Alan was thrown off by his surroundings. The entrance to this place had been located in the ruins of a church. But it was more of a nice community church, the kind you could find in any small town in America.

  What he was currently standing in could also be described as the ruins of a church, but it would probably be more appropriate to call it a cathedral. The floor was marble and the ceiling was at least twenty meters high. The side walls were made up of several stained glass windows. Sturdy looking pews lined the space in five columns before ending in front of a large raised dais.

  In its heyday, this would probably have been a rather impressive place of worship. Unfortunately, ‘bad things’ had happened and it was in tatters. Most of the stained glass was shattered and the floor was covered in soot and debris. Half of the pews were broken or burned and the altar was covered in graffiti. He would have described the writing as satanic, but he wasn’t really sure what that term meant. Theology had never been high on his list of favorite subjects.

  What he could see were pentagrams and strange symbols or runes. Most were done with some kind of black paint but others seemed to be drawn with a red substance that looked suspiciously like blood.

  Between this dungeon and the last, Alan was truly starting to feel like he was living in the apocalypse. Just standing here, he felt his skin crawling, like at any moment some nasty hell creature was going to slither its way out from somewhere and devour his soul. Literally, since he now had an actual soul. When the network sent him a quest, the notification actually made him jump.

  New Quest: Profaned Temple (200)

  [This once great place of worship has been desecrated. Whoever, or whatever, did it is still lingering somewhere in the area. Find those responsible and punish them for their sins.]

  Well that wasn’t creepy at all. He also wasn’t sure how he felt about punishing them ‘for their sins’. He knew nothing about who this had been a temple to, or those who had destroyed it. Maybe they had good reasons for the profaning. Although, the blood drawings, and he was now sure that was blood, were concerning.

  A quest was a quest, however, and he had to remember that this wasn’t real, just something created by a dungeon core. With that comforting thought, he was able to settle his minor moral quandary. Now it was time to figure out this quest.

  A quick scan of the ruins didn’t show anything else alive. There could be things hiding in the debris, but there were no obvious dangers. He did notice a choir loft on the wall behind him. That would provide him a nice vantage point to survey the room. He didn’t really want to go climbing over the broken pews to look for evil creepy crawlies.

  He was in the chapel proper, but behind Alan was the entry foyer, and he noticed a few doors. Maybe behind one of those were the stairs that led up to the balcony. The first door he tried was locked. He could probably kick it down, but he decided to check the others first.

  The second door was also locked, their placement made him think they were bathrooms. Alan smiled when he remembered he wouldn’t need a bathroom ever again. In perhaps the best feature of the Network, all bodily waste was converted to energy that was used by your aura.

  The final door opened easily and revealed a set of stairs leading up. These were wooden stairs, but they didn’t even creak when he put his weight on them. They were also clean and showed no signs of the destruction that the main room had suffered.

  Alan wasn’t going to take a chance, however safe it looked, so he slowly made his way up, using both his natural and aura senses to scan his surroundings. When he finally reached the top, he found a few padded pews in perfect condition. Whatever had vented its rage downstairs hadn’t bothered to come up here.

  Looking down, it was clear now that it was something profoundly angry that had demolished the sanctuary below. He could see how the pews had been thrown around and smashed through the windows, and he finally saw a body.

  The body was awash in blood and gore, but Alan could discern the remnants of priestly garb underneath. Not a black suit with a white collar, but a more fantasy version. He wore robes that had once been brown, and carried a thick golden staff. That staff was now bent almost in half and lying beside the body. It looked like something had tried to break it, but didn’t quite have the strength.

  The priest’s chest had been torn open and his organs were scattered around. There were also distinct blood trails leading from the corpse to the bloody diagrams on the wall. That settled where the blood came from, but he still didn’t know about the black paint.

  Alan put all of his perception to use and scoured the room. He couldn’t detect anything that seemed like a threat. If there was a monster waiting down there it was either really small or invisible. The latter was a concern, but you couldn’t live your life in fear of invisible beasts.

  What he did find was another place to search. Behind the altar on the dais was a wooden door. He wasn’t too familiar with church design, but it probably led to the priest’s office or some kind of hidden altar.

  Making his way back down to the main floor, he carefully picked his way across the ruins. Upon reaching the altar, he almost went straight to the door, but then his greed got the better of him. The staff next to the body looked to be made of gold, and was probably worth quite a lot. He wouldn’t even have to touch the corpse to loot it.

  Trying to get over to the staff, without stepping in the blood, was a challenge, but he was soon standing over the ruined staff. Alan took the opportunity to more closely examine the priest’s remains as well. There were no signs of slicing or cutting around the gaping chest wound. Instead it looked more like what happened when his spewn caved in something’s body.

  Next up, he studied the staff. Identify didn’t tell him much.

  Item: Holy Staff rarity Uncommon. A staff made of a high quality gold alloy. It had recently had its durability compromised and is not much use as an icon or a weapon.

  Good thing he didn’t want it for its usefulness, he was only interested in what it was worth. He grabbed it with one hand, but it didn’t budge. Gold is heavy, but with his stats he shouldn’t have a problem. He got two hands on it, as best he could, and strained with his legs.

  His grip was awkward as he couldn’t get his fingers underneath the golden shaft, but slowly it lifted off the ground. Once there was space, he slid his fingers around to the bottom. Now that he had a firm grasp on it, he was easily able to lift it up. Before he could place it in storage, though, he felt energy suddenly coursing through the staff.

  He tried to drop it, but the rapidly increasing power made straight for his hands. He found himself unable to let go as more and more energy entered his body. This foreign mana surged into his aura pathways and he suddenly received a notification.

  New Status: Anathema

  [You have been cursed. All aggressive creatures will consider you a threat and attack on sight. Sentient creatures will instinctually treat you as hostile.]

  The mana flowing from the staff and into his body finally cut off and he dropped it to the floor with a resounding bang. He flinched from the noise, but was more concerned with the curse. He stared at the staff, trying to figure out what had happened, when his identify went off again.

  Item: Cursed Holy Staff rarity Uncommon. This was once the symbol of a Priest’s devotion to his god. It has been profaned and is now a symbol of the hatred someone has for that god. Any being who tries to wield the staff will receive the Anathema curse for twenty hours. The timer will not begin while the staff is still in their possession.

  Well that sucks. The curse was awful enough, but it looked like he wasn’t even going to be able to keep the staff. Going by the description it seemed like he would be a pariah to all he met. It was unclear how that would affect people Alan already knew, but he didn’t want to test it out.

  The good news was that it would wear off after a day, the bad news, that only worked if he left the golden icon here. He was going to be cursed and he couldn’t even sell the stupid thing. No longer wanting anything to do with that cursed staff, Alan made his way to the door in the back.

  Instead of leading to an office or another room, he found a set of stone stairs leading down. These looked like ancient, well worn stairs, the kind that you might find leading to a crypt. There were also burning torches on the wall, but from what he could tell there was no fuel keeping them lit. This whole dungeon was feeling very gothic.

  It was a short series of stairs, and he soon found himself standing in a hallway. The decor was similar to the stairs, tight stonework illuminated by occasional torches. As traditional dungeons go, this was much nicer than Toderack’s maze. There was none of that dripping ooze or general scumminess.

  However, that wasn’t to say it was pristine. The wall in front of him had a large bloody hand print that trailed off toward the right. Holding his own hand up, it wasn’t even half as large as the crimson one in front of him. Whatever had left that print was not messing around.

  He could go either left or right from where he was, but it wasn’t really a choice. As little as he wanted to find the creature who had left that gorey print, it was probably the same one who had destroyed the temple above. That meant he had to find it to complete the quest, which meant he would follow the blood.

  Heading to the right, he soon found a doorway on the side. As he got close, he could see that the door was ajar. Hugging the wall, he cautiously made his way forward, and leaned over just far enough to peer in.

  There was no one in sight, but the room wasn’t empty. There was a table in the middle of the room with iron manacles positioned around the edges. Three of the restraints appeared broken and the table was so soaked in blood that most of the wood was dyed red. Hanging on the wall were many devices that special forces operators prayed they never encountered. Knives, tongs, clips, chains, whips, and other instruments of pain dominated the collection.

  This was clearly a room designed for torture, not what you would normally expect in the basement of a church. In an effort to be thorough, he stepped inside to check it out. There really wasn’t anyone in the room, and other than the hanging implements and the torture table, there wasn’t anything of note.

  Alan considered collecting the various tools of terror, they had to be worth something after all, but he didn’t really want to touch them. His ongoing curse was part of the reason, a warning that looting was potentially dangerous. Another problem was that while he had enough storage to loot all he wanted, dungeons didn’t appreciate it if you tried to strip them bare. He would save his sticky fingers for better items.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  As he was getting ready to leave, he noticed something off about one of the hooks. Unlike the others, this one wasn’t holding any torture devices. It also looked slightly thicker than the others, and it was currently sitting at an angle that was slightly off of the rest.

  Reaching up he pulled down gently on the hook. It easily gave way, and a section of the wall next to him swung outward. His high perception had paid off, it seemed, he had found a hidden room. Stepping around the new door, he found a short hallway that led into a small chamber.

  There was a single torch in the room and it gave off a feeble amount of light. It was plenty for Alan’s eyes, however. In the middle of the room, floating about twenty centimeters above the floor, was a humanoid figure.

  Having learned his lesson, he didn’t give it his full focus, not wanting to trigger identify, just in case it could detect it. But he did study it. It looked like a human, but smaller. It was only about a meter tall, and everything about it was similarly shrunken, except its head. That was full size for a normal human. It was facing a little away from Alan, but he thought that it looked masculine, so he thought of it as a man or maybe a boy.

  He thought of moving closer to check out the rest of the room it was in, but there didn’t seem to be much there. He also didn’t think it was wise to get too close until he knew what it was he was facing. It was time to identify it and see what happened.

  Demon: Fallen Cherub (Uncommon) level 12, threat: medium.

  As he had feared, it sensed his spiritual intrusion. Having been warned by Pixel how identify worked, he had been both focusing on the figure to trigger identify, and using his aura senses to try and detect how the skill formed its connection.

  Once he had focused on the cherub, a small pulse of energy had emerged from his soul and entered his aura. From there it rushed to his head and passed into his eyes. Then a slender strand of that energy formed and stretched to the floating enigma. When it connected, another pulse flowed back along the energy string and brought with it knowledge. The strand disintegrated behind the pulse.

  This had all happened in almost an instant, but he now had a better idea of what his skill was doing, and how someone might detect it. All of that was something he could think on later, but the figure's identity had him confused.

  Demon was not only a type of creature he had encountered before, but a classic figure in both fantasy and religion. Cherub was also a familiar term, but it was almost always associated with a holy being. The fallen designation was probably the link between the two, but Alan was unclear on what that would mean for the being’s abilities.

  This was not his only dilemma. After Alan had identified the fallen cherub, it seemed to have woken up and its body began to change. It was nothing major, but a pair of small angel wings formed on the thing’s back and ripples spread across it, leaving it more muscular than before. The fingers on his tiny hands elongated and long talons grew from what had been fingernails.

  It wasn’t lost on Alan that this was the highest leveled creature he had faced so far. The medium threat level was reassuring, but he didn’t actually know how that was calibrated. Did medium mean he had a 50/50 chance of losing, or he should win unless he screwed up? So far it seemed like the latter, but maybe he had just gotten lucky.

  Alan didn’t see any weapons other than its claws, so he decided to go with his spewn and pugio. This should allow him to block the attacks and inflict damage at the same time. It was about time he got to try out his new abilities. Well, ability. He couldn’t use healer’s mark on himself, and fade didn’t seem applicable since it had already seen him and was unlikely to lose sight of Alan, even with the ablitie’s boost.

  He activated mana lode and then sent a prismatic orb flying toward the cherub. He was right behind his spell, ready to attack when it was dazzled. That plan didn’t pan out though, his orb detonated early when it impacted a glowing white sphere. The cherub had some kind of shield active.

  Now that he knew to look, he could sense some kind of mana orbiting the demon. It wasn’t familiar, but it had something in common with light mana. None of that was helpful at the moment, but his parents and oh so many teachers had instilled in him the importance of learning. You never knew when some random piece of information would help.

  He was already in melee range, so he decided to follow up with a slice from his spewn. The cherub didn’t even try to block, instead it held its clawed hands several centimeters apart in front of it. Meanwhile, Alan’s attack bounced harmlessly off of its shield. He got the sense that it could shrug off such blows for quite some time.

  Alan had been focused on his attack, but he would have been better off watching what the cherub was doing. An orb suddenly formed between its hands and grew to a diameter of six centimeters before shooting out at him. He was so taken by surprise that he didn’t even try to dodge.

  It hit him dead center in his chest and blew a chunk of flesh out of his torso. Looking down he could actually see a piece of his heart beating inside of him. He quickly backed off, and at the same time cast his minor healing spell. Alan followed it up by casting his regeneration spell. He should have cast that ahead of time, but he hadn't gotten used to having it as part of his arsenal yet.

  The good news was that he had healed enough so that his organs were no longer exposed, but his chest was still a dark yellow. It was slowly getting lighter as his regeneration took effect, however. Now that he wasn’t in danger of imminent death he could refocus on his enemy.

  Once again it had its hands together and was getting ready to send another orb his way. This time he was better able to sense the mana gathering, and noticed that it had the same feel as the man in its shield. When it formed he was ready to react, and dove out of the way. Luckily it wasn’t a seeking spell, and it impacted harmlessly against the wall behind him.

  If he kept his distance, Alan should be able to dodge all of its attacks, but he didn’t know how to hurt it yet. Time to change that by utilizing some of his own spell arsenal. Prismatic orb had been ineffective, but it wasn’t a damaging spell anyway. He started with his most powerful offensive spell, a massive fire bolt.

  With his spewn pointed at the demon cherub’s chest he unleashed a giant ball of flames, but when they reached the creature’s shield they exploded without harming the man-boy inside. It did seem like the shield lost some of its power, but he wasn’t sure how much.

  It had its hands together again, and Alan tried something different. When fighting one of the drow in the dwarven tunnels, he had managed to disrupt his foe's casting by hitting the forming spell with a light bolt. It had caused a rather explosive failure that had blasted them apart.

  He was ready to try that again, so as the mana gathered between the cherub's claws he already had his light bolt formed and sent it shooting toward the burgeoning spell form. Unfortunately it hit the shield and dissipated. It didn’t seem to do any damage either. Alan was already diving out of the way, having learned to anticipate failure in his Network fights.

  In hindsight, it should have been obvious that his tactic wouldn’t work, since the spell was being formed inside of a shield, and his mana wouldn’t be able to penetrate. Time to try plan beta. Light had been rather ineffective, which made sense since it had seemed similar to the shield mana, but fire had done some damage. Alan would need to experiment with his different spells to figure out what would be most effective.

  Gust and conjure water weren’t even worth trying, neither caused actual damage. That left stone spear and shadow bolt. Technically he could also try cone of steam, but that was a low damage, area of effect spell. Shadow bolt also wasn’t technically listed as one of his spells. He had cast it a few times, but he had never mastered it to the point that the Network included it on his stat sheet.

  Stone spear was first, he waited for the next time the cherub cast its glowing white orb, and after side stepping the attack, he formed his own spell. He had learned a better version of the basic earth spell from Simon, another prospective apprentice that he had met in Dracon’s tower. The towering russian had learned to create multiple spears at a time. Alan could only manage two at the moment, and they both proved barely effective.

  Punching in from either side, the two stone shafts shattered themselves on the cherubs shield. Again, the mana level surrounding it dipped, but not significantly. Alan was starting to question how intelligent this thing was though, because it once again just tried to cast another orb at him without changing anything up.

  He was easily able to avoid it and tried out his shadow bolt next. In the past he had struggled to cast it, but that was before he learned his dark spreader talent and gained mana lacing with his sorcerer class. He really had been slacking in his magical studies ever since leaving his mentor’s tower. After this dungeon he would have to commit himself to spending some time with his spells.

  The dark mana gathered almost instantly into the spell form and a bolt of darkness shot at the cherub. It would have been nice if it magically pierced through the shield, but it wasn’t to be. What did happen, though, was that it ate a big chunk of the shield. It had cost less than half of the mana, and been cast faster than his large fire bolt. It had even done more damage as well.

  Something about the interplay of the mana types must be involved. From a simplistic sense, if the mana was similar to light, it made sense that it was resistant to the same type of energy and weak against an opposite mana. This wasn’t something he had gotten to experience before, but then again, he didn’t have many opportunities to see mana interacting.

  Having found a successful attack, the rest of the fight was simple drudgery. Again and again he would shoot the fallen cherub with shadow bolts in between dodging its glowing orbs. He could usually get two or even three shadow bolts off between his opponent’s attacks. If it wasn’t for mana lode he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off, the repeated castings were hard on his mana pool. It took roughly eight of the spells, ten minutes to break the cherub’s shield.

  After that, the shadow bolt failed to inflict much damage on the creature itself. It seemed it was only effective against the mana itself, not the one wielding it. Without its shield, however, Alan was able to use his prismatic orb to blind it and stab it through the heart with his spewn.

  After the fight was over, he took stock of his situation. His torso still wasn’t fully healed, but it looked more like road rash than a sucking chest wound. Another healing spell fixed the last of that issue. His mana lode was now on cool down, so he should probably try to avoid any fights for a little bit.

  He had also gained some useful knowledge. That shield had taught him about how mana interacted, and also how it could be used to protect spell casting. Ever since he had disrupted the drow’s spell, he had wondered how mages cast more impressive magics. If someone could disrupt it with a simple mana bolt, you would never have time to complete a complex form. It must be that they were somehow able to shield their spells.

  While he was pondering things, the strange demon’s body disappeared in what he had taken to calling a lootnado. In its place was a pouch. Inside the pouch was a small bone. His identify skill labeled it as a holy finger relic, but gave no hint as to its purpose. His aura senses were able to confirm the presence of a lot of mana. The energy seemed to be similar to what he had encountered in the cherub’s shield. Perhaps that meant it was holy mana.

  It occurred to him that he had a way of confirming this. Searching through his ring, Alan pulled out a book. He hadn’t used it in a while, but he had once spent many an hour studying its pages. He knew from his time memorizing glyphs that Holy Mana was a thing. It was one of the hundred glyphs he had memorized to pass the first trial in the tower.

  The book of glyphs didn’t only contain the names, however. Below each glyph was also a description. It was written in the magical symbols that mages used to write down their knowledge. It was not something that the Network translated for him, either. Luckily, after his time becoming Dracon’s apprentice, he had a decent grasp on the language.

  Holy magic was not actually attached to Gods, his observer Tamee had told him that true Gods didn’t exist. As far as they knew, anyway. However, there was a subsection of races that were classified as Angels. These beings specialized in this type of mana, and it was related to life and light mana. A cherub must be a type of angel, although the one he fought had been classified as a demon.

  This was interesting, but it didn’t offer any hints on countering holy mana. Alan had picked up one tactic though, using dark mana spells. He currently only had one, and it was the basic version. Since he had some time before his mana lode could be used again, he decided to see if he could beef up the spell.

  He had spent months in Dracon’s tower learning to improve, and even create new, spells. He also had a blueprint for what he wanted. To create a totally new dark mana spell would take more time than he had. Modifying his existing one to be more powerful, well, that he had already done before.

  What he wanted was basically what he already had with his fire bolt. Alan was looking for the ability to make the spell more powerful when he needed it. This was simply a matter of adding a couple of sections to the spell form that would allow him to boost it by adding mana. It wasn’t quite as simple as plug and play, though, since different mana types behaved slightly differently. It took a few tries until he finally got what he was looking for. In the end it took him half an hour to upgrade his shadow bolt to rare, which would have seriously impressed him not that long ago.

  Spell: Shadow Bolt (Uncommon). Summons a bolt of darkness which can hit a target up to 30 meters away. Deals a variable amount of damage from low to moderate depending on the mana used. Mana cost: Variable 10 to 50 depending on size of shadow bolt.

  This would hopefully help him break through a cherub’s shield much faster. He hadn’t paid attention before, but he noticed that almost all of his spell rarities had been downgraded when he leveled his sorcerer class. He had been warned it would happen, but it was still a little sad to see. Armed with his new spell, and with the finger bone safely stored in his necklace, Alan got back to the serious job of exploring the dungeon.