Jason, the 15th floor

  Jason spent his day raining down melodic blows with his pickaxe. Here, in the belly of the world, he was a king. Each swing wasn't labor but a simple meditation, a metronome for the mind. Every clang against crystal echoed through his thoughts rhythm sparking his invention. He wasn't a slave.

  The complexity of mana fascinated him. The way it bent natural law and flirted with the periodic table like a drunk chemist at a speed-dating event. Jason had long since figured out how to bypass the suppression field of the slave collars. Magic had the same basic principals as physics and while he only had a minor in the subject he loved to solve an intriguing problem. The temporal disturbance near the 15th floor's control tower created just enough variance in the collar's field harmonics to let him slip through the cracks.

  Yes, Jason was here by choice. The guards never noticed. The other slaves? They watched him with wide eyes, especially the women. He'd learned to imbue his muscles with mana, turning string into steel and sustaining himself on ether alone. Setting up his soul shards was difficult work, but not impossible. The rations were trash, but who needed stew when you could drink raw cosmic force?

  He'd spent his youth hanging around anime club girls and getting shoved by band geeks. Who, contrary to stereotype, were vicious little bastards. Now, he looked like Conan the Barbarian... if Conan were 5'2", and wore a lab coat over his mining harness. Down here, size meant faster quotas. Faster quotas meant more free time. More free time meant science.

  He wasn't just surviving, he had achieved level 85. The system didn't hand over noncombat classes, but Jason didn't care he knew from the little time he spent that skills influenced classes and not the other way around. He'd taken Battle Researcher, and he had gamed the hell out of it. Skill repetition, detailed logs, and hypotheses tested by the hour. When he reached level 81, he unlocked a rare variant of the skill analyze called Research Assistant, which categorized his notes and compiled relevant information to be brought up whenever a connection was missed, which was rare.

  He loved it nothing got in the way something was always happening every day. Not many people would cheer at being an unpaid magical intern in a dungeon, but Jason had no complaints.

  Analysis had always been surface-level. But this new ability? This was deep work. This was sipping fine wine while dissecting mana flows at the molecular level. He even got System recognition; his folks wouldn't believe it. He was a fucking Baron, officially acknowledged by whatever admin, algorithm, or half-bored galactic entity ran the damn thing.

  Amelia, the 15th floor

  Amelia had spent the last few weeks stalking her prey. Forty Imperial guards and two shadows from the Scarlet Legion. She tracked their shifts, memorizing their rotations; no one sneezed without her knowing. In the Empire, she scouted monsters, but here, hunting elves stirred something deeper. Scratched an itch she didn't think she had.

  After they struck, they would have to move fast because she was sure that the Scarlet legion would sound for reinforcements. So she did more than reconnaissance of the guards; she also listened to the slaves. She never heard more than a few sentences from them, but it always came back to what the mad scientist was doing.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  "Did you know Jason made a Distillery?" a man said proudly, like he had done it himself. "What, no way? You mean we can get drunk again?"

  "Would you let Jason... you know?" a woman in her 30s said while only stopping for a second to raise an eyebrow.

  "Ew, no, Amanda, he is like three feet tall." The girl replied

  "I heard he is as tall as he is long," Amanda said. The other slaves stopped, slack-jawed. A few of them blushed.

  Whoever this Jason was, he was the only one that seemed interesting on the floor, well, him and a silent man with fiery red hair and a scar that ran down the length of his throat. The sheer power with which he hit the earth suggested that he was perfect for wielding a two-handed weapon.

  Ada had suggested that instead of fighting head-on, they should grab some more allies and come back to finish the rest. Great in theory, but setting their ammo cache on fire was the wrong diversion. Stirring the barracks like a hornet's nest. After all the trouble that Dane put them through, the dungeon guards were ready and swarmed the two.

  Ada activated every skill that she had, and Amelia aimed. She was getting faster with the added benefits of +300 unassigned points every level. Dane was pushing to gain strength, and she would try to match it. She couldn't keep riding on his coattails. Amelia and Ada were two levels away from 100, where they would receive their race evolution, and they yearned for it.

  Forty targets made for a delightful target practice; she was flowing and rhythmic with her shots. She crouched close to the ground and only let loose lethal blows. She looked over to Ada and saw her fighting.

  She hadn't grown used to seeing a healer bludgeon foes to death using the Staff like a club. But Ada did it; she empowered each strike with cursed energy. It was something out of a fairytale. A healer who glowed bright and golden with healing magic, dealing blows lined with the green magic reserved for witches. Witches used rituals to cast, but Ada had inherited the Black Witches' style. Blending curse with smooth combat rituals. The ground was her cauldron, and body parts from the guards became her ingredients.

  All but the two assassins had fallen; they both ran terrified, leaving a yellow trail glistening in their wake. Amelia refused to let them escape and shot an arrow laced with languorous intent spores smeared on it. She split the arrow mid-shot with her skill, Splitting Strike. The first arrow missed, but the second found its target. She walked up to the downed assassin and removed his head. She had a message to leave.

  Jason stood near a collapsed section of crystal-veined wall, shirt ripped, glistening with the dust and sweat of labor. Mana still shimmered faintly in his muscles; he had been mid-experiment, trying to create a kinetic feedback loop from his pickaxe strikes. He'd just cracked a hypothesis wide open when the world above exploded in noise and color.

  Then they appeared.

  Ada landed in a crouch, blood painting the edges of her wedding dress, Staff glowing with a green mana that was definitely not from a forest... well, if that forest had a house made of Gingerbread, maybe. Amelia stood behind her, bow still humming, the severed head of an assassin dangling from her off-hand. Both women radiated the kind of intensity Jason only associated with Nobel Prize winners or TikTok stars.

  Jason's heart skipped. His brain didn't. Without hesitation, he fell to one knee, brushing crystal dust off his pants and slapping on his most dashing grin.

  "Ladies," he said, voice thick with faux nobility, "You've bested forty guards and two shadows, and rescued a humble researcher from unjust bondage. For this act of bravery, I can offer only one reward…"

  He produced a crude, mana-etched copper ring from his pocket. "Marry me. Either of you. Both of you. I'm not picky."

  Ada blinked. Amelia gave him a long look.

  "You're the slave researcher who built a working distiller out of iron shavings and fungus wine, right?" Amelia asked.

  "Guilty," he beamed. "Also, the inventor of the Self-Stirring Soup Bowl and the Mana-Laced Morning Wake-Up Rod?... pending elf patent approval."

  Ada raised an eyebrow. "You're not even trying to be serious, are you?"

  Jason stood upright, displaying all 5 feet of himself, and cracked his neck. "Seriousness is for people who don't know they're awesome. I know."

  Amelia sighed. "Dane's gonna love this guy."