Chapter 2: 1.pt2 ᴘᴀᴛʀᴇᴏɴ.ᴄᴏᴍ/sᴛʀᴀᴛᴏᴛʜʀᴀx
"Myra stop fucking around. The horses are hobbled, let's get inside this damn dungeon already," said an even taller guy than Adlen who pushed aside the foliage and stepped into the clearing. A pair of girls followed behind.
Rain eyed him warily. While Adlen was an intimidating level nineteen, this one, Brax, was an incredible level twenty eight, a prodigy, and because of that one of the most desirable men in the dungeon town of Lynthia, Rain's home. Seriously, Rain had seen him simply walk up to a random woman and take her hand and draw her away. She would happily follow, hopping like an eager rabbit into the nearest bedroom with him. It helped that he looked like an idealized adonis with long black slightly curled hair, though as always a person's level was cause for greatest attraction, a high number charmed people like nothing else.
That two of the three girls of the team seemed to have attached themselves to him did not surprise Rain in the slightest. In fact he was more surprised Adlen had any chance at all with Myra.
"Oh we were just having a little fun, nothing serious!" she pouted at him.
"Just a little eh?" he slapped his thigh and Myra bounced over to him where he wrapped one large arm around her hips.
Adlen scowled seeing that. Rain had to hold in a snort of laughter, he knew well that Adlen would love to say something but like himself he would have to keep his thoughts unspoken for fear of getting beaten to a pulp by the higher leveler.
"Hey you wanted us to go, well, let's go," said Adlen, clearly hoping to distract Brax from Myra. He gestured behind himself to a stone entrance.
It was an impressive thing, the entrance to a dungeon. At least twenty feet tall and built from heavy block stonework. Large angular runes from a dead language marked the thick arch, the stone chipped and marred with age beneath thick green moss that crawled across its surface.
Brax caught Rain's eye. "Scared, little Rain? This isn't where runts should tread."
"If you must know, yeah, I am. Weren't you scared to fight your first monster?"
Brax snorted. "Nah, power levelling is easy, you just gotta hold a knife steady once the monster is pinned, I stabbed the shit out of mine, was fun as hell."
"You would say that, you overleveled-..." grumbled Adlen stopping himself from finishing.
"Ooh I bet you could take 'em solo these days though!" cooed Myra running a hand across Brax's chest. Brax smirked at Adlen's irritation.
"Around here most monsters are easy for me. I would need to find something a bit rarer to provide a challenge."
"Come on Brax, I'm not here to hear you brag about your levels as well as your prowess in bed." said one of the girls who had followed him into the clearing.
"Ah, I'm pretty sure I satisfied your curiosity on the latter one. But sure let's get inside and get you your promised levels. The runt too."
Myra clung to him as he strode into the darkness of the dungeon and Adlen followed scowling unhappily. He was followed by the two girls then lastly came Rain bringing up the rear.
Rain had to walk quickly to keep up.
That he had been allowed to join a team going to power level lower levelers was something that Rain was still having trouble adjusting to. He was the town's runt or near enough, a stunted level one. How had he come to be like that? Unfortunately for Rain his father had attacked the town's Ranker when Rain was a child for trying to take Rain's mother.
Attacking the highest leveled person in town and its de facto leader when you hadn't even broken level twenty, well, it wasn't exactly a wise decision. Still, Rain's father had fought like a demon and by some incredible fluke he had permanently blinded the Ranker in one eye.
Which was the worst result imaginable.
The Ranker had brutally crippled Rain's father in furious retaliation and then tortured his mother to death in front of him. Then, surprisingly, he sentenced him with a Black Mark and let him live. This meant little to the man who'd seen his wife suffer and die in front of his eyes and from then on he had escaped into the bottle.
This left Rain with a broken home and a drunkard for a father. Worse, a Black Mark meant that any descendants of the man were to be made to suffer the same punishment, 'Sins of the Father', in practice that meant one person, Rain.
He didn't understand at the time, being made a pariah and being banned from being power leveled seemed like nothing, not even a real punishment. It wasn't until he started to grow older that he realised he had been handed a slow death sentence. No way to increase his level because he was too weak to kill even the weakest of monsters and no one to help him.
His father had passed a few years ago, a decade of booze and self-harm and Rain had woken one day to find he had not returned home. He found him several hours later having passed out in an alley and caught his death of cold leaving Rain alone in the world. Things only got worse after that and Rain was reduced to begging. Most ignored his pleas for fear of angering the town's Ranker but he had survived, just.
And now he was here, having somehow wormed his way into a group going out to a dungeon to power level. It was as he had hoped, the death of his father and so many years having passed had softened people's hearts and caused them to forget the Ranker's Black Mark. Of course his weak and pathetic state was not so easy to ignore, but he would just have to make up for that by working really hard once he started levelling.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone