Chương 9: Apparently, I’m the Veteran Now

One week later, Cave Rats had stopped being monsters. They were just targets. When Matt first stepped into Black Hollow Mine, he'd approached every rat like it was a lethal threat. He'd watched the way it moved, braced for the charge, and worried about missing his swing. Now, when six Cave Rats poured out of a side tunnel, Matt barely looked at the glowing red eyes or armored spines. He looked at the gaps between them. Their direction of travel. Ethan's shield. The angle of his own sword.

Ethan stepped forward without needing a call and struck the stone once with the rim of his shield. Three rats immediately changed direction, then two more followed. Matt moved left while Chloe took the other side, compressing the pack between them. Matt waited half a second longer. Then— Cleave. A red arc swept through the tunnel. Four rats disappeared. Chloe stepped through the fading ash and finished the fifth with a short thrust, while Ethan casually blocked the sixth and kicked it sideways into Matt's reach.

One downward swing. Done. Nobody said anything. They simply kept walking. That was the strangest part. On his first day, a fight like that would have occupied Matt's complete attention. Now it barely qualified as a conversation. Black Hollow had changed too. Or rather, Matt had. The Dungeon no longer felt like an incomprehensible underground world built according to rules he didn't understand.

He recognized common tunnel patterns, knew which routes looked worth checking, could read a Stone Beetle immediately before it charged, understood how Goblin Miners tended to cluster under pressure, and knew exactly how wide Cleave's arc actually was. Much narrower than his imagination still wanted it to be. Outside the Dungeon, the Camp had shrunk in much the same way. What had initially seemed like a sprawling temporary city was now simply where Matt lived. G-214. The Last Flask. Gear & Gem.

The Mana Stone Exchange. A grocery store, the laundry building, and two coffee trucks—one better, one cheaper. Even the blue-streaked clerk at Gear & Gem recognized him on sight now. It was bizarre how quickly the impossible became mundane. The week had passed in a blur of steady, methodical grinding. Day Four had been ordinary. No Fresh Instance, no Boss Rush, no Treasure Chest. They'd selected a moderately populated Instance and discovered that somebody else had already killed The Old Foreman.

Matt had looked at the terminal. Boss Defeated. Then he'd felt an unexpected sense of relief.

"Honestly, that's relaxing." Ethan had stared at him.

"Coward."

"He's right," Chloe had said.

"We don't need the stress every day." Day Five was what an average day actually looked like: five hours underground, plenty of monsters, no Treasure Chest, no Boss, a handful of Mana Stones, and two pieces of Magic equipment none of them wanted. After the mandatory tax and three-way division, Matt's share had come to roughly seventy-five dollars. He'd looked at the amount on his phone.

"This looks more sustainable." Chloe had raised an eyebrow.

"You sound disappointed."

"Financially relieved."

"What does that mean?"

"If I made two thousand dollars every day, I'd start feeling obligated to stay here forever." Matt had pocketed the phone.

"Seventy-five means I can still pretend this is a road trip." Ethan had laughed. Day Six brought a familiar notification. LEVEL UP Matthew Hayes has reached Level 6. Ethan had glanced over.

"Six."

"Apparently." Matt had dismissed the notification and kept walking. By Days Seven and Eight, the three of them had stopped feeling like strangers who happened to be fighting in the same direction. Against normal packs, Chloe rarely had to call anything anymore. Ethan pulled, Matt moved into position, and Chloe handled whatever slipped through. A shift left, a step back, or Ethan suddenly stopping was enough for the other two to understand what was happening. They'd learned each other.

And on Day Nine, halfway through an otherwise forgettable morning run, the chime sounded again. LEVEL UP Matthew Hayes has reached Level 7. Matt lowered his longsword.

"…Seven."

"Told you," Chloe said. She'd predicted he would reach it before the Academy left.

"Unfortunately," Ethan said. Matt looked at him.

"Why unfortunately?"

"You're catching up."

"I've been doing this for ten days."

"Exactly. It's offensive." Matt ignored him. Black Hollow remained crowded enough that he saw Unique Skills being activated every day, including plenty that COPY rejected for exceeding his current C-rank ceiling. The failures no longer surprised him. They were still irritating. Mostly, they reminded him how much more there was to see beyond Black Hollow. Preferably things he could actually copy. ◆ Day Ten began at the Gate. Matt stood between Ethan and Chloe as the Instance list scrolled in front of them.

Instance 218 — 21/64 — Boss Defeated Matt stared at it.

"This is kind of anticlimactic." Chloe looked at him.

"What is?"

"Last run." Ethan adjusted his shield.

"Want me to get hit by something dramatically?"

"No."

"I could scream."

"No."

"I could sacrifice myself to a Cave Rat." Chloe looked at him.

"Please do." Ethan looked wounded. Matt laughed.

"Normal is fine." It was the Atlantic Delver Academy's last day at Black Hollow. The Academy vehicles were scheduled to leave that afternoon. This was it. Their final run together. And apparently the Dungeon had no interest in commemorating the occasion. No zero-player Instance, live Boss, or exciting indicator. Just twenty-one other Delvers and a dead Foreman. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. They entered anyway.

The run remained exactly as normal as promised. The first chamber held three Goblin Miners. Ethan stepped forward and redirected the first pickaxe strike with his shield instead of absorbing it directly. The second Goblin moved toward Chloe, but Quick Frame carried her past the attack and let her turn the monster toward Matt. He waited until the third Goblin entered his angle. Cleave. Two disappeared. Chloe finished the last. They kept moving. Ten minutes later, a Stone Beetle charged from a side passage.

Matt saw the movement before the warning appeared.

"Beetle." Ethan shifted, caught the creature on his shield, and deliberately gave ground. Matt circled while Chloe struck the rear joint. Matt followed with a normal attack. No wasted Cleave. No wasted Mana. Thirty seconds. Done. Later, they encountered a mixed pack: five Cave Rats, two Goblin Miners, and one Stone Beetle. A week earlier, Matt would have considered it a large fight. Now he looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at the pack. No words. He charged. The Beetle reacted first, exactly as Matt expected.

Ethan caught it while the Goblins converged and the rats rushed around both sides. Matt moved into the opening Ethan created. Three targets. Not enough. He waited. A rat crossed into the angle. Four. Another half second. Five. Cleave. The arc tore through the center. Chloe was already moving before the Skill finished, cleaning up two survivors with quick strikes while Ethan shoved the wounded Beetle into Matt's line. Second Cleave. Silence. Matt looked at the ash, then at the Mana Stone rolling toward his boot.

He picked it up. Ethan glanced back.

"Remember when you almost cried leaving one of those behind?"

"I did not almost cry."

"You absolutely did."

"It was loot."

"Five dollars of loot."

"Money is money." Chloe stepped over the fading remains of a Goblin.

"Last chance for another twenty-thousand-dollar pickaxe." Matt put the Mana Stone into the shared loot bag.

"I'm beginning to think that wasn't normal." Chloe stared at him.

"It took you a week?"

"I'm cautious about drawing conclusions from small datasets." Ethan shook his head.

"The spreadsheet account ruined you."

"Improved me." They continued. No Treasure Chest appeared. No Unique Item dropped. The Boss remained dead, and nobody discovered a hidden passage or suffered a last-minute disaster. Their final Black Hollow run ended the way most professional workdays probably ended. They decided they'd done enough. They cracked Portal Scrolls. And went home. ◆ The Mana Stone Exchange clerk barely looked surprised when the three of them arrived together. Again.

Their loot went onto the counter, was weighed, graded, taxed, and divided with the same efficiency Matt had now seen countless times. The process that had seemed strange on his first day felt about as exotic as checking out at a grocery store. His share came to roughly one hundred twenty dollars. Matt checked the number.

"This feels much more like a job." Ethan leaned over.

"Bad?" Matt considered it.

"No." That surprised him slightly. There had been no six-thousand-dollar payoff, exciting drop, or Boss story. They had simply gone underground, worked efficiently for several hours, made some money—and Matt had enjoyed himself. As they walked away from the Exchange, he glanced back toward the Gate. A week ago, he'd been trying to figure out how to hold a sword properly without embarrassing himself. Today he'd spent most of the morning thinking about pack density, positioning, and whether a target deserved Mana.

That was what leveling actually felt like. The number mattered. But so did everything he'd learned between the numbers. ◆ That afternoon, the Atlantic Delver Academy section of Camp turned into organized chaos. Students moved bags while instructors checked lists. Equipment cases disappeared into trucks, a bus idled beside the road, and somebody was loudly trying to locate a pair of missing boots that were apparently already on the bus.

Matt stood beside Ethan and Chloe while a group of students attempted to maneuver a weapon rack into the rear of an equipment truck. They failed. Backed up. Rotated it. Failed differently. Matt watched with genuine interest.

"You guys really move all of this every few weeks?"

"Pretty much," Chloe said. Ethan grimaced.

"It's worse when someone forgets something."

"Like what?"

"Last month, somebody left his chest piece at the hotel." Matt looked at him.

"What happened?"

"They gave him the Academy loaner." Chloe's expression changed slightly. Matt noticed.

"What?"

"Bright orange." Ethan shuddered.

"Completely orange." Matt stared.

"Why?"

"Because if you forget your armor, everyone should know."

"That's cruel."

"Exactly." Chloe disagreed.

"It worked. Nobody in his group has forgotten armor since." Matt nodded.

"Effective." A passing Academy student recognized Matt and lifted a hand.

"Later, Matt."

"Later." Another one carrying a duffel bag pointed at him.

"Good luck with the road thing."

"Thanks." Matt watched them go. He hadn't really thought about it, but after a week of seeing the same students, terminals, and faces around Camp, he wasn't a stranger anymore. Not part of the Academy. But familiar.

"So Pennsylvania next," Matt said. Ethan nodded.

"Yep."

"And then?"

"Another F-rank," Chloe said. Matt waited.

"And then?"

"Another F-rank." He frowned.

"How long are you doing this?"

"About two more months," Ethan said.

"Two months?" Matt stared at him.

"I hit Level Seven in ten days."

"It's school," Chloe said.

"The point isn't to power-level. If all we wanted was Levels, we'd find one efficient Dungeon and grind it."

"Then what is the point?"

"Exposure." She gestured toward Black Hollow.

"They're deliberately taking us through different Dungeon types—different environments, monsters, Boss mechanics, and party problems—before the consequences for not knowing those things get expensive." Ethan nodded.

"Different bad food."

"That is not part of the curriculum."

"It should be." Matt understood. The Academy wasn't trying to create the fastest Level Tens. It was trying to make sure its students learned basic Dungeon lessons while the consequences were still forgiving.

"You'll probably leave F-rank before we do," Ethan said. Matt looked at him.

"Really?"

"Probably," Chloe agreed.

"You're independent. When you think you're ready, you can choose an E-rank instead of waiting for a curriculum." Matt hadn't thought that far ahead yet. He was still Level Seven, and there were several F-rank Dungeons he wanted to see before even considering moving up. Ethan grinned.

"You know what's going to be annoying?" Matt sighed.

"What?"

"Next time we run into you, you're probably going to be the veteran." Matt laughed.

"I've been doing this for ten days."

"And we're spending another two months doing F-rank curriculum."

"So?"

"So if we see you six months from now, you're going to be explaining things to us." Matt stared.

"…That's deeply concerning."

"He's probably right," Chloe said.

"Please don't make me responsible for anyone. I barely know what I'm doing." Ethan saluted.

"Too late, Senior Hayes."

"Absolutely not." A sharp whistle cut across the staging area. An instructor waved toward the buses. Students began moving faster. Matt looked at Ethan, then Chloe.

"Well." Ethan looked solemn.

"Well." Chloe immediately sighed.

"Please don't do this." Matt raised an eyebrow.

"Do what?"

"Turn this into a graduation speech."

"I wasn't planning to."

"I was," Ethan said.

"Of course you were." Ethan put one hand dramatically over his chest.

"Matthew Hayes."

"No."

"In the short week we have traveled together—""Get in the van." Chloe physically pushed him toward the waiting vehicles. Matt laughed. Ethan abandoned the speech long enough to hold out a fist. Matt bumped it. Chloe turned back and offered her hand. Matt shook it.

"Thanks." The word came out more seriously than the rest of the conversation. Both students noticed.

"Seriously," Matt continued.

"I would've learned a lot slower without you two." Chloe shrugged.

"You would've figured it out."

"After spending significantly more money," Ethan added. Matt nodded.

"Probably." That was hard to argue.

"Keep the Group Chat," Chloe said.

"Obviously." Ethan started backing toward the bus.

"Send us good drops."

"Only if they're expensive."

"Especially if they're expensive!" Matt looked at Chloe.

"So I guess this is goodbye." She shook her head.

"Not really."

"No?"

"The Delving community gets smaller as you move around." Matt glanced toward the lines of vehicles.

"America is fairly large." Ethan had reached the bus steps. He looked back.

"Dungeons make it smaller." Matt paused.

"That sounded almost intelligent."

"Thank you!"

"I said almost."

"Still counts!" Chloe walked toward the bus.

"See you around, Matt."

"See you." Ethan waved, then disappeared inside. Ten minutes later, the Academy caravan began rolling out—buses, equipment trucks, and instructor vehicles forming a long line toward the main road. Matt stood near the edge of the staging area and watched until the last one disappeared beyond Camp. Black Hollow did not become quiet. It was still packed.

Delvers walked past, a truck reversed nearby, somebody argued over a Gear price, and a food vendor shouted an order number while the Gate continued swallowing people and sending others back. Nothing had changed. Except the two people Matt had spent almost every day with were gone. He pulled out his phone. BLACK HOLLOW GROUP Active No dramatic goodbye message. No farewell speech. Ethan had already posted a blurry photo from inside the bus. Chloe was visible in the background looking annoyed.

Matt smiled, then put the phone away.

"…So." He looked at the empty space beside him.

"Solo again." ◆ The trailer felt noticeably quieter. That annoyed Matt. It was exactly as quiet as it had been before he'd met Ethan and Chloe. Possibly quieter, because now he had something to compare it to. He dropped his Gear beside the bed, sat at the small desk, and checked his phone. No: Dinner? No: Gate in ten? No argument between Ethan and Chloe about what time somebody was supposed to arrive. Matt stared at the Group Chat for another moment, then put the phone face down.

"Right." He looked around the trailer.

"I was supposed to be traveling." That was the point. Black Hollow had been the first stop. Not the destination. Matt opened a bottle of water, corrected its lukewarm temperature with Perfect Temperature, and drank. Then he opened his laptop. The National Dungeon Search Database loaded. Black Hollow Mine was still open in one tab. BLACK HOLLOW MINE Rank: F Recommended Level: 1–10 Matt was Level Seven. He could stay. There was nothing wrong with staying.

He knew the Dungeon, the Camp, where to shop, and what an average day looked like. Black Hollow remained reasonably safe and profitable, and he could easily stay until Level Ten. Maybe longer. It would be efficient. Matt looked at the page. Then closed the tab.

"I bought a truck for a reason." He opened the national map and filtered for F-rank Dungeons with Camps, trailer hookups, and beginner-friendly ratings. Markers appeared across the surrounding states. Dozens of them. Matt zoomed in and started opening tabs. EMBERGLASS QUARRY Rank: F Theme: Fire / Stone Matt glanced at Pure Element around his neck. Black Hollow had made the elemental portion of the Beginner Set almost irrelevant. Emberglass would not.

FROSTPINE BURROW Rank: F Theme: Cold / Beast Different terrain and monsters, plus an obvious chance to find out how much the Beginner Set actually mattered against elemental damage. RED CREEK RUINS Rank: F Theme: Undead / Ruins Matt paused on that one. Undead sounded properly Dungeon-like. Much more dramatic than rats. Possibly smellier. He wasn't sure. HOLLOW LAKE Rank: F Theme: Water / Beast Matt leaned back and looked at the row of tabs.

"Okay. That's a lot of options." A week ago, he would have picked whichever Dungeon had the best reviews and driven there. Now there was one other problem to solve first. His Passive Points were still untouched, exactly as planned. The problem was that after a week of reading and actual combat, he still liked all three beginner directions he'd bookmarked. Sword / Area Clear was closest to what he already had: longsword, Cleave, pack positioning, fast kills.

Sword + Shield / Solo Stability had become considerably more attractive now that Ethan was several hundred miles away. Heavy Physical was extremely simple. Big weapon. Big hit. Matt stared at the three guides.

"I want both." He paused.

"Actually, I want all three." Nobody was there to tell him that wasn't a build. His phone buzzed. Matt glanced down. Ethan: that's not a build Matt froze. He stared at the screen, then slowly typed. Matt: how did you know The answer came almost immediately. Ethan: know what Chloe: He doesn't. He's just annoying. Matt laughed hard enough that he had to put the bottle of water down.

"Of course." He looked back at the laptop. A normal Warrior couldn't afford to build in every direction at once. Matt had COPY. That changed things—but not infinitely, and not yet. He still had limited active slots, an incomplete Archive, and far too little experience to know what the Skill would eventually let him become. One thought kept returning. Maybe he didn't need a build that did everything. Maybe he needed a build that let everything else work.

A stable, proven foundation that didn't force him into one narrow answer before he understood what COPY might eventually offer. That seemed considerably more reasonable than inventing a brilliant custom build after ten days of experience.

"A proven base first." Matt looked at the untouched Passive Points. Then at the Build Guides.

"Then cheat." He closed the Dungeon Search tabs. Not permanently. The road could wait one more evening. The foundation probably shouldn't. Matt opened the link Chloe had sent him. @RookDelves The boring veteran. The first result was exactly what Matt needed. LEVEL 5–15 SOLO WARRIOR THE BORING VERSION THAT WORKS Matt smiled.

"Perfect." He clicked play. Rook appeared on-screen, a graying beard beneath a scarred face and the expression of a man who had spent years answering questions that should never have been asked. He looked directly into the camera.

"If you're watching this because you've finally decided you're smarter than every beginner guide on the internet, close the video." Matt leaned back.

"I like this guy." Rook continued. Matt glanced at the untouched Passive Points floating at the edge of his vision. Black Hollow had taught him how to fight. Ethan and Chloe had taught him how not to be stupid. Now he had to decide what kind of Delver he actually wanted to become. Matt turned the volume up.

"Okay." He reached for his notebook.

"Let's try not to invent poverty."