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Mages are powerful.

Not a single user in Haven Online would deny it, and the reason they have to be is just as plain.

Casting.

Unlike ordinary games, Haven Online does not let a skill fly the instant you shout its name. Every skill demands a cast time, and you still have to aim it. That is why magic has no choice but to hit hard. It devours resources and swallows time, and the risk pays you back in kind. High risk, high return. So nobody picks a fight over mages being strong, and whenever the complaint does come up, the mages' rebuttal always lands.

But that airtight logic had just been broken.

A mage's strength had always been tolerated because of the cast time, the mana a skill burned, and the drawback of only being able to cast one spell at a time. My skills had none of that. People were bound to lose their minds. None of it, of course, meant a thing to me.

"Why?"

"Sore about it? Then you do it. A five-star class. A three-star SS special option on top of that. Two SSS-grade skills, and a pile of five-star newbie gear besides. Strap all of that on and you're disgusting too, so why isn't anyone doing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it?"

I was curious, though. I'd spent a lot of money, sure, but there had to be plenty of people who could spend this much. Even in cryptocurrency alone, stories kept surfacing of someone striking it rich and walking around with hundreds of billions. Tens of billions would still be serious money to people like that, but if they called it an investment, it shouldn't have felt like much of a burden next to a fortune made overnight.

Reading chats like that, I had to admit they had a point. A five-star class isn't something money can buy in the first place. The odds are so miserable that if every user playing rolled a hundred times, you might still not see a single one. Four others besides me had one, which put the whole thing squarely in the realm of luck, and I was just one of the lucky bastards who'd landed inside it.

The rest was the same story. Of all the five-star classes I could have pulled, it was Dragon Words Mage, and because the class was tied to the Magic Tower, I'd walked away with an SS-grade skill. Then, of all things, the SS-grade special option that came up at three stars was the one that raised a skill's grade by a tier, and SSS was the result. Luck chained into luck. Was there another lucky bastard ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like me anywhere?

So I didn't let it get to me. Not the chats tearing me down, and not the people green with envy over my fortune. It was luck I never would have found in the first place without the money.

"This is a hack-and-slash. And this is what a mage is."

I hunted like I was having the time of my life. Every monster in the dungeon caught a Fireball the moment it showed its face and burned to death. I went at it so hard the clear didn't even take long, and the dungeon itself wasn't wide to begin with. A tutorial dungeon, after all.

"Hmm. Pretty sure that's all of them."

Right about when not a slime or a rabbit was left, light burst out of my body.

Flash!

"Oh. I leveled up."

"Whew. Shall we head out?"

A level 1, one-star dungeon doesn't drop anything worth real money. Rabbit hide or slime mucus, at best.

Every dungeon has clear conditions of its own. Meet them and the exit opens; step through, and everything you can take from the place comes up as a list.

Moments like this are when you really feel that a game is still a game. It lifts every scrap of real-world detail it can get its hands on, and then, the second convenience is on the line, it spends freely on things only a game can do.

"Items dropped, too."

Out of the dungeon, the viewers started stress-testing my limits among themselves. Haven users, spinning up their little simulations. I was curious too.

I'd been nervous at the start, if I'm honest. However good the build, I was still a mage. Could I really clear a dungeon alone? What if a mob of monsters rushed me? Come at me from every side, and even magic had to have a ceiling, didn't it? Maybe all that worry was inevitable. I'd never been in a fight in my life. Just an ordinary guy.

But now that I'd done it, I understood. The doubt was gone.

"I'm going to run the table."

I spread the map and searched for a level 1, two-star dungeon. The tool in my hand was an exclusive dungeon-finder app issued only to Haven Bank VVIPs. There was one not far off, so I headed straight for it.

"This is fun. Games."

If nothing else, the feel of getting stronger was dead certain. And what even is a sense of growth? Spend money or time and watch yourself get stronger in proportion — that's growth you can feel. Just as important are enemies that let you feel it for certain, stage by stage. Stats ticking upward on their own don't do it. It's like marking your height on the wall as you grow, day after day. You need a trace somewhere, something you can hold up against last time. Haven had that built exceptionally well.

"What's different about two-star? I heard they've got more health."

One of the viewers took my half-formed knowledge and laid it out simply.

"Ah."

One-star dungeons don't come with special options. Strictly speaking, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one-star has a star on it too. It's just Monster Health +0%, so it looks like nothing is there.

"Oh. Think this place has any monsters that can actually take one of my skills?"

Difficulty climbs with the grade. Of course, if all that climbed was the difficulty, users would have no reason to run them. High risk, high return. The law Haven never stops applying applies to dungeons too.

"Do they hand out more EXP?"

"Whoa."

A fast road to levels. I went in, and monsters that hadn't existed in the one-star dungeon started to show themselves.

"Oh. Orcs!"

People call level 1 dungeons tutorial dungeons, but that only holds for one-star. From two-star on, they're where users go once a basic setup is finished, so every monster in them attacks on sight. Familiar orcs wandered in a pack, snorting and grunting, and I was glad to see them. Weren't these the monsters out of the novels I'd actually bothered to read? Green skin. Pigs that walked on two legs. The clubs were shabby, but swung by a body that size, anything would hurt. They looked like they'd turn into perfectly good pork the moment I threw a Fireball and roasted them.

I picked something else.

"Ought to try Ice Arrow, too."

Crackle. The air froze in an instant, and seven arrows of ice took shape, sharp enough that I couldn't tell whether I was looking at arrows or spears.

"Luck's not on my side."

At eighty percent, make five and four of them ought to come out. Somehow only two showed up.

"I'm the only one with no luck."

The arrows flew for the orcs.

Pak, pak, pak!

"Gweeeek!"

The orcs' screams came back at me. I hadn't aimed shot by shot this time either, so only about three connected, but the ones that landed froze solid and then dropped where they stood. At the same time, shards of ice burst out of their bodies and punched into the others. Three shards from each of three orcs, and every orc they bit into froze solid.

"Whoa. That's gorgeous."

The freeze chance was ten percent, and yet it felt like it was proccing better than it had any right to. Probably because so many shards were going off. And even the ones that didn't freeze caught the slow, which lands at fifty percent and, in practice, might as well be a freeze of its own. They shuffled a little, sure. But orcs whose Agility had dropped into the negatives — how far were they really going to get?

Pak-pak-pak-pak!

Hitting orcs that weren't moving wasn't hard. I needed the practice anyway. Start here, and the feel of it would come soon enough.

The hunt itself was no different from the one-star dungeon. There were more orcs than before, and they were aggressive, so the noise of the fight pulled them in a rush — but not one monster made it anywhere near me. I just stood with the staff in hand and flicked. Flicked. It was easier, if anything.

"Nice of them to come to me."