Chapter Twenty, Dealt Dungeon.

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  Jora sat within a cave entrance, toying with his hand. It's consistency had changed, becoming a black sludge, flowing about.

  The result of his altered physiology. Through both his new Soul skill, and his [Hungry Slime] Talent.

  He glanced towards the glowing panels, a small smile emerging once more.

  He glanced at his Attributes, a voice ringing in his head.

  "[Don't push your Capacity any higher for now, it's a powerful stat that will put you above the curve... Let's max out your stats at high C-rank, since that's the amount of power that the A-rank was able to gather from you... lets do, 670 points total across Vitality, Strength, Agility, and Intelligence... That would put you at the peak of C-rank with a Unique Class.]" Ana spoke, Jora nodding understandingly.

  His attention hovered back towards his, new skill, his eyes darting towards his Talent for a moment.

  "[Yeah... Mr. World Talent... Still baffles me...]" Ana sighed, Jora only equipping a smile.

  Indirectly, through the bonuses of this skill, he had come to understand something.

  Experience points were soul energy.

  The level represented the baseline level of a soul, and with an increase in soul power, came the allocation of physical and mental power in the form of Attributes. Soul skills boosted the power of the soul beyond the baseline level, so it was hard to truly understand the power of an entity at higher ranks.

  With his new power, he was able to cleanly consume all of the experience of his food, but even then at the higher levels, any creature below him in soul level wouldn't even put a dent in the required experience for his next level.

  Surely, it would stack up, but only eating those with higher levels would truly boost his level. His soul was beyond the power of level 96, but that was the level he had naturally attained, not including his skills. It was like two separate portions of his soul, that grew in different, but the same ways.

  Only by consuming souls would he really see intense growth.

  Thinking about it was making him hungry.

  "Are you satisfied with the Dungeon for now?" He moved to his feet, stepping out of the cave.

  "[Yes, slightly, it's grown vastly thanks to your new skills. We have adopted many animals from the world too! Bears, rabbits, birds, deer... The environment is looking lively! The real question is what should we name it?]" Ana replied.

  "[And actually, while you just did your weird triple check of your Gluttony, I thought of a way to bypass that Capacity limit... Wanna hear it?]" She rambled just a bit, Jora shielding his eyes from the glaring sun hanging in the sky.

  "Let me hear it." He said, dropping from the cliff face.

  He soared towards the ground a couple hundred feet below from the cliff face.

  "[We say fuck the Capacity limit, let your Health and Mana grow, but we funnel that energy into the Dungeon. It will help with the hard cap for the high C-rank limit as well. The ceiling of your pools will grow limitlessly, we won't have to worry about them growing too powerful, because we'll funnel the energy towards the Dungeon! You could have a limit of 15,000 Health, but you'll only ever have... About 2,000? Somewhere around there would be the realistic level for a high C-rank... That way, we're giving the Inner World a vast amount of energy to grow, and in that way, your regeneration and all of that will grow boundlessly.]" She rambled.

  "[Even though your Health would be 2,000, you would be instantly regenerated to that level every time you took damage, because of the plethora of Vitality you would have stored within! And leveling up the Dungeon so much and feeding it that much energy would let us use the Dungeon Management's capability of altering reality, to manipulate space and time on a deeper level, dilating it, and warping it far further. Through that, I'm sure we could gain both Space and Time magic skills... I've put a lot of thought into this Jora! It's the greatest way!]" He could hear Ana clapping.

  Jora smiled, touching down on the ground, his body recoiling and shimmering like a slimes would.

  Following through with a roll, he outstretched an arm, shooting a web towards a tree and pulling himself forward.

  "Honestly... I contemplate trying to assimilate all of your memories sometimes... Seeing you formulate all these things makes me want to do it myself." He chuckled, flying through the air, attaching to another tree with another web, slinging himself through the forest.

  "[Yeah thanks for the praise.]" Ana teased, "[But reach level 500 before you try and do that... You'll be partially safe at that point, safe enough to sift through my history at least.]" She added, making Jora shrug amidst the swinging.

  "Whatever you say..." He replied, "As for the name of the Dungeon?... I'll leave that up to you. You already made me name the four kids." He said, Ana nodding in reply.

  "[True there.]" She muttered.

  There was just a moment of silence between the two, and in that window, they noticed something.

  Jora's nose twitched, his hunger welling up.

  He released his web, tucking his legs and flipping towards the ground. He landed smoothly, his brows furrowed as he turned to face a certain direction.

  "[... I attribute this to your Luck.]" Ana muttered.

  "Should I do the same that I did for you?" He questioned.

  He could feel her hesitance, but he knew what she was thinking.

  He stood to his full height, aiming himself towards the disturbance. He stepped, closing the distance bit by bit as he continued to move forward.

  "[We'd have to talk to them first... If they've been here for a while, unlike me, they could have important information. Uprooting them might affect the ecosystem, bringing us unwanted attention. You wouldn't want to increase the size of the target on your back...]" Ana explained, as Jora neared their target.

  He could hear voices.

  He slowed, a clearing coming into view, but he stayed hidden in the trees, deepening his [Stalker]...

  He felt it was close to a level up.

  He situated himself on the edge of the clearing, his eyes hardening.

  Subconsciously, he tapped deeper into his rarely used [Mana Vision], melding it with the [Enhanced Sight] skill that he gained from his bird meals.

  He wasn't fond of their winged movement, finding their wings rather ugly, he would tackle the skill of flight another way.

  Hopefully the same way that A-rank had done it...

  His mind returned it's focus to the clearing, Ana speaking in his mind.

  "[There are stalls, shops, many people... This Dungeon must be integrated into that Tilmont place... It's guarded as well. They have dealt with it, as far as I can tell.]" Ana spoke.

  'I thought Dungeon's didn't get dealt with?' Jora mentally asked.

  "[No, I mean literally dealt with. A deal has been formed. We'll just have to figure out if it was mutual or enforced. Mutual would mean that the party that the Dungeon dealt with would remember the interaction. Enforced meaning the Dungeon wiped their memory... If it's mutual, then us uprooting this Dungeon would alert the dealer, because they know the nature of Dungeons...]" Ana explained, and Jora nodded.

  "[Let's infiltrate. You can farm monsters in the Dungeon as well, for a small power boost. And we can steal their creations and put them into the Inner World... We can work on boosting [Stalker] during this as well. Eating with it active to stay undetected and confuse the Dungeon when we confront it... That way [Stalker] might evolve as well.]" Ana planned.

  A natural talent she seemed to have.

  'You think a lot... Better than me.' Jora scoffed.

  "[Because I am better than you. We already knew this?]" He rolled his eyes.

  'Explain why you want me to refrain from eating those humans outside the Dungeon?' He asked, feeling some of her thoughts.

  "[Because I'm sure the humans have some way of tracking those that die. Seeing people die outside of the Dungeon would be alarming. It's clear that this Dungeon hasn't been designated for any important Quest like mine had... Yep, I just checked. Therefore, you should be able to eat the humans inside in moderate... If there is a lot, then eating all of them would be alarming as well. We have to play things safe. Until you can match the power of that man... Only with time dilation in the Inner World can I see that happening any soon.]" Ana rambled once more.

  She was really extensive with her explanations, but Jora was thankfully.

  'Understandable.' He nodded.

  And then he made his move.

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