Author's note:

Almost forgot! Made a few changes to the chapter where they first entered the dungeon. Below has the particulars:

Rather than standing still, they're ambushed...

Showcase more of Alan's skills...

Cass has a little more agency...

Here's the full section that was edited. Feel free to skip as the results are the same, it just better fits the story.

From Chapter 45: Just Another Day in the Dungeon

One member was off on the flank, just a little too far from the group. Joran, Alan, and most of the group were sprinting to the other side, right when a single Veilrunner slipped up behind him.

The Veilrunners' sharp fingers stabbed through the man’s thin leather protection. He had enough time to gasp, catching Cass’s attention, before it quickly started to drag him away to the dark. 

“Hey!” Cass yelled out, but noone could hear him over the melee and shouting. “Hey!”

Nobody’s listening. I can’t chase him myself, I’m still recovering, and besides, I’m the only one with the map. I need to do something else. 

An idea popped into Cass’s mind, and he quickly pulled out the Quill.

Rescue is a combat Quest, but it doesn’t give a return Waypoint. Escort does give a return Waypoint, but you can’t assign it in a combat scenario. For this man to be saved, it needs to be both.

I’ll have to assign them and just deal with the System being mad at me for using a non-combat Quest in this situation.

Pulling up his templates, he grabbed the single Rescue type he’d ever made, thanking Mr. Moore from miles and miles away for forcing him to do so.

Choice made and without a lot of time, Cass sprinted over as fast as his wobbly legs could take him. Alan pulled back his rapier from a Veilrunner’s chest and took a breath just as Cass got there.

“What’s his name?”

The old man’s head sharply swiveled his way, “What?”

“Someone’s been taken? I need their name!”

Alan turned and did a quick headcount, “Anyone seen Matt?”

No response came, and Cass noted several group members begin to look panicked. That settled it for him.

Cass slotted it into the Outliner, then started to rattle off the Quest to the air. Just as he was about to send it through, he put a fifteen-second delay on it at the very end, then sent it Alan’s way. He could’ve made it longer, but Mat didn’t have that kind of time. 

The golden, floating words traveled slowly through the air as Cass flipped the Outliner over to an Escort template.

Without his recent mental enhancement, Cass’s speed would not have been possible. Considering Waypoints, selecting the correct Quest-type, and putting it all together would’ve taken him at least a few minutes before. But though alacrity didn’t make him smarter, he was certainly faster than he used to be.

Escort flew through his mind with haste. Quick enough that he was mumbling the words to the air. He finished, pushed the light drain away, then held his breath as both Quests flew to a staring Alan tapping his foot.

Then they touched each other before reaching him. Cass blinked as the two Quests merged into one, and his notifications started blinking.

Alan…

Vale mumbled to the air as the weird floating symbols drifted in the air toward him. He liked Vale, thought he was a good kid who was just trying his best in a shitty place. But that didn’t mean he liked strange things flying at his chest.

Vale stopped talking, and suddenly, a second stream of symbols flew at him as well. It looked almost like a golden spear before it briefly touched the other stream beside it. Both became one as they touched him, and an update forced itself into his vision.

Rescue Matt and slay the Veilrunner!

He annoyingly flicked it off as a giant beam of gold lit the air hundreds of feet away, and getting further. Lone Charge kicked him away from the group, and Alan felt all the years straining his old body. Another Charge was spent as he closed the gap between Matt and himself. The Veilrunner holding him got a quick Rapier to the eye, then he threw two more pointed attacks out at the closing monsters beside it.

Lifting Matt’s heavy frame onto his shoulders, another update came in, and he read it without meaning to.

Matt rescued, Veilrunner slain. Return him to the group.

Turning around, Alan noticed a new golden beam appear. He was about to use Charge again when a wall cut off his view…and more were coming.

“Bullshit ass smart Guardians.”

Leap turned into a Territorial Scan as Alan began bouncing off the enclosing walls attempting to pin him in. His rescuee groaned, but Alan didn’t listen. All that mattered was getting back.

A third use of Charge had him gritting his teeth as his stamina quickly drained. They were flying through the air, just as a Greybeard dropped from the ceiling. A well-timed kick sent it off into the darkness with a snort, then they landed, and his boots skittered and slipped as he sprinted the rest of the way.  

Now, onto the show.

Chapter 47: Enhanced

As soon as the glowing Quill touched the cold, red metal, the mental separation Cass was experiencing ratcheted up to another level. 

Looking down at his boiling hand was like staring at someone else's. The skin bubbled and peeled back. Tendons made their inglorious appearance. Blood flowed freely, dripping upon the splattered ground. And yet, it didn’t move him. 

In fact, he felt no pain at all.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t a sight to see. That, the moment the purge was done, some part of himself would recoil in horror. But the separation between his mind and body was complete in that moment, where nothing but cold logic could remain.

Regeneration worked, Constitution as well. In tandem, one repaired while the other cleaned and cleansed his body, but he could already tell it wouldn’t be enough. They just weren’t keeping up with the damage being done. And the notifications kept coming.

First Threshold reached: 1x Endurance

Second Threshold reached: 2x Endurance

(System Trust I) Note: Threshold accelerated by outside forces

Third Threshold reached: 3x Endurance

(System Trust I) Note: Threshold accelerated by outside forces

Only ten seconds had passed before all of the skin was flayed from his hand. Then it began to take the muscle and exposed tendons, quickly cracking the skin along the rest of his arm. When that wasn’t enough, fissures broke out across his shoulders, back, and chest, staining the borrowed leather gear Alan had provided for him at the start of the expedition.

Logic dictated that something must be done.

While he processed what actions he might take, the thresholds kept scaling up, and more than that, the ruptures across his figure began to take on the same red glow permeating the Pylon. 

Sixth Threshold reached: 6x Endurance

Trapped in an unmoving rictus claw gripped tightly around the Quill, skeletal fingers emerged. For the second time in two weeks, his body was going to be forced to rebuild everything that had been taken away. If he survived, that is.

He was trapped in this as surely as a rat in a cage. 

Regeneration and Constitution could not keep up. At the current rate, there would be nothing to repair. So he was forced to take an action he had previously held off on. If his body could not survive the process as it currently existed, then he needed one better suited to endure the purging of corruption. 

In this precarious position, Cass made a logical mental step.

System, I’d like to activate my Path of the Versatile, please.

…

Path of the Versatile is now active

Choose a Path to enhance…

There was only one real choice.

Survivor selected…

Proceed?

[Yes] [No] 

Yes.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

Path of the Versatile: Survivor Selected.

Initiating System-Guided Evolution of the Survivor Path

Every Way, including those he had yet to unlock, began to glow as nodes lit up and darkened in a riotous explosion of lights and color. There was a pause, then words took over his vision.

Reviewing Calling history

Cass’s mind went back in time. 

First, he saw his desperate battle with the Skreels, which earned him Survivor in the first place. Then, in a flash of memories, he saw each and every time Survivor had activated. 

Dailies, fights, and even his most recent Trial. It was an endless cycle of stress, pain, and growth. The vision didn’t stop until he saw with his own eye, from only moments before, the skeletal fingers of his hand.

Enhancing Survivor based on Cassio Vale’s history…

Passive Survivor Benefits: 

Regeneration-> Restoration

(System Trust I) Note: Restoration is focused healing that can be targeted throughout the body as needed. Without focus, regeneration becomes more efficient, consuming less physical resources for improved recovery.

Reflexes-> Precision

(System Trust I) Note: Precision improves fine motor control and movement efficiency throughout the body. When directed, specific motions can be refined further for greater accuracy.

Other changes came through. Adaptive Strain Response became Fortitude, adding environmental resistance to its description. Supercharge took on a second daily charge, while Pain is in the Proof became Survivor’s Record, attaching itself to any Survivor Quest rather than Stalwart alone. The node even moved, centering itself at the bottom and stretching toward all the Ways at once.

Cass took it all in with a cold eye as he tracked the changes. 

Evolution complete: Path of the Survivor -> Path of the Versatile Survivor.

Without emotion clouding his mind, Cass got a feel for the power Restoration was bringing to his body.

Previously, Regeneration had worked broadly, spreading evenly across his injuries with little distinction between catastrophic and superficial damage. But now, he could feel every thread of energy moving independently through him.

Interesting.

Starting with the tips of his fingers, Cass focused on his right hand, using the newfound and controllable energy that felt right at the edge of his consciousness. The effect of restoration was immediate as muscles along the exposed palm began to rebuild at a visible pace. The spread of corruption across the rest of his body continued onward, but the source now had a pinhole rather than a spigot.

Fortitude started up on its own when a new fissure burst on Cass’s other shoulder. Rather than the skin peeling back with speed, it was slowed as his enhanced ability worked against the damage attempting to accrue.

But the process wasn’t free. Even separated from pain, Cass could feel the drain it placed on his body. Hunger arrived first, sharp enough to hollow out his stomach. Then came the dryness in his throat as restoration burned through his body’s water reserves at an alarming rate.

He noted it all, but didn’t let it rest too long on his mind. It was just another step in cleansing the Pylon, nothing else.

Once his hand was healed, Cass worked from back to front. Healing his lightly damaged shoulder, then moving on to his back and chest while doing spot-healing on his hand to continue slowing the rate of corruption decay. And still, the notifications came in.

15th Threshold reached: 15x Endurance

Bonus Threshold reached

Time faded from his mind as he combated the malignant red corruption. It would make some progress, spreading from an opening into the rest of his body, and he would fight it back with a steely eye.

The effect on his body was profound, but as for the corruption, it was running as strong as ever. At this rate, it would take him hours to wear it down.

Without the barrier of feeling, it was ever more apparent that regeneration, now restoration, took resources from the rest of his body to heal any damage it discovered. As he’d only recently completed his dive into the Trial of Attrition, there wasn’t a great amount of storage left.

So this needed to be fast.

Methodically, he changed his mental approach. The red glow around the Pylon looked like nothing else than an evil eye intent upon his destruction. But every resource was finite; every beginning must have an end, be it his own body or the corruption within the antenna. 

So, with his newly discovered ability to direct energy, he searched for the System. That search was fast as the answer was obvious. The Quill.

It was a conduit of System energy, while he was simply the facilitator. This wasn’t a vellum to be overwritten, but there must be a way to weaken the Pylon. So he looked, and as he did, spending every few seconds target healing a part of his body, he found small, hardened points of corruption across the structure. 

Lifting the Quill off the Pylon took more energy than expected, but once he did, he mercilessly stabbed it into the first point he could find. With a pop, a small burst of concentrated corruption splashed across his body. 

Cass had to pause as he healed himself, then he did it again. And again. His healing wasn’t complete, as he triaged his injuries rather than going for completeness, but all that mattered was this moment, and the purge.

This continued for another thirty seconds until he reached high up, stabbing the final point, and the carmine glow began to fade. Then, without warning, the System released the barrier. Perhaps more importantly, it also released the calming influence it had on his mind.

The trial screen had already been opened, but still, Cass screamed as, for a heartbeat, a notification reached him before he could shut it off.

20th Threshold reached: 20x Endurance

Bonus Threshold reached

Passing out was a time-honored tradition for Cassio Vale. He’d passed out when first receiving Survivor, then again when reaching the conclusion of his mad dash through Liora. In fact, most major events in his recent life had happened immediately preceding unconsciousness. 

But this time, he didn’t pass out.

That wasn’t a good thing.

The sense of pain from a 20th threshold Trial of Endurance wasn’t something that could be put into words. At some point, nerves reach their upper limit of tolerance, turning off within the mind as a form of protection. But that didn’t happen for Cass. Instead, for a heartbeat, he’d felt as if thousands of tiny, sharp insects had been clawing their way out of his skin. 

The feeling had short-circuited his brain, sending him into a catatonic stupor. 

Twenty members of the group had gathered around him immediately following his collapse to the ground. They’d lost another member in the fight against the Guardian’s opportunistic attack, but every single person was resolved to see this through. As for the ‘old antenna’, it had broken apart and collapsed right beside the QuestWright.

Nobody had any answers as to what had happened.

After a limping Johan patched him up, they placed Cass’s wasted, thin frame on Dain’s back, then continued on without his callouts. His eyes were wide open as he mumbled every so often, but he gave them little more. Adya wouldn’t leave his side.

In Cass’s mind, the world refused to settle into anything coherent.

Fragments of memory, pain, and notifications drifted through one another without order. One moment, he’d see Skreels, then remember he was in a dungeon beneath Liberty, then a new notification would draw away his attention.

Every breath felt like he’d gone three days without food, and he was having great difficulty swallowing. More than once, on the trek as Dain held off while the rest of the group fought, his vision blurred badly enough that he thought he might finally black out. Then, Fortitude would kick in, and he’d still be awake.

The world came and went in pieces. Senses turned on and off as his mind continuously refused to heed the call of clarity. But one thing was consistent. Adya.

Her emotions stayed constant in the haze. Each time they stopped, she would touch him, and he felt like that sense of feeling was buoying him out of the darkness he suddenly found himself in. 

They stopped again, and Dain put him down. It had been two hours since entering the dungeon, and they were clearly on a diminished time limit. As Adya moved over and sat beside his listless form, placing a hand on his chest as she leaned her head against his shoulder, something within him changed. Her warm feelings of affection cut through the fog in his head enough that Cass slowly blinked. Then blinked again.

She noticed.

“There you are, handsome.” She lifted a small bit of his sweaty hair away from his eyes. “Looks like you’re turning into a bit of a silver fox.”

“Water?” He croaked.

Adya lifted a bottle off her hip, and he drank with extreme greed. She pulled it back before he could gulp down anymore, “Calm down or you’ll choke.”

Cass was much calmer the second time, but they both heard his stomach complain about its lack of attention. As the group was taking a breather, she snuggled up against him, and in bits and pieces, he told her what happened.

When he finished, she wasn’t enthusiastic in her praise, “That’s insane.”

“Mm.”

“That’s genuinely insane, Cass. You keep doing things like that and you’ll end up dead.”

Before he could respond, Alan’s light feet took him over to the couple. Cass’s stomach took that moment to grumble again, and the observant old man didn’t miss it. He looked from the top of Cass’s head to his stomach before pulling a wrapped object from his waist and handing it to Adya.

“Here, this’ll make you feel better.”

Adya unwrapped the object carefully before immediately wrinkling her nose, “What is that?”

“It’s a compressed ration bar. Hard to get out here, but always useful in a pinch. We call it a brickmeal.”

Cass reached for it almost immediately as his stomach twisted itself in knots at even the thought of food. It tasted atrocious, but he devoured it with barely a thought.

The dense food sat heavily in his stomach, but he wasn’t complaining. Adya was called up to the front, so Cass took a quick glance at the map.

To his shock, it was clear.

Everything around them and forward was completely open to his sight. All the untraveled places could now be looked at, unambiguously and without any hesitation.

There were a few dozen red dots only a short distance away. Several were larger than he’d grown used to seeing, with one being truly massive.

The Guardian, probably.

He watched for a time, making sure they weren’t moving, then looked at his waiting notifications. The first one nearly took his breath away. The second completed the job.

Trial Concluded. 

Highest Endurance level reached: 19x 

Total time: 5 minutes, 39 seconds

Bonus threshold: Surpassed.

Reward: 95xp and 95 Tempered Tokens

Bonus threshold reward: 25 Tempered Tokens

Experience is held in reserve until the second gate has been passed.

Survivor’s Record activating…

+30 Tempered Tokens, +15 Survivor Tokens

[Corrupted Pylon Purged]

Rewards: 

500 Points

Tailored reward: 

Command Center Upgrade: Surveyor’s Sense

Survey’s Sense: A Command Center upgrade that helps the QuestWright detect environmental abnormalities, concealed corruption, and System interference.

And it didn’t stop there.

Bonus experience granted for cleansing your first corrupted object

160xp

Junior QuestWright Achievement progress:

4/16

[QUESTWRIGHT TIER UPGRADE AVAILABLE]

Would you like to upgrade now?