matt stopped. Four Slots. The minimum Rook recommended for a Solo Warrior. He looked at the remaining four Crystals. He could stop here. Instead, he used the rest. Active Skill Gem Slots: 4 → 8 A different notification appeared. ACTIVE SKILL GEM CAPACITY MAXIMIZED Active Skill Gem Slots: 8 / 8 Matt opened the interface. Eight boxes. One occupied. Seven empty.

"That looks much better." Then he looked at the empty lockbox and the receipt.

"I just spent thirty-five hundred dollars on empty boxes."

"Welcome to buildcraft." Matt nodded.

"I need to fill three of them." The roles were already clear. Single target. Movement. Ranged.

"Heavy Strike." The clerk pulled a common crimson Gem from the case. Nothing exotic. Nothing rare. Exactly what Matt wanted.

"Leap Slam." The second Gem appeared. Matt pointed toward the projectile section.

"Physical. Warrior-compatible. Doesn't need to kill Bosses." The clerk raised an eyebrow. Matt continued.

"I need Cinder Crows to stop being Cinder Crows." The man laughed.

"There it is." He reached farther into the case and produced a pale translucent Gem. BLADE PROJECTION Type: Skill Gem Tags: Attack / Projectile / Physical Effect Projects a temporary mana-formed copy of the equipped melee weapon toward a target.

"Popular backup ranged option for melee builds," the clerk said.

"Uses your equipped weapon as the basis for the attack. Doesn't turn you into a dedicated ranged build, but if something weak refuses to come down—""Bird."

"Usually."

"Perfect." Matt bought all three. Heavy Strike came to about a hundred and ten dollars. Leap Slam was almost exactly three hundred. Blade Projection added another two hundred sixty. The three Gems came to roughly six hundred seventy dollars. Between the Gems and the Expansion Crystals, Matt had spent about forty-one hundred seventy dollars before lunch. He looked at the receipts.

"Yesterday I made one hundred forty dollars selling plant parts." The clerk raised an eyebrow.

"Today I spent over four grand."

"Sounds like Delving."

"I'm starting to notice." He socketed the Gems. ACTIVE SKILL GEMS Slot 1 — Cleave — Area Clear Slot 2 — Heavy Strike — Single Target Slot 3 — Leap Slam — Movement Slot 4 — Blade Projection — Ranged Slot 5 — Empty Slot 6 — Empty Slot 7 — Empty Slot 8 — Empty Matt stared at the first four.

"That looks like a build." He considered it.

"Half a build." ◆ The Ashfield Training Yard was busy. A Mage practiced controlled bursts against reinforced targets, two Warriors traded shield drills, and someone with a spear repeatedly tested the same thrust from different distances. Matt found an empty lane. He did not want the first time he used Leap Slam to be while an Ash Rabbit fled in one direction and a Briar Husk tried to pull his legs out from under him. Test first. Dungeon second. Boss later. Matt drew his longsword. First: Heavy Strike.

He hit the nearest reinforced dummy with a normal attack and watched the training system record the impact. Then he reset and activated the Gem. Mana flowed through the Skill, turning the attack into something more committed and concentrated. Matt swung. CRACK. The dummy shuddered on its reinforced base. Matt's eyebrows rose.

"Boss." Simple. One target. Hit it harder. He moved toward three clustered dummies. Heavy Strike hit one. The others remained untouched. Then Cleave sent a red arc through all three. Matt nodded. Different problems. Different Skills. Next: Leap Slam. Matt moved to a dedicated movement lane marked at regular intervals across the packed dirt. A practice dummy stood several yards away. He selected the target point. Mana surged into his legs. Matt jumped. Except it wasn't a normal jump.

The Skill took over and launched his body forward in a fast shallow arc. For one extremely brief moment, Matt regretted not asking more questions. Then the ground arrived. THUD. He landed beside the target and stumbled one step.

"Oh." Matt looked back at the distance he had crossed. Several normal running strides. The second attempt was better. On the third, he tried a diagonal route, bent his knees properly into the landing, and immediately brought the longsword up. Matt smiled. This wasn't simply run faster. It was rapid repositioning. A gap existed. Then it didn't. He remembered Ash Rabbits making him sprint between orchard rows.

"Oh, that's much better." Last: Blade Projection. Matt stepped back and raised the longsword. He activated the Gem. A translucent Mana copy of the blade formed beside the real weapon. Matt swung. The projected blade shot across the practice lane and struck the distant dummy. Solid hit. Not Heavy Strike. Not even close. It didn't need to be. Matt fired another projection. Hit. Farther than any Cinder Crow needed to be.

Matt looked toward one of the tall wooden posts around the training yard and imagined a black-red bird sitting at the top. Blade Projection. The Mana blade struck the wood.

"You're all dead." A man practicing shield blocks in the neighboring lane paused.

"Crows?"

"Crows." The man nodded.

"Understandable." Matt sat on a bench with his water bottle and looked over the four equipped Skills. Rook's core package was complete. Single target. Area. Movement. Range. Four Slots remained empty. For about three seconds, Matt felt the urge to start filling them.

"No." He closed the market before the page finished loading. The empty Slots were not waste. They were reserve capacity. He had no idea what the next F-rank Dungeon, E-rank, or something farther down the road would demand. There was no prize for filling every box immediately. Pure Element already provided Elemental Shield without using a Gem Slot. COPY gave him another pair of flexible answers on top of the Skill Gem setup. And then there were Support Sockets. Matt hadn't opened one. Not on Cleave. Not on anything.

Each of these Skills could eventually become another build problem once Support Gems entered the picture.

"…Oh, right." Matt stared at the interface. Passives, Active Skills, Supports, Gear, copied Unique Skills, Stats, Resistances, requirements, Mana management— He slowly nodded.

"This needs a spreadsheet." Matt paused. A smile spread across his face.

"Unfortunately, I own spreadsheets." ◆ Before actually building one, Matt took a screenshot of his expanded Skill interface and sent it to the Black Hollow Group. BLACK HOLLOW GROUP Matt: bought more skill slots Chloe: how many Matt: all of them A pause. Chloe: You bought seven expansion crystals? Matt: yes Ethan: MONEY HAYES Matt: that isn't a nickname Ethan: rich guy maxing slots at level 7 Matt: it was $3500 Ethan: THAT IS THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS Matt: yes that is how numbers work Chloe answered.

Chloe: Permanent upgrade. Reasonable if you're sure you're staying a delver. Matt stopped. If you're sure. Until that moment, part of him had still treated the truck-and-trailer plan as an experiment with an exit ramp. Try Delving. Travel for a while. If it stopped being fun, leave. Somewhere between Black Hollow and Ashfield, he had apparently stopped thinking about the exit. He looked toward the distant Gate.

The constant puzzle of turning limited Slots, Stats, Skills, Gear, and random drops into something better had gotten its hooks into him. Matt smiled faintly.

"Yeah." He typed. Matt: I'm staying for a while. Then: Matt: current four Matt: Heavy Strike / Cleave / Leap Slam / Blade Projection Chloe: Standard. Good. Ethan: BORING Matt: Rook says boring survives Ethan: rook is emotionally dead Chloe: Rook has been doing this since the early days. Ethan: exactly Matt laughed. Then checked the time. Still afternoon. Plenty of daylight outside. The artificial sunset in Ashfield didn't care what time it was anyway. He stood. Yesterday's problems now had answers. Rabbit ran away?

Leap Slam. Crow stayed in a tree? Blade Projection. One tough target? Heavy Strike. Several targets together? Cleave. Matt slid the phone into his pocket.

"That's going to feel different." ◆ It did. Matt deliberately chose another populated Instance with the Boss already dead. He wanted testing. Not excitement. Instance 91 — 29/64 — Boss Defeated The Gate transitioned him back into warm orchard air beneath the artificial sunset. Matt looked up.

"Still pretty." Caw. His eyes moved immediately. A Cinder Crow sat high in a tree. Matt sighed.

"Not you." Rustling erupted from the grass ahead. An Ash Rabbit ran. Yesterday, Matt would have followed it. Today he targeted the space ahead of it. Leap Slam. Mana surged and the ground vanished beneath him. Matt crossed the gap in one rapid bound, landing ahead of the Rabbit before it had finished changing direction. The creature tried to stop. Too late. One normal attack turned it to ash. Matt straightened and looked back toward where he'd started. Then at the fading monster.

"…I have been living incorrectly." The Cinder Crow screamed. Fire formed in its beak. Matt turned. Yesterday he would have waited through repeated fireballs until the bird finally committed to a dive. Today he used Blade Projection. The Mana copy of his longsword shot upward and struck the Crow. The monster burst apart. A small bundle of Cinder Feathers dropped through the branches. Matt walked over and picked them up immediately. He looked around for other birds.

"I love technology." Matt considered that statement.

"This is magic." A pause.

"Close enough." A Briar Husk emerged beside a weathered wooden structure. Yesterday, that had meant two normal attacks. Today Matt stepped inside its swing and tested Heavy Strike. CRACK. The Briar Husk broke apart. Ash. Matt looked at the empty space.

"Boss Skill." He hadn't studied The Orchard Keeper yet, and Heavy Strike wasn't necessarily the answer to every Boss. But the role was obvious. Matt kept moving. ◆ The first mixed pack appeared near a low stone wall: two Ash Rabbits, one Briar Husk, and one Cinder Crow. Not enough to seriously test the setup. Matt raised his sword. The Crow started charging fire. Blade Projection removed it before the fireball launched. One Rabbit rushed him and died to a basic attack.

The Husk closed next, and Heavy Strike broke it apart in one blow. The remaining Rabbit was already several yards away. Matt looked at it. The Rabbit looked back. Leap Slam. Matt landed close enough that the creature's next turn brought it directly into his sword. Ash. He checked his Mana. Noticeably lower. That mattered. More tools meant more ways to spend resources. Matt was now using Mana to move, shoot, and amplify single-target attacks instead of mostly reserving it for Cleave. Convenience had a cost.

Not much yet. Still F-rank. But enough to notice. Matt waited for Mana to recover.

"Okay." More answers. More resource use. Fair. The next pack was larger. Four Ash Rabbits moved through the dry grass near a collapsed wall, two Briar Husks stood partly disguised among the trees, and two Cinder Crows watched from above. Almost exactly the kind of fight that had wasted too much time yesterday. Eight enemies. Not dangerous. Messy. Matt smiled.

"Let's try this." The first Crow spotted him and began forming fire. Blade Projection. The Mana blade crossed the clearing and erased it. One problem gone. The remaining Crow launched from its branch to reposition while the Rabbits scattered. Yesterday, that would have started the chase. Today Matt targeted the largest cluster. Leap Slam. He launched across the clearing. One Rabbit escaped before he landed. Three remained close enough. The landing impact disrupted their movement. Cleave.

Red light swept through the group. Two Rabbits vanished immediately and the third staggered at the edge of the arc. Matt finished it with a normal swing. Both Briar Husks were approaching now. The surviving Cinder Crow fired. Matt saw the projectile too late. It clipped his shoulder. Life: 137 → 132"Fine." Master of the Arena immediately started returning the lost points. The first Briar Husk reached him. Matt slipped past its arm and used Heavy Strike. Ash. The second slammed both hands into the soil.

Roots erupted. Anchored Step caught the pull and held him in place. Then Matt saw the Crow change angle. A Mana Stone had dropped from the first Husk.

"Oh, no." The bird dived. Not at him. At the Stone. Matt aimed. Blade Projection. Miss. The bird banked. Matt grimaced.

"Right. They move." The Crow came lower. Matt activated Quick Frame. Its path became easier to read. Second projection. Hit. The Cinder Crow vanished less than three feet above the loot. The Mana Stone remained exactly where it was. Matt immediately scooped it up.

"Learning." The remaining Briar Husk was still trying to pull him with roots. Matt released Anchored Step as the effect weakened, took one step forward, and ended it with Heavy Strike. Then the final Rabbit ran. Of course it did. Matt turned. The Rabbit was already halfway to the next row. He considered Leap Slam. Then checked his Mana. Enough. But significantly lower now. Matt smiled.

"No." He ran. The Rabbit zigzagged. Matt cut across instead of following directly. It doubled back. Matt intercepted. Basic attack. Ash. Silence returned. His Life was almost full again. Mana was not. The fight had been dramatically faster than yesterday, but it had also consumed much more Mana. Skill Slots expanded his possible actions. They didn't make those actions free. If Matt used Leap Slam on every ten-foot gap or Heavy Strike on every Rabbit, he would simply waste resources.

The correct answer could exist and still be the wrong choice in a particular moment. Matt took out his water bottle, adjusted it with Perfect Temperature, and drank. Yesterday the question had been whether he could reach the target. Today, he could. Now the question was whether reaching it with Mana was worth the cost. Matt smiled. There it was. Another problem. He liked problems. ◆ The next encounter made the lesson clearer. Two Cinder Crows sat in separate trees.

An Ash Rabbit wandered below them while a Briar Husk blocked the center path. Yesterday, Matt would have spent most of the fight looking upward. Today, one Blade Projection removed the first Crow. The second repositioned. Matt didn't immediately fire again. He watched. The Crow launched a fireball. Matt avoided it. The Husk approached. Matt used a tree trunk to break the Crow's line of sight and let the Husk enter melee. Instead of spending Mana on Heavy Strike, he killed it with two normal attacks.

A Mana Stone dropped. Immediate pickup. The Rabbit charged next and died to another basic attack. Only then did Matt step out from behind the tree. The Crow was still circling. One Blade Projection. Ash. Matt checked his Mana. Much better. He nodded.

"That's the part the guide doesn't do for you." Rook could tell him which answers a Solo Warrior should carry. The guide couldn't tell him whether one particular Briar Husk was worth spending Heavy Strike Mana on. That was play. Experience. Build and execution. Different layers again. ◆ Matt stayed in Ashfield for several more hours. Most fights were simply faster now. Rabbit packs that had once turned into long chases could be intercepted with a well-placed Leap Slam.

Cinder Crows no longer controlled the pace of combat. Briar Husks could be killed quickly with Heavy Strike or cheaply with normal attacks depending on what Matt needed. The new Skills didn't replace yesterday's lessons. They gave him better ways to apply them. He even discovered a way to make Leap Slam a mistake. One Rabbit fled past a stone wall. Matt targeted the other side and jumped. He landed. Then immediately realized he had crossed into another pack. Three Rabbits. One Husk. A Crow.

Matt slowly drew his sword.

"… Poor route selection." The Crow screamed. Combat began. Movement Skills made it much easier to go somewhere stupid very quickly. Useful lesson. He survived easily. But he wrote that one down later. ◆ By late afternoon, Matt had enough. He used a Portal Scroll and returned to Camp. The difference in his loot bag was immediately obvious. More Mana Stones. More plant material. More Cinder Feathers. Not because the monsters were better or his luck had suddenly improved.

He had simply killed more of them in the same amount of time. Matt looked into the bag.

"Clear speed." Same hours. More monsters. More loot. That was the part he liked. A lot. ◆ That evening, Matt returned to C-87 and spread the day's loot across the small table, sorting it into sell, temporary keep, local-buyer check, and potential equipment piles. Then he opened his build spreadsheet. SOLO WARRIOR CORE Heavy Strike — Single Target Cleave — Area Clear Leap Slam — Movement Blade Projection — Ranged Slots 5–8: EMPTY Four occupied. Four empty.

Yesterday, an empty Slot would have looked like a missing feature. Now it looked like optionality. Matt had enough tools for the problems Ashfield was currently giving him. He didn't need to predict every future Dungeon. His phone buzzed. Ethan: kill boss yet Matt: no Ethan: coward Matt: tomorrow The typing indicator appeared. Stopped. Appeared again. Ethan::) Matt stared.

"Stop doing that." He opened the Ashfield Orchard guide. The Boss entry he'd ignored yesterday waited near the bottom. Matt clicked. THE ORCHARD KEEPER Ashfield Orchard — Instance Boss He skipped the general overview, old clear records, and drop reports. Straight to mechanics. One line appeared immediately. Known Adds: Cinder Crows Matt closed his eyes.

"Of course." He scrolled farther. More mechanics. Enough that he stopped after the first screen. That was tomorrow's problem. The four Skills he'd added today had transformed Ashfield without making his raw numbers much larger. They had given him answers. Four Slots remained empty. Matt looked at them. Then at COPY. Then at the Boss guide.

"Okay." Somewhere outside the trailer, a completely ordinary Ohio crow cawed. Matt slowly looked toward the window.

"Tomorrow," he told it, "I'm killing your boss."